News Links - 6/24/06

[dleedlee]

Twins visit Saipan to shoot MV
http://www.saipantribune.com/newsstory. ... wsID=58761

Time magazine: The fifth New York Asian Film Festival celebrates cinematic excess from Tokyo to Bangkok and beyond
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0 ... 30,00.html

Shanghai Disney Theme Park Awaiting Gov't Nod
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/3086/2006/0 ... 106305.htm

Hollywood’s First Asian Sex Symbols Reuniting in San Francisco
http://news.asianweek.com/news/view_art ... 8af0403177

An escalating battle against crime by the Guangzhou authorities has led to five police shootings so far this year.
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/weekend_n ... r=20060624

Why I love ChinesePod
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/weekend_n ... r=20060624

Stage: Korean kung-fu comedy comes to HK
http://www.news.gov.hk/en/citylife/0606 ... 20002.htm#

[MrBooth]

Ken Watanabe, Ziyi Zhang, Chow Yun-Fat, Lucy Liu, Keanu Reeves and Tamlyn Tomita are just a few Asian actors

Keanu Reeves is Asian?

[dleedlee]

Yep.

From one bio:
He was born Keanu Charles Reeves on the 2nd of September, 1964, in Beirut. His father Samuel Nowlin Reeves, a part-Chinese part-Hawaiian geologist had married English showgirl Patricia Taylor there, the couple having met after he'd seen her performing at a nightclub. His name, Keanu, is Hawaiian for "cool breeze over the mountains". Well, literally-speaking it means "the coolness", but the fancy extension is forgivable. We all need a little more poetry in our lives, don't we?


http://www.mixedasians.com/celeb.php

[Brian Thibodeau]

That website (www.mixedasians.com/celeb.php) leaves off two fairly well known half-Chinese actresses from Canada: Jennifer and Meg Tilly.

[bkasten]

Why I love ChinesePod
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/weekend_n ... r=20060624

I know this is old, but just a quick review/comment and counter-point to this journalist's opinion.

Chinesepod sucks.

OK, the advanced lessons are actually acceptable, but everything else is not. The non-native speaker in most non-advanced lessons ("Ken") is so bad at pronouncing Chinese, it is painful to my ears, and it is also very misleading for students. Listening to someone speak a language this badly is no way to learn it. But even worse: the native speaker ("Jenny"), while having a wonderfully beautiful voice, does not speak Putonghua with a correct accent. She has a definite southern-Chinese 'drawl'...and even worse yet, does not realize it. It's hilarious to hear her in one phrase say she speaks standard putonghua, and in the next do a phonetic so completely 'Shanghai'.

The non-advanced lessons frequently move toward altogether boring digressions (by "Ken") into meaningless usage discussions. And the conversational speed is not right either. At the late beginner stage, all conversation should be at normal speed, and not sounding like one is speaking to a 5-year-old.

On the positive side, there is a lot of colloquial vocabulary one can get listening to this stuff...but it's a rather small consolation...

Oh, and yes, at the beginning and end of the lessons are all sorts of obligatory self-congratulatory comments about how great they are.

Right...

The show may actually be satire. It would explain a lot...