By APA Staff
Moon So-ri, Kim Jeong-eun, and Kim Ji-Young
This year, American critics have been all over Mickey Rourke's physical feat, playing a middle-aged wrestler. In that same year, Korea had not one but three thirty-something stars commit body and soul to a physically demanding project -- in this case Im Soon-rye's Forever the Moment, about Korea's 2004 Olympic women's handball team. In it, Moon So-ri, Kim Jung-eun, and Kim Ji-young play veterans finding themselves cornered by the young guns of a reorganized Olympics squad. While they're far sprightlier than the 50 year-old Rourke, the Forever the Moment trio impresses with their mastery of the sport. For the most part, those aren't stunt doubles flying in the air past opponents, hurling balls into goals, and doing sprints. And all through the physicality, the actresses maintain the film's melodramatic force. We've come to expect such skill from Moon So-ri, Korea's greatest actress. But Kim Jung-eun (in an award-winning performance) shines as both player and coach, and Kim Ji-young provides comic relief, in addition to goals and assists. --Brian Hu
Dev Patel
A virtual unknown in the cinematic world, Patel's endearing turn as Jamal Malik in Slumdog Millionaire is certainly a breakthrough performance, all at the tender age of 18. As Jamal, he helps to carry the film with surprising vitality and maintains the element of hope in love that has made the film, dare I say it, magical. It was his second acting job that became a definite rite of passage, after his first acting job in a British TV ended with his character getting axed. Surely Slumdog Millionaire has helped to ease the pain. --Rowena Aquino
Jet Li
So Jet Li has retired from the wushu film. And since it's a period action film, The Warlords should be one of those pictures Li vowed to stop making. But seeing his dramatic turn in the film would assure the doubters that in its execution, Li's role is not martial artist, but emotional juggernaut. Never before -- not even in the serious-minded Fearless -- has Jet Li demonstrated such commitment to articulating emotional complexity. In the film, he plays a conflicted general worried that he may have left his men to die. Meanwhile, he befriends a celebrated thief (Andy Lau), who he later discovers is married to the woman he loves (Xu Jinglei). Rounding these out is his relationship with a blood brother played by Takeshi Kaneshiro. Pressured to act by all three forces, and doomed to collapse under his moral anguish, Li's character is no simple martial arts hero and Jet Li no mere action star. --Brian Hu
M.I.A
Although her Kala album and hit single "Paper Planes" were officially released in 2007, it took repeated airplay on the trailer for a little stoner movie starring Seth Rogen and James Franco to get the cashier-ringing, gunshot-firing tune stuck in everybody's heads this year. A remix of "Paper Planes" popped up again in Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, trading comic druggies for lovable Mumbai slum kids literally "sitting on trains." Slumdog's soundtrack also includes an M.I.A collaboration with the legendary A.R. Rahman, titled "O... Saya" -- an oddly complementary hybrid of frenzied hip-hop beats and ethereal Hindi vocals that enhances the feeling of reckless yet liberating commotion as the young children race through alleyways at the start of the film. 2008 earned M.I.A a much-deserved Grammy nomination for Record of the Year. --Ada Tseng
Henry O
Mainstream America may know Henry O best for his role as Triad patriarch Cu'Sing in Romeo Must Die, or as the blind martial arts guru Master Yu in Rush Hour 3, but his true claim to fame is his performance as Mr. Shi in Wayne Wang's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, a film adaptation of a short story by Yiyun Li. Henry O became the oldest Asian man to win a best actor award (at age 80) at 2007's San Sebastian Film Festival. Henry O's performance provides a comtemplative glimpse into a father's persistent efforts to improve communications between him and his culturally and emotionally distant daughter. His silence and expression speaks volumes, with his weathered face expressing regret and loneliness. It's difficult not to sympathize with his hopeful attempts to reconciliate with his daughter. Wayne Wang chose Henry O precisely because of what he had gone through: he survived the Cultural Revolution, and as a stage actor, he was punished by theater leaders for coming from a wealthy family. But O endured. It was that kind of unyielding persistence that makes Henry O the perfect Mr. Shi, the persistent father. --William Hong
Arnel Pineda
After a sucessful twenty-plus year career in Asia, Arnel Pineda and long-time friend, guitarist Monet Cajipe, formed the band The Zoo. They toured around the Philippines singing original songs and covering classics from American bands such as Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, and, of course, Journey. As luck would have it, when the real Journey was looking for a new lead singer, Neal Schon saw YouTube clips of Pineda's performances, called him up, and the rest was history. Although it was announced in late 2007, 2008 was the year that Arnel Pineda officially took over lead singer duties for the legendary rock band. Since his February 2008 televised debut at a song festival in Chile, Pineda has toured the world, satisfying long-term fans with his pitch-perfect renditions of Journey's power ballads. Take a walk down memory lane with: "Open Arms," "Faithfully," and "Don't Stop Believin'." Revelation, Pineda's first album featuring Pineda's vocals, went platinum this year, and Journey has officially been reborn. --Ada Tseng
Eason Chan
One can call Eason Chan's role in Edmund Pang's Trivial Matters gutsy. After all, pop star Chan plays a horndog who searches for obscure holidays because his girlfriend has agreed to only give him oral sex on special occasions. But that assessment draws attention away from Chan's terrific comic timing and self-deprecating juvenile cluelessness, which we haven't really seen from Chan before. 2008 also saw the release of two stellar Eason concert Blu-ray discs, which I got to know intimately from their repeated play at a local Chinatown café. And while in Taipei this year, I was happy to hear that Eason's 2007 "Ai Qing Zhuan Yi" (the Mandarin version of his 2006 Cantonese hit) was still a karaoke and One Million Star staple. It's been stuck in my head ever since. --Brian Hu
Tannishtha Chatterjee
Chatterjee plays the lead character Nazneen in Brick Lane -- which is the name of Sarah Gavron's 2008 film, Monica Ali's 2003 book, and the immigrant neighborhood in London that is home to many Bangladeshi Muslims. Although the novel caused controversy amongst parts of the British Bangladeshi community, the film sidesteps accusations of caricature by focusing deeply on Nazneen's internal journey. She's trapped in a marriage, she gets her first taste of sexual liberation, and she has to weigh whether her family's stability is worth sacrificing in exchange for freedom. Nominated for a British Independent Film Award, Chatterjee's performance is almost more powerful in her restraint, than her rebellion -- how she responds to her arranged marriage, to her unmarried sister's letters, to the emergence of the young, confident Karim into her quiet life. In the end, it's the way her eyes are unexpectedly opened by her brutish husband that lifts this storyline out of cliche. --Ada Tseng
Justin Nozuka
This year, Clear Channel online named Justin Nozuka one of the Top 5 Artists of the 2008. A recent graduate of Toronto's Etobicoke School of the Arts, Nozuka comes from a very creative family. His mother, actress Holly Sedgwick, is the sister of TV/movie star Kyra Sedgwick, while his brothers are successful R&B singer George Nozuka and actor Philip Nozuka. Justin began writing songs for his debut album Holly since he was 15. Best known for his raspy voice, acoustic guitar, and song-writing skills, Justin has been a virtual quick hit. Holly peaked at #6 on the US Top Heatseekers. To top that all off, Justin also has his own clothing line. After his successful CD, Justin is set to go on a nationwide tour starting February in Nashville, Tennessee. Click here for interviews of Justin, his blog, upcoming tour dates, or to see live video footage of his previous performances. --Kristie Hang
Tadanobu Asano and Honglei Sun
Historically, the blood brothers that Asano and Sun represent in Mongol ended when Temudjin, aka Genghis Khan (Asano), had Jamukha (Sun) killed. No matter. Any other performance would have been swallowed up by the larger-than-life bio-myth that is Genghis Khan and by the sweeping expanse of landscape and crowds that forms part of the film's spectacle. But Asano and Sun prove that they are blood brothers in their commanding presence: each demonstrates how much magnetic power he can convey with just the eyes and with minimal, but majestic, gestures. Each one rises to the task of being the other's equal as friend or foe, in character and as fellow actor. As a result, their fraternal relationship forms the emotional core and narrative interest. --Rowena Aquino
Tia Carrere
Most known for her role as Cassandra in Wayne's World, the multi-talented Hawaiian model-turned-actress surprised the American audience when she was nominated for a Grammy for Best Hawaiian Music Album Award. The Spanish, Filipino, Chinese Hawaiian actress started with brief roles in television, but after her breakthrough in Wayne's World (for which she turned down a Baywatch audition to participate in), she's been cast in prominent movies such as True Lies, Rising Sun, and The Immortals. More recently, she did the voice of Lani in Lilo and Stitch and competed in Dancing With the Stars. Often typecast in Hollywood, in a supporting femme fatale role, Carrere is actually a superstar singer in the Philippines. Before her acting career, Carrera was the vocalist of a rock band and jazz orchestra. In 1993, she released her first album Dream, and it went platinum in the Philippines. Ten years later, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the president of the Philippines. As a professionally-trained singer, her moment to shine finally arrived when she collaborated with three-times Grammy award-winning musician Daniel Ho to produce Hawaiiana, the album which earned her the Grammy nomination. --Winghei Kwok
Ne-Yo
This year, Ne-Yo has added "Grammy-nominated artist" onto his already-accomplished resume. Having written and produced songs for Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Corbin Bleu, Enrique Iglesias, and Lindsay Lohan, Neyo spent 2008 collaborating with Rihanna on her number-one hit "Take a Bow" and Beyoncé Knowles on her Billboard Hot 100 ten-week number-one hit "Irreplaceable." Released in September, this third album Year of the Gentleman sold 250,000 copies in its first week in the US. The album was nominated for Best Contemporary R&B Album and Album of the Year at the 2009 Grammy Awards, "Closer" was nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, and "Miss Independent" for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song. Looking ahead, Ne-Yo is set to work with Lindsay Lohan, Marilyn Manson, and Michael Jackson on their upcoming albums. --Kristie Hang
Jimmy Tsai
From an accountant for last year's Finishing the Game to the lead actor of Jessica Yu's sports comedy Ping Pong Playa, Jimmy Tsai's is a man of many talents. This year, he also helped produce the hilarious documentary The Killing of a Chinese Cookie. In Ping Ping Playa, which he also co-wrote with Yu, Tsai plays C-Dub, a basketball-loving, smack-talking Asian American guy that refuses to grow up, until he is forced to take take over his mom's ping pong class of misfits and take his brother's spot in the local ping pong tournament. C-dub provides a humorously accurate portrayal of what typical Asian Americans go through when they're growing up -- like being compared to (financially) successful siblings and relatives or being forced to work in your family's business. Tsai's performance has its ups and downs (and rebounds), but he never fails to deliver in the stat that matters most: the laughs. --William Hong
Omid Abtahi
The film Ocean of Pearls couldn't have worked if the audience wasn't hooked by the struggles of its protagonist Amrit Singh -- a Sikh doctor who is forced to make compromises in his relationships and religious traditions when he moves to a Michigan hospital with the goal of becoming chief of transplant surgery. It's eerie how Omid Abtahi glides from hope to aggression, his eyes just as easily expressing pain, stubbornness, or cold indifference. Most impressively is how he takes the film's pivotal scene beyond mere symbolism: when Amrit removes his turban to cut his own hair, we feel the emotional weight of his act, knowing it's more than a middle finger to his overbearing father. It's more than a desperate plea for acceptance. He's giving himself license for future betrayals. --Ada Tseng
Back to APA's Best of 2008 issue