Lunar New Year celebrations start January 28 in Squirrel Hill.

Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood will host its second annual Lunar New Year celebration, starting with a kick-off event on January 28 at the Jewish Community Center. A program of events, from Squirrel Hill Magazine:

At 1pm, the Steel Dragon LION Dance Team will ring in the Year of the Fire Rooster, followed by performances and presentations from:

• OCA Pittsburgh/Tsu Chi Academy – Chinese Y-Yo Martial Arts demos
• OCA Cultural Youth Performance
• Win-Win KungFu
• Ai-Lin Chen on Guzheng, a musical instrument performance
• YanLai Dance Academy
• Filipino American Association of Pittsburgh Dance Troupe
• HaiHua Youth Orchestra (of Mt. Lebanon)
• CMU K(orean)-pop
• Pittsburgh Chinese School Chinese Folk Dance
• Oom Yung Doe Martial Arts
• Silk Elephant Thai Dancers
• Yanlai Dance Academy
• Lydia Music Center

Throughout the building, attendees can enjoy free arts and crafts for the kids including calligraphy, origami, making hand-drums (for the parade of course!), and more. There will also be delicious, authentic Asian food for sale.

In addition to the activities inside the JCC, two teams of lion dancers will be visiting and blessing our merchants on Forbes and Murray from 10am to 3pm.

The events are free and open to the public; shirts are $10 for kids or $15 for adults, and are available for purchase online. The holiday celebration closes on February 12 with a parade along Squirrel Hill's Murray Ave.

Korean Lunar New Year Celebration, January 27 at Pitt.

The University of Pittsburgh's Daehwa Korean Conversation Club will host a Korean Lunar New Year (설날) Celebration on Friday, January 27, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm in the William Pitt Union Lower Lounge (map).

Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Dark Side Of Dimensions (遊☆戯☆王 THE DARK SIDE OF DIMENSIONS) in Pittsburgh, from January 28.

The 2016 animated Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Dark Side Of Dimensions (遊☆戯☆王 THE DARK SIDE OF DIMENSIONS), premiering in the US on January 27, will play in the Pittsburgh area from January 28. It will play at 1:00 pm on the 28th and at 7:00 pm on the 31st at Pittsburgh Mills, and will have four screenings from January 28 through February 4 at Carmike 10 in South Hills Village.

Chinese-language lecture "The Features and Outlook of China's Economic Transformation", January 23 at Pitt.

Dr. Haifeng Huang of the Peking University HSBC Business School will give a Chinese-language lecture, "The Features and Outlook of China's Economic Transformation", at Pitt on January 23. Dr. Huang presented in English on January 17. The talk starts at 12:00 pm in 4217 Posvar Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.

Buddies in India (大闹天竺) in Pittsburgh, from January 27.

The 2017 Chinese-Indian comedy Buddies in India (大闹天竺) will play at the AMC Loews Waterfront theater from January 27. AMC provides a plot summary:

Following his fatheras deathbed confession about the location of his last will and testament, Tang Sen (Bai Ke) packs up and heads to India with his friend Wu Kong (Wang Baoqiang) in search of it. Along the way, the merry duo becomes a motley crew, enlisting a loyal but quirky fighter (Yue Yunpeng) and a cagey but beautiful woman (Liu Yan), all while experiencing the mysteries of a magical land that both helps and hinders them in their quest.

Tickets and showtimes are available from the theater's website. The theater is located at 300 West Waterfront Dr. in the Waterfront shopping complex in Homestead (map), across the Monongahela River from Greenfield, Squirrel Hill, and the rest of Pittsburgh.

Chinese Calligraphy at Carnegie Library in Squirrel Hill, January 28.

The Carnegie Library in Squirrel Hill will host Chinese Calligraphy on January 28.

Stop in on January 28 to celebrate Lunar New Year’s Day with Chinese Calligraphy! Join us to rub ink sticks, learn to write “lucky” Chinese characters with a brush and carry the luck with you into the New Year.

新年好!

The library is located at 5801 Forbes Ave. (map) and is accessible by buses 61A, 61B, 61C, 61D, 64, and 74.

Nomadic Perspectives on Multivocality in the Altai Mountains, January 19 at Pitt.

The University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and East European Studies will host Robert O. Beahrs and his talk "Nomadic Perspectives on Multivocality in the Altai Mountains" on January 19.

Over the past forty years, nomadic vocal practices from Inner Asia known as "throat-singing" or "overtone singing have been commonly misunderstood. Drawing on twelve years of fieldwork in Tuva and Altai, this presentation explores how localized cosmologies and indigenous philosophies of voice and music suggest new ways of conceiving of xöömei beyond ethnic identity and vocal technique. This project joins a number of recent anthropological studies of Central Eurasia that reexamine how indigenous peoples were inscribed into the ethnographic archive and offers new ways of conceiving of the poetics and politics of life in less human-centered ecologies.

The talk starts at 3:30 pm in 4217 Posvar Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.

1993 movie Sailor Moon R: The Movie (劇場版 美少女戦士セーラームーンＲ) at Hollywood Theater January 21 - 25, part of US theatrical premiere.

The 1993 movie Sailor Moon R: The Movie (劇場版 美少女戦士セーラームーンＲ) will play in US theaters for the first time in January 2017, and will be in Pittsburgh on January 21, 22, 24, and 25 at the Hollywood Theater in Dormont. The distributor provides a plot summary:

Long before Mamoru found his destiny with Usagi, he gave a single rose in thanks to a lonely boy who helped him recover from the crash that claimed his parents. This long-forgotten friend, Fiore, has been searching the galaxy for a flower worthy of that sweet gesture long ago. The mysterious flower he finds is beautiful, but has a dark side- it has the power to take over planets. To make matters worse, the strange plant is tied to an ominous new asteroid near Earth! Faced with an enemy blooming out of control, It’s up to Sailor Moon and the Sailor Guardians to band together, stop the impending destruction and save Mamoru!

The theatrical premiere will also include the short "Make Up! Sailor Guardians", and giveaways are available on a first-come first-served basis.

Tickets are currently available online. The screenings on January 21, 22, and 24 will be dubbed in English and the January 25 showing will be in Japanese with English subtitles. The theater is located at 1449 Potomac Ave. in Dormont (map), and is accessible by Pittsburgh's subway/LRT at a block south of Potomac Station.

Nicky's Thai Kitchen to open North Hills location.

Construction is underway at 1026 Mt. Nebo Rd (map) on Nicky's Thai Kitchen, in what was formerly Recipe's Remembered and, most recently, a Chinese restaurant. Nicky's Thai Kitchen has two locations in Pittsburgh---downtown and North Shore---and is routinely in the conversation for best Thai food in the city. The North Hills location is scheduled for a February opening.

1993 Studio Ghibli film Ocean Waves (海がきこえる) in Pittsburgh for the first time, January 20 - 26 (sneak preview January 17).

The 1993 Studio Ghibli movie Ocean Waves (海がきこえる) made its US premiere in December, and will play at the Row House Cinema from January 20 through 26. The theater has planned a sneak preview on January 17; tickets go on sale to the general public on December 22. The distributor provides a summary of the film that premiered in New York City on December 28 and nationwide in January:

Rarely seen outside of Japan, Ocean Waves is a subtle, poignant and wonderfully detailed story of adolescence and teenage isolation. Taku and his best friend Yutaka are headed back to school for what looks like another uneventful year. But they soon find their friendship tested by the arrival of Rikako, a beautiful new transfer student from Tokyo whose attitude vacillates wildly from flirty and flippant to melancholic. When Taku joins Rikako on a trip to Tokyo, the school erupts with rumors, and the three friends are forced to come to terms with their changing relationships.

Ocean Waves was the first Studio Ghibli film directed by someone other than studio founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, as director Tomomi Mochizuki led a talented staff of younger employees in an adaptation of Saeko Himuro’s best-selling novel. Full of shots bathed in a palette of pleasingly soft pastel colors and rich in the unexpected visual details typical of Studio Ghibli’s most revered works, Ocean Waves is an accomplished teenage drama and a true discovery.

Tickets for the sneak preview are still available online, and tickets and showtimes are available at the Row House Cinema's website. The single-screen theater is located at 4115 Butler Street in Lawrenceville (map).