Photo via YouTube.com

Coming up with a storyline for a movie is never easy, but sometimes the idea is right in front of you. Director Quentin Lee found inspiration from the 2005 murder of 19-year-old Simon Sek Man Ng, whose final blog post helped police solve his case.  Lee was so moved by the incident that he adapted Simon’s story into a short film titled “Today Has Been Weird,” part of the series “Love Letters to Vancouver.” The short is premiering at the 15^th Vancouver Asian Film Festival, which starts Friday, November 3, 2011 and runs until Monday, November 6, 2011.

Photo via IMDb.com

I read this article today about a Laguna Beach doctor who is close to finalizing a laser surgery that could permanently change brown eye color to blue. The laser is tuned to remove pigment from the surface of the iris, which reveals blue underneath.

I’m already a little freaked out by a lot of eye-related trends—surgery to give you eyelids, pupil-enlarging contacts and colored contacts, to name a few. One of the things that bugged me the most about “Memoirs of a Geisha” was the geisha’s blue eyes. What?? How many blue-eyed Japanese women do you see walking around? I know an Indian girl who wears blue contacts, and while it is a striking look for her, it’s clearly not a part of who she is. What’s so wrong with brown eyes, anyway? To me, the most beautiful aspect of people is their eyes. They’re seductive and come in a range of colors and shades (and, yes, I sound like I’m talking about nail polish), but it saddens me to see so many girls mess around with a physical feature that’s more than perfectly good.

If you’re a fan of Asian cinema and live in Southern California, you might want to check out the Busan West Asian Film Festival at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts on November 11-13. In partnership with South Korea’s Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), Dodge College will be hosting a festival showcasing Asia’s biggest film talent and feature contemporary and classic Asian films. Dodge College’s Professor Nam Lee, an expert in Pan-Asian film, chose and organized this year’s showcase. This year’s festival will also be rewarding highly acclaimed writer/director Bong Joon-ho with the Busan West Icon Award. Bong Joon-ho is one of Korea’s most popular filmmakers and his success and work has been recognized the U.S. and Europe. Bong Joon-ho will present his hit film The Host in 3D after the award ceremony. The screening marks the North American premiere of The Host in 3D.

Photo by Mandy Yeh

This past Saturday was our first-ever live networking event at Folli Follie in SoHo, NYC, and while it was so lovely meeting everyone who came (and be able to jewelry shop at the same time), a major part of the fun for us that night was checking you guys out! Here’s a snapshot of some folks who especially caught our eye.

Photo by Keith Munyan

There have been countless stories, movies, and TV shows in Hollywood based on the triangle relationship of two guys and a girl, but nothing out there quite captures the dynamics of two Caucasian guys and an Asian American girl. In Jesse Eisenberg’s (you may remember him as Mark Zuckerberg in the Oscar-winning film The Social Network) debut off-Broadway play “Asuncion,” Camille Mana, a Filipino-American actress from California, challenges the open-mindedness and self-perceptions of her two guy roommates—the other played by Justin Bartha from The Hangover. The two men, both of whom are intellectuals and liberal-minded, are “awakened” from their preconceived notions about her when they learn about the depth of Asuncion’s personality, her past, and her history.