the week that was

What a dreary NYC day it was ... it didn't stop raining for a second!  Too bad, it was such a nice weekend too...and speaking of that, this weekend kicked off the NY Asian American International Film Festival where I started catching up on all the films I wanted to see.  I have to say - one stuck out in particular by a mile.  

If any of you ever get the chance to check out a film called American Pastime, do yourself a favor and do it.  Get the dvd - it's available on Amazon now.  It was really well put together.  I gotta admit, I lumped up in my throat a few different times.  Usually, a good movie might move me once, but this one had several spots.  The film takes place during the Japanese internment camp period when, during WWII, the US placed Japanese Americans in camps in an effort to "protect" them when the US was at war with Japan.  I've seen this story told many times on stage, in books, and on film - American Pastime presented it centered around the game of baseball - a sport that the communities in the camps really took to during that time to pass the days.  It isn't so much a sports movie though, so fear not non-sports fans.  It's a fine film and it's just a tragedy that studios in the US never picked it up and distributed it.  The film producers shopped it around, but the studios all passed.  Shame on them.  This is a story that needs to be told on a broad scale in America.  No doubt because all the main leads are Asians who don't do chop socky, Hollywood passed, but regardless of that, the quality and the delivery of the film were on par with that of anything studios could produce.  I really hope it finds a bigger audience.  Even at the festival, it had an unfavorable time slot of Saturday morning - a time when most New Yorkers are still passed out from hanging out till 5am the night before.  (I did, but I still got up to see it.  )

Sigh.

Well, in any case - Aaron Yoo - the lead in the film, is doing just fine from a Hollywood perspective, so he's got nothing to worry about. 

I also caught the 72-Hour Shootout Top 10.  The 72-Hour Shootoutis a short-film contest that the Asian American Film Lab here in NYC puts on each year.  You have 72 hours to make a 5 minute film after they give you the theme on a Friday at 8pm.  Sadly, this year, my friend Eddie Hsieh asked me to participate - and I did - but he failed to get the final piece into the judges on time, so we were disqualified!  He promises to enter it into other festivals, so we'll see.  It was a little disappointing, but not really at the same time.   I have no idea how ours' looked and some of the ones I saw this weekend were amazing.  It's impressive what people can turn around in such a short time.  I've stuck some photos of our shoot in my photo album for kicks...

speaking of kicks ... me putting it to our co-producer/co-writer/p.a. This summer has been a lot of print jobs.  I'm not complaining.  It's advertising, and though acting is number 1, print on occasion can be fun and I consider it "acting really still."  After all, I got to go to Rome earlier this summer for a Royal Caribbean shoot.  I also worked a Microsoft job recently and then last week, I did what was probably my most fun shoot in awhile for Adidas!

Going to Rome was sweet, but this Adidas gig was sweeter in many ways cause it was for Adidas basketball -- my all-time favorite sport!  If you know me, you know that at times, I live/eat/breathe b-ball.  In fact, I run a basketball league on the side out here in NYC.  I actually have these silly dreams of bringing what we do out to Asia too.  Who knows, maybe one day...

Anyway, for this spot, I had to play ball at a park in Harlem.  As you can see from this photo, our spot was the Asian ballers (they had all different demographics) and I guess our shots are set to be on display all over Asia starting later this year or next year some time.  Be on the look out for me!  Sometimes, I never even see these things since I live on this side of the pond...

Me making like Agent Zero up in Harlem... Been making some progress with our production company as well...we're looking at doing a real cool short film about a bunch of kids that has hilarious potential.  And sourcing through some great scrīpts that are originating out of Asia.  This stuff has got me truly excited...

I never know what tomorrow brings in this business - that's part of the beauty of it.  This week, Li-Anne Huang's short film Red Shoes that I had a part in, is screening at the festival that's still going on.  Check out the trailer on Li-Anne's site!