Tag: John Cho

Movies

Our Picks For The 2017 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival

 

The Annual Gather-up of Los Angeles Asians in Entertainment is upon us.

I mean, the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.

Starting tomorrow, from April 27 to May 4, the LAAPFF will showcase a week of films from the opening of Better Luck Tomorrow for its 15th anniversary, the centerpiece Gook starring Justin Chon, the closing film Columbus with John Cho as the romantic lead, and a whole slew of shorts and features in between.

To be exact, there are 45 features and 139 shorts to choose from. Here are the few select ones that have caught my attention as Josephine Chang and I will cover the festival:

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Movies, Television

Ten (or More) People Who Proved 2016 Wasn’t a Total Disaster

When it’s all said and done, 2016 will be long remembered as the year everything (including American democracy) went to hell. Pop culture did not go unscathed either. We said goodbye to all of our heroes: Prince, Bowie, Ali, Phife, Kanye… and hello to the worst the internet could offer. From misogynist Ghostbusters haters to problematic faves, it was the year the ugly side of internet culture went mainstream. I mean, we literally elected an internet troll the leader of the free world.

Still, the geekosystem was able to produce a few silver linings in the massive dark cloud that was the last 12 months. Here are ten… or so.

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Movies, Star Trek

Sitting in the Captain’s Chair for Star Trek Beyond Now on Blu-Ray

People tell me physical media is a dying format and that everyone gets their movies digitally now. Well, I’m old and set in my ways. One of those ways is buying my favorite movies on blu-ray. Last time there was a new Star Trek movie available on disc, Paramount spread the movie’s bonus features over several different retail outlets, and I was not happy about it. This time, while there are still retail exclusives for Star Trek Beyond, you don’t have to buy five different versions of the same movie to get all of the featurettes in one place.

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Martial Arts, Movies

Bruce Lee Movie Stars a White Guy Because Of Course it Does

This morning, Deadline unveiled the first trailer for Birth of the Dragon, which recently made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. Ostensibly, the film depicts the legendary fight between Bruce Lee (played by Philip Ng) and Wong Jack Man (Yu Xia). But because this is Hollywood, the movie is going to be told from the perspective of a white dude.

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News, Television

USA Network’s Connoisseur Literally #StarringJohnCho

It looks like we will have a show #StarringJohnCho.

Star Trek Beyond’s John Cho recently went viral for the fan-made hashtag and movement #StarringJohnCho, which showcased the lack of Asian American representation in entertainment. It looks like it may have worked.

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Movies, Videos

CCTV America News on Whitewashing in Hollywood

Over the weekend, I was invited to join a CCTV America newscast — the Stateside arm of China Central Television — to discuss Hollywood’s continuing habit of erasing Asians and Asian Americans from the movies. It was my first time as an in-studio guest, but I was able to join anchorwoman Susan Roberts live from Washington, DC. Check out the video of the segment after the jump.

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Movies

Why Can’t the Next Bond be #AsianBond?

Yesterday, the movie world was shocked (not really) to learn Daniel Craig had turned down a small fortune to return to the big screen as James Bond, leaving a 007-sized hole for the franchise. Of course, the most obvious successor to the Aston Martin is Idris Elba, preferably in a Christopher Nolan-directed 007. Unfortunately, he’s “too street” to be considered, whatever that means. (We know what that means). So why not give an Asian actor a license to kill? Thus, #AsianBond was born on twitter. It’s not like there isn’t a plethora of Asian Brits who could take the role. In fact, I came up with nine. The only caveat is that they all hail from the UK, so sorry John Cho.

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Movies

Asian Americans Should be Movie Stars: an Update

So a few days ago, I wrote a thing. Maybe you’ve seen it. Ever since that post has been passed around, I’ve been taken to task about the stars I included (or didn’t include) on the list and whether or not I was basically proving Sorkin’s point by coming up with only three names.

On the first point, the names I included were not meant to be my casting suggestions for the role of Brad Katsuyama in a hypothetical Flash Boys movie. Instead, I was more concerned with Sorkin’s assertion that Asian movie stars didn’t exist. So I went to Box Office Mojo, and scanned their list of actors’ all-time domestic grosses and looked for the ones who were (North) American of Asian descent — whether or not you think hapas or Pacific Islanders should’ve been appropriately considered criteria is another matter1.

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Movies

There are No Asian American Movie Stars

Last week, North Korean hackers allegedly broke into the personal files of Sony Pictures execs as retaliation for the studio producing the James Franco and Seth Rogen comedy The Interview, which is about a CIA plot to assassinate Kim Jong Un. Normally, we’d be all over the nerd-friendly news about, say, Spider-Man coming home to Marvel Studios, but that’s been covered plenty of times on the web. Besides, we already told the world the best way to mashup Spidey and the MCU.

The thing to emerge out of the Sony leak that really bugged me was the assertion by Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin that “there aren’t any Asian movie stars.”

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Animation, Guest Post, Television

Get Ready for Harold & Kumar: The Animated Series

by Phil Yu | Originally posted at Angry Asian Man

It’s on, my friends. The Harold and Kumar animated series is on. We’ve known that an animated series based on the comedy trilogy was in the works, with John Cho and Kal Penn returning to provide the voices for the titular stoner duo. This week, the cast reportedly reunited for the show’s first table read.

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