Good news and bad ones~
First, about a week or two ago Yuguo announced that they were finally releasing their third full studio album Sunset Strip (日落大道), which seemed like it had been in the planning for ages [1].
It’s the 23rd in China, and it happened!
You can listen to the album (and download the songs) via Xiami.
For those fathers who always play down their worries and fears.
我想你，爸。
BiBi’s got a brand new song titled Hello World, the theme for the new Mainland Chinese movie The Breakup Guru (分手大师), which opens… on June 27th. The vibe of the song is very Train’s Hey Soul Sister-y and Jason Mraz-y chill whimsical folksy.
Fun fact: Jason Mraz’s Wordplay [MV] was my jam back in my Vancouverite days. Never liked him as much since then.
… and in the process gets to remind me of Dido, for some reason.
Tizzy Bac vocalist Chen Hui Ting is set to release her solo album 21gr. (21克), which includes this song titled Set on Fire. The video is directed by Lin Hui Bin (林揮斌)… but I’m unsure if he did the light painting or just put together the video.
I always have such respect for people that light-paint in Chinese characters or Arabic. Haven’t run into people using Devanagari or Sanskrit or any other non-Roman script, though, that’d be really interesting.
Paraphrasing this different…
小时候，爸爸说《睡不着的时候就看看天空找到最亮的那颗星星，魔法师就会送你一个美梦》。睡梦中，我知道魔法师带着爸爸回来了。
When I was little, dad used to say, “when you can’t sleep, just look to the sky. Find the brightest star, and the magician will grant you a beautiful dream.” In the dream, I know the magician will bring my father back.
Father’s day is coming up soon, and all the promotion has made it a difficult start of the month. This is the latest song to make me cry.
I was being a diligent updater and news reporter when I ran into my first Indian boyband.
Admittedly, I clicked on the link because I was curious with the name Meiyang Chang [1] in the Sony Music India channel… which is how I saw this version of Azul Azul’s La Bomba [MV] LOL
Well, this is a completely unexpected collaboration. I’m not completely feeling the English lyrics added to the EPIK HIGH cover, I think it would’ve made more sense if they had added Mandarin instead. However, I bet I would be complaining about how pedestrian the lyrics in Chinese are. LOL So I’ll settle.
Instead~ look at how awkward the vibe of the Making Of is at the beginning, and how they all sort of become dorks by the end of it. xD It’s even more funny if you’ve EVER been the only person in a room that doesn’t speak a language –in this case Korean– and then sort of blurt out a nodding affirmation in said language.
So… I thought I was wrong [1], but now I’m not so sure.
One of my pet-peeves with Indian cinema (and Chinese… and Russian) is when some sort of dubbing is involved. The Russians, of course, are the worst offenders of that when they just slap some Russian over-dubbed without even caring if it’s a man talking over a female character. It’s not even like it’s properly dubbed, it’s just lazily slapped onto the original track without even lowering the audio.
Then the Chinese mess around with you because you got Hong Kong actors that don’t necessarily speak proper Mandarin working with Mainland actors who wouldn’t necessarily speak proper Cantonese (or at all). The result? You don’t exactly know which one is the original audio track. The way I go about it is to choose always Cantonese when film is set in Hong Kong, and go for Mandarin in most epics. Anything historical epic HK production pre-97 also gets the Cantonese favoritism. xD
India has suchhhhhh an array of languages that I’m not entirely familiar with that it would mean little to choose one language over the other, unless you’re bothered with lips syncing. Though Hindi now sounds familiar, I must admit. What bothers me is that I get accustomed to people’s voices. It seems people in India find certain voices more appealing than others, and could -in a whim- dubbed you over. One of the reasons I can’t stand Ghulam is because it bothers me that Rani’s dubbed voice doesn’t match my idea of Rani.
Tabu has done a bit of non-Hindi films, and though her acting can be epic- Telugu dubbing, man. I know and I like Tabu’s voice, and it freaks me out a little how different the dubbing voice can be. As a general dubbing rule, companies tend to go for voices that are similar to the original audio… or they go for someone with a similar flare. Not generally in Indian cinema.
All this talk is because I found a clip of Vidya Balan from Urumi, for which I complained that they probably dubbed their voices. However, in the clip, it sounds… almost like Vidya. For a very long moment I thought it was her, until I read the comments… now, I’m not sure. LOL
If it’s dubbed, it’s the best dubbed I’ve seen. It’s a Japanese super-dub!
If it’s Vidya’s voice, she apparently speaks perfect Malayalam for the movie.
So this is the reason my Archie post [1] was popular a couple of hours ago. One of my fave Chinese biases is now officially [as per Weibo announcement] dating my teen (and not so teen) crush Archie Kao. I’ve never had such mixed feelings about celebrity couples… I love it and am madly jealous of each of them. LOL
Too much awesomeness into one.
What made it to the list and where it placed? Some of my biggest biases placed lower than expected, and some that I don’t want to be my bias placed high on there~
