Live Your Dream: The Taylor Anderson Story at Melwood Screening Room, March 13.

The Japan-American Society of Pennsylvania will present the film Live Your Dream: The Taylor Anderson Story at the Melwood Screening Room in Oakland (map) on March 13. Taylor Anderson taught English in Japan for three years and died in the March 11, 2011 tsunami at age 24. A brief summary of the film from JQ Magazine:

[Filmmaker Reggie] Life opens the window for the viewer to glimpse the life of Taylor Anderson (Miyagi-ken, 2008-11) through personal accounts from her loved ones. Laced with emotional reflections, vivid photos and jovial home movies, the film walks the viewer through Taylor’s 24 years on earth and untimely end caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011. In light of the tragedy, the film sends a message of hope, optimism and encouragement for all to follow their hearts.

The movie starts at 7:30, and tickets are $2.

Photography exhibition "My Odd Journey" at Imagebox Productions, March 7 through 31.

A photography exhibition by Shanning Wan titled "My Odd Journey" will open today at Imagebox Productions in Garfield (map).

Shanning Wan’s travel photography throughout China and the US which touches upon topics such as Muslims in China, women, architecture, found objects, and more.

The opening reception runs from 6 pm to 9 pm and is part of Unblurred: First Fridays on Penn. The exhibit runs through March. Wan was last on this blog last summer with her Northwest Chinese Pop-Up Restaurant.

New Pirates pitcher complains to press about life in Korea.

Coverage by OhMyNews. "Korean life was terrible" . . . Returning foreign player's "criticisms".

This off-season the Pittsburgh Pirates signed Adam Wilk, a pitcher formerly in the Detroit Tigers organization and who pitched the 2013 in the Korean Baseball Organization. Some Korean news outlets have noticed the comments Wilk made about his time in Changwon to the USA Today and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Cathedral of Learning on cover of 미국 대학의 힘.

Pitt's Cathedral of Learning and Stephen Foster Memorial are on the cover of a Korean book published last year by Sanzini Books, 미국 대학의 힘, which translates to The Strengths of American Colleges. The book was released on December 16, 2013, was written by Hak-soo Mok of Pusan National University, and looks at services available to students, professors, and applicants.

The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ) now at Southside Works.

The latest Hayao Miyazaki film The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ) is currently playing at Pittsburgh's SouthSide Works Cinema (map). From a TIME magazine review last month:

The Wind Rises — its title taken from a line in Paul Valéry’s poem “The Graveyard by the Sea” (“The wind is rising! We must try to live!”) — weaves a tender, doomed love story into two volcanic decades of Japan’s history, from 1918 to the end of the ’30s. Here are indelible images of the 1923 Kanto earthquake and the firestorms that devoured whole cities and killed 140,000 people. Here is the Depression that crippled Japan while its government poured more money into its military.

The movie is really a double biopic: of Horikoshi, whose life it follows from his youth to his work at Mitsubishi, with a brief postwar coda; and of the author Tatsuo Hori, whose 1937 novel The Wind Has Risen tells the story of a tubercular girl at a sanatorium. The life and works of Hori, who died of TB in 1953 at age 48, inform the character of Naoko Satomi, the young woman who becomes Jiro’s wife.

The version currently playing in Pittsburgh, and the one released nationwide on February 28, is dubbed in English. Showtimes for March 4, 5, and 6 are 1:40 pm, 4:30 pm, 7:20 pm, and 10:10 pm.

Again with the memes, at Tân Lạc Viên Vietnamese Bistro on Murray Ave.

Ran (乱), Castaway on the Moon (김씨 표류기), Yi Yi (一一) comprise Maridon Museum's Spring Film Series.

Butler's Maridon Museum announced its 2014 Spring Film Series today, which will be comprised of the Japanese film Ran on March 20, the South Korean film Castaway on the Moon on April 24, and the Taiwanese film Yi Yi on May 15. More-detailed posts on each will follow closer to the dates.

The Maridon Museum of Asian Art is located at 322 N. McKean St. in downtown Butler, some 40 miles north of Pittsburgh (map). It holds film series throughout the year, with recent themes of relevance to this blog being Vietnamese and Taiwanese films.

Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster (一代宗師) at Erie Art Museum, March 5.

Wong Kar Wai's latest film The Grandmaster (一代宗師), which opened throughout the US in August 2013, will play at the Erie Art Museum (map) on March 5. Starring Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi, the New York Times wrote last year it's

a hypnotically beautiful dream from the Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, opens with curls of smoke, eddies of water and men soaring and flying across the frame as effortlessly as silk ribbons. The men are warriors, street fighters with furious fists and winged feet, who have massed together on a dark, rainy night to take on Ip Man (Tony Leung), a still figure in a long coat and an elegant white hat. Even amid the violent whirlpools of rain and bodies, that hat never leaves his head. It’s as unyielding as its owner.

The movie starts at 7:00. Tickets are $5 at the door, or $6.17 online.

Oakland's Sushi Boat cited, temporarily closd by Allegheny County Health Department.

The Pitt News wrote on Wednesday that Sushi Boat Asian Food on Oakland Ave. was cited by the Allegheny County Health Department on February 18 "for numerous critical violations of the county’s Food Safety Rules and Regulations."

"Still Watching a Movie?: Korean National Cinema in the Post-Film Era" lecture at Pitt, March 3.

Korean Popular Culture Reader, 2014.

The University of Pittsburgh's Film Studies program will host Dr. Kyung Hyun Kim and his lecture "Still Watching a Movie?: Korean National Cinema in the Post-Film Era" on Monday, March 3, in room 501 of the Cathedral of Learning (map). Dr. Kim is a professor at the University of California Irvine, author on numerous articles and books on Korean film and pop culture, and editor of the forthcoming The Korean Popular Culture Reader. The talk runs from 1 to 3 pm and is free.

On a related topic at Pitt on the same day, Ph.D. candidate Seung-hwan Shin in the Department of English will defend his dissertation "New Korean Cinema: Mourning to Regeneration" at 9:30 am in the same room, 501 Cathedral of Learning.