February 26, 2006
Life
Radio Fryer: Mike Relm blinds us with love and leaves a trail of smoking decks in his wake
Who rocks the party that rocks the body? Mike "it's 3am in Vancouver and I love my life" Relm. Gracing Richard's on Richards with his first headlining show last night, Relm took the stage after shit-hot opening sets by Montreal's Skratch Bastid and Vancouver's No Luck Club (see story below). Playing to a sold-out crowd peppered with indie kids, hip hop enthusiasts, and night club hoppers who didn't expect to be treated to 90 minutes of the golden goods from one of the best turntablists of the year, Relm pulled out all stops to deliver an audio-visual powerhouse of scratched DVDs and sampled ecstacy to make the most fastidious crate-sifter jealous. Standout moments included scritch-scratched visual materials from Fight Club, Office Space, and the Chemical Brothers, with audio samples running the gamut of Jay-Z, UB40, and Rage Against the Machine. We were cresting 4am when he finished with a singalong rendition of John Lennon's "Imagine."
Mike Relm is a rare gem when it comes to charisma; regardless of your affinity with turntablism or DJ culture, the spectacle of his visual show knocks the wind out of any audience. Attired in his signature black suit and spectacles, Relm's unassuming stature renders the delivery of his music all the more powerful. It isn't often that you see an artist walk onstage, throw down, and own the place, free of any pretentia; it was obvious that Relm was as excited to be there as his audience was to see him. The energy of Vancouver crowds has been likened to that of a loaf of canned ham, but Relm's show had the entire house jumping and woke me up the next morning with the chorus of "Josie and Relm" ringing in my ears.
More
Sample more of Relm's music here.
Read a review of Mike Relm's latest DVD, Suit Yourself.
Check out more coverage of Relm's show on Vancouver music blog From Blown Speakers.
Life
Yeelen: Brightness
When I received an announcement from the Vancouver International Film Centre that they were celebrating Black History Month, I was wonderfully surprised. Although intimately familiar with Asian Heritage Month in May, I am embarassed to say that I knew nothing about Black History Month. African director Souleymane Cissé's Yeelen or Brightness, winner of the Cannes Jury Prize in 1987, is the featured film in the series.
The film opens with a rising sun. Then, small prisms shine on a thin wooden pole. This is the magic pylon used by Mali people to find lost things and punish theives or traitors. A chicken hung on the pole bursts into flames. When critics say nothing prepares you for this cinematic experience, they were right. Yeelen is the story of Nianankoro, an up-and-coming magician hated and hunted by his powerful father. Nianankoro embarks on a journey and along the way, he learns about himself, the world, and even gets a taste of the birds and bees.
Trained in Russia and a longtime documentarian, Cissé's film can be seen as a reverse ethnography. Recreating life, rituals and behaviour of the time, the film is a remarkable work of magic realism, in the sense that it depicts magic as everyday fact as well as spiritual knowledge. However, to a young Chinese-Canadian viewer, I felt often distanced and confused by the film's impersonal reconstruction of Mali culture and religion. Yeelen can be compared to Canada's Atanarjuat. Both are categorized in the fantasy genre but are in fact cultural and social documents. To me, Atanarjuat is more accessible and compelling as a film. Instead of promoting cultural understanding, Yeelen makes me feel like an outsider. Interestingly, after leaving the Film Centre, I passed through an opening at the Or Art Gallery and felt a similar sense of detachment from the tribes of artists and groupies.
Yeelen is classic in African cinema and forms an important opposition to colonial perspectives such as a five-minute sequence in David Lachapelle's Rize where he intercuts between anthropological footage of tribal dance and krump dance in South Central LA. So go watch Yeelen, along with other cultural riches the Film Centre has to offer.
Read the New York Times Review of Yeelen.
Learn more about Souleymane Cissé and his other films at the Harvard Film Archive.
February 25, 2006
Life
Sex in Vancouver: The End, or the Beginning?
If you could go back in time and muster the balls to proposition that dude you were eyeing in grade nine, what would have happened? A crucial combination of strategic lighting, disorienting music, and Old Man Fog Machine makes it all possible in the time-travel sequences of Kathy Hsieh’s Sex in Vancouver: Doin’ it Again, the final installment of a 4-part series of plays chronicling the sexcapades and love lives of a group of Vancouver friends.
So far, Tess is married to a gay male friend for economic convenience, her best friend Elizabeth laments a recent break-up with her fiancé, who ditches her for the sex-tacular possibilities of Shari (Elizabeth, on the other hand, is saving herself for their wedding night), and Jenna wrestles with the committal obligations tied up with the marriage card. Complicated? And how. A Sex in Vancouver relationship chart is helpfully included in the program.
Presented by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre (VACT), Doin’ it Again ties up the loose ends, last dates, and love lost from the past 3 episodes, and tries to answer the residual “what if I…” questions through revisiting the characters’ pasts in the second act. Offering an alternative to the persistent and problematic typecasting of Asian actors in ethnically-stereotypical roles, the Sex in Vancouver series aims to kiss the pigeonholing roles of the Asian mathlete, ninja, grocer, and dragon lady goodbye—or, at least, add some edge to the one-dimensional roles in which Asian actors are often typecast.
Continue reading "Sex in Vancouver: The End, or the Beginning?"
February 22, 2006
Life
How to Build a Space Invaders Shrine 101
Space Invaders fans unite! Who knew the retro arcade game would become a classic when Japanese company Taito launched it in 1978? Now, true fans can transform their rooms into venerable Space Invaders shrines by decorating with Blik's Invader Decals.
The removable PVC decals look like paint when applied to any flat surface—walls, furniture, floors, mirrors. Each Blik Invader’s set includes seven 13” alien invaders, one base station shooter and eight missiles in 4 assorted colours (raspberry, kiwi, red and electric blue) or in white/black.
More:
Find Blik surface graphic decals where you live, here.
Play some Space Invaders here or here.
Kick it with a pair of Space Invaders sneakers
Tile your bathroom with Space Invaders tiles
Peruse through some Space Invaders flikr photos.
Listen to some Space Invaders music while you work.
Wear some Space Invaders gear while you’re at it…
Congrats, you’re officially a geek! GAME OVER. INSERT COINS.
February 19, 2006
Life
Gawd damn, that DJ Made My Day: No Luck Club Spins Turntablist Gold
Call it trip-hop, breakbeats, jazz-funk, or a joyful mix of all three: Vancouver-based trio No Luck Club is a hip hop project with an innovative aural aesthetic that is as defiant of generic classification as it is intent on cutting new musical headways. Featuring Matt Chan (turntables), Trevor Chan (laptop samples), and Paul Belen (turntables), No Luck Club's decks-on-fire sampling and instrumentals crafts a careful blend of hip-shaking beats, danceable melodies, and political commentary that has attracted the attention of critics and heavy-hitting musicians in Vancouver and beyond.
With an upcoming opening gig for San Francisco legend-maker Mike Relm next Saturday, February 25th at Richard's on Richards, the gentlemen of NLC are busy. Jackie Wong was lucky to catch up with Trevor Chan over the past week to discuss the finer points of the band's origins, upcoming projects, and comic book superheroes.
Listen to No Luck Club on CBC Radio3
Full Bio on CBC Radio3
Continue reading "Gawd damn, that DJ Made My Day: No Luck Club Spins Turntablist Gold"
February 14, 2006
Life
Assaulted Fish at SketchFest 2006
Chinese astrological superstition, the fictitious Ninja Party of Canada, an interpretive "lychee" dance.
Canada’s hottest Asian Canadian sketch troupe Assaulted Fish is one of six sketch comedy troupes performing at SketchFest Vancouver 2006, presented by Pink Vixen Comedy Arts, February 15 - 18 at the Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island.
Smart, edgy comedy -- everything from television to racism gets skewed and skewered by this fast-rising group of writers and performers. A hit at SketchOff and an audience favourite at SketchFest Vancouver 2005, Assaulted Fish is quickly gathering a large and loyal following of fans.
Click here for more information, or visit www.sketchfestvancouver.com
More
Schema's review from 2005 Fringe Festival
See The Georgia Straight (2005) here.
See the Asian American Theatre Revue here.
February 13, 2006
Life
Lost in Translation – The Best of Japan’s Engrish Awards
No doubt (ha!), Gwen’s Harajuku Girls would be speaking Engrish if they were allowed to open their mouths for more than just giggling. Engrish has become a cult “language” in its own right, so it’s no surprise The Japan Times featured an article on the Amazing English Hunt Awards which honour the super cute and usually bizarre usage of English in Japan.
The 2005 winner for Best Sign Language Award was found in a restaurant in Hokkaido: "Please be careful to forget valuables".
The Careful What You Say Award was discovered at a resort in Okinawa: "Relax Place Pee Pee Kaa Kaa”.
The What's in a Name Award went to NHK program “BS News” which in English can easily be misconstrued as “Bullshit News”.
A theatre flyer in Sendai won the Incomprehensible English Award: "Being Slovenly, there is no ginger it is. I having done now, Until it dies, the spare time crushing. I wanna be free!!!".
More
See the complete list of winners here.
See more Engrish here.
February 12, 2006
Life
The Shanghai Restoration Project: Electronic Music Meets Asian Chic
East-meets-West doesn’t always make for a successful fusion, but when it works, it works. And it really works in producer and songwriter Dave Liang's first complete album, The Shanghai Restoration Project. The album has been burning up the ears of iPod users since its debut, making its way as one of the top albums of 2005 on both iTunes and MSN Music.
The Kansas-raised Liang—a former producer for artists on major labels Bad Boy and Universal Records—fuses traditional Chinese instruments such as dizi and erhu with modern hip-hop and electronica to create music that he says, “mirrors my upbringing as a Chinese-American delicately balancing Eastern and Western influences.”
Listen to the ambience of "Babylon of the Orient" here.
Buy all the album's songs, including “Jade Buddha Temple” and “Miss Shanghai”, on digital download services like iTunes and MSN Music, or on the album’s official website.
Full interview with Dave Liang on Club Zen
Cultural insight on The Shanghai Restoration Project from the Asia Pacific Arts – UCLA Asia Institute
February 11, 2006
Life
Douglas Coupland and Chuck Palahniuk: Right here, right soon, right awesome.
Few writers consistently deliver that special grab-your-heart-and-juice-it epiphany of, "Oh my god, that's my life!" When they do, however, hold on to it, and read voraciously.
Such was the case for me and Vancouver's Douglas Coupland , starting with an initial foray in his fiction with Girlfriend in a Coma on a summer roadtrip after graduating from high school. Perhaps it was the short-term nostalgia for high school that was quickly sinking in, or growing up in the same city and suburb that Coupland's characters lived, or the fact that at that age, it was the sharpest, most touchingly relevant novel I'd read. Nonetheless, my fascination spiralled into an all-out personal Coupland reading festival, curried with the grittier, south-of-the-border prose of Chuck Palahniuk.
Best known for 1990s time capsule Generation X (Coupland) and novel-turned-feature film Fight Club (Palahniuk), Coupland and Palahniuk's wit, incisiveness, and zeitgeist commentary has shaped the aesthetic of a contemporary fiction that pinpoints the anxieties of a generation.
Coupland and Palahniuk will be giving a talk at Frederic Wood Theatre,
University of British Columbia on Monday, February 27th
Tickets are $12, available at the Frederic Wood box office (6354 Crescent Road), or by phone: 604-822-2678. Call 604-682-4066 for more information. The discussion starts at 7:30pm.
More
About Douglas Coupland's Jpod - coming in May 2006
Interview with Chuck Palahniuk on Bookslut
Interview with Douglas Coupland on The Morning News
February 08, 2006
Life
Exclusive Interview with Sundance Favorite Julia Kwan
Shortly after EVE & THE FIREHORSE was voted Most Popular Canadian Feature Film at the 2005 Vancouver International Film Festival, Asian Canadian media-making pioneer, Kuan Foo, met with with Canada’s rising star JULIA KWAN and asked her just about every question about filmmaking, community and subtitles.
Click here to READ Schema Magazine’s EXCLUSIVE interview with Canadian filmmaker Julia Kwan on thetyee.ca. Or go to Schema's Feature Page
More
CBC Arts Review
Schema Magazine Review
Sundance Film Festival Review
Photo Gallery (Rotten Tomatoes)
Life
Anime Inspired LEGO
North America's LEGO has, until now, been culturally neutral, or at best, stereotypical. Sometime last year LEGO released EXOFORCE, which comes complete with spiky-haired mini-figures (with Japanese names, of course) and stickers of Chinese characters, like "Tiger." LEGO's version of Gundam building sets -- better known to super-geeks as "Tech" -- is meant to appeal to all those adult males who can't “let go of their LEGO” (or their Gundam action figures).
EXOFORCE isn't actually for kids, ages 7+ -- although they all know the cartoon. This is LEGO's first product with modern weaponry, that actually lights up. If you do buy it (for your neice, right?), remind her that this won't be welcome at school (guns not allowed). One seven-year-old actually complained that "Hiraku looks too angry to be having fun." That's because LEGO was smart enough to use the faces of its real target market; behind those tinted glasses is the adult-sized rage that it took LEGO 25 years too late to come up with this series. Still, reviews from the LEGO-enthusiast community have been mixed, "Can hentai be far behind?"
LEGO fanatics have always been using the building blocks to make their futuristic fantasies more tangible. Check out this gallery from LEGO expert-builders site. It'll bring any LEGO enthusiasts to their knees.
Have a couple hours to burn … www.zemi.net
These guys do ... see flikr.com
February 06, 2006
Life
Zed Real presents Documentary "Burning to Shine" : K-OS and the CBC Radio Orchestra
On February 7th at 11:25 PM, on CBC Television’s Zed Real: the national late-night telecast of Burning to Shine. Billed as “Two Musical Worlds Collide,” the documentary follows Canadian hip-hop artist, K-os, and the CBC Radio Orchestra (the last of its kind in North America) on a 43-day journey as they compose a new piece of music titled, Burning to Shine.
Click here to view Quicktime trailer.
See chartattack.com, by Brian Pascual.
Pics from the preview screening in Vancouver, BC. on flickr.com
Read Michelle DaSilva's review after the jump.
Life
Brian Jungen : 10 Year Retrospective
Vancouver-based artist, Brian Jungen, has returned to a familiar stomping ground, after having just shown a ten-year retrospective at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. Jungen is s a member of the Doig River band, of the Dunne-za Nation in Northern British Columbia, making his recent success rather sweet for all of British Columbians, but especially meaningful for B.C.'s growing Aboriginal communities. Since his last Vancouver exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery in 2001, Jungen has apparently been an art-making-machine, having produced an impressive volume of work for this expansion from the New York show, currently on display at the VAG. What was once perhaps a creative thesis, back in the early displays of Shapeshifter (2000) and early exhibitions of Prototype for a New Understanding (1999), is now a full-blown set of encyclopedias.
Click here for a great interview with Alexander Varty of the Georgia Straight.
Check out these great pictures from New York, coolhunters.com
Life
The Empress’ New Clothes
There’s little doubt that Chinese culture isn’t at the core of the American imagination. Just check out the curvaceous and seductive skin-tight costumes of MAC’s incredible body-painting exhibition, which marked the opening of the Fall/Winter 2006 Fashion Week in New York City. The display of unabashed Orientalism, created by the MAC uber-team of makeup magicians, is affirmation enough that NY’s fashion scene is still red RED hot with Asian fever.
Click here for GLAM’s coverage of NY Fashion Week
Behind the scenes coverage by China Daily
The New York Times goes Skin Deep
Life
Can't get enough of Banana Boys: Watch the Trailer
No piece of modern literature has had the kind of lingering impact on younger generations of Asian Canadian men as Terry Woo’s seminal text Banana Boys. This past summer, fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company delivered a stage adaptation to Toronto audiences, accompanied by an amazing online tribute to the play - complete with press clippings, profiles and TRAILERS.
Click here to view the trailers in flash : Trailer One | Trailer Two
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On the west coast, SEX is still on the brain, but it's all about the girls!
Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre presents the last episode of Sex in Vancouver: Doing it Again, playing at The Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island from February 23 - March 5, 2006. Click here for more information.
