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By The Associated Press


Wayne Wang: 'Snow Flower' no 'Joy Luck Club' rehash

By MIN LEE

AP Entertainment Writer

SHANGHAI (AP) -- Wayne Wang's 1993 adaptation of the Amy Tan novel “The Joy Luck Club” put the Chinese-American filmmaker on the map in Hollywood by turning an Asian family drama into an American box office success story.

Thirteen years later, Wang is about to release another film with shades of his career-making movie. Like “Joy Luck Club,” “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” explores the past and present of Chinese women. “Snow Flower” is also based on the work of a Chinese-American writer, this time Lisa See's novel of the same name.

“Snow Flower” also marks Wang's reunion with “Joy Luck Club” actress Vivian Wu, a Shanghai native. Oscar-winning screenwriter Ronald Bass, who co-wrote the “Joy Luck Club” screenplay with Tan, also worked on the script for “Snow Flower.”

But promoting “Snow Flower” on the sidelines of the Shanghai International Film Festival on Sunday, Wang said the similarities end there.

“I think it's very different from 'Joy Luck Club.' I don't want to make another movie like 'Joy Luck Club.' 'Joy Luck Club' is about mother-daughter relationships. This is the story of two female friends,” Wang said.

Starring Chinese actress Li Bingbing and South Korea's Jeon Ji-hyun with a cameo from Hugh Jackman, “Snow Flower” explores the friendship between two Chinese women in the 1800s and the friendship between two of their descendants.

While Wang is eager to move on from “The Joy Luck Club,” Wu called it a classic that still brings her to tears. The movie version explores the pasts of four Chinese immigrants and their relationships with their American daughters.

“Even now, when I see it on TV I will sit down and watch the entire film and still cry,” Wu said.

While Wang, whose credits also include “Smoke” and “Anywhere But Here,” has a history of sourcing material from Chinese-American writers -- he also adapted Li Yiyun's stories “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” and “The Princess of Nebraska” -- the “Snow Flower” adaptation did not originate with him.

Wendi Deng Murdoch, the Chinese-born wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, bought the rights and helped secure its mostly Chinese funding. Fox Searchlight Pictures, a unit of Murdoch's News Corp., is releasing the movie in the U.S. on July 15. Mixing Chinese and English dialogue, the film was shot in China and will be released there on June 24.

“I read the book four years ago and really liked it,” Wendi Murdoch said. “I really identified with it. Even though the story is about two Chinese women, it is about the friendship of two women and how they overcame different difficulties and different situations in life. Even though this story happened in China, this kind of story happens in every country, every race, so it is a universal theme.”

Wang said the book “is about the very intense relationship between two women in a male-dominated society. It's a very rare story.”

He said the language barrier between Li and Jeon produced unexpected on-screen chemistry because they focused on body language instead.

“Actors often focus too much on dialogue but dialogue is only a small part of the equation. The gaze of your eyes, your gestures are equally important. This was a rare occasion when we saw actors perform this way,” he said.


Study: Minority youth have big media appetite

By DAVID AGUILAR

Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) -- Minority youth spend more than half their day consuming media content, a rate that's 4.5 hours greater than their white counterparts, according to a Northwestern University report released Wednesday.

Television remains king among all youth, but among minorities who spend 13 hours per day consuming media of various types, electronic gadgets such as cell phones and iPods increasingly are the way such content gets delivered, the report found.

“Children, Media and Race: Media Use Among White, Black, Hispanic and Asian American Children” was touted by researchers as the first national study to focus exclusively on children's media use by race and ethnicity.

Minority youth media consumption rates outpace their white counterparts by two hours when it comes to TV and video viewership, approximately an hour for music, up to 1.5 hours for computer use, and 30 to 40 minutes for playing video games.

“In the past decade, the gap between minority and white youth's daily media use has doubled for blacks and quadrupled for Hispanics,” said Northwestern Professor Ellen Wartella, who co-authored the study along with former Kaiser Family Foundation vice president Vicky Rideout and Northwestern post-doctoral fellow Alexis Lauri.

Wartella acknowledged that technology is a structural part of modern society but said the numbers suggest that young people are settling for a sedentary lifestyle and risk further exacerbating ongoing problems such as child obesity. She said increased parental involvement, including limiting usage time and monitoring content, could mitigate those concerns.

“Our study is not meant to blame parents,” Wartella said, adding that in some cases minority youth are using media to bridge the gap between themselves and a predominantly white culture. “But it suggests that kids are very much tethered to technology at all times. To be tethered so much by technology seems to be an imbalance ... as a parent of two boys, I know it's a wake-up call for me: All things in moderation.”

The report analyzes by race data from the 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation Generation M2 study on media use among 2,000 8- to 18-year-olds and the foundation's 2006 Media Family study on another 2,000 children from birth to 6 years old. It did not chart the type of programming youth were consuming nor did it offer final conclusions.

Young people in all groups read for pleasure 30 to 40 minutes a day, the only medium that no difference was found between minority and white youth.

Other findings include:

-- Minority youth spend 3 hours and 7 minutes per day using mobile devices to watch TV and videos, play games and listen to music. That's about 1.5 hours more each day than white youth.

-- Traditional TV viewing remains most popular. Black and Hispanic youth consume more than three hours daily; whites and Asians more than two hours.

-- Access to TiVo, DVDs, and mobile and online viewing increase television consumption to 5 hours and 54 minutes for black youth, 5 hours and 21 minutes for Hispanics, 4 hours and 41 minutes for Asians, and 3 hours and 36 minutes for whites.

-- Black and Hispanic youth are more likely to have TV sets in their bedrooms (84 percent of blacks, 77 percent of Hispanics compared to 64 percent of whites and Asians), and to have cable and premium channels available in their bedrooms (42 percent of blacks and 28 percent of Hispanics compared to 17 percent of whites and 14% of Asians).

-- 78 percent of black youth, 67 percent of Hispanic, 58 percent of white and 55 percent of Asian 8- to 18-year-olds say the TV is “usually” on during home meals.

-- Black children under 6 are twice as likely to have a TV in their bedroom as whites, and more than twice as likely to go to sleep with the TV on.

-- Asian youth spend more time in recreational computer use: Nearly 3 hours a day compared to 1:49 for Hispanics, nearly 1.24 for blacks and 1:17 for whites.

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Online:

Children, Media and Race: Media Use Among White, Black, Hispanic and Asian American Children: http://cmhd.northwestern.edu/?page--id=9 http://cmhd.northwestern.edu/?page--id=9


Baltimore schools to reimburse foreign teachers

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Baltimore school officials say the district will reimburse international teachers who paid fees associated with getting temporary work visas out of their own pockets.

The decision comes after the U.S. Department of Labor ordered the Prince George's County school system to pay $5.9 million in back wages and penalties to teachers recruited from foreign countries. The Baltimore school district, however, could not say how much money it might have to pay back.

In April, the head of a Filipino teachers group claimed that Baltimore schools was following the same hiring practices that led to the fine against the Prince George's County public school system.

Tisha Edwards, the chief of staff for the city school system, says the goal is to make sure that everything is done correctly. 

------

Information from: The Baltimore Sun, http://www.baltimoresun.com


Coltrane house, China Alley called endangered

By BRETT ZONGKER

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Jazz musician John Coltrane's home on Long Island, N.Y., a cloverleaf-shaped Chicago hospital building and a Pillsbury plant in Minneapolis that once was the world's most advanced flour mill are among America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation on June 15 also made the unusual move of listing an entire city -- Charleston, S.C. -- on “watch status.” The group says expanding cruise ship tourism could harm the city's historic character.

Specific sites in Alabama, California, Minnesota, New Mexico, South Dakota, Virginia and Wisconsin also made the list, including a historic Chinatown called China Alley in California's San Joaquin Valley that began when immigrants arrived in 1877. There are no local historic preservation officials to enforce laws protecting such sites, according to the National Trust.

The final listing this year is devoted to historic sites imperiled by state actions as legislatures across the country consider cuts to preservation funding. Michigan eliminated historic preservation tax credits, and Texas has considered deep cuts with one proposal to eliminate its state historic preservation agency.

Funding is the biggest threat affecting all 50 states because so many are facing budget deficits and a sputtering economy, said National Trust President Stephanie Meeks. Congress was among the first to cut historic preservation funding by eliminating the Save America's Treasures grant program in the 2011 budget.

“I think it does send a message that preservation is something that's nice to have, not something that's essential to have,” Meeks told The Associated Press. “Of course, we take a different view.”

In Charleston on Monday, residents and environmental groups sued Carnival Cruise Lines, alleging that the company's vessels are a public nuisance. They said cruises mean more noise, pollution and congestion, among other complaints.

Charleston's issues are “complex and somewhat unique,” Meeks said, though the national group does not have plans to join the lawsuit. She said Charleston was nominated for the list by a local group.

The National Trust wanted to “strike a balanced note between recognizing the great work that Charleston has done in preservation over the last several decades, while also signaling our concern about the growing impacts of the cruise ship industry in that port,” Meeks said.

Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. called the designation unfortunate.

“What we have here with the cruise business is very modest and in perfect scale. We manage tourism carefully in Charleston, and the cruise industry amounts to less than 4 percent of our tourism,” he said.

Cruises have about 200,000 passengers a year among the city's 4.5 million visitors, he said.

The mayor said he felt the trust was getting pressure from “the same tiny, radical fringe” in Charleston that has sued over the cruise industry.

The cruise controversy over the impact of cruises has been brewing for months, ever since Carnival last year permanently based its 2,056-passenger liner Fantasy in Charleston creating a year-round cruise industry.

In Chicago, the uniquely shaped Prentice Women's Hospital is perhaps the list's most endangered site, Meeks said. Northwestern University, which owns the building, has said it plans to raze the building later this year. Preservationists argue the building is a prime candidate for reuse and is one of Chicago's most distinctive designs from the 1970s.

“What we hope for through the `11 Most' listing ... is to engender a dialogue locally about what's important about this place,” Meeks said. “Sometimes that place is a building, like Prentice Women's Hospital, and sometimes that place is a state or a city.”

In Minneapolis, the Pillsbury “A” Mill Complex stands vacant. The trust said the National Historic Landmark is in danger of piecemeal development that could strip it of its potential for reuse and rehabilitation.

Coltrane's home in Dix Hills, N.Y., where he wrote “A Love Supreme,” has deteriorated due to a lack of funds, the trust said. A local group hopes to restore the site as an education center but needs additional support.

Other endangered sites on the National Trust list are:

-- Bear Butte, Meade County, S.D. -- This 4,426-foot mountain is sacred ground for many Native American tribes but is threatened by proposed wind and oil energy development.

-- Belmead-on-the-James, Powhatan County, Va. -- This little-known landmark of African-American heritage was once a slave plantation that was transformed into schools for black and Native American students. The buildings closed in the 1970s and now need emergency repairs.

-- Fort Gaines, Dauphin Island, Ala. -- This fortress that played a pivotal role in the Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay is threatened as the shoreline erodes as much as 50 feet per year.

-- Greater Chaco Landscape, N.M. -- The site includes hundreds of Native American archaeological and cultural sites across 1,000 miles but is in jeopardy due to increased oil and gas exploration.

-- Isaac Manchester Farm, Avella, Pa. -- Coal mining threatens this colonial-era farm that has been home to eight generations of one family.

-- National Soldiers Home Historic District, Milwaukee, Wis. -- Deferred maintenance has left some historic buildings on this campus on in danger of collapse.

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Associated Press Writer Bruce Smith in Charleston, S.C., contributed to this report. 


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