It’s been a while since I posted an animated short… especially from a French animation school, and chickens set in 1700 Versailles seemed like a no-brainer. It’s super cute and funny. Duh! It’s chickens! In Versailles! LOL
A short movie by:
Julien Hazebroucq
Emmanuelle Leleu
Morrigane Boyer
William Lorton
Ren Hsien Hsu
This is an eerily gorgeous claymation that I ran into yesterday. Best enjoyed in High Definition.
Alternate YouTube link here.
So tell me, is this impressive for a couple of months watching Indian films or what? I must admit, though, that I’m still not familiar enough with Hindi or any other dialect spoken in films. My level of understanding goes from having a ladki or ladka giving their dil tere liye. And I’m not even sure that’s Hindi or Urdu.
Also, though most of the films I’ve come across are subtitled, some weren’t properly sync to their video sources. I think that happened to me with Ghulam, Nayak, Yuva, Chalte Chalte and maybe Hum Tum. I can’t even remember any longer. After this, I realized I really really REALLY love Rani Mukerji on screen… say it with her voice “she’s so cute.” And her eyes are so expressive with such on screen charisma. Her dancing doesn’t seem to be at the level of ease as… let’s say- Madhuri Dixit, but she compensate with the acting.
Though her performance on Hey Ram is barely 10% of the film, I do think it deserves its spot on the Top5 Top6 of her films and everyone should watch it. It’s an amazing movie.
Fan for life!
I remember the first time I got to watch Swallowtail Butterfly and found it interesting that Ayumi Ito spoke a couple of lines in Mandarin. Later I was surprised she was in the cast of The Go Master; it just seemed like Ayumi Ito had maybe some interest in working outside Japan. Interestingly, she’s also the one Japanese actress working in Kpop music videos [1], and I know for certain she speaks pretty good English.
Then again, Japan doesn’t seem to like its actresses trying to work in other markets [eg. Rinko Kikuchi, Koyuki xD]. I wonder if she hasn’t considered working in the US or Europe, or maybe they don’t consider her Japanese enough or hot enough. After all, US and European casting seems to be so random at times.
Anyway, while googling a photo of Ito for the previous post, I ended up running into this short film she did back in 2005 directed by someone called Nomura Yasuo (野村泰夫) titled Shanghai Lian Xiang (上海恋香) or translated to Shanghai Love Fragrance… or possibly referring to the smell of incense. The short that lasts 50ish minutes sees a Japanese young woman (I don’t think they mention her name) that arrives to Shanghai to deliver her grandmother’s ashes to the bay because she had spent the 1930s in the Japanese concession of the city. In there she met a young Chinese man and fell in love… and it’s all melancholy and sadness due to the events of the time.
[iframe height=380 width=580 src=”https://player.youku.com/embed/XNzkyMjg4NTY=” ]
There’s no much info except for this page.
Ito plays both characters of the woman and the young version of her grandmother, with dialog in different levels of Mandarin and Japanese. It gets a little confusing when you have to read Japanese for big chunks of Mandarin, and Chinese characters for most chunks of Japanese dialog xD But I think you get the point across.
You gotta get your Ayumi Ito fix any way you can.
There’s also a song that plays throughout~
春天来了树发芽
冬天来了飘雪花
你等的人等来了吗
我还在等我还在等
我还在等他
千山越过到你家
万水越过到我的家
你找的人找到了吗
我在寻找我在寻找
我在寻找他
夏天来了花儿美
秋天到了云追月
你等的人等来了吗
我还在等我还在等
我还在等他
I was looking for Chulpan Khamatova news (she’s gonna be acting and co-producing a film on the life of writer Vladimir Mayakovsky, if you must know), and ran into news about this short documentary for the Sheredar Foundation [Facebook][Twitter][VK.com] titled The Man from Sheredar (Человек из Шередаря), and it’s got to do with charity work.
I haven’t watched the whole thing (just ran into the subtitled version), but it seems to deal with children with severe illnesses and the rehabilitation they get through this charity fund, which allows over 100 children to get the help they need.
The Vimeo version available is HD but lacks subtitles.
The documentary is also competing at this year’s Kazan International Festival of Muslim Cinema in the category of Documentary, so I don’t know if there’s a longer cut of the film available since it’s not considered Short-length.
A long long LONG time ago (actually, about three years ago), I made a rough list of Yu Aoi films I had watched and ranked them on MUBI (then TheAuteurs). Since I’m way too lazy to bother adding films to their database, unless I really REALLY wanted the films to be on their database, I’m just gonna work on the ranking here, like I started with my Russian fandom love Chulpan Khamatova.
Well, I think it’s time, no? This has been my Chulpan Khamatova’s journey so far. Surprisingly, most of the films that remain hard to find (and hence are not subtitled in other language) have been my least favorite. It could be a case of lost in not-translation, but I’m confident in my non-subtitled watch experience to trust my instinct.
I’ve been on a Chulpan Khamatova binge for a while, but since Russian is such a foreign language to me, it seems hard to come by with simple googling since Google Translate doesn’t do so well with the language either. This time, though, I was browsing Khamatova.ru and was looking at the Filmography page and noticed that she had a fairly recent short film.
Titled From Tokyo (Из Токио), this short film also serves as a commercial for Chivas Regal. Directed by Aleksei German Jr., the short follows a Russian businessman on a return flight from Tokyo to Moscow (I suppose), where he’s unable to sleep. When approached by the flight attendant, they begin talking about his reasons to be in Tokyo right after the Tohoku Earthquake and the Tsunami, where he’s rescued a survivor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhAbV6Nep4Q
Though I really liked the short by the end, even if that might be my Khamatova bias showing~ there were some things that irked me for no reason. One- the dude is a rescuer flying on Business. Two- he refers to Miyagi Prefecture and Sendai City as “a village” because we did not see the Tsunami literally crushing miles and miles of road, bridges, highways, while sweeping tons of cars and other city-related debris.
Having said that~ Yes! Khamatova! I finally learned how to pronounce her name correctly. I was doing it SO wrong. LOL I’m a little embarrassed.
In the style of Comic Book Meets Western, Brazilian-born Edson Oda has a young mercenary hired to kill Death. Outstanding, fresh and very creative.
Someone even uploaded it on YouTube.
