90 Miles From Tyranny

Saturday, May 30, 2020

Agent Provacateur Smashing Windows In Minnesota?

How China Managed To Make 'Top Gun' Boring

The Chinese government wants to take you into the danger zone.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Sky Fighters is Top Gun with the imagery preserved, but the life—and frankly any bit of joy—sucked out of it. It defies my attempts to make fun of it. Despite the occasional glimpses into real-life Chinese air force operations, it was boring. I couldn’t wait for it to end.

The Chinese government wants to take you into the danger zone. In 2011 Beijing released Sky Fighters, China’s answer to Top Gun. Like Top Gun, it’s about fighter pilots waging aerial war for their country.

But that’s where the comparison ends. Made by the Chinese military as domestic propaganda, Sky Fighters is possibly the worst movie with fighter planes ever made. And that’s saying a lot.

The film imitates Top Gun relentlessly in scene after scene, but in many ways it’s the American film’s exact opposite. While Top Gun is proof that a cheesy film can still be immensely enjoyable, Sky Fighters proves that a movie with fighter planes can actually be pretty awful.

Sky Fighters is a movie about the pilots of Air Division 903, a storied unit of the Chinese air force that has turned out “tens of generals” during its illustrious history. The action starts with two pilots engaged in air-to-air combat training. Yin Shang Hu, the cocky upstart, outmaneuvers his superior officer, Yue Tianlong, by using the famous Pugachev’s Cobra aerial maneuver.

The rest of the film is hard to describe, because Sky Fighters doesn’t really have a plot. It’s merely a collection of incidents that prove the superiority of the Chinese system, as advocated by Yue.

Which system? All of them.

In lieu of a plot, Sky Fighters poses a series of challenges to Yue Tianlong, each of which he excels at. One of the main themes of the film is the friction between...

A week that saw Derek Chauvin play a disturbing role in the death of unarmed black man George Floyd has ended with the cop behind bars and now facing divorce proceedings as his wife seeks to have their marriage dissolved.

Lawyers for Kellie Chauvin have announced that the former Mrs. Minnesota has filed for divorce from the ex-police officer who was her husband for around a decade.

In a statement, Sekula Law Offices said that the pageant queen is “devastated” by Floyd’s death and her “utmost sympathy” lies with his family, loved ones, and “everyone who is grieving this tragedy.”

“While Ms Chauvin has no children from her current marriage, she respectfully requests that her children, her elder parents, and her extended family be given safety and privacy during this difficult time,” the statement added.

Kellie Chauvin won the Mrs Minnesota pageant in 2018. Derek Chauvin was arrested on Friday. © Facebook/ Mrs Minnesota; © Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office

The only mention of Derek Chauvin in the statement was to note that his wife has filed for the dissolution of their marriage.

Chauvin was fired from the Minneapolis police earlier this week after video of him and three other officers arresting Floyd became public. In the disturbing footage, Chauvin can be seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck as the African-American man says he can’t breathe. Floyd died in custody.

After days of protests in Minnesota and around the US, local authorities announced on Friday that Chauvin had been charged with third degree murder and manslaughter.

Kellie Chauvin won the Mrs. Minnesota contest in October 2018 and represented the state in the national round of the beauty pageant the following year. In a 2018 local newspaper interview, the realtor described her husband as a “softie.”