'Tai Chi Hero' high graphic arts fun

If you saw "Tai Chi Zero," then you'll know that "Tai Chi Hero" comes up with a solution to the family curse and that's why "Tai Chi Hero" begins with a wedding. Stephen Fung brings a graphic novel sensibility to subtitles and martial arts movie. This is a light-hearted fable about the founding of tai chi.
Since some of you might be coming into this second movie without seeing the first, let me get you up to speed. The Chen Village has this wonderful style of martial arts that draws on inner strength. Yet because it was foretold that the village would be destroyed if an outsider learned their martial art, they decided to allow the man, Yang Lu Chan (Yuan XiaoChao), join because he helped save their village from the steam-driven precursor to the modern tank. They are making him a part of the village by marriage.
You can tell that his bride Chen Yu Niang (Angelababy) isn't exactly happy about this wedding. In "Tai Chi Zero," we learned she had been in love with Fang Zi Jing (Eddie Peng). Fang, however, was disgraced and left the village. Fang had been educated in England and that brain-washing has him on the side of the evil. Yes, the British and Westernization is the looming evil, but a native steampunk influence saves this from being the traditionalists against the innovators.

First, Yang Lu Chan must learn the Chen style and because of Yu Niang's coolness toward her new husband and the problems of the master-disciple dynamics (not to mention the traditional Chinese husband-wife behind the walls warfare), Yu Niang demands that Lu Chan sleep on the floor and not even think of nookie. With his puppy dog sweetness, Lu Chan seems to lust more for food than for Yu Niang anyway.

Chen Yu Niang's father, Master Chen (Tony Leung Ka Fai), didn't have all his baskets in this one smart, good-looking egg of a daughter. He had a son and the son, Zai Yang (Feng Shaofeng) returns. Zai Yang and his wife have to do that hierarchal dance with Lu Chan and Yu Niang. It's a matter of domestic dominance and social order complicated by birthright and merit or martial arts skills.

Yet Fang returns, embittered with the death of his beloved. Things get complicated, but never too serious.
Because "Tai Chi Hero" is a comedy and because we know it's the second part of a trilogy, we know that Lu Chan will survive. His climatic fight with Li Qiankun (Yuen Biao) is above his greatest temptation: food not sex.

There's some grain of truth to this tale about tai chi. There was a historical figure named Chan Wanting who lived from 1580 to 1660.  To put things in perspective, 1580 was the year that Frances Drake completed his circumnavigation of the world on the Golden Hind and Spanish troops landed in Ireland. By the time of Chen's death, King Charles II returned from exile to rule England. James II of England was named Duke of Normandy by Louis XIV of France.

Yang Lu Chan is an actual historical figure who lived from 1799-1872. According to Wikipedia, Lu Chan was from a poor family of Hebei Province and initially learned martial arts as a child. He met Chen De Hu and saw him performing his martial art. Chen referred him to his hometown, Chen Village. Lu Chan eventually became known as Yang Wudi or Yang the Invincible because he never lost a match and never seriously hurt the people he fought against. Yang Lu Chan was the first person outside of the Chen family to learn what became known as tai chi chuan. He learned it from Chen Changxing and then went on to teach what became known as the Yang style. His own students would include officials of the Qing dynasty and some of the elite Manchu Imperial guards from Beijing's Forbidden City.

This movie isn't interested so much in historical detail. Director Fung in his humorous and at times frenetically visual style leaves no doubt in your mind about that. His Lu Chan is more cartoon character and superhero.

So sit back for some fanciful family entertainment with interactive media-influence graphics and subtitles that work overtime to keep you in the martial arts informational overload. "Tai Chi Hero" is available as a DVD and Blu-Ray.

*Help sponsor me at USC. 


VoD

'Tai Chi Zero' is a fabulous first episode

Chinese movies are easy to miss when they come through Los Angeles--they don't play in many places. If you're somewhere else, I'm not even sure that this movie, "Tai Chi Zero," even made out your way, but if you like well choreographed martial arts with whimsy and a silly sense of sweetness, then go to Amazon because "Tai Chi Zero" is available to stream.

If you've gone to Chinese movies, you'll be used to subtitles, even if you speak and read Chinese. That's because the spoken language is what keeps the Chinese apart while the written language mostly unifies them (despite the more recent developments of jiantizi 简体字 (pinyin: jiǎntǐzì) and fantizi 繁體字 (pinyin: Fántǐzì)). Director/writer Stephen Fung in his fourth feature film uses subtitles like footnotes and not the dry intellectual type. You don't have to be an expert on kung fu flicks to appreciate this amazing cast because the subtitles tell you who and what these people are. Fung's styles fuses Chinese movie subtitles, with graphic novel and web design.

The martial arts here is the real thing. Although newcomer Yuan has the fresh-faced eagerness of a golden retriever puppy, he was the 2008 Olympic Games Wushu gold medalist. "Tai Chi Zero" is about a young man Yang Lu Chan (Jayden Yuan or Yuan Xiaochao), born under difficult circumstances that are played out in black and white and with a heavy dose of slapstick humor. In "Tai Chi Zero," Yuan is called "The Freak" because he has a little bump on his upper forehead. When that spot is pushed he gets eye-blazing white mad and pretty much unstoppable.
Yang grows up fighting under Zhao Kanping (Fung Hak On) of the Divine Truth forces.  Yang becomes a martial arts master of the exterior forms but must seek out the interior forms because that freakish bump is changing color and if he doesn't learn interior peace, he will die.

Yang travels to Chen Village to learn this special form of martial arts, but because of an old curse, the villagers are forbidden to teach outsiders the Chen form. Yang determinedly continues to throw himself into the village and in each case, he's defeated by men, women and even kids. Each time, however, he learns through imitation.

Yuniang (Angelababy), the daughter of Master Chen, begins to notice him, but not in a romantic sense.

The village is threatened by the designs of the evil the British in the form of the East India Company. The East India Company is in cahoots with Yuniang's fiancé, Fang Zijin (Eddie Peng). Fang dresses in European clothes and hopes to bring electricity to the village. The East India Company is also determined to bring the railroad through China and right through Chen Village.

In an American Western movie, villages wanted the railroad to come through in hopes it would bring more people and more civilization. But that probably wasn't the sentiment of the Native Americans who saw the railroads bringing hoards more people to steal their land. So let's not think that Chen Village is exactly against progress, they might not want to Westernize and become pawns of the East India Company.

When Fang's electrical exhibition fails to impress, the East India Company brings out a special weapon: A woman named Claire (Mandy Lieu) and her steam-punky weapon of mass destruction--a crude dome-shaped tank.

"Tai Chi Zero" was nominated for several awards, including a nomination for the Golden Horse Award for Best Action Choreography (Sammo Hung Kam-bo) and Best Makeup & Costume Design (Timmy Yip), and the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Action Choreography, Best Art Direction, Best Cstume & Make Up design and Best Visual Effects.

I'm going to have to backtrack here. I didn't catch Fung's 2004 "Enter the Phoenix" or the 2005 "House of Fury" or the 2009 "Jump."  Fung is a writer on those three movies. Before that, he was an actor, making his debut in the 1990 "Forbidden Nights" as the child who grows up to become the protagonist.  So I don't know how representative "Tai Chi Zero" is of his work.

Both my husband and I found it light-hearted fun and indulged our taste for Asian steam punk. We went backwards. Having seen and enjoyed the second movie in this trilogy, "Tai Chi Hero," we found "Tai Chi Zero" on Amazon.com and watched it the same day. I recommend you do it in the order it was meant to be seen.

'Seeking Asian Female' an anecdotal approach to yellow fever

Marriage isn't easy. Two people who speak the same language and come from the same culture have enough problems communicating and navigating the hurdles life throws in your way. If one doesn't speak the other's language, then the hurdles are even higher. Climbing them isn't impossible, but you have to ask what does each partner get from the relationship. That's something you have to consider when you watch "Seeking Asian Female." PBS screens "Seeking Asian Female" tonight at 10 p.m.

Where, but China, would a 60-year-old white man find an attractive wife half his age? Where else would a 30-year-old executive secretary like Sandy find a husband with a dead end job? Yes, it seems that Steven, who has been searching for an Asian bride for ten years--at first snail mail mail-order catalogues and then on the Internet, is getting the better deal. Sandy is totally dependent upon him and she can't go home for fear of losing face. On the other hand, Sandy has the advantage that most younger wives have over their older husbands. He may not be the best she could do; she might even be settling for now, but she is better than he could expect.

Steven has been divorced twice, has two children by his first marriage and grandchildren. He works taking money for parking at San Francisco International Airport. He lives in a small, messy apartment that is cluttered with photos and notebooks with letters from his possible love connections that have accumulated over the past decade. We don't learn much about Steven as a person from his family or his ex-wives (oh, that would be telling.)

We also don't know much about Sandy. Much of what we know is self-reporting and influenced by director Debbie Lum's own prejudices. She kinds Steven initially more than a little creepy and does seem to want to show him as a loser as Steven himself writes in online forums. The couple despite some rocky moments that are survived with help from Google Translate and Lum's interpreting skills, they are still married and Steven doesn't feel he saved Sandy. You can check out his Facebook page which features a photo of the two, but doesn't list them as married. We do know they marry but have to wonder about the kind of debt this brought on. Steven made several trips to China and his brother lent him money for the wedding to Sandy.

Without the yellow fever consideration, this reality seems very much like Terrence Malick's fictional tale of love lost, "To the Wonder." In that film, we have four languages: English, French, Spanish and Italian. Does anyone really understand the other? Perhaps this romance easier on our minds because the couple is easier on the eyes. The man, Ben Affleck, is clean cut and his character, Neil, has a house. He seems responsible and has a job that promises a future if it doesn't destroy the environment. His love interest, Marina (Olga Kurylenko)  is lithe and beautiful. She has a lovely smile and is happy at the expansive supermarkets in America. The story is told from her perspective and she was previously married. Her daughter is the first one to note something is missing.

Malick keeps a respectful distance from both Marina and Neil. We don't know all of their thoughts nor do we hear all of their conversations. French and English share many words, but not so with English and Mandarin Chinese. Imagine Sandy and Steven's frustration, but look how hard Sandy works to learn English while Steven can only declare, "This is not China and I am not Chinese."  Do you think Steven is making the same effort as Sandy is to learn Mandarin Chinese?


Would it be any different if Steven went to China to live? I have to wonder if it's American arrogance (e.g. I know many Americans in Japan who didn't bother to learn the language), male chauvinism (which fuels the self-help book industry targeting predominately women) or just laziness. She's learning English to speak with his family and neighbors but what about her family? Steven did specifically want a Chinese woman and did actually visit China.

You have to wonder why Lum chose Steven whom she openly states gave her the creeps and made her feel uncomfortable. She says it was because he doesn't have a filter. Over the five years, she might have learned more if she had kept her distance and looked at more than just one couple--perhaps as many as five. Certainly focusing on one couple makes it more personal and anecdotal, but with more than one couple. Lum looking at common problems, found couples who had succeeded or failed or were jumping over the same hurdles. Because Steven felt he was misrepresented and we don't know what Sandy feels, and because Lum spends time on her own feelings and resolving Steven and Sandy's problems, we don't get to know Steven and Sandy through the perspective of their co-workers and family. We both don't learn specifics nor do we learn generalities. Malick's "To the Wonder" with its vague storyline and minimal script allows you to fill in the blanks, making the story more universal. Malick also has a gifted cinematographer (Emmanuel Lubezki) where Lum's cinematography suffers from shakes, unfortunate backlighting (leaving the subject's face too dark) and on the fly footage of herself by herself. 

The story of Steven and Sandy really has yet to be told. Perhaps we'll understand what really happened in another five years when both Sandy and Steven can evaluate their expectations and the reality they found together and can contrast their interpretation of those five years Lum filmed Steven with what they see in the documentary.


The movie won the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2012 San Diego Asian Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary the same year at the VC Film Festival. "Seeking Asian Female" premieres on PBS on Monday, 6 May 2013 at 10 p.m. For more information visit the PBS website. You can also visit the official movie website. In English and Mandarin with English subtitles.

*Help sponsor me at USC.

Preserving culture by preserving language

Two documentaries, "To Weave a Name (E Haku Inoa)" and "Tongues of Heaven," look at preserving languages as a part of identity and preserving culture. Both documentaries screen twice as part of the Visual Communications' L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival.

Having studied several languages, I'm a strong advocate for learning more than one language. Going back to Japan and learn Japanese changed my life, so I can sympathize with the impulse behind both documentaries. The first, "To Weave a Name," is about the personal journey of director Christen Marquez.
Marquez is half-native Hawaiian. Her father met and married her mother, a hula teacher named Elena, when he was working in Hawaii. Elena was diagnosed as being schizophrenic and found to be a danger to her children. Marquez's father  divorced Elena and took all three of their children to the mainland.

All three children had Hawaiian names, Marquez's being 63 letters long. When the documentary began, none of the children knew what those names meant. Being a hula teacher, Marquez's mother Elena was more entrenched in the Hawaiian culture and by taking time to stay with her mother, Marquez learns more about the Hawaiian culture and her family.

The story is perhaps too personal and could have used some objective eyes. Marquez's narration is flat and doesn't probe into the exact extent of Elena's mental illness or Marquez's own changing perception.

Anita Chang's "Tongues of Heaven" is set in both Taiwan and Hawaii looks at much the same issue: Four young indigenous women who want to learn the languages of their parents and help prevent the extinction of the language and the culture. In the case of Hawaii, the Hawaiian language has been largely replaced by American English. For the Taiwanese, their native peoples were under Japanese Imperial rule (1895-1945) and then became dominated by Mandarin-speaking Chinese from the mainland when the Republic of China (ROC) led by Chiang Kai-Sheck fled to Taiwan in 1949. Taiwan had also been under Dutch and Spanish rule. One women choose between the language of her mother and the language of her father by considering which one has fewer people. A gain for one language, but a loss for the other.


Of course, language can't survive if only women are the gatekeepers of culture. The challenge will be getting both men and women in not only preserving but also developing the language and seeing how the language explains cultural attitudes.

"To Weave a Name (E Haku Inoa)" screens on 7 May 2013 (Tuesday) at 6:45 p.m. at the CGV Cinemas, 621 S. Western Ave. (between 6th and Wilshire), Los Angeles. On 11 May 2013 (Saturday) the documentary will screen again at 3 p.m. at the Art Theatre of Long Beach, 2025 E. 4th Street, Long Beach.

"Tongues of Heaven" screens on 4 May 2013 (Saturday) at 2:30 p.m. at the CGV Cinemas, 621 S. Western Ave. (between 6th and Wilshire), Los Angeles. On 11 May 2013  the documentary will screen again at 12:30 p.m. at the Art Theatre of Long Beach, 2025 E. 4th Street, Long Beach.

For more info, visit the official website of the L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival.

'Abigail Harm' is harmless but not particularly involving

A woman with a thin and somewhat annoying voice is reading a children's tale, "Through the Looking Glass" to a middle-aged white man. The woman is Abigail Harm and she's not the kind of person you'd normally build a movie around. "Abigail Harm" will screen on Saturday, 4 May 2013 at 7:15 in West Hollywood.

"Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the fawn's neck," she says. The man closes his eyes. The woman is Abigail Harm and she travels to people's homes "reading them stories from books they once loved" because these people cannot read any more. This is not the most uplifting job, not with such as quiet, passive non-descript woman as Abigail (Amanda Plummer). Then sometimes the job gets creepy. Her new client doesn't like her voice and wants her to read sexual descriptions from an instructional article about "undressing the girl next door."

Her clients asks, "Can you see the pictures, can you describe them?"

The narrator (Will Patton) tells us that sometimes the people say they see faces, but she doesn't believe them. We're also told that her father is dying, but she can't visit him because she doesn't know what she would say. Instead, she imagines that he's well again. She imagines that she's listening to him tell her a story about a woodcutter who save the life of a deer. The deer tells the woodcutter where to find a person and to hide its robe because "as long as you keep its robe, it will never leave you."

Abigail falls down the rabbit hole and into a world where she too finds a companion (Tetsuo Kuramochi) and finds comfort and love with him.

Director Lee Isaac Chung grounds us in reality, with common people, but I didn't feel the kind of magical chemistry between Kuramochi. Chung who co-wrote this piece with Samuel Gray Anderson brings the Korean folk tale, "The Woodcutter and the Nymph," into New York, but neither the relationship between father and daughter nor Abigail and the companion are intriguing enough to carry this movie.  Still, I do like the idea of using actors who look like ordinary people and the concept of bringing Asian folk tales into our reality much as TV programs such as "Once Upon a Time" are doing for European fairy tales.

"Abigail Harm" is a narrative feature of the Visual Communications L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival and screens on 4 May 2013 (Saturday), 7:15 p.m. at the Directors Guild of America (#2), 7920 Sunset Blvd. (At Hayworth, one block west of Fairfax) in West Hollywood. For more info, visit the festival's official website.

Iron Man deftly handles the yellowface factor

Were you worried about Ben Kingsley playing the Mandarin in "Iron Man 3"? Did you think that the humor of Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark was going to be lost in the sociopolitical implications of more yellowface after we'd already been through "Cloud Atlas"? Don't despair and buy your tickets and see "Iron Man 3." Shane Black and Drew Pearce's screenplay deftly handles the question of the Mandarin and will have you laughing but isn't that why we love Iron Man?


The Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Don Heck and Jack Kirby creation came at a time when yellowface was still acceptable. Iron Man was created by writer-editor Lee, developed by Lieber and designed by Heck and Kirby. He made his first appearance in the 1963 "Tales of Suspense." The self-promoting Lee does make an appearance, of course. But what we're really looking for is the Mandarin.

Lee created the Mandarin in 1964 and supposedly he was the son of a wealthy Chinese father (descended from Ghengis Khan) and an English aristocratic mother. Look at that. The Asian guy getting the white girl. In reality, that was pushing the boundaries of reality by adding the aristocratic bit and makes me think that geek guys do have a thing about royalty that slightly different from the girlish princess fantasy (currently be marketed with alarming effectiveness by Disney).  Iron Man's Mandarin was really at least part Mandarin and he was both a brilliant scientists and a skilled martial artist. That's like combining two stereotypes together for master mayhem.

The Mandarin's primary source of power is ten rings--not one ring Tolkien and Wagner fans, ten.  Each ring has a different power and has to be worn on a specific finger. You probably don't want to be shaking the Mandarin's hand now.

In "Iron Man 3," Sir Ben Kingsley is the son of a Gujarati Indian (Muslim) and a British actress mother. It looked like he was going to join fellow Anglo-Indian Boris Karloff who played Fu Manchu in 1932 ("The Mask of Fu Manchu").  Did we want to diss a fellow Asian for playing Asian?

You won't be seeing Axonn-Karr, a dragon-like alien. We already had aliens in the 2012 Joss Whedon-directed  "The Avengers."  In "Iron Man 3," Black and Pearce have a troubled Tony Stark telling this tale in a voiceover. Stark is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He's not an alien like Thor and at least Thor is a humanoid alien. You could mostly pretend he's human although I'm still wondering about the different accents of Thor and his foster bro Loki.

Thor and Loki don't appear, but they are mentioned. In a flashback, Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) tells in a voiceover how things started on a New Year's Eve party in Berns, Switzerland. Stark has yet to meet and commit to Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and while on his way to seduce a pretty brunette female scientist Dr. Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), he's approached by a male scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce). Stark is at his self-absorbed worst, and tells Killian to wait for him on the rooftop. Killian is developing an experimental regenerative treatment. Killian eventually hires Hansen and together they develop Extremis (based on story line by Warren Ellis and Adi Granov).

Yet Stark isn't so concerned with Killian yet because the Mandarin is threatening the President of the United States who is being protected by Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle). The Mandarin seems to be behind explosions, including one that injured Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau). The Mandarin has gone the way of the 2007-2008 "Flash Gordon" series. In that TV series, Ming became West Asian like a Saddam Hussein. For "Iron Man 3," the Mandarin is more like an Osama bin Laden leader of an international terrorist ring called the Ten Rings.  Not exactly Mandarin, but I doubt if West Asians will be insulted either.

Black and Pearce give us more falling, crashing, exploding and shooting than personal one-on-one time with Pepper and Stark or even Rhodes and Stark. Yet Black and Pearce keep the tone light with a self-deprecating humor. Things don't always go as Stark plans, but you know eventually things will end well and Stark will end up with Pepper. Be sure to wait until the very end, after all of the very long credits for an extra surprise.

Jake Shimabukuro revitalizes ukulele music

Tiny Tim infamously played the soprano ukulele and sang in a less than lovely falsetto about tiptoeing through the tulips. Tiny Tim and his falsetto singing as he played the ukulele in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and to a lesser extent, Hawaiian-born Don Ho in his guest appearances on TV shows and in his ABC TV variety show (1976-1977) defined what many considered ukelele music in the United States. Jake Shimabukuro with his custom-made four-string tenor ukulele has single-handedly changed all that. Tadashi Nakamura's intimate "Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings" shows how this TED Talk virtuoso got his start and shot to fame on YouTube. The movie screens on Saturday, 4 May 2013, at the Directors Guild of America as part of the annual L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival.

This is, according to IMDb, Nakamura's first feature-length documentary. This is obviously a work of love. Nakamura also served as one of the three cinematographers (along with Jim Choi and Naalehu Anthony) and edited the film. The cinematography is good and the editing flows well, but, of course, in any documentary about a musician, it's all about the music and the man.  Nakamura gets it right with the soundtrack and the informal style of his interviews.

Shimabukuro is fifth-generation Japanese Americans (gosei) and received his first ukulele from his mother at age four. Now 36, the Honolulu-born and based Shimabukuro has ventured into jazz, blues, funk, rock, classical, bluegrass, folk and flamenco with is ukulele. Like many musicians, he got his start as a garage band. The documentary includes photos of him playing as a child and later as a trio with his friends. His group, a trio with Lopaka Colon on percussion and Jon Yamasato on guitar who called themselves Pure Heart, got popular local attention for this first album. They won awards, but Yamasato left the group and eventually after a brief stint in a newly formed group called Colon, Shimabukuro became a solo artist as well.

His YouTube page got him plenty of attention and Shimabukuro went on to perform with Jimmy Buffett and Bette Midler and score a Japanese award-winning film "Hula Girls."

The documentary touches on his childhood, growing up in a small apartment and raised by his single mother, his acquisition of a manager, his meeting and marriage as well as his rise to international fame and then focuses on his recent 2012 tour which took him to post-Tsunami Sendai, the birthplace of his manager. We see the affable Shimabukuro spreading the love of the ukulele by visiting with both the old and the young. Shimabukuro is humble and sweet. You just want to hug him and have him over for dinner. He's a regular guy who found his passion and brought the ukulele out from under the squeaky shadow of Tiny Tim and forward from the smooth but old-fashioned legacy of Don Ho (seen below on "The Brady Bunch").

  "Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings" screens on 4 May 2013 (Saturday) at 7 p.m. at the Directors Guild  of America #1, 7920 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles.

For more info, visit the film festival's website.

If you miss your change to see "Life on Four Strings" during the festival, don't despair. You can see it on PBS on 10 May 2013 (Check for local listings). You can even win a chance to meet him in person.

May Day is Asia/Pacific Day #1, but May 2 is Linsanity Day in L.A.

In honor of Asian Pacific Heritage Month, I've begun two new blogs. This one will be devoted to Asian and Asian American films. (There other one is about L.A. Asians and what I think they would find interesting). This is my fit of ambitious insanity and today's entry celebrates "Linsanity." The documentary on Jeremy Lin opens the L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival today.

Visual Communications L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival  began as a humble little film and video festival in 1983, has not expanded to a two-week film festival with show cases, panels and seminars. The festival now uses several venues: the Directors Guild of America, CGV Cinemas and the Art Theatre of Long Beach.

If you're looking for Bollywood or samurai-slasher movies, move on. This is about new works by old and new filmmakers and videos artists from America and Asian Pacific communities world-wide and the movies cover a wide range of topics.

And there are parties. Plenty of parties, including karaoke.

Opening night is today and get ready for "Linsanity." Yes, it's a 2013 documentary by Evan Jackson Leong about Houston Rocket point guard Jeremy Lin during his February 2012 celebrity run. This Taiwanese American athlete was born in Los Angeles. If you want to jump on the "Linsanity" celebration, the movie screens at the DGA at 7 p.m. VIP tickets are $100, but screening and gala reception for VC or DGA members is $45.

"Linsanity" was at Sundance in January, but this is the first time it has screened in Los Angeles. Love basketball? Infected with Linsanity? Get your tickets quick.

The reception begins at 5: 30 p.m. in the DGA Atrium.  The 88-minute movie begins at 7 p.m. (#2). The reception begins at 9:30 p.m. at the DGA lobby.

Directors Guild of America - Theater 1
7920 Sunset Blvd
Hollywood, CA 90046
Phone: (213) 680-4462
For the full program visit the official website.