Uh ... was anyone actually suggesting that Obama invade Iran? I mean, other than crazy mans on da streets?
Because (m)O('bettah)bama is the very opposite of a brutal regime dictator tyrant evil axis thingie. (m)O('bettah)bama is good. It is Ahmadinejad who is brutal 'n' evil. And Kim Il thingie. And, like, Angela Merkel, and Johnson & Johnson. And Metallica.
Actually, if you look around, the Brutal Regimes are everywhere. Everywhere. Wow. It's frightening.
Attendees of this year's Frameline San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival will be able to catch a screening of Fruit Fly: the newest film written, directed, composed, edited, and probably catered by H.P. Mendoza, he of Colma: The Musical fame.
Currently making the rounds and garnering rave reviews at film festivals is Lee Isaac Chung's Munyurangabo, a tale following the eponymous hero's mission to avenge his father's death with the help of his friend Sangwa. Munyurangabo (or 'Ngabo for short) is Tutsi and Sangwa is Hutu, facts that don't complicate their friendship until their families cross paths and the reminders of years of genocide begin to bubble up.
Judd Apatow is taking an interesting -- and to some, confusing -- approach to marketing his upcoming film Funny People, starring Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen. Apatow and Co. have created a fake television series starring one of Funny People's characters, a hack actor named Mark Taylor Jackson played by Jason Schwartzman (I Heart Huckabee's, Rushmore). The series Yo Teach! is a send-up of every corny sitcom to ever appear on "TGIF" or Saturday morning programming, sitcoms we watched despite the bad writing, terrible acting, and clichés galore.
Her character's name is Bang Bang, and supposedly Bang Bang can't speak English. However in the film she understands everyone, even though she speaks to no one. Also, Bang Bang's job is, um, to blow stuff up.
So here is a Japanese woman who doesn't speak, yet leaves her signature
in bombs. OK, that's a little bit scary. At one point, characters
Stephen and Penelope (Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz) even discuss how,
"She's an artist with nitroglycerin" while watching Bang Bang hook-up a
chain reaction that results in Barbie's head being blown off.
Playing for a one-week exclusive engagement in the Los Angeles area is Anna Chi's Dim Sum Funeral, a film that tracks the lives of estranged Chinese American siblings who return home for their mother's traditional Chinese funeral. Inevitably they each tackle their issues with Mommy, whom they've affectionately dubbed "Dragon Lady."
Masi Oka's 'The Defenders' Given Green Light By DreamWorks
Gamers, rejoice! Masi Oka is taking gaming mainstream. The Heroes star, a gamer himself, has come up with a movie project, The Defenders, which was just given the go-ahead by DreamWorks. The story follows a group of gamer teens who must surface from their online avatars to save the world, which is basically the daydream of many a MMORPG player. (That's massively multiplayer online role-playing games, for those of you not in the know.)
"You can be whoever you want to be," Oka said about gaming to the The Hollywood Reporter. " The question came to
me: What if you had to live up to the person you created in the virtual world?"
The project was picked up by DreamWorks after Oka pitched it to Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen). Gary Whitta, a fellow World of Warcraft gamer and screenwriter of 2010 Denzel Washington action thriller Book of Eli, is attached to write the script.
Hump Day comes and Hump Day goes, but the bridge into the weekend can feel seamless this time around with the help of the IndioBravo Filipino Film Festival.
Summer movie season is upon us and if you're like me, you're probably wondering what the Asian American Cinematic Presence Forecast is looking like in the upcoming months. X-Men Origins: Wolverine gave us a hit of Daniel Henney, and pretty much everyone in possession of more than ten dollars went to see John Cho in Star Trek. Will the rest of the season let us represent? Here's my round-up of Asian/Americans behind and in front of the camera this summer
With the new Star Trek movie coming out on Friday, it seems appropriate to revisit Hyphen's interview with John Cho and our look at racial stereotypes in the Trek universe from The Spaces Issue.
Asian American mystery 'Ghosts of the Heartland' opens in NYC
On May 22, New York City's Quad Cinema will begin screening Allen Blumberg's Ghosts of the Heartland, the tale of Chinese American reporter Roland Lu who returns to his hometown of Millville to blow the lid off of a racist, corrupt mayor's evil deeds during the McCarthy era. Leading the cast are Phil Moon from The Big Lebowski (he peed on The Dude's rug), and Roseanne Ma from HBO's Deadwood and Pan Asian Repertory Company (The Joy Luck Club, Rashomon).
KevJumba (one of the most popular, subscribed people on Youtube) recently posted a new video, the first in several months since he started college. He talks about the whitewashed casting in the upcoming Dragonball movie, an issue that hits home personally for him as a big fan of Dragonball growing up. Seeing that video made my day, because KevJumba's videos routinely reach two million viewers, so he's reaching a lot of people when he's addressing the issues of whitewashed casting and the exclusion of non-stereotypical roles for Asian American male actors.
Sam #1. In an interesting development, director Sam Raimi is going to be overseeing a remake of the Zhang Yimou movie House of Flying Daggers. Why are there so many Hollywood remakes of recent movies created by Asian people? Hollywood remade The Hulk only a few years after Ang Lee directed it, remade Infernal Affairs into The Departed, and there are more than a dozen other recent examples from this decade of Hollywood remakes of brand-new quality Asian films. What is wrong with simply showing the same story with the original Asian faces in them?
Sam #2. I'm excited to pass along that Sam Yoon recently announced
his candidacy for mayor of Boston, attempting to beat out two other
candidates to take over the post long held by Tom "mumbles" Menino. For
those unaware of his background, Sam Yoon is a Princeton and Harvard
educated activist who just a few years ago became the first-ever
elected Asian American Boston city councilman. He is also a co-founder
of the Asian Political Leadership Fund,
which supports and fosters Asian American political leaders around the
country. Interestingly, most of his funds have been raised from out-of-state. Learn more about Sam Yoon and his campaign by visiting his site.
It's only day 3 of SFIAAFF, with the festival really getting busy today with a free Festival Forum
in the Japantown Peace Plaza (free performances! free films!) and, of course, lots of films, but I feel
like I've been there for days already. I guess I have. Thursday was
opening night, featuring the Korean film My Dear Enemy. The
film, about exes spending a day together a year after they broke up, was slow and didn't really have a plot, but I kind of enjoyed that
about it. (Other people told me they fell asleep though.)
What might you have in common with a schizophrenic, kleptomaniacal Korean American sex addict? Probably nothing. David Choe, the subject of Harry Kim's documentaryDirty Hands, is part Jackass cast member, part street miscreant and part artistic genius. We follow him from his youth growing up in Los Angeles and formative years as a graffiti artist, his continuing wanderlust beginning in his teens, his brushes with the law, to his blowing up and eventual success as an artist -- all while dealing with inner demons, Jesus, and mounds of pornography.
Watchmen Screenwriter Alex Tse Talks About Adapting the Groundbreaking Comic
Film adaptations of comic books are a dime a dozen in Hollywood these days, with a track record that suggests studios are pumping out more Batman Forevers than Dark Knights. But what happens when your task is to bring the words of history's most acclaimed graphic novel -- and one of Time magazine's 100 greatest novels of all time -- to the big screen?
Enter Alex Tse, a San Francisco native who is the co-screenwriter of the much-anticipated Watchmen adaptation, which opened last week to the tune of $55 million. Tse first came onto the scene as the writer of 2004's multiethnic crime drama, Sucker Free City, directed by Spike Lee. Now with the success of Watchmen, he's in demand but still making time to return to his roots. Hyphen caught up with Tse before his visit to the 2009 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival to learn about his climb from a kid in journalism camp to bona fide Hollywood screenwriter.
Read the interview in our web features area and comeback here if you have a comment. (Unfortunately, our publishing system doesn't allow commenting on articles.)
Okay, whatever my particular opinion on the Slumdog phenom, I think it's clear that it is a stellar year for South Asian film and I am excited to blog about the impressive selection of South Asian films at the San Francisco International Film Festival. (Finally!) If nothing else, there's always the Saturday night Bollywood movie at the Castro: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.
Okay, okay, I'm on a roll. No, no, just let me say it:
This flick moves at the speed of life.
No, seriously, I get it: if you don't quite know how to make a movie make people feel something, then SLOW IT DOWN. Even if they don't feel something, the slow pace will convince them that there's some profundity happening.
This year, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival has another great group of films lined up. I had the opportunity to review some of them, and for some reason, they all seemed to center on the theme of individual and community resilience:
Whatever It Takes
This film focuses on first-year principal Edward Tom of the South Bronx Center for Science and Math. The film follows Tom and his school for a year, and zooms in on one 9th grade girl in particular, Sharifea. I was really amazed at how much access first-time filmmaker Christopher Wong had to the school, Tom and Sharifea's family. All in all, it's a great documentary about the dramas of being a principal in a small urban school. There are a lot of ups and downs and a few unexpected turns. I recommend this film for everyone. It's not the only urban school documentary out there, but possibly the first that focuses on an Asian American principal. The school community and Sharifea's life eventually overshadow Tom's story, but I think that's the point: it's not one person, but a whole community that makes a school what it is.
It's already March which means you're all feverishly filling out NCAA brackets, prepping your livers for St. Patrick's Day, and of course, gearing up for the 27th Annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. SFIAAFF kicks off this Thursday, March 9 with its opening night screening of South Korea's My Dear Enemy at the Castro Theatre and a gala reception at the Asian Art Museum.
To whet your cinematic appetites, Hyphen will be posting reviews of some of the Asian American films screening at the festival, starting with a look at this year's Japanese American films below. Keep checking in to our blog all week for reviews of Korean, Chinese, Filipino, hapa, and South Asian American films. But don't just take our opinions as gospel. Treat yourself to a festival movie ticket or two and get exposed to some fine Asian/American cinema that you can't see everyday.
We've already said quite a bit about Slumdog Millionaire and how it opened up a can of whoop-ass at the Oscar's, possibly fed by the movie's appeal as 'poverty porn'. International Herald Tribune has a sweet, interesting article on how Best Picture winner Slumdog Millionaire may be irking some of India's elite.
Hyphen Lynks: Model Minority Crap, American Idol's Anoop Dog
Oh, barf! This opinion piece in Forbes says Indian Americans are the new model minority. In a typical divide-and-conquer tactic, it then goes on to compare Indian immigrants with others to put down those other groups and suggest changes to immigration policy. "In sharp contrast to Indian Americans, most U.S. immigrants, especially
Mexican, are much less wealthy and educated than U.S. natives, even after many
years in the country. A new immigration policy that prioritizes skills over family reunification
could bring more successful immigrants to the U.S. By emphasizing education,
work experience and IQ in our immigration policy, immigrant groups from other
national backgrounds could join the list of model minorities." The piece was written by Jason Richwine, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
Deepa Iyer of SAALT calls Richwine out on the tired and racist thinking of the model minority myth in this rebuttal on the Colorlines blog.
UPDATE: 'Slumdog Millionaire's' Child Actors Headed to Hollywood...Then Back to the Slums
The makers of Slumdog Millionairetold the press this week that they have made last-minute arrangements for the entire cast of the film (children included) to attend the Oscars this weekend, where it's up for seven Academy Awards.
The film has been controversial for a number of reasons, from the pejorative nature of its title to the cringe-worthy salaries paid to its child actors, Rubina and Azharuddin, (who played the youngest incarnations of protagonists Latika and Salim, respectively). While surely not all of the criticism is valid, the issue of the children's salaries remains a validly contentious one -- particularly given the wild and unexpected success of the film.
The Slumdog Millionaire phenomenon has been an interesting one. For me, the best part has been the 'Fuck You' to the Hollywood establishment that this film represented: no stars, no backing, etc. I'm not sure if it was my favorite Oscar winning movie -- or my favorite movie of the year for that matter [because, um, did you SEE The Wrestler? and I'm not really a feel-good kinda girl]. But it has also elicited some really interesting responses. Here's a quick wrap up of blog entries and pieces:
'Slumdog' Wins Best Picture Oscar (and a Whole Lot More)
As predicted, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire won best picture at the 81st Annual Academy Awards. The Mumbai love story also won for best director, best adapted screenplay, best cinematography, best film editing, best original score, and best original song. If you didn't have the nearly four hours to spare to watch the ceremony, check out the complete list of winners.
Sorry, but it's raining. I have no little sarcasm, and no made-up theme, for Hyphen Lynks this week. It's just the news, plus a few undigested opinions, from all over the place. Please feel free to insert your own sarcastic comments below. Or to suggest themes. Above, enjoy a vid of Our Tamlyn explaining why everyone needed to vote last November. Glad she did. Why Tamlyn? See below.
Another Friday night is here and, if you like music, there's no need to weigh your options. Put this in your Hyphenite's social calender now, because LOCUS is here!
Co-presenting with the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, LOCUS returns with the 2nd Annual Do-It-Yourself Music Video Premiere Night. Not quite sure what that means? Well, not long ago LOCUS played matchmaker with APA filmmakers and musicians and, after pairing them with one another, challenged each group to make a music video in two months with little to no budget. Not only could you be among the first to view the results this Friday, you will also get to see the musicians perform live! This is an event that would do Wrigley's Doublemint gum slogan proud, because it would be double the pleasure and double the fun.
So don't miss it! You can view last year's videos and vote for your favorite video from this year's batch at the CAAM website. The video with the most votes will win a spot in the coming San Francisco International Asian American Festival! Event info follows, and you can also visit our calender posting or the LOCUS website for more details.
Friday, February 20 8-11 pm (doors open at 7pm) Root Division 3175 17th Street @ S. Van Ness Admission: $10 suggested donation All ages.
Gamers, rejoice! Masi Oka is taking gaming mainstream. The Heroes star, a gamer himself, has come up with a movie project, The Defenders, which was just given the go-ahead by DreamWorks. The story follows a group of gamer teens who must surface from their online avatars to save the world, which is basically the daydream of many a MMORPG player. (That's massively multiplayer online role-playing games, for those of you not in the know.)
Photo by John Liau
The Slumdog Millionaire phenomenon has been an interesting one. For me, the best part has been the 'Fuck You' to the Hollywood establishment that this film represented: no stars, no backing, etc. I'm not sure if it was my favorite Oscar winning movie -- or my favorite movie of the year for that matter [because, um, did you SEE The Wrestler? and I'm not really a feel-good kinda girl]. But it has also elicited some really interesting responses. Here's a quick wrap up of blog entries and pieces:
