Eat a Bowl of Tea

Wayne Wang has been around a long time and Eat a Bowl of Tea was one of his indie films from the 80s.

The movie is about a New York Chinatown right after WWII ended (40s). The Chinese Exclusion Act prevented Chinese immigrants from bringing over family members. This created a male dominated Chinatowns in the US. Russell Wong plays the son of one of these immigrants and has returned from serving in the US Army. As a serviceman, he is allowed to bring a bride back from China. Which he does via an arranged marriage. The movie than moves into how this couple deals with life in the states. Not only as an couple via arranged marriage, but as one of the few couples in Chinatown.

I was both happy and sad while watching this film. I was happy that this slice of Chinese-American history is presented. Something that was still very real until the 1960s. I was sad because the a story had to be wrapped around it. Do I think the story is representative? I don't know, but something didn't feel right about it.

I would recommend this film. This is a type of film making is no longer around within Chinese/Taiwanese American film making community. Also of note is Russell Wong. Russell Wong was the great Asian American hope during the 80s and 90s. Russell was anointed with the responsibility of breaking through to stardom. Up to that time of Eat a Bowl of Tea, no Asian American actors to date had achieved "stardom". From Russell's performance in the movie, I can see why.

Wayne and Russell seem to keep pluggin away in Hollywood or in the film industry. Wayne is still making movies. Russell keeps appearing in movies.

I have an issue with the cover of the DVD. The girl is not in the movie and there's some sexuality in the film. Why does this movie need to be exoticized?

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (The Mummy 3) - 神鬼傳奇3

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon (The Mummy 3 - 神鬼傳奇3) was released to world in the summer of 2008 and is now on DVD. If you've seen the first 2 of this trilogy, you can expect some of the same but its mostly a departure from the first 2 Mummy films. Brandon Fraser reprises his role as Rick O'Connell as well as John Hannah as Johnathan Carnahan. The rest of the crew are new to the franchise. Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, Isabella Leong, Anthony Wong, Jacky Wu, Jessey Meng, and Russell Wong (李連杰,楊紫瓊,梁洛施,黃秋生,吳京,孟廣美,王盛德).

The movie is the same formula of the first two. A mummy is resurrected and its up to the hero and friends to take care of it. In this installment, the main mummy is Jet Li. Jet Li has to get to the eye of Shangri-la to find the fountain of youth. Once there, the fountain gives him powers, including the ability to raise his mummified terracotta army. The heroes try to prevent this and you know the rest.

There are varying degrees of Mandarin Chinese spoken in the film. However, of the main Chinese cast, only Jet Li and Jessey Meng are fluent in Mandarin. Michelle Yeoh, Isabella Leong, Anthony Wong and Russell Wong would not call Mandarin Chinese their first tongue, and you can tell. Its weird to hear and see this unfold in an Hollywood film.  And this is only the Chinese actors.  Imagine when you hear Luke Ford and friends speak Chinese.  I can imagine, I took Chinese 1 and 2 in college.  Its like that.

I selected this off Netflix because I liked Mummy 1 and 2. I also wanted to see if the movie was as bad its been made out to be. It was that and much more. I won't ever want to watch this again.

Having scored $400 million plus worldwide. You can bet another sequel is coming. The epilogue points to Peru. Will Isabella Leong reprise her roll now that she's an love interest and mortal?