Penn State University Libraries - Asian American Cinema

This documentary is already one of the classics in the “personal discovery tour” genre of filmmaking.  My America, or Honk If You Love Buddha is Japanese American filmmaker Renee Tajima-Penã’s attempt to answer the question : how does an American of Asian ancestry fit into the American landscape? She interviews actor Victor Wong who tells about his rebellion against the straightjacket of tradition and obedience of Chinatown in the 1940s, and his escaping into the bohemian life. We travel with Civil Rights workers Bill and Yuri Kochiyama on a pilgrimage through the south and end up in Jerome, Arkansas, where Yuri was interned during World War Two.  In Seattle, we meet Korean American teenagers who adopted the “gangsta rapper” lifestyle as a defense against the “emasculated Asian male” stereotype and we then attend the White Blossom Debutant Ball in Anaheim, California where Chinese American girls from well-to-do families are introduced to society, mostly to available Chinese American boys (although most of the girls already have Caucasian boyfriends). If anything can be concluded in her search of Asian America, it is that, like the history of any minority, the past is inextricably tied to the present, and an incredible richness pervades it all. Highly recommended.

Asian Women have been portrayed in cinema either as theobedient, man-pleasing, girl or the demonic dragon lady in movies of the early twentieth century, and one would believe that in the intervening one hundred years such stereotyping is over. And they would be very mistaken. Slaying the Dragon,a film by Deborah Gee, examines how the past images of Asian women in cinema still persists today in the images of Asian woman and effects the lives of Asian and Asian American women. But the danger is that it persists in more insidious, unspoken ways. News reporter Emerald Yeh recalls how she was re-designed by CNN (hair style, eye makeup) to become a Connie Chung-clone –the accepted image of the Asian American female news reporter. Producers and directors still, perhaps unconsciously, cling to stereotypes when deciding on who is hired for female leading roles and supporting roles, and if Asian women are hired, they also decide how Asian women look, behave, speak, denying these women their human rights to be full-actualized human beings.

However the perniciously clinging, quiet racism of Hollywood is being slowly being challenged by not only a new generation of Asian woman who are working both in front and behind the camera, but with the new computer-delivered media, especially Youtube. This video pack also includes a film by Elaine Kim titled Slaying the Dragon Reloaded on the changing nature of electronic access to internet videos and its impact on changing the previous definitions of the Asian American female. See these videos together with the documentary The Slanted Screen, a film about the stereotyping of Asian and Asian American male performers, also on this list.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina roars through New Orleans and the Vietnamese occupants of Village de l’East (a.k.a. Versailles) find their community devastated. But their problems were far from over after the waters receded. The Mayor of New Orleans C. Ray Nagin and his administration began dumping millions of tons of highly contaminated trash accumulated from Katrina into a landfill neighboring dangerously close to canals that feed into  Versailles. The Vietnamese community, described by one of their Roman Catholic pastors as people who simply wanted to “blend in” and not make any trouble, decided to take political and legal action to stop the landfill. A Village Called Versailles, a film by S. Leo Chiang, is about how a people who normally wanted to be invisible and left alone, already injured by nature, refused to become victims again; how they learned to organize and make the government responsible to the needs of the people, no matter how “foreign” or insignificant they may seem to the powers-that-be.

The American auto industry in the 1980s was threatened by the rapid growth of the Japanese automobile industry and many white Detroit auto workers were suffering from layoffs and reduced working hours. There was a growing resentment, fueled by racial hatred, against the Japanese. In June 1982, Chinese American Vincent Chin of Detroit, Michigan was mistaken by Chrysler auto workers Ronald Ebens and his step-son Michael Nitz for being Japanese. Ebens and Nitz beat Vincent Chin to death with a baseball bat. The punishment from the U.S. courts for the murder was $3,000 in fines and three years probation. Neither man spent a day in jail for their crime.  Who Killed Vincent Chin?, a 1987 Academy Award-nominated documentary directed by Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Reña, chronicles this unbelievable travesty as its unfolds in the American justice system and its effects on both the American community in general and Asian American community in particular. A major feature of this documentary is the story of the coming-of-age of Pan-Asian protest and defiance against a system that undervalues the life of Asian Americans. It was the first time that the Asian American community pulled together as one unit and recognized that racial hatred was not a simple white-black dichotomy in America but involved everyone fighting for civil rights. After Vincent Chin’s death, the phrase “hate crime” became a fixture in American jurisprudence.  An online resource version is also available here -> Who Killed Vincent Chin?

Thirty years later, Vincent Chin’s murder has sadly faded from the memory of the general public yet the reverberations from that hate crime still echoes throughout the Asian American culture. Vincent Who?, a 2009 documentary, directed by Renee Tajima-Peña, is a return to the painful memories of that murder through interviews of the people who were involved in the original Vincent Chin protest movement. Many of the players have gotten older but their zeal for humans rights have not stopped. And they have passed on their fight for justice to members of the next generation: Asian Americans who, unlike an earlier generation who believed it was best to remain quiet and trust the system, demand to be heard, demand to have a seat at the political table. And the loud protests have not abated. After 9/11, it was the Japanese American community who first protested against the discrimination of all Muslims. Poet Marcia Lee speaks about Vincent Chin’s “unintended gift” - a tragic death that gave birth to a movement dedicated to civil rights for all. Both documentaries are essential viewing.

Tired of being displayed as the model minority? Perfect SATs, musical virtuoso, ivy league bound? Quiet, polite, emasculated males; cute, subservient females? Flip it all and see Better Luck Tomorrow from the good people at MTV. This 2002 film, directed by Justine Li of "Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift," is a world where Asian American teenagers loose and find themselves in a Southern California landscape of guns, drugs, sex, and violence. A group of overachieving Asian American males discover the thrills of drug trafficking, the love for expensive guns, and the bright lights and prostitutes of Las Vegas, all leading to murder, torture, and mayhem. The sheer ambitiousness of the writing, of the cast and the director, is a pleasure to watch. It is as if there was just too much that needed to be said, and we are all caught up in this whirling kaleidoscope of teenage angst, confusion, depression, racism, and manic joy and splendor. Also, this movie has one of the best endings since "The Graduate," especially poignant for Asian Americans who will immediately understand what is going on. Rated a very strong R for violence, language, and female nudity.

What's Wrong with Frank Chin?  What is wrong?  Everything, and nothing.  For close to five decades, Frank Chin has been both the "bad boy" and "literary genuis" of Asian American literature - utterly uncompromising, perniciously opinionated, invective spewing, incendiary, argumentative, seeking no accommodations nor willing to bend his philosophies of what is right and wrong.  His play "Chickencoop Chinaman" and the "Year of the Dragon" are considered part of the bedrock of the Asian American Studies (AAS) Literature canon.  In this documentary, someone said that Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston are the grandfather and grandmother of Asian American literature, except grandpa hates grandma with a vengeance, and it can be both grotesquely amusing and absolutely frightening to see grandpa throttling (metaphorically, of course) grandma.  This documentary is essential for all people interested in AAS literature, its history and development.  After watching its 97 minute run of the clashing of theories, warty politics, bad blood, "true" Asians verses Asians "sucking up to white male fantasies," one can at least agree that something fascinating is happening here.  Very highly recommended.

Something you did not think existed.  There is a thriving group of Asia American comedy troupes struggling for recognition and hoping for that big break into L.A. show business.  The "18 Mighty Mountain Warriors," "Cold Tofu," "OPM (aka Opening People's Minds)," "Lodestone Ensemble" are definitely not household names and they are nowhere on the national comedy landscape.  Yet they push on finding humor in the toxic and pernicious racial stereotypes that permeate American culture, constantly seeking ways of getting their messages to the general public.  The documentary Mighty Warriors of Comedy highlights the "18 Mighty Mountain Warriors," a comedy group founded in 1969 during the civil rights movement in San Francisco, and through their sketches, we can see how they are struggling to define what an "Asian American" is both to themselves and to the American public-at-large through a comic lens.  Featuring comedians and actors such as PK (Paul Kim), Rex Navarette, Ali Wong, Dr. Ken, Bobby Lee, probably people you do not know, but have seen.  No rating but contains strong language.

Margaret Cho is now an established comedian and spokesperson, but in the early 1990s, she was just another underground, struggling standup comic. Her "big break" came in 1994 when she was hired to headline the television show "All-American Girl" — that's the title of the show. Problems began immediately. She was forced to loose weight quickly which lead to kidney failure. Her portrayal of an Asian American female was criticized as "too Asian" or "not Asian enough." Within one year, the show was gone due to poor ratings and Margaret was a wreck, physically and emotionally. Her long battle to regain her identity, her power to define herself, to accept her body and her philosophies are all in this concert film I'm the One That I Want, shot in 2000. Part screed, part manifesto, we see a woman declaring "she's mad as hell and she is not going to be told what to do anymore." She has other recorded concert films: the "Notorious C.H.O." from 2002; "Cho Revolution" from 2004, and many other video projects. Yet whenever I think about Margaret Cho, I think about this first film. A film about a woman's reawakening, about a woman who lost, then regained her voice, stronger than ever. Rated R for strong language.

The Slanted Screen.  Written, produced, and directed by Jeff Adachi, this is presently the most comprehensive documentary of how Asians and Asian Americans male stereotypes have been adopted and disseminated by the Hollywood "dream" machine.  Through interviews of veteran actors such as Mako and James Shigeta, we hear first-hand how limited were the opportunities not only to get acting jobs, but to influence America-at-large about who Asian Americans are.  Although we believe times have changed, even present-day performers such as Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Jason Scott Lee speak about the unspoken, yet understood, biases that still permeate the hiring of Asians for leading roles, and the shaping of the images of Hollywood Asians.  This film focuses exclusively on the male movie performers.  For a documentary on Asian female performers, see Slaying the Dragon, also on this list.
  

American Fusion.  We have all lived it : a ultra-demanding Chinese matriarch who rules her family with passive-aggressive demands, and just aggressive guilt.  Yvonne, a 49-year old divorcee, is the main whipping post, the elder daughter who must sacrifice herself for the honor of the family.  She is blamed by her sister for her nephew's bodybuilding and dancing in a strip club.  She is blamed by her brother for his problems producing a child.  Into this mess, she meets and falls in love with a Mexican American dentist and the culture clashes really begin.  This movie is filled to the brim with cultural stereotypes and appears to be a vehicle to mock them all.  One of the funniest is the Chinese family (with a sincere and straight face) giving an African American orthopedic surgeon a box of Popeye's Chicken and a basketball as a traditional Chinese gesture of good luck.  American Fusion may not be the best movie about mother-daughter relationships or the clashing of America's minority cultures, but it is a love story with a predictable and satisfying ending.

Asian Stories. A young Chinese American man, upwardly mobile, articulate, anal retentive, has been dumped by his fiancee two weeks prior to their wedding on Valentine's Day.  Devastated and in pain, he makes a deal with his friend, a Japanese American hitman and self-taught gormand, to take him into the high country of the Sierras and kill him before his former wedding day to stop his anguish.  But like all stories of heartbreak and loss, he finds that in his last few days on earth, leaving the past world behind and journeying onward can bring about healing and rediscovery.  Despite a disjointed ending, this comedy, occasionally meandering into a farce with an array of purposefully hyper-spooky Caucasian characters, is rather a formulaic love story, but there is enough to enjoy.  A good date movie except for the last ten minutes.  Occasional rough language.

This is the film that many critics believe started it all for Asian American filmmaking. The 1982 small budget film Chan is Missing, directed by Wayne Wang. In this film verite-styled drama, we follow two taxicab drivers searching for an enigmatic character who ran off with their money. If the journey is everything, this small movie has it all.  We meet the funny, the reckless, the mundane, but the heart and soul of this movie is the authenticity of locale and its true voice — Chinese speaking about how it feels to live at the margins of American society where "white" meets "yellow." This is an art film and takes a little more effort and concentration to understand what is being said and implied, however it is certainly worth your time, and you'll be discussing this movie long after it ends. As early as 1995, the U.S. National Film Registry of the Library of Congress designated this movie for preservation.
 

Days of Waiting.  Estelle Ishigo was a rebel, and an artist.  A young Caucasian woman living in California in the early twentieth century, she dared to marry a Japanese American and was disowned by her family.  Despite her ostracism, she did not dream that in 1942, she would be interned in Heart Mountain Concentration Camp in Wyoming along with 5,000 other Japanese Americans.  Through her stark black-and-white sketches and watercolors, we see her record the anguish, frustration, and anger of her fellow camp inmates.  This story has been told before and we have all seen the photographs of Ansel Adams and Dorothy Lange of camp life, but there is a special poignancy about her art as she transforms the daily ennui and tedium of camp life into grander landscapes portraying vividly the universal themes of injustice and oppression.  Paint and watercolors can illuminate in ways photographs cannot.  My only complaint is that this documentary is far too short with a running time of 28 minutes.  So much more needed to be said.  This documentary won the 1990 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) and the George Foster Peabody Award.

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. The quintessential 2004 stoner comedy.  Kal Penn, formerly of "House", and John Cho, from "Star Trek," star as two stoners, tripped out on cannabis, trying to get to the closest White Castle to buy burgers ("sliders"). If "Chan is Missing" is the verisimilitude, anti-Hollywood, art film, "Harold and Kumar" is a whacked-out, off-to-see-the-wizard comedy. Stopping at Princeton University for weed and an incredible wild "Asian" party, bitten by a raccoon, performing a surgical operation, riding a cheetah, a Neil Patrick Harris fired up on ecstasy. This is an Asian American farce, expanded and exploded.  And as a farce, don't concern yourself with the leaps into illogic. Simply laugh and enjoy it.  It is truly a joy to see two Asians as leads in a goofy and ridiculous, yet noncondescending, movie. Rated R for strong language, comic violence, and nudity.
  

Ethan Mao. A Chinese American boy is thrown out of his home when his father discovers he is gay, and he survives by becoming a hustler and male prostitute.  He hooks up with another abandoned boy, Remigio, fellow hustler and drug dealer.  Believing his father's family would be gone for Thanksgiving, Ethan with Remigio, returns to his home to retrieve his dead mother's necklace only to take his unexpectedly returning family hostage.  The movie focuses on the dynamics of a family under siege both under the gun and the clashing, destructive natures of all their personalities, yet when a dysfunctional family is forced to remain together, strange alliances can form, hauntings from the past can be revealed, and little can be settled.  I can easily see this movie transforming well onto the stage.  Unrated but a strong R for adult language and sexual situations.
 

Motel. This is no "model minority" movie -- no immaculate house in the suburbs, no doctor/lawyer parents, no ivy league, no National Honor Society Academic Bowl championships. On the road to nowhere at 13, Ernest Chin cleans rooms for his overbearing mother in their hourly-rated motel, catering to lowlifes and prostitutes.  He dreams of nothing except for Christine, the 15-year-old girl next door. A teenage guest at his motel taunts him that "we're here temporarily but you, you're here for good."  Into this death of a life comes Sam Kim, a loud, boisterous, equally lost, young man, recently divorced from his wife, who covers his pain with a desperate joie-de-vivre. And together they make something less than a whole.  The first Noble Truth of Buddhism is life sucks; imagine that you're on the road to enlightenment, says Kim. This movie is advertised as a comedy but there is too much pain to be anything else than a sad tale of almost unbearable loneliness and permanent despair. It's a hard film to watch but the message is clear: growing up is hard, but so is adulthood except only worse. And Christine ends up hating him. Rated R for strong language and nudity.

In many major cities, there are historical areas, once occupied by Asian immigrants, known as Chinatown, Japantown, or Little Saigon, but very little is known of the areas, usually only a few city blocks, that first were occupied by Filipino immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century.  In Stockton, California, there is little remaining of "Little Manila," once the largest population of Filipinos outside of the Philippines, mostly because it has been buried under the Crosstown freeway. This documentary seeks to recover decades of history lost under concrete. In 1898, the Philippines were annexed by the United States and young Filipino men, fed on promises that America was a combination of "El Dorado" and Hollywood, immigrated to California, only to be trapped, working in the asparagus fields. Their history of being the victims of race riots, bombings, Congressional acts to have them expatriated, and their significant participation in the creation of the United Farm Workers union are amply and fully covered.
 

The beginning of Catfish in Black Bean Sauce should not be surprising, but it is. An older African American couple are playing cards at their dining room table and talking about a blind cat. They turn to talk to their son; the camera pans right, and he is Vietnamese. Twenty-two years earlier, he (Dwayne) and his sister Mai were adopted out of a refugee camp in Vietnam and they were raised in an African American community. Now their biological mother has been found and has come to live in the United States. However what could have been a movie about replacement of affections is flooded with many, perhaps too many, other major themes: abandonment, interracial relationships, jealousy, identity, self-doubt, immigration problems, Vietnamese vs. American culture clashes, etc. The writing is a little uneven with moments of slapstick comedy immediately followed by scenes of heartbreaking tenderness, yet it is a clever and smart film, with great performances from Paul Winfield and Mary Alice as the adoptive father and mother. Well worth your Saturday night.

Ping Pong Playa.  Christopher Wang ("that's C-dub, man!") embodies the gangsta-rapping, hip hop, street kid : loud, brash, and the quintessential wannabe.  Dreaming of playing in the NBA, he lacks both height and especially the skill.  When his older brother, a community ping pong champion and "perfect son," breaks his arm, his family calls upon "C-dub" to take his place in the tournament.  He considers ping pong, the Nixonian detente salve, to be stereotypic Chinese, old school, limiting oneself to a flat wooden board, not free ranging as a basketball court.  Family obligation and an equally obnoxious ping pong opponent fires his ego to take up the sport, and amid the yelling, posturing, and a group of adorable youngsters who idolize him, we see a young man changing not only himself but the rest of his small world.  And this movie has some really good ping pong action too.  Contains a few drug and sex references, but nothing to be concerned about for a college audience.

Eat a Bowl of Tea.  New York City Chinatown in the late 1940s.  In a new world after the brutality of World War II, all things seem possible for a young Chinese American veteran. Instead, Ben Loy is being pushed and pulled by everyone. His father sends him to China to get a "proper" Chinese wife, and suddenly he finds himself in the whirl of Chinese traditions, Chinese obligations, and Chinese forced ambitions. His father wants grandchildren and right NOW. His new wife wants his attention (and who can blame her being in a foreign land). His new boss wants all his dedication exclusively for his work. What does Ben want? There is very little time in his day to even ask the question. In this comedy, we see the problems are the same for all young people thrown into that deep end of the pool, and how much more when one is frantically learning to swim among the detritus of the cultures of their parents. But the best part of the movie is when they escape. This is the American dream and see how they run.

Roots in the Sand.  The history of early twentieth century immigration in the western U.S. focuses mainly on Hispanics from the south and Asians from the "Far East," yet few people know about the 5,000 Punjabis - Sikhs, Moslems, and Hindus - who immigrated from India to California, mostly into the desert regions of the Imperial Valley.

Despite the institutional racism, the anti-miscegenation laws, the laws that both barred them from becoming American citizens and also stripped them of a citizenship once granted to them for services to the United States, these people built one of the most lucrative farming communities in the American West, and their ancestors still today produce a vast amount of the fruits and vegetables that feed our country. This documentary amply fills in a large gap in American history.
  

If "Chan is Missing" is one of the seminal Asian American movies, this filmed version of a play by Frank Chin is one of the seminal Asian American plays. The Year of the Dragon was among the first staged salvos against the stereotype that all Asian Americans are upwardly mobile, highly educated, easily and invisibly assimilating into American culture; a benchmark for all other minorities of what can be accomplished by simple hard work.

Instead, we see a Chinese American family in the United States not only being oppressed by benign American racism, but slowly and inexorably destroyed by its own inner demons: generational and cultural (Chinese vs. Chinese American vs. American) conflicting values. Although the play is anchored in San Francisco Chinatown in the 1970s, the dialogue has not aged and the energy is always at maximum. For those of you who are most familiar with George Takei as Star Trek's helmsman Sulu, you will be amazed at his performance as an utterly frustrated man at battle with everything created for him and created by him. Essential for literature and language, drama and theater majors.

The Best of Slant. vol. 1. Slant Film Festival : Bold Asian American Images (http://slantfestival.org) is an annual short film festival held in Houston, Texas.  For the last ten years, it has been showcasing many short films made by Asian Americans on a number of formats including "narrative, experimental, film art/video art, documentary, and animation." 

Among the eight short films included on this disk is a humorous cartoon about a Filipino woman who sadly complains about being an unhappy domestic worker/slave for the Justice League Superfriends (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.), a "science film" on the difference between Western squatting and Eastern squatting (and the superiority of the latter), and a documentary (possibly mockumentary) on a creepy baker obsessed with fruit pies.  The most charming is a Korean Canadian film about a woman - the filmmaker's mother - who teaches us how to make authentic Korean Kim Chee (Spicy fermented picked cabbage).  Like most collections, there are weak films, strong films, and simply bizarre films.  With ten years backlog worth of films to mine, let us hope volume two will quickly be released.

Yellow.  Another fully energized Asian American teenage movie. I don't know why there aren't more of these. Eight friends plan to have a great graduation party in Los Angeles when the one of them who works in his parent's grocery store is robbed of $1500. When he won't tell his Korean parents, his friends decide to get enough money to help him.  In one night, the eight move through a confusing Los Angeles, struggling to find the cash. Unlike "Better Luck Tomorrow," this movie has more of an art movie feel to it, where what is not said is just as important as what is being said, and certain characters are highlighted, then pushed back into the scenery, only to re-emerge.

Like all movies about teenagers, there is so much about insecurity and angst, and all the themes are in the minor key, touched upon briefly whether they are about jealously, self-discovery and self-deception, trust, young love, and especially fear. And what kind of art film would this be if even reality is not questioned. Rated R for strong language.

Strawberry Fields.  1973.  Irene, a sixteen-year-old Japanese American girl is morose, lost, angry - the archetypal teenager.  But her ghosts are more deep and pervasive than the average girl's.  Her obsession is fire : fire that cleanses, destroys, not only present-day inconsequentials, but entire histories.  Sick of her insipid school and her step-mother's inability to love her, she runs toward the "freedom" of San Francisco with her boyfriend to join a band in the City of Love.  But the ghosts of a nagging, still shrouded, past shadow her everywhere, steering her away from her destination, into the southwest to the location where the Japanese American Concentration Camp at Poston, Arizona once stood.  In the bare desert, she faces the truth of her past : the ghosts of thousands who once created bonfires to burn out their ethnicity and then road trains into the despair of the American desert.

The Namesake, directed by Mira Nair, a 2006 film that chronicles the lives of two West Bengali immigrants to New York and their American-born children.  Kal Penn is back again this time as a young son, fully, then partially, Americanized.  We have seen this film before : the problems of dating, marriage, love, and sex made worse by the clashing of generations and cultures, and it doesn't get better than this.  What strikes me the most is how beautiful the film is : the Hindu wedding, funerals, celebrations of life and death.  The cinematographer did an excellent job.  Think of the perfect generational conflict movie and then square it.

Searching for Asian America.  This PBS special, hosted by news anchor Ann Curry, is comprised of three stories of Asians and Asian Americans.  The first is of Gary Locke, former governor of the state of Washington and present Secretary of Commerce in the Obama Administration.  He was the first Asian American governor of a mainland state.  We witness his meteoric rise in American politics with the admonitions that he "better not screw up" or it'll reflect poorly on all Asian Americans.  The second story is about Filipino doctors who serve the predominantly Caucasian, hog-farming American heartland town of Guymon, Oklahoma.  Their lives reflect the "alien-ness" of being Asian in a white world where acceptance is often hard but not insurmountable.  The last story is my favorite.  Lela Lee, actress of such TV shows as "Scrubs" and "Tremors," and movies such as "Yellow," is also known as the creator of the "Angry Little Asian Girl" cartoons, now known as "Angry Little Girls."  Her cartoon alter ego Kim screams out all the time, both justly and unjustly, at both perceived and actual frustrations of being "different" in America.  And at her mother who tells her "Be somebody!" (Sounds familiar?)  Of the three stories, this is the most amusing, compelling, and heartwarming.

And Flower Drum Song. Yes, Flower Drum Song.  I know there has been a lot of controversy about this 1961 Rogers and Hammerstein movie, directed by Ross Hunter, adopted from the Broadway musical. Members of the Asian American community has said that this is a pernicious stereotype. That Miyoshi Umeki's role as the "proper" Asian daughter is horribly sexist, racist, and panders to the prurient interests of men.

I disagree. I think as a period piece about rich Chinese and Chinese Americans in 1950s San Francisco, this movie is charming and entertaining, and had a lot of "firsts" regarding Asian Americans in cinema. It had an almost all-Asian cast for a major Hollywood movie. It showed Asians in strong, complex, leading roles. We see James Shigeta, at his most handsome, as the romantic lead -- rare in its time and still rather rare. And the Miyoshi Umeki's role of Mei Li is well-balanced by Nancy Kwan's character Linda Low -- the nightclub singer and dancer : bold, loud, demanding, all sparkle and fireworks. If you want to have two great hours lost in an imaginary Hollywood world of funny, pure entertainment with wonderful, memorable songs, check out "Flower Drum Song."