Archives For Celebrity

Olympic Chulpan Khamatova

My TV signal is not working :( though I doubt the local channel is broadcasting the whole event, being famous for cutting the lightning of the cauldron at the London Olympics to continue with their regular programming [1][2], so I had to wait over 12hrs for *cough* ahem- watch it. My Sochi search on Twitter revealed two spoilers~~~ the spoiled snowflake that didn’t turn into the fifth Olympic ring that’s already been spoofed online, and Chulpan Khamatova.

I didn’t get to read when she’d be appearing — during a skit? during the show? waving? carrying the torch? — I just saw the comment of “Chulpan Khamatova!!!” multiple exclamation points and all. I was already giddy. And she didn’t disappoint.

chulpan-khamatova-sochi-2014

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Posted on February 8, 2014 In Celebrity, English, Russian, Screencaps, Sharing, Snapshots, Television , , , , ,
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BiBi Does It ‘Slowly’

I have far too many audience discrepancy, it seems. For some reason, people believe that the performance I liked the least (an admittedly funny but kinda cringe-worthy latinesque rendition of The Little Tigers (小虎隊) Green Apple Paradise (青蘋果樂園)) has been BiBi’s best performance. Okay.

So far, BiBi’s managed to escape elimination, but she’s been quite inconsistent with her placing. She’s literally been all over. In here she’s in the bottom half with a rendition of Jacky Cheung’s Slowly (慢慢) that almost made people cry… once again.

Posted on February 1, 2014 In Celebrity, Chinese, Clips, English, Music, Sharing, Television , , , ,
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Happy Year of the Horse!

Happy Chinese New Year y’all!

Here’s my Voice of China 2 fave gurl Yao Bei Na singing an epic number for CCTV’s annual Spring Gala Festival, proving (once again) that The Voice of China voters don’t know how to vote. Such terrible exercises on the democratic system as well as the selected democratic system, LOL.

Other notable numbers on the 4hr show:

The performance by Attraction, the Hungarian shadow theater. If you ever wondered where Sophie Marceau was, she was celebrating the Chinese New Year in China with a performance of La Vie en Rose with Liu Huan [1], and the example of what Chinese people think is flexibility.

Also, there’s an official YouTube Channel for the Spring Festival Gala now.

Posted on January 31, 2014 In Celebrity, Chinese, Clips, English, French, Music, Sharing, Television , , , , , , ,
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BiBi for Mavis

Everyone is freaking crying. Tears rolling down their eyes because BiBi is performing a Mavis Fan song called Cried (哭了), and BiBi keeps bringing it vocally despite some fierce competition from Luo Qi (罗琦, dubbed China’s First Rock Girl) and her performance of I Look Forward To (我期待) [clip], as well as GEM’s own interpretation of Mavis’ I Want Us to Be Together (我要我們在一起) [clip].

I obviously have a bias. G.E.M’s performance was pretty good but the song is a rocking one to start. She kept it to the good standard and gave it a spin. People were bawling with BiBi’s performance. Performance-wise, I’ll take G.E.M and vocally, it’s gotta be my gurl.

My dad would’ve approved.

Posted on January 24, 2014 In Celebrity, Chinese, Clips, English, Music, Sharing, Television , , , , , , , ,
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Tabu Ranked

January 23, 2014 — 1 Comment

Two weeks before the end of the year, I was already done watching all the Rani Mukerji movies I could get my hands on [1], and by Christmas I had already devoured about ten movies with Tabu [1], casting her in my Joan Crawford Indian re-adaptations. So I’m pretty much done watching Tabu’s main basic filmography. I might have two or three more that I want to watch (Prem, Border and Khudam Kasam) that I’ve been able to locate with subtitles, while Kala Pani I haven’t been able to find in a subbed version.

Her alongside Rani and Vidya Balan are my current top contemporary Indian actresses. I wish the first two were as eager to get lead vehicles (nowadays) instead of supporting… like Tabu in the last decade! Be it a lead or supporting role, though, Tabu remains interesting and slightly girl-empowering.Ghaath and Hu Tu Tu (and to a degree: Aamdani Atthani Kharcha Rupaiyaa) had Tabu in a tux or sporting a short hair with a tomboy-ish attitude, urging people to be revolutionaries (or terrorists, depending on your POV), and doing all those sneaky subtly sex scenes in things like Maqbool (to a degree -though not hidden- in The Namesake), Ghaath, and definitely Astitva.

I was amazed at how consistently good she was even in poor vehicles like Hawa or Silsiilay. She’s also a straight-forward no bullshit kind of person. Even if you give her the best role to fit her schedule, if she doesn’t like you, she won’t work with you. That means she’ll probably never agree for a Lars Von Trier movie, and that Ang Lee is the best.

Also, there are two new Tabu movies coming up~ Jai Ho with Salman seems like it can be crap because Stalin (the Telugu movie it’s a remake of) was so, and I’m completely unable to stand Salman Khan except for Maine Pyar Kiya. Then there’s Haider by Vishal Bhardwaj, so that’s -at least- some kind of relief. That has got to be somewhat interesting, even if it turns out not superb.

*Updated Apr’16*

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In Celebrity, DVD/BR, English, Films, Misc., Music, Sharing, Torrents & Digital Streams , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Vidya arranges books by thickness and other Koffee with Karan bits

I found this episode of Koffee with Karan extra hilarious… or maybe this is symptomatic of my Indian movie-watching. In any case, if you have not yet met Vidya Balan- please, get acquainted as soon as possible.

And I just gotten acquainted with Farhan Akhtar in Luck by Chance -literally- just a few hours ago.

Having said that… Vidya Balan talks about her married life and how she arranges books by their thickness (and her husband by height). I was going to ask “Who DOES that?” but my mother came to mind, and she suggested arranging books by color. So there you go~ As for me? I arrange books by topic or function. In the case of educational books (programming, design, photography, etc) or dictionaries. Fiction (books, plays, collections etc) is divided by West/East content arranged by author… and then I have a comic and graphic novel section mostly arranged by author and genre.

And Vidya is such a tease. She knows how to push Karan’s buttons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWnkzKOOXWI

She also left us with this quote:

Women like it,need it, want it as much as men do.

I didn’t know you could actually watch The Dirty Picture subbed online. Thank you, Shemaroo.

— EDIT Nov 7, 2914 —

For some reason, StarTV has made the clips private, but you can still watch the episodes on their website.

Posted on January 19, 2014 In Celebrity, Clips, English, Television, Torrents & Digital Streams , , , , , , , ,
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Yu Aoi for Zipang Punk Trailer

A film cut of the Zipang Punk play [1] they did last year is being released on March 29th, so we -unlucky ones- will get to see Yu Aoi singing and dancing in a wacky period punk musical. It looks super funny, but I doubt it’ll ever get subtitled or er… shared.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc5L6WGqUCk

We’ll always have this trailer, though.

Posted on January 16, 2014 In Celebrity, English, Films, Music, Sharing, Trailers , , , , ,
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BiBi’s ‘Annoyed’ for I Am a Singer 2

One of the many reasons I love BiBi is because she introduced me to Mavis Fan when she sang a bit of You Don’t Trust Me at All [MV] in one of those talk shows where the hosts (all women) asked her to sing snippets of different songs. I remember she also did a bit of Leehom’s Julia, but I was struck by her bit on Mavis and ended up discovering her.

Now she’s introducing me to Shino (林曉培)- of course, not a guarantee that I’ll fall in love with her music as I did with Mavis’ but you gotta start somewhere. Bibi’s performance of Shino’s Annoyed (煩) was pretty awesome. The song was also composed by Sandee Chan. Suddenly, she’s overpopulated my music library.

Posted on January 13, 2014 In Celebrity, Chinese, Clips, English, Music, Sharing, Television , , , , , ,
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From the Vault: Rani Mukerji IIFA 2006 Black Performance

Oh, wow~ it never occurred to me to search for Black on YouTube, or else I would have seen this performance the main cast of the film put together. Is this like a thing the International Indian Film Academy Awards does? Letting each nominated film present itself with a special performance? Do they generally do like an item song and that’s it? Because I loved that they sort of did the whole film into this 10min. sequence. Spoiler and all.

I would love it at the Academy Awards, instead of a movie montage.

According to a comment on YouTube, the whole performance was choreographed by Shiamak Davar and performed by his dance company.

Posted on January 12, 2014 In Celebrity, Clips, English, Misc., Sharing , , , , , , ,
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Remembering Anita with Friends~

A little bit more than ten years ago, Anita Mui passed away leaving a legacy of music and movies that will be remembered. Even my dad knew Anita Mui (besides from Jackie Chan movies), he told me he knew her from her singing the Song of Sunset (夕陽之歌) [1][2], which he loved both in this version and its Japanese original.

Ten years after her passing, her (very famous) friends got together to put something really special… a super performance to remember her by. Titled Anita Mui. 10. Longing. Music. Concert (梅艷芳。10。思念。音樂。會), the event garnered an array of Hong Kong (and overall Chinese) best — of the best for a night of music and memories.

Jacky Cheng, A-Mei, HOCC was there, Miriam Yeung, Sammi Cheng. Eric Tsang being melancholic, Jackie Chan throwing a joke… Eason Chan with his hair~ Maggie Cheung was freaking there, Aaron Kwok swung his hips, and Carina Lau introduced her hubby Tony Leung, and Tony SANG! People cheered. At a point in the concert, I told my mom “the only one missing here is Andy Lau.” Lo and behold, who turns up for one of the last numbers~

The only one I missed was Faye Wong. Just coz.

Anyway, my dad would’ve been happy with this show. I hope he and Anita are sharing a drink together up above.

Posted on January 10, 2014 In Celebrity, Chinese, English, Motion, Music, Sharing, Television , , , , , , , , , ,
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