05.15.08
Posted in Interviews at 3:25 pm by william_lee_intern
New York’s finest and the only Asian American member of the city council is John Liu. He is the envoy of one of the largest neighborhood in New York City which is Flushing, Queens. And he has been very forthright in his admonition about racial-related crimes and physical attack in opposition with Asian Americans.
Q: You were very instrumental in getting some Asian language reporters press passes when they were having trouble with that.
Liu: I think it had to do a lot with the city and the administration not understanding that there’s a huge media presence, it’s just not in English. But they didn’t get it, and so the city folks didn’t necessarily believe that these were bona fide reporters. There’s not any intentional discrimination, but there obviously has been institutional ignorance…
Continue reading the article…
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04.21.08
Posted in Interviews, Media and Entertainment, Blog at 5:28 pm by alvin_lin_guest
Last week I had a phone and email interview with the members of the Far East Movement (FM), whose songs have gotten radio play on the West Coast, and in movies like ‘Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’, and ‘Finishing the Game’. They have a great sound and are starting to get some mainstream attention from TV channels like MTV.
Below is Part I of our interview.
Please introduce yourselves (names, ages, roles)?
The FAR EAST MOVEMENT.. FM ON YOUR DIAL.
Kev Nish, MC
Prohgress, MC
J-Splif, MC
DJ Virman, DJ
We’re all mid twenties.
How did you all meet, how did you come up with your initial name?
We were friends in highschool, freestyling in parking lots and recording on home computers with downloaded instrumentals. Back in 2001 we had the name ‘Emcee’s Anonymous’ because during those times we were unaware of Asian Americans in hip-hop and we had the thought in our mind that maybe people wouldn’t like our music because we’re not the ‘norm’ in hip-hop. One of the first songs we recorded was called “The Far-east Movement”, talking about what we want in music and mainstream media - a FAR EAST MOVEMENT. As we were recording the song, the name Far East Movement felt so strong it kicked us in the head and made us realize we can’t and shouldn’t hide the fact we’re Asian, especially during a time when there were few to no Asian American hip-hop artists… we had to make a statement with our name and change the way people view Asian American music by allowing ourselves freedom to sound however we feel - as fun as we want, as sexy as we want or as hip-hop as we want our music to sound. We met our manager Carl Choi in 2003 while putting at charity show called “Movementality” raising money for a drug rehab house in Koreatown and through workin with him in this event we felt we found someone who shared the same vision and goals, someone who had faith in us and someone we could build with. We’ve been riding this crazy ride as a team ever since… which lead us to find Dj Virman from LA radio station Power106 who has helped to take this team even further.
Who or what are your major influences, and what are you trying to be?
Our major musical influences are as scattered as an ipod playlist. We grew up listening to Tupac, the Dogg Pound, Gun’s n Roses, Nirvana, Biggie, Smashing Pumpkins, the Cure, Outkast and even the artists we hear on the radio today to keep our tastes relevant. Outside of music, the LA lifestyle and our journeys on the road from the cities we visit, the cultures we experience, and the people that bless us along the way are huge influences and inspirations to us. A motto we have is “We moving east, one city at a time until the whole world is folks and family to us”, and thats exactly what we’re tryin to be through our music.
How do you come up with your songs or make your music? Are there any main themes or messages you want to express?
When creating a song.. our goal is to make music that people in every city we visit can relate to while staying true to our character as Asian American dudes growing up in Los Angeles, and as rappers, song writers, producers, and fans of music, our main theme and message is to bring out an emotion from the listener through our beats and experiences… creating music that every listener no matter the race can relate to personally. When we get in the studio, our goals are the same as a platinum recording artist or a young rapper at home recording for the first time, to make a song that people want to listen to more than once! hahaha
For more, check out the rest of this interview portion here
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04.11.08
Posted in Interviews, Media and Entertainment at 8:40 am by william_lee_intern
Filmmaker Arthur Dong, who created Coming Out Under Fire, Licensed to Kill, Family Fundamentals and other LGBT films, has finished a new film Hollywood Chinese, a vivid and entertaining journey tracking the experience of Chinese Americans in America’s film industry. The film opens in the Bay Area on April 11 at San Francisco’s Sundance Kabuki Cinemas and at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater. Here is a talk between Arthur Dong and Bay Times.
Click here for the original article
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04.09.08
Posted in Interviews at 9:51 am by william_lee_intern
Writer Marianne Villanueva has just had a interview at the Book Passage in the Ferry Building in San Francisco on Wednesday April 9th at 6 p.m. Marianne was gracious enough to respond from a trip to Tel Aviv, and on the way back to California in the Frankfurt airport.
Click here for the original article
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03.26.08
Posted in Interviews, Media and Entertainment at 8:32 am by william_lee_intern
Ni Hao, Kai-lan (”Hello, Kai-lan”) is Nick Jr.’s latest preschool series, and the first on TV to explore Chinese culture and language. Teaching Mandarin to 3- to 5-year-old viewers might seem a fool’s errand, but that is way down on the list of the show’s actual intentions. With a week’s worth of new episodes premiering on March 24, show creator Karen Chau and Teri Weiss, Nickelodeon’s senior VP of Preschool TV Production & Development, recently discussed young Kai-lan’s adventures and her role in fostering cross-cultural understanding.
Click here to know more details about the interview
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03.25.08
Posted in Interviews at 8:59 am by william_lee_intern
The 58-year-old Chinese-American director Wayne Wang says that aversion explains his eclectic body of work. Wang told the Associated Press in an interview on the sidelines of the Hong Kong International Film Festival that he did not want to follow the way that Chinese director making Chinese-American material. However, after a Hollywood streak, Wang is now back with another pair of Asian-themed movies, “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” and “The Princess of Nebraska,” both based on stories by award-winning writer Li Yiyun.
Click here for the original article
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03.04.08
Posted in Interviews at 9:31 am by william_lee
The 2008 Common Wealth Award winners are: Glenn Close, celebrated actress of stage, screen and television, for Dramatic Arts; John Howard, four-term prime minister of Australia, for Government; Ann Curry, news anchor of NBC’s Today, co-anchor of Dateline NBC, for Mass Communications; James Hansen, preeminent climate scientist, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, for Science. Curry was born November 19, 1956 in Guam. She graduated from the University of Oregon School of Journalism in 1978Curry first joined NBC News in August 1990 as a Chicago-based Correspondent. In 1992 she was named anchor of NBC News at Sunrise. She later helped launch MSNBC and then became news anchor at Today. Before Coming to NBC, Ms. Curry was a reporter for KCBS in Los Angeles. In 1981,
she was a reporter and anchor for KGW, the NBC affiliate in Portland, Oregon. Curry began her broadcasting career as an intern in 1978 at KTVL, in Medford Oregon, near her hometown, rising to become that station’s first female news reporter. Curry has earned two Emmys, four Golden Mikes, several Associated Press Certificates of Excellence, two Gracies, and an award for Excellence in Reporting from the NAACP. In June 2007, she was honored with the Simon
Wiesenthal Medal of Valor for her reporting in Darfur. She has been awarded by America , the Anti-Defamation League as a Woman of Achievement, and the Asian American Journalists Association, receiving its National Journalism Award in 2003. She has also won numerous awards for her charity work, primarily for breast cancer research
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02.27.08
Posted in Interviews at 12:33 pm by william_lee
Margaret Cho recently put on a show at Swarthmore University. Before the show she sat down for a Q&A session with students from English Professor Bakirathi Mani’s Nations and Migrations & Introduction to Asian American class, she began the Q&A session by giving a background of her work. The floor was subsequently opened up to questions from students
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02.22.08
Posted in Interviews, Media and Entertainment at 11:09 am by william_lee
Ramiele Malubay the Filipino American will likely get votes from Asian Americans, especially from Filipino Americans, on American Idol. The young Asian-American caught the judges attention this Wednesday during women’s semifinal, and had the audience cheering her on like there’s no tomorrow!
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12.11.07
Posted in Sports, Chinatown, Interviews, Activism and Empowerment, Community Offenders, Media and Entertainment, Racism at 3:14 pm by mark_chang
In the lead up to a potential bout, in is the norm for boxers not only travel to watch their potential future opponents but also to engage in some trash talk as well when interviewed.
Recently Edison Miranda traveled to Canada to watch Jean Pascal in a bout, after which he provided the usual interview filled with bravado (published on www.fightnews.com/). Only this time I was shocked to hear his racially disrespectful closing statement, which was the aforementioned: “You are nothing more than a Chinatown boxer.” (translation: “You are a pussy”) which read less as an insult to Pascal and more as an insult to us.
The only thing Miranda did was exercise his right to freedom of speech. Maybe we should do the same (freedom of speech works both ways) and contact any stations televising his upcoming bouts (or any Warrior’s boxing events for that matter) indicating that we intend to boycott the sponsors.
The next Miranda bout is on January 11, 2008 and ESPN2 (contact page: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?page=contact/espntv) intends to televise both Pascal and Miranda the same night. Maybe a nice note (or nastygram, your choice) to boycott the sponsors of the program would be worthwhile.
Miranda is promoted by Warriors Boxing, the Executive Director of which is Leon Margules (leon@warriorsboxing.com), may want to send him a nice note as well.
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