Jessica Yu, an Oscar-winning filmmaker known for her serious documentaries, decided to take a chance for her first feature film. She ventured to make a comedy about ping pong. And she invested her ...

With the sport being table tennis, of course, the tournament isn’t exactly the last five minutes of “Rocky.” But when the characters are this charming and the dialogue is this smart, you won’t mind ...

Jessica Yu’s “Ping Pong Playa” made its premiere at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, shortly after another table-tennis-based comedy, “Balls of Fury,” bounced through mainstream ...

A few years ago, the indie circuit was shaken by a little-known, cheap independent film about a know-it-all spaz named Napoleon Dynamite. That film went on to score a major fan base thanks to MTV and ...

Every once in a few film festivals I find that rare gem that goes unnoticed in the mainstream movie world yet instantly becomes one of my all-time favorites. This year it was Jessica Yu's Ping Pong ...

It's hard to imagine a more dramatic departure from Jessica Yu's impressive (and Oscar-winning) docu work than "Ping Pong Playa," a good, clean, fun comedy that uses a table tennis championship to ...

You may be wondering why I'm supporting this little indie movie so much and the answer is simple - it was awesome! Ping Pong Playa was one of my favorite movies of last year and has remained in my ...

filmmakers nurture a secret desire to make lowbrow comedies and genre pictures? Prior to co-writing and directing Ping Pong Playa, Jessica Yu had a reputation as one of the most daring documentarians ...

Starring Jimmy Tsai. In English and Mandarin with English subtitles. Rated PG. Opens Friday, November 14, at the Cinemark Tinseltown At the Vancouver Asian Film Festival, Academy Award–winning ...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Oscar-winning documentarian Jessica Yu's narrative debut upends any highbrow expectations created by her intense nonfiction films. By Justin Lowe, The Associated Press San Francisco ...