This year, SXSW (a.k.a. South by Southwest) film festival has a very hearty helping of Asian-ness — and I’LL BE THERE! YAY!
Sure, the music and interactive portions of the popular festival are big draws, but when it comes to the film festival, I am totally all over it.
This year they will be featuring big time movies like the Jonah Hill/Channing Tatum comedy romp 21 Jump Street and Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods — but the selection of Asian-centric films are in abundance. From Indonesian forest-based thrillers to Olivia Munn trying to get preggers, here’s a list of them in no particular order.
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Outrage, the new film from Japan’s legendary Takeshi Kitano (ZATOICHI: THE BLIND SWORDSMAN, BROTHER, VIOLENT COP) opening in Los Angeles and New York on December 2, 2011. It stars Beat Takeshi, Kippei Shiina, Ryo Kase, and Tomokazu Miura.
In a ruthless battle for power, several yakuza clans vie for the favor of their head family in the Japanese underworld. The rival bosses seek to rise through the ranks by scheming and making allegiances sworn over saké.
Long-time yakuza Ôtomo (writer/director Kitano, using his screen name “Beat Takeshi”) has seen his kind go from elaborate body tattoos and severed fingertips to becoming important players on the stock market. Theirs is a never-ending struggle to end up on top, or at least survive, in a corrupt world where there are no heroes but constant betrayal and vengeance…
Running Time: 109 minutes
Language: Japanese (with English subtitles)
Rating: R for violence, language, and brief sexuality
Ok, ok, so you just want to know how you can win some free tickets and DVDs? Read on!
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Shopping With GASP!
The 15th Anniversary of the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival opens its doors this coming Tuesday, November 8th to 12th in downtown Toronto, followed by 4 special screenings in Richmond Hill November 18th to 19th.
Voted one of Toronto’s Best Little film festival, Reel Asian has grown leaps and bounds from its humble independent roster, to screen world premieres of International Asian films. Check out my reviews for Lover’s Discourse, Saigon Electric, Piercing, I, and Jump Ashin after the jump.
Distributed by Lotte Entertainment, War of the Arrows is directed and written by Kim Han-Min. The film is something I’ve been wanting out of Korean films for a long time: an epic action film that keeps you on your toes but also has a great story line. The original film premiered in South Korea this August under the name: Arrow: The Ultimate Weapon (최종병기 활). Personally, the new English name seems a lot more fitting.
So everyone in L.A. has been visiting our beloved Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) to see the latest blockbuster art exhibit featuring the art of director Tim Burton. Appropriately, this exhibit will be on display until Halloween 2011. Over the July 4th weekend, I was able to stop by the exhibit and enjoy with childish delight Burton’s amazing private collection of his own art. They even had on display all of the original figurines used in The Nightmare Before Christmas, my all-time favorite.
I was totally geeking out and chuckling as I enjoyed all of his awesome drawings and sculptures when I came across a live-action film playing continuously. It was clearly a creepy rendition of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale with an all Asian cast. The film looked old, like from the 1970′s. Intrigued, I sat down and watched the film, thinking, “Did Tim Burton make a film in Asia?” Then I quickly noticed that all the actors were speaking with pristine, un-dubbed American English and realized it was an all Asian American cast.
It turns out Burton had made the film for Disney in the early 80′s, which aired on Halloween night 1983 and then disappeared for over two decades before being shown again at art galleries in recent years. Apparently, Burton was really into Japanese culture at the time, and this film has an all Japanese American cast. The film footage can’t be found on online, so it looks like the only way to see this totally Asian American casted Tim Burton film right now is at LACMA. Definitely worth it.
Sometimes it’s amazing the weird things you can run across on Youtube. I recently came across Sexy Beijing, an web series in China and while the video above is suitable for work, some of the interviews may be questionable due to the content. In any case, I was totally enthralled for whatever reason because a laowai was speaking in a Northern accent, which brought me back to the days of taking collegiate Chinese when the TA liked to give me hell because I didn’t speak with the Beijing accent like he was taught. In any case, it was fascinating since Sexy Beijing not only brings out how China has grown, but as a people, what sort of internal revolutions they’ve had due to opening up to the world.
For example, one of the videos was the interviewing of a comedy film called Red Light Revolution. It’s basically about how a businessman opens a sex shop to make ends meet. What’s interesting about this interview is that the older actor said he actually remembers one of the first sex shops opening up in Beijing and it was probably around ten years ago. This also coincides with the beginning of the China Adult-Care Expo back in 2004 which began because China produces 70% of the world’s sex toys.
Many Westerners still believe that China continues to be a very closed off and isolated country due to government restrictions. But on the ground with Sexy Beijing, it seems apparent that change has been rampant in the last decade and continues to steamroll through.
The Working APA Actor is a bi-monthly interview of Asian Pacific Islander American actors in the entertainment world, whether it be theater, film, television, or commercials. It is an inside look at these actors exploring their passion in their craft and how they balance their personal lives with their work. But more importantly, this column is dedicated to knowing these busy actors a little better as individuals.
Over the past few weeks The Taqwacores (directed by Eyad Zahra) opened in various cities across the nation and in the UK after premiering at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It is a film that will be dubbed as “that film about punk Muslims” but it is so much more than that. At the heart of it all, it is a film that explores the concept of identity and truly expressing oneself without any restraint. The film also opened at the 2010 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and swept the awards as it nailed Best Film, Best Director, Best Ensemble Cast, Best Script, and the Audience Award.
Starring in the leading role is Bobby Naderi, an Iranian American actor who I had the pleasure of meeting when the film first premiered at the 2010 LAAPFF. Bobby will take the honor as the first person to kick off our new column, The Working APA Actor. Continue Reading »
By Kristina Wong
Kristina Wong delves deep into the sky high rates of depression and suicide among Asian American Women to make ‘Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’
“I’m Definitely Not Crazy. But I Probably am Lying.”
My earliest memories of even thinking I might be depressed were met with warnings by my mother that if I ever dare seek professional help for depression, even as a kid, my employers would one day find out and fire me. It did bother me that being depressed-but-employed versus happy-and-unemployed was the better of the two (and only two) options, but I heeded her advice and never sought professional help. God forbid anyone know I was once a crazy 12-year old kid.
So I hid it for years. And not very well. Even into my college years, I managed to turn club meetings, sleepovers, friendships and intimate relationships into my own impromptu therapy sessions. Anything to avoid the stigma of actually seeking professional help! When I introduced myself to a circle of new friends, somehow unsolicited emotional clutter would always spill out with it. Sometimes my friends were halfway decent at playing Freud, but very often, they were so mired in their own messy lives that my problems just exhausted them.
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I wanted to share this promotional trailer of a new short film that I produced with FPS Productions titled “Dilated”. (FYI: I also make a cameo in the film as “Dr. Yang.”)
Directed by Brian L. Tan, this intense action film shot for less than $10,000 features a high-octane car chase, military HMMWVs, and a cast and crew of more than 200 people. In conjunction with the release of this film, we will also be presenting “Off Campus”, a TV pilot about five disparate roomies trying to make sense of the long days and decadent nights of college. We will be showcasing various short films shot by other UCLA artists and filmmakers as well, so I want to invite all of you to come out and show these students your support!
Our premiere will be held on May 5, 2010 (Cinco De Mayo) at the Ackerman Grand Ballroom at UCLA. For more information about this event, you can either e-mail us or go to the Facebook event page.
Please visit the film’s website as well.
What’s up everybody? This is Steve from channelAPA.com, and I just want to say that I’m very enthusiastic about the partnership that we’ve formed with our friends here at 8Asians!
Along with the videos that you’ll be seeing on channelAPA’s end, I’ll be releasing exclusive content that you can only find through my channel.
With that having been said, the video shown above is a compilation that I’ve been working on throughout our NYC promotional tour. We pride ourselves in highlighting all facets of Asian American entertainment from all across the country. Throughout my travels, I’ve been reaching out to several New York/New Jersey based artists in order to collaborate and get them more involved with our channel. The making of this video would not have been possible without the help of our sponsor, Blacklava, film composer George Shaw, the channelAPA team, and the support of our followers in the East Coast.
The artists and groups that were featured include Heather Park, Audio Fiction, Triangle Offense, Johnnyphlo, The Notorious MSG, Dave Boyle, Rik Cordero, Teresa Lee of PaperDoll, Taiyo Na, Cynthia Lin, Decipher, Ellie Lee of seoulbeats/aatheory, Misnomer(S), Jen Kwok, Air Tabigue, Jordan White of Racebending, Cliff Chiang, Jeff Yang, Jerry Ma, Deep Foundation, Alfa, Gary King, and Choz Belen.
Formosa Betrayed is a feature film set in the 1980′s about FBI Agent Jake Kelly’s investigation of the brutal murder of a Taiwanese-American professor on U.S. soil. With the help of his partner Tom Braxton and a sharp Chicago police detective, Agent Kelly discovers that the murderers have fled to Taiwan. Inspired by real events, the film follows the intertwining and complicated story of the Taiwanese and the United States governments, as well as Taiwan’s emergence as a country once ruled under marshal law but now thriving with democracy.
After making the rounds at several film festivals, Formosa Betrayed was picked up last fall for theatrical release by Screen Media Films and will premiere in select cities during the weekend of February 28th (For those of you who know something about Taiwan, “2/28″ is historically significant.)
The annual Lunar New Year celebration organized by local Bay Area Taiwanese American organization featured a special panel discussion about Formosa Betrayed, with director Adam Kane (whose TV credits include Heroes, Pushing Daisies, Mercy), actor Tzi Ma (Rush Hour, 24), actor, writer & producer Will Tiao, actors Henry Chu and Adam Wang, and associate producer Evita Huang. Lead actor, James Van Der Beek of Dawson’s Creek fame was on the East Coast for press interviews and was unable to attend. Ho Chie Tsai, founder of TaiwaneseAmerican.org, moderated the discussion before opening it up to general Q&A.
I first learned of the film when Will Tiao was looking for investors in the film a few years back. Since then, Will raised over $5 million+ dollars in “shares” of $25,000 chunks as he literally traveled across the United States and Taiwan to raise money to finance the film, even before a script was written or any actors or directors were attached to the film. As Will stated, if you want to tell stories that others are unaware or unwilling to finance, you have to do it yourself, just as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck did with Good Will Hunting.
Actor Tzi Ma said he has never met a more cohesive and committed Asian ethnic group as he has with Taiwanese Americans, which personally doesn’t surprise me. When an ethnic group and country like Taiwan are marginalized by China and — through China’s efforts — the world community, there is a certain survivalist mentality instilled in the community.
Henry and Adam are fairly new actors cutting their teeth in Hollywood and are happy to have real speaking roles in a major film production – one of the cast members was selected during an open casting call in Chicago. Evita, a recent college graduate, was amazed at the opportunity to be deeply involved with the production and promotion of the film, given that most of her fellow peers are still working on the production assistant level.
There were a few controversial topics regarding the narrative of Formosa Betrayed, including the complaint over featuring a lead white male actor in a film about Taiwanese history. Will Taio and the other writer/producers decided to move forward with James Van Der Beek to make the film more appealing to a mass audience that extended past the Taiwanese or Asian American community, much like how the character of Sydney Schanberg provided important context about Cambodia and Dith Pran in The Killing Fields. In this case, James Van Der Beek’s character would be able to introduce facts and background information in the plot to the audience. Before directing this film, director Adam Kane admitted that he didn’t know much about Taiwan or had ever traveled there.
Another controversy was the location of the actual production, parts of which were filmed in Bangkok rather than Taiwan. Will and Adam decided this for many reasons, including maintaining the film’s setting in the 1980s, which was hard to find in Taiwan since not too many places in Taipei resemble Taiwan in the 1980s due its rapid modernization. Secondly, Bangkok boasts a better film industry infrastructure over Taipei, and shooting the film in Taiwan would require them to ship equipment there. Thirdly, they feared that the sensitive nature of this political thriller would have been too costly to film in Taipei and cause their production shut down for whatever reason. (The ruling party for most of Taiwan’s rule since the 1940′s has been the KMT, which regained rule in 2008). I also believe a major reason was purely financial: it has to cost less to shoot a film in Bangkok than Taipei. With all the different location and limited budget, it’ll be interesting to see if one can tell if the film was shot in Bangkok instead of Taipei.
They also answered my own question over the movie’s title and why they picked Formosa Betrayed instead of something along the lines of “Taiwan Betrayed.” Their response was interesting and logical: Taiwan was given the name Ilha Formosa by the Portuguese, which means “Beautiful Island.” If the name “Taiwan” was used, most audiences who know little to nothing about the country would not care to see such a movie. However, “Formosa” sounds more ambiguous and mysterious, which could intrigue audiences into at least learning more about the film.
After the jump, check out a quick interview with Ho Chie Tsai, founder of TaiwaneseAmerican.org, before the Q&A panel with the panelists before they addressed the crowd. Once the whole panel discussion is available online, I’ll be sure to link to it in the comments.
If you live in a big city, you may have subscribed to Daily Candy for their dispatches regarding things to do, places to shop, and where to eat.
In the latest “Weekend Guide” from Washington, D.C., Daily Candy recommends the Terra Cotta Warriors Film Festival this weekend at the National Geographic Society. They say that you can watch “Kung fu classics like Lao Tou Ho introduced by martial arts guru Craig D. Reid.” Cool!
But why is this worth attending? According to Daily Candy, it’s because “It makes total sensei.” LAME! Do I need to tell you that “sensei” is a Japanese word and kung fu is not Japanese? Should I mention that all the films in the festival are Chinese?!
WTF, Daily Candy? Who do you think you are?! Karate Kid 2010?! Bah!
(Don’t let Daily Candy’s idiocy prevent you from checking out the Terra Cotta Warriors Film Fest, if you are in DC, though. I love the NGS and the film festival features one of my favorite Chinese films– despite Zhang Ziyi’s inclusion in it– Hero (2002).)
h/t: Ming & Stephanie
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