Dubbed version of Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale (劇場版 ソードアート・オンライン -オーディナル・スケール) at Hollywood Theater, April 23.

If you missed the Pittsburgh premiere of the Japanese animated movie Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale (劇場版 ソードアート・オンライン -オーディナル・スケール) on March 9, the Hollywood Theater in Dormont will show a dubbed-in-English version on April 23 The official site provides a plot summary of the movie, which opened in Japan in February:

In 2022, the world of virtual reality was upended by the arrival of a new invention from a genius programmer, Akihiko Kayaba, called NerveGear. It was the first full-dive system, and with it, came endless possibilities to VRMMORPGs.

In 2026, a new machine called the Augma is developed to compete against the NerveGear and its successor, the Amusphere. A next-gen wearable device, the Augma doesn't have a full-dive function like its predecessors. Instead, it uses Augmented Reality (AR) to get players into the game. It is safe, user-friendly and lets users play while they are conscious, making it an instant hit on the market. The most popular game on the system is "Ordinal Scale" (aka: OS), an ARMMORPG developed exclusively for the Augma.

Asuna and the gang have already been playing OS for a while, by the time Kirito decides to join them. They're about to find out that Ordinal Scale isn't all fun and games…

Tickets for the 2:00 pm show are available online for $15. 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.

2015 movie The Beauty Inside (뷰티 인사이드) at Maridon Museum, April 20.

The Maridon Museum will show the 2015 movie The Beauty Inside (뷰티 인사이드) on April 20 as the second installment of this spring's Korean Film Series. A Los Angeles Times review summarizes:

Everyday, Woo-Jin wakes up with a new face. New face, new body, new eyesight, new shoe size, completely new outer-facing identity. Though he remains the same inside, the world sees him as an old woman, a middle-aged man, a young lady, a child.

Predictably, this makes relationships, particularly romantic ones, difficult. Although Woo-Jin enjoys waking up as a handsome young man, the relationships last for only one night. That is until he meets the lovely Yi-Soo (Hyo-ju Han) in a furniture store, and he imagines what it might be like to have a love that's more lasting.

The movie starts at 6:00 pm and the museum requires reservations made at 724-282-0123. The Maridon Museum is an Asian art museum at 322 N. McKean St. in downtown Butler (map)

Menu and flyer for 2017 Korean Food Bazaar (제22회 선교바자회), May 6 in Shadyside.

In late-March the Korean Central Church of Pittsburgh announced its 2017 Korean Food Bazaar (제22회 선교바자회). Today there is a flyer and menu.



The highly-anticipated annual Korean food festival is in its 22nd year, and is held at 821 S. Aiken Ave. in Shadyside (map).

K-pop, J-pop, C-pop dance performances at FRESA's Spring Music Countdown, April 14 at Pitt.

Pitt's Fresh Entertainment by Student Artists will host a night of K-pop, J-pop, and C-pop dance performances at its Spring Music Countdown on April 14. It runs from 7:00 to 9:00 pm in the William Pitt Union's Assembly Room (map).

"Muslim Identities Among Uyghur Populations in China" at Pitt, April 14.

The University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian & East European Studies and Asian Studies Center will host Dr. Rian Thum of Loyola University and his talk "Muslim Identities Among Uyghur Populations in China". The talk runs from 3:00 to 4:30 pm in 4130 Posvar Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.

Kizumonogatari Part 3 (傷物語III 冷血篇) at Hollywood Theater on April 15, 16, and 18; parts 1 and 2 on April 15 and 16.

Parts 1, 2, and 3, respectively.

The Hollywood Theater in Dormont will be the only theater in Pennsylvania to show Kizumonogatari Part 3: Reiketsu (傷物語III 冷血篇 ) when it makes its US premiere in April. The theater will also show Kizumonogatari Part 1: Tekketsu (傷物語Ⅰ 鉄血篇) and Kizumonogatari Part 2: Nekketsu (傷物語II 熱血篇) on the 15th and 16th, both of which played at the Hollywood last year.

Tickets for the three Kizumonogatari Part 3: Reiketsu shows on April 15, 16, and 18 are available at the theater's website. Tickets for the two $15 double features of parts 1 and 2 are available there as well.

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.

"Science in Nationalist China: A Confrontation between Academia Sinica and Dr. Kishinouye’s Biological Expedition Along the Yangzi River" at Pitt, April 14.

The University of Pittsburgh's Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures will present its final colloquium of the semester on April 14, with M.A. candidate Aijie Shi and her talk "Science in Nationalist China: A Confrontation between Academia Sinica and Dr. Kishinouye’s Biological Expedition Along the Yangzi River".

My study addresses the institutionalization of science in the nation-building era of China through the establishment of Academia Sinica, the national academy of China, founded by the Nationalist Government in Nanjing in 1927. My presentation will focus on a confrontation between Academia Sinica and a Japanese biological expedition along the Yangzi River in 1929. As a result of the confrontation, Academia Sinica, a research institute, was empowered to promulgate scientific laws regulating foreign-funded research trips in China. The empowerment of Academia Sinica, I argue, was jointly shaped by four interrelated factors: the Japanese scientific expedition in Chinese territory, China’s nationwide anti-imperialism movements, Academia Sinica’s monopoly on representing the Nationalist government in the scientific realm of China, and the emergence of a new ideology of science in connection with modernity.

The talk starts at 12:00 pm in 4130 Posvar Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.

Original Ghost in the Shell (攻殻機動隊) at Row House Cinema, closing night of Pittsburgh Japanese Film Festival, April 13.

The 1995 Japanese animated movie Ghost in the Shell (攻殻機動隊) will play at the Row House Cinema on April 13, the last film of the second annual Pittsburgh Japanese Film Festival. The distributor provides a summary:

In the year 2029, cybernetic government agent, Major Motoko Kusanagi and the Internal Bureau of Investigations are hot on the trail of “The Puppet Master”—a mysterious and threatening computer virus is capable of infiltrating human hosts. Working closely with her fellow agents from Section 9, the Major embarks on a high-tech race against time to capture the omnipresent entity.

Don’t miss the movie the Examiner called “…one of the pioneering films of anime history.”

Tickets are $10 and are available online. Tickets for six other films showing through the week are available as well. The single-screen theater is located at 4115 Butler Street in Lawrenceville (map).

Jennifer Lin and "From Missionary Cook to Counterrevolutionary: The Saga of a Chinese Christian Family" at Pitt, April 11.

The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will host journalist and author Jennifer Lin and her talk "From Missionary Cook to Counterrevolutionary: The Saga of a Chinese Christian Family" on April 11.

Journalist Jennifer Lin examines the tumultuous past and present of Christianity in China through five generations of her family.  A former Beijing correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Lin chronicles 150 years of family history in the recently-published "Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family" (Rowman & Littlefield).  The book includes a compelling cast: a doctor who treated opium addicts; a Penn-educated Chinese pastor; and the influential independent religious leader Watchman Nee, imprisoned after 1949 as a "counterrevolutionary".  Author Orville Schell called Lin's book "a beautifully written elegy to that generation of foreign educated, humanist and often Christian Chinese who had begun to form a cosmopolitan class in China that was comfortable on both sides of the East/West divide and might have successfully led China rom its cultural traditionalism into modernity."

See also the April 3 book review and profile in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Lin will also speak at Duquesne University on the 10th and will give a reading at St. Vincent's College the evening of Tuesday the 11th.

The talk begins at 12:00 pm in 4130 Posvar Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.

2016 Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen part of 2017-18 Ten Evenings lecture series.

Via Nguyen's Facebook page.

Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures just announced its lineup for the 2017-18 Ten Evenings series and Vietnamese-American Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen is among the season's ten speakers.

Bold, elegant, and fiercely honest, Nguyen’s debut novel, The Sympathizer, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016. His collection of stories, The Refugees, gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth.

The Refugees is a collection of perfectly formed stories exploring questions of immigration, identity, love, and family. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration. The Refugees is a beautifully written and sharply observed book about the aspirations of those who leave one country for another.

Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America, His novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War is a nonfiction exploration of the conflict Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call the American War.

Nguyen will speak on April 9, 2018, and tickets go on sale July 5. The lectures are held at the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland.