James Franco: Akira Manga Man! Exclusive! | James Franco, Leonardo DiCprio : Just Jared

Someone explain how James Franco is being considered for the main role as Kaneda, the Japanese biker gang leader?

Oh wait, it’s set in New Manhattan instead of Neo Tokyo? Cool. How about we rename the movie to the closest American equivalent of the name Akira? Something like… Jeff.

GQ was right – the movies are dead. (Sorry, article isn’t available online)

In the context of our moden day society, a person’s identity has a strong history of being attributed to a family history. The question: “Where are you from?” begs the question of your family’s background. This is only natural in the contemporary United States. After all, the basis of our society us founded on the system of immigration. A clear result of this: ancestry plays an immutable part of our identities.

When we think of our parents, we think of how we were raised. The way we are raised entails the food that we ate, language that we learned, morals we uphold; these are all traits that have a profound effect on what others think of ourselves as well as what we believe to be true to ourselves.

Michael Pollan argues (wholly out of context) that: “culture is what your mother fed you.” And to that point, just as we are unable to change the food we ate in our childhood, we are unable to change both the physical and metaphysical traits we acquire. What we are able to do however, is to adapt and cope with whatever boons these traits afford to us. And the act of doing so is the act of beginning to defining a personal identity.

I thought I’d open with this article from today’s NYTimes.

Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above

Many young adults of mixed backgrounds are rejecting the color lines that have defined Americans for generations in favor of a much more fluid sense of identity. Ask Michelle López-Mullins, a 20-year-old junior and the president of the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, how she marks her race on forms like the census, and she says, “It depends on the day, and it depends on the options.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/us/30mixed.html

Prints of China – Empty Vessels

Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain

I’ve been in love since I’ve first watched this. With Audrey Tatou or the movie, I’m not sure.

IRC dance movement | Vimeo

Kinokuniya – New York

Metric – Gold Guns Girls

New York City | Craig Redman

Inception Chibis | Flickr

Too cute not to post.