I just watched Jet Li's Hero with Michael and YiLin. It seemed pretty good, but I'm sure it woulda been a ton better if I actually understood what the hell was going on, hahaha! It was in mandarin with simplified (bastardized mainland version) Chinese subtitles. And I mean, my Chinese by true measure, really isn't all that bad I suppose, but they were speaking in like old Chinese. It's like if you're used to Cat in the Hat, and all of a sudden they spring The Canterbury Tales on ya! So yea, half the time, I was like uhhhh... what's going on? Why are they fighting? Why aren't they fighting? Didn't this just happen? So yea, it was a cool movie, but I couldn't give you a plot synopsis if I tried, hahaha. Yea, I'm gonna have to watch this one again with a Fob translating for me or something, hahaha.

*We ended up watching Gen X Cops and Bowling for Columbine also. Gen X Cops was kinda boring since I'd watched it like 3 times, but the corny dialogue is still hilarious. Bowling for Columbine was really good. I thought it'd just be about the school shooting(s), but it was a deeper look at American culture and trying to determine why we're world's most homicidal culture. I think the final conclusion was that we're a country shrouded in fear and paranoia of our neighbors and society in general. We don't think rationally before we act; we "shoot first and ask questions later." And it said that our fear is largely grounded in the media's presentation of the news. I thought about that, and I reflected on how when I went back to Taiwan last summer, my relatives all made such a big deal about the "rampant ecstasy problem" there. I thought it was ridiculous, and I knew it was cuz of what they saw on tv, but I never drew the correlation back to America. The movie made me realize that the same kind of media exaggeration is very likely the root of our fear of minority crime here in the US. Man, that movie was deep. It really made me think... Oh, and the movie also reinforced my personal disagreement with the political right.