Are you wondering why we haven't talked about J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, despite our obvious excitement about it? That's because we haven't seen it (see: finals). Boo hoo. So don't talk about it until after Wednesday, when we've seen it in IMAX!

While watching Brillante Mendoza’s film Serbis, viewers may only take a slippery hold on the many secrets that linger inside the campy porn movie theater (appropriately called “Family” Theater), that doubles as an underground hotspot for gay prostitution. The latter point seems to be the more arresting aspect of the film, but Mendoza isn’t interested in the men who engage in pleasure-for-profit. They consistently remain nameless and faceless. Mendoza is instead interested in the family that runs the theater, whose own disarray parallels the crumbling of the theater itself, as prostitutes and customers run rampant under blind eyes.

That the story circulates around a movie theater is significant, because there are times when watching certain individual’s activities feels like an act of voyeurism. There is the opening scene, in which a nude Jewel boldly applies lipstick and, while observing her self in the mirror, puts on a sexual display with a series of gestures and endless mouthings of “I love you”. Whatever and whomever she is doing it for remains unclear, but there is a blatant sexuality, vanity, and privacy to her act, and those qualities are broken when Jewel realizes that, in fact, her nephew has been watching all along. This is one of many moments in which characters (and viewers) are put in the uncomfortable position of feeling unwelcome as they open doors, seeing what probably shouldn’t be seen. Yet, despite all appearances, that which is seen can no longer be erased from the mind.

The quality of voyeurism has much to do with the notion that each character has a particular position and place in this microcosm, and while crossing certain places may be unallowable, it is also unavoidable. The people running in and out of the theater are many, but there remains an unspoken agreement of where each one belongs. Through an observable series of everyday routines, one is trained to understand that Ronald runs projections (while masturbating) in the reel room; Alan trades projection reels and paints posters (while bedding his girlfriend Merly in between); Nayda stands in as the married theater matriarch (while fighting an attraction to her cousin Ronald); and so on. No mention is made of how this pattern came to be; it just seems to have been this way for as long as anyone could remember. Here it becomes clear that the family operates under the illusion that people can run by pure mechanics, can automatically stabilize their selves, and can be free of wrongdoing or mistake. Even the movie theater itself, a porn house, is maintained under the illusion that sex can be distilled and rendered immobile, resting as paintings on the theater walls or as a picture on screen for the price of a movie ticket. In fact, much more is brewing under the surface. Whether anyone knows, or wishes, to acknowledge this, remains unclear.

This droning routine, rendering even sex stagnant, makes one look to smaller, more quotidian gestures to find any hint of disruption or untidiness. Mendoza sets everything up so that seeing a man being sucked off by a boy for a modest fee is no longer shocking; but catching Ronald looking one moment too long at Nayda is. The losing principle of Serbis, it seems, is that life should be anything but messy. If things do get messy, then clean up the mess, pure and simple. As Nanay Flor, the aging mother, says, “There’s a lot to fix in this movie house”, but she fails to recognize that perhaps some things, like her divorce, can’t really be fixed. Near the end of the film, Mendoza withdraws from the family and leaves the theater. The final scene rests on two complete strangers, men who briefly converse about nothing in particular, and the film reel burns up, leaving a gaping hole in the screen. The gesture reads like a "fuck you" to this concept of social mechanization to which the family--and on another level, the audience--so desperately adheres. With people, there is no smooth running or compartmentalizations to be had, so let them remain confusing and opaque, even in the movies.

And we walked, feeling the ground

We'd someday own, not alone

And I knew there was something different

And I feel us growing stronger

Building something new...

I knew there was something different about me today

I blogged about this movie a while back. Then I finally watched it at NAASCon '08, and now, thanks to the powers of APAAM, it's coming to hang out at Columbia/Barnard. If you don't know already, there's a major reason why the date of Vincent Chin's death is the date on our staff list entry. And if you don't know, then maybe this is the perfect film for you.

Check out the Facebook event here.

Christopher Wong is a California-based filmmaker who established himself by working on projects that range from independents, to shorts, to commercials. But it wasn't until Whatever It Takes that he hit it big.

Whatever It Takes follows Principal Edward Tom, who abandoned the steel and concrete of Fifth Avenue to instead monitor the hallways of the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics. The school, which boasts only 107 students, is a place that Tom considers to be "a safe haven, amidst the violence and poverty of the south Bronx, where children can focus on a rigorous and meaningful education."

The film is co-produced by Renee Tajima-Pena (of Who Killed Vincent Chin? directing fame), and has received major funding from the Center for Asian American Media as well as the Sundance Institute. This is serious business for an Asian American film, centered around an Asian American man and the tumultuous environment in which he lives. Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow, in comparison, didn't make big waves. I spoke to Chris just after the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, and he said that the reception was amazing.

During the Women Who Work It! panel, Fay Ann Lee said that the biggest problem with "Asian American" films is that it doesn't garner an audience (not in the way that Tyler Perry garners an African American audience, anyway). This makes me critique the way that I've been categorizing Chris's film since I first heard about it. Unlike Falling For Grace or Better Luck Tomorrow, Whatever It Takes is not just a chick flick, or a teenage angst film, that happens to feature Asian American players. It is a documentary that details something which looks to us like a more believable slice of reality, one which lays out issues of race, class and education, and asks the audience to piece something out of it. The film presents race as a mere node in a web of problems that have led to society's twisted failings.

Anyway, I haven't even seen the film yet, and this leaves out a lot of other AsAm documentaries that have a lot to offer to the so-called Asian American genre. I'll wait for it to hit the East Coast for Asian Cinevision's Asian American International Film Festival; until then, someone who has actually seen it (and therefore has a cohesive idea), please enlighten.

For more on Whatever It Takes, visit the film website.

I'm a sucker for authenticity (pirated software and cheap knockoff bags excluded), which is why movies sometimes infuriate me, because they always prove that such a thing doesn't exist. We've seen it happen with movies that are "inspired" or "based on" TV shows, comic books, and earlier films that are already classics (and, in my opinion, should not be touched again). Random example: When Disturbia, I found out, was supposed to be a modern, updated version of Hitchock's Rear Window, you should've seen the shit fly in my living room. But what can you do? Everything is inspired in some way or another. Can I even say that Hitchcock is foundational and "untouchable", or is this equally ignorant because I haven't looked further enough into his own influences?

Anyway, enough of that college-essay talk. I'll do a cheap lead-in here and discuss Hollywood's most recent example of its violating that which is authentic or has already been institutionally established. This is its decision to "remake" earlier and probably better films that became cult hits in Asia. Ringu (The Ring), My Sassy Girl (the remake for this one didn't even hit theaters), and Dragonball Z instantly come to mind. Oh, and the Infernal Affairs series, but everyone argues over that one (and, admittedly, The Departed was pretty kickass). Basically, remakes suck.

So if this is a pattern of Hollywood, and bicultural kids like myself who know the originals are condemning Hollywood, tell me WHY things like this still happen:


According to IMDB, The Ramen Girl goes like this: "An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master." Tofugu, who wrote the entry "'The Ramen Girl' Makes Me Want to Cry", outed the movie as a remake/rip-off of Tampopo (タンポポ).


Setting aside the facts that there are a lot of marketing issues involved, that ownership over a story or idea is really hard to claim, and that maybe remakes are actually a twisted form of flattery, I think this is bullshit. You can argue that remakes are a re-imagining of an earlier story, or a new "spin" of it, so it shouldn't be held to the earlier piece. But everybody compares a remake to the original, once the fact that it's a remake is made public. The really crazy part of me wants to map this pattern onto a history of colonialism and the West's idea that it can take ownership of things that aren't its own (museum artifacts, anybody?), but I won't even go there.

To read the Tofugu entry, which is much less convoluted, go here.

More of my random movie updates. I watched Milk today and it had a totally Blaaag-worthy character: Michael Wong, the only Asian American gay activist that was on the campaign team for Harvey Milk. My favorite part of it was when a distressed Milk jokingly said to Wong, "Don't you have some laundry to do?" and Wong dryly replied, "Don't you have a hairdresser to visit?"

Sadly, I couldn't find any pictures of Kelvin Yu, the actor who played Wong, on IMDB or Google Images (big surprise). But seriously, if you want to see him, just go watch the movie. It would do Dennis Chin or any of our gay Asian American activist friends proud.

Last night I finally went to see the super hyped movie Slumdog Millionaire. If you know me, then you know that I'm part blogger, part half-assed academic, and part film/concert geek. Be warned, I wrote this with little intention of bringing up any Asian American connections, but make of it what you will.

The first thing that turned me onto this movie was the heaps of praise that Videogum editor Lindsay Robertson showered onto it:

gabe: let your guard down
gabe: for once
lindsay: I did, when I saw Slumdog Millionaire!
lindsay: my guard was down for like, an hour

I couldn't believe it when I read this. Who, in their mid twenties to thirties, in the 21st Century, lets their guard down when watching any movie, especially one done by the guy who made the crazy zombie flick 28 Days Later? New Yorkers are dry and caustic, and like it or not, the qualities are contagious.

But then again, there is definitely something about Danny Boyle knowing how to tap into people's feelings through a number of magical things, including kids. There is this amazing scene, for example, and I won't tell you too much, but it involves a child, an outhouse, and the pile of shit that he has to crawl through in order to meet the most famous celebrity in India. I kid you not, this scene (the outrageousness of which was to be topped in later scenes) made me completely not care that the plotline was outrageous, and that nobody really believes in everlasting love underscoring this movie.

Which in some ways is the strength of its setting in Mumbai, a place that has become all too familiar in the tabloids as of late and doubly unimaginable. Boyle has somehow made us forget the horrors of what's happened there overseas, exposed its underbelly of people who suffer but are in love, and why not? A tragedy doesn't rob a city of its magic or its sentimentality, and neither should the recent headlines for this movie. In truth, a part of me didn't even realize or care that Slumdog took place in Mumbai. When I walked out of it with my boyfriend, one of the first things that he said about it was, "It felt like a completely fantastical sort of film." Indeed. Yours truly, the self-identified Daria Morgendorffer of the Blaaaging team, has been sold.

Got some e-mails via the AAA listserv about some possible movies to be shown next year (Note: David and I are off the board and only getting e-mails for the sake of writing entries; this lets us return to our full time jobs as creepy internet stalkers). A pretty interesting discussion was taking off, with some pretty cool movie names being dropped. Thought y'all would like to know about them.

So here are two films that have been discussed so far (I'm bolding everything that sounds interesting and cutting everything that's yawn-worthy from the original websites' synopses):

Cinderella in a Chinatown massage parlour

YEAR OF THE FISH is an animated independent feature film written and directed by David Kaplan, shot entirely on location in New York City’s Chinatown. A modern-day adaptation of Cinderella based on an old Chinese version of the story, it was shot on inexpensive live-action video that was used as a guide for digital painting in post-production.

A young hopeful girl named Ye Xian (An Nguyen) travels alone to New York City to try to make some money for her ailing father back home in China. She falls into the clutches of Mrs. Su (Tsai Chin), who runs a massage parlor in the heart of Chinatown. But Ye Xian refuses to do the requisite sex work for the clients, so she is made into a menial servant who must do all the laundry, cleaning, shopping and cooking – a Cinderella. However, she finds solace in a magical fish given to her by the strange hunchback Auntie Yaga (Randall Duk Kim) and in her fleeting, tender encounters with Johnny (Ken Leung), a local jazz musician.

Kaplan’s screenplay is based on a 9th Century Chinese variant of the folk-tale, the oldest known version of the story, recorded some 800 years before our better-known European versions.

The animation was created with an advanced algorithmic digital painting technology to achieve a living, fluctuating painterly look. The aesthetic effect is totally unique, less like a graphic novel and more like a painting brought to life.

Why I'd watch this film: I've read this story as a kid; magical fishes are weird; the hunchback woman is played by a man; Ken Leung pretty much dominates independent American cinema, oh and he's in Lost; animated versions of live-shot films are cool (example: Waking Life). Oh yeah, and it was the centerpiece of the AAIFF 2007.

While I don't think we Blaaagers can seriously call ourselves Trekkies, here's an exciting promotional poster of John Cho's portrayal of Sulu in the 2009 Star Trek (... directed by JJ Abrams!) Four were released yesterday at the Star Trek convention in Vegas... yadda yadda... here it is!


It's perhaps commendable that Star Trek, having been (I think?) a statement upon racial and social egalitarianism, did not recast Sulu as another "normative" chump the way other franchises might have. Anyhow, enjoy these until the movie comes out! And because I wouldn't feel right without mentioning the original Sulu, here's the guy who paved this road - George Takei.

I absolutely had to post this because David and I just had a discussion about Charlotte's adopted Chinese baby (also, I'm a diehard SATC fan). I never knew that Charlotte was so racist, but her racism manifests itself in scene-stealing moments of hilarity (see scene with the Poughkeepsie chocolate pudding). Anyway, here's the list:

1. Charlotte's cute adopted daughter from China, Lily, played by Alexandra and Parker Fong (twins). The gals teach her to say "sex." I guess it had to happen sooner or later.

2. Carrie and Mr. Big's realtor. An older lady wearing lots of makeup.

3. Woman having wild sex with Samantha's neighbor. Very, very naked.

4. Man with an extremely impressive resume interviewing for the job of Carrie's assistant... wearing bright pink heels. Goes from overqualified to emasculated in about nine seconds.

5. Dude with a ponytail, serving Samantha a drink. Seen at a distance. No lines.

Okay, I know I'm being nitpicky about a piece of pop culture fluff, but this is what I do. I can't help it. So what does it mean when a movie rakes in $56 million its opening weekend, is considered something of a cultural phenomenon, and a reflection of our society... and this is the best we can in terms of Asian American representation? I know, it's really the same old story.

UPDATE: Okay, I totally forgot about the Sikh man driving the cab. Also, there were a handful of scattered Asians roaming around the scene in Chinatown. Of course! Gentrification of the lower east side and all. And that's it. Those are all the Asians in "the City." Just like real life, right?

Read the Angry Asian Man entry here.

I've been hearing about this movie for months now (PC's inclination towards working on illegal immigrant workers' rights doesn't hurt). Directed by Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou, Take Out is "a day-in-the-life of Ming Ding, an illegal Chinese immigrant working as a deliveryman for a Chinese take-out shop in New York City." Though the story is fictional, the sad truth is that you can probably find tons of illegal immigrant workers in nearly every restaurant in NYC who share nearly an identical experience to Ming Ding's. Thankfully, the critics have caught on to this as well.

Take Out opens this week in Quad Cinema.

To learn about the sufferings of real service workers, visit JWBS!

I really should be writing an 8-10 pg paper on Posthumanism as I rot here in the computer lab; but sometimes, procrastination is joyful relief.

Both David and I saw Iron Man (David opening night; I last night) and we love it to pieces. If you haven't already done so, watch it, because you will definitely find something to love about it too. Critics have picked up on this fact; but one thing I noticed (and which critics will probably never point out) is that Yinsen, in the film as a Muslim doctor from Afghanistan, was originally Chinese!



When he first appeared in the Iron Man comics (created in the 1960s), Ho Yinsen was imagined as a pacifistic Chinese physicist, engineer, and professor from the fictional city of Timbetpal whose work was greatly admired by Tony Stark. Throughout the entire comic book series, Yinsen remained of East Asian descent, until the film re-imagined him as a native of Gulmira, a fictional village in Afghanistan. In the film, Yinsen is portrayed by Shaun Toub, an American actor of Persian Jewish descent.

When I think 1960s, I think post-Red Scare and spotlight on the Chinese.
When I think 2000s, I think War on Terror and fear of the Middle East.

So a number of AAA members have been circulating a Facebook note written by a CC senior who attended CUCSSA's screening of Finding Li Wei and found some of the film's comments blatantly racist. Here is that note:

To the Members of the Columbia University Chinese Scholars and Students Association (CUCSSA), and to those it may concern:

I am writing this note in response to the performance of "寻找李伟 (Finding Li Wei),” a Chinese drama (spoken in Mandarin) performed on the night of Saturday, April 26th, 2008 at Teacher's College, Columbia University. This was one of the most hurtful and disappointing experiences for me during my time here at Columbia University in the City of New York. I was so devastated to hear the racism and the racist slurs against Black people in the show itself. Specifically, there was a racist comment made by one of the characters in the show and it was targeted towards Blacks in Harlem. I went home crying after hearing one of the characters saying, "I feel like Americans are quite nice, but actually no! We need to get rid of those Black people in Harlem. I'm terrified by Black people!" which was followed by an uproar of laughter in the audience. Not only did the character's words hurt me, but so too did the outburst of laughter by nearly 99% of the people in the audience, who are Chinese students at Columbia University.

I am deeply upset and saddened that Columbia Chinese Scholars and Students Association would be associated with and originally produce and write something so racist, especially at a time when the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, an event that people from all across the globe and people of all races will be traveling to China to see. As a black Columbia student and East Asian Studies major, I have dedicated so much of my energy to learning about Chinese language and culture, and even spent quite some time in China for study abroad. I am so saddened that this act of racism occurred on my campus and in such a public, blatant manner, in a play that was written and produced by the Columbia University Chinese Scholars and Students Association (CUCSSA). In recent weeks, I too have been coping with the loss of fellow student, Minghui Yu of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, who was also an active member of the CUCSSA. Although I realize that the physical harassment and death he endured on April 4th, 2008 was at the hands of a West Harlem youth, the ethnic background of his assailant is not a justification for a generic attack on the entire African Diasporic community in Harlem.

Prior to the beginning of the show, I was so excited to attend and invited five of my friends to attend this event. I was so excited to be there. Not only that, but I also cancelled an event last night that I am group organizer and creator of, called the Columbia University Chinese Karaoke Group, since the event conflicted with yesterday's performance of "Finding Li Wei." To make a long story short, I sacrificed my own event to attend this one. In hindsight, I would have rather gone to karaoke.

This incident of racism insulted me and the entire African-American community at my own university and in front of my own eyes! This prejudice will not be tolerated. The fact that these racist comments were spoken in Chinese does NOT desensitize the issue. To my fellow audience members: I left crying while all of you kept laughing and snickering. I am so saddened that "Chinese scholars" would write a screenplay that would instigate racism in our Columbia community. I am also especially disappointed, hurt and overwhelmed by the fact that a "friend" of mine, Guo Rui SEAS '08 was the playwright.

Columbia University is one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and it really needs to enforce its supposed intolerance of racist acts on campus. Within the past year alone, there have been many hate crimes on Columbia's campus, with only a few gaining attention by the administration. I am so saddened that yet another one occurred. Members of the CUCSSA, please remember that there are fellow students of the African Diaspora and from Harlem who attend the SAME university as you. Show respect, and STOP THE RACISM!!!!!!!

Sadly, no AAA members were in attendance; but anybody who was there is welcome to comment.

Update: In hindsight, it's a shame that the Minghui Yu / Bwog discussion didn't take off, because this issue definitely could have been worked into it.

This concludes Calvin's Harold & Kumar 2 interview series. Enjoy!

Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg, writers and directors of Harold & Kumar 1 & 2

This is part two of the Harold and Kumar Q&A / Interview series, where Neil Patrick Harris answers questions about acting and his role in this movie. We're still not totally sure how it relates to Asian America, but I'm sure this is just the buildup to the Kal Penn part, which Calvin will transcribe in due time.

NPH enters smiling; a reporter shrieks and NPH laughs at her. I make fun of fellow interviewer: ‘She’s actually not here to interview, we found her on the street and paid her to looked excited.”

NPH laughs as he sits down and is asked the first question.

What was your career like before it took off?

NPH: My career was very different back then: I did a lot of Broadway: Cabaret, Proof, Assassins. I wanted to cultivate a skillset without worrying about the fame ramifications of it. Harold & Kumar was nice in that it was a quick glass of notoriety.

John & Hayden (The writers & directors of the Harold & Kumar movies) was fans of me way back, and they thought it was funny to write me in the movie, and so they did. And then I read the script, responding that I loved it.

Are you upset that you got killed off?

NPH: Did you not stay until the end of the credits?

Journalist who had asked that question gets quiet.

NPH: There are 250 people out there who are cursing your name right now. Think about them. What about the gaffers? The grips? Shame on you.

What is your schedule like?

NPH: The TV schedule is more than half the year and is a bigger time commitment for what’s usually owed to Broadway: 6 months. There’s no time to the do the 12-14 month gig.

Has anyone mentioned a Doogie Howser reunion movie?

NPH (laughs): No.

How similar are you in real life to NPH in the movie?

NPH: Almost surprisingly similar...but no, really, it’s everything up until the point I stopped using a fake ID.

Was it your or the writers’ say to make your character very sexual?

NPH: You know, they wrote me that way before they even met me; before they knew me at all. Thats the idea they had of me when they wrote me. Yeah...

NPH then talks about his Whoopi Goldberg stand-in lovechild in the film. If you have no idea what we’re talking about, then go see it...NOW!

So do you prefer to eat at White Castle?

NPH: I’ve only eaten at White Castle late late late at night. I’m not an onion guy, and that’s like the main part of what makes those “sliders” so great, right? So it’s not my thing. I would have to order them sans-onion, but then again what’s the point? I might as well go to McDonalds.

How did you feel about H&K when you were filming it?

NPH: When you’re filming a movie, you have no sense of how it turns out until much much later. It’s very nice to have this role in this chapter of my life because it’s nice to have a demographic like me to have nice things to say.

And what do they say?

NPH: A lot of specific questions of “did that really happen? Did you really ride a unicorn? Did you really snort coke off a stripper’s ass?”

If your body could be made from anything else than skin and bones, what would it be?

NPH: Silly putty.

Like Gumby?

NPH: Like Stretch Armstrong.

What role do you look forward to doing that you haven’t done?

NPH: Someone villainous. I’m always envious of the super-villain in the Batman movies. Those are an actor’s dream job.

So whats the next thing?

NPH: There are a few more episodes of “How I Met your Mother.” Then there’s this project involving a site specific theater thing. It’s like an interactive activity with the audience....you’ll see.

What did you think of the writer’s strike?

NPH: The strike was strange because all of a sudden you find yourself trying to create your own material. I did something with Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). It’s this Dr. Horribles Sing-Along thing...yeah, I can’t describe it.

Will you direct?

NPH: Oh yes. It’s a big time commitment; with Harold & Kumar I work for 5 days whereas the director works for 18 months. There’s so much more involved behind the camera.

And that’s a wrap! As he takes pictures with the journalists, I ask the final question:

So what would Neil Patrick Harris do?

NPH (laughs): The question is: What wouldn’t NPH do?

Next up: KAL PENN!

This interview with Christopher Meloni marks the beginning of a series of Harold and Kumar 2 interviews which our AAA Chair and guest blogger Calvin Sun also conducted with Kal Penn and Neil Patrick Harris (what would NPH do?). Fans of Law & Order: SVU, Oz, and/or Wet Hot American Summer are free to emit cries of joy.

Sadly, there are no pictures because Chris's agents were especially unfriendly compared to Neil's and Kal's.

Jack Song over at David Magdael & Associates, Inc. sent us a bunch of publicity materials for some movies he's publicizing so here's the first batch. Harold and Kumar 2: Escape from Guantanamo Bay promises to turn the H&K franchise raucously political. We're crazy excited for this movie. See it immediately when it comes out on April 25th!

Notice: Some of these photos display that typical frat-boy misogyny, seemingly something all comedy movies have to have nowadays. You've been forwarned. Also, if you take these photos as happening chronologically, this is also a spoiler warning, lol.

Kal Penn (left) stars as “Kumar” and John Cho (center) stars as “Harold” in New Line Cinema’s upcoming release HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY. Photo courtesy Jaimie Trueblood/New Line Cinema ©2008 New Line Cinema

Whoa. I didn't believe it until I saw it myself:



According to Apple Trailers, East Broadway (or Falling for Grace) is a romantic comedy of errors premised upon a hilarious misunderstanding at an opera soirée. There, some Manhattan socialites mistakenly believe that Grace Tang is an heiress of a major Hong Kong fashion industry (she's actually a major Wall Street banker). She doesn't actually correct the mistake, and instead goes on to meet, date, and (maybe) love New York's most eligible (rich, white) bachelor.

Margaret Cho and Ken Leung feature as supporting characters, which has absolutely no way of going wrong. My favorite moment in the entire trailer is when Christine Baranski's character asks the male lead if Grace Tang only wants him "for [his] green card" and if she is "unusually willing to perform bizarre sexual favors". Anybody remember Cruel Intentions? She played an equally racist mother who cracks down on an interracial relationship between her daughter (Selma Blair) and her African American cello instructor (Sean Patrick Thomas).

In some ways, this story might look, read, and sound like a cleaned-up cosmopolitan version of The Joy Luck Club (the ignorant mother comments are uncomfortably familiar), which I don't love and probably never will. However, Fay Ann Lee takes some classic Asian American problems in a world of race-class-immigrant-identity confusion and strings them into a contemporary, relevant storyline. It actually looks good enough that I want to see it on opening night (April 15).

Lee has previously starred in Law & Order and Third Watch, but this is her first writing, producing, and directing debut.

by guest contributor Calvin Sun, who's just earning his blogging chops, so please excuse the stylistic foibles. But speaking of 21, have you guys seen the My Sassy Girl trailer???

It's funny, with all that's going on with 21, I'm feeling coy irony. I first heard about Bringing Down the House (the book 21 is based on) a few years ago, when my brother (who also attended MIT for grad school) told me about how it was written about a bunch of MIT Asian American students who went to Vegas and skillfully used mathematics to literally "bring down the house."

The story became a novel, which then got turned into the movie that's now getting so much grease. As far as the information I've been given, it was the novel that initially changed the ethnicities of the characters (I didn't hear too much comparable controversy there). Kevin Spacey pretty much went ahead with the treatment and produced a film. Granted, even if the novel kept the ethnicities as Asian Americans, Kevin Spacey most likely would have still preferred the Caucasian remix. We've seen it done with The Departed and we almost seen it done with the Hollywood remake of Oldboy. What would stop Hollywood with 21?

Now the reason why I feel coy irony is because I saw this coming years ago...and I was only in high school! Why did we, as a collective APIA community, all wait until post-production to start a movement? The film's made, the damage has been done, and the best we can do now is to boycott last weekend's #1 movie in the box office? All this negative energy-- we could have started years ago when the book was published and prevented the Hollywood slap in the face. We could have compelled the execs to get more Asian Americans on the ticket during preproduction. Sure, we've been given amazing consolation prizes of the venerable Aaron Yoo and Liza Lapira (Hollywood likes to give consolation prizes in preparation for any controversy; did you know that Justin Lin was set to direct the remake of Oldboy?), but perhaps we could have gotten something more worthy of the phrase "based on a true story." From that we could have created something positive out of this instead of waiting so late and being negative and angry.

Yes, I agree with AngryAsianMan's Phil Yu that anything that draws attention to create dialogue and begin scrutiny into the Hollywood casting is a good thing. But as Hollywood dictates, any publicity is good publicity... all I know is that any sort of controversy we create will now get the film more attention, ticket sales will go up, the chances of it succeeding will increase, the Hollywood execs will be happy, and then the formula will be repeated. Next? The Caucasian remix of The Motel.

I think the best thing we can learn is to pay more attention to current events and rally together sooner. We should have seen this coming. We should have started talking when the book came out and began our steps in encouraging Hollywood to get more Asian Americans on the big screen for the film. Instead we're playing our respective role as a cog in the Hollywood machine; an uproar during a film's publicity campaign could not have been sweeter for the Hollywood execs. In their language, for every person that boycotts there's two people that becomes interested in the film. That's Hollywood mathematics for you; they've managed to bring down the house for APAs and run away with the dinero. We may have sowed the seeds for the next Hollywood remake of Better Luck Tomorrow, starring Hayden Christensen.

Let's refrain from idling with the popcorn next time.