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5.23.2007

no sleep 'til shanghai and other stuff on dvd


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.