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      Why an Asian American Reporter Wanted to Write About Romance

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      Hollywood has portrayed Asian American men in unflattering ways for decades. One Culture reporter aimed to bring the uncomfortable conversations out of group chats, and into The Times.There is a scene in the 2023 film “Past Lives” in which Nora Moon, the protagonist, calls Hae Sung Jung, her childhood friend, “really
masculine, in
this
way
I
think
is
so
Korean.”When I first heard that dialogue, I remember jolting to attention. It felt like the movie was going out of its way to label an Asian man as manly. I had never heard that kind of talk on the big screen before.And, if I’m being honest, it made me, a Korean American man, feel good.I knew there was more I wanted to unpack, and doing so falls into my jurisdiction as a reporter on The New York Times’s Culture desk. So I was delighted when The Times’s Projects and Collaborations team asked me if I’d be interested in writing about the representation of Asian American men — and specifically their romantic roles — onscreen.Asian and Asian American men have been emasculated and marginalized for decades on American screens, and I wanted to chronicle the modest, but meaningful, shift happening right now. The article, which was published online today alongside visuals from Ricardo Nagaoka, explores how roles available to Asian and Asian American actors have evolved, especially over the last few years.I spoke to almost two dozen Asian Americans: Mostly actors, writers and directors, but also scholars, historians and everyday people. I needed to understand how laws and immigration policy — and especially pop culture — had shaped America’s view of Asian men. And I was interested in how the years of unflattering Hollywood portrayals made Asian and Asian American men feel.Surveys from the 2000s and 2010s had concluded that Asian men, along with Black women, were at the bottom of the racial romantic hierarchy when it came to dating in real life. And the frustration felt by Asian American men in that realm has at times manifested itself in misplaced toxicity, anger and resentment — particularly toward Asian women.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Asian American Actors Are Finally Getting Romantic Lead Roles

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      It was not long ago that the actor and writer Joel Kim Booster first began going to auditions only to quickly realize that the roles available to him as an Asian American man were severely limited.“It does not get better from here, no matter how many Chinese-food delivery boys you play,” he recalled being told by other Asian American actors.But Booster kept at it. And eventually, in 2022, he got to portray a gay Asian American man in “Fire Island,” a groundbreaking rom-com that he also wrote. “So much of that movie,” Booster said, “is just a literal transcript from my life.”As it turned out, things did get a little better for Asian American men in Hollywood during the decade that Booster spent toiling. And he senses that the momentum has continued in the two years since “Fire Island” debuted.Many of the newest Asian and Asian American stories seem unconcerned with “the white gaze,” he said. And so “the conversation has sort of moved on for a lot of people,” he said, adding that his movie “almost feels a little retrograde now.”Indeed, since the 2018 blockbuster “Crazy Rich Asians” became a box office hit, Asian and Asian American stories and characters have proliferated in American pop culture. And after decades of degrading, often emasculating portrayals, Asian and Asian American men like Booster have been at the center of the new work, often playing the sort of hunky hero parts that Hollywood long kept out of reach.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Karla Sofía Gascón of ‘Emilia Pérez’ Could Make Oscar History

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      There has never been a movie quite like “Emilia Pérez,” so it’s fitting that its star Karla Sofía Gascón is one of a kind, too.In the film from the director Jacques Audiard, Gascón plays a Mexico City cartel kingpin who fakes death in order to transition abroad in secret. Years after her gender-affirming surgery, the newly rechristened Emilia contacts the lawyer who helped arrange it (Zoe Saldaña) and has one more request: a reunion with the unsuspecting wife (Selena Gomez) and children she left behind, even though returning to the scene of her old crimes could have dire consequences.The multitude of genres suggested by this synopsis — a gritty drug-world exposé, a family melodrama, a trans-empowerment narrative — are further complicated by the fact that “Emilia Pérez” is a musical, meaning the characters are liable to break into song whether they’re in a love scene or clashing in a heated gunfight. In a film full of big swings, it’s hard to imagine any of the wild ideas holding together if it weren’t for Gascón, who can contain all of those multitudes in a single freighted look. Many pundits believe that after Netflix releases “Emilia Pérez” in November, Gascón will make history as the first openly trans actress nominated for an Oscar.In May, the 52-year-old Gascón was the breakout star of the Cannes Film Festival, where “Emilia Pérez” won a best actress award that was shared among all of the movie’s leading women. Since her castmates had returned home before the awards ceremony, an overcome Gascón took the stage on their behalf, and her emotional speech was the night’s highlight. At the microphone for nearly six minutes, Gascón flitted between Spanish and English as she tearfully asserted the humanity of trans people, joked about bribing the jurors, paid romantic tribute to her co-star Gomez, then apologized to Gomez’s boyfriend for her ardor.Afterward, Gascón tried to explain her speech’s breathless sprawl. “I’ve never been given a prize,” she told reporters. “I’ve mostly been given blows and kicks.”Spanish-speaking audiences may already be familiar with Gascón, a veteran of Mexican telenovelas who starred in the hit 2013 film “Nosotros los Nobles” and transitioned six years ago while in the public eye. “It was very difficult,” she told me recently over lunch in Los Angeles. “People knew me a certain way and then I changed, so I constantly felt that I had to justify myself. I was always fighting with everyone.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Beetlejuice’ Sequel With Jenna Ortega Premieres at Venice Film Festival

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      After the actors’ strike muted the 2023 edition, this year’s event is being powered by stars like the “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” actress and her castmates.On Wednesday morning, several hours before Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” opened the Venice Film Festival, dozens of young people were already camped out by the Palazzo del Cinema in the hopes of seeing one of the film’s stars.As I surveyed the scene, a teenage boy pulled up on a bicycle, accompanied by his parents. All three craned their necks to check out the still-empty red carpet. “Jenna Ortega is going to be here?” asked his father.The boy nodded shyly and his parents exchanged grins. “That’s his great love, you know,” the father said.Just as casting Ortega, the popular star of “Wednesday,” helped juice interest in Burton’s sequel, so too do glamorous movie stars turbocharge a film festival. Last year, Venice had to make do with precious few A-listers since the actors’ strike barred anyone who had appeared in a big-studio film from doing press for it.That meant the Zendaya tennis romance “Challengers,” planned as the glamorous opening salvo for last year’s festival, was yanked from the lineup and replaced by the Italian war drama “Comandante.” While that movie had its scattered highlights, it didn’t exactly have teenagers lining up for it at 11 in the morning.At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, the festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera recalled experiencing “this terrible feeling — this bereavement, if you like” when the strike sapped his event of its opening film and most of its stars.“It was a great blow we were dealt,” he said. “There was a lot of concern, of course, that the lack of the talent may somehow undermine the efficacy of the machinery of this festival, which is also associated with strong promotion.”In other words, while cinema is the lifeblood of any film festival, celebrity is what really sells it. Barbera asserted that this year’s starry schedule will be the exact opposite of the previous edition: “We have the longest list of talent attending, who will actually walk along our red carpet, in years.”The “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” news conference provided a fitting sneak preview of what’s to come: When Ortega, 21, took the dais alongside Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and the rest of the cast, she said it was she who felt intimidated by the others’ combined star power.“I just kind of tried to mind my business in the corner,” Ortega said, “making sure I didn’t rip off the lovely Winona’s work from back in the day.”The sequel needed more than 35 years to mount in part because of the busy schedules of Burton and his big stars. Knowing that, would the director ever consider a third installment?“Let’s do the math,” he said wryly. “It took 35 years to do this one, so I’ll be 100. I guess it’s possible, with medical science these days, but I don’t think so.” More

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      Seeking Free Quality Streaming? Try Plex.

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      This specialty streamer offers live TV along with a robust collection of free, ad-supported movies.If we’re being honest, the streaming app that your correspondent uses most — more than Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu, and more than any of the less-recognizable subscription streamers we’ve previously spotlighted here — is Plex, though for reasons owing less to its current iteration than to its humble beginnings.Plex launched in the late 2000s as free media-server software, allowing its users to set up a client-server on either their home computer or on a network-attached storage device for their personal libraries of movies, television episodes and music. Setup and integration are fairly simple, and once the app has been directed to the user’s files, it matches titles to its database of films and shows, which can be streamed to a variety of devices (including Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire and smart TVs). Best of all, you can share your libraries with friends, and vice versa, for either individual or “watch together” viewing. It’s a nifty way to watch whatever you want, wherever you want — for free, at least in its basic form. (The paid “Plex Pass” offers additional bells and whistles.)Of course, it’s difficult for a service to make money functioning solely as a free app for personal streaming, so Plex began expanding its offerings and utility in recent years. In 2019, the app added live TV streaming and DVR functionality, allowing its users the option of full-on cord cutting for an additional monthly fee. The following year, Plex introduced its ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) streaming service and free-to-stream live TV channels. As with Tubi, Pluto TV and other AVOD services, the automated commercial breaks aren’t always executed with finesse; the breaks sometimes fall mid-scene, or even midsentence. But it’s hard to complain when it comes with a $0 price tag.Cate Blanchett in “I’m Not There.”The Weinstein CompanyThis February, Plex launched another feature: a VOD rental service, allowing viewers to shell out a few bucks to stream new releases in the app, rather than in Amazon, Apple or Vudu. Sure, it’s a revenue-generator, but it also helps make Plex, in its own words, something of a concierge service. With the “Universal Watchlist” function, you tell the app which streaming services you use, and thereafter, whenever you add a movie or show to your watchlist, it will show you where to find it: via one of your other services, in a media library (yours or a friend’s) or through Plex’s own AVOD or VOD portals. It essentially makes the app the center of your streaming universe, and in an increasingly convoluted digital media landscape, that’s a useful function indeed.Here are a few highlights from their current AVOD offerings:‘Master of the Flying Guillotine’: This 1976 wuxia epic from the writer, director and star Jimmy Wang Yu is one of the era’s most beloved martial arts extravaganzas. Technically a sequel to Wang Yu’s smash “One-Armed Boxer” from the previous year, this tale of a blind warrior seeking revenge against Wang Yu’s antihero is full of clever innovations and complications in its plentiful action sequences. Most impressively, the filmmaker shoots his action scenes the way a fighter fights, up close and personal, with the graceful camera right in the middle of the bone-cracking action.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Venice Film Festival 2024: What to Watch For

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      “Joker: Folie à Deux,” with Joaquin Phoenix, and Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature are on tap. Here are the questions we hope to answer.The 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival kicks off Wednesday with the premiere of Tim Burton’s sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” and starry fare will follow, like the sexually provocative Nicole Kidman film “Babygirl” and the George Clooney-Brad Pitt team-up “Wolfs.”Here are four big questions we expect to be answered at the festival, which has long been considered the unofficial kickoff of Oscar season.Will Joaquin Phoenix face the music?A Venice debut for “Joker: Folie à Deux” has been presumed ever since the first “Joker” won the festival’s prestigious Golden Lion award five years ago. Can the sequel match that film’s success, which made more than a billion dollars at the box office and landed a best-actor Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix? The new film adds song-and-dance sequences and a potent co-star in Lady Gaga, so it’s clear that some big swings have been taken.But the “Joker: Folie à Deux” news conference at Venice may be even more keenly awaited than the movie itself now that Phoenix has made headlines for dropping out of a Todd Haynes film just as it was about to start shooting. With the actor potentially facing legal action, will he be willing to take questions about the controversy from reporters? Or will he skip the conference altogether and call to mind Florence Pugh, who famously ditched her Venice press duties for “Don’t Worry Darling” two years ago amid a rumored feud with her director, Olivia Wilde?Can ‘Queer’ and ‘Maria’ make a mark?Two of Venice’s most anticipated titles are still looking for buyers: Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” an adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel starring Daniel Craig, and Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” featuring Angelina Jolie as the opera singer Maria Callas.After the writers’ and actors’ strikes left many studios’ year-end slates looking awfully barren, you might have expected a bidding frenzy for two prestige films with major stars, but potential distributors that have screened the movies are taking a wait-and-see approach. Splashy premieres at Venice and almost-certain Oscar buzz could help make the sale.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tim Burton, Michael Keaton and More Share How ‘Beetlejuice’ Sequel Came Together

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      Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara and their director, Tim Burton, look back on the first movie, the “Day-O” scene and their ghost comedy’s afterlife.If you wonder why it took 36 years for “Beetlejuice” to spawn a sequel, consider how complicated it was simply to reunite its busy principals for a video call last month.The director Tim Burton joined from the south of France, where he was editing the second season of the Netflix series “Wednesday,” while Winona Ryder signed on from Atlanta, on a brief break from filming the final season of “Stranger Things.” Michael Keaton spent the call roaming a cabin he’d built in rural Montana — “I’m reheating coffee, if you want some,” he told the group — while Catherine O’Hara, the last to sign on, did so from her cottage in Ontario, Canada.Still, even on a video call that catered to a torturous number of time zones, the quartet’s comic chemistry remained strong. Ryder said revisiting their decades-old bond was the best part of making “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which opens the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday before its theatrical release Sept. 6.“It was nostalgic, but not in any saccharine sense,” Ryder said. “It went straight to the heart.”In the 1988 original, the newly dead couple Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) marshal all their ghostly might in an attempt to scare away the Deetzes, city slickers who’ve moved into their Connecticut house. Eccentric hauntings ensue, including a memorable dinner-party possession where Delia Deetz (O’Hara) lurches in time to Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O.” But when the Maitlands go looking for added firepower, they make the mistake of hiring Beetlejuice (Keaton), a trickster spirit who plays by his own rules and has romantic designs on the Deetzes’ daughter, the dark and morbid Lydia (Ryder).From left, Keaton, Catherine O’Hara, Ryder and the director Tim Burton, all participants from the original film, in New York to promote the sequel.Theo Wargo/Getty ImagesThe new film picks up decades later as Lydia, now the host of an exploitative paranormal-reality series, heads back home with her stepmother, Delia, and skeptical daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), in tow. Meanwhile, Beetlejuice lies in wait, still pining for the goth girl that got away.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Revisiting Tom Cruise’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ and ‘Magnolia’ Performances From 1999

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      Twenty-five years ago, the superstar starred in “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Magnolia,” and opened himself up for the camera in ways he rarely has since.“Eyes Wide Shut” had a blunt sales pitch: Cruise. Kidman. Kubrick.The poster didn’t need much more. Audiences already knew plenty. At the peak of his clout, having just earned his second Oscar nomination, for “Jerry Maguire,” and publicly launched his production company with “Mission: Impossible,” Tom Cruise and his wife at the time, Nicole Kidman, ditched Hollywood to quietly make a dirty movie in England with the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. The shoot was supposed to last six to eight months. It took 15.‘’People say: ‘You’ve lost 40, 60, 80 million dollars. You’ve lost all this money. You’ve lost all this time,” Cruise told The New York Times a year before its anticipated release. “To have a chance to work with Stanley Kubrick,” he added, “that’s worth it for me.”Talk about risky business. The second half of 1999 would prove to be the diciest period of Cruise’s career with the release of two back-to-back films that dared him to expose his private vulnerabilities. The first, “Eyes Wide Shut,” released 25 years ago this summer, was a cerebral and slippery tale about a husband named Dr. Bill Harford who wanders Manhattan for two nights as vague vengeance upon his wife for fantasizing about another man. It was hawked as Cruise after dark — the movie star and his spouse, the ascendant Kidman, inviting people into their bedroom to see how they slept, smooched and argued.Cruise sacrificed a year and a half of his life for what he hoped would be his major contender, the film that might finally earn him an Academy Award. But ironically, it was the other role that got him an invite to the ceremony: an outrageous supporting bit as the seduction guru Frank T.J. Mackey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ensemble drama “Magnolia” that Cruise had shot in just three weeks. Of the two performances, it’s by far the most personally revealing.Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, married at the time, playing a couple in “Eyes Wide Shut.”Warner Bros.At that time, Cruise was a promiscuous director-gatherer, rarely working with the same filmmaker twice. He aimed for heavyweights: Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Ron Howard, Brian De Palma, breaking his ronin inclinations only to make “Top Gun” and “Days of Thunder” with Tony Scott. On “Thunder,” he had fallen in love with Kidman and made another film with her, too — “Far and Away” — and neither had been critically acclaimed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More