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Had to put this video because the beginning makes me laugh.

Remember that Hollywood lead role that Rain talked about getting? Remember my hopes and dreams that it wouldn’t be the stereotyped Hollywood headstart that Jang Dong Gun and Park Joon Hyung are getting?

As revealed in the J.Tune and William Morris Agency press conference Rain’s Hollywood lead role will be as a Ninja Asassin in a movie tentatively called. . . Ninja Assassin (can you hear me sighing?). Rain obviously impressed the Wachowski brothers because they are at the helm of this project.

Random press conference tidbits from Dramabeans.com:

Rain: “I haven’t received the script for Ninja Assassin so I’m not positive, but it’s my understanding that the character is not Japanese…I’ve been learning English and taking dance lessons and doing lots of preparations in the States. Although more than anything my music and recording work is most important to me, because I’ve been cast in Ninja Assassin in my first leading Hollywood role, I’ll be debuting first as an actor.”

I understand that Korea and Japan have friction and all that lovely diplomatic stuff but the mainstream audience will not be debating the ethnicity of Rain versus the ethnicity of the character he plays (at least not in this country). A movie called Ninja Assassin, tentative or not, is without a doubt about a Japanese person. Unless they call that movie [insert Korean combat sport here] Assassin the movie is about a Japanese person. In the states not much is paid attention to being completely accurate when it comes to race and ethnicity. For example, Zoe Saldana, who is Dominican, playing an African-American in Guess Who, France Nuyen a Vietnamese-French woman playing a Chinese mother in The Joy Luck Club, Edison Chen playing a Japanese guy in The Grudge 2 (promise me you won’t watch it) and Zhang Ziyi, Chinese, playing a Japanese geisha in Memoirs of a Geisha and should I even mention Mickey Rooney playing the Japanese upstairs neighbor in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? But America is not the only country that does this, EVERY country with common sense does. In the Japanese drama Attention Please!! a Japanese girl is Hawaiian (but you can tell they just threw her into a bucket of self-tanner). In another Japanese drama Moderato Cantabile a Japanese pretends to be a German… Being as diverse as the United States is and being as homogeneous Asian countries are they don’t really need an excuse to…*sigh* I digress…

Anyway, as many know Rain recently signed with William Morris Agency. Unless he expresses his concerns about ethnic integrity (if that’s what you would call it) they aren’t going to make an effort. Seeing as Rain has read the script yet I don’t think that he really cares either. He just wants to break into Hollywood.

*still waiting patiently for Speed Racer to come out* But honestly, as much as I love Emile Hirsch and the Wachowski brothers, after seeing the trailers I’m a bit… um unsure?

I really had to restrain myself from posting a picture of Rain’s ridiculous Bae Yong Joon wannabe getup. Not to Rain: it doesn’t look good on Bae Yong Joon either.