Global Briefs
August 27, 2004
WORLD HEALTH
Bird Flu Fears Increasing
A bird flu strain was confirmed in Malaysia last week, arousing concern about a major outbreak this year. China also confirmed that some pigs have been infected with the avian flu this year, raising concerns about the disease’s spread to humans. Read more
Popcorn and Opium: Closing credits approach for Richmond’s 4-Star Theatre
August 27, 2004
After 12 years of operation and hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment, owners Frank and Lida Lee are being forced to vacate the 4-Star Theatre in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond by May 2005. The Canaan Lutheran Church bought the building in 2001, and Frank Lee has been leasing it since then. Now the church wants the space to hold services. The Lees have been trying to buy the property since 1996 but were never able to purchase it. In desperation, 4-Star has started a petition drive and collected 2,000 signatures. Read more
Jet Li, You’re My ‘Hero’
August 27, 2004
After nearly two years of delays, Miramax is finally releasing Oscar-nominated Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s romantic martial arts film Hero, which plays on rich historical material in its account of the King of Qin’s violent unification of China 2,200 years ago. Read more
Nation Briefs
August 27, 2004
HEALTH CARE
Moon’s Death Spurs NYC Hospital Language Help
NEW YORK — New York City is considering a bill to provide more translation services to limited-English-speaking patients at the state’s hospitals. Read more
Bay Briefs
August 27, 2004
SEX CRIMES
Tet Activist Arrested After His Wedding
LOS ANGELES — Community leader Huy Ngoc Nguyen, 34, was arrested on charges of rape and molestation, three days after his wedding. Read more
Mainstream Press and Asian America
August 27, 2004
Wen Ho Lee Wins Round One Versus Journalists
WASHINGTON — U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson held five reporters in contempt of court for withholding the identities of their sources who provided questionable personal information about former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee. Read more
A Fresh, Modern Kabuki
August 20, 2004
In Japan, the 400-year-old theater form known as kabuki is considered one of the nation’s greatest cultural treasures. Its movements are highly stylized, and its language archaic. The troupes that perform it can usually be traced back more than a dozen generations. Read more
Korean Americans Rally Against Iraq Deployment
August 20, 2004
A planned deployment of 3,000 South Korean troops to Iraq this month triggered demonstrations by Korean Americans in five major U.S. cities last week. Read more
‘Star Search’ Teen Sophie Oda Now ‘A Little Princess’: Losing by 1 vote on talent show doesn’t deter 13-year-old
August 20, 2004
Young East Bay actress Sophie Oda has just rushed in from auditioning for the part of Young Pumpkin in the forthcoming movie Memoirs of a Geisha and will soon be off to a rehearsal of A Little Princess for TheatreWorks of Palo Alto. Although only 13 years old and facing the eighth grade next month, Oda knows she loves theater and the acting and singing that go with it. Born to a typical suburban Japanese American family, the daughter of Allan and Kathy, Oda thinks she always loved singing for the fun of it. Read more
Good Citizen: Talking to Citizens Here and Abroad’s Adrienne Robillard
August 20, 2004
Followers of Bay Area indie rock may know Adrienne Robillard from her old band Secadora or from her current combo Citizens Here and Abroad. I know her from my former workplace, a music website where we spent our days huddled beneath heavy earphones, listening to lousy joke bands, so-called guitar virtuosos and weak singer-songwriters who would mislabel themselves as “easy listening.” Uneasy listening was more like it. Read more
Harmony or Horror? Twelve Girls Band Offers Americans East-West Flavor
August 20, 2004
Perhaps you’ve seen the commercials on TV or billboards on your local bus: a group of young Chinese women dressed in flowing garments, beaming smiles and cradling Chinese instruments. They’ve been called the latest music “sensation” from Asia, but are they musical geniuses or an Asian version of bland, manufactured pop? Read more
Swimming With Sharks
August 20, 2004
All independent filmmakers fantasize that their low-budget movies will go from Sundance Film Festival buzz magnets to successful theatrical releases, but few see it happen.
For producer Laura Lau and her husband, writer-director Chris Kentis, that dream became a reality when Lions Gate Films bought Open Water — which the couple made with $130,000 from their personal savings — for $2.5 million the day after it debuted at Sundance last January. In its first weekend, the movie earned more than $1 million. Read more