In light of David Fincher’s latest film The Social Network (if you haven’t seen it, watch it, trailer here), we here at The Banana Times would like to re-introduce a short film we made even before The Banana Times started, Book Of A Million Faces. This 9-minute piece is a mockumentary reflecting on the global Internet phenomenon of Facebook. But in this parody the social network is called “FaceNovel”, and the narrative plays out like a public service announcement spliced with real and scripted interviews to illustrate the addiction users have with this online service. Please direct your attention to the Book Of A Million Faces below!!

The Banana Times presents:
Book Of A Million Faces

This short was made in 2007 as a final film project in my sophomore year. Having made an experimental car-exploitation short and a documentary portraying our friend Dexter Chu earlier that year, I intended to simply join a project and get a decent mark as a crew mate. But succumbing to my desperate need for attention, I threw together a pitch in one day and decided to make something that makes fun of Facebook. And thus, Book Of A Million Faces was born! I talk a bit more about this old project in the video blog below:

The reason why we decided to re-release this old flick of ours was to pay tribute to the ever-expanding phenomena of Facebook, the drama that the creators had to endure in its creation, and ultimately David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s recent masterpiece in The Social Network. Even though Book Of A Million Faces pokes fun at Facebook, we only do it out of understanding and respect for what Mark Zuckerberg has done. In the end, we make fun of what we like and what’s important (:

Enjoy!

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The Social Network – A Banana Review:

David Fincher and Aaron Sorkins’ The Social Network is one for the books. If this film was part of the Toronto International Film Festival lineup this year, it would have rivaled 127 Hours and Black Swan. Many would object to making a film based on the lives of people who are still under 30 years old and so soon after the creation of Facebook. Less than a decade after the fact a film was already made. But due to the subject matter, I believe it was necessary to make a film this swiftly. Considering the exponential rate the cyber world is growing, in comparison to the real world, a biopic based on the lives on Mark Zuckerberg and his peers would soon become irrelevant if left untouched.

With the trending curve of Internet phenomena these days, maybe the film should have been made even sooner than it did. But having this story come out of the godly hands of Aaron Sorkin and the brilliant vision of David Fincher, The Social Network was more than anyone could have imagined. An impeccably written screenplay that drove the story with hypnotizingly great dialogue between strong yet fragile leading characters. The verdict? I’m going to watch it again. Keep in mind Inception was the only other film I watched twice in the theaters this year. Look out Oscars, we got another contender.

Banana Rating

/10

-phibz.

PS: The Social Network raked in 45.9 million dollars at the box office in its 10 days in cinemas. Chyeah.

PEEL ME is an award-winning film made by us, The Banana Times, that began its film festival run in July at the Toronto Youth Shorts Film Festival. Our next step is to bring our film to as many film festivals as we can, meaning PEEL ME won’t be available on our Youtube channel until our festival run is over. But we will be periodically uploading short clips from the film to let everyone know what PEEL ME is all about! This week’s clip features Andrew Kim, an actor who was part of the play The Boat People, which was recently featured at the Hamilton Fringe Festival.

A Clip from PEEL ME – The Grey Area of a Banana

In this clip Andrew refers to a very common issue of cultural identity crisis many Asians in North America experience due to their parents being immigrants or themselves being immigrants as well. I had the pleasure to watch the play he was in, The Boat People by Sylvia Vuong, and it tells a true and universal tale regarding the struggles of the countless Asian immigrants that had to leave their homeland and flee to the West. As a result of this mass-migration of our previous generation, many of our generation experience struggles with culture and identity. But of course, our current problems, which are at times overdramatic and immature, are nothing compared to those who came before us.

Andrew can be considered lucky in a sense, to be able to distinguish himself from set archetypes of Asian-North American cultural identity. He realizes that because of his Korean ethnicity, he is never going to be Caucasian-Canadian. Nor can he be fully Korean due to some of the Western cultures and influences he’s been brought up with. The term “grey area” rarely has a positive connotation. But when it comes to the context of the “Banana”, I think we should take pride in being part of the grey area. We are not purely white nor purely Asian in any sense, but somewhere in between. It has been birthed out of two extremes into something new that has a global following and relevance. What’s not to be proud of?

-phibz
youtube/thebananatimes
twitter/bananatimes
twitter/philbertlui

You can watch the trailer for PEEL ME here:

PEEL ME is a short film created by us, The Banana Times, that recently screened at this year’s Toronto Youth Shorts Film Festival in July and we also took home the Spectator Award of the night. We are immensely proud of this film and will continually shop it around various festivals in the coming year. Many have made requests for us to upload the whole film up onto Youtube, but due to the nature of the film, we would like to finish our festival run before letting cyberspace know what our film is about. But don’t fret, we will be releasing various clips from the film in the coming weeks to spread the word of PEEL ME. Here’s the first:

A Clip from PEEL ME – Old School Bananas VS New School Bananas:

As our co-founder Wilkin Cheung states in the clip, we find that there is a distinction in today’s society regarding the Banana. In later weeks we will upload a clip of our interview with Professor Theodore Goossen who specializes in East Asian Studies where he explains the origin of the term “Banana”. The term was originally used by an older generation of Asians who regarded themselves as purely Asian, against a younger generation of Asians who grew up or was heavily influenced by Western, North American or European attitudes and values. We here at The Banana Times find that there are more people who fit the New School Banana rather than the Old School Banana, where there are Asians who are completely Caucasian on the inside. This extreme Banana, so to speak, is rare in modern North American society where there are Asians who have no trace of their cultural heritage within them. Maybe with a few exceptions of Caucasian parents who have adopted Asian children might this be the case.

I guess we’re trying to beg the question: “Which is more prominent in today’s multicultural society: the Old School Banana, or the New School Banana?”

-phibz.
youtube/thebananatimes
twitter/bananatimes
twitter/philbertlui

Check out the trailer for PEEL ME:

Another Heroic Melon Random Antic! Lent is a Christian tradition where one gives up something  for 40 days to represent the 40 days Jesus wandered the desert resisting Satan’s temptation. This year’s lent began on February 17th and ended on April 3rd. As I am not a Christian, that is the extent of my knowledge on this religious practice. Three out of five of the HMC members took on Lent regardless of religion. Lester tried giving up drinking and caved after the first two days. Kevin and myself were more successful. I gave up eating chips, and Kevin decided to give up swearing and McDonalds.

Kevin was not entirely successful because sometimes swearing just comes naturally. For every time he accidentally cusses, he granted me the pleasure of slapping him across the face. We didn’t spend every waking minute together, contrary to popular belief, so Kevin informs me of his slip ups and I follow through by slapping him the next time I saw him. And thus, spawned this awesome Random Antic:

Heroic Melon Collective presents,
Random Antics Volume 18: Slapping Kevin

I will honestly never get sick of this episode (: This will be the third Random Antic that The Banana Times has edited for the HMC, but don’t worry, there will be many more to come! Especially if it involves inflicting slapstick pain on another HMC member (see what I did there?). I’ll leave you with this:

The day lent ended, I wanted to seal myself in my room with a wall of chips. But unfortunately, I ate the wall. Mmmm…

-phibz.

Its been quite a February, considering it is the shortest month of the year. We had the NFL SuperBowl XLIV, the NBA All-Star Game, Chinese New Year, Valentines Day, and last but not least, the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

To celebrate this wondrous month, The Banana Times made the move to start blogging in the form of video. It is not like the usual video blogs you see, where the speaker talks and looks straight into the camera. We here at TBT love to mix things up, and like any worthy and great genre, it adapts and adopts. We hope you enjoy our little spin to the video blog style!

The Banana Times Productions presents,
BANANA BLOG 01 – TIGER! TIGER!

恭喜發財!

-phibz

On January 16th 2009 The Banana Times, as part of the Heroic Melon Collective, hosted a film screening and music event at O’Grady’s Tap & Grill in Downtown Toronto. The event was titled The Best Case Scenario. We had an audience of around 70 people, almost double the amount of our last screening, Awkward Night Out.

We showcased a lineup of films that were very diverse, to show the HMC’s versatility and varying styles. Along with our short films, the very talented Kevin Lam from Bujumed Media and others, performed several musical numbers that eased the crowd into the event.

The Banana Times screened three things on the night, A Melon’s Journey: The Beginning, a teaser trailer for our upcoming film Dry Cups and a short version of our definitive documentary Peel Me. Videos below:

A Melon’s Journey: The Beginning

Peel Me – Trailer

Other works of the night included The Homecoming from Reuben John A. Tumanguil’s Perfect Destiny Pictures, Central Squares I & II from Lester Calleja’s Lemon Meringue Productions, and the headliner Process Of Elmination from Alex Chung’s Saunica Films. Videos below!

The Homecoming

Central Squares I & II

Process Of Elimination

All in all the event very well! On behalf of the HMC, we’d like to thank everyone who came and for everyone who helped! Please tune in to www.HeroicMelon.com for more details on our upcoming projects, updates and events!

-phibz

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.

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.

For those of you who don’t know, The Banana Times Productions, our film and video producing affiliate, is part of a creative hub called the Heroic Melon Collective. This includes Lemon Meringue Productions who created the Awkward Compilation and others such as Bujumed Music.

We have worked with each other as separate entities before but only formed the HMC recently. Even so, we have had many enjoyable and productive experiences.

And so, here is a video retrospect of what we have been doing thus far:

We hope you enjoy it!

Join our The Banana Times Facebook group here!

And our HMC group here!

-phibz