Ahh, Halloween — everyone’s doing lists about their fave scary movies… their fave scary moments, and the reviews of many scary movies. Now, horror isn’t exactly my favorite genre, so I’m not well-versed. xD This is why I’m just ranking the scary films that I own… based on scale of how scared I got. LOL
First bonus first!
The Others
Thought that it was scary, but IMDb is not marking it as horror. However, it is one of my favorite Kidman films/performances — and that old lady in the closet! BAM!
G asked me about Ga-In — sorry, only in Spanish — and wondered if she was my favorite Brown Eyed Girl member. And yes, yes she is indeed. Though I didn’t love or adored her EP debut, it was very interesting to me in terms of style. It sounded very Argentina. To sum it all up, the music video is also very passionate Tango.
First of all, Ga-In seems to be enjoying all the body groping. I suspect it started with Abracadabra. LOL Plus she goes all “Music-Vid Turned Short Film” on us with a running time of over 10min. that includes tragic love, tears, face-scratching, dramatic walking away while the girl gropes your leg (very Latin passion, btw), suicide attempts, and some pop version of Tango dancing (Tanging?) in the desert.
I’m gonna actually show the video to my mom and dad — who also enjoy Kpop, btw. My mom likes to point out that Korean girl groups have better legs than Japanese girl groups. LOL She’s picky with the Asian chicken legs xD or how my friend calls them – the drumsticks. LOL
Anyway, I’d like to know what they think about this parrilla argentina.
Never have followed the Asian Pacific nominations… mainly because it’s hard to, you know~~~ watch films from that part of the world for me. However, distribution is getting better – dvds are being launched so much faster, and many of them come with subtitles in English (when needed), and there’s a lot more people willing to fansub when needed.
And YAY! Aftershocks has landed 6 nominations – including Best Film, Best Directing, Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay PLUS! Best Actor and Best Actress. Now, I’m trying not to be biased, I don’t think actor Chen Daoming was THAT good in Aftershocks, but actress Xu Fan completely deserves it.
The other big nominee of the night is South Korea’s Poetry (Shi) – crap! I’m really that good at film recommendations for distributors, someone hire me ASAP! – which received 4 nominations for Best Film, Best Directing, Best Screenplay and Best Actress. While Taiwan’s Monga – see, I’m good – was nominated for 3 awards for Best Film, Best Directing and Best Cinematography.
The APSA(wards) will be handed out December 2nd on a live webcast at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards site.
All nominations below the break~
I can feel it in the air. Award season is approaching. I think Indie Spirit Awards are also done with submissions, and their nominations should arrive come early December.
In the meantime, the Academy Awards has released the list of the 65 countries (or not-countries… Greenland?) that will be competing for 5 spots as “Best Foreign” nominees, as well as their 8 short documentaries.
Here are some of the reviews of the ones I’ve seen.
Let’s talk wild guess predictions in here. Which countries will be the 5 chosen ones?
Mexico’s Biutiful seems like an easy assumption.
China’s Aftershocks seems to be a good candidate for several reasons besides “film”. Whatever your thoughts on melodrama are, I mean… you really need to be a sour grape not to feel something for the family in that film. Either that, or you’ve never been in a natural disaster. Having said that, it is because it’s a melodrama that it’s perfect for Oscar. Moving family drama that deals with catastrophe with a really powerful and magnificently handled Earthquake scene that was a box office hit in China. It’s just good business.
Also, China being nominated is controversial. Anything to do with China since 2008 is controversial. Controversial always brings ratings. Also nominating China is just plain good business. If China gets nominated – I dunno, what are the chances of some state channel broadcasting the Oscar? Just imaging 2/3 of China’s internet population watches the Oscar that night. That’s 200 million viewers. Anything in China is big.
If there’s no China, it must be another cheese movie… like South Korea’s A Barefoot Dream. An underdog story of a kiddie football team and a coach. It shall make you feel happy xD
Canada’s Incendies?
and… I dunno what else. Peru’s chances? From what I have seen, and what I’ve heard. It could very well get into the nine before they select the final five. I’ll have a better grasp once the 9 are out xD
Yu-chan’s been busy! Or it’s actually been busy for us…
REDLINE opened in Japan, as well as some dates in San Francisco – jealous! There was also the re-run of last-last week’s episode of Ryomaden on Friday night. On Saturday, there was a re-run of Hana & Alice on i-Sat. Plus, Yu-chan’s also been in Korea for the Pusan Film Festival to promote Raiou!
G-Dragon must be there stalking. He really should visit the site and comment, we could really be friends.
Anyway! As you know, Yu-chan’s pretty popular in Korea. Hana & Alice opened there as well, and even her film Letters from Nirai Kanai (with no subs yet) was released there under the name “Aoi Yu’s Letters” Snap!
Yu-chan looks so pretty xD
Ah… English, such a direct language. I often have discussions with people about the nuances of the different languages. Friends tell me that French and Italian are great for flirting, and my mom keeps telling me that different dialects in Chinese have so many words to describe food flavors, impossible to describe in Spanish or English.
However, what about songs?
My favorite songs, my favorite artists in English — 99% of the time, I try not to find the lyrics any longer. Whenever I have enjoyed the songs, looked for the lyrics, 90% of the time I’ve ended up disappointed.
My first language is Spanish, however, I often find myself thinking in English – so, whenever I listen to music in Spanish, my brain begins translating lyrics into English. The repertoire of songs that I actually like in Spanish tend to be songs that are hard to translate literally into English.
Julz knows I’m not really big on SHINee, even though a lot of people I know have been telling me how much they liked Lucifer… I haven’t listened to it yet – I only need to stream it, but haven’t done it yet. LOL However, since Twitter timeline is filled with Julz tweets and re-tweets, and I saw the SHINee video on my YouTube updates, decided to check it out.
Hello is like… strawberry cheesecake. It’s cheese, it’s sweet like cake, and it has pink/red strawberries. I have no idea why dude is the only in a room, but I dig the whole strawberry cheesecake dancing in the street.
So… today it’s voting Sunday. And I’ve also setup my About page… and got rid of my Favorites page because… well, it seemed redundant to have two pages about me. LOL
In case you missed the post in which I talked about my taste in film, this is a similar post that talks about my history… or lack of history with music.
When I was about 7, my dad opened a Karaoke bar (how Asian, non?). But by then, I had already grown up with the likes of the music of La Nueva Ola (the new wave) — you know, the type of Rock n’ Roll from The King… Jailhouse Rock or Houndog but in Spanish. My favorite tunes were probably La Plaga (the plage, the Spanish version of Little Richard’s Good Golly, Miss Molly), and La Mantequilla (the butter, the Spanish version of Cliff Richard and the Shadows’ Move It).
Of course, I was a little kid going to Chinese/Peruvian school, so my repertoire also included the Cantonese Counting Song Yat Yi Sam, as well as the counting Elefantes song… as well as the Sukiyaki song. So from the very beginning… I had a predisposition for all types of music in many different languages.
Continue Reading…
Some very exciting news – First, it seems I’ve seen more than TWO of the Foreign submissions this year LOL. Of course that’s without considering the 9 films that will go through the other stage, and the 5 that will be chosen. I’ll probably get a 1/5 ratio at the most.
Second of all… China chose Xiaogang Feng’s earthquake drama Aftershocks to represent them. *jumpy claps* Now, this is my weakness. I love tear-jerking dramas. Anyone who’s lived through an earthquake should and will be affected by the story, anyone who’s lived through a hurricane, typhoon, any catastrophic natural disaster. Aftershocks is for you. But this is not to say that Aftershocks is exploitative of the tragedy, because this “earthquake” film is little about the earthquake and all about the people affected by it.
Considering the technical achievement this is, and how human and audience-friendly this drama is, I think this might have high chances of passing to the “chosen 9”. *crosses fingers*
Here are some of the submissions I’ve seen and reviewed:
The updated titles via Indie Wire!
I’m taking a wild guess here, I’m really confused with all the nicknames in the comments, but I’m guessing Southsideirish is Bill (you can change your name in the Intense Debate profile, you know xD), so… I finally took time to watch 2NE1’s presentation he recommended – in… Sketchbook?
Plus, I also took some time to listen to their debut album, and like I commented when they released their 3 singles, I’m giving the album a passing grade already. However, I’m doing so just barely. I’m giving them a 3/5, which is more than I could say for the likes of Rain or even Taeyang. xD But why is that? After all, I did love Try to Follow Me and Clap your Hands. I’m all over those two, and I’m partial to Go Away and Can’t Nobody. The rest of the album? It just sort of felt kind of bland, and I’m not counting the remixes. Can’t Nobody is so processed that I can’t even understand what they are saying, and if I give Kanye flack for it, I’m giving 2NE1 flack for it too. LOL
2NE1 defends themselves vocally, but they’d better be prepared when autotune begins wearing out. I am not convinced they could kill it vocally, or in a 100% full-on Michael Jackson-worthy choreography. 2NE1 is cool, it’s fun, but I don’t think I can see them here once Bom and Dara hit 30.
Give me a performance where 2NE1 kills it Acapella style a la Acapella Candy Man from Brown Eyed Girls, and I’ll eat my words. Same with the dudes of Big Bang – I know Daesung can sing – but can all of them kill an Acapella performance together as Big Bang?
And… is it me, or is Minzy the lovechild of Daesung and G-Dragon? There, I said it.
