Watch Milarepa, a 2006 Tibetan-made movie about one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism, who became a sorcerer. They have no problem depicting him as having Doctor Strange-like magical powers. In the stories on which the movie is based he also flies and teleports and is visited by demons and all sorts of…

Yeah, the latter claim really annoys me. I’m a fan of Tibetan culture and Tibetan music and their are a lot of Tibetan artists who perform in China with full support of the government, perform on television, etc. Some of them perform with the People’s Liberation Army troupes. There’s a lot of doting over minority…

Yes. I can’t understand why they wouldn’t just go with Bhutan.

It fits Tibetan culture pretty well. They have pretty much everything: magic, demons, astral projection, reincarnation. They took kind of a ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ approach to religion.

I noticed that. They say the roles are Chinese and only say Mulan will be cast as a Chinese actress. Love interest is probably going to be a white guy with CGI eyes.

Sounded like Damon was doing a bad Irish accent to me.

This actually made me want to watch the show more than the trailer.

When I was scrolling through, I thought the Tilda Swinton one was a shaven-headed Asian man when I first saw her. I was like, “who’s he?”

Maybe it was prior to it being switched on?

It has a radio quiet zone around it 5km in radius in which radio equipment is banned.

Every time I see ScarJo now I can’t help but laugh having seen all the comments on io9 claiming she’s what Asian women aspire to look like.

That’s not how it works. China, like a lot of countries, has quotas on the number of foreign films that can be shown in cinemas (lots of European countries do this too, to stop Hollywood overshadowing local productions). One of the ways Hollywood tries to ensure a given movie will have a better chance is by featuring…

Tibetans and Tibetan culture are popular in China and prominently represented on popular television shows, especially music shows.

No. These movies are already way overstuffed. The clip wasn’t even that funny and didn’t make any sense. The economics of clickbait mean sites like this have to pretend everything is ‘awesome’ and then these movies end up being an hour too long with all the fanwankery. Stop it.

I suspect the real reason is not China - which does not actually “deny the existence of Tibet and Tibetan culture” (Tibetan stuff is pretty popular on Chinese television) - but the “Free Tibet” crowd, who would have used a Tibetan character as a reason for protest and made the issue political.

The fact that the “war is about to break out” stuff from the trailer is “background noise” and not central to the story is promising. I’m still worried they’re going to screw this up though. It’s one of those stories that will not benefit from any kind of Hollywoodization.

This does it, I’m watching Face/Off, The Rock and Con Air back to back.

You’re right. This is something I realised recently. I grew up watching episodic shows that only occasionally referenced previous episodes or had multiple episode arcs and I dreamt of shows with series-long story arcs. Now every show has a complicated story arc and I want to go back to the old way of doing things. I…

What was especially great was the combination of sophistication and high concept. Nowadays, you can have one or the other, but not both.

I want this. I don’t want to listen to another word from this horribly miscast, poorly written character. One terrible 15 minute monologue was enough.