#raymond chan

[zinkadear]

This scared me when I first saw it! I was worried something happened to Tom Hiddleston. I would have been so devastated.

I think they just used this picture because he looks sad, but it makes it seem like he's the one who died.

The actual person is named Raymond Chan. He was an art director and production designer. There's a tribute to him in the credits of Deadpool and Wolverine.

[sesiondemadrugada]

Eye in the Sky (Nai-Hoi Yau, 2007).

[abs0luteb4stard]

W A T C H I N G

[skullsandwineglasses]

Call Me By Fire S2 has taken an incredibly cinematic approach this season and I’m not sure if I should be impressed or if I should lament how they’re kind of erasing what it means to perform on a stage?

It feels like these performances are designed for a TV audience rather than a live audience because so much of the aesthetics are reliant on close-up camera shots (and sometimes even slow-mo). 

Just haven’t really been wow’d by any of this year’s performances yet, even though I love a lot of this year’s cast. Last year, the performances were designed to show off everyone’s stage presence with large, flashy dance numbers, or at least kinetic movement and travel on stage. 

One example of wasted talent this year was how Raymond Lam and Vanness Wu, two artists who have extensive experience dancing and performing in sold-out arenas, performed a very high-energy song but stood in place the entire time and were only allowed to move their upper body. 

Also, Chilam renewing his vows with Anita on stage seemed like an unfair advantage to sway the audience emotionally. 

I think the program knows that it’s getting harder to surprise and impress the audience because we’ve already seen a lot last season: bonding between members, nostalgia, wives coming to support their husbands, and so it’s hard to top last season. 

[dragoninahumancostume]

I seriously love it when I see black men and they have wide noses like. I love those noses. Also guys with long noses. Like. Just look!!!

[taekwondolifemagazine]

Twilight of the Warriors is a Great Way to Spend Two Hours

August 14, 2024 (NYC)– Twilight of the  Warriors is a Great Way to Spend Two Hours. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024), is the latest theatrical release from Well Go USA Entertainment.  It is a great martial arts, action film and worth seeing in theaters. SYNOPSIS: Many years after the bloody turf war that ushered in an uneasy era of peace in Hong Kong’s underworld, the notorious Kowloon…

[panicinthestudio]

Further reading:

HKFP: Explainer: Where did Hong Kong’s political cartoonists go?, May 23, 2023

HKFP: As books disappear from Hong Kong’s public libraries, some ‘rescue’ titles for private, overseas collections, May 27, 2023

HKFP Opinion: Before books are deemed unlawful, lawyers should read them. I should know, I was once a censor in Hong Kong…,June 3, 2023

[la-panda]

[vintagegeekculture]

So, a friend of mine on Discord said something interesting, and I feel like you might have thoughts on it. So. What do you think of the idea of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as being "The Shaw Brothers for kids", a sort of gateway drug for "the kung fu genre"?

Not the Shaw Brothers, but Golden Harvest. Let me explain: 

I’m going to sound like a conspiracy theorist when I say this, but I believe the New Line Cinema “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (1990) movie was actually a money laundering scheme by the Chinese Mafia, specifically, the Sun Yee On Triad. 

Looking into the role of organized crime in martial arts cinema is a rabbit hole that goes very, very, very deep...and comes out somewhere very shocking at the end.

You mention the Shaw Brothers, but there was another Hong Kong Producer who was the only credible rival to the Shaw Brothers (and who eventually surpassed the Shaws) in martial arts movies: Golden Harvest’s Raymond Chow….a man who started off as the Shaw Brothers’ talent division, but who eventually founded his own rival studio to the Shaws (with rumored triad financial backing), and who made Bruce Lee, Angela Mao and Jackie Chan stars. Raymond Chow is widely, and extremely credibly, believed to be a middleman for the Hong Kong Triad, the Sun Yee On, who used Golden Harvest as a front facing money laundering scheme, as claimed by Frederic Dannen in "Hong Kong Babylon," and Yiu Kong Chiu in "The Triads as Business," books I recommend if you are at all interested in the topic of organized crime in the Hong Kong film industry.

Raymond Chow was also the producer and primary funder of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. I mean, what does it mean when your movie is entirely produced and funded by a guy well known for being a triad middleman and money launderer?

And all of this happened at New Line Cinema, a borderline independent film company…one known for having dodgy financials it’s entire existence, no less, which ultimately doomed it? One of the most extraordinary things about the 1990 Ninja Turtles movie is that it was, essentially, an independent film. New Line would later become a powerhouse as a studio and created Lord of the Rings, but at the time, it was a mainly low rent operation, rather like Cannon films, known for the success of the slasher series “Nightmare on Elm Street.” So yes, I do believe "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (1990) was a money laundering scheme by the Chinese Mafia.

The triads in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan take enormous interest in financing martial arts movies for the same reason that they take a tremendous interest in financing porn movies: they’re quick, cheap, dirty, and can be used as a mechanism for laundering money, and a way to claim money from illegal sources (say, heroin) comes from a clean and legal source that can be claimed on taxes, like say, a movie studio. In addition, Hong Kong’s strict rating system, the Category III (equivalent to a far stricter R-rating) meant that very violent movies were handled in ways that were outside the law in ways similar to pornography. And according to several Senate investigations in 1991 ("Hearings on Asian Organized Crime"), the triads were actively involved in money laundering as well outside of Hong Kong, including currency trading and real estate, and the idea they could back a studio is entirely possible.

Everyone working in Hong Kong cinema has a story of dealing with the triads, who are interwoven into the city. Anita Mui's manager was was shot dead by mafiosos. Jimmy Wang Yu, the first Kung Fu star, was a suspected member of the Bamboo Union triad, and once borrowed money from one triad to pay another....and may have used his reported connections with the Triads to get Jackie Chan out of his initial contract with Golden Harvest, a favor Jackie repaid. Golden Harvest studios were actually firebombed in 1984, an event suspected to be due to Triad activity. Raymond Chow’s fellow producer and good friend who discovered Steven Chow, film producer Charles Heung, is well known to be the son of Heung Chin, who founded the Sun Yee On Triad, the largest in Hong Kong with over 25,000 members. And you don’t have to take my word for it; a US Senate Committee in 1991 on Asian Organized Crime identified Cheung as a leader of the Sun Yee On along with his brothers. Because of his association with Charles Heung and the Sun Yee On, Steven Chow, director of Kung Fu Hustle, cannot enter Canada legally.

Jackie Chan asserted Raymond Chow’s triad connections in his autobiography, and also claimed that he only hired triad members and other people who were mobbed up at Golden Harvest. One example would be producer Ng See Yuen, who produced Once Upon a Time in China for Golden Harvest, and who Jet Li refused to work with ever again after his manager was assassinated by triad gunmen (Jet Li blamed Ng See Yuen for his manager's death).

There's also Lo Wei, a Shaw Brothers director and known “Red Pole” enforcer of the Sun Yee On Triad, who came over to Golden Harvest, where he directed Bruce Lee’s Chinese Connection and Big Boss, and also directed Jackie Chan’s earliest “period” historical movies for GH. Jackie Chan, in his autobiography, stated that the reason he initially left Hong Kong to go to the United States for an American career was because Lo Wei, his director on Laughing Hyena, put a hit out on him for refusing to make Laughing Hyena 2, and Jackie had to flee the city when Lo Wei sent gunmen to his house to abduct him. When arriving in the United States, he had to avoid some men with machine guns at the airport. To this day, whenever possible, Jackie Chan goes out in public armed for fear of gangsters. 

Even Jackie Chan though, never made the assertion that Raymond Chow and the Sun Yee On had Bruce Lee killed. This is important to mention because if you talk to any Chinese person, nearly all of them believe with unshakable, absolute certainty that the Chinese Mafia killed Bruce Lee, which is literally the plot of Game of Death (which, incidentally, Raymond Chow produced). Everyone around Bruce was mobbed up, because everyone in the Hong Kong film industry was mobbed up; in fact, it’s an open question how much it existed for its own sake. It’s notable Bruce Lee died at the home of Betty Lo Ting Pei, Golden Harvest actress, and his known mistress…who was married to a triad gangster. It’s also known that the first person that Betty Lo Ting Pei called when Bruce died was not medical services but Raymond Chow, something that to this day, she has not attempted to explain. 

It can be hard to imagine what the motive is for Raymond Chow and the triads to kill Bruce Lee. After all, wouldn’t Bruce Lee be more useful to Raymond Chow alive than dead? I never saw the angle, here. But then, you consider that in the last few months of his life, Bruce Lee started to set the stage for his transition to behind the scenes roles like producer, and was assembling a lot of stunt talent around him (a lot of productions down the pipeline intended to have Bruce Lee in producer roles, like Circle of Iron). The rumor among the stunt players, as recounted by Sammo Hung, was that Bruce was attempting to form his own stunt and film production company (as Chiba later did successfully in Japan) and that would involve organizing and peeling off half the talent in Hong Kong….in a deeply triad controlled industry, no less. There was also a story recounted by witnesses that Bruce Lee, a temperamental and explosively violent man, physically assaulted Raymond Chow in his office with punches and kicks when he heard Chow had two sets of books in their shared production company, as Bruce was always keen to keep the triads out of his films. Ten days later, Bruce Lee was dead. And for weeks before his death, Lee told his friends "Hong Kong is getting too hot, I have to get out."

And you know something? A Ninja Turtles movie from 1990 is probably the least of it. In 2020, a few documents were declassified by the Taiwanese government that showed that the members of the Bamboo Union Triad had 19 top governmental positions in Taiwan from 1955-1984 (the era when Taiwan was in a complete state of military rule), including the National Security Bureau and all branches of the armed forces. In other words, Taiwan during the military rule era wasn't just corrupted by the triads, the triads were the government.

I never cease to be amazed at the incuriousness of the journalistic professions. Governments don't declassify documents - especially something as damning as triad involvement in government - unless they have to. So why would the Tsai Ing-Wen government reveal this now in 2020, especially when anti-corruption is the driving force of Taiwanese politics, and anti-corruption sentiment pushed the KMT out of power since the 90s? Outsiders believe that the single biggest question in Taiwanese politics is their relationship with the mainland. Kinda...the status quo is more or less a settled question. It's actually anti-corruption and anti-triad infiltration, which is why the DPP are the ruling party now.

The answer, I suspect, is that the triads are no longer working with the Taiwanese government, but with the mainland government. In the 1980s, Wong Man Fong, editor of the Xinhua paper of Hong Kong, said in several interviews he was asked by the People's Republic of China to reach out to the triads to help make a deal: no government interference in their activities, if they pledge to keep order in the city after the handover in 1997. I strongly suspect the mainland now has a similar arrangement with the Bamboo Union, Green Gang, and the Si Hai Bang they did in Hong Kong, especially since so much money is going back and forth with the release of trade to the mainland. In other words, the triads in Taiwan are active agents of the PRC.

Backdoor deals between government and the mob aren't out of the question, just ask the CIA, who used Giancana Crime Family assassins sent to kill Castro as a key plank of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the role of the mafia in the Kennedy Assassination, or how control of opium was a key under-the-table reason for the invasion of Afghanistan.

What I suspect happened is, the Taipei government is turning on organized crime now after decades and decades of ludicrous and obvious corruption, because to the triads, the money to be made with the mainland and unification is far more lucrative. It's no coincidence that the largest pro-unification party in Taiwan is led by a triad gangster who spent time in jail for racketeering, Chang An Lo, nicknamed "the White Wolf." Like John Gotti, everyone knows he's a mobster and that's even part of the White Wolf's coolness and appeal (if you could vote for Tony "Scarface" Montana, boy, I bet a lot of guys would), but nobody can touch him. In fact, combined with how the "light world" financial institutions are intertwined along with the underworld, there's an argument to be made that the reason the PRC hasn't tried to take Taiwan is that for all intents and purposes, they already have it.

In other words, the triads have gone from using the Ninja Turtles to money launder to essentially setting global geopolitics.

[yougetsu]

Books & B-T

Books/stories that might have inspired B-T lyrics or albums:

Salome by Oscar Wilde Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare Hamlet by Shakespeare Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson Neuromancer by William Gibson Solaris by Stanisław Lem Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Lewis Carroll Season in Hell Arthur Rimbaud The Stranger by Albert Camus Fantomas by Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau The Fall of Icarus by Ovid Dada Manifesto by Hugo Ball The Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton The Rosicrucian manifestos The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman JoJo's Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki Hearts by Kumi Himeno The Soul of the Night by Chet Raymo Vita Mechanicalis by Inagaki Taruho Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo

Books mentioned by Acchan:

Villain by Shuichi Yoshida A Collection of Crime Stories by Shuichi Yoshida Ikari by Shuichi Yoshida Kokuhou by Shuichi Yoshida Kokoro by Natsume Soseki Audition by Ryu Murakami Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami The World Five Minutes From Now by Ryu Murakami No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai Hakyoku by Tono Haruka Kairyou by Tono Haruka Neko Nari by Numata Mahokaru Shibireru by Numata Mahokaru Kugatsu ga Eien ni Tsuzukeba by Numata Mahokaru Yurigokoro by Numata Mahokaru On Decadence by Sakaguchi Ango Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima  Death Spirits by Yutaka Haniya Living Tips by Itsuki Hiroyuki Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino Shiki by Fuyumi Ono Bride of Deimos written by Etsuko Ikeda & illustrated by Yuho Ashibe The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky Night on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa Gedou no uta by Daisuke Watanabe Tokkou no shima by Satō Shūhō

Other authors mentioned by Acchan:

Junji Ito Randi Taguchi Ryunosuke Akutagawa Yasunari Kawabata Natsuhiko Kyogoku Ayatsuji Yukito Sakuraba Kazuki Nobuyuki Fukumoto Hermann Hesse Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sources:

nopperabou.net Jrockarchive This is not greatest site Buck-Tick Zone Vk BT group Book list gathered by fans (twt) FT bulletins Ongaku to hito interviews Kurumi chan no Heya (FM COCOLO) B-T profiles through the years I've saved Personal scans & magazines

Feel free to add more books/novels/mangas <3

[noise-vs-signal]

The Ladder

“Man only becomes free through his active understanding.

If we recall the psychical ladder of Raymond Llull, we can perceive that the upper levels are furthest from sense-interpretation. It was held that sense-interpretation bound a man.

‘The intelligible substance, if it is drawn near to God, has power over itself.... If it falls away, it chooses the corporeal world and in that way becomes subject to Necessity which rules the Kosmos' (Stobaei, Hermetica, VIII).

What is to be understood by the intelligible substance drawing near to God? Does it not simply mean an ascent of this ladder of degrees of consciousness within us? 'The idea of God is the idea of our own spiritual natures enlarged to infinity' (Wm. E. Channing).

To put 'God' inside us is itself a reversal, for our material conception of God is as something outside in the sensible world. But God is closer 'than the neck-vein' because understanding is not outside us; and to understand differently, in a new way, is always close to us, because this ladder of consciousness is within us.

Outside is the world of experience, inside are degrees of understanding; and if the intelligible substance draws near another understanding of things it draws near to 'God', i.e. to an enlargement of consciousness.”

From “Living Time and the Integration of the Life” by Maurice Nicoll (1952).

By using our active mind and focusing on larger ideas about Time and Consciousness we start to “override” the smaller ideas and habits that keep us bound, and expand into the greater world of Eternity.

Images:

“Ladder of Ascent and Descent of the Mind” by Ramon Llull (1305).

“Jacob’s Ladder” by William Blake (1805).

[kousaka-ayumu]

Bernice Scotch

Nickmakes: Bernice(All), Princesse de la Victoire(Rook), Loser Bunny(Yuzu), Scotch-san(Ortho), Bernice-shi(Idia), Bernice-chan(Sonomi).

Twisted from: Emu(Project Sekai), Hoppy Hopscotch(Poppy Playtime), Towa(D4DJ), GingerBrave(Cookie Run)

Voice claim: Kito Akari

Age:16

Height: 152cm

DOB: 2/16

Species: Rabbit beastwoman

Homeland: Queendom of Roses

Family:

Victoria(Mother)

Marine(Mother)

Dorm: Savanaclaw

Class: 1-C(No.2)

Clubs: Track and Field

Hobby: hanging out with Rye, competing with Deuce, Jack and Taiyou.

Likes: playing sports, annoying the daylights out of Raymond and Subaru.

Dislikes: Sakamaki siblings(-Subaru), darkness, her friends getting hurt, being mistaken as a boy.

Pet peeve: Being called short.

Favorite food: Steak and carrots

Least favorite food: anything spicy

Favorite drink: soda

"An energetic first year of Savanaclaw, known to be the 3rd fastest runner in the dorm along side Jack and Taiyou, please don't call her short otherwise she kick you in the shins."

Appearance

Bernice is a fair-skin girl with short light green hair, and ruby red eyes.

Background

Bernice is an orphan in Queendom of Roses from the orphanage, she spent most of her time playing outside with the other orphans, sure she wasn't chosen for adoption, but it's okay she's still have her friends and Rye.

Personality

Bernice is an overly excited and cheerful girl who is often jumping around in excitement and is a hyperactive girl.

Although she can be very hotheaded, she gets into fights every now and then and kicking people in the shins if they bully her friends and/or call her short and gave them the middle finger

Unique Magic: Peppermint Shifts

It allows her to transform to a bunny.

Trivia

She's a natural prankster, she works together with Taiyou to prank on several students, especially Jack.

Whenever she's angry she would often be pouty about it.

She is a absolute menace to Jamil.

She would prank on the Sakamaki siblings several times without getting caught mostly on Yuzu.

Her, and Rye are childhood friends

What do you guys think about her? @zexal-club @anxious-twisted-vampire @yukii0nna

[notastraykid]

okay so are we in agreement:

chan: terry jeffords | minho: rosa diaz | changbin: jake peralta | hyunjin: ? | jisung: charles boyle | felix: ? | seungmin: raymond holt | jeongin: ?

i have reasons for my decisions so far but what do you think 🤔 seungmin would definitely deliver the holt insults flawlessly and with the monotone inflection so I HAD TO CHOOSE HIM HEHEH,,, lemme know the opinions you’ve got 🔫

I think Scully could be Hyunjin because he's lovable and just so innocent. Jeongin could be Hitchcock as he, to me, comes across as very dirty minded.

Now I know we have our FelixBok. He doesn't seem like an Amy nor a Gina. Oohh okay. Could Jeongin be Gina?? She was always one step ahead and he is Maknae on top. So Felix and Hyunjin are Hitchcock and Scully.

Yes. Yes Seubgmin is Holt. HOT DAMN!

I could see Changbin as an Amy type A.

This excites me more than it should. Woojin as fake Boyle.

[caeruleum-feniks]

"Sometimes you gotta burn the past up to rise up from the ashes."

Like or Reblog if you would like to interact with Raymond "Ray" Gallagher; an original character for the late Monty Oum's RWBY.

-Mid to Low activity

-Semi selective

-Mun is 21+ years old and goes by Alex (He/Him)

-Open to shipping with the right chemistry and plotting. I will never ever try to force anyone into a ship on account of my headcanons.

-Up to date with RWBY up to Volume 9 and even Ice Queendom

-Headcanon heavy but super flexible and open to discussing new ideas or plotting.

-OC and Canon friendly

-NSFW tagged appropriately but won't do smut with minors

-Several years worth of experience in roleplaying in other fandoms such as Bleach, Fairy Tail, Naruto, and My Hero Academia to name a few

-Discord available upon request

-No time limit on ask memes that can be submitted as ice breakers.

(Artwork credit goes to Manu-Chan who I personally commissioned)

[oceanofmusings]

𝐏𝐎𝐂 𝐅𝐂𝐬 𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐂𝐄𝐒.

hello! just putting together a little resource which is by no means comprehensive, but can be used as a quick reference for some poc fcs with good resources and links to some of their gif hunts. though i’m not an rph, i had made this list already for personal reference and wanted to share in case it brought anyone else inspo. i know there are probably a few of these posts already, but i think the more ways to get people looking at poc fcs, the better! there are so many good poc fcs out there, that it’s a shame we don’t see them more, especially when some have a shocking amount of resources. some of these fcs are already popular, but i figured i’d add them in anyway, though i did try to list out more fcs i don’t see as often. 

i tried to include 2-3 good hunts per fc (most were found using this site/link since tumblr tags are a hot mess as usual) and i take no credit for any of the resources linked either. thank you to creators who’ve made such good gifs for these fcs and if you use their hunts, please like/reblog their posts and be mindful of any denoted triggers. hopefully this gives a wee boost to some more underused fcs as well.

adeline rudolph (one, two, three)

aiysha hart (one, two, three)

alperen duymaz ( one) 

amita suman (one, two, three) 

anna diop (one, two, three)

arden cho (one, two)

aubrey plaza (one, two, three, four)

daniel henney (one, two, three)

darren barnet (one, two, three)

davika hoorne (one, two) 

david castaneda (one, two, three)

deepika padukone (one, two, three)

dev patel (one, two, three) 

diane guerrero (one, two, three)

diego luna (one, two, three)

diego boneta (one, two, three)

gemma chan (one, two)

gong yoo (one, two, three)

greta onieogou (one, two)

han so-hee (one, two)

issa rae (one, two, three)

jamie chung (one, two, three)

jordan fisher (one, two)

jung eun-chae (one, two)

justice smith (one, two, three)

justin h. min (one, two, three)

karen fukuhara (one, two)

lewis tan (one, two, three)

manny jacinto (one, two, three, four, five)

may calamawy (one, two, three)

medalion rahimi (one, two, three)

melissa barrera (one, two)

michaela coel (one, two)

michael b jordan (one, two)

natasha liu bordizzo (one, two, three) 

nathalie emmanuel (one, two, three)

nishi munshi (one)

pedro pascal (one, two, three)

quintessa swindell (one, two, three)

rachel hilson (one, two, three)

raymond ablack (one, two)

ritu arya (one, two, three)

ross butler (one, two, three)

sarah shahi (one, two, three)

sean teale (one, two, three)

sobhita dhulipala (one, two, three)

sonoya mizuno (one, two, three)

yahua abdul-mateen ii (one, two, three)

zeeko zaki (one, two, three)

zion moreno (one, two, three)

[sotiredmostnights]

Taiwan/Japan Loot, Round 1: Miscellaneous Stuff ✨

Itemized list + comments below!

Official Grizzco's Salmon run jacket (Splatoon)

Official Grizzco's Salmon Run t-shirt (Splatoon) (I got a matching one for my brother @moe-broey ) 👍

Salmon Run keychain (Splatoon)

Little Buddy toy (Splatoon) (Bath bomb bonus!)

Don-chan keychain (Taiko no Tatsujin) (Gacha prize!)

Ike/Lyn rings (Fire Emblem) (Gacha prize!)

Volcarona plush (Pokemon)

Slither Wing plush (Pokemon)

Raymond plush (Animal Crossing)

Assorted Aoshi Shinomori merchandise (Rurouni Kenshin) (I'm sorry; he was my first ever anime crush) 🙈

Hina standees (Otaku Vampire's Love Bite)

Juliette Suzuki heart cards (I won the gold prize at the JS pop-up shop lottery and got the full set!) 🥰

Blue Box/Apothecary Diaries bookmarks

I wanted to show off some of the smaller stuff first! 🥰

I really loved the pop-up shop for Julietta Suzuki!! Her art is soooo cute, and I'm really excited to pick up the first volume of Vampire Otaku's Love Bite in October! 💖💖

I almost yelled when I saw that Slither Wing plush in a game store... it's so cute...a perfect bug...🥺🥺💖💖💖

The Salmon Run jacket is probably one of the coolest things I picked up during my trip, and definitely my favorite item from the Nintendo store. 🤗🤗