Jun 25 2009
Let’s Get Ready For a 9 year-old Movie Critic!
Perry Chen, a nine-year-old prodigy movie critic in third grade at the Torrey Hills elementary school in Carmel Valley, San Diego, became an instant hit on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. His feature story became the 2nd most viewed story on http://www.cbsnews.com/ on May 31, 2009, the night of the broadcast.
Perry is a columnist/movie critic for family movies for “We Chinese in America” weekly newspaper, where he reviews G and PG rated movies on a scale of 1 to 5 Starfish, 5 being the best.
Perry’s sophisticated and insightful movie reviews have caught the attention of producers from “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric”, who produced a special feature to introduce Perry as one of the youngest film critics in the country that aired on the show on May 31, 2008.
Perry also appeared on Fox 5 San Diego on May 25 for an interview and review of Pixar/Disney’s new movie “Up,” the first animated feature that opened the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. The San Diego Asia Film Festival also invited Perry to interview filmmakers and become a guest columnist during the festival, October 15-29, 2009.
Renowned filmmakers took notice and have invited Perry to private interview sessions, including Pixar “Up” director Pete Docter and producer Jonas Rivera whom Perry interviewed on May 4 during their San Diego press tour. Perry was also invited to meet the acclaimed French director Michel Ocelot in San Francisco on March 4 whose movie “Azur & Asmar” Perry reviewed and gave five starfish rating in his first published review on “We Chinese in America” newspaper on February 20, 2009.
Perry’s movie reviews have also been featured on La Jolla Light, Carmel Valley Leader, Del Mar Times, Solana Beach Sun, and Rancho Santa Fe Record. His movie reviews has generated significant media following, including features on San Diego News Network, San Diego Magazine, La Jolla Light’s five newspapers, Del Mar Village Voice, Carmel Valley News, The China Press, and We Chinese in America.
Perry was born in 2000 in California after his parents Drs. Changyou Chen and Zhu Shen came to America to study biochemistry and molecular biology at graduate schools in 1988 from Beijing, China.
In October 2008, at the Parent-Teacher Conference, Perry’s 3rd grade teacher Ms. Joli Harris, told his mom Dr. Zhu Shen that he was already decoding words at high school level. At home, Perry enjoys reading Time Magazine that his mom subscribed. With encouragement from his mom and Ms. Harris, he has have been writing movie reviews ever since, and enjoy it very much!
Perry’s hobbies are drawing, reading, folding origami, gardening, writing poems (In English and Chinese), and watching movies. Perry hopes that a lot of parents will watch many wonderful movies with their children and talk to them about the movies after reading his reviews, which can be found at his website, together with all of his published reviews, media coverage, and upcoming events: http://www.perryspreviews.com/
He’s one of those kids that no words can aptly describe. Amazing!