8 Asians

Lucy Liu recently discussed racism in Hollywood, the problem with not being American enough and not being Asian enough–the classic paradoxical existence every Asian American lives in. She’s tired of being the emotionless Asian girl or the Asian girl that kicks your butt. But her role in “Elementary“, a contemporary re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes in New York, throws a sizable wrench in the Asian female stereotypes by casting her as Dr. Joan Watson. What’s cool [...] Continue »

Filmmaker Grace Lee is making a documentary on Asian American food, and she wants your stories and ideas. “Asian Chops” (the current working title) will look at Asian America through the lens of food.  A kickoff party, food panel, and brainstorming session for the film was held at CAAMFest for the joint Center for Asian American Media and PBS production.  You can listen to the audio from the meeting, including an overview from Grace Lee [...] Continue »

Watch Coming to Independent Lens: Seeking Asian Female on PBS. See more from Independent Lens. Both Dino-Ray and I have seen and reviewed Seeking Asian Female, the documentary. For those of you living in the United States, you can catch the documentary on PBS’s Independent Lens’ series this Monday, May 6th. Be sure to check you local listings for the exact time (as well as possibly slightly different date).

HTC’s latest Android smartphone, the HTC One, has been getting a lot of fantastic reviews and is about to launch in the United States. So it’s nice to see that one of their latest commercials features hip hop band Far East Movement, to highlight the HTC One’s superior sound quality with “Turn Up the Love” playing.

Have you seen the Sears commercial featuring Jeanne Chinn, Lorenzo Lamas, and a monkey? Cute commercial, but if that didn’t sound like the start of a bad joke, I’m not sure what does. Screenshot courtesy: ispot.tv

In the latest Progressive Insurance, we have the spokesperson “Flo,” speaking with an Asian American couple about bundling their home and auto insurance together. Flo pushes a button, and a boxing announcer does a comedic announcement on getting ready to “bundle” – a play on “rumble.” Personally, I found the commercial entertaining. The couple could have been of any race or a mixed race marriage, but it was nice to see an Asian American one [...] Continue »

An award-winning production company and a top-rated national cable network is casting a new docu-series that will explore unique perspectives on parenting — styles like attachment parenting, authoritative parenting, green parenting… you name it, they’re interested in hearing about it. They’re especially seeking Asian American parents to be part of the series. Are you a parent interested in telling your story? Over the coming weeks, Punched in the Head will be conducting interviews with prospective [...] Continue »

Last September, I had blogged about Jeremy Lin’s escape from his busy Taipei schedule to play street basketball and how that was taped by 60 Minutes. The full 60 Minutes piece profiling Jeremy Lin finally aired this past Sunday night! I guess 60 Minutes decided to wait to see how his season with the Houston Rockets went as well as time the segment as the Rockets are going to secure a spot in the NBA [...] Continue »

Ironically, I saw this Miller commercial while watch the Duke vs. Creighton game (Duke won!)  Maybe it isn’t exactly irony, but Ken Jeong did go to Duke for undergrad (and became a traitor by going to UNC for medical school). In going through my archive of Ken Jeong commercial blog posts, it looks like Jeong has been getting steady commercial work and has appeared in Coke, and Pepto-Bismol, with Dat Pham being a Ken Jeong/ [...] Continue »

As I had blogged about when reviewing Seeking Asian Female, Director Debbie Lum had hundreds of hours of footage for her documentary that she did not use. Her original intent prior to focusing on the story of Steven and Sandy was to explore “yellow fever” – or the strong preference of non-Asian men, predominately white men, who have a fetish for Asian or Asian American women. Lum is a guest on This American Life on [...] Continue »

When I first saw this ad airing on TV, I thought that having “Bob” dressed up as a vampire was a bit odd (especially since you don’t often see Asian vampires – do they even exist in American television shows and movies?). But as I saw Bob, his wife and two kids, along with his mortgage, I was pleasantly surprised. Because to be honest, I am not sure that I’ve seen a complete Asian American [...] Continue »

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Last month, Tina had blogged about Michelle Rhee and her distaste for Rhee’s maniacal focus focus on standardized testing. I think I had first heard of Rhee when she graced the cover of Time Magazine back in 2008 and learned in that article that Rhee was selected by Washington, D.C. Mayor’s at that time, Adrian Fenty, named her chancellor of the school system – even though she had no [...] Continue »