#china sky

[transistoradio]

1. OMNI, vol. 11, no. 3 (December 1988), with cover art — “Alien of Troy” — by Jean François Podevin. Note in OMNI says the art was created for “China Sky's upcoming record from CBS.“

2. China Sky, CHINA SKY (Parc Records, 1988), with cover art by Jean François Podevin. Released in September, 1988.

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | China Sky (Enright, 1945)

This was included as part of the Hollywood Chinese series on the Criterion Channel in large part for instructive reasons, as the most prominent role played by a Chinese actor in this is Richard Loo as a cunning Japanese officer. As Arthur Dong points out in the series introduction, Hollywood movies couldn't get actual Japanese actors as they were imprisoned in the internment camps, so such roles were filled by other Asian Americans. Loo is not exactly nuanced in the role, but the forcefulness with which he plays up his character's most evil qualities is of some interest.

But the movie is also of interest for the performance by Philip Ahn as a half-Korean, half-Japanese doctor who helps manage the hospital at which the movie is set. Ahn, who was Korean in real life, had been cast as Chinese in the other movies I'd seen him (King of Chinatown and Daughter of Shanghai, both starring the great Anna May Wong and both well worth a look for the stereotype-defying roles they offer both actors), but this is a role that explicitly defines him as Korean and gets a certain tension out of his Korean identity. As I haven't delved much into Ahn's body of work myself, I will instead steer you in the direction of this great review by Letterboxd user theironcupcake, who provides some valuable context around his career and on the whole digs into this movie much more insightfully and eloquently than I can.

What's most intriguing about this movie is that while it casts the actual Asian actors in the movie in supporting roles, they're generally giving much more nuanced and interesting performances than the actors in yellowface (among them Anthony Quinn, whose career is perhaps also worth examining for the way many of his roles exploit his ethnic otherness), and especially more than the white characters. For all the academic/historical interest this movie provides and the handful of thrills it throws in at the end, it struggles under the weight of a deathly dull love triangle between Randolph Scott, Ruth Warrick and Ellen Davis. I don't have any strong feelings against the sanctity of marriage, but you kind of wish Scott and Davis would hurry up and get a divorce because the romantic chemistry between them is worse than nonexistent, it's a void that sucks up everything remotely compelling about this movie. Scott in particular does not have the inspiring presence accredited to his westerns ("You'd do it for Randolph Scott"), so one becomes especially sympathetic to the resentment felt by Ahn in having to serve under him, both as characters running the hospital and as cast members sharing the screen.

[sow-hat1960]

Randolph Scott (°Orange County, January 23rd, 1898 - +Beverly Hills, March 2nd, 1987)

Scenes from China Sky and Supernatural

Actresses Ruth Warwick and the divine Carole Lombard

[andersonvision]

CHINA SKY

CHINA SKY REVIEWED “China Sky” is two movies in one film. One is a workplace melodrama about a married doctor flirting with his female doctor co-worker. He leaves and comes back having married a spoiled woman. The two women fight for the man’s attention, while Japan invades China. The American doctors work to help the wounded Chinese and to fight back against the Japanese. That’s where the second…

View On WordPress

[ivelina-pavlova]

Vogue China January 2006 “China Sky” by Mario Sorrenti with Freja Beha