Category Archives: movies

Win tickets to Dark Shadows Film Premiere

Win tickets to Dark Shadows Film Premiere
Vampires have been hot the past few years from films like Twilight to TV shows like True Blood. channelAPA.com is working with Dark Shadows to giveaway tickets to their premiere in Los Angeles on Monday, May 7, 2012 at 7:30pm. If you’re not in the LA area, enter the giveaway and you might win a Dark Shadows Prize pack.

Here’s more about the movie Dark Shadows:

In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet—or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy…until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) has called upon live-in psychiatrist, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), to help with her family troubles. Also residing in the manor is Elizabeth’s ne’er-do-well brother, Roger Collins, (Jonny Lee Miller); her rebellious teenage daughter Carolyn Stoddard (Chloe Moretz); and Roger’s precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gulliver McGrath). The mystery extends beyond the family, to caretaker Willie Loomis, played by Jackie Earle Haley, and David’s new nanny, Victoria Winters, played by Bella Heathcote.

Dark Shadows Trailer

For the Dark Shadows giveaway, we’ve got two options:
1) If you’re in the Los Angeles area:
Send a tweet to “@channelAPA [insert Asian Vampire Movie] http://bit.ly/Kw1G9f #DarkShadows Premiere”

2) If you’re outside the Los Angeles area:
Send a tweet to “@channelAPA [insert Asian Vampire Movie] http://bit.ly/Kw1G9f #DarkShadows Giveaway”

All entries must be submitted by Sunday, May 6, 2012 at midnight. Winners will be randomly selected and will be notified by direct message (DM) via twitter. (hint: if you need an Asian Vampire movie, see below). Good luck!!

Asian / Asian American actors who have appeared in vampire movies!

Maggie Q as Priestess in Priest
Maggie Q as Priestess in Priest
Maggie Q kicks some serious butt as a vampire-hunting priestess in this post-apocalyptic science fiction actioner.

Lucy Liu as Sadie Blake in Rise: Blood Hunter
Lucy Liu as Sadie Blake in Rise: Blood Hunter
In this supernatural thriller, a female reporter (Liu) wakes up in a morgue to discover she is a vampire. Vowing revenge against the vampire cult responsible for her situation, she hunts each of the vampires down, one by one.

Ken Jeong as Daro in Vampires Suck
Ken Jeong as Daro in Vampires Suck
Jeong co-stars as Daro, leader of a vampire organization called the Zolturi – the FBI of vampires.

Jun Ji -hyun as Saya in Blood: The Last Vampire
Jun Ji -hyun as Saya in Blood: The Last Vampire
Jun (best known for her starring role in the Korean hit “My Sassy Girl”) plays a vampire who is part of a covert government agency committed to hunting and destroying demons in a post-WWII Japan.

Kate Beckinsale as Selene in the Underworld series
Kate Beckinsale as Selene in the Underworld series
Why is Kate Beckinsale on this list? Because she’s part Burmese! In the Underworld films, Beckinsale plays a creature of the night caught in the middle of a war between vampires and werewolves.

Malese Jow as Anna in the The Vampire Diaries
Malese Jow as Anna in the The Vampire Diaries
The Chinese-American actress/singer-songwriter played an ill-fated teenage vampire on CW’s “The Vampire Diaries.”

Jason Scott Lee as Father Uffizi in Dracula II: Ascension and Dracula III: Legacy
Jason Scott Lee as Father Uffizi in Dracula II: Ascension and Dracula III: Legacy
Best known for his portrayal of Bruce Lee in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Lee stars in these sequels to Dracula 2000 (which featured a then unknown Gerard Butler in the title role) as Father Uffizi, a badass priest who hunts for The Count.

Ken Watanabe as Mr. Tall in Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
Ken Watanabe as Mr. Tall in Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
Watanabe takes a break from heavy dramatic roles to play the bulbous headed owner of Cirque du Freak.

Janina Gavankar as Luna Garza in True Blood
Janina Gavankar as Luna Garza in True Blood
Gavankar played a public school teacher and shape-shifter named Luna Garza, who gets romantically involved with one of the show’s main characters.

Nice Girls Crew Trailer

Nice Girls Crew Trailer

Sheetal Sheth, Michelle Krusiec and Lynn Chen star in this raunchy Bridesmaids‐meets-Arrested Development, no-holds-barred comedy series. Assembling an all-star cast of actresses, Nice Girls Crew crosses the line of traditional comedy – and then goes a little further.

Sophie (Lynn Chen), Leena (Sheetal Sheth), and Geraldine (Michelle Krusiec) have been true “frenemies” since elementary school. All grown up and finding themselves in the city of Los Angeles, the ladies seek refuge from their isolation in a book club where they never actually talk about the book. Their subjects of interest? Sex, cannibalism, drugs and just about everything else you’d expect in such good company.

Geraldine is a natural leader with an insatiable thirst for validation; Leena is a ruthless thug-ess in heels, and Sophie is the angelic voice of reason (but true undercover psycho). As adults, the ladies find themselves gathering week after week not because they like each other, but because their inability to mix with normal society forces them to rally for a bit of companionship and good reads. But when personal hang‐ups combine with delusions of grandeur, books make way for much more explosive conversation material.

Look for the Nice Girls Crew at a film festival near you.

Nice Girls Crew Trailer

What If People Died trailer

What If People Died trailer

Director Dominic Mah released a trailer for his short film/pilot “What If People Died“. The dark comedy about hipsters, sudden death, and even suddener reincarnation has diverse ensemble cast including Jae Suh, Dwayne Perkins, Ewan Chung, Feodor Chin, Jennie Yee, Alexandra Fulton, and Karin Anna Cheung. The 29-minute film is a self-contained story that branches into a larger world. The trailer features music by MC Frontalot, Timo Chen, and Maurice Ravel as performed by Gwendolyn Mok. Look for it coming soon.

What If People Died trailer

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Hang Loose Trailer with KevJumba x Dante Basco

Hang Loose Trailer with KevJumba x Dante Basco
YouTuber KevJumba (aka Kevin Wu) and actor Dante Basco star in the indie film “Hang Loose”. In his feature film debut, Kevin Wu plays a newly single high school grad. He flies out to Hawaii to attend his older sister’s wedding. While there, he meets his future brother-in-law, the suave Dante and his groomsmen. Kevin joins Dante’s bachelor party for a night of revelry on the islands with leads to craziness that rivals “The Hangover” x “Harold and Kumar” films. The night is only starting when they hit the bar, jump off cliffs, get hogtied, meet beautiful women, and more.

Look for the film to hit a festival near you. KevJumba is currently touring the film on college campuses with an official debut in Los Angeles at the 2012 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Watch the trailer to the music of So What? by Far East Movement. KevJumba also has a few other projects in the works including Waking Summer and Rock Jocks.

Hang Loose official Trailer with KevJumba x Dante Basco

Hang Loose Trailer with KevJumba x Dante Basco

Behind the scenes of Hang Loose with KevJumba x Dante Basco

Safe with Catherine Chan

Safe with Catherine Chan

A second-rate cage fighter on the mixed martial arts circuit, Luke Wright (Jason Statham) lives a numbing life of routine beatings and chump change…until the day he blows a rigged fight. Wanting to make an example of him, the Russian Mafia murders his family and banishes him from his life forever, leaving Luke to wander the streets of New York destitute, haunted by guilt, and tormented by the knowledge that he will always be watched, and anyone he develops a relationship with will also be killed.

But when he witnesses a frightened twelve-year-old Chinese girl, Mei (Catherine Chan), being pursued by the same gangsters who killed his wife, Luke impulsively jumps to action…and straight into the heart of a deadly high-stakes war. Mei, he discovers, is no ordinary girl, but an orphaned math prodigy forced to work for the Triads as a “counter.” He discovers she holds in her memory a priceless numerical code that the Triads, the Russian mob and a corrupt faction of the NYPD will kill for.

Realizing he’s the only person Mei can trust, Luke tears a swath through the city’s brutal underworld to save an innocent girl’s life…and perhaps even redeem his own.

Safe Trailer with Catherine Chan

UPLOADED: The Asian American Movement trailer

UPLOADED: The Asian American Movement trailer

Advances in online media in the past decade have seen an increase in the historically limited presence of Asian faces in American entertainment. The documentary “UPLOADED: The Asian American Movement” aims to uncover the extent to which Asian Americans have utilized new media such as YouTube to infiltrate American popular culture and where this momentum will lead. The documentary will focus on the current struggles and successes of important Asian Americans in entertainment, from both online celebrities and industry professionals.

Five years ago, we couldn’t name more than 10 recognizable Asian entertainers in mainstream America and the few that we could name only played stereotypical roles like the nerd or the martial artist. Even more problematic was the lack of acknowledgement of this problem by the general public. However, in the past few years, we have noticed groups of young Asian American artists emerging in entertainment with roots in new media, specifically YouTube. They are taking action into their own hands and redefining how Asian Americans are perceived and valued in society. We wanted to document this important era as a reference point for the future.

The film features a list of who’s who in Asian American entertainment including AJ Rafael, Cathy Nguyen, Clara C, David Choi, Feats in Inches, George Shaw, Jennifer Chung, Jesse Barrera, Michael Carreon, Paul J Kim, Scott Yoshimoto, Jane Lui, Paul Dateh, Wong Fu Productions, Victor Kim, and more.

UPLOADED: The Asian American Movement trailer