The Short List: TOP SPIN

  • June 14, 2013 9:00 am

As part of the YOMYOMF Network series, The Short List, where we present short films we love every Friday at Noon EST, we’ve reached out to the filmmakers with 5 Questions to see what’s up since the production of their short film. It’s a way for them to revisit their film and get an update on their next projects. You can view all The Short List films here.

This week, we ask 5 questions to co-directors Sara Newens and Mina T. Son regarding their short film documentary, TOP SPIN.  Read more...

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1. How did you come up with the concept for this short?
We were in a car full of documentary filmmakers and the inevitable, “You know what would make a great documentary?” came up when someone mentioned a New York Times article about ping pong prodigies in the Bay Area. We were both getting our MFAs at the time and had to co-direct a project together, so thought this would be perfect.

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Philadelphia Orchestra performs on airplane

  • June 8, 2013 7:48 am

YouTube Preview ImageHow awesome is this??? When a group from the Philadelphia Orchestra found itself delayed on the tarmac for three hours waiting for their flight from Beijing to Macao as part of the 2013 Residency & Fortieth Anniversary Tour of China, a quartet of musicians decided to provide a “pop up” performance for the passengers.

Of course, all the musicians were Asian Americans, and they totally rocked it out on that plane. I love the Chinese dude who really dug it at the end and starts yelling and clapping. Anyway, this is a great video to watch to start off your weekend.

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The Short List: BASKETBALL, MERI JAAN

  • May 31, 2013 9:00 am

As part of the YOMYOMF Network series, The Short List, where we present short films we love every Friday at Noon EST, we’ve reached out to the filmmakers with 5 Questions to see what’s up since the production of their short film. It’s a way for them to revisit their film and get an update on their next projects. You can view all The Short List films here.

This week, we ask 5 questions to director Veena Hampapur about her short film, BASKETBALL, MERI JAAN.

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1. How did you come up with the concept for this short?  Read more...

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Film Festival Dispatch: Cannes Film Festival 2013

  • May 30, 2013 11:12 pm

Cannes 2013 come to a close last weekend and the winners were announced — French sapphic coming-of-age drama BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR won the coveted Palme D’Or and the Coen brother’s INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, a moody snapshot of the Greenwich village folk singer-songwriter scene of the 1960s, won the Grand Prize.

The Jury, headed by Steven Spielberg with fellow members like Ang Lee and Nicole Kidman among others, also recognized several Asian films. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s magnificent LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON, which explores the nature and nurture relationship of fathers and sons, won the Jury Prize; Chinese abutter Jia Zhang-ke’s A TOUCH OF SIN, a scathing commentary on the chasm between the rich and poor in today’s China which is also an homage to King Hu’s A TOUCH OF ZEN won Best Screenplay; and ILO ILO, a Singaporean film by Anthony Chen about a young boy and his relationship with his Filipino nanny during the Asian economic crisis of 1997 was given the Camera d’or.  Read more...

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Original Offender: David Tran, Inventor of Sriracha

  • April 16, 2013 9:58 pm

The LA Times has a great profile on David Tran, a Vietnamese refugee who epitomizes the American dream and became a multi-millionaire, thanks to his need to fill the void of a good hot sauce to add to his food in his new adopted U.S. homeland after escaping Vietnam on a Taiwanese freighter after the fall of Saigon. Setting up a company called Huy Fong Foods, named after said Taiwanese freighter, his homemade concoction took off in San Gabriel Valley (east LA) and he would make deliveries to supermarkets and restaurants.  Read more...

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Vacuum Sealed Love

  • April 15, 2013 3:50 am

Photographer Haruhiko Kawaguchi cases nightclubs to meet potential couples for his current photo project FLESH LOVE. He invites the prospective couple to his apartment and takes photos of them on his kitchen floor. He arranges them like pieces of meat inside bags meant to store futons and blankets. He then seals their conjoined bodies inside the bag using a household vacuum that sucks out all of the air.

Now, this sounds pretty much like serial killer behavior. And apparently, the males in these couples panic more than the females. A few have struggled for air while in the bag and one man ended up pissing himself. The women just want to look good, he says.  Read more...

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Mahalo, Mr. Ebert

  • April 4, 2013 1:43 pm

I would always call him Mr Ebert. Before when he could speak (he had lost his voice after removing part of his jaw and vocal chords because of cancer), he would just say, “please, call me Roger.”

Today, we lost a champion of cinema and an intellectual who brought film appreciation to the masses. Mr Ebert lost his decades long bout with cancer and passed away at the still young age of 70. Read the Chicago Sun Times obit here. Mr Ebert was the paper’s chief film critic for over 40 years.  Read more...

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Japanese Power-Up Poses

  • March 27, 2013 4:29 pm

I don’t know how old these photos are or how long this has been happening, but this photostream of Japanese kids doing anime power-up poses is awesome! Need to see more of these. Way better than the Harlem Shake.

(Thanks Neatto)

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Japanese Pervy Ad!

  • March 7, 2013 6:35 pm

YouTube Preview ImageAKB48 is the biggest J-Pop girl group ever. They’re supposed to be cute and innocent, but really, they are just a symbol of Japan’s infantile perversion for young girls. Wait, that’s true everywhere in the world. Revision: Japan is ichiban when it comes to pervertedness. Case-in-point: This commercial featuring the aforementioned J-pop girl group. And this is the same group that splashed headlines a few weeks ago when one of their members, Minami Minegishi, shaved her head and tearfully apologized and pleaded for the world’s forgiveness because she was caught (ON CAMERA), leaving a guy’s apartment late at night.

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Michael Haneke’s STAR WARS Episode 7

  • March 5, 2013 5:59 pm

YouTube Preview ImageMichael Haneke is one of Europe’s leading filmmakers and has produced some of the most gut-wrenching films to come out of Europe in the last two decades with films like FUNNY GAMES, THE WHITE RABBIT and his most recent film, AMOUR, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Haneke’s a perennial favorite at Cannes and has two Palme d’Ors, a Grand Prix and Best Director award from the festival to his name, but it wasn’t until this year that he became better known to a much wider audience, thanks in part to AMOUR’s success in the arthouse and awards circuit. The film chronicles the last days of a geriatric couple as the wife suffers through slow dementia. Bottom-line, his films are definitely not feel good, especially after the third time when Emmanuelle Riva’s character’s adult diaper is changed for the third time.  Read more...

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Ang Lee, Accidental Chinese Hipster

  • February 28, 2013 7:37 pm

We at YOMYOMF are huge Ang Lee fans and were elated when he won his SECOND Academy Award for Best Director this past Sunday, for his masterful film adaptation of LIFE OF PI. Even though we were lamenting if the Oscars should even matter anymore, it was great to see such an amazing director deserve such an accolade (Mr. Lee, we’ll forgive you for your HULK movie).

Just wanted to share more of the Ang Lee love with this photo that has been floating around the Interwebs of a 28-year old Lee, looking quite hipster in his youth. I think the awesome Accidental Chinese Hipsters folks need to get this on their Tumblr site asap!

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Boy sodomized by his own bike

  • February 26, 2013 4:24 pm

Awww man, this actually happened… A bicyclist’s worst nightmare come true. This poor kid in China, riding his bike to school, with only his hopes and dreams ahead of him, became a victim of one in a billion situations. The bicycle’s seat got bent over exposing a cold, merciless steel rod which penetrated the boy’s buttocks. Firefighters were called to the scene and used the Jaws of Life to detach much of the bicycle from the boy’s rear end.  He was then taken to hospital by ambulance with a large portion of the bike still emerging from his butt.  Read more...

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