Us + Them uses Dolby Atmos more effectively for music than any other content I've heard before. It doesn't just reserve height for arena ambience and crowd noise. Songs are mixed almost equally front and high. The band looms, the sound is a tidal wave, and the clarity and precision is astonishing. It also makes thunderous use of deep bass. English 101 September 2, 2012 "Us and Them" 1. The title of David Sedaris's piece "Us and Them" refers to the Tomkey family and the author's family. The family which is considered "them" is the Tomkey family. In this piece we are meant to sympathize with the Tomkey's because of the author's harsh and unreasonable judgment of them. Full Review…. Writer-Director Joe Martin's Us And Them is a class war, social commentary filtered through a post-Quentin Tarantino cinematic world. Turns out jerks come with all different sized Us and Them (2017), written and directed by Joe Martin, is a British crime drama and thriller. It's a film that dramatizes the life of an angry, working class, young man's attempts to affect some kind of change and seek retribution against the 1 % set against the pathology of the British class system. Review Summary: Shinedown's Us and Them is a step up from the monotonous Leave A Whisper, but still leaves a lot to be desired. In the year of 2003, hard rock quartet Shinedown saw mild success with their debut release Leave A Whisper. With the help of the single 45, it made its way to 53 on the Billboard Hot 200 chart. The result plays like a mirror-image riposte to the French-Romanian home-invasion horror Ils (Them), suggesting that, contrary to Sartre, hell is not other people; it is us. 04O0sB. Us and Them 后来的我们 is a Chinese tragi-romance told through two narratives. In the present, ex-lovers Jianqing Jing Boran and Xiaoxiao Zhou Dongyu meet by chance while stranded on their way to Beijing over New Year’s. Stuck together for a night, their reminisces turn into flashbacks, bringing us to a second tale of romance in their younger days, as they tried to start lives in the city. It’s Tough Being YoungJianqing and Xiaoxiao first meet as they try to eke out a meager existence in Beijing. Fresh in the city from their homes in the countryside, the pair initially meet on the train ride home while Jianqing is still a college student. Later, the two become shop owners peddling pirated software and Japanese adult videos. They both see Beijing as a city of limitless opportunity. Jianqing has dreams of making video games, while Xiaoxiao wants to obtain a Beijing residency permit a 户口, or hukou, granting access to local public services such as schools and hospitals, or even the right to purchase a house — an aspiration shared by many migrant workers in urban China who originally hail from the countryside. This era of their lives occurs in the early 2000s, the same decade when many Western millennials came of age. In many ways, Jianqing and Xiaoxiao’s struggles to “make it” in the big city echo the struggles of young people across the world. Saddled with the expectations of their parents and society, young people today are put under tremendous pressure to attain success not only materially via home ownership and a high-paying stable job but also familially a la parental questioning of “when will you get married?”.In many ways, the tight-knit family environment of China worsens this problem. Traditionally, once a year over Chinese New Year, Chinese millennials’ parents and relatives gather for 团年饭 tuan nian fan, or a “New Year get-together dinner”. During these family reunions, it is common for relatives — however distant from your daily life — to question your relationship status, roadmap to marriage, and your plans to “settle down”. These questions annoy the latest generation in China so much that they have resorted to obtaining fake girlfriends and boyfriends to avoid scrutiny from their elders. The difficulty of reconciling familial pressures with reality have led many youths in China to give up entirely on fulfilling the expectations of their parents and relatives. This has given rise to sang culture in China a self-ironic rejection of the definitions of success imposed by the elder generation, and an embrace of a more personal and modern definition of success. Jianqing though, is not stereotypically unsuccessful. In fact, over time he achieves the classic hallmarks of a successful young man in China owning a home in the city, having a nice car, and garnering a stable, high-earning job — the oft-repeated mantra in Chinese 有房有车有钱 “youfang youche youqian”. These three qualities are often required for a man to find a girlfriend in China, and have often been satirized for representing the materialism that has come to dominate relationships in China for example, in this spot for Didi — Chinese Uber. Image courtesy of Dou BanBreakups and Tech StartupsNo tragi-romance would be complete without a breakup story. Therefore, it’s no spoiler that Jianqing and Xiaoxiao eventually split on sudden terms in their younger days. What then makes Us and Them different from other tragi-romances such as My Old Classmate is how the male protagonist decides to deal with the breakup Instead of wallowing in sorrow, Jianqing decides to build his own video game inspired in part by Xiaoxiao, which ultimately leads to his material success in the present day. Of course, building a tech startup isn’t as easy as a mere 15 minutes in a movie could capture, but it was admirable to see Us and Them depict Jianqing pulling himself up by his bootstraps and channelling his newfound loneliness and general misery into a more positive channel. It would then be difficult to classify Us and Them as a classical tragi-romance because, unlike the male protagonists in many Chinese tragi-romances, our protagonist actually succeeds in building his own business and eventually joins a larger game studio as a senior business leader — senior enough to fly business class. Jiangqing attains such material success that he is able to purchase a home in Beijing for his family — attaining the dream of his ex-lover. Image courtesy of Dou BanWhy Bother?That said, Us and Them spares no time before it jumps back to a stark reminder that, despite all the material success Jianqing might have in the world, he may still not be happy. This explains then, the sang culture that has taken root in China what’s the point of participating in the rat race if you’re just going to be miserable when you cross the finish line? Even if you become the millionaire CEO of a tech startup, are you going to ever truly be happy? We can easily evoke the Americanism of “it’s lonely at the top” here. As Jianqing and Xiaoxiao talk in the present day, Xiaoxiao mentions that she started to learn English — and says “I miss you.” However, she quickly corrects herself and says she meant “I missed you” — just as Jianqing replies “I miss you too.” This awkward exchange shows that ultimately Jianqing isn’t sure whether he truly wants this materially successful life, or just wanted to be with the sweetheart of his younger days. However, Xiaoxiao recognizes that the past is in the past, and no amount of regret can change the decisions that she and Jianqing made to get to where they are and Them will bring you on a roller-coaster of emotions; and ultimately it might encourage you to drunkenly look up your ex on Facebook and send them a message which ironically the protagonists of this film would never be able to do, given Facebook is blocked in China. After all, you never know — maybe you’ll find yourselves reminiscing together about the cheerful days of your and Them Chinese 后来的我们—China. Directed by Rene Liu. First released April 2018. Running time 1hr 50min. Starring Zhou Dongyu and Jing Boran. Chinese singer and actress Rene Liu’s directorial debut Us and Them is a film that’s all about missed opportunities. The film takes a deep and sensitive look at the fragile nature of human relationships under the pressures of the modern world, and reminds us that nurturing those relationships is far more important than reaching tangible goals. The film tells the story of two individuals from a small town in China who are trying to making it big in Beijing — the ambitious and soft-spoken Jianqing and the dreamy and vivacious Xiaoxiao. The two meet on a train during the busy Spring Festival travel season, and instantly develop a friendship. Over the years, Jianqing and Xiaoxiao form a deep bond, as the former helps his friend navigate through several relationships that always seem to leave her with a broken heart. The two finally find love and solace in each other’s arms, only to realise what they had been missing all these years. The two seem to be happy, but not for long, as the struggle of the ruthless life in a big city like Beijing gets to them and threatens to pull them apart. Jianqing had seemed to be the more level-headed of the two, but as it turns out, it is Xiaoxiao who is the more mature and patient one. The two soon begin to fall apart and a time comes when Xiaoxiao leaves. After many years, on the eve of the Chinese new year, they meet again, when the flight they are on gets cancelled due to bad weather, and circumstances force them to share a hotel room. Confined to the room, they fondly reminisce about the good old days, and wonder how things turned out the way they did. While it is undeniably true that Us and Them is a beautifully crafted romantic film, it is also true that it offers little that is new. The film’s storyline follows a predictable path — nothing we haven't seen before — making us wonder along with Xiaoxiao herself – why can’t a story be happy from the beginning to the end?’ But having said that, I must also haste to add that the execution of the story does not leave you with a sense of boredom. And much of the credit for this goes to the performances. Still from Us and Them. Image via Netflix Related Articles Boran Jing plays the calculating and reticent young boy from a small town with perfection. Watch his frustration as one by one, all his friends who had come to the city with him abandon him and head back to their hometown to settle down there, leaving their dream of someday developing a video game unfulfilled. Jianqing struggles on alone, and just when he seems to be giving up, Xiaoxiao comes into his life. As he struggles to deal with his feelings for her, the girl is happily hopping in and out of relationships, relying on Jianqing to clean up the mess after. But like a good friend, Jianqing takes it in his stride, and is always there for the immature and pesky little brat. Dongyu Zhou slips into the shoes very ugly ones, as her friend points out in the film! of the bubbly and cheerful young Xiaoxiao with supreme ease and grace. Towards the beginning of the film, she comes across as someone who has absolutely no idea where she is headed. She is impetuous, she is a hopeless romantic and she is starry-eyed. But as the years go by, we see her mature faster than Jianqing does. She seems to come to terms with reality much sooner than her lover, and is clearly the saner, bolder, more intelligent and significantly more caring of the two. There are moments when you can’t help feeling sorry for her, and for everything that she has to go through. The systematic destruction of her innocence is tragic, to say the least. But in my favourite performance from the film, it is Tian Zhuangzhuang who shines forth, as Jianqing’s father. The aged gentleman walks around the kitchen of his tiny small-town restaurant with unhurried pace, making food for the community — entertaining them, feeding them. But you can see that he is worried about the only child he has — a boy who has left the nest the moment he has learned to fly. In what is perhaps the most beautiful scene from the film, he narrates an incident around a video game to his son’s girlfriend and explains how — he felt — it must have fuelled his unhealthy obsession with a career that had no future. It is a tender scene, performed to perfection, and it beautifully succeeds in capturing the old man’s fears and worries for the son he gets to meet only once a year. But more than the relationship between the son and the father, it is the fond relationship that the father has developed with his son’s lover that is bound to move you the most. The wisdom of the elder, and his advice to his son’s estranged lover is the highlight of the film for me. It is the sort of writing, the kind of performance that one hopes to see in a film, and it literally saves the film from being just another love story, elevating it to a whole new level altogether. The film is also beautifully scored, and the songs come in at the right places. The background music sets the right mood, aptly highlighting the emotions played out on screen. The writing is quite good, but could have been better, had the script been more compact’ at places. Veteran cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing gives the film a breathtakingly beautiful look. It would be difficult to call out any one scene that looks stunning — simply because there are so many. The snow-swept highways, the autumn sunlight sliding off the golden leaves of the trees, the dark and grungy rooms of the urban ghetto — everything has been shot with superlative technical prowess. Telling the story of the two lovers in two different timelines, Us and Them shows us how small mistakes can ruin perfectly healthy relationships that could have bloomed into something beautiful. It also shows us the futile nature of a life that has everything for comfort — except love. Us and Them is currently streaming on Netflix. Watch the trailer here Netflix Netflix continues to branch out into foreign-language titles in a way that feels very forward-looking. This weekend saw the premiere of Us and Them, a Chinese film from director Rene Liu that made a huge splash at the Chinese box office this spring. Telling a contemporary love story that stretches from 2007 to 2018, the film also touches on things like economic anxiety amid the promises of wild success in the big city of Beijing. US AND THEM STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? The Gist Jian-qing Jing Boran and Xiaoxiao Zhou Dongyu meet on a crowded train from Beijing to their hometown for Chinese New Year in 2007. They strike a fast friendship that is very obviously destined towards something more — in China as in the United States, we’ve all seen a romance on film before — and when it does, we see their relationship evolve as well as their own personal and professional trajectories. They both arrive in Beijing looking to get great jobs and make big money. These are the bus-ticket-and-a-dream kids like the ones who flock to New York and Los Angeles looking for fame and fortune. The promise of wealth and success that Beijing represents is a major character throughout the film, and it’s a constant backdrop as these two get together, break up, and meet up again. What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The span of time that Rene Liu covers here brings to mind a couple recent films, one Chinese and one American. Jia Zhangke’s “Mountains May Depart,” from 2015, tracks the story of a handful of young, hopeful Chinese people from 1999 to 2025, and they too experience optimism and success and disappointment along the way. Us and Them, though stylish, is more of a straightforward narrative, and though Rene Liu puts a lot of personality into it, there are flourishes in Mountains May Depart — those bookending dance scenes! — that remain out of reach. The second film is The Last Five Years, the film adaptation of the cult-favorite musical that tracks the beginnings of and dissolution to a relationship, told forward from his perspective and backwards from hers. The way that Liu films the present-day scenes in black-and-white have that “you cannot recapture what’s already gone” feeling. Performance Worth Watching Both Jing Boran and Zhou Dongyu do a great job carrying off the romantic storyline, and I can’t imagine having one yet not the other. Memorable Dialogue “I feel like the past is right in front of us,” Xiaoxiao cries during one of the present day scenes, when the weight of everything they’ve both been through is too much to ignore. Netflix Single Best Shot There is one breathtaking scene of the pair of them walking through the trees in autumn, the sun positively golden and bouncing off the crunchy leaves, during a pivotal moment in their young relationship. It’s incredibly beautiful work. Stream It or Skip It 'Love's Greek to Me' on Hallmark Pits Torrey DeVitto Against Marina Sirtis in a Cultural Clash Stream It Or Skip It 'Creed III' on Prime Video, An Explosive Head-to-Head Matchup of Two Gifted Actors Stream It Or Skip It 'The Playing Card Killer' on Netflix, a Boilerplate True-Crime Series About a Series of Unsettling Murders in Spain Stream It Or Skip It 'First Five' On Max, A Docuseries About Finland's Youngest-Ever Prime Minister And The Female Members Of Her Cabinet Our Take It’s heartening that this is the kind of movie that can become a huge blockbuster sensation in China. A simple but beautifully filmed love story that touches upon the economic realities of the world is not exactly a superhero action blockbuster. Here’s hoping plenty of people find it on Netflix and are able to give it the attention it deserves. Our Call Stream It. Stream Us and Them on Netflix Tags Stream It Or Skip It Them and Us by TendoGames pays loving homage to the golden age of survival horror titles such as Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark. A singular hero finds themselves trapped in a haunted house full of locked doors, endless hallways and no shortage of horrifying creatures eager to feast on their flesh. Upon starting the game, you are treated to a compelling comic book-style cutscene. You get introduced to Alicia, a disturbed, former paramedic on death row for unknown reasons, yet she is driven by a compulsion to find her missing daughter. After a catastrophic uprising on a prison bus, she awakens in a locked room in an old mansion on a mysterious island with no recollection of her whereabouts, and begins her quest to escape. Back to the basics In an interesting twist, you’re given the choice of two camera options from the get-go tank controls with fixed camera angles, or an over-the-shoulder perspective a la Resident Evil 4. There is a third option, should one feel inclined to pay for DLC, of a first-person perspective. Alicia starts with a small inventory that can be accessed at any time, which also contains special folders for found documents and personal notes or “memories”. Constant planning is necessary to manage what you will carry and what you will leave behind. Navigating the environment is simple enough. As one would expect from the genre, areas in the mansion and its grounds are locked behind any number of doors and simple tasks that require exploration and careful attention to detail. Levers, crests, books, tools, and other objects must be acquired in order to progress. Puzzles range from the obvious to the obtuse, but all the clues you need are provided if you take the time to look for them and practice the necessary patience. Because every horror game needs a disgusting bathroom. Combat is what it is the main enemy you will encounter are the shambling dead, which behave about as you would expect. Dealing with one is straightforward enough, but two or three forces you to weigh your options. Besides mindlessly beelining toward you with arms outstretched, they are capable of occasional bouts of sporadic behavior to keep you on your toes, especially if you choose to engage them in close-range combat with your trusty knife to conserve ammo. There are a handful of firearms some only available on subsequent playthroughs, and ammo is wisely distributed throughout the various zones in such a fashion that you will never feel completely safe. This becomes apparent later on as the game starts throwing more and more unique enemy types your way, often without warning, forcing you to switch tactics on the fly. Healing items are sparse but fairly distributed, and some can even be combined to create more powerful agents. Although health item crafting is only surface level, and not explored as deeply as it could have been. There’s the evil! Shoot it! Undermining fear Sound design is especially important in the survival horror genre, and Them and Us gets its oppressive atmosphere just about perfect. The music in particular is especially brooding and well conceived, particularly when paired with the outstanding ambiance. I also appreciated some of the minor aesthetic flourishes. The game contains small, but impactful touches, like fog lingering on the ground in outdoor areas, fireflies swarming around lamp posts, and the way blood gradually pools outward from a fallen zombie. The movement of their jaws and mouths matches their groans, making them feel like a natural extension of the ominous horror-scape that surrounds them. I was also impressed with their fairly wide variety of shapes, sizes, and wardrobes. Unfortunately, Them and Us falls short on a technical level. Even after reducing the graphics to “Very Low” I was rarely able to achieve more than 20-30 fps. After sharing my woes in the community forums, I was informed by others, including one of the developers, that this often occurred when the application defaulted to the PC’s integrated graphics rather than the system’s higher-power GPU in my case an RTX 3060 Ti. However, even after forcing the game to favor my card in the Nvidia control panel, the problem persisted. Other suggested remedies, such as deleting and reacquiring config files and even renaming the executable, were of no use. I am not a programmer by any means, but it is likely much of this comes from the fact that Them and Us was created using the aging Unreal Engine 3. The end result was an extremely choppy gameplay experience with ugly visuals and long loading times. I shuddered with fear — not from the creepy crawlies thirsting for my blood, but from my framerate dropping to single digits any time I approached an open flame. Yes, yes you should. Almost perfect Besides mediocre graphical fidelity, Them and Us has other issues as well. Early in the game an enemy type is introduced that can only be damaged by first splashing it with holy water. However, doing so requires you to perform a one-second animation before regaining control of your weapons, leaving you helpless for what seems like an eternity. The enemy can still attack you during this time. Zombies like to “play dead” is that possible? and provide you with a limited window to run up and do some damage before they become “aware.” However, there are points where, no matter how much you hack and slash, they remain stationary until “activated” by a triggering event, like the player picking up a specific item. Many of the story items found throughout the game contain poorly written text riddled with errors, though this might be attributed to an imperfect translation. Some of these qualms might not seem very troublesome at first, but become more apparent the further into the game one delves. Still, Them and Us has its heart in the right place. The atmosphere and constant sense of dread will keep you on your toes, as will your dwindling ammo and the growing bestiary of enemy types that stand between you and freedom. Its story and tone clearly take inspiration from Amnesia The Dark Descent, which is a good thing. However, technical shortfalls on a system that is more than capable of handling the load neutered the entire experience for me. Buyer beware you’re in for a scare, just not the one you were hoping for. 1. The title of David Sedaris’s piece “Us and Them” refers to the Tomkey family and the author’s family. The family which is considered “them” is the Tomkey family. In this piece we are meant to sympathize with the Tomkey’s because of the author’s harsh and unreasonable judgment of them. I know this because of the tone of the piece and the word usage which the author incorporates. 2. The memoir “Us and Them” definitely tells a very intriguing and surprising story. It uses sensory details, and makes the reader feel connected to the author’s feelings. I believe “Us and Them” constitutes a good story because not only was it humorous and entertaining, it also used many literary elements to help elaborate on the details of the story. 3. The handwritten signs described by Sedaris help to elaborate on the differences between the two families, and the extreme judgment that Sedaris has towards the Tomkeys. The sign on the Tomkey’s door was most likely a humorous way of saving the candy so that all the trick or treater’s would have some. The sign on Sedaris’s bag explains his selfish nature and his inability to accept and share with anyone who is different from him. 4. Sedaris’s stance in this piece could be described as one-sided and very judgmental. Sedaris does not have the ability to accept others and believes the Tomkey’s are not worthy of his friendship. Sedaris is very set in his ways and also holds a very selfish stance in this piece. In the text, the way he responds to the Halloween events and the way he speaks of their lack of television proves how critical he is.

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