By APA Staff
Ping Pong Playa hits theaters, new Pang brothers film stars Nic Cage, and a modern-day Amy Tan opera is born. All this and more in the latest edition of News Bites.
Novel to Libretto
Chinese American award-winning author Amy Tan has more than just a skill for story-writing and complex mother-daughter narration, she's also written a recent libretto to her own acclaimed 2001 novel, The Bonesetter's Daughter. Her book has been been transformed into a modern-day opera. Directed by Chinese stage director Chen Shi-Zheng (The Peony Pavilion) with a fusion of Western-Chinese music composed by Stewart Wallace, The Bonesetter's Daughter is on the playbill for the San Francisco Opera 2008-2009 season. For fans of the novel, Tan stays true to the basic storyline, focusing on an Alzheimer's-ridden mother with a mysterious past and a Chinese American daughter who begins to understand this past. Extensive acrobatics combine with lavish costume design to bring a star cast of opera veterans -- including mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao of M. Butterfly fame and Chinese operatic princess Qian Yi -- to Tan's opera world premiere. Performances will run from September 13 to October 3. For more information, click here. --LiAnn Ishizuka
Ping Pong Playa in limited release across the US
On September 5th, Jessica Yu's Ping Pong Playa rolls out into theaters in selected cities in California and New York, and on September 12th the film will open in Seattle and Houston. Yu aims to revive the Asian American comedy with this story about Christopher "C-dub" Wong, played by co-writer Jimmy Tsai. C-dub is a failed NBA "basketball star" who's in denial about his own failure -- or more specifically, his lack of initial talent that could have led him on the road to potential failure. Circumstances arise, and he is ultimately given another athletic challenge: to defend his family's ping pong legacy. Click here to see a picture of Jimmy Tsai opening his mouth really really wide. Other, more practial purposes for visiting their website include: learning more about the film and finding out where you can go see it. --Ada Tseng
A Marvel-ous mashup of anime and western comics
Marvel Entertainment and Japanese animation studio Madhouse will be partnering to create characters inspired by the Marvel universe for the elusive Japanese market. Aside from the visual styles being changed into anime style, the storylines will also be tailored to include Japanese history and culture. Madhouse is currently working on the first of four series set to debut on Animemax, the 24-hour anime network, in 2010. The initial batch will feature characters like Iron Man and Wolverine. Expect a lot of neat merchandising tie-ins, like Jean Grey body pillows or Wolverine shaving cream. I'm personally hoping they'll adapt the Japanese live action Spider-Man show, which includes transforming giant robots, into an Spider-Manime, too. Yea yea yea, wow! --William Hong
1st ID Film Festival 2008 Asks, ‘What is Your Identity?'
Identity is never as simple as black and white -- or even grey for that matter. Co-programmers of the first ID Film Festival, Quentin Lee and Koji Steven Sakai, aim to "explore and celebrate identity crisis in our diverse Asian/Pacific Islander community" with a presentation of thought-provoking independent films -- many by first time Asian and Asian American directors. Presented by the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, the twelve films, spread over a three-day period, include the short documentary program "Conflicting Passions"; Gone Shopping, a 90 minute satirical Singaporean drama focusing on the multicultural Singapore country; and "Non/Fiction," a series of short films where the division between fiction and non-fiction is blurred. The ID Film Fest begins September 25, screening at the Democracy Forum in the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy. For more information, click here, and for program information, click here. --LiAnn Ishizuka
Forbidden Kingdom DVD available Sept 9th
Forbidden Kingdom, which features the long-anticipated face-off between kung-fu megastars Jackie Chan and Jet Li, will be released on DVD on September 9. This film was unfortunately a critical disappointment, and ultimately just an unfortunate example of what happens when a Western filmmaker attempts to make a sixteen year-old white boy the central character of a story based on an Eastern classic -- in this case, Journey to the West. Not only was the story fragmented, but the awkward insertion of bits and pieces of Chinese wuxia classics such as The Bride With White Hair, Golden Sparrow, and the Drunken Master often seemed like a Lord of the Rings rip-off, complete with Frodo-ish concerns about saving the day: "What if I can't handle it?" Instead of protecting a ring this time, the boy risks his life to deliver the Monkey King's golden staff -- and facing the perils alone in the enemy's nest. If you are an avid Jackie Chan and/or Jet Li fan, then this is bearable to watch. The Forbidden Kingdom DVD comes as in a two-disc special edition with an additional digital copy. Special features include "The King Fu Dream Team," the historical airing of Jackie Chan and Jet Li; "The Dangerous Beauty," the intro of Bing Bing Li and Crystal Liu; and "Filming in 'Chinawood'," a behind-the-scenes look. --Cathryn Chen
Bangkok Dangerous blows its way to theaters
I'm totally surprised Jason Statham isn't in this movie, since he usually has his way with Asians in classic (crap) films like The Transporter (eat it, Shu Qi) and War (beat it, Jet Li). Oh wait, he's busy filming Crank 2, which involves him chasing down a Chinese mobster. So Nicolas Cage is the latest American action star to venture into exotic realm of Southeast Asia for some ass-kicking. In Bangkok Dangerous, a remake of a Thai action film of the same name, Cage plays a hitman in Bangkok who pulls off a series of jobs until he gets sidetracked. He falls in love with a local (hot Asian) woman and bonds with a errand boy. Both the original and remake were by directed the Pang brothers, who saw their movie The Eye ruined by Jessica Alba in America not too long ago. The funny thing is, according to MTV, Cage couldn't initially tell the two brothers apart. I'm guessing that's because all directors look the same? If this movie is successful, I'm sure we'll see similar movies with equally terrible titles. Hong Kong Homicide? Canton Catastrophy? Shanghai Shenanigans! The possibilities are endless, and that frightens me more than Cage's hairdo in this movie. --William Hong
Twentieth-Century Asian American Modernism on Display
Seventy years in the making, San Francisco's de Young Museum will present the first comprehensive survey of Asian American modernism in Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900–1970, on view from October 25 to January 18, 2009. Over one hundred works from over seventy artists of Asian ancestry who lived and worked in the United States are included -- featuring artist and art historian Tseng Yuho's mural "Western Frontier" (1964), which is recognized as "the largest public artwork ever created by a female Chinese artist before 1970." One of the earliest art from the exhibition is a sacred Shinto spirit made of paper (by Toshio Aoki), and the most recent piece from the collection is Carlos Villa's "Painted Cloak" (1970–71) which uses mixed media materials as a symbolic search for his Filipino American cultural identity. The modernist matrix of the early twentieth century and the post-World War II period are the two areas of emphasis for an exhibition whose objective is to not define an Asian American art aesthetic, but to bring underrepresented Asian American artists deserved exposure. For more information, click here. For images of exhibition pieces, click here. --LiAnn Ishizuka
Los Angeles welcomes the World Festival of Sacred Music
From September 13th to the 28th, 1000 artists from all over the world will gather at UCLA's Royce Hall to participate in a festival that showcases the diverse range and traditions of sacred music. The World Festival of Sacred Music began in 1999, and its mission has been to use music to "bring forth our shared human values of peace, understanding, and respect for all living things." For sixteen days, it will feature performers such as Tuva's Chirgilchin, India's Rupayan, Angola's Waldemar Bastos, Indonesia's Emiko Susilo, and the US's Rob Levit and Lian Ensemble. For more information, go to their website here, where there is an extensive calendar of events and descriptions of all 41 events. There are also individual bios for the musicians and short audio clips available to help interested parties figure out who they want to see. --Ada Tseng
Published: Friday, September 5, 2008
