They gather almost every night at San Francisco’s Dragon Gate, the ornately decorated entrance to the nation’s oldest Chinatown. Armed with only whistles and pamphlets, the volunteer neighborhood patrol roams the streets, checking out ATMs and mom-and-pop shops in areas where Asian residents have experienced attacks that have left this neighborhood on edge.

Some volunteers drive more than an hour to walk these blocks — largely deserted by a combination of fear and pandemic lockdown — to hand out bilingual fliers that explain how to report a crime to police. read more…

Last year, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mulan actor Tzi Ma was walking towards a Whole Foods in Pasadena, Calif., when a car slowed down in front of him.

“I said, ‘Oh, how courteous, a young man, slowing down for me to cross,'” Ma, who was born in Hong Kong, tells PEOPLE. “That was not the case. He rode up and stopped in front of me, rolled down his window and looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘You should be quarantined,’ and took off.”

The encounter, Ma said, left him “numb and kind of a little bit dazed.” read more…

Critics Choice Awards didn’t narrow this down too much for the season as the usual suspects showed up with “Emma,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Mank,” “Mulan,” “The Personal History of David Copperfield” and “Promising Young Woman.” Mark Bridges, who won the Oscar for “The Artist” and “Phantom Thread” could easily slip in, especially just one year after cracking the lineup for “Joker,” which shows he’s beloved with the branch. read more…

While it was delayed about a month, for safety reasons, we are now in the nominating stage of the stretch of time known as “awards season.” Earlier this week we reported on Disney’s Golden Globe nominations, another set of nominations were also announced and they were for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards.

The guild is filled with actors and other performers who have done work in the past in either television of film, and the awards they present are all in acting categories. read more…

From a black-and-white ode to Old Hollywood to a reggae-soaked mood piece and a Romanian doc — our picks for the greatest films of the year.

This was not the year we were promised. It started off on a series of high points: a fruitful Sundance, a history-making Oscar win for Parasite, the release of several notable 2019 fest-circuit gems for general-public consumption. Movie theaters were still filled with annoying texters and talkers, but they were open for business. We looked forward to seeing Daniel Craig’s Bond farewell, Christopher Nolan’s latest question mark of an IMAX thriller, Wes Anderson’s tribute to old-timey newspaper folk, a Peter Jackson documentary on the Beatles’ Let It Be sessions; we braced ourselves in anticipation (and also with some trepidation) about new Marvel movies, a belated Top Gun sequel, yet another Ghostbusters franchise coffer filler. We speculated on what would make the cut for Cannes in the spring, and by extension, the lineups of Venice, Telluride, and Toronto in the fall. We debated whether First Cow‘s bovine star Eve the Cow should be considered a best supporting actress or more of a co-lead. read more…