 Asian
American Village News
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.
------
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.
------
Associated Press Writer Bruce Smith in Charleston,
S.C., contributed to this report.
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