New Dragonball Movie: Shaping Up to be LAME

I love Dragonball. I remember reading this comic as a little kid, from tiny little books that were all in Korean. I could barely understand the writing, but I still loved every frame.

Then Dragonball came to American TV. Awesome. A little boring, given the fact that each episode had at least 10 minutes of closeups of various heros/villans grunting and struggling, as if they were trying to have a massive bowel movement. But still, I was a fan.

Then I hear about a new live-action Dragonball movie that's coming out. Aweso-- OH WAIT. Not so awesome. Guess who they decided to cast as the lead character, Goku, in this Japanese manga series, based on a Chinese folk novel, that was popularized all over Asia before coming to the US? Oh of course, they cast some guy named Justin Chatwin. Of course.

Disgrasian posted a great "alternative" movie poster for this film:


This movie is going to suck.

-e

Still Fighting the Uphill Battle

I read an interesting article about Sessue Hayakawa, who was a huge Hollywood star back about 90 years ago. That's right, a Japanese dude was more famous (and playing less stereotyped roles) in Hollywood in 1920 than the grand majority of Asian actors today. But the thing that kind of got me down was the survey of roles Asian people are playing today, as well as the treatment we still get in the media:

In most Hollywood movies, Asian men are invisible. And those are the better Hollywood movies.

Crude comedies feature men with impenetrable accents. Action films feature stoic heroes, who rarely get a kiss. Stereotypes of bespectacled grinds abound. Japanese characters are particularly forgettable, even though their country's own films are often crammed with kinky sex and violence.

"The Japanese businessman, bowing to everyone in 'Lost in Translation,'" says Ryo Nagasawa, the film program officer at the Japan Society. "I don't think the Hollywood image goes beyond that."

...

Of course Hollywood films stereotype everyone -- whether it's evil executives or absurdly effeminate gay men. Yet Asian males often come in for rougher treatment -- with crude jokes about dog-eating, or Pidgin English -- than other, long-denigrated minorities.

You can see it even in a current movie like "Be Kind Rewind." A goofy parody of bare-bones filmmaking, it features Jack Black mimicking stars like Jessica Tandy. When he finally goes too far -- smearing on dark makeup to portray Fats Waller -- he's rightly greeted with horror, and taken aside for a stern talking-to.

Yet when he tapes back his eyes to mimic Jackie Chan, the racial buffoonery passes without notice.

Sighhh....

-e

Shanghai Kiss

Apparently there's this movie called Shanghai Kiss that came out on DVD recently. I think it might've been a straight-to-DVD thing, but regardless, it looks good for a few reasons:

1) It's got an Asian American dude in the lead role (Ken Leung)
2) Ken stars opposite Hayden Panettiere, who plays his love interest
3) Ken's character Liam has a SECOND love interest, played by none other than Kelly Hu
4) See #2 and #3
5) See #1

So that about sums it up. Check the trailer here.

And, if you're really interested, buy it on Amazon.