Jimmy Tsai Movies

An aimless young Chinese-American finds his hoop dreams unexpectedly sidelined when his parents are injured in an accident and he is forced to give ping-pong lessons in the fiction feature debut of acclaimed documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu (In the Realms of the Unreal). Christopher "C-dub" Wang (Jimmy Tsai) may not be able to sink a lay-up to save his life, yet he longs to realize his lifelong goal of playing in the NBA. Add to this the fact that C-dub still lives at home and will likely never emerge from under the shadow of his successful older brother, Michael (Roger Fan), and it's beginning to look like this wannabe pro-athlete is going nowhere fast. C-dub's parents (Jim Lau and Elizabeth Sung) are a pair of former table tennis champs who now own a successful ping-pong supply shop and teach lessons on the side. Much like his parents were back in the day, C-dub's brother Michael (Roger Fan) is a ping-pong wizard who is championed by the Chinese community for taking top rank in the tournaments year after year. But now, Michael and C-dub's parents have both been injured in a car accident, forcing the ill-equipped -- and extremely reluctant -- family slacker to take over the ping-pong teaching duties. While at first C-dub doesn't take his new responsibility all too seriously, he quickly discovers that the future of his family rests in his hands after Michael is injured and rendered unable to compete in this year's championships. Soon, C-dub realizes that by stepping in for Michael and winning the championships, he may also be able to win the heart of the girl he has fallen head over heels in love with. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The curious history and cultural impact of the fortune cookie sets the stage for this witty documentary from filmmaker Eric Shimoda. While most people associate the fortune cookie with Chinese food, like many "Chinese" dishes it's an American invention, first appearing in San Francisco restaurants in the early years of the 20th Century. Since then, the lightly sweet cookie with the message inside has become an international phenomenon, while the aphorisms inside have become the subject of a wide range of parodies (and the "lucky numbers" featured in many cookies are often played by lottery fans, sometimes with a surprising degree of success). In The Killing Of A Chinese Cookie, Shimoda looks at the ongoing debate over who invented the fortune cookie, visits a factory where five million cookies are baked every day, interviews writers who make their living dreaming up fortunes for the cookies, and talks to a performance artist who creates deliberately odd fortunes and inserts them into cookies in order to observe the reactions of unsuspecting diners. The Killing Of A Chinese Cookie was screened in competition at the 2008 San Francisco Asian-American Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi