By Samantha Pak
Northwest Asian Weekly

Year of the Dog
By Henry Chang
Soho Press, Inc., 2008

From the outside, New York’s Chinatown may appear to be a united community filled with not just Chinese — both immigrants and American-born residents — but an array of individuals with many different backgrounds.

But NYPD detective Jack Yu from the Ninth Precinct knows better. Having grown up in the neighborhood, he knows that there is a difference between individuals with roots planted in Mainland China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan, especially when it comes to the local gangs. Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

Chung-ryoul Lee’s documentary “Old Partner” begins with pain. An old man climbs a long set of steps to a temple. He carries a cane. He pauses after each step. He inhales sharply after each step, wondering if he will ever get to the top. The notion of enduring pain and suffering continues throughout the film.

Most of the film concentrates on a real-life family in rural South Korea. We see the old man, farmer Won-kyun Choi, his wife Sam-soon, and their draft animal, a seemingly-unnamed ox. Read the full story

By Irfan Shariff
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

International action film star Jackie Chan wants to prove that he can do more than just stunts. With the release of “Shinjuku Incident,” Jackie Chan proves he has a dark side.

From acclaimed Hong Kong director Derek Yee, “Shinjuku Incident” takes Chan’s character, Nick (a.k.a. Steelhead), and smuggles him out of China into a life of crime in Tokyo. Although, Steelhead tries to lead an honest life, strange twists of fate lead him back to the yakuza, the Japanese mafia.

Yee explains that he first had the idea for the film in the late 1990s when he heard news reports of illegal Chinese immigrants arriving in Japan. As he researched the idea, he became fascinated with migrant communities and their growth.

Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

Alexander Sokurov’s “The Sun” opens in an awkward fashion. On the surface, life seems ordinary enough at the Imperial Palace of Japan. A servant brings in breakfast for the emperor on a tray. A second servant reads off the itinerary for the day. The emperor must attend a meeting with his war ministers. Then he will study marine biology, his favorite subject.

The year is 1945, and this emperor is Hirohito. Japan, for the first time in its history as a nation, is losing a war — World War II. Read the full story

By Samantha Pak
Northwest Asian Weekly

“Train Man”
By Hitori Nakano
Del Ray Books, 2004

What would you do if you came across a cute girl (or guy) and had the opportunity to see them again, but didn’t know how to make it happen?
Most people would turn to their friends, but in the case of Nakano’s protagonist, he turns to the Internet.

After defending some women on a Tokyo train from an obnoxious drunk, the nameless protagonist immediately shares his experiences on an online message board of self-proclaimed geeks. He doesn’t think much of it until he receives a pair of Hermes teacups from the 20-something woman who had been sitting next to him on the train.

Train Man — as he soon comes to be known as — doesn’t know what to make of the gift and immediately turns to his online comrades. What follows is an ever-growing message board as the geeks respond to him. Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

2009 brought a wealth of Asian and Asian-related films to American theaters.  Here’s a quick look back at 10 films you should have seen — and if you haven’t, you should hunt these down at your local video store: Read the full story

By Samantha Pak
Northwest Asian Weekly

“The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya”
By Nagaru Tanigawa
Little, Brown and Company, 2009

The SOS Brigade is back and still on its mission to keep Haruhi Suzumiya — a high school student who unknowingly has the power to destroy the world — happy.

In this sequel to “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya,” Kyon and the rest of the brigade (whose name stands for Save the World by Overloading it with Fun Haruhi Suzumiya) members go along with Haruhi as she takes on the task of making a movie for their school’s cultural festival. Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

“Ninja Assassin,” the new film from director James McTeigue, begins with a Japanese tattoo artist working on a yakuza’s back. Blood flows down from the tattoo needle. With only short respites, blood also flows throughout the rest of the film. Blood isn’t enough, however, to compensate for the film’s anemia in other areas.

South Korean pop singer Rain stars as Raizo, a lonely ninja. As the film unfolds, we see how he learned to stalk and kill as a child from master Ozunu (played by Shô Kosugi, a veteran of many martial arts films in Japan). However, Raizo later broke away from Ozunu and the entire ninja clan, and went rogue. As a result, his former “family” is trying to kill him. Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

“Red Cliff” is John Woo’s first Chinese movie since 1991’s “Once a Thief.” His new film triumphs over the cutting of the footage which is almost as cruel as the cuttings of so many characters over the film’s running time. Conceived as a four-hour epic in two parts, it reaches the United States as a single film that runs two and a half hours.

However, one critic who watched the overseas version of the film complained that just as the huge epic battle at the end was about to start, the film ended. That was probably the end of part one. The edited Western version doesn’t have this problem. All of the promised shock, awe, and bloodshed are delivered. Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

Before leaving his home in Texas for Mongolia with his wife and autistic son, author and horse trainer Rupert Isaacson seems eager for the trip as he calls it a “gateway to adventure, a gateway to healing.”

The viewer will have to decide whether healing actually takes place in this documentary. The adventure, however, is right in front of our eyes.

Isaacson and his wife, psychology professor Kristen Neff, seek help for their son Rowan. Usually flailing, screaming, and unresponsive, Rowan becomes calmer when he’s around animals. Animals seem to sense his uniqueness and bond with him.

Isaacson also believes that the shamanic healers of Mongolia can help his son. Some of the most respected Mongolian healers herd and ride reindeers. Isaacson feels that Rowan can get benefits from both healers and reindeers. Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

At age 33, Thailand’s Tony Jaa seems poised to replace Jackie Chan in the world of Asian martial arts film. Like Jackie Chan, Jaa’s movies emphasize all-natural fights and stunts. They avoid the use of computer graphics and stuntman substitutions for the leading man.

Jaa, 22 years younger than Chan, has yet to break the majority of bones in his body. He remains, for the moment, young, strong, and up to the formidable challenges of his work.

The plot of the first “Ong-Bak” was quite simple. Jaa plays a humble marital arts student in a small Thai town. Gangsters steal the head of the town’s Buddha statue.

Jaa spends the entire film trying to get the head back. In the film, there are plenty of wild stunts and bad-guy punch-outs.

The new installment takes Jaa back almost 600 years, to 1421. He plays the role of Tien, a nobleman’s son.

Tien loses his father to assassins. A bandit leader adopts and raises him. As an adult, he must discover the truth about his father’s death and seeks vengeance.

When Tien resists becoming a slave, the slave master dumps him into a filthy and slimy pit. He soon discovers that he isn’t alone in the pit. A crocodile breaks the surface, going straight for Tien’s throat.

Later, after Tien escapes the pit and routs the slavers, the slave master crawls on the ground, begging for his life. Read the full story

By Samantha Pak
Northwest Asian Weekly

“The Scent of Sake”
By Joyce Lebra
HarperCollins, 2009

“Let a woman enter the brewery and the sake will go sour.”

All her life, Rie has heard these words. But as the sole heir to the House of Omura, one of the most respected families of sake brewers in Kobe, Japan, she knows she must learn as much as possible about the trade in order to carry on the tradition.

Unfortunately, things are not that simple in 19th century Japan. In this male-dominated society, Rie learns from her mother that she must “kill the self,” swallow her feelings, and push her personal desires aside. This becomes especially true when her parents arrange for her to marry Jihei, the son of another brewing family. Read the full story