Rick Yune Dropped From ‘Street Fighter’
After weeks of rumors that Snow Falling on Cedars’ Rick Yune would be playing Gen in the upcoming Street Fighter movie, it’s been debunked. A blogger keeping tabs on the production revealed that Gen will actually be played by someone else from video game movie history: Robin Shou, who starred as Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat (1995), sporting a rather vintage Bruce Lee pageboy. Shou, 47, will play Chun-Li’s mentor and dai lo. Fans say Gen likes meat buns and Chinese poetry — which apparently makes him perfect to train young female assassins.
Pak to Raise Women’s Confidence at Harvard
The ASPIRE 2008 Asian American Women in Leadership Conference at Harvard University on April 26 will be headed by James Logan High’s own SuChin Pak and will feature Becky Lee of the Becky Lee Women’s Support Fund (who is a former Survivor cast member and, naturally, friends with Yul Kwon). SuChin found fame on MTV as a VJ, and now narrates MTV Cribs while mom and dad continue to run a restaurant in downtown Oakland. But even confident women have their hang-ups: Pak revealed on Oprah last year that she felt pressure from her family to get eyelid surgery.
Yul Kwon Gives FiancÉe Immunity
Newly engaged Yul Kwon and fiancée Sophie Tan were set up by Survivor tribe-mate Brad Virata, after Tan made a “highly inappropriate comment” about Kwon in the episode where he finds the hidden immunity idol. “The next thing I know, I got a call from Brad telling me that I had a new fan. He then sent me some grainy photos of Sophie that he had taken from his dilapidated cell phone, which almost scared me off. But then I remembered that Brad has an excellent sense about people and has far better taste than I do,” Kwon told me. He knew she was the one when he gave her the hidden immunity idol a few months later, and she didn’t laugh in his face.
‘Playboy’ Models Invade Ad:Tech 2008
Playboy model Kaila Yu is a staple on every Asian fratboy’s wall, but it’s a wonder there wasn’t a stampede when she appeared at Temple nightclub on April 16 for Adteractive’s ad:tech party. While no one got the chance to swap spit with Yu, local filmmaker James Hou was seen swapping something else with the vixen: his digits. Yu’s fellow playmates Milan Q and The Pack, along with a harem of go-go dancers, kept the crowd moving toward the open bars, and even APA5’s Brian Wang, who recently won a San Francisco Barack Obama delegate seat, was spotted looking liquored-up on the dance floor.
Oakland Honors Chinese Film Pioneers
Arthur Dong has much to celebrate, other than his successful screening of Hollywood Chinese. Marion Wong’s The Curse of Quon Gwon, possibly the first Chinese American film ever made, was given an additional screening on April 20, and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums declared April 12 “The Curse of Quon Gwon Day.” For Wong’s family, the film was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy: It nearly bankrupted them after it was made. “We didn’t talk about it for a long time, and it just sat in the basement,” one family member said at a screening last year.