Sunday Read: With movie theaters shuttered, online and streaming fill the gap for Asian American programming

With the coronavirus rescheduling all the premieres and launches of Hollywood products, it looks like Asian March which initially had five Asian or Asian American projects debut on television or the theaters, has extended into May for an Asian Spring.

Netflix is now offering three promising AAPI projects, one of which is streaming right now, two that will premiere May 1, kicking off Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

The big change was delaying the general release of the live-action Mulan to later this summer. With the shelter-in-place mandates in the US and China, the blockbuster with an international cast of Asians and Asian Americans, would have failed miserably if it opened on the original March date.

Tigertail, streaming on Netflix

The big premiere in April was Tigertail, which opened April 7. Alan Yang's tale of immigration is loosely based on his father's journey to the US. The movie is just over an hour and a half and I wish it could have gone on for at least another hour to flesh out subtleties Yang offered in the stunningly beautiful film.

Much like the Chinese or Japanese scrolls depicting landscapes surrounded by empty space, a lot of Tigertail's power lies in those empty spaces, the closeup of the father's face as he seeks to forces his facial muscles to tighten in order to hide the emotions he dares not reveal, the silences between father and daughter that speaks volumes about the lifetime of tension between them.

This allows the viewer to fill in the spaces with their own experiences and emotions.  Perhaps this is why the film has had mixed reviews: Asian reviewers almost universally love the film but white reviewers just see emptiness and the missing parts of the story.

Receiving less press but perhaps more accessible to the non-Asian audience is the romcom The Half of It and Mindy Kaling's coming-of-age series Never Have I Ever.

A scene from 'Tigertail,' an Asian American story.

Ghost in A Shell 2045, streaming on Netflix 

Scarlett Johansson will not be in this latest iteration of the Ghost in A Shell. For the uninitiated, Ghost in the Shell is a long-running anime franchise that began its life as a cyberpunk manga in 1989, following a cyborg named Major Motoko Kusanagi who worked in a counter-cyberterrorist organization called Public Security Section 9. Notoriously, Paramount’s live-action adaptation of the story sparked controversy over the casting of Johansson as Major Motoko Kusanagi, clearly a Japanese character in the animated story. Hopefully, this new story will be just the thing for fans to put that recent film firmly in the dustbin of awful mistakes.

To call Netflix’s visual take on Ghost in the Shell different would be an understatement. The animated series has gotten a full makeover in the form of CGI that looks more suited to a Pixar film or a video game; it’s a beautiful, albeit drastic, change from the drawn animation most fans have come to know. In the first full trailer for Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, which is set to arrive this April, Netflix offers a full look at the cast, from Major to Batou.

Never Have I Ever, May 1, Netflix

Never Have I Ever is an upcoming Netflix Original coming-of-age comedy series co-created and written by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher based on Kaling's youth in Massachusetts. After a nationwide casting call, newcomer Maitreyi Ramakrishnan was picked to play the lead.

This will be the first Netflix Original series produced by Kaling, who has previously worked as a writer and executive producer on The Office, and Fisher who has served as a writer on award-winning shows such as 30 Rock, The Mindy Project and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

'Never Have I Ever' is a coming-of-age story from an Indian American point of view.

The Half of It, Netflix, May 1

The Half of It is a movie that will begin streaming on May 1 to kick off Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

The feature flick is like a Cyrano de Bergerac situation with a modern-day twist. If To All the Boys I Ever Loved, a Netflix hit that was part of 2018's Asian August, was a teen romance fantasy, The Half of It presents a situation closer to the confusing, questioning reality faced by most Asian American teenagers.

Leah Louis plays Ellie Chu, a friendless and shy straight-A student who runs a business in school, making money off the students who want her to do their homework. She receives an unusual request from one of the jocks, Paul, to help him write a letter to Aster Flores, the girl he loves. The unlikely pair strike up a friendship, but it becomes extremely complicated when Ellie finds herself falling for Aster too.

Asian Americans, PBS, May 11 & 12

On May 11 & May 12, 2020 PBS will premiere Asian Americans, a five-hour film series that will chronicle the contributions, and challenges of Asian Americans, the fastest-growing ethnic group in America. Personal histories and new academic research will cast a fresh lens on US history and the role Asian Americans have played in it.

Led by a team of Asian American filmmakers, including Academy Award®-nominated series producer Renee Tajima-Peña (Who Killed Vincent Chin?, No Más Bebés), Asian Americans examines the significant role of Asian Americans in shaping American history and identity, from the first wave of Asian immigrants in the 1850s and identity politics during the social and cultural turmoil of the 20th century to modern refugee crises in a globally connected world.

“These are American stories: stories of resilience in the face of racism, of overcoming challenges as refugees from war and strife, of making contributions in all sectors of society: business, technology, military service, and the arts,” said Stephen Gong, Executive Director of the Center for Asian American Media. 

Unladylike 2020, PBS, May 13

This series tells the stories of little known women who have had a big impact on the US. On May 13, the 1-hour epsode is about Tye Leung Schulze (1887–1972), the youngest daughter of low-income immigrants from China, escaped from domestic servitude at age nine and an arranged marriage at age 12. She began her career translating for victims of human trafficking in San Francisco’s Chinatown working for Donldina Cameron’s Presbyterian Mission Home. In 1910, she became the first Chinese American woman to work for the federal government, as assistant matron and an interpreter at the Angel Island Immigration Station, a detention center designed to control the flow of Asian immigrants into the US under the Chinese Exclusion Act. While there, she fell in love with a white immigration inspector, Charles Schulze, and married him against both their parents’ wishes and California’s anti-miscegenation laws. In 1912, one year after California granted women the right to vote, Leung became the first Chinese American woman to vote in a US election.

Burden of Truth, CW, May 21

Kristin Kreuk is back with her series, Burden of Truth, on the CW network. The series centers on attorney Joanna Hanley (Kreuk), who walked away from her partnership at a corporate law firm in order to figure out why a mysterious illness was afflicting high school girls in her home town of Millwood, Manitoba. By the end of season one, Joanna was estranged from her dad and changed her last name to Chang — her mother’s maiden name. In season two, she has joined a Winnipeg firm, where a new client involves her in a case full of political and cyber intrigue.

One thing to keep in mind when going over these offerings, while the choices for AAPI to find subjects or characters relevant to themselves may seem plentiful, these represent only a teeny, tiny portion of the products put out by the Hollywood dream factory. AAPI themes and characters are still woefully under-represented in the output coming from Toronto, Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles, centers for video and film productions for North America.

The Lovebirds, Netflix, May 22

Any movie with Kumail Nanjiani is a must for me because, well, he's like Everyman for AAPI guys. And he makes me laugh. 

Add Issa Rae and you know this is going to be a movie with a lot of POC inside jokes to make a serious point about interracial relationships and social inequities but have you laughing at the same time. 

Rae and Nanjiani play a couple who experiences a defining moment in their relationship when they are unintentionally embroiled in a murder mystery. As their journey to clear their names takes them from one extreme – and hilarious - circumstance to the next, they must figure out how they, and their relationship, can survive the night.

Originally set for an April 3 general release by Paramount, the coronavirus crisis forced a delay and then the streaming giant Netflix settled on an exclusive online premiere.

PLUS ...

With Asian American film festivals cancelled around the country due to the coronavirus crisis, communities will depend more on programs on television and online offerings to observe Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in May.

Local PBS-affiliated television stations, such as:

• KQED in San Francisco,
• KCET in Los Angeles, 
• WTTW in Chicago,
• WNET in New York,

have their own individual programming for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and they vary from station to station. Check your local listings for more information.