Writer-director Tom Lin delivers an impressive and ambitious sophomore feature with STARRY STARRY NIGHT, a film adaptation of Jimmy Liao’s popular children’s book starring Josie Xu as the young lead, who many know from Stephen Chow’s CJ7. This Taiwanese fantasy-drama is about Mei, a young girl living in a financially stable family only to witness her parents’ marriage slowly deteriorate. As her parents begin to stray further from each other, Mei finds solace in time spent with her quirky grandfather who constantly reinforces her ever-expanding imagination with his hand-made wooden animals. Mei’s life takes a sorrowful turn when her grandpa falls ill, leaving her without any source of comfort with her parents’ looming divorce. However, she befriends a new student at school, Jay (Eric Lin), who also has trouble in his personal life. Knowing the issues in their respective lives, they take a colorful and whimsical journey into the mountains to find Mei’s grandpa’s rural cottage.

Director Lin achieved something rarely seen in recent Asian cinema with STARRY STARRY NIGHT, using visual effects as an effective narrative and visual device to push forward a captivating story, rather than superficially sprinkling CGI on top of a film to increase marketability. Almost like a cross between a Studio Ghibli film and Woody Allen’s recent Oscar-winning Midnight In Paris, Tom Lin uses a family drama as the backbone to his story as he ambitiously and successfully explores the boundless world of adolescence imagination. Lin tells the tale from the perspective of a young teenage girl and how she sees her everyday life. From adventurous and playful daydreams of your crush’s shadow appearing as a dinosaur, to having a troop of your grandfather’s wooden animals come to life to escort you home.

What STARRY STARRY NIGHT vividly portrayed with great empathy was that sensation you felt as a child where the world was your playground. Everything you saw and touch could easily morph into anything you desired. Even though it originated from your mind, every animated creature and character you saw was real through your eyes because it was you who made them. Growing up there were many things you did not understand, and when life became sad and dark, the one safe thing you could rely on was the limitless energy of your own imagination.

STARRY STARRY NIGHT made its North American premiere at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts on March 16th 2012 and was presented by the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.

STARRY STARRY NIGHT will began its exclusive North American run only in Toronto on March 23rd at AMC Yonge & Dundas and AMC Kennedy Commons.

Philbert: @philbertlui
Banana Times: @bananatimes
Reel Asian: @reelasian 

There is a sequence late in the first quarter of last Thursday’s game, between the New York Knicks and Miami Heat, that Jeremy Lin will probably remember for the rest of this season–if not his career.

He has the ball at the top of the key, guarded by Mario Chalmers. His teammate, Tyson Chandler, scurries over to sets a pick.

This play, the pick and roll, has been the foundation of the Knicks’ success in the Linsanity era. Lin is so skilled with his decision making, and Chandler so deft at cutting immediate after the pick, that it has become the engine of which the team operates.

Usually, after Chandler sets the pick, Lin will begin his drive, and one of three things will occur: Either Lin gets enough room for an uncontested jumper, Lin gets into the paint, or Chandler will receive a pass with a clear path to the basket.

Not tonight.

Lin begins his drive, but Joel Anthony–Chandler’s defender–jumps out and cuts off the lane. The Knicks reset the play. This time Lin goes left–a direction of which he is averse–but Wade pops over from the weak side to block his path. Lin heads the other way, but LeBron James–a 6’8, 260 pounds player who’s built like a tank but moves like a cheetah–stands in his way. Still undeterred, Lin looks for the pass, but James is so quick, and so explosive, he closes the passing lane before Lin could identify the open teammate.

Completely stuck, Lin tosses a skip pass across the court–essentially giving up that play, at least from his end.

Later in the game, in the 4th quarter, Lin receives another pick from Chandler, another attempt at their bread and butter. Again, LeBron and Chalmers blitzed Lin with a hard double team, but before they could reach him, Lin picks up his dribble–a move that, essentially, concedes a stoppage of attack.

“He’s f***ing scared,” screamed a drunk patron seated a few tables from me inside a sports bar. “Stick to your books!”

As annoyed as I was with that racist idiot, I agreed–albeit to a lesser extent. To me, Lin looked, for the lack of a better word, shook. 

It’s a feeling that I, along with probably many Asian American basketball players, have personally experienced on the basketball court at one point or another. It’s not necessarily a feeling of fear, or acknowledgment of defeat, it’s more feeling surprised, taken aback, shocked.

Like a feeling of, “damn”.

It’s something we usually feel when we play basketball against black players.

As I’ve blogged about before, there is no escaping the fact that black athletes are generally faster and more explosive than other athletes. It’s why the best professional basketball league in the world is 85% black and why the fastest sprinters and jumpers at the Olympics are black.

And in a sport like basketball, superior explosiveness–the ability to jump faster and higher is one key trait–and height makes a huge difference. For me, and probably many Asian basketball players, we’ve all had those moments where we complete a basketball move that usually works well against our peers, but have no effect on a black player. For example, a crossover followed by two hard dribbles will usually distance myself from the defender. Against an athletic black player, I may do the exact same move only to notice he’s still attached to my hip.

And if you don’t play against them regularly–say, if you generally play against your own social circle of friends from similar background–that sudden exposure to superior athleticism will leave you…shook.

I think that’s what happened to Lin. The look on his face is one I recognize. I know I’m not alone in recognizing that look. I know other Asian ballers are nodding. We’ve all been shook.

Basketball journalists could see it (they can’t mention the whole “black players are just so much more athletic it’s unfair” bit, but read between the lines, the undertone is there).

“Lin has probably never faced defense this aggressive, from such great athletes, before in his life,” tweeted Ken Berger from CBS Sports.

“As we were watching the game, we almost wanted to yell ‘Leave him alone, he’s just a boy!’,” wrote Will Leitch of New York Magazine.

Lin admits this, too, in the post-game press conference.

“I can’t remember another game where it was so hard to take dribbles,” Lin said in the post game press conference, after being forced into his worst game of his career, and a deflating Knicks loss.

It is this whole scenario that’s had me saying, from day one, that to truly understand the significance of Lin’s emergence, you have to be an Asian male who plays, or has played, a lot of basketball in America.

You have to experience jumping as hard as you can and still not getting high enough for that rebound, or breaking out every dribble move in your arsenal only to go nowhere because the other guy is just too fast, or realizing “wow, us Asians are just physically inferior when it comes to explosive sports”. You have to have that moment when you feel shook.

You have to go through all of that to understand why almost all of us never thought an Asian player could make it to the NBA without being a giant, because the thought of a Chinese guy making it to the NBA as a guard–a position that requires explosiveness–just seemed too improbable.

My friend Marv and I compared Lin making it to the NBA with Obama becoming President, in that, it was something we (Asian ballers) thought it could never happen.

I thought it was a bit too much to make that comparison publicly, but TIME magazine’s Lin cover story from two weeks ago makes the same case.

With all due respect, but if you’re a White guy, or even an Asian woman, you can’t fully grasp the shock and joy that we Chinese males felt watching Lin (that’s why Jay Caspian Kang said him and his friends have nearly teared up watching Lin play). You don’t truly understand how this was something that was previously thought to be impossible, because, as far as I’m concerned, there isn’t a field, or a hobby, where the rest of you simply could not measure up to the best SOLELY because of your physical traits or genetics. For the most part, whatever you guys wanted to do, there wasn’t a daily reminder that “um, you’re Chinese… it’s kinda impossible”.

We Chinese-American kids who grew up playing basketball everyday, we’ve all had that moment when we felt “shook”, leading to the unspoken agreement among us that ain’t none of us will ever play basketball beyond high school.

Lin eventually felt it too, but it took the world’s greatest athlete at the highest level to do it. And that, in itself, is still something to be proud of.

And no, he will never be as good as LeBron. He won’t even be within 2 levels. LeBron will make Lin feel shook again if he has to guard him (LeBron makes everyone else feel shook too, to be fair).

But the thing I admire most about Lin is he won’t stop trying. Shortly after picking up his dribble in that shook moment. Lin attacked again.

He still played a horrible game, and Miami still destroyed the Knicks (don’t let the close score fool you, that game was never in doubt, Miami outclassed the Knicks in every way), but Lin at least showed that, shook or not, he’s gonna keep driving.

Even if dude can only go right.

Ben Sin: @bencsin
Banana Times: @bananatimes

Everyone hates Mondays, it’s a known fact. To help your Mondays be a little easier to get through, we here at The Banana Times will try our hardest to bring you the best memes every week that are related to the “Banana”. This week, it’s Linspirational (yeah, getting slightly tired of the puns as well).

We need to realize that as spectacular and heart-warming the Jeremy Lin story is, he is just going to get better. In time, Lin will only get more confident and have his skills more refined. With all the worldwide attention he’s receiving, he will only learn to shoulder it all and become a better person and a better basketball player. I am confident to say that Jeremy Lin, is here to stay.

Philbert: @philbertlui
Banana Times: @bananatimes

On July 20th, 2010, Jeremy Lin, was signed by the Golden State Warriors. After being undrafted coming out of Harvard University, the 6’3 point guard dazzled in the NBA summer leagues, including going toe to toe with the NBA’s 2010 first pick, John Wall in a summer league game against the Wizards. An American born to Taiwanese parents, his exciting and ferocious play in 5 games has turned Jeremy Lin into a fan favorite even before having an official NBA team. This, for more reasons than the average NBA fan would understand, matters.

Basketball to me has always been my favourite sport for a number of reasons. There’s pace, there’s drama, there’s tension, but most importantly, it is the most vicarious sport. Everyone has their inner athlete, or at least their yearning to become one, even though a majority of us are not athletically gifted. We go to playgrounds and rec leagues, trying an Iverson crossover, a Steve Nash behind the back, or a Lebron crab dribble drive (that’s called less and therefore easier to perform). Those who are lucky can pull off a Hakeem (and now Rondo) Dream -Shake, or God-forbid even dunk once in a while. We try these moves because we all want to be these athletes, and even though we can’t string all these athletic gifts together, we dream. It’s why we watch basketball; so that we can live vicariously through these amazing physical specimens that do what we cannot. They defy gravity. They will themselves to greatness.

This is even more important for the banana community.

There’s no arguing around it; Asians are generally less athletically gifted than most other people, and those that are are usually deemed finesse players (like in baseball), are gifted in sports that do not require pure athletic power (such as racquet sports), or need to be trained non-stop by their Government to produce results (diving, skating and gymnastics). Even back at Boston University, there was a rec league for Asian players 6’0 and under (which is about 90% of us). We need more than most others to live through our television sets, because if we can’t do, we can watch, and feel like we are taking part in something bigger than ourselves.

This is where Jeremy Lin comes in.

Yao Ming was no doubt one of the largest factors in marketing NBA and the sport of basketball to Asia, and specifically China. But even before Yao was drafted, people joked about how he was a creation of the Chinese Government, just a way to manufacture a player into the NBA like they have done in other sports. Even to some of his most die-hard fans, we were proud to finally have a Chinese star in the NBA, but didn’t really believe that a regular Chinese person ever could unless we were 7’6, never mind being put under a state controlled farm system. And this is why Jeremy Lin matters. A division II state champion in high school, Lin has always been about proving that Asians can play, and more importantly, showing that this sport can be had by the new breed of banana’s (whether it be ABC, BBC, CBC or other westernized Asians). Despite never getting a Division I scholarship or being drafted by an NBA team, Lin is trying to overcome stereotypes to realize his dream in the association, entering with a chip on his shoulder like many other Asian athletes may have had. Though he will not create a basketball buzz like Yao did back in 2002, he does have a drive and slash game that relies on his athletic gifts that previous Asian players like Yi Jian Lian, Yuta Tabuse and even Yao himself do not have; the type of game that fans of the game watch basketball for. Though he will not break all Asian stereotypes (there’s a joke I’ve heard a few times about how Asian parents wouldn’t let their children become athletes unless they graduate 4 years from an Ivy League school first), he will be an important stepping stone in proving that Asians have got game too, whether it be in dominating all-star games or contributing 10 minutes off the bench. And we all should be watching.

Just a little less vicariously this time.

-Garron
twitter/thegarz88

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.

I’m back from my forced hiatus. Wilks banned me from the servers because I ate his last banana. I don’t regret it. It was long, soft and scrumptious (:

I actually just had a lot of other work to do. Anyway, its good to be back blogging. Its become an uncertified addiction. You know you’re getting hooked when you see something interesting or weird in your daily life (life outside of your computer proximity) and your first thought is “that would be awesome on my blog”. Sigh, blogaholic:

[Source - XKCD]
Thank you WouldYouLikeSomePie for showing me this a while ago

Now for the headliner:

[Source - CelebrityCM]

Doesn’t S.H.E. know better than ripping off the slogan of the President of the United States? President Obama probably won’t sue or even acknowledge copyrights. George W. Bush on the other hand…

-phibz

News.com.au reports:

TAIWAN police have arrested a 55-year-old man for lobbing bank notes worth about T$1 million ($41,000) from vehicles, causing disorder in the streets.
The man tossed the bills from a taxi in a crowded part of Taichung city yesetrday as people stopped to pick up the cash, Changhua police official Lin Shih-ming said.

This man actually started this excreting-money mission earlier as part of a road trip. He is charged with public endagerment and desctruction of currency. He also burnt around $16,500 in cash that were in two big sacks. This money were proceeds of a property sale. Sure, pick up some free cash on the street, endangering the public.

Its not like these guys got arrested:

-phibz.