Calling all Jin fans... Todd Angkasuwan's No Sleep 'Til Shanghai is out on DVD this week. It's a documentary that follows Jin's eight-city tour of Asia in the fall of 2004. It's an interesting look at hip hop and its fans from a global perspective, seen through the eyes of Jin visiting the so-called "motherland." You can get it at the usual online retailers like Amazon.com
. For more information about the film go here. Check out Todd Angkasuwan's MySpace page here (there's apparently a DVD release party on Wednesday in Phoneix, AZ). And view the teaser trailer here.Some other notable titles out on DVD this week... Letters From Iwo Jima
, Clint Eastwood's World War II epic told from the Japanese perspective of the Iwo Jima conflict; Afro Samurai, the totally insane Spike TV animated series based on Takashi Okazaki's manga, directed by Fuminori Kizaki, featuring the voice of Samuel L. Jackson and music by The RZA; Kitchen Confidential, the short-lived Fox comedy that featured John Cho in the regular cast (but obviously not important enough to include on the cover art); You Only Live Twice, the James Bond flick where 007 is surgically altered (yellowface!) to go undercover as a Japanese guy; Epic Movie, starring Kal Penn in a godawful-looking spoof of big-budget blockbusters; and I've already mentioned several times how much I love Desmond Nakano's internment camp baseball drama American Pastime.And finally, I just found that The Grace Lee Project DVD is now available for home video purchase through Women Make Movies. It's a clever, charming documentary about the filmmaker's personal search for Grace Lee—one of the most common names in Asian America—and the women who break the typical mold. I love this film, and I plan on buying a copy. Highly recommended viewing. And if you're name is also Grace Lee, well, it's like required viewing.
