The Sheik and I

While a little slow to take off, Bay Area auteur Caveh Zahedi’s  new documentary is a worthy entry to his distinguished filmography. Its first half chronicles Zahedi’s attempt to create and exhibit a film commissioned by the Sheikh of Sharjah for the emirate’s biennial. His attempts to make an irreverent, somewhat insensitive, button-pushing film are met with resistance in his conservative, monarchic host country, and he begins asking people “why?”, though he damn well knows the answer. Like most of his films, “The Sheik and I” gets good when it gets uncomfortable, and it wrestles with some pretty interesting questions. Is Zahedi, himself an Arab American, creating a film that pokes fun at stereotypes, or is he reinforcing them? Is he really as naively “ugly American” as he acts, or is he, as he lets on at one point in the film, somewhat familiar with how the culture actually works? And as it becomes increasingly clear that his film will cause problems, what is his responsibility to his collaborators in Sharjah? And theirs to him? While he does a worthy job of taking on a big issues like censorship, the film’s best moments concern the formation and dissolution of Zahedi’s friendships with these collaborators. He seems a bit callous to their concerns about stereotyping and even, to an extent, their personal safety, and they seem a bit disingenuous in their stated commitment to art and freedom of speech (and often don’t seem to be telling Zahedi the whole story). While I would have liked to know more about these people and Zahedi’s relationship to them, it has enough laughs and twists to be well-worth watching.

Keep an eye out for upcoming screenings: here.

The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years Without Images

This documentary tells the story of three people involved with the radical Japanese Red Army, Masao Adachi, a New Wave filmmaker turned revolutionary, Fusako Shigenobu, the group’s founder, and her daughter May, who spent most of her life on the lam in the Middle East. This film doesn’t do a great job communicating historical information the way one typically expects from a documentary, but I don’t really think that’s the point. The film has loftier goals, functioning more as a discussion about the power of images and the relationship between political art and political action. In that sense, it succeeds, illustrating its interviews with beautiful, sometimes abstract, or deliberately contradictory images. A thoughtful, compelling film, but not a great place to start if you’re interested in the Red Army’s history.

Golden Slumbers

Artfully crafted and sincere, “Golden Slumbers” is a touching tribute to the 15 years of Cambodian cinema that were lost in the Khmer Rouge genocide. The film, lovingly directed by Davy Chou, grandson of golden era Khmer cinema producer Vann Chan, introduces us to surviving actors, filmmakers, producers and fans and lets us experience, through them, the sense of discovery, adventure, and accomplishment that creating and watching the films inspired. It does a terrific job of balancing honoring the films and their creators with depicting the enduring sense of loss caused by their destruction. Highly recommended.

For upcoming screenings, including the Sydney International FIlm Festival, June 6 to 17, visit the film’s blog.

Who here remembers the Los Angeles Riots of ‘92? I certainly don’t. I was 4 (and now you feel old). LA burned following the acquittal of the four police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King. The city eventually saw the deaths of dozens of people, along with the destruction of an estimated $1 billion in property.

What’s important to remember from the riot is not the destruction, though. The angry mob was largely racially motivated; African Americans were disenfranchised by the system. The acquittals by a mostly white jury sent them over the edge and into the streets. Many Korean Americans were targeted during the rioting, prompting famous images of Korean shop owners holding firearms to fend off looters. Some say Korean American business owners were particularly targeted following Soon Ja Du’s conviction for voluntary manslaughter of an alleged shoplifter, which occurred less than a month after King’s beating. Du was sentenced to five years of probation, 400 hours of community service and a $500 fine.

The LA Weekly has published the reflections of rappers who have incorporated the riots into their music. There’s no doubt the media and entertainment industry, especially the rappers, have been influenced by the riots since 1992.

I want to focus on something else, though: Rockstar Games Inc.’s 2004 game, “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.” Set in the state of San Andreas, in the early nineties in a fictionalized version of California and Nevada, the story follows CJ and his efforts to restore his honor as a gang leader in Los Santos (the game’s version of LA).

Late in the game, CJ watches the trial verdict for Sgt. Frank Tenpenny, a corrupt member of the Los Santos police. Tenpenny’s case is similar to the Rampart Scandal in 1998. The end of the trial, however, ended with Tenpenny’s acquittal due to insufficient evidence. The city of Los Santos goes up in flames following the verdict.

The riot, however, does not take into account the ire against Koreans. Much less, Koreans are a non-entity within “GTA: SA.” The only Asians who play a prominent role in the game are the affable Triads based in San Fierro (San Francisco) and their rivaling Vietnamese gang.

To be fair, the GTA franchise has given the spotlight to Asians once before in “Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.” Overall, the Grand Theft Auto series has given considerable diversity to its cast of characters over the years. Past protagonists include the African American gangster CJ, a Serbian expat, a Dominican American bodyguard and ladies man, and a Jewish American biker. Minor characters and supporting roles feature an even larger cast of colorful nationalities and personalities.

One of the four Asians. (Spoilers, she's dead.) screenshot of "L.A. Noire"

I still worry, however, because of Rockstar’s recent treatment of 1947 LA in “L.A. Noire.” The game (admittedly developed by Team Bondi and not Rockstar North, the makers of GTA) features only four Asians (two of them laundromat workers). Little Tokyo is given no mention at all. Chinatown, however, is immortalized as a landmark. While the game depicts a generally faithful recreation of post-war LA, and follows the stories of anguished war vets who served in Okinawa, it has a dearth of Asian Americans.

This is why I hope that “GTA: V” will better reflect California’s diversity. The game’s trailer doesn’t reveal a particularly prominent role for Asians, at this moment. The perceived main protagonist looks to be a white male, and the game doesn’t seem to have a racially charged plot. However, knowing Rockstar’s obsession in creating a bigger, better and more realistic world with each iteration of GTA, I have high hopes that the game will recreate LA with attention to minute detail, including the makeup of the population and the way its residents socially intertwine throughout the city.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkkoHAzjnUs

If all else fails, I’ll go play “Saints Row: The Third,” which lets me create a main protagonist that looks however I want him/her to look — like a purple skinned obese zombie wearing a pink spacesuit.

This screenshot essentially describes what "Saints Row: The Third" is all about.

Did you know that the "Saints Row" series features a Korean American as a central character, is modeled after, and played by Daniel Dae Kim? Yeah. screenshot of "Saints Row: The Third"

The show takes place in 1966 in rural Kyushu and centers on Kaoru, a high school boy with social anxiety who has had to transfer schools every year because of his father’s job. He strikes up an unexpected friendship with Sentaro, a local delinquent, and his best friend, the class president and daughter of the owner of a local music store. They connect primarily over music, though Kaoru is trained in classical and Sentaro listens exclusively to jazz.

Given the subject matter, it may seem like quite a departure for the guy who did the action anime classics “Cowboy Bebop,” an outer space, martial arts gangster epic, and “Samurai Champloo,” a hip-hop chambara story.  However, “Slope” has a surprising amount in common with those two. The character archetypes are somewhat similar — all of these series have two male protagonists, one of them serious-minded and uptight and the other carefree and reckless, and a female companion (who, at least in the previous two series), never gets quite the same level of character development as the guys. In the other two series, there was definite romantic tension between the male leads, and it’s quite noticeable in “Slope” as well.

Music is a huge part of all three series. “Cowboy Bebop” featured a heavily jazz-oriented soundtrack, with some rock and blues thrown in for good measure. “Champloo” was largely hip-hop; it was scored by the late great Nujabes and the theme song was by the Bay Area’s own Shing02. “Slope” returns Watanabe to jazz and reunites him with Yoko Kanno, who did the soundtrack for “Bebop.”

The series also appears to show a content trajectory for Watanabe, from the fantastic to the personal. “Bebop” is outer-space sci-fi, while “Samurai Champloo” moves closer to home, since it takes place in Japan, (albeit a highly stylized version of Edo-era Japan). “Slope,” on the other hand, takes place in Japan in the approximate era in which Watanabe grew up.

That said, there is plenty about “Slope” that is quite different from Watanabe’s other series, beyond the fact that the characters in “Slope” are not samurai or space bounty hunters. “Bebop” and “Champloo,” particularly the latter, were both very meta, commenting on and referencing historical and social events, international pop culture, and the medium of animation itself. The series was both gleefully unbound from its settings, pulling in fragments of different pop culture from across time and around the globe and throwing them together in clever, unexpected ways, (staging John Woo-style gunfights on Mars, for instance, or putting Andy Warhol in Edo Japan).

“Kids on the Slope,” so far, is grounded in its time and place. It’s almost claustrophobic, particularly when compared to his earlier sprawling epics. And the plot is not particularly novel or innovative. There are no clever cultural references to watch for, no fast-paced action set-pieces, and no surprising narrative tricks. In other words, it’s Watanabe separated completely from his signature artistic traits, leaving him with only his storytelling ability to rely on to entertain his audience. And he certainly is a capable storyteller; the first episode pulled me in thoroughly. Also, I like the pilot episode as much as the first episodes of “Champloo” and “Bebop.” However, the quality of the first episode doesn’t say much about the quality of the series as a whole. For instance, I liked the pilot for “Bebop” better than “Champloo” but (and I know I’m in the minority on this one) I think “Champloo” is the better series.

The only real criticism I have doesn’t have anything to do with the show itself, but rather, it’s distribution model — Crunchyroll makes you sign up for an account to watch the show. It seems like they should at least release an episode or so for free, Hulu-style, to build an audience. Still, the basic idea of officially releasing subbed shows online shortly after their Japanese debut is fantastic (and long-overdue). Fansubbers (God bless them) are going to have it subbed and online within days anyways. This model gets a quality version to the fans in about as much time, and  gets some of the proceeds to the artists who produced the work. Definitely a welcome sign of things to come.

Hunger Games v. Battle Royale

“The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins and “Battle Royale” By Koushun Takami have nothing to do with each other. They both, however, have young children committing terrible acts of violence upon each other. The same can be said for “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding, which also features children killing each other.

Much like how I said so in a review of Usamaru Furuya’s “Lychee Light Club,” while it is similar to “Lord of the Flies,” it is unfair to compare the two books based on the goring of young children (Furuya’s work is better explained as Macbethian than anything). Just the same, back when I first read “Battle Royale,” I argued that the book was nothing close to being a modern day “Lord of the Flies.” They both simply take place on an island where children kill each other. It would be like comparing “A Farewell to Arms” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” because they both feature the First World War and its anguishing experiences, or that Takuya Kimura and Jin Akanishi are the same because they’re both successful Johnny & Associates boy band members — one’s a suave lady killer, the other married Meisa Kuroki.

To begin, I’ll orient people very quickly in case either book is unfamiliar. To clarify, I’m not going to talk about the manga or movie rendition for either book, as 1) I have yet to see “Hunger Games” in theaters 2) I have never bothered to see the “Battle Royale” movie 3) the manga is horrible and 4) it allows me to eliminate confounding variables.

In “Battle Royale,” a class of 42 third-year middle school students living in an authoritarian Japan is forced to kill each other on an island. “The Hunger Games” follows the story of 24 children sent to kill each other for the entertainment of an authoritarian regime. Both, of course, feature isolation, murder and teenaged children as a central theme. However, the meaning of death in each instance is drastically different. “Battle Royale” has forced agency (an outside force strong-arming the children) to kill while the “Hunger Games” has voluntary aspects to its participation.

Each of these books deals with young adolescent children killing each other for various reasons. photo by Tomo Hirai

As senseless as the violence is in “Battle Royale,” the combined deaths of all the students tell the story. While it ultimately focuses on Shuya, Noriko and Shogo’s bid for survival, the deaths of each student also tell the story of failure to survive. Takami begins with 42 students to dwindle the numbers down, showing off each death in an act of futility. Takami uses the deaths as something like a countdown timer by noting how many students are alive at the end of each chapter. A central theme throughout the story is the undying hope that someone in the game will find a way to escape, while the number slowly dwindles down into the single digits.

In contrast, while Katniss, the heroine does not necessarily want to be in the Hunger Games, her participation is voluntary. Much the same, several of the more affluent competitors from other sectors volunteer themselves after training the better half of their early lives to become champions. While some of the competitors are given forced agency to kill each other (such as Rue), the greater half of participants in the game train themselves to win, not escape. Thus, the deaths carry on an entirely different meaning. While the Games require two children from each sector, they are not necessarily friends, and they certainly are not aiming to become friends with the children from any of the other sectors. Katniss, throughout the games, does not think about escaping, but to triumph.

Combined with the death, the authoritarian law also is treated very differently between the settings. While cruel governments are central to both stories, the goals differ. One is based in psychological warfare, but the other is based on punishment. The intents are spelled out clearly in both cases. It is also important to note that that both governments are thus subverted in completely different ways.

The Games are based on the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur. Collins said her Panem was like Crete, demanding children as sacrifice for punishment. She further drew from Roman gladiators, which combined mortal combat and entertainment, and updated it to have a more modern reality TV setting. Thus, its subversion is based on the very media its orchestrators rely upon. Katniss is as much a political player of images as she is a fighter. Ultimately, Katniss subverts the Games and Panem through its own devices.

Meanwhile, The Program in “Battle Royale” is pitched as an “experiment” orchestrated by the government, but the real meaning is made apparent later in the book. The Program ultimately sends a psychological message to the people of Japan: “don’t trust anyone but yourself.” It is a tactic to keep anti-government forces at bay in an authoritarian state. The media plays a smaller role and is only meant to instill the fear with the fact that The Program exists. The children thus are driven by a more basic drive for survival. The subversion of the Program can then be described as simply surviving the ordeal without being the last man standing.

Whereas Shuya spends the greater portion of the novel working to rescue his friends and find a way to escape, Katniss spends the book preparing to kill everyone with whatever it takes. She was sure 23 people were going to die — and those she didn’t want to kill, she wished in the back of her mind that she would not be the one killing them. Katniss’ goal lay more on flipping the bird at the privileged denizens of Panem as much as coming out on top. She is conscious of the millions of onlookers watching her on the battlefield and many of her actions throughout the book are driven by the cameras focusing on her. Shuya’s world is smaller and while he hates the government, he is far more focused on escaping. While, in the end, he is successful in landing a solid blow to Japan’s despotic government, it is more an icing on the cake for the readers.

Ultimately, both books are individually good and well worth the read. I don’t think either book is better than the other. Enjoy them both, but don’t judge a book by another’s cover.

As a blog located on a nonprofit based on ethnic empowerment, you’d think I’d talk about the exasperation surrounding Amandla Stenberg’s casting as Rue, but you see, I’m not about to waste my time arguing against a bunch of bigots.

This is what I do in my spare time. Really, this is what I do.

I’m more of a Western gamer when it comes to my video gaming habits. I guess I just never got into the Moe-blob romance and tsundere masochism my friends have enjoyed (though I did play a few dating sims in my day). If I had to choose, I’m much more an “action games” person. That, or simulations.

But I do pay attention to other games from time to time. Today’s topic: A new video game coming out in Japan called “Conception: Please Deliver My Child” for the PSP. If you have to ask me what this game is about, I’ll have to point right back at the game title and let you figure it out for yourself.

The opening of the game was recently released, showing folks how babies are created. Boy meets girl, boy kisses girl, kiss creates magical baby to help fight for and save the universe. Gotcha.

Thinking about “Conception,” though, I believe we need to go … DEEPER.

Japan’s population has been in decline for years. A prime reason, when I was younger, was that men and women did not leave the house to start their own families because doing so would limit their monthly income.

In a strange case of post-modernism, many women in Japan, a nation in which income disparities remain high between men and women, have shunned marriage or settling down because doing so would inevitably end their professional careers. Why settle down with some workhorse dude working middle management to raise children when you can actually be an independent person? These barriers have taken their toll to deny some of the greatest people the right to settle down and marry. Combined with Christmas Cake syndrome (No one wants a Christmas Cake after the 25th), many women didn’t want to marry throughout the late ’90s, and early millennium, and couldn’t by the time they felt it was right.

After that came the “herbivorous men,” men who were not the typical archetypes of men of the past, and were the byproduct of idolized boy bands and a rebellious outburst resembling a bizarro version of punk in the 1980s.

Otaku men, of course, faced similar challenges. Similar to herbivore, they decided to go for synthetic vitamin pill meals to put both the carnivores and herbivores to shame. They flat out fled into the servitude of 2D avatars for their affection, avatars that embody the now passed craze of moe. Enough so that some refuse to find 3D women attractive in any capacity (though, assuredly, women likely aren’t so keen on dating men who are enamored with women whom they can never hold a candle to).

So maybe we need a game where guys are encouraged to make children. We need games like “Conception” to perhaps tell guys, “Hey, get out there, get a girlfriend, make some kids and save humanity. Go home and be a family man.”

Though, it might be worth mentioning that real girlfriends and children are conceived through a lot of work and sacrifice. For that, may I suggest a real game about dating? How about a dating sim? Katawa Shoujo?

Or you can go read a book.

All screenshots by Tomo Hirai

Now no matter what they do with the American remake, we’ll always at least have this. I seriously have to remember to check Twitch much, much more often. From their site:

“Filipino theater troupe Sipat Lawin Ensemble have teamed up with Australian playwrights David Finnigan, Jordan Prosser, Sam Burns-Warr, and Georgie McAuley to create a live theater version of Battle Royale to be performed in outdoor venues around the country.

Titled Battalia Royale, the production has been so popular that people had to be turned away from the debut performances at Manila’s Cultural Center of the Philippines. Upcoming performances will be held at an abandoned high school in Quezon City.”

Hat-tip to Benito Vergara aka The Wily Filipino.

Tickets for Ansari’s “Buried Alive” standup tour can be purchased here.

I considered "A Separation" one of the best films of the year, if not the best film of the year.

Every year, to coincide with the Academy Awards, I try to roughly rank all the films I saw in the previous year. I do this, instead of picking out a top five or 10, because I think those lists are inherently flawed — I think it’s important for the reader to know that I didn’t see certain films, and they weren’t left off the list because I didn’t like them. The rankings are, by the way, approximate. A lot of these films are like apples and oranges; it’s really hard to compare a documentary with an action flick with an understated drama. Still, if something appears at the top of the list, it means I definitely liked it more than something that appears at the bottom. I also make a distinction between films I felt were excellent, films that were good, but flawed, and films that were just bad. This year, I was fortunate enough to not see anything I’d really consider a bad film. As usual, I’ve written the API films in bold font. The print version of this will have commentary on API films and films with API content, but that is probably going to have to wait ’til after the SFIAAFF.

The Best of 2011

“The Tree of Life”

“A Separation” (Asghar Farhadi)

“Mother” (Bong Joon-Ho) (in Korea, it’s a couple years old)

“The Green Hornet” (Michel Gondry) (API because Jay Chou is featured in the principal cast)

“Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”

“Cave of Forgotten Dreams”

“The Black Power Mixtape”

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1″

2011 Runner-ups

“J. Edgar”

“The Trip”

“The Interrupters”

“Kaboom” (Gregg Araki)

“The Descendants”

“13 Assassins” (Takashi Miike)

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2″

“Surrogate Valentine” (Dave Boyle) (API because it features Goh Nakamura as the lead, and Boyle is part of API filmmaking community)

“The Legend of Kamui” (Yoichi Sai)

“Drive”

“Midnight in Paris”

“Outrage” (Takeshi Kitano)

“The Muppets”

“The Adventures of Tintin”

“Red State”

“Hugo” (didn’t see in its original 3D format, which might influence low-ranking)

“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”

“Moneyball”

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”

“The Artist”

Note: I make these rankings in, essentially, real-time as I see films. When “The Artist” won best picture, I almost considered moving it up a notch or two, so as not to appear to be a contrarian. But I thought about the reason it’s there, (both it and “Planet of the Apes” were pretty good and pretty flawed, but I felt much more of a connection with the main monkey from “Apes” than with anyone in “The Artist,”) and decided changing the rankings would be disingenuous. I’m not prejudiced against silent films either; some of my favorite films are silent films! (Like Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon.”) Oh, and there are two films that would certainly rank high in the list, but I didn’t feel comfortable ranking because I know the filmmakers: they were “The Virtues of Corned Beef Hash” (Kerwin Berk) and “All We Could Carry.” They are both very good, (and I think, much better than “The Artist.”)

Dobbs claims that the film, about a four-inch-tall family that “borrows” basic necessities from the humans whose house they secretly live in, “plainly [has] an agenda” and is “plainly demonizing the so-called one percent.”

Most of the comments in response to Dobbs’ commentary mock him, and with good reason. The idea that major entertainment corporations are colluding to push a liberal agenda on kids is pretty ridiculous (publicly-traded companies have no agenda other than increasing the value of their stock). And although Dobbs never explicitly claims it, his use of a bizarre montage of clips of President Barack Obama saying among other things, “Everyone should do their fair share,” seems to be implying that the President somehow has something to do with the films — an even more outlandish notion.

But Dobbs does have one thing right: The artists who created these works did put deliberate messages in them (the other example Dobbs cites is the upcoming “Lorax” film adapted from Dr. Seuss’ openly pro-environment kids’ book). According to Hiromasa Yonebayashi, “Arrietty’s” director, Miyazaki explicitly told him that “in this particular [economic] time it might be very important to create this kind of story where little people borrow a bit from other people.”

And even though they argue the point in a completely over-the-top manner, Dobbs and company are also correct that the messages in kids’ entertainment matters. I just happen to disagree with them that teaching kids to share and take care of the environment is somehow harmful.

LINSANITY — Jeremy Lin graces the cover of Sports Illustrated's Feb. 20, 2012 issue.

So Asian America collectively shuddered the other day at rumors that Jeremy Lin and Kim Kardashian might go on a date. (Interestingly, if you Google “jeremy lin,” “jeremy lin kim kardashian” comes up as the first autocomplete result.)  I guess it’s since been debunked, but I feel like I’m a little alone in thinking that it really isn’t such a big deal.

Granted I’m not a basketball fan — although I enjoyed the hell out of Spike Lee’s exuberant pun-a-thon — and I know next to nothing about either Lin or Kardashian, other than that Lin has, overnight, become sort of a living Asian Pacific Islander (API) “David and Goliath” story, and that Kardashian is wildly famous, essentially because she’s rich and connected and decided she wanted to be famous. But telling Lin who he should and shouldn’t date because of who we want him to be as a community symbol seems kinda unfair, and particularly troubling in that it sort of casts Lin and Kardashian as API “racial ambassadors,” one of whom is “doing us proud,” and the other is “makes us look bad.”

Or am I reading too much into some light-hearted ribbing?

Thoughts?