SuddenWorld.com

For the upcoming holiday season, if you’re looking for something somewhat different from the usual products sold by the usual national chain stores (because, really, aren’t you suffering from just a wee bit of consumer fatigue from just about every Best Buy or Target or Macy’s around practically every corner?), then perhaps you might consider some of the following online shopping sites—listed in alphabetical order—for an alternate gifting experience.

1. AnimeNation: Japanese pop culture in the way of manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese animation) has made significant inroads to the American mainstream. You might have noticed the growing shelf space devoted to these genres in your local book store or DVD retailer. AnimeNation maintains a huge catalog of 8000-plus products, including extensive manga and anime titles. Parents should take careful note of the “Suggested Age Rating” listed for each product, as there are some materials that are definitely not suitable for younger viewers.

2. CafePress.com: Need a t-shirt that says “Auntie” in Chinese characters or a baby bib that says “Puerto Rican Princess? Then look no further than the “International T-Shirts and Gifts” section of CafePress.com. The site features numerous logos, emblems, icons, or what have you pertaining to various countries around the world.

3. CDS International Bookstore: CDS International is a nonprofit organization dedicated to international training opportunities for young students and professionals. In affiliation with Barnes & Noble, purchasing a book specifically through the CDS bookstore will automatically generate a donation to CDS International’s endowed Scholarship Fund which helps support American students and young professionals gain work experience overseas.

3. Cost Plus World Market: Okay, admittedly this is a chain store (299 stores nationwide and counting, according to their site), but it has its own distinct modus operandi. It’s as if someone decided to blend a Crate & Barrel and a Whole Foods Market with the added twist of focusing on global imports. The slightly unwieldy commercial name aside, this could conceivably be your last-stop shopping for all your international home needs.

4. Culture for Kids: The site is a great resource for parents, teachers, and librarians looking for educational items dedicated to expanding children’s knowledge of various languages and cultures. They offer products ranging from arts-and-craft kits to bilingual books to foreign language software.

5. DollsLikeMe.com: Although all the world does not look like Ken and Barbie, certain ethnic minorities may be hard-pressed to find this reality reflected in their choice of toys. In answer, DollsLikeMe.com promotes self-esteem among children of color by providing toys of cultural relevance to their respective backgrounds. Besides dolls, products include games, books, birthday cards, and puppets—all chosen with the same contextual ethnic sensibility.

6. A Greater Gift: This is a program of SERRV International, a nonprofit trade and development organization, which allows you to purchase authentic handcrafts and agricultural products from artisans and farmers from developing regions throughout the world. Online or in their participating outlets, you can purchase unique arts, crafts, and foods for various occasions, which in turn will help their artisans and farmers earn a living wage.

8. Housing Works | Thrift Shops: According to their site, Housing Works is the nation’s largest non-profit minority-controlled AIDS service organization. They rely on donations for their thrift shops and auctions from which they raise money for public health advocacy for AIDS-related issues, which means that a careful buyer could score some great deals on various clothing (including international designer brands like Dolce & Gabbana or Christian Dior), home furnishings, and/or assorted bric-a-brac while supporting a worthy cause.

9. Kalustyan’s: A specialty grocer originally known for its South Asian and Middle Eastern food products, they have expanded their stocks to represent countries from practically every continent. Their physical store is located in the Midtown/Murray Hill area of Manhattan, but anyone who may not have easy local access to international food products can order from their online site.

10. Princeton Home Décor: Their showroom is located in Princteton, NJ, but you need walk no further than your own home computer to order home décor items specially imported from Asia (specifically China and Tibet). Although their furniture may be rather cost-prohibitive for the average holiday shopper, check out their “Best Sellers” list for reasonably priced accessories such as a hand-made Chinese calligraphy set at $40 or a Feng Shui compass at $23.

Now you have a fighting chance to get your friends and family a gift they may have never seen before, and in some cases, you’ll even be contributing to a greater cause. They’ll wonder at your resourcefulness in cosmopolitan gift-giving, so don’t hesitate to buy into a bigger world!

Making a professional living is tough. Even when you find your calling, the choices you have, while they may come more into focus, don’t necessarily become any easier. Throw into the mix that you happen to be a foreign national trying to get a film made in New York City, and said individual has got his work cut out for him. However, when you believe in the medium of film as strongly as I learned filmmaker Jinoh Park does, such circumstances are simply part of the grand quest for artistic growth.

Jinoh Park was born in Seoul, South Korea, but for now, he calls the neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Queens his home as he commutes daily into Manhattan, endeavoring to make his first full feature-length film. An alumnus of New York University’s Graduate Film Program, he is certainly no stranger to the city.

To date, his short films “Lunch,” “Request,” and “Slowly Silently” achieved international recognition as official selections in numerous film festivals around the world, including the Cannes Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, and the DGA (Directors Guild of America) Haig P. Manoogian Screenings in Los Angeles, to name a few.

I sat down with Jinoh recently in November, on the second floor of a deli not far from Manhattan’s own Koreatown, to discuss the beginning stages of his film. He had just made his final casting decision that evening for the female lead, an actress by the name of Marina Michelson, with whom he was in the midst of discussing the film’s character roles.

I decided to take the interim to ask his assistant Chris Hwang some details about the film. Its working title is Night and Day. He describes the plot in brief as an actor and actress spending a full twenty-four hours against the backdrop of New York City. There is a story outline, but the script will be developed in organic fashion, which Chris indicates has a notable precedent in the expressionist pastiche method of director Wong Kar-wai.

Jinoh concludes his discussion with Marina, who says her good-byes until their first rehearsal. Although I hope to be able to speak with various members of the cast and crew as the film develops, for now I am eager to begin my interview in earnest with the aspiring director.

If Quentin Tarantino’s voice shoots out like a hare hopped up on caffeine pills, then Jinoh’s voice ambles forth with a tortoise’s profound convictions about reaching the finish line. As we talk, his demeanor is one of continual introspection, so that sometimes his face flashes moments of mild but genuine surprise at his spoken words, as if skirting the edges of knowledge heretofore unknown, but then quickly accepting their intrinsic truth.

Prior to our discussion, I learned from Chris that Jinoh also plans to take the lead male role in the film, so I’m curious to ask him his reasoning behind this particular creative decision. He responds, “I think sincerity is one of the most important factors for me both as a director and an actor. I want to really feel in all honesty, you know, try to achieve in both ways.” He emphasizes that this decision was not a conscious one, but happened naturally as a result of his various experiences in filmmaking over the years. Although he has also had prior acting experience, he feels more ready to take it seriously now and see what happens.

Shifting focus to his role as the director, I ask how he felt about moving across cultures as a Korean national directing an American-based film, citing Clint Eastwood and Ang Lee as filmmakers who have worked on films outside their normal spheres of cultural familiarity, i.e., Letters to Iwo Jima and Sense and Sensibility, respectively.

Indicating his great respect for those two directors, he answers, “I’m very interested in exploring different, specific cultures. I was born in Korea; however, America has been very important to me. So culturally, spiritually, emotionally, I feel very close to the States.”

He continues, “But I think cinema is essentially about a universal language. I truly believe and hope that cinema can overcome any specific culture. And it can really deal with the essence of life like human nature, human heart, human beings.”

To the practical matter of trying to direct the performances of characters in an unfamiliar culture, Jinoh recalls a response by Ang Lee (whom Jinoh had occasion to meet a few times) to critics who questioned whether a Taiwanese-born director could effectively direct a British period piece like Sense and Sensibility. (To my mind, such thinking reveals an inherent Hollywood hypocrisy, since relatively little concerns were raised about films ranging from “The King and I” to the more recent “The Last Samurai,” where foreign cultures were for the most part depicted under the helm of white directors).

According to Jinoh, Ang Lee expressed his belief that no one could truly know how people behaved back then (British people included) and thus found directorial freedom from that perspective. However, with a more contemporary movie like The Ice Storm, Ang Lee had to research far more extensively for the film in order to capture convincing details of the more recent era of the 1970s.

Regarding the barrier of language across cultures, although citing his admiration for Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, who spoke little French yet directed many French-speaking films, Jinoh qualifies that he believes it would be better for a director to be familiar with the language in which he is directing.

When I ask why he decided to make his first feature-length film in the U.S.A. versus South Korea, he answers that it’s not so much a conscious decision as it is a manifestation of where he stands now in his life experience. During his 3 years of obligatory military service in South Korea, he thought deeply about his aspirations, not even sure if he was interested in the particular medium of film.

It wasn’t until coming to the U.S. that his commitment to film evolved. Living here, Jinoh is able to surmise, “One of the happiest moments for me as a human being is when I go to the cinema.”

Unfortunately, since the evening was stretching on into the night and Jinoh still had business to discuss with his assistant Chris, I wasn’t able to explore in greater depth the whys and wherefores of his artistic evolution, but given his open invitation to visit him during various parts of the filmmaking process, I was sure there would be more opportunities.

Similar to the conception of his film, I plan to write future postings (you’ll note the “Part 1” in the title) in like-minded organic fashion. As the film develops, so will this particular series of blogs entitled “Making a New York Film,” paying close attention, as is the wont of this site, to the fascinating cross-cultural issues that stem from filmmaking.

The Summary Report:
King, Volume 1 by writer/illustrator Ho Che Anderson is the first installment of a three-volume comics biopic of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life. Volume 1 covers his life spanning from 1934 to 1963. It touches briefly upon his childhood, but greater attention is given to his courtship of his wife-to-be Coretta Scott and to King’s first major leadership role as a civil rights activist in the boycott of public buses in Montgomery, Alabama, following the historic refusal of Rosa Parks’ to acquiesce to segregated bus seating.

The Demographic Report:
This graphic novel should be read by mature readers. Given the historical subject matter, readers should expect some depictions of violence, adult language (including historically contextualized ethnic slurs), and adult situations. This work is not for anyone seeking a comprehensive biographical account of Martin Luther King’s life but rather for those who would be interested in a dramatized interpretation.

The Minority Report:
Mr. Anderson endeavors to resist mythologizing the historical figure of Martin Luther King, arguably the most prominent figure of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, in favor of depicting King’s gifts as a leader and no less his fallibility as a man living through an extraordinary period of upheaval of black-white relations in U.S. history.

The Review:
In his introduction to King, Volume 1, Ho Che Anderson asserted that his goal was to portray Martin Luther King through “some of the flaws and some of the triumphs,” in order to avoid creating an idealized icon. He also provided the caveat that his work was meant to be an interpretation of the life of Martin Luther King and not a definitive biography. They are candid self-assessments.

The author further admits to taking some dramatic license. Such is the case in the event of King’s stabbing by Izola Ware Curry, which was an actual historical event that had occurred during King’s book signing of Stride Toward Freedom in a Harlem department store in 1958. Mr. Anderson decided to transplant that incident to dramatic effect into King’s arrest in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama that occurred during a protest of segregation practices by public eating establishments.

Speaking to the interests of both drama and accuracy, reading through the book offers the impression of watching a feverishly kinetic documentary, where the film editor has chosen to depict King’s life through a pastiche of fly-on-the-wall outtakes. It works to create a tone of stark immediacy and authenticity, as if the scenes he had chosen came from actual footage from some heretofore unknown film archive of King’s life (some panels are in fact based on actual historical photographs and film footage). Unfortunately, what Mr. Anderson gains in tone he often loses in narrative clarity.

Does an artistic interpretation of a man’s life require narrative clarity? If there is an expectation to function in a biographical capacity, I would have to say yes. Much of the confusion comes from Mr. Anderson’s technical choices.

His “characters,” for the most part, have a heavily etched appearance, maximizing contrast while foregoing almost all intermediate shading. While this technique is very good for underscoring distinctive features and more intense emotions (as well as possibly playing out the theme of black-white relations with the predominantly black and white color scheme), it also ends up making it difficult to distinguish different characters, sometimes even including between characters who are black and white.

Such confusion is further compounded by the fact that Mr. Anderson’s panel progressions often utilize what Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics would refer to as “aspect-to-aspect,” where eclectic establishing shots are used to create an impression of a whole scene. While this is certainly a viable artistic choice, in Mr. Anderson’s execution, the eye too often becomes unsure of what to focus on in terms of character action and plot development.

As a result of all the aforementioned difficulties, I would have to recommend, strangely enough, that one should familiarize oneself with another Martin Luther biography (or autobiography) beforehand in order to gain a better appreciation of King. If in King we don’t have the biography of choice to become familiar with the start of Martin Luther King’s legacy, we at least have what feels to be a still raw and truthful rendition of the man behind the legacy.

Perhaps a more accurate analogy than the documentary film I mentioned earlier, one might look at Mr. Anderson’s endeavor as one might at a jazz musician’s performance, where the player can avoid paying royalties by improvising on established chord progressions. The resulting tune may not resemble the old standard-bearer much, but the resulting innovation could offer an entirely new artistic experience. And like any bold move from old to new, one can love it, hate it, or acquire a lasting taste for it.

Product Details:

• Title: King, Volume 1
• Author: Ho Che Anderson (writer/illustrator)
• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (June 1993)
• ISBN-10: 1560971126
• ISBN-13: 978-1560971122
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 7.4 x 0.2 inches