Films in 1992 with U.S. Asians!

PUSHING HANDS (aka Tui shou)
(1992)
Directed by Ang Lee
Written by by Ang Lee & James Schamus
Cast: Bin Chao, Victor Chan, Lester Chit-Man Chan, Fanny De Luz, Audrey Haight, Jackson King, Eugene Lau, Bar-Chya Lee, Haan Lee, Peter Lee, Yin Liang, Richard Light, Bill Lin, Emily Yi-Ming Liu, Jean Kou Chang

There are several things that make this film noteworthy to remember. The first being that is is the first film of a great Chinese/Chinese American director and the interracial marriage (Chinese male/White female) that is the focal point/story of the movie's plot. The interracial/intercultural issues is an unusual and unique element that is rarely seen in American films.

REVIEW: Before directing The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility and Pushing Hands. It is small of scale, a delicately done family melodrama that overflows with Lee's characteristic compassion and humanity. A bit awkward at times, it does show the developing talent of a world-class director. A retired tai chi master from Beijing has moved in with his Anglicized son and American daughter-in-law, who live in the suburbs of New York. The grumpy daughter-in-law can't stand having the old man underfoot all the time, and he resents his situation, too, and won't learn English. Things eventually work out for all parties, and balance returns. Modesty is a virtue. Confucius didn't say that, but would probably agree. -- Jim Byerley from HBO Reviews

If you're looking for a film with an interracial (Black/Asian-Indian) romance, purchase this film by CLICKING HERE.

MISSISSIPPI MASALA
(1992)
Directed by Mira Nair
Cast: Denzel Washington, Sarita Choudhury, Roshan Seth, Sharmila Tagore, Charles Dutton, Joe Seneca, Ranjit Chowdhry, Mohan Gokhale, Mohan Agashe, Tico Wells, Yvette Hawkins, Anjan Srivastava, Dipti Suthar, Varsha Thaker, Ashok Lath, Natalie Oliver, Karen Pinkston, Willy Cobbs, Mira Nair, Rajika Puri, Sharon Williams, Cyreio Hughes, Stacy Swinford, Rick Senn, Jim Haffey, Dillon Rozell Gross, Reverend Fred Matthews, Shung Moo Joe

Yes, it's yet another interracial romance with an Asian American woman. But wait! This time, the leading man is African American. The thought-provoking flip side to all those annoying "white knight" movies.

RAPID FIRE
(1992)
Directed by Dwight H. Little
Cast: Brandon Lee, Powers Boothe, Dustin Nguyen

One of the few Hollywood films with an acculturated Asian American hero who is also in touch with his ancestral roots, this above-average, action-packed movie boasts some fine acting and rescues Brandon Lee (son of Bruce Lee) from his insulting sidekick role in the loathsome "Showdown in Little Tokyo" (1991). This film also led to Brandon's casting as the non-Asian title character in "The Crow" (1994) and--sadly--to his untimely death.

WHO'S GOING TO PAY FOR THESE DONUTS?
(1992)
Directed by Janice Tanaka

Sansei artist Tanaka confronts a momentous chapter in her personal history: the discovery of her long-missing father, an evacuee during World War II, in a halfway house for the mentally ill. Tanaka's hour-long video interrogates perceptions of her father's mental health, an interrogation that stretches into the history of the Japanese American internment. But rather than making any hard and fast assertions, Tanaka questions the very subject of perception and looks inward to fathom the internment's impact upon herself and the rest of her family. Unusual and absorbing video images permeate this thought-provoking work.

STRANGERS
(1992)
Directed by Daniel Vigne, Wayne Wang, and Joan Tewkesbury
Cast: Linda Fiorentino, Joan Chen, Timothy Hutton

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This HBO-produced omnibus film consists of three separate stories, one of them directed by Wang and starring Chen as an Asian American woman whom becomes erotically obsessed with an unseen man in Paris. Refreshingly, the race of Chen's character is incidental to the story. Wang's segment does a fine job of capturing Chen's sense of disorientation (so to speak), but it's hard to tell what the point of the story is supposed to be--beyond the sexual titillation of the audience. Although the erotic material clearly required Chen to cut loose and bare all, she self-consciously keeps her body strategically covered. This draws our attention to the artifice of Chen's performance, and it makes us wonder why such an inhibited actress was hired for such an uninhibited role in the first place.

WAYNE'S WORLD
(1992)
Directed by Penelope Spheeris
Cast: Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Rob Lowe, Tia Carrere, Brian Doyle-Murray, Lara Flynn Boyle, Michael DeLuise, Dan Bell, Lee Tergesen, Kurt Fuller, Sean Gregory Sullivan, Colleen Camp, Donna Dixon, Frederick Coffin, Michael G. Hagerty, Chris Farley, Meat Loaf, Charles Noland, Robert Patrick, Ione Skye, Frank DiLeo, Eric Crabb, Mark St. James, Harris Shore, Peder Melhuse, Don Amendolia, Carmen Filpi, Anna Schoeller, Robin Ruzan, Alice Cooper, Stan Mikita, Ed O'Neill, George Foster, Anthony Focx, Marc Ferrari, Stef Burns, Pete Freezin', Greg Smith, Derek Sherinian, Jimmy DeGrasso

Wayne and Garth, the horny, heavy metal-loving teenage heroes of the popular "Saturday Night Live" skit, hit the big screen. They're still doing their cable-access show out of the Wayne's basement in Aurora, Illinois; only now a sleazy TV executive named Benjamin Oliver wants a piece of the action. As the babe 'n' band obsessed adolescents negotiate the shark-infested waters of network television, Wayne finds 'amore' in the form of a heavy metal femme fatale with a penchant for skin-tight costumes. But can Wayne keep his new lady love out Oliver's unsavory clutches?

This film provided a very high profile to the pretty Tia Carriere. She wasn't cast as a typical Asian girl, just as a pretty girl that all boys dream about. Tia does kick as a strong girl in the film. Despite some people thinking that this is inconsequential film of youthful lust, a lot of people did see the film and those same viewers saw Tia Carriere as the object of their desire. Now what we need to do is to let people know that Asian / Asian Pacific American guys are just as sexy - just look at Russell Wong!?!

INDOCHINE
(1992)
Directed by R�gis Wargnier
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Vincent P�rez, Jean Yanne, Linh Dan Pham, Dominique Blanc, Alain Fromager, Eric Nguyen, Carlo Brandt, Henri Marteau, G�rard Lartigau, Andrzej Seweryn

We decided to slightly bend the rules of which films are included in this list with the inclusion of Indochine. This film, though it is an European film, is noteworthy because the plot shows where an Asian (Vietnamese) woman has a mind of her own and decides her own destiny! This film won a 1992 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, though many American critics didn't like the film. Their complaint is that the picture is more like a soap opera, but one could say that the film was more interested in character development - different strokes for different folks! The film does feature some great acting from the great and beautiful Catherine Deneuve, along with Linh Dan Pham! If you're into European films and tired of the typical "boy toy" image of Asian/Asian Pacific American women, you should see/rent/buy this film!

THE PLOT - Romantic melodrama set during French colonial rule in Vietnam from 1930-1954. French national Eliane thinks of Vietnam as home: she owns a rubber plantation there, and has adopted Camille, the Vietnamese child of Eliane's deceased friends. But mother and daughter are soon at odds over both romance and politics: Camille has fallen for French naval officer Jean-Baptiste, who was once Eliane's lover, and has also become a revolutionary determined to destroy the French-run government. Tensions deepen when authorities sentence Camille to a French labor camp, and Eliane takes charge of Jean-Baptiste and Camille's baby. As time passes, it becomes clear that France's reign in Vietnam will soon end -- leaving mother, daughter and grandchild on different sides of the ideological issue. (from Amazon.Com)