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Mat Cauthon posted:She has fans who want to support her but feel that they can't because she won't acknowledge the harm done in reinforcing stereotypes that harm Black people. She has fans who want to support her because of the importance of AAPI representation but can't because the way she got famous inflames tension between minority communities as well as reinforcing a model minority myth. That's criticism levied by people of all races but obviously Black and Asian people have been the most prominent voices because the impact affects them more heavily. No one is asking for her to grovel - simply saying "I realize that what I did was harmful, in the future I'm going to do better to listen and work to make space for all minorites who embody their culture to be embraced" would do wonders. I think the thing that isn't universally understood, and where the discourse get's stuck, is what "harmful" means in this context -- why it's more harmful and demanding of redress than other ways one might reflect and participate in unjust systems. It's presented as an axiomatic assertion in a way that chafes for many. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Apr 21, 2021 |
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Apr 21, 2021 18:14
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KVeezy3 posted:I'm curious what your thoughts are on the Black Panther film. The movie where the CIA agent gets special healing while the family member driven "insane" from the grief of his father's death and the genocide of his people dies giving lip service to our ancestors? Or how the answer to this strife is another bootstrap in the middle of oakland, aka silicon valley? Also I hope you aren't suggesting that was a black product.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:22
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I once saw Awkwafina almost get booed off stage in 2012 after opening for Anamanaguchi at a free show in Brooklyn. Its pretty wild to see where she is now and to see her the subject of this much argument when I thought she was just a dumb meme rapper that nobody would ever remember.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:28
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bushisms.txt posted:The movie where the CIA agent gets special healing while the family member driven "insane" from the grief of his father's death and the genocide of his people dies giving lip service to our ancestors? Or how the answer to this strife is another bootstrap in the middle of oakland, aka silicon valley? I think that's the crux of it -- if Black Panther had a script with better politics, would it be a less exploitative vehicle?
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Apr 21, 2021 18:31
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Mechafunkzilla posted:I think that's the crux of it -- if Black Panther had a script with better politics, would it be a less exploitative vehicle? How is wakanda black other than white men say so? It's a white fantasy for black people. Is Django unchained a black product?
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Apr 21, 2021 18:37
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bushisms.txt posted:How is wakanda black other than white men say so? It's a white fantasy for black people. Is Django unchained a black product? Right, and so we reach some strange conclusions, like that the black members of the cast and crew of those films should issue public apologies for being complicit in the exploitation of black history and culture by white capital.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:45
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Right, and so we reach some strange conclusions, like that the black members of the cast and crew of those films should issue public apologies for being complicit in the exploitation of black history and culture by white capital. This isn't equivalent and you should know it.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:51
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josh04 posted:The problem isn't that the act is inauthentic; I'm sure you know that any attempt to fix down a notion of authenticity goes to hilarious places very quickly. Similarly, one cannot grade the racisms against each other. The problem isn't inherent at all. It's that right now, in actually-existing US society which is universally acknowledged to be extremely racist, there are a handful of things that are recognised to have a historical context that means exploiting them for entertainment if you are not black (although sometimes even then) is impolite and insulting to black people, and so racist. Yeah, so we're basically on the same page here, except when we get into curious details - like, at the end of your first paragraph, you're unwittingly saying: 'sometimes black entertainers exploit their own history and are therefore an insult their own race'. Like, uh, yikes. So we just need to get a lot more careful and specific about what we mean by "exploitation". A lot of people are using it in the sense of, like, "exploitation film" when crassness is really not the problem. Like, concrete example: there are white people who are making money from the Black Panther movie. White people will be making money from the Shang-Chi movie. These are neo-exploitation films, but I think you'll be hard-pressed to find any American movie where that isn't the case. So, are we insulted? And then, let's take a hypothetical Chinese film where literally everyone involved is in the production is Chinese. Is there now no exploitation? Of course not. Obviously, the workers are being exploited, and we could very easily make the argument that they are 'exploiting their own culture' - because, you know, movies are cultural products that are typically sold for money. But that's not some exceptional "insulting" event, but merely the status quo. And I think that's what we've narrowed it down to: Aquafina's stage name and persona are unusual for an Asian woman, and therefore a disruption of the comfortable norm where we don't have to think about such things. Hence why the main goal is for her to drop the rap thing and apologize instead of, say, treating it as just a basic example of code-switching.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:52
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Mat Cauthon posted:I've not seen Hunters or Watchmen but people seemed to like them so maybe it's a good pick? Is Goyer involved in the writing at all? The Watchmen TV series was really great. Pen15 is hilarious and I wouldn't put it in the top 10 shows of all time, but it is very memorable and unique. I have also not seen Hunters, but she won an Emmy for writing on it and I've heard nothing but good things. The concept of the show is pretty great. She has a very short catalogue, but everything I have seen from her has been great. Goyer is not involved in any way right now. Seems unlikely that he will be because the current writer is the first black woman to write a Marvel movie and they probably don't want to bring in other major writers to co-write with her.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:54
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Right, and so we reach some strange conclusions, like that the black members of the cast and crew of those films should issue public apologies for being complicit in the exploitation of black history and culture by white capital. If anything marvel needs to apologize, hell they didn't even give BP respect at the end of civil war with a "he's coming back in the future" message like they did spider man. But we've strayed from the central point, that aquafina's minstrel act is palatable to y'all because you don't see black identity as a thing anyone owns.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:54
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Burkion posted:This isn't equivalent and you should know it. Sure, but articulating why they aren't equivalent is difficult, and why the discourse breaks down. In the same way that we can generally agree that racism and exploitation won't go away once we reach a critical mass of public apologies, but it's hard to articulate why we don't apply that lens when considering the individual.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:55
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Sure, but articulating why they aren't equivalent is quite difficult, and why the discourse breaks down. In the same way that we can generally agree that racism and exploitation won't go away once we reach a critical mass of public apologies, but it's hard to articulate why we don't apply that lens when considering the individual. No, no it isn't No one made Awkwafina do her dumb poo poo. She did it as a person and should own up to it. Black Panther was going to be made regardless what any PoC had to say about it. That was always going to be a thing because of Marvel Studios, and behind them, Disney. You can't hold any of the people paid to make the thing for them accountable because they never had any say to begin with.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:58
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Sure, but articulating why they aren't equivalent is quite difficult, and why the discourse breaks down. In the same way that we can generally agree that racism and exploitation won't go away once we reach a critical mass of public apologies, but it's hard to articulate why we don't apply that lens when considering the individual. No I've said it numerous times. Cultural appropriation is when someone outside of a community profits off something said community is excoriated for. Black people are derided for ebonics, "hood" clothes, being thug, weird respellings of products, and yet an Asian woman can be mediocre at best doing this and gets a movie career.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:58
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bushisms.txt posted:No I've said it numerous times. Cultural appropriation is when someone outside of a community profits off something said community is excoriated for. Black people are derided for ebonics, "hood" clothes, being thug, weird respellings of products, and yet an Asian woman can be mediocre at best doing this and gets a movie career. And we're defining 'community' -- racially, ethnically, geographically? It's at some intersection of race, class, and geography, clearly. Should we consider Awkwafina's affectations, having grown up in New York City, differently than those of the Indonesian rapper someone posted earlier in the thread? There's some kind of argument about authenticity and 'acting', but it kind of speaks to the point SMG made about how we distinguish that from other types of code switching, which is considered generally acceptable. There's this whole mire of to what degree affectations mean assuming an identity. This can work violently in reverse, when a black person is accused of discarding their identity because they 'act white'. e: also I know I'm being incredibly tedious with all this poststructuralist poo poo so I apologize, feel free to just call me a racist idiot and move on. I just think there's ideology here worth interrogating! Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Apr 21, 2021 |
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Apr 21, 2021 19:09
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Mechafunkzilla posted:code switching, This is specifically about individuals in an environment. Aquafina's environment is a construct for her "comedy" bit that doesn't exist outside the frame. There's literally nothing in common, you're a half step away from saying Dolezal was fine. And acting white is another internalization of white supremacy that we have to contend with, along with colorism within the diaspora. bushisms.txt fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Apr 21, 2021 |
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Apr 21, 2021 19:14
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The Watchmen TV series was really great. Pen15 is hilarious and I wouldn't put it in the top 10 shows of all time, but it is very memorable and unique. Hunters is utterly fantastic, and you should check it out, if you get a chance. I can't wait for season 2, whenever it finally comes around. If she had anything to do with Hunters and Watchmen, then I'm taking this as great news.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:18
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bushisms.txt posted:This is specifically about individuals in an environment. Aquafina's environment is a construct for her "comedy" bit that doesn't exist outside the frame. There's literally nothing in common, you're a half step away from saying Dolezal was fine. I have to disagree with the 'entirely a construct' part -- even characters portrayed for entertainment are an expression of some kind of internal self-state, which can be an identification with, not necessarily an identification as. Dolezal is definitely not fine, she's explicitly assuming identity, self-identifying as a black woman. There's something much more reified there. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Apr 21, 2021 |
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Apr 21, 2021 19:18
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Yeah, so we're basically on the same page here, except when we get into curious details - like, at the end of your first paragraph, you're unwittingly saying: 'sometimes black entertainers exploit their own history and are therefore an insult their own race'. Like, uh, yikes. So we just need to get a lot more careful and specific about what we mean by "exploitation". A lot of people are using it in the sense of, like, "exploitation film" when crassness is really not the problem. I think it's perfectly fair to say that black entertainers sometimes get criticised by black people for the way their act is received by white audiences! I remain un-'yikes'-ed. I'm using 'exploited' in the sense of exploitation films, not marxist exploitation, but not to mean 'crass'. I simply mean that everyone knows that a reliable number of white people will pay money to see a minstrel act if one is available. It's akin to the exploitation of a natural resource. And by itself that is not a moral descriptor. As you say, Chinese people making Chinese movies are 'exploiting' the desire of an audience to see those movies, but that's not a problem. And so it's not that the goal is for her to "drop the rap thing"; even in this thread, I don't think anyone has said that. If anything, the complaints are explicitly sympathetic: "We know that it is disproportionately hard for minorities to climb the ladder in the US, but". The goal is just that recognition, that few things in society are ceded to the history of racism and this is one of them. And finally, you can say that the disruption caused by Awkwafina's act is what singles it out for criticism, but I would say that the extent to which she is integrated into and pre-apologised for by the liberal establishment and liberal cinema is what causes such a strong response in the thread to the idea that she might be racist. Even here, of all places, people want to believe that The Process will effectively filter out racism from our celebrity class.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:26
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Mechafunkzilla posted:expression of some kind of internal self-state, Can you give any kind of example for why you think aquafina's somehow a natural AAVE speaker when she reps this place? quote:
Like the devil's advocacy is really annoying because it's based in nothing but witticism.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:29
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bushisms.txt posted:Can you give any kind of example for why you think aquafina's somehow a natural AAVE speaker when she reps this place? I'm really not talking about being a 'natural speaker' of anything, what I'm talking about has more to do with psychological identifications than assimilation. The demographics of her neighborhood is kind of a non-sequitur for a few reasons, one being that it's still a part of a larger highly multicultural borough and city, and also because cultural/community boundaries are getting increasingly blurry with the proliferation of the internet.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:39
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Mechafunkzilla posted:I'm really not talking about being a 'natural speaker' of anything, what I'm talking about has more to do with psychological identifications than assimilation. The demographics of her neighborhood is kind of a non-sequitur for a few reasons, one being that it's still a part of a larger highly multicultural borough and city, and also because cultural/community boundaries are getting increasingly blurry with the proliferation of the internet.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:41
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FilthyImp posted:
You gotta keep up with your Miley Cyrus news, she’s Pat Benatar now. josh04 posted:I think it's perfectly fair to say that black entertainers sometimes get criticised by black people for the way their act is received by white audiences! I remain un-'yikes'-ed. King Bach was trending earlier this year because of a rumor that he might play a role in the new Boondocks season and all of the conversations I saw were black people calling him out for how his vines were built to exploit old stereotypes for popularity.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:41
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bushisms.txt posted:You've done nothing but throw out hypotheticals that aren't grounded in anything, not even in awkwafina herself. I can see you just want to be right, so you're right, there's no racism, you can now safely like her. I mean, yeah, I'm interested in talking about social theory. I'm not familiar enough with any of the media Awkwafina has appeared in to like or dislike it.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:46
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Mechafunkzilla posted:I mean, yeah, I'm interested in talking about social theory. I'm not familiar enough with any of the media Awkwafina has appeared in to like or dislike it. Well you should read up on intersectionality, because you're failing at it right now. So enjoy your thought exercises on the ownership of my identity.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:49
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bushisms.txt posted:Well you should read up on intersectionality, because you're failing at it right now. So enjoy your thought exercises on the ownership of my identity. I'm not following what you mean by 'failing at intersectionality' Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Apr 21, 2021 |
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Apr 21, 2021 19:58
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I like the movie Blade.
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Apr 21, 2021 20:01
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Blade rocks It's rad, even
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Apr 21, 2021 20:08
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Mechafunkzilla posted:I'm really not talking about being a 'natural speaker' of anything, what I'm talking about has more to do with psychological identifications than assimilation. The demographics of her neighborhood is kind of a non-sequitur for a few reasons, one being that it's still a part of a larger highly multicultural borough and city, and also because cultural/community boundaries are getting increasingly blurry with the proliferation of the internet. I think the larger issue that’s being alluded to is that things that are parts of “black culture” (which I understand is a nebulous term) like hip hop or AAVE or certain types of fashion get imported into the broader culture and become “available” for anyone to trade in for purely commercial or aesthetic reasons, but none of the benefits of being this constant engine of cultural dynamism actually accrue to the black community. The good stuff gets taken and de-racialized while the negative stereotypes persist because all that’s left of “black culture” are the negative stereotypes once the white supremacist monoculture has incorporated the parts they want.
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Apr 21, 2021 20:13
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Roth posted:I like the movie Blade. I love Blade, but I've never been able to get behind Blade II. And I say this as a huge del Toro fan. Something about it just doesn't work for me. Don't get me wrong, it's miles better than Blade III. But that franchise has always felt like it would have been better as "one and done". Because Blade...god drat, Blade rules. thrawn527 fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Apr 21, 2021 |
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Apr 21, 2021 20:19
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While I feel like certain parts of this discussion have been productive, this is still the Comic Book Movies thread, so yes, please go back to discussing why the bad film Blade is considered good for some reason.
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Apr 21, 2021 20:22
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thrawn527 posted:I love Blade, but I've never been able to get behind Blade II. And I say this as a huge del Toro fan. Something about it just doesn't work for me. For the longest time, I thought I was the only one who felt that way.  I mostly choose to believe there was only ever the first Blade.
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Apr 21, 2021 20:24
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Debbie Does Dagon posted:please go back to discussing why the bad film Blade is considered good for some reason. yo wtf?????
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Apr 21, 2021 20:25
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YOLOsubmarine posted:I think the larger issue that’s being alluded to is that things that are parts of “black culture” (which I understand is a nebulous term) like hip hop or AAVE or certain types of fashion get imported into the broader culture and become “available” for anyone to trade in for purely commercial or aesthetic reasons, but none of the benefits of being this constant engine of cultural dynamism actually accrue to the black community. The good stuff gets taken and de-racialized while the negative stereotypes persist because all that’s left of “black culture” are the negative stereotypes once the white supremacist monoculture has incorporated the parts they want. Undeniably true. I think the point of contention lies around the degree to which individuals are responsible for this, versus the individual as a proxy for something structural. So it feels like we're talking about race but we're actually talking about, like, structural marxism vs. liberalism or something  e: Blade sucks jk it's good
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Apr 21, 2021 20:27
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Some motherfuckers are always trying to moderate uphill.
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Apr 21, 2021 20:27
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I think Wesley Snipes would argue that Blade is all about him being cool as gently caress, whereas the sequels are less so and are thus less cool. I'm inclined to agree.
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Apr 21, 2021 20:41
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Debbie Does Dagon posted:While I feel like certain parts of this discussion have been productive, this is still the Comic Book Movies thread, so yes, please go back to discussing why the bad film Blade is considered good for some reason. 
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Apr 21, 2021 20:49
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Debbie Does Dagon posted:While I feel like certain parts of this discussion have been productive, this is still the Comic Book Movies thread, so yes, please go back to discussing why the bad film Blade is considered good for some reason. We really need to screen CineD mods so they don't cause problems like this.
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Apr 21, 2021 22:32
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thrawn527 posted:I love Blade, but I've never been able to get behind Blade II. And I say this as a huge del Toro fan. Something about it just doesn't work for me. There's a lot of stuff in Blade II that is really good - Snipes getting more space to explore the character, some of the action sequences, etc. The vampire royalty intrigue is even decent enough as a B plot. It just flubs the landing a bit too much in a few too many places and ends with a reset back to the status quo at the start of Blade, which immediately gets blown up in Blade III. Also complete waste of Donnie Yen and they didn't bring back N'Bushe Wright. It's still more entertaining than half the current ream of cape flicks but hard to watch it without thinking about the squandered potential.
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Apr 21, 2021 22:37
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Blade is top 1% tier of both superhero movies and vampire movies easily
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Apr 21, 2021 22:44
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GDT's commentary on Blade II rules tho
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