Asian A.V. Club newsletter #2
It's intro week as we take a deeper dive into three titles that are on the top of our viewing agenda; Beef, Polite Society and Joy Ride!
Let’s BEEF!
From the mind of writer, director, creator Lee Sung Jin (Dave, Tuca & Bertie), comes a tale of escalating revenge instigated by an incident in a crowded parking lot (see that moment below).
What ensues is somewhat of a giddy momentum in which successful business woman Amy Lau (Ali Wong - Always Be My Maybe, Baby Cobra) locks into a one-upmanship battle against eternally frustrated Danny Cho (Steven Yeun - Minari, The Walking Dead). The setup for humor is perfect and one can easily say that ‘Beef’ offers that in droves. But as things amplify, careers & relationships are affected to the brink of no return. And once we go past that line, things will never be the same again.
Or as I wrote to my friend Alice, who asked about the show:
“I just binged the whole series in less than two days! All I can tell you is that it’s crazy and messy and brilliant and walks to it’s own rhythm and self indulgent and twisted and sad and powerfully lasered through an Asian lens. I’m still trying to process what I just saw.”
(I mean, they really should use that as the poster quote!)
Creator Lee said at the recent SXSW that the idea for ‘Beef’ came from an altercation with a driver in which the whole incident made him think that “we project so much onto people that we don’t know… maybe there would be a show here.”
But the series took on bigger themes once Wong and Yeun got involved during the pandemic. Conversations from growing up in the Korean church to a love of ‘The Sopranos’ which steers one of our leads having a very interesting scene with a gun, all made the final cut of scripts that covers a scope that’ll surprise viewers.
“We had a time where we went to our safe spaces and got to cultivate our stories and feel emboldened to tell the truth from our perspectives,” explains Yeun to the Austin-American Statesman, “and now we get to be at a place where we can share stories with each other (rather than be in) this siloed box where we’re separate.”
For those who have seen the show ahead of its release, the responses have gone a bit bonkers for ‘Beef’. Of course there is a glee in watching our two main characters spar and take everything else down with them, but the bigger joy is to watch Steven Yeun and Ali Wong showcase some of their best career performances which will definitely play out during award season.
I could break down this show even further, but I feel like I’m on the verge of spoilers and to be fair to this show, you just have to press play to experience it in all it’s glory.
‘Beef’ is on Netflix April 6th
Let’s Enter POLITE SOCIETY!
From the creative mind of writer-director Nida Manzoor comes her feature debut ‘Polite Society’. Originally written over a decade ago, it took the global success of her Muslim female punk band series ‘We Are Lady Parts’, that producers signed on to make her feature dreams a reality.
The result is 'Polite Society’. World premiering at the Sundance Film Festival back in January, the film tells the story of two sisters who… well… lets have Nida describe it in her own words below:
…we had to cut Nida off cause she was telling us too much of the plot.
But Manzoor had other reasons to want to tell this story. “I wanted to make this film for many reasons but predominantly so I could see a South Asian teenage girl as an action hero. I grew up loving the spectacle of action movies, but feeling extremely left out, so this film is for my teenage self.”
And her teenage self should be so pleased with the results, because ‘Polite Society’ not only showcases two strong sisters, Ria (Priya Kansara - Bridgerton) and Lena (Ritu Arya - The Umbrella Academy), but the mix of comedy, action and cultural celebration makes this a breezy fun watch.
“South Asian characters are often relegated to shop owners or token friends to white leads. It meant everything to me to center the film around a South Asian girl - who is flawed and funny and kicks ass.”
‘Polite Society’ is out in theaters April 28th
Fresh Obsession: JOY RIDE
Warning: Red Band trailer below. Maybe don’t blast this at work or around kids at full volume!
Here’s another hot title from SXSW which brings together writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong (Family Guy, Resident Alien), Teresa Hsiao (Awkwafina is Nora from Queens) and first time director Adele Lim (who co-wrote the screenplay to Crazy Rich Asians).
Chevapravatdumrong explains at SXSW how the project came to be. “We have been friends for years, we hang out at each others houses, go out to dinners, (and we said), you know what maybe we should try to write a movie and then we were like, wait… we’re professional TV writers, we should probably actually just do it.”
‘Joy Ride’ tells the adventure of childhood besties Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) who along with Kat (Oscar nom Stephanie Hsu) and Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) travel to China to find Audrey’s birth mom. Like all raunchy road-trip films, naughtiness and cultural bonding ensues.
“The characters are based on friends of ours. Well, heightened versions,” explains co-writer Hsiao, “I’m not trying to throw anyone under the bus, but sorry to their parents who watch this. But honestly, we weren’t trying to do anything crazy, we wanted a story grounded in heart, in addition to all the raunchiness and the jokes.”
“Something has started to crack open,” observes Hsu, hot off of being a part of the ‘Everything Everywhere At Once’ award season, “for us to get to do this raunchy, balls-to-the-wall, rated R, wild, unhinged movie, I feel like we have permission to do this and make a mess and not be precious with our identity. Our movie is just a fun time and we get to do it because of all the movies that have come before, paved the way and made space for us to get to wile out.”
ugh… July 7th can’t come soon enough for Joy Ride!
One final thing!
Let’s celebrate the wind machine cause Shah Rukh Khan’s hair is it’s own character in the global Hindi-language action smash Pathaan!
ready to stream for free on Prime Video March 24th onwards!
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