April 4, 2008: News Bites

JabbaWockeeZ Win it

Joining the late spawn of reality TV shows, Randy Jackson's America's Best Dance Crew concluded last Friday with the JabbaWockeeZ beating Status Quo in the final dance battle. The white-masked, white-gloved all-male ensemble is composed of mostly Asian Americans, including Rynan 'Kid Rainen' Paguio, Phil Tayag, Ben 'B-Tek' Chung, and Jeff 'Phi' Nguyen.  While the interesting costumes beg for extra viewer votes, the JabbaWockeez perform with break-dancing moves, contorting bodies into unnatural positions and spinning on heads like floor buffers. Before their sweeping success in America's Best Dance Crew, they first gained fame from the popular America's Got Talent. Riding the wave of their success, they later performed on Live With Regis and Kelly and in the popular hip-hop dance movie Step Up 2 The Streets. Although the dance group met challenges, such as grooving to the painful repetition of N'Sync's "Bye Bye Bye," the JabbaWockeez danced to many popular songs such as OneRepublic's "Apologize," and 50 Cent's "Ayo Technology." Ending their fame on America's Best Dance with a climactic bang, the JabbaWockeeZ performed to Kanye West's "Stronger" feat. Daft Punk. Even more surprising for the JabbaWockeez's fans was that during their final dance, the group ditched the Phantom of the Opera masks and produced their first orchestrated act with bare faces. --Tim Natividad


Jhumpa Lahiri's latest

Released this week, Unaccustomed Earth is the latest publication from Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Jhumpa Lahiri. Because her previous works, Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake, have been both critically acclaimed and widely popular, Unaccustomed Earth's release has been highly anticipated. Lahiri's latest is a collection of eight short stories, which is a return to the pithy-but-powerful genre of Interpreter of Maladies. She also returns to her signature theme: the generation gap between immigrant parents and their American-born children, as it is tied to the relationships between India and abroad, home and away. In the titular story, a daughter must take in her alcoholic father, resulting in a role reversal that reveals her father's secrets. The last three stories intersect to comprise the tale of "Hema and Kaushik," two childhood friends who meet at various points in their life, on various continents. There might be something in Unaccustomed Earth to win Lahiri another award, or perhaps, a new movie deal. --Lisa Leong


Sessue book and DVD

Milestone Film and Video has just released a DVD of the film The Dragon Painter (1919), which features Sessue Hayakawa, one of the first Asian actors from the early 20th century that didn't have to play the typical Asian roles familiar today to make it big in Hollywood. The Dragon Painter was produced by Hayakawa himself and the DVD's bonus features include his other film The Wrath of the Gods (1914), where Hayakawa plays a supporting role as an elderly man. Anyone interested in the life of Sessue Hayakawa and his claim to fame can check out a book of his life by Daisuke Miyao that has been published by Duke University Press. The book it titled: Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom. --My Thanh Mac


Shu Qi joins New York, I Love You

Taiwanese actress, Shu Qi, boosts her Hollywood resume with a coveted role in a new project titled, New York, I Love You. She will star in one of 12 short love stories, directed by 12 various directors. Japanese director, Shunji Iwai, and Chinese director, Jiang Wen are included in the production. New York, I Love You will have a vignette-style storyline that explores different types of love among individuals within the boroughs of New York. The concept was developed by Paris, Je t'aime scribe, Emmanuel Benbihy. It is a collaborative work among several writers, including Hu Hong, Shunji Iwai, Suketu Mehta, and Yao Meng. Maggie Q also has a role in the film,  currenly filming with Ethan Hawke.  --Michelle Tang

A fantasy for Shekhar Kapur

The international writer-director of Bollywood films, Masoom and Mr. India, and the Cate Blanchett-starring Elizabeth/Elizabeth:The Golden Age, Shekhar Kapur has picked up a new project: the $200 million project, Larklight. Larklight is based on a novel by Philip Reeve, and the story will be adapted into a script by Eastern Promises screenwriter Steven Knight. It's a fantasy story that takes place in an alternate universe, and it involves a brother and sister, some renegade space pirates, a madman, and saving the world. In other news, Kapur has also signed on to direct a segment in the collection of shorts, New York, I Love You.  He was selected to take over Anthony Minghella's segment after the director's recent death. --Ada Tseng

My Blueberry Nights Out in Theaters

My Blueberry Nights is director Wong Kar Wai's (Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love) first film in English, and it is set to have a limited release in the States on April 4th. The film was screened at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival in May and has since opened in various countries. Starring international actor Jude Law and Grammy award winner Norah Jones, the all-star cast is complete with David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman, and Chan Marshall. Norah Jones is Elizabeth, who hits the road in search of true love. Instead, she encounters a broken marriage between Arnie and Sue, played by Strathairn and Weisz, and a companion in Leslie (Natalie Portman).  Filmed in classic diners and stunning locations throughout the US, My Blueberry Nights is about a journey of self discovery. --My Thanh Mac


Lilo & Stitch gets anime makeover

Entertainment juggernaut Walt Disney has recently unveiled pilots for its latest animated television series, which it produced in collaboration with Japanese animation studios. This unique partnership between the US based Disney and Japan is unusual since Disney had traditionally distributed its own characters like Mickey Mouse around the world without any cosmetic changes. This marks a change in Disney's traditional strategy, as the entertainment giant will now actively produce and distribute content catering to the Japanese population. The collaboration has resulted in a made-for-Japan adaptation of the Lilo and Stitch series, a popular franchise in the US. Japanese Disney officials described the show as "the first Disney animation made in Japan and set in Japan." Which likely means the Elvis-centric soundtrack will be replaced by contemporary Japanese pop/rock songs. I'm crossing my fingers for a version of The Blue Heart's "Linda Linda Linda." --William Hong


Japan Film Festival @ImaginAsian Theater

From April 11-17th, the ImaginAsian Center in downtown Los Angeles will be hosting the first week of the Japan Film Festival. From the 18th through the 20th, the screenings will be held in the Starplex Cinema in Irvine. Held every year in LA since 2003, the festival's goal is to provide a better understanding of Japanese culture through cinema. The festival will headlined by films such as the critically acclaimed Always Sunset on Third Street and the live action adaptation of manga classic Yunagi City, Sakura Country. There'll be a wide variety of other genres presented, ranging from CG animation (Appleseed Saga Ex Machina), anime (One Piece), documentary (Traveling with Yoshitomo Nara), comedy (Trainman), action (Shinobi), and even signature classics like Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro. All films will thankfully be English subtitled. The schedule can be found on the JFF site. --William Hong


New Asian American magazine The Big A to release at 2008 Beijing Olympics

Search "Asian American magazine" and the first hits you'll find are non-profit Hyphen Magazine, women's lifestyle magazine Audrey, and Asians In America magazine where their motto is "Knowledge is Power, Knowledge is Pride."  Don Chareunsy, an Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) governing board member, is acting as the Editor-in-Chief of a new Asian American magazine, The Big A. Launching this August, this monthly magazine is targeted at the 18-34 year-old Asian American demographic covering topics of lifestyle, politics, fashion, film and philanthropy with a focus on "connecting all Asian Cultures in a mainstream multimedia format."  The first distribution of The Big A magazine will start at 700,000 copies in the US with an additional 500,000 copies to be distributed in Beijing at the 2008 Summer Olympics.  For more information, visit their official website. --LiAnn Ishizuka 


SFIAAFF Narrative & Documentary Award-winning Films

For ten days in San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Jose, the 26th annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival screened over 120 films from Asian and Asian American filmmakers representing over 20 countries. As part of the SFIAAFF, films were recognized through Juried Competitions and Audience Awards representing the best in Asian American filmmaking for this year.

And the winners are...

Best Narrative Feature Award: Amal
Special Jury Award (tie): Always Be Boyz and Santa Mesa
Best Documentary Feature Award: Planet B-Boy
Special Jury Award: Wings of Defeat
Audience Award, Narrative Feature: Om Shanti Om
Audience Award, Documentary Feature: Planet B-Boy

--LiAnn Ishizuka
 

Farewell to Dith Pran, The Killing Fields real-life Survivor

Most knew the 65-year-old New York Times photojournalist for more than what his day job could tell you. Dith Pran was a survivor of the Cambodian Holocaust, in which an estimated two million people died under the rule of communist Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. Pran's own life story was the basis of the Oscar-winning film, The Killing Fields (1984) directed by Roland Joffé.  On March 30, Dith Pran lost his battle to pancreatic cancer in a New Jersey hospital. Pran was not only a survivor, he was activist, goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and also founder of the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project which helps to educate people of the Cambodian genocide. --LiAnn Ishizuka