Ready, set, GO!

Here's hoping the new "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" movie does even better at the box office than the previous two movies in the series did. Why? Two good reasons: director Justin Lin and Korean-American actor Sung Kang.

After seeing a preview of the movie a while back, I remember rolling my eyes and cringing at the thought of Hollywood doing a racing movie set in Japan. But Jeff Yang's column on today's SFGate.com has me wanting to check out the new film.

OK, granted the movie is set in Japan, and looks to have a bunch of non-Japanese stars (including Bow Wow??), but Yang interviews the director, who explains some of the casting decisions and changes to the original script.

"After I read the original script, they called me up and asked, 'What do you think?'" says Lin.

"And I said, 'I think it's offensive and dated, and I don't have any intention of doing it.' But Stacey [Snider], the head of the studio, said, 'Just tell us what you'd do differently.' So I said, 'To begin with, I'd get rid of all the gongs and temples and Buddhas and the visual gags about how the white guy is a foot taller than all the Asians.' And she said, 'OK, we'll make the kind of movie you want.' I was like, 'Uh, are you sure?'"

We can also look forward to more movies with Sung Kang, thanks in part to Lin who cast him as the racer who teaches the main character (white boy) how to drift ...

"When we were screening this movie, Sung tested through the roof. It was unanimous: Every focus group we threw out there, he was their favorite character. Now they're looking for vehicles for him to be in. That's what it's all about, man: opportunity. It's not a revolution or anything -- it's winning one gunfight, not the war. But it's important. Little by little it adds up."

Check out the full article on SFGate.com: "ASIAN POP: Switching Gears."

Other interesting notes:

According to IMDB, "600 Asian extras were used during the LA filming days for the street scenes," more than 100 cars were wrecked during the filming, and all of the drifting in the movie was done by professional drivers, not created by CGI and computers.

Hot.

I haven't seen the first two movies, at the theater or on DVD, but I may just have to plunk down my $10 at the theater for this one.

(Stupid Blogger site having problems!)