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I didn't see this mentioned elsewhere on the board but DVDActive annouced this yesterday:

Universal Home Video has announced a brand new special edition of the 1961 musical comedy Flower Drum Song which stars the likes of Nancy Kwan, Miyoshi Umeki, and James Shigeta. This Henry Koster directed film will be available to own from the 7th November, and should set you back around $29.98. The film itself will be presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, along with an English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. English, French and Spanish subtitles will also be included. I'm afraid Universal has yet to reveal the extra material for this one, but we'll bring you further details very shortly. Stay tuned for that.

Artwork and menus.

Sorry to bump such an old thread, but I watched this last night and was very impressed by it. It's a fun and lavish production that surprised with how layered it was as a cultural critique and in terms of the relationship dynamics.

Of course the film is best known for featuring an all Asian cast, thus being the first Hollywood film to do so. Given Hollywood's less than stellar history of depicting Asian culture, I was expecting the worst, but was pleasantly surprised by the amount of restraint shown. There weren't any glaring stereotypes, and although Mei Li's broken English is often played for laughs, it's primarily due to her butchering of American slang (ie the term 'cool cat' becomes 'cold cat'), and her good-natured naivete about American customs. Similarly the traditional Chinese family dynamics (namely patriarchal control) felt real and tangible (my girlfriend, a Chinese born Canadian remarked that she can imagine her father acting very much like Master Wang does as he tries to maintain control).

I also thought the integration of Chinese culture into American culture was handled quite well...although the 'Chop Suey' number is pretty dreadful save for the dancing. I particularly liked the contrast of the youngest son Wang San who is virtually incomprehensible to his father with his penchant of American slang, baseball, and Rock & Roll, and the older son Wang Ta who manages to retain some of the traditional Chinese values while also embracing some the American ones. I would have liked Wang San to get more screen time to flesh out some of these generational dynamics, but as it is I think it's still effective. I think the film could also have benefitted from a more explicit exploration of Wang Ta's internal conflict between his Chinese and American halves as it is referenced several times. His pursuit of the night club singer Linda Low is a manifestation of this: in chasing the glamorous, free-spirited, very American girl as opposed to obeying his father's desire for him to marry the Chinese born Mei Li, he is conforming to American values and rebelling against his father and his Chinese heritage.

I'll add some more thoughts later.