My pro and con for Paper Bullets

Con: I really don’t know if it was necessary for the author to talk about the sex scenes in detail.

Pro: I like the talk between him and the Cambodian women. Really made me think about the differences between being Hapa and being Asian.

I really need to start watching Bruce Lee films. I looked up the showdown between the two martial artists on the internet and in seems as though there is some controversy as to how it went down. I’m wondering if the directors who made Birth of the Dragon used this as an excuse to make the film in their own image.

I thought this was a very good film to watch because from my perspective I don’t know much about the Indians who came from Uganda. I first heard about South Asians in Uganda from an article that I read and that was it.

On a side note, I wonder how many South Asians stayed in Uganda. Plus, how many of those who stayed survived?

I found a few short documentaries on Idi Amin on YouTube. Most of them have the fact that he was part of one of Britain’s imperial armies. That seems to be a very common fact on most military dictators in European colonies.

The book kept me thinking about a crossroad because of the way it depicted two, maybe three different lives of what could of happened to all those Vietnamese orphans.

One other thing that came into question was the first chapter where the woman drops off her child at the orphanage, where I believe that the children could have been dropped off in a number of different ways.

Vinh kind of made a good point where he asked, “What makes you so special”? However, someone can ask him the same question.

The Beautiful Country took place in a time that surprised me. If the setting is 1990 then the main character must have been born sometime in the late 60s maybe.

I was actually satisfied with the ending when Binh finds his father and works with him. However, I believe that a sequel could have made for this considering we don’t know what Binh would do if his father passes away.

I always wonder how Vietnam Veterans would react when they saw someone of Vietnamese descent. In the one scene where Binh meets a few veterans who have missing arms, they ended up giving him a ride. This is probably one out of many reactions that veterans would have done if they met someone who is Vietnamese.

• I actually didn’t know that boxing was that popular among the Filipinos during the 1920s and 1930s.
• I wonder how people would compare or contrast Manny Pacquio to Francisco Guilledo (Pancho Villa). Would he be better slightly better than Pancho Villa?

• One thing that I noticed between the reading and the film was the fact that the book didn’t us any Spanish words. I see this as a good thing because if they only spoke Spanish in the film, then non-Filipinos would think that Filipinos speak that language when they actually speak their native one.
• I would like to see or read a depiction of a Filipino Muslim character due to the conflict that is going on right now in the Philippines (look up Moro Conflict).

 

After I finished the book, I felt as if a sequel needed to be written.

The theme of, “What is home to you?” really plays out in the second half of the book.

• This is shown with the father where he wants to be in the house he grew up in
• The mother when she goes to the DMZ
• Jeehyun when she feels that her home is in Michigan or Korea
• Haejin when she wants to live an independent life away from her parents

• Twinsters was a really interesting movie about how two twins, separated, found each other through Facebook. This kind of reminds me of the movie Lion. The only difference between the two is that the man in the movie is trying to find his biological family through Google Earth instead of Facebook.
• I wonder what the current situation now is between the twins and their biological mother as far as if they made any kind of social contact at all.
• I think one of the most interesting things from the film was the fact that Anaïs’s parents were looked down on for having adopted an Asian, while Sam’s family situation was the opposite. Why is this the case?

I will get right to the point by saying that Better Luck Tomorrow was the most messed up film that I have ever seen in my life. I will admit that some of the acting was good, but man that climax and ending was just messed up for me. To be fair though I don’t know if I could have made this better than it is now.

After the film ended some people may have heard me say, “That’s how the movie ends”?!

This film reminds me of another film by the name of American Hustle. The differences lie with the fact that this is based off of some true events, the mob is involved, and there were a lot of characters I didn’t like. The similarity with Better Luck Tomorrow is the fact that both films have a messed up storyline.

I wish there were more films that could depict Asian Americans, but not in a stereotypical negative way.