Daily Archives: January 23, 2009

Win Tickets to Kollaboration 9

We previously posted Kollaboration 9 Promo Trailer and another Kollaboration 9 Trailer. Since its inception over eight years ago, Kollaboration has launched an array of talent shows which provided a much needed platform for countless aspiring artists in music, dance, poetry, and other creative expressions. Having garnered a creditable reputation for delivering striking performances unexampled elsewhere, Kollaboration has been able to help turn up the volume of many Asian Pacific American (APA) voices in 24 shows in 5 cities so far.

This year, Kollaboration 9 will take center stage on February 21st, 2009 at the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles for its 25th show. The show will be offering special guest performances by MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew’s Kaba Modern and Fanny Pak. Also performing is Comedy Central’s Jo Koy, whose new show premieres this year.

The historical and iconic venue’s 6,300 seats will be filled by an eager audience, as the show’s line-up of competing performers are composed of the most listened-to independent artists of today:

  • Jane Lui – award-winning songwriter and performer with her rich and soulful voice
  • Paul Dateh – hip hop violinist
  • David Choi – Warner Chappell songwriter and David Bowie award-winning songwriter and performer
  • Kenichi Ebina – the only two-time Grand Champion of Showtime at the Apollo; actor and choreographer of the Japanese drama Manhattan Diaries
  • Jazmin – the four-sister pop-group finalists of MTV’s Top Pop Group and NBC’s America’s Got Talent
  • Kina Grannis – Interscope Record’s singer and songwriter
  • Lilybeth Evardome – Concerto protégé of Andrew Robinson of the Los Angeles Philharmonic

This year’s panel of guest judges include Moon Bloodgood (Actress of the upcoming Terminator: Salvation, Eight Below, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li), James Kyson Lee (Actor of NBC’s Heroes), James Ryu (Editor-in-Chief of KoreaAm Journal and Audrey magazine), Welly Yang (director of Asian Excellence Awards), and Teddy Zee (Producer of The Pursuit of Happyness, Hitch).

If you want to win tickets to this event, send an email to webmaster@channelapa.com and tell us how you found out about channelAPA.com. Winners will be randomly selected from all entries and notified by email. Entries must be recieved by February 13, 2009. We have a couple pairs to give away, so tell your friends.

Here’s more information about the 2009 event:
KOLLABORATION 9

Date: Saturday, February 21, 2009

Time: 7PM

Venue: Shrine Auditorium

665 W Jefferson Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90007-3626

If you want to buy tickets, get your Kollaboration 9 tickets here.

Behind the Scenes footage of Kollaboration 9 with Jazmin

Free Red Mango fro-yo from Yul Kwon

This is for the readers in the San Francisco Bay Area. This weekend is the official grand opening of another Yul Kwon Red Mango fro-yo store. This time Red Mango is will be located at Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose, CA. Previously, Yul Kwon opened a Red Mango fro-yo shop in Palo Alto.

On Saturday, January 24th, Yul Kwon’s newest Red Mango store is offering a free small frozen yogurt of any flavor plus one topping and free gift bags to the first 50 customers. Donate a can of food, a toy, or get typed for bone marrow this Saturday at the Red Mango Valley Fair Grand Opening to be entered into a raffle for a free Apple iPod Touch as well as gift cards and other great prizes. Live DJ, free yogurt all day long, gifts, prizes and raffle! What could be better? While you are in San Jose, drop by the Camera 3 Theaters and watch “Owl and the Sparrow“.

Yul Kwon supporting Bone Marrow Drive. That reminds us of Project Michelle.

More about Red Mango

Red Mango’s most unique factor is its authentic, all-natural nonfat frozen yogurt that has all yogurt’s natural goodness, such as calcium, protein and live and active cultures that are good for your body.

Whether in Original, Green Tea, or Pomegranate by POM Wonderful, Red Mango frozen yogurt promotes good health, making it an extremely satisfying dessert you can eat morning, day or night.

Owl and The Sparrow Movie

Distribution of Asian/Asian American film have always been difficult in the US. With the shutdown of several Asian/Asian American film distributors last year, it makes film harder to get distribution and makes Asian American Film Festivals around the country even more important. One film is trying to buck the trend. “Owl and The Sparrow” is getting released with a grassroot effort by the Vietnamese American directors that formed the distribution company Wave Releasing. This is the first film being distributed. Currently, “Owl and The Sparrow” is in Los Angeles and the OC. This weekend it opens in San Jose. Coming soon San Francisco and Texas. Here’s the synopsis for “Owl and The Sparrow”:

A beautiful flight attendant looking for love. A lonely zookeeper hiding from a changing society. A little orphan girl selling roses on the streets of Saigon, relying on the kindness of strangers to survive. It’s modern day Saigon, where eight million people are just trying to keep up with the pace.

Thuy, a scrappy ten year old who lives on the outskirts of the city, has no choice in life but to work in her uncle’s bamboo factory. That is, till she packs her bags to run away into the city. Now forced to survive on her own, she first sells postcards then flowers on the streets. Lan, the flight attendant, arrives at Ho Chi Minh airport on a five-day layover, checking into the same family-run hotel every week. The hotel girls wonder why she’s alone, but Lan only tells them that she’s just hard to understand. She doesn’t tell them that she’s having a secret affair with the airline pilot. Hai, a zookeeper living on the park grounds in a shack, is nursing a broken heart after his fiance left him. He lives only for his animals now, until the zoo director tells him that his beloved elephant will soon be shipped off to an Indian Zoo.

In four days the young runaway will play matchmaker to these lonely hearts in hopes of forming a surrogate family. The only thing that may stop her are city authorities who want her in an orphanage and an overbearing uncle tracking her down in the big city.

Special message from writer/director Stephane Gauger and executive producer Timothy Linh Bui about supporting “Owl and the Sparrow”

A captivating performance by 10-year old newcomer Pham Thi Han. A sweet story directed by Stephane Gauger that leaves audiences smiling.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li trailer

More Street Fighter buzz will be coming soon. A few days ago Youtube had Street Fighter “game” online. The Street Fighter IV game will be coming out soon.As for the movie, we posted that Kristin Kreuk will be in Street Fighter: Legend of Chun-Li. The Japanese version of the trailer already came out. The movie comes out February 27, 2009.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li trailer

Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack by A.R. Rahman

With A.R. Rahman racking up the wins for the Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack at Golden Globe Awards and Critic’s Choice Awards, as well as getting 3 Oscar nominations. We decided to explore a little more online here what we found

An imeem player for Slumdog Millionaire from Interscope Records. This player is legit. Interscope Records created it. You can listen to both Oscar Nominated songs “Jai Ho” and “O Saya”

For a limited time only, you can download the whole Slumdog Soundtrack for $5 on Amazon.


Watch an exclusive clip of Slumdog Millionaire set to the DFA Remix of M.I.A.’s Paper Planes. MIA Slumdog Millionaire Remix

More about Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack by A.R. Rahman

In composing the music for acclaimed director Danny Boyle’s intoxicating new film Slumdog Millionaire, now playing in select theaters, A.R. Rahman has conjured the sound of a city, fusing the frenetic scramble of daily life in Mumbai, India into beautiful fugues that ride upon the dust clouds kicked up by its everyday people.

From the movie’s first frames — with children racing through alleyways, knocking over merchants and pottery, police kicking loose clay roof tiles, disrupted birds fluttering from gutters — we hear the sound of their commotion made manifest in “O… Saya.” It’s a rumbling hybrid of Bollywood and hip-hop, a brand new collaboration between Rahman and M.I.A. It’s the kind of cinematic moment where image and sound coexist. And that’s only the first five minutes.

Filmed in the streets and slums of Mumbai, India, Boyle needed just the right music to compliment the film’s cinema verité urban realism. He turned to internationally renowned composer A.R. Rahman (a huge star in South Asia—selling more than 100 million albums worldwide and 200 million cassettes—Rahman is one of the world’s top 25 all-time top selling recording artists.) The film’s score is central to the propulsive modern grit that pervades the story, but is also a nod to classic Bollywood productions where the music is front and center. And loud. Says Rahman, “We wanted it edgy, upfront. Danny wanted it loud.”

M.I.A.’s appreciation for Bollywood music led her to record much of last year’s Kala inside A.R. Rahman’s studio in India, although the two had never worked together until now. Referring to him in URB magazine as “the Indian Timbaland,” M.I.A. obviously jumped at the chance to work on “O… Saya” with the famed composer. Rahman says, “She’s a real powerhouse. Somebody played me her CD and I thought, ‘Who is this girl? She came here and knew all my work, had followed my work for ages. I said, ‘Cut the crap, this “my idol” crap. You have to teach me.’”

M.I.A. crops up again, later in the film, with the remix of her worldwide hit “Paper Planes” seemingly made for Slumdog, as the lyrics pronounce, “Sometimes I feel like sitting on trains…” while a light blue locomotive chugs and hurls its way through India, young boys perched up top in the sepia sunlight scoping out for a scrap of food.

Other songs on the soundtrack include “Gangsta Blues,” featuring hip-hop artist BlaaZe, which flutters with the rhythms of a film projector, capturing a bit of the madness of crowds as they disperse in a thousand directions to escape the claustrophobia of back alleys. And nothing quite prepares you for the triumphant climax, the overarching ode to joy that is “Jai Ho,” closing out the film in a rousing sing-a-long that’s had film audiences burst into spontaneous applause. As Rahman told Variety, “The energy of the film takes you through a roller coaster, and that’s one of the main inspirations for the whole music.”