boston progress radio

Sophia Moon will be having a show at Limelight Boston on March 3rd at 7PM! If you missed her when she performed at East Meets Words or are looking for another chance to hear her songs live, go to this event!

Cultural and societal references (even commentary?) abound (along with facial hair) in Randall Park’s latest piece, a concise and humorous tale of love and academic elitism. Ever since episode 3 of THE FOOD, I’ve been wondering what Randall Park and his adept cohort would roll out next, and DUMB PROFESSOR—while upholding the bar set by its predecessor—takes viewers into another fascinating region of Randall Park’s wondrous world.

Tags: academic elitism, film, humor, Love, youTube.

Tonight (Monday, Feb 22), musician David Choi will be performing! Here’s all the info and a video of his by Wong Fu Productions:

Cafe 939 @ Berklee | 939 Boylston St. | Boston, MA. 02115 | www.cafe939.com

Doors Open: 6:30pm | Show Starts: 7:00pm | Day of Show: $12.00 | ALL AGES

All you API* folks in California are so lucky with your Asian Am film fests like SFIAFF!! You get to/got to see the latest film from Quentin Lee starring BLT’s Stephanie Vandergosh (Karin Anna Cheung) as the protagonist. This film also includes THE FOOD’s Wallace (Randall Park) as the nice but boring guy. For those of us who have to wait for broader distro of this film, we’ll just have to be satisfied with this for now:

Tags: film festival.

I’m only about 1/2 or 2/3 of the way through this cinematic delight, so everything I write here could be invalidated by the rest of the film. But I doubt it.

I don’t want to give too much of the film away, so instead of telling you what it’s about, I’ll tell you how it feels to me. This story of Wil (surgeon, daughter, lover, ABC) and her mother unfolding in the claustrophobically tight-knit, multigenerational Chinese American community within Flushing, it’s a narrative that is all at once dramatic, quotidian and richly nuanced in its fascinating intersections of microcosms and mindsets. Each character feels authentic and straightforward but has facets that allude to intricacy and depth, to the strength of their bonds with each other and the weight of their personal and collective histories. The dynamic of the dialogues Mandarin, English and Mandarin with interspersed English is delightfully real to my 1.73-lingual mind. And the emotions between Wil and Vivian have a dazzling immediacy and almost palpability.

Alice Wu, I cannot wait to see your next film project!

The February 2010 East Meets Words Open mic was a night of powerful words, laughter and love. Preceding the Lunar New Year, Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day, this event had fantastic energy with a variety of performers sharing everything from a beautiful piano rendition of Faye Wong’s FFVIII song “Eyes on Me” to a heartfelt spoken word piece addressing the state of hip hop to delightful, vibrant freestyling antics.

The evening’s featured artist Payal Sharma gave us immersive, vivid glimpses into a variety of her experiences, offering perspectives on a conversation about Slumdog Millionaire, clubbing songs, teaching math and much more. If you missed the event or would like another dose of Payal’s work, we’ve got a podcast of Payal’s set right here (just scroll down). The thunderous applause has been turned down, but the volume is still variable, so be careful with this audio file!

BTW, to expand upon Payal’s remarks on the Pussy Cat Dolls’ song “Don’t Cha” here’s Hari Kondabolu’s take on it…

 Payal Sharma at East Meets Words [40:37m]: Download

This part of a recent Boston Globe happened to catch my eye today. Not sure what to make of it. Not sure if I should make anything of it. But maybe I should? Any ideas?

Tags: Boston Globe, name-changing, weddings.

We just got word from our friends at the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA—more about them in a future post!) about this event at MIT later this month:

Remembering Internment: Words and Images of Mine Okubo and Michi Weglyn
Featuring Elena Tajima Creef with a short film on Michi Weglyn.

February 20, 3-5pm
MIT Bldg E25-117

Light Refreshments Served!

Prof. Elena Creef, Wellesley College, is author of Imaging Japanese America and co-editor of Mine Okubo: Following Her Own Road

Sponsored by MIT Center for International Studies, MIT Foreign Languages and Literatures, MIT Office of the Arts, MIT Center for Bilingual and Bicultural Studies, New England JACL, and the Asian American Resource Workshop

[image from AsianceMagazin.com's article "Celebrating the Lives of Mine Okubo and Michi Nishiura Weglyn"]