NAAAP Pgh End of the Year Party, December 11.

The Pittsburgh chapter of the National Association of Asian American Professionals [NAAAP] will hold its End of the Year Party on Thursday, December 11, in Market Square.

Join NAAAP PGH for our last event of the year! We will be meeting at NoLa on the Square in Market Square at 7:00pm for dinner, and then ice skating at the rink at PPG Place (see prices for skate rental and admission to the rink below. Super affordable). We hope that you have been able to make it to some of our past events this year. We had a blast hosting them, and we look forward to an even more exciting and eventful 2015!

The event begins at 7:00 pm.

Korean film Oldboy (올드보이) coming to Row House Cinema, December 26 - January 1.

Row House Cinema in Lawrenceville will show the 2003 Korean film Oldboy (올드보이) from December 26 through January 1. 올드보이, the 21st-century classic not to be confused with the 2013 Spike Lee remake, is summarized in a 2005 Roger Ebert review:

A man gets violently drunk and is chained to the wall in a police station. His friend comes and bails him out. While the friend is making a telephone call, the man disappears from an empty city street in the middle of the night. The man regains consciousness in what looks like a shabby hotel room. A bed, a desk, a TV, a bathroom cubicle. There is a steel door with a slot near the floor for his food tray. Occasionally a little tune plays, the room fills with gas, and when he regains consciousness the room has been cleaned, his clothes have been changed, and he has received a haircut.

This routine continues for 15 years. He is never told who has imprisoned him, or why. He watches TV until it becomes his world. He fills one journal after another with his writings. He pounds the wall until his fists grow bloody, and then hardened. He screams. He learns from TV that his blood and fingerprints were found at the scene of his wife's murder. That their daughter has been adopted in Sweden. That if he were to escape, he would be a wanted man.

. . .

When he suddenly finds himself freed from his bizarre captivity 15 years later, he is a different person, focused on revenge, ridiculously responsive to kindness. Wandering into a restaurant, he meets a young woman who, he knows from the TV, is Korea's "Chef of the Year." This is Mido. Sensing that he has suffered, feeling an instinctive sympathy, she takes him home with her, hears his story, cares for him, comes to love him. Meanwhile, he sets out on a methodical search to find the secret of his captivity. He was fed pot stickers, day after day, until their taste is burned into his memory, and he travels the city's restaurants until he finds the one that supplied his meals. That is the key to tracking down his captors.

Showtimes are available online. The theater is located at 4115 Butler St. (map).

Devils on the Doorstep (鬼子来了) at Row House Cinema, December 5 - 11.

The 2000 Chinese movie Devils on the Doorstep (鬼子来了) will play at the Row House Cinema in Lawrenceville (map) from December 5 through 11 as part of the WWII International Reflections series. The theater summarizes the film:

A Chinese villager is forced to take two Japanese Army prisoners into custody. This black comedy won of the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2000.

The movie played at the Three Rivers Film Festival in 2002. Showtimes for it and the other four films in the series are available on the theater's website.

Colloquium "The Everyday without Depth: Hong Sang-soo and a Cinema of Paradox" at Pitt, December 5.

The Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh will present a colloquium with Seung-Hwan Shin, "The Everyday without Depth: Hong Sang-soo and a Cinema of Paradox", on December 5. The abstract:

Hong's arrival in the mid-1990s marks a new phase in the development of Korean cinema in the post-democratization era. He responded to the post-epic condition by rediscovering everyday life (its contingency and disjontedness) via a minimalist gaze. Yet instead of putting his films under such blanket terms as postmodernism or deconstruction, I read them as hinging upon the urge to scrutinize and embrace life without "good sense". Notably, his cinema is marked by the lack of center and depth to build our perception on it; depth gives way to service where events prove to be governed by paradoxes instead of good senses that oblige us to pick one direction over the other. We thus recurrently witness in his films such motifs as drifting, idling, waiting, drinking, chatting, doubting, hesitating, wavering, forgetting, etc. Notable in this regard is Hong's peculiar sense of humor, which I attributed to his effort to make sense of life without good sense, viz., the everyday that continues without an ultimate solution to its paradoxes. It is also intriguing to note how his minimalism shows a viable way of independent cinema between maximalism (e.g., big-budget films) and protectionism (e.g., publicly funded films).

Dr. Shin is a part-time instructor of Korean and East Asian Cinema, and earned his Ph.D. from Pitt in April. The talk will take place in 4130 Posvar Hall (campus map) from 12:00 pm.

Kung Fu Fest at Row House Cinema starts tomorrow.

Row House Cinema in Lawrenceville will present Kung Fu Fest from tomorrow through December 4.

Watching old Kung Fu films is both an honest & fantastical experience. The action is the focus... sure sure, but there are no explosions nor fancy gadgetry, just extremely athletic, hand to hand combat.

The films to be presented are: Enter the Dragon (龍爭虎鬥); Fists of Fury (精武門); Master of the Flying Guillotine (獨臂拳王大破血滴子); Once Upon a Time in China (黃飛鴻); and Drunken Master (醉拳). A schedule is available on the theater's website and in .pdf form. Movies will be shown in their original languages, with English subtitles. The theater is located at 4115 Butler St. (map).

The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (かぐや姫の物語) and From Up on Poppy Hill (コクリコ坂から) at Row House Cinema, December 12 - 18.

Row House Cinema in Lawrenceville will present the GKIDS Animation Festival from December 12 through 18, including two animated films from Japan and Studio Ghibli: 2013's The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (かぐや姫の物語) in its Pittsburgh debut and 2011's From Up On Poppy Hill (コクリコ坂から).

A.V. Club provides a summary of The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (かぐや姫の物語):

A humble bamboo cutter named Okina (translation: “old man”) happens upon a glowing stalk in the grove near his house. When he investigates, the shimmering tree blossoms reveal a baby nested inside. Believing this discovery to be a gift from the heavens, Okina brings her home to his wife Ouna (“old woman”), with whom he begins to raise the child as their own. Dubbing her “Princess” Kaguya, Ouna and Okina marvel at how rapidly the girl begins to grow, racing from infancy to pre-adolescence in a matter of days.

While Kaguya busies herself with a normal childhood, making friends with the local kids and bonding with an older boy named Sutemaru, her adopted father becomes distracted by Kaguya’s value to him—the bamboo shoot from which she was born begins producing gold. As Kaguya transforms into a teenager, Okina relocates their family to the capital city, where the girl receives lessons on how to be a proper woman, and is celebrated as a rare beauty. When five aggressive suitors come calling—followed by the emperor himself—Kaguya begins to feel trapped, things falling apart as she imagines a different life for herself.

It goes on to say the film has "some of the most beautifully expressive animation that Ghibli (or anyone else) has ever produced".

Wikipedia provides a brief summary of the latter:

Set in 1963 Yokohama, Japan, the film tells the story of Umi Matsuzaki, a high school girl living in a boarding house, Coquelicot Manor. When Umi meets Shun Kazama, a member of the school's newspaper club, they decide to clean up the school's clubhouse, Quartier Latin. However, Tokumaru, the chairman of the local high school and a businessman, intends to demolish the building for redevelopment and Umi and Shun, along with Shirō Mizunuma, must persuade him to reconsider.

And the Pittsburgh City-Paper adds, in a review of the film when it was last here in 2013:

The film's small story is set against a larger cultural one, as Japan transitions from the sorrows and hardships of the last generation's wars to being a modern world power. Nearly every scene contains visual cues that show Japan's mish-mash of old and new, while the story illustrates this new generation, caught between the nostalgic pull of the past and the responsibility of leading this new Japan.

Showtimes will be released shortly. The theater is located at 4115 Butler St. (map).

New "Asian Noodle Bar" coming to Oakland.

Signage went up today for Asian Noodle Bar at 3531 Forbes Ave. (map), in a storefront that was most recently the Pittsburgh Pretzel Sandwich Shop.

Nak Won Garden Korean Restaurant (낙원가든) opens in Shadyside.

PG Plate wrote on the 10th about a new Korean restaurant that opened in Shadyside on the 14th. Nak Won Garden Korean Restaurant (낙원가든) is located at 5504 Centre Ave. (map), next to Market District. PG Plate has scanned and posted the menu, which includes most of the standard appetizers, dishes, and soups.

WholeChi (豪吃匹兹堡) delivery service.

Flyers recently went up around Oakland for WholeChi (豪吃匹兹堡), which offers a delivery service from local Asian markets to customers' homes in parts of the Oakland, Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Greenfield, and Uptown neighborhoods. It's run by the group behind WholeRen, a locally-based Chinese education consulting and placement firm.

Shim Eun-kyung chose "한국 사람이 없는 피츠버그".

Korean actress Shim Eun-kyung might be best known to readers in Pittsburgh for starring in the 2011 film Sunny, which was part of the 2012 Silk Screen Asian American Film Festival.

A story from four-and-a-half years ago, but worth sharing: Korean actress Shim Eun-kyung chose Pittsburgh as a study abroad location back in 2010 because there are few Koreans here. From the Chosun Ilbo:

영화 '반가운 살인자' 배급사 롯데엔테테인먼트 측은 "심은경이 오는 9월 미국 피츠버그로 유학을 떠난다"며 "심은경은 어린 시절부터 연기를 시작해 지친 심신을 위로하고 연기자로서의 삶과 대학생활 중 어떤 것을 선택할 것인지 본격적으로 고민하기 위해 일부러 한국 사람이 없는 피츠버그 유학을 결심했다"고 전했다.

Unlike most interested in studying abroad, Shim---who by the age of 16 had been in several successful TV shows and movies---sought refuge from years of media attention in order to focus on her studies. A location with few Koreans, though, is a selling point for some programs, and to those students who might wish to avoid certain crutches.