(image provided courtesy SFIAAFF)
L I N K S T O F E S T I V A L W E B S I T E
Bend it Like Beckham
|
E X T R A S @ M A N J A
Overlooked and Underappreciated
|
Ten Movies in Ten Days
I love movies. Matinees, premieres, film festivals; I prefer a front-ish and center seat where I can prop my feet up, large tub of popcorn with extra butter grease held firmly in lap. Fortunately, my apartment is just around the corner from the AMC Kabuki theater in Japantown, where most of this year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival will be screened. Ten movies in ten days: here are my picks.
1. Opening night's BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM (3/6). I confess to a profound weakness for teen movies, especially ones with cute girls and sports (think Bring It On). Throw in a little Asian representation and I'm hooked. This British export features all of the above: eighteen-year-old excels on the soccer field while at odds with her traditional Sikh parents, plenty of sporty girl power, and not to mention make-out sessions with hot boys.
2. I liked director Mina Shum's DOUBLE HAPPINESS when it came out a few years ago, so I'll check out her latest, LONG LIFE, HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY (3/12, 3/14). Sandra Oh, who also played lead in DH, stars as a single mom of a twelve-year old girl trying to make it work in Vancouver's Chinese community.
3. What fueled a generation's revolutionary fantasies? This documentary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution promises personal narratives and plenty of psychological insight. MORNING SUN (3/08, 3/11) features interviews with former Red Guards and student supporters of Mao, plus victims' testimonies.
4. For pure cheese, three hours of Bollywood can't be beat. KUCH KUCH HOTA HAI (3/07) goes down easy while shamelessly pulling out all the stops, from wisecracking grannies to unrequited love between best buddies. Throw in a singing cast with moves better than Grease and you'll be humming the Hindi theme song for the rest of the day. The best part, however, is an hour-long 80s flashback complete with NKOTB-style duds and lingo. Who knew that the California linguistic mainstay "dude" had such far-reaching cultural ramifications?
5. BOOK OF RULES (3/07, 3/11) dramatizes the lives of three self-centered twenty something housemates in San Francisco, including an Asian American stoner and his yappie (Young Asian Professional) counterpart. Too close to home, perhaps, but at least you won't find this cast on The Real World.
6. CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES (3/08, 3/09, 3/15) scores extra points because its title references a Cure song. Can't get more Asian American than that, unless it was an Erasure tune. In this movie, an auto mechanic falls for his tenant, who in turn is screwing the stockbroker. All hell breaks loose when a mysterious writer moves to town. A love triangle with non-traditional APA characters? I'm intrigued.
7. Playwright Philip Kan Gotanda's debut feature film, LIFE TASTES GOOD (3/16), returns to the festival for another spin (it was first premiered in '99). I can't resist a good story about food and death, and this one's got both: a Japanese-American accountant returns to his estranged family in the Bay Area with plans to off himself with a poisonous mushroom.
8. NEITHER FISH, NOR FOWL (3/07, 3/08) indulges my latent Euro-fetish, starring a scruffy young Korean-German adoptee discovering adventure and identity answers in Berlin's Koreatown. The Asian cultural identity dilemma's certainly been explored in film before, but not in German.
9. A welcome portrayal of Filipino Muslims as something other than militant kidnappers, NEW MOON (3/8, 3/10), traces a Manila doctor's return to his home province of Mindanao after his son's murder. Based on interviews with refugees on the island.
10. Greg Pak's ROBOT STORIES caps off the festival on closing night (3/13). Pak's short ASIAN PRIDE PORN - a spoof on Asian sex ads - was hilarious, and I can't pass up the chance to see his full-length feature. The all-star cast includes Tamlyn Tomita, with tales of robot babies and electronic temps.
Lisa Ko edits the Books section of Hyphen Magazine. She also serves as the editor of Ten, the literary magazine of the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and writes reviews and short stories.