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Achtung: Spoilers.

For two hours we were charmed, fired up, and inspirited by Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins and embodied by Gal Gadot. After a week of terrible news we were so cheered by the tale of an Amazon meeting the outside world for the first time, that towards the end when the movie suddenly dove into a pot of cheese fondue, we decided to overlook it. Truly casting is half the work, so whoever thought of putting Gal Gadot in the costume: You are brilliant. We know she was an Israeli army combat instructor, so we hope to see her fighting in long takes and not those slowed down-sped up cuts. (DC, please stop recycling your final fight scene.)

As Steve Trevor, Chris Pine is not photographed as lovingly as he is in Star Trek and elsewhere—sometimes he looks pudgy. This makes sense, as no one should out-gorgeous Diana, and it actually boosts Pine in the Chris rankings because it means he’s not overly concerned with his looks. And the DC Universe has added a color to its palette (blue), yay. As the Amazon general Robin Wright is so fearsome, there should be a remake of The Princess Bride in which Buttercup is also Inigo Montoya. She should be the President in House of Cards. Also if you’re a Chris playing a Steve in a world war, stay away from the plane carrying the weapon.

There is no end credits sequence. If you’re planning to catch the movie tomorrow, get your tickets now because they’re almost gone.

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Patty Jenkins directed Monster, which won Charlize Theron her Oscar, in 2003. Since then she has directed for TV, but Wonder Woman is her first movie in 14 years. Success is sweet.

My friend who is indifferent to superhero movies says she was not prepared for how Wonder Woman affected her. It was the No Man’s Land scene that made the movie for many viewers. In her case it was the Amazons training on the beach at Themyscira, and seeing Artemis, a black woman and a senator.

And beautiful as Diana/Gal Gadot is, her Wonder Woman is not sexualized or ogled by the camera. In fact her beauty is a weapon to disarm the patriarchy.

More women filmmakers, please.

View from the Hotel Stage, 1 Chi Wo, Jordan

I will always have a special fondness for Hong Kong because it’s the first foreign city I ever visited on my own. (There’s an extremely detailed account of that trip in the first Twisted book.) Since then I’ve been to Hong Kong a few times, but it doesn’t get old. Hong Kong is not just about the spectacular sights and food: there’s something in the air, something thrilling and vaguely chaotic. It’s a sense of possibility that you get in a world city. You know that things are happening that were not stage-managed for promotional purposes.

We spent several days in Hong Kong at the end of May to shoot two episodes for Trippies. We had wonderful meals that we burned off by walking, walking, and walking from markets in Kowloon to hiking trails in the New Territories to Old Town Central where we looked for the locations of Wong Kar Wai movies, to the Film Archive to Sai Ying’s haunted houses to the dojo of one of Ip Man’s students, to new food and drink haunts like May Chow’s Happy Paradise and Victoria Chow’s Kwoon cocktails.

At the end of a long, packed but strangely not exhausting shoot, we met Vivian Mak, whom I hereby dub the Empress of Tea. Vivian is the proprietor and soul of MingCha Tea House, one of the finest tea shops on the planet. She gave us a quick workshop, during which we sampled a variety of teas, each with a distinct flavor and aroma, which is more than I can say for some overpriced tea shops. It’s not cheap, but you get more than what you pay for and leave feeling clean and almost virtuous.

Even the setting is dramatic: MingCha is hidden inside an old factory building.

Now I’m going to re-watch Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love, and if anyone borrowed my DVDs and didn’t return them, prepare for pain.

You can watch the previous episodes of Trippies (China, Turkey, Thailand, Korea) here.