By Sean Niu
5
1616 ratings
The podcast currently has 41 episodes available.
Ray, Alan, and Renee discuss Eddie Huang's coming-of-age, basketball drama and why it resonated differently among the team. They talk about the unique perspective of the Black/Asian cultural interactions, how the basketball scenes were shot, and where this fits in the ranking of popular basketball movies.
Hint: Space Jam is still the best.
Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate:
DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
In episode 40, we sit down with Tik Tok creator Lily Lei as she shares her jourrney to obtaining Tik Tok fame over the last year. As we are all well aware, Tik Tok is an incredibly influential video platform. As a podcast interested in how Asian Americans portray ourselves across any creative medium, we were really fascinated by how Lily employed many elements of her Asian upbringing into her skits, and how those skits helped contribute to her rise. Lily also gives us insight into her versatile background as a design researcher and entrepreneur and how those experiences helped her gain over 700K followers on Tik Tok.
Before we get to Lily, we also have a 20 minute segment discussing the 2021 Oscars with Katie Quan from This Asian American Life. This year's awards marked many firsts for Asian Americans in Hollywood and Katie broke down her feelings about the necessity of the Oscars in 2021 and how she felt about the three movies that most prominently featured Asian Americans: Minari, Nomadland, and Sound of Metal.
Editors note: Sorry about the sound quality in some parts, some of these recordings were done while traveling!
Katie Quan's This Asian American Life
Notes:
1) Start of Oscars segment: (1:52)
Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate:
DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
It's our ANNIVERSARY! THANK YOU to all of our listeners and fans for your continued support! THANK YOU to our guests for lending your time and sharing your stories, and THANK YOU to everyone else who has contributed to the show!
We've added a BONUS episode for our anniversary: Raymond Luu and Alan Duong from [The Reel Asian Podcast] (https://www.reelasianpodcast.com/) join us to revisit Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale.
Notes:
1) The Reel Asian guys explain the appeal of Battle Royale and Sean shares some background and the impact of the movie (3:50)
Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate:
DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
It's our ANNIVERSARY! THANK YOU to all of our listeners and fans for your continued support! THANK YOU to our guests for lending your time and sharing your stories, and THANK YOU to everyone else who has contributed to the show!
In this episode, Hon Hoang returns to talk about (what else) Wong Kar Wai's Days of Being Wild and some Haruki Murakami. COULD there be a more appropriate topic for a Sean Niu-hosted podcast?
Watch Hon's films and appreciate his photography here: https://honhoang.com/
Notes:
1) An extended introduction discussing the Electric Image Express so far (0:00)
Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate:
DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
Director, writer, and professor Valerie Soe joins Sean to share her creative journey and the making of her newest documentary: Love Boat: Taiwan
You can watch Love Boat here:
and you can watch more of Valerie's activist-oriented films here:
Picturing Oriental Girls
The Chinese Gardens
Notes:
1) Valerie gives her thoughts and action items in reaction to the recent violence on Asian Americans (3:27)
Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate:
DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
Director Patrick Chen and Actor Perry Yung join Sean and Hon Hoang to talk about their upcoming film A Father’s Son: A 90’s Chinatown Noir Thriller based on the character’s from Henry Change’s Jack Yu crime novels. Kickstarter
Patrick and Perry are long time filmmaking veterans. You can find some of Patrick’s shorts here: (I personally like Love Express the most bc surprise surprise, it reminds me of Wong Kat Was)
Love Express
Underneath The Grey
Sonnet 48
And you probably know Perry Yung as Father Jun in Warrior. He Also plays the protagonist’s dad in Eddie Huang’s new movie Boogie.
Notes:
1) Patrick’s history, how he got into filmmaking, and how that ties into A Father’s Son (7:24)
Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate provided by Patrick:
DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
In Episode 35, I’m joined by legendary Taiwanese writer Kenneth Pai (白先勇). Professor Pai’s works pioneered the modern Chinese experience: including as waishengren (外省人) living in Taiwan (Taipei People, Crystal Boys) and as immigrants to America. (Pleasantville, Death in Chicago)
In our conversation, we talk about:
My further thoughts on Taipei People and Chinese Identity [https://sameseanniulook.medium.com/taipei-people-and-chinese-identity-540741f093b7]
Where you can watch his work: [https://www.netflix.com/title/80233859](A Touch of Green)
Notes
Welcome to Season 2! Happy Lunar New Year! 新年快樂! 새해 복 많이 받으세요 ! Chúc Mừng Năm Mới”!
After reflecting for a few weeks I decided to dedicate more time on the show talking to AsAm/minority creators and focusing the conversation around their journeys and experiences. I hope this helps you understand about how to pursue your own creative passions and furthers the conversation beyond variations of “what did you think of seeing someone that looked like you on screen?”
In Episode 34, I’m joined by Actors Charles Ryu and Yeena Sung as well as Writer Kat Kim from the Korean American movie Happy Cleaners. We start at (8:54) by talking about their memories of Seollal, or Korean New Year. Next (14:47) my guests share their varied journeys to become the creators they are today. Charles and Kat figuring out how to integrate acting/writing into their lives as preacher and lawyer, while Yeena pursuing a full-time acting career from a younger age.
Happy Cleaners is a movie that proudly displays its tight-knit Flushing community roots, and at (28:51) Kat elaborates on how their community was the driving force to enable the film. At (34:01) Charles and Yeena give us insight into how their family experiences influenced the characters they portray (father, daughter) in the film. Finally, Charles and Kat highlight the subtle thread of religion that ties the family dynamic together (44:24) and at (52:26) Yeena and Kat explain how their idea of the Asian American Dream influenced the ending of the film.
Notes
Merry Xmas and happy holidays to everyone! Akshay Singh returns to make good on the Xmas episode he promised us way back in episode 4.
Akshay and I first determine where we will record our next Xmas special when the pandemic (hopefully) finally ends (7:04) before we get into how we celebrate Christmas as non-Christian minorities in America (13:17) including Akshay's memories of Christmas growing up in Brazil and India. At (23:52) we get into the very bad/good movie that completes the Harold & Kumar trilogy--what's changed since the first movie, (29:14) how the movie reflects on the ugly truth of Christmas (30:36) and how it represents the end of the stoner movie genre. (32:43) (also, how it breaks ground by showing asian american penis on the big screen)
We end the episode by debating waffles vs. pancakes (36:58) and I share my first encounter with Black Ice. (43:01)
Info
In Episode #29, Shannon Fong and Blake Lew-Merwin come back to revisit To All the Boys I've Loved Before: the 2018 high school Netflix romcom written by Jenny Han that notably features Lara Jean, a half-asian protagonist.
After sharing our first reactions, Shannon, our resident asian drama expert (and the only one of the shares the movie's plot similarities to Asian dramas (17:04) before we have a roundtable discussion on Jenny Han's "pragmatic" approach to racial representation (21:11), and where the non-asian creators dropped the ball in adapting from the book. (32:41) At (36:27) we react to the male romantic leads and some missed opportunities before Blake, our gen Z intern, gives her take on the accuracy of To All the Boys in representing modern high school culture. (45:17) Finally, I give my hot take on Netflix content (1:00:15) before we end (1:07:36) with Shannon giving her two favorite recommendations of where to go eat and drink in Taipei, a recurring feature that listeners can always find in our Google Maps bookmark on our website.
The podcast currently has 41 episodes available.