Bringing Down the House = 21 = No Asians! Oh wait...maybe 1....
Bringing Down the House is one of my favorite books ever. It's about a team of MIT whiz kids who figure out a way to beat the casinos in blackjack and end up making millions but also getting their lives endangered from the angry casinos. It's so fascinating that it feels like a fictional novel but the majority of the stories are actually true. If you're a fan of blackjack, you should definitely read this book. I highly highly recommend it.Hollywood has decided to make this book into a movie currently being called 21. Great! But the only thing is....most of the MIT students who were on the team were Asians yet Hollywood's original casting said that there'd be no Asians cast except for maybe an Asian female. Now that's just wrong on so many levels. If you're gonna base a movie on a real life event, the people in the movie should portray the people accurately. This is different from the whole Memoirs of a Geisha casting Chinese as Japanese fiasco. Those were fictional characters. Now Hollywood is talking about whitewashing the cast and that's just disgusting.
What makes it worse is that they're saying they might cast an Asian female. Sure...why don't we keep perpetuating the Asian "exotic" female stereotype on white men? While of course I'm a fan of the Asian female, I'm tired of seeing only Asian women being cast in TV and film. Ever watch CNN? The only Asians you see are women. They are there for eye candy more than anything if you ask me.
Anyways...it's just been announced that the movie studio will indeed cast an Asian male. It's none other than current flavor of the month and recent Golden Globe nominee Masi Oka from the hit TV show Heroes. Well finally! This is a step in the right direction and hopefully they'll cast even more Asians as production progresses. You know who'd be great in this movie? Sung Kang from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Better Luck Tomorrow. This guy just oozes charisma. Well, we'll see how the movie turns out when it's released later this year...regardless of the final casting, I shall be eagerly awaiting this film.
posted by Myong Choi at 8:00 AM
1 Comments:
Yeah, this is the same guy who wrote Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions. Funny how Asian-Am' students "bring down the house" and get chased down by types that aren't necessarily on our Christmas gift list, Las Vegas shady figures and their power, etc., but, when it comes to college students from well established educational institutions discovering an opening in dragons' armor and making a go at taking vengeance (however intended or otherwise) against East Asian financial dominance in the good ol' U.S. of A. in the 80s (yes, I obviously don't buy another good author, Michael Crichton's sentiment that the Japanese "didn't make us sell" in his novel -- heh, 'nother "Asian" connected book -- Rising Sun), it's "ugly Americans." Umm-hmm.
I've not read Mezrich's co-authored book, Bustling Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought Casinos to their Knees, and I wonder how related the events of that book are to Bringing Down the House . . ..
Mr. Choi, if you like this kinda' thing, check out John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Got that one after Christmas day w/a nifty gift card (still got money on that one; shucks, though -- subject to new tax hike, yikes), finished the book by New Years eve. Really riveting and kinda' spooky.
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