It's been playing in select cities, but A Serious Man, the latest from the Coen Brothers, opens in wider release this weekend. It's about a Jewish family struggling with their afflictions in 1967 Midwestern America.
Not really a movie you'd expect to see any Asian faces in, but lo and behold, I happened to catch Steve Park in a TV spot for the movie. You might recall that he's worked with the Coen Brothers before, in Fargo. According to IMDb, in this movie, he plays "Clive's Father." Who is Clive? Clive is played by David Kang.
In limited release, New York, I Love You, a collective work of twelve short films about love, shot by by internationally renowned directors in New York City's five boroughs. The movie's directors include Jiang Wen, Mira Nair, Shuji Iwai and Shekhar Kabur, with a cast that includes Irrfan Khan, Maggie Q and Shu Qi.
Also opening in limited release, Black Dynamite, a crazy homage to badass (and often just plain bad) 1970s "blaxploitation" flicks. I caught a screening of this movie last week, and it's actually a lot of fun. But while its affection for the genre is remarkably thorough and authentic, the joke runs a little too long. You get it pretty quickly.
One scene that could clearly get cut: Black Dynamite's assault on the Kung Fu Island, and the assbeating he gives to The Fiendish Dr. Wu (played by Roger Yuan) and his band of mean-looking but useless Asian henchmen. The tip of the hat to bad yellow peril chopsocky flicks is dead on, but it's easily the most extraneous sequence in the movie.
And finally, Smith Cho shows up in tonight's season premiere of ABC's Ugly Betty, in her recurring role as Betty's quirky new officemate, Megan. I don't know what is happening in the photo above, but tonight's episode appears to include something to do with Rambo-styled archery.