TV and Movies

I want to talk a bit about what TV shows and movies I watch.

I grew up looking at reruns of TV shows from the sixties and seventies, namely Star Trek, Lost in Space, Batman, The Incredible Hulk, Charlie's Angels, Battlestar Galactica and the Wild Wild West. All these shows spawned movies, remakes and/or spin offs. I liked Star Trek, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise but Voyager left me cold: it was basically Star Trek meets Lost in Space and it didn't mesh very well. I posted pictures of Linda Park, Zoe Saldana and Rosalind Chao to the right.

Rosalind Chao was also in The Joy Luck Club along with Tamlyn Tomita, Ming Na-Wen (溫明娜)and Lauren Tom. Tamlyn Tomita had her debut in The Karate Kid II: I remember really, really wanting to see that movie and then anxiously waiting for the DVD to come out. I wasn't disappointed: Tamlyn Tomita was a living doll. Similarly, I watched Ming Na-Wen on ER but turned the channel whenever one of her scenes would end: I was more interested in watching Ming Na-Wen eat ice cream than in the storyline. Lauren Tom also had a role on Friends for one season in which she was Ross's girlfriend before he went back to Rachel. What an idiot! Anyway, The Joy Luck Club was the first movie that ever made me cry. (The second was The Colour Purple.) I remember when The Joy Luck Club came out I was thinking "Rosalind Chao! Ming Na-Wen! Tamlyn Tomita! Lauren Tom!" and being so anxious to see the movie and then ending up feeling so embarrassed crying in the middle of the movie theatre!

A movie I was similarly anxious to see was Ang Lee (李安)'s Eat Drink, Man Woman (飲食男女) starring Yang Kueimei (楊貴媚), Wu Chienlien (吳倩蓮) and Wang Yuwen (王渝文). When Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍, with Michelle Yeoh [楊紫瓊]! She was also in Jacky Chan's Supercop and the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies) came out I was already in Korea so when I rented the video tape to watch at home I ended up feeling disappointed that the only subtitles were in Korean! I watched it anyway. I recently watched both movies again on DVD here in Taiwan and I wanted to try watching them without reading the English subtitles but it turned out to be too difficult.

Now that I'm in Taiwan I get some American TV shows through the internet and some from Filipino channels that I pick up by satellite. I watch shows like CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, Bones (with Tamara Taylor and Michaela Conlin!), Law and Order, Heroes, Smallville (with Kristen Kreuk for the first seven seasons!) and America's Next Top Model (with Tyra Banks!). I also was able to watch Ally McBeal (with Lucy Liu!) and Dark Angel (with Jessica Alba!) back when I was in Korea. I mainly watch the CSI shows just for the drama, although Kelly Hu did appear as a detective in Season 1 of CSI: New York. She was also in The Scorpion King and X-Men United (with Halle Berry!).

One TV show that probably had a life changing effect on me was the mini-series Shogun that came out in 1980. It portrayed living in another country and not knowing the language as an exciting, adventurous thing, especially with somebody like Yôko Shimada (島田陽子, the actress playing Mariko) there to help out! (A movie that no doubt had a similar effect on me was The World of Suzie with Nancy Kwan [關家蒨]) Well, as it turned out, living in Korea and not knowing the language turned out to be more Hellish than exciting: most Koreans -like a lot of Americans, to be fair- seem to expect foreigners to arrive in their country already knowing the local language.

My experience in Taiwan has been far more positive with the people here being relatively more inclined to demonstrate patience with this poor sap who can't understand half of what people say to him: most people in Taiwanese seem to understand that Chinese is a difficult language to learn and seem surprised if a foreigner manages to speak -let alone read and write- any Chinese whatsoever. In the past six years I've only had one person ever telling me that I "should learn Chinese" as opposed to praising me for what I've been able to accomplish so far. I consider that to be a fair track record and thus have no major complaints about how people treat me here.

Martin