One of the many gloom-inducing things about Michael Mann‘s Blackhat are the Asian urban locales, which are mostly gray, grim, congested and corporate fuck-ugly with little else but high-rises, office buildings, freeways and skanky, neon-lit fast-food joints. The IMDB says Blackhat shot in (a) Jakarata, Indonesia, (b) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, (c) Klang, Malaysia and (d) Hong Kong besides Los Angeles. They all seem like the same soul-less Asian hell-hole. Mann obviously decided to avoid the conventionally photogenic and emphasize the stinky, but good God. The footage of over-developed Bangkok in the 2nd Hangover movie made me feel the same way. In some ways the above-named burghs looked a bit like Tokyo, Seoul and Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon — cities I didn’t care for and have zero interest in ever visiting again.

Shot adjacent to a Burger King in Las Vegas’s McCarran airport — Wednesday, 1.21, 1:10 pm.