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.

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 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.

I came home still awemazed (yes, that is a portmanteau of awesome and amazed) by the divine epic-grandness that is Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance, at the Waterloo Festival of Animated Cinema. Play-by-play of our experience is on Twitter @ twitter.com/bananatimes or to the right of this post –>

Like I said, I was still and continually will be blown away by this film. Basically, I was in a GREAT mood despite the 3:30am orz figure floating over my head. And then, I saw this horrific piece of news..

Claiming the record for the biggest one-day gross, The Twilight Saga: New Moon raked in an estimated $72.7 million on approximately 8,500 screens at 4,024 sites. The Dark Knight was the previous title holder with $67.2 million on around 9,300 screens at 4,366 sites.

More at Box Office Mojo

Great mood, evaporated, in an instant. I questioned what kind of world we live in, where shit like this can happen. And I thought 2012, the end of time, could not come any sooner.
No wait. It came, and it was a horrible movie (Okay, I haven’t seen it. But since Day After Tomorrow, I’ve lost hope in Roland Emmerich).

What? New Moon? What’s that? I can’t see it. Can you? So they screwed up werewolves too?

-phibz.

PS: At least The Dark Knight still holds the record for biggest weekend (Fri-Sat-Sun) ever: 158.4 million

Warning: This post will be short, random and kind of lame.

So I was on my way walking towards a friends place to watch Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone, (3rd time watching it FTW!) and then I bursted into laughter because I saw this:

Then, this was my train of thought, “GEE! GEE! GEE! GEE! … I Jooooooeeee!!”
And I thought of this, and cracked up even more.

And to top it off, Girl’s Generation’s Gee music video..but DANCE version

-phibz.

The weather is getting increasingly cold and depressing. Temperature is dropping, precipitation is at its ultimate annoyance, and the wind won’t stop f***ing blowing. So some friends and I decided to warm our bodies and spirits by eating “hot pot” for dinner. We found a well known hot pot franchise called Siu Fei Yeung (小肥羊) or Mongolian Hot Pot in English, just a little south of Finch and Warden.

And I stumbled on a little something for fans of the Beck anime and manga out there:

BECK was DELICIOUS!

Typhoon! Typhoon 24!

-phibz

A little mini-post for you cute-craving people out there.

HAHA! I can watch that over and over again. The bear’s actions are so animated, it seriously looks like something out of an anime. I hope this made your day just a little better.

-phibz.