boston progress radio

As many of you hipsters know, the recent flick Slumdog Millionaire got nominated for 10 Academy Awards! (At least that’s what they say in the commercial.) And I can’t help but feel a little bit of an inner-smirk fighting its way to my grill because a movie with no Hollywood stars could make this big of an impact, sitting on most critics’ “Best of 2008″ lists.

And if you been paying attention, then you know the love is coming down all over, but if you’ve been paying more attention, you know that there’s a lot of reasons to be second-guessing right now too.

As someone who has not yet seen the film, I can’t judge it myself, but I will say this: although I’ve heard so much about how amazing the movie is from everyone in the media, people who I know and trust personally don’t seem as enamored by it. Why, just ask Pro Brown.

Again, not having seen this flick – and I admit I had really been wanting to, but didn’t based on the opinions of friends – I can’t judge for myself, but some of the things that stand out to me about it:

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Tags: Movie.

Welcome to Aural Presence: Asian American Presents!

This new Boston Progress Radio podcast series brings the voices of Boston-area API* artists and activists to you by sharing conversations, music, poetry and more.

Boston isn’t well known for its Asian American artists and activists, but there are more of us here than you might think! We’re aiming to up the visibility and share passions for art, culture, history, social change and much more through this podcast, especially with those of you who don’t have a chance to delve into that exuberant Asian Am vibe at venues like East Meets Words. And we’ve got a great variety on tap, so something in this wide spectrum of Asian America here is bound to surprise and fascinate you!

This week we will be talking to Brian Chan.

Brian Chan is one of the most innovative origami designers in the US, recently rolling out stunning anime origami. In this podcast, Brian Chan talks about how he got into origami design and gives us his perspectives on his experiences and on origami as an art.

“I find it extremely meaningful to be at the forefront of a relatively new art. Traditional origami is an old art, but this new stuff, custom origami is very new. It’s only a few decades old. So… hopefully in a few centuries we’ll still be seen s some of the pioneers of origami… But in modern times, I’m not that famous… Most of my days are pretty normal.”

“The real masters, most of them are really humble and very open-minded. I find that open-mindedness sort of comes hand in hand with humility.”

Special thanks to Simon Hutchinson for the intro and outro music from his album den gen, available on iTunes.

Aural Presence is hosted by sudo, aka Albert.

[Editor's Note: API* is a re-appropriation of the term API, which was created by the US government to more easily categorize our communities. While API still stands for Asian/Pacific Islander, with the * we redefine and expand the term to include- but not limited to: South-, Southeast-, East-, Central-, or West-Asian, Middle Eastern, Arab, Pacific-Islander, Oceanic, Americans of Asian decent, multiracial, adoptee, "other," or however one chooses to represent their cultural/political/ethnic identity. For decades, others have used the category API to tell us what we are to them. But now, we use API* to define who we are to ourselves.]

 A Short Conversation With Brian Chan [18:09m]: Download

Tags: Aural Presence.

Yesterday, Oscar nominations were announced. Several films that have been getting critical acclaim, including Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire, received well-deserved nominations. I was happy to see that the film The Conscience of Nhem En, by Oscar award-winning director Steven Okazaki, was also nominated in the category of “Best Documentary Short Subject.”

Here’s the basic plot summary of the film:

In the wake of Cambodia’s takeover by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, a sixteen-year-old soldier named Nhem En was instructed to photograph the tens of thousands of citizens who passed through a processing center on the way to their execution.

A couple of months ago, I was lucky enough to watch a screening of the film in a friend’s home.

For the film, Okazaki finds several of the prisoners who were photographed at the processing center. In the film, he interviews a few of them. He also interviews Nhem En, now a grown adult. The stories told by the prisoners are incredibly disturbing. Guilty of nothing, many of the prisoners were tortured and forced to admit to commiting crimes and affirm allegiances to foreign governments and organizations they did not know. They admitted their guilt only because they wanted to live. Alas, regardless of what was said, inevitably, many of the prisoners were executed. Read more

Tags: Movie.

Ahhh the NBA All-Star Weekend approaches. A mostly pointless, yet strangely relevant annual occurrence. What will be the storyline this year? Some of the standouts from my lifetime have been the year Magic Johnson retired and revealed he was HIV positive, and then played in the All-Star game, and won the MVP; he was hitting almost every shot he took, and Michael Jordan and Isiah Thomas took turns guarding him, and everyone was all smiles. It was a signal to a lot of sports fans that AIDS was not leprosy. That may sound mad ignorant to us nowadays, but that’s what a lot of people used to assume.

Or there was the year Kobe Bryant represented the West at the game in his hometown of Philadelphia, where his teammates kept feeding him and feeding him so he was the clear choice for MVP of the game. And as he received his award, he got booed by the Philly crowd. I think on that day, we witnessed the beginning of Kobe’s conversion from wannabe nice guy K-O-B-E to F everybody Black Mamba.

And after years of boring boring boring, the Slam Dunk contest is back! When I was a kid, legitimately great players like Jordan and Dominique Wilkins vied for the title each year. But eventually it became a show for one-trick ponies like Harold Miner, Isaiah Rider, and Cedric Ceballos (wackest dunk ever). But recently, we been seeing studs like Jason Richardson, Amare Stoudamire, Nate Robinson, and Dwight Howard competing, which makes me feel like a kid again. (Weird for me that I’m like older than all those dudes.)

This year, one of the plotlines was markedly anti-immigrant. Apparently, due to the popularity of Internets voting in China, New Jersey Nets Yi Jianlian was making a run at one of the two starting forward spots for the East team. In a division where LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, Chris Bosh, Paul Pierce, Danny Granger, Tayshaun Prince, Josh Smith, Shawn Marion, and Rashard Lewis play, Yi is clearly not among the top 2 forwards – he’s probably barely top 22.

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Tags: basketball, China.

A few months back, I wrote a post about how excited I was that a new Asian grocery store, namely the Korean chain H-Mart, was coming to the Boston Metro Area (Burlington, MA). At the time, I believe the place was slated to open up in September 2008. Of course, September 2008 came and went and no new H-Mart. And now, it is 2009!

I suspect that part of the delay is due to the current “economic climate.” At the same time, it is not unusual for construction project to take a little longer than expected. See the Big Dig for details.

Well, I recently went and visited the website and I think that it is going to be opening very soon. I’m excited. The Super 88 in Allston is being renovated and for some reason, they have stopped stocking new food during the renovation. So, currently, I can only hit up Chinatown for my Asian goods.

So, how do I know that the opening is going to happen soon? Well, I can’t read Hangul, but while aimlessly clicking links, I found this web page. Apparently, it looks like H-Mart in Burlington, MA is looking to hire. If you’re currently out of a job, maybe you can apply there. While the application form has English on it, I would recommend fluency in Korean. Read more

Tags: Food, Video.

Governor Patrick gave us Massachusetts residents his State of the State address yesterday and on Monday, Mayor Menino gave his State of the City address. So, I thought it would be fun to write a State of the Blog post.

As probably all of you know, the economic situation of the United States (and the world in fact) is not good. That has filtered down to both state, city, and local levels. People are getting laid off, there are budget deficits, corporations are losing money. And of course, friends of Boston Progress have been affected.

So, how is BPR affected you may ask? Well, the effect is not direct. BPR, as a program of Boston Progress Arts Collective, is purely volunteer run, so there is no cost to running the station. Moreover, BPR is fortunate to be using a free connection to the Internet, so we don’t have to pay to bring our cheerful blog posts and awesome music stream to your computer. So, in that sense, we’re doing fine. Read more

Tags: Commentary, Open Orchestra.

Morning all. We at BPRLive have been having a hard time finding time to post given the situation in the rest of the world right now. The Internet is one of many places folks can turn to for escape I know; so we’re sorry if you’ve been loyally logging on to our website for a little bit of distraction. and haven’t found many updates

Until we figure out a way to get back on our horses though, here’s the video for “Crooks and Rooks” by the brother Bambu, done with Kid Heroes Productions. We shoulda posted this when it came out, but somehow we all seem to have just forgot. But everything about this is right: the song and beat are perfectly matched for each other, and the video is top-notch as we’ve come to expect from Kid Heroes. Much respect to all.

Tags: Video.

I found this video while surfing the Internet. While, actually, since I’m friends with Vudoo Soul on a well-known social networking website, I caught it cause he posted it. At first, I thought it was a movie that Vudoo Soul was actually staring in. Alas, the Owl and the Sparrow does not count Vudoo Soul among its cast. Instead, this is a promo created by Wave Releasing to promote Asian American movies (though I’m not sure this is an “American” movie). The movie looks sweet and the video isn’t bad either. Vudoo gets all flustered. Who woulda thunk?

Tags: Video.