Jamie Chung in Variety Japan
Jamie Chung (Chi-Chi) was recently interviewed by Variety Japan, where she talks a little about Dragonball. Thanks to our source in Japan for the translation.
Jamie Chung, she appeared at the interview room in very high tension. As soon as she found out I was Japanese, she asked me the question, “Is it true that all Dragon Ball characters names derive from the name of vegetables?” The name of the Saiyan is so, I explained, she said “Well, what does Chi-chi mean in Japanese? Shooting place in Mexico, the crew spoke Spanish, all of them laughed when they called my name Chi-chi, I asked why they were laughing, they said that Chi-chi means boobs in Spanish!” I was surprised, in fact almost the same meaning in Japanese, when I told her it, “No!” She was shocked and put her hands on her head, but she rebound quickly, and showed an impish smile.
She is 25-years-old, a Korean American who was born and raised in San Francisco. The family lived in the Japan Town, She grew up surrounded by Japanese culture. The city where anime events are often held is her playground, Jamie says “Dragon Ball” and “Hello Kitty” is her Idol.
She knows the importance and high-visibility of Dragon Ball in Japan, so she take great care of Japanese fans.
“I know that a lot of Japanese actors wanted to play the movie’s roles, so I gave my best for Japanese fans to be satisfied with it, I’m happy if you enjoy. Director James Wong did diligent research, he read a lot of Japanese manga, I’m sure that this movie will be respecting the original as much as possible. I heard that his son who hadn’t read Dragon Ball yet, read it around this time and was fascinated with it. Japanese people may think the Japanese should be cast more in the movie, but when we thought of the story, Goku is an alien. Justin Chatwin looks astonishingly like Goku, I think he is exactly Goku. He looks like Japanese a little bit (laugh). ”
The most powerful woman to play, her weak scene was……
“Chi-chi is one of the strongest women. To play the action heroine is the dream of every actress. There are a lot of roles for romantic comedy and melodrama, but action heroine not so much. Producer Stephen Chow couldn’t come to the set, but he gave us a lot of the ideas for actions before the shooting, at the same time I watched the Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle to research action scenes. Staff of action sequences were very excellent, and I believe it will be amazing scenes mixed with various martial arts like tae kwon do and so on.
Jamie is slender and it looks like she has excellent reflexes. Her most
difficult scene was not action scene, she said.“It was kiss scene, because it was the first time for me……. This didn’t have choreography (unlike the action scenes), I had to think for myself. I was so nervous. It was very difficult, more so than action scenes (laughs).”
When I asked about Eriko Tamura, she showed beaming face.
“Eriko is a very good friend! She is a great, beautiful, cute and polite. She played Mai, a very evil and dark character, though she is very good and cheerful. But she is a method actor (acting based on the experience) so she got into the role even in the break time of shooting and controlled herself if she wanted to have a chat. She tried very hard.
Loading ...
@J: Then why did he say he wasn’t Teto? And they’re not the same guy, they’re two separate actors in the movie. Each has his own character summary:
Weaver – Young student in his twenties, class mate (Goku’s best friend)
Teto – Some school nerd.
excuse me? first time for a kissing scene or kiss in general? im confused lol
There is no Teto!! Those were only rumors Sean
His name is Weaver!!!!
Labnash made all of those pics drcjb you showed us!!! He already confirmed it in Legendary forums. Labnash got made skills
!!
I wonder what that dude is making next…. He sure knows how to fool people with his Dragonball posters and trailers.
@sal:i think she meant on screen with a guy she has no relationship with =-P
@www.myspace.com/coreywilson10- thanks
… btw its lEbnash1.. lol
i watched samurai girl, jamie was ok. she lookd good on screen, and she has the ability to fight. thats about it imo. she’s not the best actress, but she probably could pull chichi off.
@lebnash1: Exactly my opinion on her. She can fight but her acting isn’t so good. I’m sure she played Chi Chi alot better than Heaven
JUST STFU and watch this video on piccolo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1YsU8pbY_Y
@Sean: He said he’s not Teto because Teto is a slang in Spanish that means nerd or know-it-all (he’s playing a ‘teto’…he’s playing a nerd). It’s not even a name of anyone in the movie. There is nobody in the movie called Teto, just Weaver.
@lebnash1: Oh sorry dude!! lol, ha, ha I didn’t mean any disrespect. It won’t happen again
@J: Finally something we can agree on!! Now get out of here you Dragonball protester. Sike just playing!! I want you to stay. I like debating with you Harry Potter fans.
@J: @Walsh:
Thanks for clearing that up
Hey what’s taking Adam so long???? I want to make my opinion about the Luis A. interview.
@http://www.myspace.com/coreywilson10: Prlly doesn’t have a good translation yet
It’s not like it was a good interview anyway, I mean, he’s just…Weaver
I thought it was good, because he talked about all those rumors that were surfacing on the internet. When Adam interviews one of the cast or crew from Dragonball I hope he ask them the good question like hoycinema did. Weaver awnser all my questions about him and more. Im just scratching my head on one thing though?
Who is going to be Goku’s best friend if Weaver is not?
@http://www.myspace.com/coreywilson10: I’m actually not a big fan of Harry Potter. Never read the books, just saw the movies when they came out on HBO so I don’t know much about it, lol. But yeah, I enjoy the debates as well.
@Sean: No problem.
I agree. I checked out Samurai Girl myself and while Jaimie Chung is not the best actress in the universe, she can hold her own in a fight so she’ll be no problem as Chi Chi. She needs to work on her postures, attitudes and facial expressions a bit more if she’s ever going to reach Lucy Liu’s level. She’s not bad but she’s not horrible either.
Yes, Samurai Girl is cheesy. But the story kept me entertained. I guess that’s all it counts in the end.
Omdz…. Justin Chatwin does not look one bit like a Japanese person…. I should know as I’ve lived there for 6 years. What a dits. Goku never even had blue eyes!!!! Bitch!!! They were green all through his saiyan transformations!!! DUMBASS!!!! That is just the biggest insult to a Japanese person! Saying a caucasian looks like one of them! HAHAA!!! Ms Chung, go and grow a brain and a backbone to support it.
Thanx Corey for the translation
@BlueHairBulma: Jamie has the presence of Chi Chi and she looks 100% like her. She didn’t act like chi chi in Samurai girl, but she still did a good job playing her character. I like Samurai girl!! The storyline is very good.
@J: Yes!! Im just finally glad we can talk like two human beings. You know what?? I like you J, but I don’t think your a real Dragonball movie fan, because you post that protest site ever time people start flamming. I really hope you stop doing that!!
@DjiNN: Your welcome dude
@http://www.myspace.com/coreywilson10: yeh corey i agree with you i dont really like @J: the only reason y i dont really like him is because he signed that stupid petition before that i had no problems with him so i dont see y he comes on this web just to insult it seems that he has nothing better to do.
@lebnash1: YOUR THE MAN how do you make those trailers (sory a bit late to congratulate you) what kind of system do you have running.
Jamie chung looks like she’ll make a good chi chi.
The samurai girl story is pretty entertaining so far, though the writing is pretty funny.
she got into a club by touching a bouncers shoulder and saying “be my knight in shining armor”….wth???
her dad looks like an asian tony stark (especially when he wears a suit)
her mom told her dad her son was dead pretty bluntly (which was funny) and he didnt even care a bit. hahaa. oh man. talk about character realism.
oh well. i guess it wasnt aimed to be that real anyway. i mean japanese ppl don’t speak to each other in english. especially if you were born in japan and lived there your whole life. i mean…she even had the american accent hahaah. hahaa
i kinda ranted about it, but as i said, she would make a good chi chi.
chi chi deosnt do much in the movie anyway. well this movie is where shes gonna do the most. once the sequels come around, shes not gonna do anything but bitch, so she better enjoy this part while she can. hahahahaha
.
.
I AM…..REPAIR MAN MAN MAN MAN MAN MAN MAN….
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.informador.com.mx/entretenimiento/2008/36687/6/escenarios-nacionales-dragon-ball-con-sabor-a-mexico.htm&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.informador.com.mx/entretenimiento/2008/36687/6/escenarios-nacionales-dragon-ball-con-sabor-a-mexico.htm%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3Dc2e
I just saw great game dragonball Z for PS2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2lIVh5p6KM cant wait till it comes out november 4
oh yeah to those retarded haters let me refresh your mind of how LORD PICCOLO LOOKS HE IS OLD oh yeah and to refresh your memory these episodes are not in order please click on it watch it and enjoy:
http://www.megavideo.com/?v=LJ93IGW4 dragonball ep 102 enter king piccolo
http://www.megavideo.com/?v=4443N9U1 dragonball ep 111 roshi gambit
http://www.megavideo.com/?v=UVEO3LA3 dragonball ep 112 king piccolo’s
i think these episodes will be the main point of the 2009 live-action movie sorry to go off the topic but i just wanna refresh people’s mind and show them haters also i think dragonball episode 111 will be the way how roshi dies by using the evil containment wave to seal lord piccolo.
I think its going to all work out in the end and that everyone is getting a little spaztic over everything that we’ve seen so far. Look on the bright side, at least they didn’t CGI EVERYTHING like they did with 300. That was nausiating to sit through (good story but the visual was very phoney). And looking on the even brighter side of things, maybe this movie will spawn a revival and the networks will show original db again so fans don’t have to scour the internet anymore looking for episodes or have to pay $279.00 per season to know what the hell is going on (I missed a shitload growing up on rabbit ears). Besides every single adaptation of anything to film usually goes through the meat grinder before it gets reassembled as something like the original, That’s the way hollywood works, sadly.
Airtime’s expensive for the cable networks with royalties and all so unless there was a serious demand for it, I doubt they’d re-air all of DB. I think it’ll turn out decent, not great. The cases where they knock it out of the ball park are extremely rare. However I don’t expect it to be as bad as street fighter the movie. That movie didn’t even give us a hadouken fx because it was so cheap. We already know they’re going to have ki blasts in the movie so it’s already better. And your right, hollywood is completely out of touch with why people like the source and usually catwomans these kinds of movies because they’re so arrogant and stupid.
It all comes down to this movie for dragon ball. It’s the only thing going for the franchise at this point and if it fails, dragon ball’s prettymuch done unfortunately as a popular franchise. It’s not like they’re making more episodes or anything. So they either did their best with this flick or *shrugs* we have to get lives or something.
I guess that’s true, but still with the low grade cartoons that have been cranked out the past few years (I babysit alot), I guess it was just wishful thinking. Ya, I don’t have the highest expectations for this movie, but I’m still hoping it will be entertaining at least. It wouldn’t crush my world or distroy my childhood if its terrible, but I’m curious to see how it turns out. Besides I always wondered what a real interpretation of Kamehameha looks like
this movie( if it fails) would crush my entire childhood. I grew up watching and loving this anime… i have every single console dragonball game and many gameboy games…i have the card game i have the costumes… this game was my childhood so this movie can no dissapoint. so many ppl in japan are the exact same way as well as any where in the world… this is known as one of the greatest shows of all time, so we will see and keep are fingers crossed
@Breasts are full:
ha…lives..
@Masenko-Huh?:
O.o reading what you said somehow, made me start thinking this movie might be kinda long. Like they have to get that crappy highschool thing in, then all the adventure, and the training, and the fighting o.o; goku didn’t learn the kamehameha in 5 god dam seconds @_@
You don’t know how much I want this movie to be good. I’ve dreamed of this film for so long… I’ll die if they screwed it up. And yeah, most cartoons today are abysmal, do kids today even watch that stuff? Remeber when dragonball was on toonami and we had a great line-up of good shows, trigun, gundam, thundercats, hell I’d watch sailor moon… I’ll admit it. Now there’s- let me see what they have on cn right now… Jesus….total drama island? what the hell… thank goodness for the internet. Kids can just youtube some classic stuff now. Very good.
A new actress in the movie Gabriela de la Garza, goes virtual!
Read here:
Gabriela de la Garza remembers her fun work in the film: “My character is virtual! It’s like a computer, to all who arrive to the city and want communicate with her, gives them instructions. The hairstyle, clothing, everything was fantastic. â€
The actress explains further that “always shot my scenes with green screen (green screen that allows overlay landscapes) and James Wong was directing me, is a great filmmaker.
@Sean: send us the article link.
HEHE MAYBE THAT`S WHY IN LATIN SPANISH CHI CHI NAME IS MILK LOL
rock on!
I wanna see the trailer!
@RJ:
@Ultimate Gohan: I meant no offense there. I too am an insanely obsessed fan of db, I just meant in the sense that hollywood has already stomped on every other inch of childhood favorites so I’m just getting used to it. anywayz best anime ever! Hands Down! and no matter what happens with the movie, it won’t change that fact one bit. 
You may be right. seems to me that they are whittling alot of the story down with changes. but the show spanned how many years? Either its going to be REALLY busy or really long.
@Gayo: “no disrespect for asians… but c’mon, Chatwin fits more in Goku’s appearance than any asian actor I know..”
Not at all. Sayiajins have dark hair and dark eyes. Chatwin has brown hair and blue eyes. Besides, he is not very muscular. He is a white guy that looks nothing like Goku, not normal Goku and not super sayian goku.
If they want a white person there for racist reasons, that’s ok. But don’t mess with Dragon ball! Get someone with dark hair and dark eyes!
@Walsh: “lol face it piccolo is a green monster how would you expect him to look in real life with out looking like all the other humanoid demons/monsters…. come on people grow up”
Well, Hellboy is read and the Thing from the fantastic 4 is orange. You should grow up! The only thing dragon ball in this movie is the title. In all “adaptations” of comics (X-Men, Spider-Man, etc) they changed a few things, BUT NOT EVERYTHING! This is not an adaptation, THIS IS A COMPLETE REWRITE OF DRAGON BALL.
@James Alexander: “Yea the highschool stuff is overrated, but think about it. ”
First of all, “highschool”, cheerleaders and all that crap is an American-centric “rewrite”. The rest of the world couldn’t care less about nerds and jocks. This is the problem. They have transformed Goku into a highschool nerd, although most of the people form the rest of the planet would relate more easily with the wild Goku from the anime than with anything related to “highschool”.
You just don’t get it, do you? Americans are impermeable. The rest of the world is delighted by Dragon Ball simply because it is different! It is Asian! We can learn and appreciate other cultures! WHAT THE F*** IS THE PROBLEM WITH YOU!?
@sajin0084.deviantart.com: “(movies created to servive off a fanbase dont do good etc. final fantasy spirits within).”
WTF!? Since when Final Fantasy spirits within was a service to the fanbase ? That was utterly crap and nothing to do with the games! The fans wanted to see Sephiroth, Cloud, Tifa, not a bunch of thugs talking about the spirit of the Earth!
I am telling you, this is full of Fox employees! Unbelievable!
Dragon ball stands on its own. It has a fascinating story that, if well done, could attract lots of more fans. The story is already great. And, yes, people from all around the world liked it way before some American idiot decided to put it in “highschool”!
What you are saying makes absolutely no sense. Dragon Ball has proven itself as a successful and fascinating story worldwide, there’s no need to “adapting to the new generation”.
This girl’s an idiot for thinking Justin Fagwin looks Japanese.
i think she should play more slutty asian girl roles. she totally has that going for her. she can relive her UCR days
Chi-chi means pussy in Spanish Lol
when you guys come home from the theater crying over jamie chung’s poor acting skills,
there will be nobody to blame but the fans who didn’t stop her in time. -_-
With you all be quiet!
I’m sick and tired of you all insulting Jamie like that. Give her a chance. Besides, in my opinion shes gonna be a good Chi-Chi.