A couple of months ago, I had a conversation with a good friend about my future and how The Banana Times is going to progress. One option for my future was to work for a few years then return to school for a masters degree in possibly Journalism. She asked why not Film Studies, and travel the world for my thesis. I responded “but I wouldn’t know what to write about”. With a brief hesitation I said “…Banana Cinema?”. In retrospect it was an obvious answer, but it never crossed my mind. Naturally, my friend knew this would be the answer all along.

It makes perfect sense since the national cinemas around the world have already been deeply covered and analyzed. Looking further, we live in such a globalized, information-dependent, and international society that language is becoming less and less of a requirement. With that said, national cinemas are evolving beyond the restrictions of their geography and race, thus Banana Cinema is possible.

Banana Cinema will not be contained within a country or a specific culture. It will encompass many Asian cultures and the traces they leave in broadening their horizons past their borders and into other identities. This is definitely something new that can be explored, where a national cinema requires not a nation, but a unified globalized ideology of sorts.

Looking back in the last 10 years, were there any potential young representatives of Banana Cinema that came about? Here are a three people I thought of who have made strides in culture, art and media, as well as influenced myself and The Banana Times (alphabetical order):

John Cho (Actor):

We know John Cho from the American Pie films, Harold & Kumar, and now in ABC’s new drama, Flashforward. Cho has made his mark with the Asian community by by portraying the stereotypical yellowman in Harold & Kumar (soon to be) trilogy, but has graciously advanced into deeper roles such as the revamped Hikaru Sulu in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek and even a guest spot on How I Met Your Mother as the Caucasian-named Jeff Coatsworth. In my opinion his most significant “Banana” role was in Justin Lin’s Better Luck Tomorrow where he played the cunning spoiled Asian high-school student, Steve Choe. More on the film later.

Utada Hikaru (Singer/Songwriter):

Utada Hikaru has very little to do with cinema, let alone Banana Cinema, but she has made huge strides in bringing together Asian and Western audiences. Utada’s body of work speaks for itself, with 5 Japanese and 3 English studio albums selling well over 70 million copies. Although her English work is not as powerful or influential as her native tongue, her global reach is undeniable. You’d be hard pressed to find an Anime lover or a gamer who has not heard of Utada Hikaru (Kingdom Hearts, Rebuild of Evangelion). Personally, if Easy Breezy was not selected as her American debut single, Exodus would have been way more popular and recognized (an underrated album methinks).

Justin Lin (Director):

Born in Taiwan and grew up in LA, Justin Lin made one of the most relatable film to Banana Cinema. Better Luck Tomorrow revolved around a group of Asian-American high school students who became bored of school life and resorted to crime and violence. It was made with a very low budget ($250,000) but made it to the Official Selection of Sundance and the Toronto International Film Festival. The stereotypical Asian student who excels in school is portrayed relevantly, with a splash of crime and drama reminiscent of many Hong Kong films. Lin went on to direct Annapolis and Fast & Furious, but he will forever be remembered, at least in our eyes, by the man who possibly kickstarted Banana Cinema.

Please note that the aforementioned three people are not in any way better or more significant than any other possible representatives of Banana Cinema or any topic regarding the blending of Asian and Western cultures. They were elaborated on because of their emergence in the last decade more or less.

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical):
Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat, Ang Lee, Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Lucy Liu, Masi Oka, Ken Watanabe, John Woo, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi

-phibz.

The first decade of our second millennia is coming to a close in 6 days, and it seems a little anti-climactic. But to highlight this landmark event, we here at TheBananaTimes are going to countdown to 2010 with a series of posts called “Decading Bananas: Hong Kong”. As I am now in Hong Kong and will be dissolving into the new year here as well, I will comment and enlighten some cultural, historical and social topics in the past 10 years, mostly relating to the my own experiences and more importantly, the big picture – The Banana.

PART I – THE COMMERCIAL HARBOUR

Being an international student growing up in Hong Kong, the pop culture we absorbed was mainly from the television (Note: International students in HK attended schools where English was the primary language being taught, local students were taught in Cantonese). Those of my generation experienced their childhood and adolescence in a Hong Kong still under British rule with the looming and inevitable handover on the horizon. This meant that the media that we were surrounded by were not necessarily national, and as our schools implied, but were mixed in Eastern and Western cultures.

Post-handover and into the 2000s, Hong Kong TV still retained its bilingual tendencies and its international reputation even increased. Due to the dip in the economy after the 1997 handover from British rule, tourism was a financial savior, and thus the international, consumerist and packaged Hong Kong was more apparent than ever. Spawning from this tourist dependency was a flurry of intricate, touching, narratively rich television commercials and advertisements.

My first day back in town, I had the privilege to check out a Cathay Pacific commercial shoot. I got to Cathay City, the main headquarters of the corporate airliner. They had a half a floor filled with interior sets of airplanes, from models of the 80s up until the latest “fishbone” model today. Walking around the sets was nostalgic and almost dreamlike.

The director was an Englishman, Laurence Dunmore (directed The Libertine), whose fast-pace efficient style controlled the flow of the set intricately. His direction was voiced in a firm and demanding tone but was not intended to be forceful or even rude, just efficient. This attitude suits Hong Kong’s work ethic perfectly, where unnecessary work and roundabout methods are frowned upon. Any thing or time that is wasted is a hindrance to success. It is a dream for any Hong Kong artist in charge of a multilingual set to operate like this.

Another CX commercial directed by Laurance Dunmore

Other than the director and 4 or 5 other people, the rest of the crew were Cantonese speakers. Even with the majority of the cast and crew being Chinese, Dunmore’s fast-pace efficiency still held out. This goes to show the potential of international collaboration in a place like Hong Kong. After realizing this, I discovered where my inter-disciplinary mindset and attraction to cross-cultural creativity originates. This way of thinking was how The Banana Times came about.

The commercials that I have been drawn to, and that have inspired me in the last decade was a clear foundation behind The Banana Times and what we aim to do here. I only hope that even after 12 years after the handover from British rule that this collaborative and unified ideology will not fade, and that Hong Kong is not the only post-colonial region that has adopted this creative practice.

One of my favourite CX commercials

I shall conclude Part I of Decading Bananas here, and ask why not encourage cross-cultural understanding and integration under the common goal of creativity and art? Even if it is for commercial purposes. Until Part II, I bid you all a very happy Christmas!

-phibz.

Another short post for today. I performed a skit in Japanese language class yesterday. I based my character on the very popular Shin-chan from the Crayon Shin-chan manga and anime franchise. A tribute to the creator, Yoshito Usui, who passed away in September this year. The result..

The outfit could’ve been better but I did act like a drunk perverted kindergarten student. Hence “yoochien”, which means kindergarten in Japanese.

I couldn’t find a funny clip of the series in Japanese on YouTube, so this dubbed version will have to do, the humour is surprisingly funny! I didn’t know Action Kamen (Mask) was Action Bastard in the English dubs, kind of makes it more vulgar, which is good. “Tore him apart with my big Bastard Rod!” (:

Rest In Peace, Yoshito Usui. Your humour will be missed, but it will live on.

-phibz.

The last of four posts for today!

Three weekends ago, the boys from the Heroic Melon Collective (including myself) took a drive from Toronto to Waterloo, Ontario. Why Waterloo, Ontario you might ask? Well, other than the being a student town and having a high concentration of studious young people (some people call them nerds, but I call them academically gifted with a side effect of being socially untalented, I’m nice that way), Waterloo really doesn’t have much else to offer – until November 21st came.

The Waterloo Festival of Animated Cinema was held that weekend, and we attended the film festival for one key reason – they were screening Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance! This was the first screening of the film in North America (if you exclude Hawaii) in its original Japanese form, with subtitles of course. The Heroic Melon crew are huge anime/manga-philes, and words can not express how excited we were to watch it, and how blown away we were afterward. Since words doesn’t do our experience justice, we’ll let the latest episode of Random Antics show you:

Heroic Melon Collective presents,
Random Antics Volume 14:
You Can (Not) Advance

There you have it. Possibly the best remake of any film or television series. I urge all of you to watch it when it is released in a theater near you. I for one know that it is already out in Hong Kong (it came out December 3rd). If my calculations are correct, Eva 2.0 will be in North American theaters by the summer of 2010 (it’ll be dubbed, but you folks HAVE to see it, one way or another). And believe me when I say, in the Academy Awards ceremony of 2011, Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance will be on the nominees list for Best Animated Feature. You heard it here first.

Eva 2.0 trailer:

“Needless to say, Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance was epic, legendary, divine”

-phibz.

The 3rd of four posts. The lead protagonist of the long-running grand manga/anime series One Piece, will appear on the cover of Men’s Non-No fashion magazine in their January issue. Monkey D. Luffy, the series’ main character, will be the first manga/anime character to appear on the cover in the magazine’s 24-year run. It is also Eiichiro Oda’s first cover illustration for a magazine that is not manga or anime related. Very cool! [More at AnimeNewsNetwork]

The first eight pages of this issue will showcase models who resemble various characters from the One Piece universe such as Nami, Robin, Zoro and Sanji.
This goes to show the status of the One Piece franchise. I say give it 5 to 6 more years, and One Piece will reach the level of influence, grandness and omnipresence that Dragonball had and still has. Oda explicitly states that his biggest influence was Akira Toriyama and his mammoth Dragonball franchise, so it isn’t far-fetched to say that One Piece will follow in his footsteps. They DID get together to create a one-shot collaboration, Cross Epoch. Sidenote: Doesn’t Luffy’s outer jacket resemble a something Gokou wears?

Another leading man on the cover of a magazine is Korea-superstar Rain on the Korean Allure magazine, promoting his latest blockbuster film Ninja Assassin. [More at AllureKorea]

Not much to say here. Asian men, feel inadequate? (:

-phibz.

The 2nd of four short posts today. A news update each for two Korean girl bands, Girls’ Generation and Wonder Girls.

First up, So Nyeo Shi Dae. Tickets for their upcoming Asian concert tour were sold out in three minute last week. You did not read wrong. THREE minutes. I guess every lonesome Asian guy out there is finally catching on to this great phenomenon. They are scheduled for two concerts in Seoul on December 19th and 20th, then they move on to Shanghai and Bangkok. [More at The Chosun Ilbo]

Next, Wonder Girls. The Wonder Girls are scheduled to appear and perform on the popular show So You Think You Can Dance next week. They’re going to perform their latest US released single “Nobody”. [More at StarEastAsia] Music Video Below:

I don’t really know why they were invited to perform at SYTYCD, their dancing in the MV has nothing compared to SNSD’s “Chocolate Love” in the video above. Ah well, hope they put on a good show.

-phibz.

The 1st of four short-posts today. The Hollywood Foreign Press released 15 animated films that could be nominated for Best Animated Feature at the upcoming Golden Globe awards in January 2010. The 15 considerations are:

• 9
• Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
• Battle For Terra
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
• Coraline
• Disney’s A Christmas Carol
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
• Mary and Max
• The Missing Lynx
• Monsters VS Aliens
• Planet 51
• Ponyo
• The Princess and the Frog
• Up

Riding the excess waves of the Academy Awards (their gluttonous expansion of 10 Best Picture nominees), the Golden Globes have 5 Best Animated Feature nominee slots this year. The Oscars and Globes sure are desperate to eat up airtime. Anyhow, here are my predictions for Best Animated Feature: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, A Christmas Carol, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Princess and the Frog, Up

Granted, I didn’t watch all of the films (didn’t even hear of Battle For Terra or The Missing Lynx until today) but I believe Ponyo won’t make the cut. A couple of months back I gave Ponyo a 7 out of 10 rating and I think even that was a little generous. In my opinion, it was definitely Miyazaki’s weakest piece. Especially with Up campaigning for a spot on the 10-seater Best Picture limousine at the Oscars, winning Best Animated Feature at the Golden Globes won’t be surprising, anyone other film is just playing catch up. (no one REALLY cares about the Globes, they nominated Tom Cruise for Best Supporting Actor last year for goodness’ sake!). Then again, seeing how random the Globes are, all of my predictions are as plausible as Ditto morphing into Agumon (click the links, they’re funny). So Ponyo has as good of a chance to be nominated as the rest of the 14.

-phibz.

Akira Toriyama, the famed creator of the immortal Dragonball franchise, is releasing a new manga mini-series!

Toriyama is BACK! …well, for now. It IS only a mini-series. He hasn’t released a full-fledged series since Dragonball, and that ended 14 years ago. But then again, who needs to release ANYTHING when you created the single most-successful manga/anime franchise in history. Then Hollywood and James Wong went and ruined it for everyone… EVERYONE! FUUUUUU-

Akira Toriyama has collaborated with DNA² creator, Masakazu Katsura, and created a new manga mini-series titled Jiya (if you haven’t read DNA², check it out, it’s very sexy) . It slated for release in 2010′s first issue of Weekly Young Jump magazine on December 10th. The story is said to be a “super science-fiction action” with an “alien of justice” as the protagonist:

[More at AnimeNewsNetwork]

In keeping with the science-fiction genre, Jon Favreau’s Iron Man 2 released its latest promotional poster. It looks like mobile-suit heaven.. I made the mistake and watched the leaked bootleg footage of the film shown at the latest Comic-Con. After that, I was screaming like Kate in Paranormal Activity, because I wanted to watch the film so f***in’ badly! So for your sake, I won’t post the link of that god-forsaken video.

On a less frustrating note, notice the similarities with Iron Man and Jiya? They both have that cat teeth thing going on with their masks.

[From IWatchStuff]

Spoiler: Warmachine got shorter, slimmer and hustles less in Iron Man 2.

-phibz.