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Questions about Movies/Chinese Restaurants

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Expert: William Sternman - 7/20/2005


Question
Can you think of any films which used Chinese restaurants as reasonably prominent settings?  The only one that comes to mind is Billy Wilder's The Apartment.  Thanks.

Answer
Hi, Andrew!

Here are the few I could come up with:

Gypsy (1962)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056048/

In The Fifth Element, the world is bright, brash and breezy, a riot of camp colour, where Chinese restaurants pootle along in the sky , cigarettes are in reverse (long brown bit, short white bit) and New York city stretches mile up into the sky.
http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/review.asp?ID=133

They
While running to Paul's apartment, Julia runs through a Chinese restaurant. I mean through the back door through the kitchen. No one in the kitchen seems to mind.
http://www.badmovieplanet.com/inferno/archives/they.html

The trailer for the upcoming remake of "Freaky Friday" features a Chinese woman in a cheungsam serving a pair of magic fortune cookies which cause Jamie Lee Curtis's character to swap bodies with her daughter.
http://www.asianamericanfilm.com/archives/000353.html  

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William Sternman

Expertise

Expertise: Classic movies. My movie and book reviews have appeared in the Houston Chronicle, Boston Herald, St. Petersburg Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Drummer, and Films in Review. My particular area of expertise (and love) is films of the late Thirties, Forties and early Fifties.

Experience in the area
My essays and movie and book reviews have appeared in the Houston Chronicle, Boston Herald, St. Petersburg Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Drummer, Films in Review, and Bestsellers. I write a regular column for Audience, a film journal (http://www.audiencemag.com/playback.html) as well as review current movies (http://www.audiencemag.com/reviews.html).

Publications
My essays and movie and book reviews have appeared in the Houston Chronicle, Boston Herald, St. Petersburg Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Drummer, Films in Review, and Bestsellers. I write a regular column for Audience, a film journal (http://www.audiencemag.com/playback.html) as well as review current movies (http://www.audiencemag.com/reviews.html).

Awards and Honors
Fellowship grant in literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

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