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.

The Indian film journey mindmap [1][2] collection is a little monster, and it keeps on getting bigger. This time some of the additions included about 21 films with Tabu, a few with Aamir Khan, a couple more from Madhuri Dixit… and about half a dozen with Konkona Sen Sharma.

Oh, and Juhi Chawla now has her own hub.

The connections now seem unreadable.

* RED bubbles denotes films from Jenna’s Beginner’s Guide to Indian Film
** BLUE bubbles are film hubs where a lot of actors show up.
*** PURPLE bubble is RED + BLUE. Duh.

indian-film-journey-continues-jan1814

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.

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.

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.

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.

In my Indian Movie Journey, I haven’t exactly found fist-pumping fighting sequences. In fact, more often than not I found Indian fight foley to be quite funny with thuds and thumps. When I saw some snaps of Madhuri Dixit being violent, I was afraid she was gonna look a bit silly. But… she’s proven me wrong. At least the cut of the first trailer makes it very Fist-Pump Girl Power.

I’ve already watched it about a dozen times.

I’m so pumped, I’m gonna send it to MUBI right away.

Also… big big rush with Juhi Chawla here.

subs here.

Fandom funny crossover~

I was watching (finally) Tokyo Kazoku — which I liked more than I thought I would — and just felt this incredible marriage pressure during the the scene in which Yu’s character is accepted by the father with that terribly heavy “There may be some hard times ahead, but if you’ll consent to be his wife, I’ll be able to die in peace.

My mind immediately went to Arshad Warsi’s Circuit; “No tension, bhai.

tokyo-kazoku-marriage-pressure-no-tension-mbbs

BiBi, Papa would’ve been proud of that performance. It brought so many feelings.

BiBi’s participating in the Chinese version of the Korean contest I Am a Singer, now in its second season. Last time, Laure Shang was in it and was eliminated fairly early on.

Let’s hope BiBi makes it through.

I haven’t run into many magazine photoshoots with Tabu (only about a handful), but gosh~ look at those striking features. Even in as bare a photoshoot as this one.

And she’s the best when on screen. Effortless flawless.

tabu