披荆斩棘的哥哥 - Call Me By Fire

披荆斩棘的哥哥 (Call Me By Fire) is a 2021 variety show out of Zhong Guo. The premise of the show is 33 "brothers" whom come from different walks of the entertainment industry come together to form a 17 member final group. In essence, it is a survival show format.

The show is a spin-off of the "sisters" show, Sisters Who Make Waves (乘风破浪的姐姐). But the format is vastly different. Instead of eliminations every week, elimations came more sporatic. The groups also had repeating "Captains" through the entire show.

The chatter online were that these folks were beyond their prime and trying to get attention. I love it. Get attention, get work again! I love some of these 33 folks and watched them for years. My favorite is Jerry Yan, whom they focused on a lot in week 1, but went more low key later on. Terry Lin started out as annoying to me, but ended up being one of my favorites at the end. The Canto group was so funny.

There were folks I was not as familiar with so I fast forwarded through their segments. That's the beauty of watching via Youtube. The ads sucked doe.

Youku did a similar show called Shine! Super Brothers (追光吧哥哥) with 21 brothers that was in a more dance and sing kind of way. I also liked that show. It's all about getting away from the real world for a brief moment every week and Call Me By Fire did it in spades.

Kung Fu Hip Hop or Kung Fu Pop (精舞門/精舞门)

Originally posted on xanga. Updated 1/21/2009.

Kung Fu Pop or Kung Fu Hip Hop was a rather entertaining movie. Because its a china production with some HK stars, I had to give them the benefit of the doubt. So, I wasn't expecting a great story, nor great production value. I basically expected a b movie.

Because of my extremely low expectations, it was meet and than some. The story was cheesy. The character development was still happening as the movie ended. The reason behind the battles was cheesy! The cheese factor was extremely high.

But that's what I was expecting! It met it and exceeded them because the dancing was actually pretty good and Kung Fu was a nice addition.

My social commentary on all this is that I hope China develops its own urban culture without having to borrow so heavily from the US. I see that influence on HK and Taiwan. It is even more so in Korea and Japan. Instead of borrowing so heavily as the aforementioned countries, create your own. There's over a billion ppl in China. Not all of them will be middle class. I'd guess that most would be struggling as always for a "better" life. They should create from within. Explore from within. None of this "east meets west" crap. We should be offended by "far eastern" anyways.