By Julie Cho
Harry Potter has a Scottish Chinese girlfriend, Victoria's Secret enrages Buddhists, first time director Liu Sen Dou sweeps Tribeca Film Festival, and more in this issue of News Bites.
Lou Sen Dou Sweeps Tribeca Film Festival
First time feature film director Lou Sen Dou, from China, won the top two awards at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival for his film The Green Hat. The film is described as portraying two different stories that explore how present day people are struggling to look beyond the traditional definitions of love and make sense of the romantic relationships in their own lives. He won the prize for Best Narrative Feature and was presented with the award for Best New Narrative Filmmaker at the festival-- both prizes accumulated to $45,000. The event ran from May 1-9 in New York City and closed with the awards ceremony and party in Lower Manhattan.
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Unknown Chinese Scottish Girl to play Harry Potter's Love Interest
Unknown actress Katie Leung has been cast as Cho Chang in the fourth film in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In this installment of the series, Cho is Harry's love interest at Hogwarts—the educational institute of magic the future wizards attend. Scottish born Leung, 16, was picked from more than 4,000 applicants for the role.
A movie insider says: “The film producers and author J K Rowling were keen to get a complete unknown for the part of Cho Chang and Katie's absolutely perfect." They describe her as pretty and bright--one can easily see why Harry would have a crush on her. The film producers say she has a glittering career ahead of her in the industry.
Contribution by Minnie Chi
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Victoria's Secret's Graphic Swimwear of Buddha and Boddhisattva
Victoria's Secret's new swimwear line has stirred quite a controversy. The 2004 swimsuit catalog revealed the usage of Buddha and Bodhisattvas as fashion design symbols for the company's new line of swimwear. Buddhists everywhere were insulted by the degrading usage of the religious figure and contacted the company for an apology and a retraction of these bathing suits from the merchant stores.
Minh Lanvien, a concerned Buddhist, contacted the Victoria's Secret service department to lodge a protest on the Buddha tankini. He received a reply stating, “We do not believe that the personage depicted on the tankini is Buddha." The spokesperson did offer an apology to Minh, saying that if "our photographs have offended you we are all truly sorry”. However, she absolved the company's responsibility in manufacturing the controversial products, saying that "although we feature this item in our catalogue, we do not manufacture this tankini. If you have additional concerns regarding this tankini, we recommend contacting the manufacturer, Ondademar directly".
According to unconfirmed reports, the United States branch of the World Fellowship of Buddhists based in Los Angeles intends to lodge a direct protest with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in New York. Its purpose is to generate public awareness of these offensive products and to alert the general Consuls of other countries, particularly Buddhist nations to stop the imports of the products into their markets.
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Chang Rae Lee's Novel Aloft
Lee's novel, Aloft, released in March, has become a best seller, and will soon be turned into a film by Warner Bros. by producer Scott Rudin. Lee has been pronounced as one of America's best young novelists. After three successful novels, he has been invited to join the highly esteemed faculty at Princeton University, where his colleagues include Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Paul Muldoon.
Princeton associate, C.K. Williams, who recently won the National Book Award for poetry, said Lee is “really an astonishing prose stylist, and that's a gift you can't make for yourself. It's talent”.
Although Lee has been compared to such writers as John Updike and John Cheever—whose protagonists view white suburbia as an oppressive force—Lee holds his characters, not their surroundings, accountable for their shortcomings in life. This could be a result of his own upbringing in a New York City suburb, Pleasantville, in Westchester County, after moving at the age of 3 from Seoul, Korea in 1965. By all accounts Lee thoroughly enjoyed his suburban upbringing as a child.
The narrator of Aloft is Jerry Battle, an Italian American on the eve of his 60th birthday who's greatest joy in life is to fly his Cessna Skyhawk above Long Island, picking out his house from the rows of others--he has arranged lighter colored shingles in an ‘X' on the roof. A retiree with far too much time on his hands, he does his best to avoid all family entanglements, even after his wife drowned in the backyard swimming pool and his girlfriend of 20 years leaves him. Lee's model for Jerry is his Italian American father-in-law. However, when asked about the similarities between the two he laughs and replies, “A loose inspiration. Quite Loose”.
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Derek Kirk Kim's Same Difference and Other Stories
Derek Kirk Kim's Same Difference and Other Stories has been nominated for a Harvey Award and two Eisner Awards—the comic book industry's highest honors. A collection of short works that originally appeared on the web (http://www.lowbright.com), they run a range of styles, from serious short fiction to satire to autobiography. Although Same Difference has the quality of a young artist trying to find his own voice by mimicking methods already laid out to him by his predecessors, he is still able to create a unique voice for himself which adds a freshness to the writing. Kim is wise enough to avoid making race a central theme of his work. Instead he puts Asian Americans into funny, compelling storylines that would typically feature ‘white' characters.
Among other aspects, Kim has an impressively varied cartooning style. Super Unleaded has more of a cinematic look that underscores its naturalism, and Oliver Pikk has a quirky Saturday morning cartoonish feel to it. Same Difference combines both these styles, blending a realistic approach with silly caricature. It shows a remarkable level of accomplishment at comic book craft.
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Asian American Association Film Festival at UC Davis
The Asian American Association Film festival, which took place on May 3-8, at UC Davis featured films centered around six themes—Drama, Assimilation, Generations, Asians & Sex, Human Spirit, and Local Films. The festival began with a screening of Better Luck Tomorrow, and ended on Saturday with Darryl Fong's film Kung Phooey. For six days, several films were shown to help promote Asian Americans in the media. The festival was intended to increase the awareness of Asian Americans, their culture, their struggles, and possibly break some of the prevalent stereotypes that circulate throughout society by showing the diversity and identities of Asian Americans that have been missing in mainstream media.
There were also insightful discussions and dialogue that occurred after the screenings. The audience even got a chance to meet and talk to some of the directors, actors, and distinguished guests. One of the judges invited to be apart of the voting panel for the festival was Phillip Yu from www.angryasianman.com.
Asian American Film Festival
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Will Yun Lee stars in Elektra
The star of Torque and Die Another Day, Will Yun Lee, has been cast as the main villain in Elektra for Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox. Also starring Jennifer Garner the film is a spin off of the movie Daredevil starring Ben Affleck. Lee will play the head of the Hand, a clan of mystical ninjas. Garner returns as the beautiful but deadly assassin who was trained by the Hand; however, Garner ends up turning her back on the Hand and they want her dead. Goran Visnjic stars as Garner's love interest, with Terence Stamp rounding out the cast.
Elektra started filming in Vancouver this month with Rob Bowman directing. A specific release date for this movie has not been set yet but they are hoping to release it in 2005. Lee will next star in Face, opposite Bai Ling.
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Sung Kang's Saketini
Sung Kang, who played Han from Better Luck Tomorrow, recently opened a restaurant, Saketini. It's described as a fresh new twist on Korean based cuisine with French/Japanese influence. World renown chef Eun San Yi is considered by food critics as the innovator of Korean fusion cuisine. Although the menu has scintillating dishes such as silky scallops and asparagus spears wrapped in a nest of flash fried glass noodles and yellowtail carpaccio, the sake is really what to ask for, stocked mostly with premium, hard to find brands that are best sipped cold.
Saketini
150 S. Barrington Ave.
Brentwood, CA 90049
(310) 440-5553
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Contribution by Minnie Chi
Ye Rin Mok Photography Exhibition
GR2 (Giant Robot) will be presenting the first solo exhibition of Ye Rin Mok, a local Korean American photographer. The exhibition will consist of nine color photographs depicting improvised images of landscape and figure. Each photo is comprised of largely random scenery and models either found anonymously via the internet or left over from magazine photo shoots. In addition to Mok's photographs, paintings by the Tokyo-based artist/designer Kiyoshi Kuroda will also be on display.
Primarily a freelance photographer for magazines such as Anthem, Mass Appeal and Metro Pop, Mok's commercial photo work deals mainly with editorial content. But once Mok finishes a photo shoot, she takes advantage of her immediate surroundings and any models present to capture her personal photographs. Although this may seem to be a haphazard approach to photo making, the resulting images form a cohesive body of work that resonates with a composed stillness.
Ye Rin Mok photography exhibition
2062 Sawtelle Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
May 29- June 30, 2004
Monday - Saturday/11:30 am to 8 pm
Sunday/12 pm to 6pm
Opening reception: Saturday, May 29, 2004
6:30 pm to 10 pm
For more information, visit: www.gr2.net
Published: Monday, May 17, 2004