Author: Quentin Lee

Not only Dennis Phung was one of the first people I met coming to LA, he also turned me away from working in porn, not…

Reminding me the early brilliance of Wong Kar Wai, Donna Ong’s fresh cinematic debut “Karma’s Meth Nightmare” is an imaginative experimental short dramatic film about a Nepalese teen experiencing a meth induced nightmarish and entertaining hallucination.

Simon Tam, founder of The Slants and The Slants Foundation, has created his latest television series titled Asian PaCIVICS featuring ten artists from the Asian American and Pacific Islander community who have written a song specifically to drive social change. Each has partnered with a grassroots organization in unique ways to support their chosen causes.

On hearing my friend and PGA (Producers Guild of America) colleague Giovannie Espiritu winning a Telly Award for her documentary short “Legacy,” I took the opportunity to interview her about her career as a multi-hyphenate in Hollywood, working as a production coordinator for a production company, an actress and a producer of independent films on her own.

First, as someone who has used and observed technology since I was 12, getting my first Apple IIe in 1983, all technology, including AI, is not to be feared of but rather understood and used. Having worked with the advancement of computing, the transition of celluloid to digital filmmaking and flatbed editing to non-linear editing… etc., I can attest that AI, like any other technology, is not here to impede but to simplify and enhance human life.

Young Man Kang has been a prolific independent filmmaker in the 90s Los Angeles indie scene. After the millennium, he went back to his home country Korea to start KWEBFEST (aka Seoul Webfest) and has returned to Los Angeles to run LA WEBFEST after the original founder’s passing in 2018.

For me, a Chinese immigrant myself, what is sadder than the Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay shooting tragedies is the lack of cultural understanding of mainstream media in reporting the events, causing the unnecessary panic of hate crimes and deflecting from three main issues behind both tragic crimes: 1) accessibility of lethal weapons in America, 2) the lack of mental health resources for older Chinese immigrants and 3) like Christmas for Americans, Chinese New Year can be a triggering time of the year for Chinese immigrants who are psychologically unstable.

A couple of months earlier, I called almost every Toronto screening venue but no no would return my call other than Martin Heath of CineCycle. And it is why I decided to world premiere my TV series Comedy Invasion, the first diverse Canadian Content stand-up TV series on Sat Nov 26 from 2 pm to 6 pm Eastern Time at Toronto’s CineCycle.

This Halloween season, I’ve been binging horror films and discovered some really compelling and genre defining new films. Check them out! #somefilmsforthishalloween

Audrey Rose was one of those films I had read about as a teenager in the 80s but bad never seen. Finally, I sat down, watched it and was surprised to find out that it was directed by the late Robert Wise, master of musical epics. While a compelling movie, Audrey Rose is a very flawed feature film, mostly because of Frank De Felitta’s problematic novel and screenplay. If a movie was flawed at the writing level, there really was no way the film could be great, which is exactly why Audrey Rose is a compelling but broken film.