By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García

Let’s play a little game of Photoshop sleight-of-hand. See the poster up there for Couples’ Retreat? Now look below:

Presto! Somewhere over the Pond, Faizon Love and Kali Hawk disappeared from the poster, as the 2nd version was the one used to promote the film in the U.K. As reported on [...]

East West Magazine is back! And for their first issue, they interviewed John Cho about his experiences with race and acting:

He recently followed in idol George Takei’s footsteps as Sulu in the Star Trek remake and is set to star in A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas when buddy Kal Penn wraps his presidential [...]

by Guest Contributor J Chang, originally published at Init_MovingPictures
While it’s still relatively new news, I thought I’d tackle this brief article from Variety republishing the Screen Actor’s Guild annual diversity research. While the headline of the article reads “SAG stats: Diversity lags” and the byline mentions that minorities, seniors and women are underrepresented, the racial breakdown [...]

by Latoya Peterson
I was peacefully watching Mad Men when this madness peeked into my commercial break. At 00:59:

“Bingo. Asians. They pack light, travel efficiently, and have a thing for slip on shoes, god love ‘em.”
“That’s racist!”
“I’m like my mother. I stereotype – it’s faster.”
Cue eye roll at blatant “he’s so cool and un-PC” ploy.
Bonus [...]

by Guest Contributor J Chang, originally published at INIT_Moving Pictures
I think I overestimated my capacity for brevity and so what was supposed to be a three part series will probably end up spreading out further as I try to unpack and look into the long relationship between race and cinema.
Last time, I established the tension [...]

by Latoya Peterson
I got a flier for B-Flix as an insert in one of my fashion magazines.  Apparently, Bloomingdales teamed up with Young Indies Films to put on a contest.  Some of the films looks like they featured PoC, so I checked them out.
“Recession Special” was interesting eye candy, but not much plot wise.  The [...]

by Guest Contributor (and frequent commenter) J Chang, originally published at Init_MovingPictures

Ever since news of The Last Airbender’s casting broke, there’s been a lot of commotion in the Asian American community about casting and how it seems that Asians are losing to white people in playing Asian characters. Now, there are issues present in the [...]

by Guest Contributor Melissa Silverstein, originally published at Women and Hollywood
Interesting story out of England about how director Anthony Fabian is resorting to guerrilla type outreach tactics to raise awareness and get an audience to see his new film Skin starring Oscar nominated actress Sophie Okonedo. The film premiered at Toronto last year and [...]

by Guest Contributor Rebecca Linz

I was looking forward to “The Soloist” for two reasons: having played the violin all my life, I love those rare contemporary films that dare to explicitly appreciate classical music, but also because I am a sucker for based-on-a-true-story films.
The dynamic between the two protagonists (Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Ayers, a [...]

By Guest Contributor Nicole Stamp, originally published at [pageslap]

Saw District 9 tonight, the alien movie by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson. I thought it was appallingly racist; here’s why. (Spoilers ahead.)
Basically, 20 years ago, a million crustacean-like space aliens arrived in Johannesberg. They’re forced to live in a horrible slum called District 9, [...]

by Guest Contributor Akshay, originally published at b-listed

Shmuel Beru arrived in Israel at age 8 with the first wave of Ethiopian immigrants in 1984. Classmates, who’d never seen a black person before, rubbed his skin to see if the color would come off. Growing up, they called him the “chocolate boy” and worse.
Today the actor-writer [...]

By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García
Also posted at Arturo Vs. The World

The much ballyhooed District 9 succeeds at one thing – it leaves you with questions. The problem is, not all of them are of the good kind.
The film’s conceit – sticking a million-plus misplaced extraterrestrials in the middle of Johannesburg – is promising. But [...]

By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García
The scene from The Prodigal Son starts out typically for kung-fu movies of its’ era: an argument over who has the best fighting skills quickly escalates into demands of empirical evidence. As the strains of Get Ur Freak On start to play, the combatants … wait, say what?
Welcome to Hop-Fu, [...]

By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García, originally published at Arturo vs. The World

You can trace the story of this year’s Comic-Con with a line. Not a straight line, necessarily, but one that wound all over the building at various points all day all four days. If you were at Con, it’s almost a given [...]

By Guest Contributor Angry Asian Man, originally published at Angry Asian Man

Movie Trailers – Movies Blog
MTV just posted the online trailer premiere for Ninja Assassin, starring Korean pop superstar Rain: ‘Ninja Assassin’ Starring Rain – Watch The Trailer Here!. He plays Raizo, a kidnapped child who is raised to be a professional killer but ends [...]