Thursday, July 3, 2008

Watching Kung Fu Panda, and a clip from Shanghai

Backdated entry, because if not by this blog, how will I track the passing of days?

This g-chat message came through yesterday at 7:03 p.m.:

Aaron: hey
kung fu panda
up for it?
me: oh yeah!

I knew little about Kung Fu Panda except that it starred Jack Black and featured the line, "I've only seen paintings of this painting," a punchline that, as China Law Blog points out, sheds light on China's counterfeiting culture (though no one laughed in my theater when the joke was delivered). Still, there were three reasons for my exclamatory excitement:

1. The name of the movie combines kung-fu and panda.
2. I hadn't watched a full movie since The Great Debaters, and I did that on an airplane from New York.
3. I had nothing else to do.

So, Aaron, Lincoln, Molly -- left to right, below (ignore that white guy in Molly's picture) -- and I went for a 9:35 showing in Wangfujing's Oriental Plaza, the same building as Aaron's Grand Hyatt Hotel. Unfortunately we had to leave Ice Age 2 at a crucial part, right before Manny meets the only other mammoth left in the world, a female he happens to despise, initially (I maintain, even after watching Dreamworks's Kung Fu Panda, that Ice Age 2 is the best non-Pixar CGI-animated movie ever made because of its subtlety and the theme of global warming). That's okay -- only Molly among us hadn't seen the movie.



Who's Molly?

This is Molly:


Joe, for the record, did not propose.

POSTSCRIPT 1: The pictures and video are from the Shanghai Ultimate Frisbee tournament, which happened two weekends ago. I'll post a picture or video every couple days from here on out. That's how massive and eventful that weekend was: it takes two weeks for me to process it all, then another four to get it all out.

POSTSCRIPT 2: Kung Fu Panda trailer.

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