Badmouth.net

interview: john cho

April 25th, 2008 by John Marcotte

John Cho in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Four years ago, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle served up a slightly subversive skewering of racial politics in America wrapped in the guise of a teen-aged stoner sex comedy. A critical success but a box-office disappointment, Harold and Kumar became a favorite on DVD — following in the footsteps of cult classics like Office Space — gaining in popularity until the studio caved in and ordered a sequel.

See our review of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.

The original Harold and Kumar was the first major studio comedy to feature Asian leads exclusively, and it made leading-men stars out of reliable second bananas Kal Penn and John Cho. Badmouth recently sat down with Cho in San Francisco for an exclusive interview (if you don’t count the other four reporters taking part in the round-table interview.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Interviews | 6 Comments »

The Comics…Very Funny

April 15th, 2008 by John Marcotte

Comics...Very Funny - Fredric Wertham

Fredric Wertham was a brilliant psychiatrist and philanthropist who corresponded with Sigmund Freud, fought racial segregation and wrote about the complicity of medical professionals in the Holocaust — but that’s not why we are talking about him today.

As diverse and brilliant as Wertham’s work was, he is primary remembered as a one-man crusader against comic books. In the 1950s, his book, Seduction of the Innocent, put the blame squarely on comic books for a perceived rise in “juvenile delinquency.” In the midst of the McCarthy era, his theories caught on and lead to national hearings before Congress, where he told a sympathetic Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency that comics books lead to violence, sexual depravity and murder.

To be fair to Wertham, many of the comic books of the day were depraved, sexist and violent — and that material was often marketed to children. But there was a lot of brilliance mixed in among the exploitation; and there was an adult audience who read the books as well. And frankly, Wertam saw often sexual depravity where there was none (e.g. - Wonder Woman was obviously a lesbian because she was a strong, independent woman.)

The comics industry did a poor job of presenting their side of the case or of making a clear argument on obvious First Amendment grounds. Instead they had an inarticulate and disheveled (and reportedly strung out) EC Publisher William Gaines explaining that gore and sex were good for small children and that parents had no right to be concerned.

After the disastrous Senate hearings and fearful of governmental censorship, the industry preemptively created the industry-sponsored Comics Code Authority, which imposed draconian rules that not only banned extreme violence or sexuality, but also prohibited entire words and concepts such as “terror” or “zombie”. Children could never be seen in danger. Criminals could never prevail. Authority figures could never be shown as corrupt.

This creative straight-jacket destroyed most of the best books on the market — especially the work of EC Comics, which published such classic titles as Tales from the Crypt and Two-Fisted Tales — and threw the industry into an infantile tailspin that only a few carefully neutered superheros were able to survive.

The imposition of the Comics Code Authority ended the explosive creativity and expansion of the Golden Age of comics with a blow that the industry never fully recovered from. It took years for superheroes to become popular again; and more years yet for a few brave books to ignore the Comics Code Authority. But in an era of television, video games and the World Wide Web, the comics industry will likely never reach the level of popularity and success it enjoyed before Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent and the CCA.

I recently came across an issue of Reader’s Digest from 1948. Imagine my delight when I realized that it contained a critique of the comics industry from Wertham himself — six full years before the publication of Seduction of the Innocent. In fact, it is likely even older than that, since it was a reprint from The Saturday Review of Literature.

What we see is a man who was all too willing to scapegoat comic books for every evil perpetrated by children. Time and time again he outlines some violent atrocity, then ominously notes that “the little boy read comic books” — conveniently ignoring that in 1948, every child pretty much read comic books.

Unfortunately, there isn’t any sign of the civil rights leader and psychological wunderkind who corresponded with Freud. What is left is a cautionary tale; a glimpse into a mindset that can turn a brilliant and kind man into a misguided book-burner, and can turn a country founded on freedom of speech into a nation opposed to the free expression of ideas. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Articles, Comics | 3 Comments »

Cheap Flights - Mortgages - Credit Counseling - Arizona Pools

Iron Man (2008)

May 1st, 2008 by Brian McDonough


Rating: ★★★★½
Director: Jon Favreau
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges

Despite high hopes for the Batman sequel, the Indiana Jones comeback and the new Hellboy, it would not be a bad summer at all if the early arriving Iron Man turns out to be the best action-adventure of the summer. Jon Favreau, who does not have this kind of action movie under his directorial belt, just knocks it out of the park here, taking a very good script and an excellent cast and making it all explode off the goddamn screen.

The film starts with the dry humor Robert Downey Jr. does so well, and then veers into intense, chaotic violence that should put to rest any fears over Favreau’s lack of experience directing an action film. He delivers one of the best superhero adaptations done in recent years, and in fact is arguably the single best. It lacks the two-halves-jammed-together-ness (one hour origin, one hour Willem Dafoe raving) of the otherwise delightful first Spider-Man and stands on its own better than the excellent Spider-Man 2. It’s way more fun, but equally well-acted, written and directed, than Batman Begins. It’s far less self-conscious than the X-Men movies, and doesn’t flat-out suck like every other superhero film of the last ten years (except maybe for the middling Fantastic Fours).

More...

Posted in Moshood, Reviews | 6 Comments »

Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (2008)

April 25th, 2008 by Brian McDonough


Rating: ★★★★☆
Director: John Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Starring: John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris, Rob Corddry

Did you see “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle”? Did you like it? Then you’ll want to see this film. Written—and this time directed—by the pair that wrote the original, the sequel delivers everything the first film offered—stoner jokes, gross-out laughs, plays to racial stereotypes—that the first offered. Here, everything is, as the kids say, dialed up a notch, so fans with fond memories of the 2004 original will love the sequel. I saw the movie with someone who’d never seen the original, and he enjoyed it, too. You just have to have a taste for jokes about drugs, genitalia and bodily secretions.

More...

Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments »

Baby Mama (2008)

April 24th, 2008 by Brian McDonough


Rating: ★★★☆☆
Director: Michael McCullers
Starring: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinear, Steve Martin, Sigourney Weaver

Tina Fey headlines an uneven but mostly enjoyable comedy with Baby Mama. Fey is likable everywoman, the normal, if awkward, center of a chaotic universe. That’s pretty much her gig on “30 Rock,” it was her personality on the “Saturday Night Live” news segments (where Baby Mama costar Amy Poehler was often her zanier co-anchor), and here she’s a sympathetic corporate executive trying to have a baby by surrogacy because she’s infertile. The issues of choosing single motherhood are not really dealt with, but it seems understandable to go it alone, since Fey is surrounded by people doing schtick.

More...

Posted in Reviews | No Comments »

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

April 17th, 2008 by Brian McDonough

Rating: ★★★★☆
Director: Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Starring: Jason Segal, Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell

This is a much better film than it should be. It stars and is written by some minor actor on a minor sitcom, co-stars the most annoying girl on That Pretty Annoying 70s Sitcom, and is about young people dating. Honestly, why even try to make a good movie out of that? But hey, 20 years ago, it would’ve been written by Nora Ephron and have starred Meg Ryan, so let’s count our blessings.

(People rightfully say the Bush Era is a low point in American history, what with the stolen elections, the nine-eleven, the lying us into wars we can’t get out of, the secret prisons, suspension of habeas corpus, general erosion of civil rights, the Katrina disgrace … sure, points taken. But in these two presidential terms, Nora Ephron has only written one movie, Bewitched and no one even saw that. So don’t tell me it’s been all bad news. But I digress.)

Jason Segal has written a really appealing film.

More...

Posted in Columns, Reviews | No Comments »

Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

April 17th, 2008 by Brian McDonough

Rating: ★★★☆☆
Director: Rob Minkoff
Starring: Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Michael Angarano

Last time you watched The Wizard of Oz, did you find yourself thinking, “What this movie needs is less singing and more people kicking each other in the head?” If so, Forbidden Kingdom is the answer to your rather disturbing prayers.

More...

Posted in Columns, Reviews | No Comments »