Arts & Culture

A quiche is perfect for any meal.

Part egg dish, part pie, it’s a whole lot of deliciousness combined into one simple entree. It’s easy to make and just as easy to experiment with by adding or subtracting different ingredients. It’s great for reheating as a fast breakfast in the morning or featured as a main course for dinner—and with a short list of cheap ingredients, it’s your best option for making your friends a faux-fancy French meal.

When we think of German cinema, many of us imagine films too dark or strange for mainstream American audiences. From the brilliantly overwrought visuals of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, to the dream-like insanity of Werner Herzog’s films, German directors have staked out territory far from American aesthetics.

The Northwest Film Center, in partnership with Zeitgeist Northwest, opens its new German cinema series Friday with the award-winning 2010 comedic drama Vincent Wants to Sea.

For two years, Portland State’s Center for Japanese Studies has presented a speaker series focusing on Americans who have set up profitable businesses in Japan.

The next talk, to be held Thursday, will be the opposite: “Japanese Success Stories in Doing Business in Oregon: The Case of Ajinomoto,” featuring Haruo Kurata, senior vice president of Ajinomoto Frozen Foods USA. Ajinomoto sells Asian frozen foods in the U.S., such as fried rice and pot stickers.

A recent surge in media attention centers on the scientific construction of infidelity and monogamy.

Why do we do it? What is the function of love in an evolutionary context? What are alternatives to long-term, single-partner relationships, and are they the solution to infidelity?

One book that addresses these questions is the New York Times bestseller Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha.

Two of the biggest players in the contemporary “chiptunes” scene are coming to Portland tomorrow night to drop a 20-megaton nostalgia bomb.

Anamanaguchi are arguably the current kings of this relatively obscure genre, but in order for this to sound impressive, you must know the brief roots of chiptunes, which go back a lot further than you might think.

None other than The New York Times described artist and eight-year Portland State art professor Harrell Fletcher as “a gift to contemporary art.”

His work strays from traditional forms and focuses on bringing communities together. Instead of creating pieces that can be hung in a gallery, he focuses on work that can be displayed in public areas.

Harvard professor and preeminent East Asia scholar Ezra K. Vogel will deliver a lecture Friday at Portland State’s Lincoln Hall to promote his new book, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, published last month by Harvard University Press.

Attracting an author-scholar of Vogel’s stature to the university was a big accomplishment for PSU’s Institute for Asian Studies and the Confucius Institute, the two organizations sponsoring the event.

How often do you get to see a classic of cinema on the big screen?

This weekend, you’ll have that opportunity. The Northwest Film Center is screening Jean Renoir’s critically acclaimed French satire The Rules of the Game (1939) this Saturday and Sunday.

Expect a witty combination of laughter and displays of tolerance at “An Evening of Laughs,” a stand-up comedy show co-sponsored by the PSU Middle East Studies Center and the Arab Persian Student Organization.

The event will feature two accomplished comedians: Arab-American Amer Zahr and Max Amini, who is of Iranian heritage.