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
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~
BiBi did a rendition of Mavis Fan & 100%’s Who Gives a Damn What Song Is On (管他什麼音樂) [MV] in a mash-up with ABBA’s Thank You for the Music that everyone loved landing her in the #2 position behind GEM.
Frankly, I wasn’t completely feeling her version of the Mavis Fan song, because- DUH! Mavis Fan sings it best. It’s an attitude, nothing about the voice. But I’m sick and tired of people complaining about BiBi- when I love her arrangement to highlight her voice, they say it’s boring. When she delivers this type of performance, they say she can’t sing. Worse yet! They complain her voice is nasal. WTF, BiBi’s voice is the complete opposite of nasal, people generally confuse it with a male’s voice!
Get a grip and take a chill pill.
BiBi placed last this episode. WHATEVER. I’ve already explained my opinion on people’s voting and how faulty the democratic system can be (specially on reality television and competitions). All that matters is that BiBi sang a GREAT arrangement of David Tao’s Black Tangerine (黑色柳丁).
It was around 9 years ago when my friend introduced me to David Tao via Ghost (鬼) and Black Tangerine, and I’ve never regretted it since. Then I discovered BiBi via the Beijing Olympics, learned about the Chinese music scene and the rest has been history. My relationship to Black Tangerine is a very strong one, and I’m usually not one for covers of great songs, but that was a great fresh arrangement. It was the song and it wasn’t — both at the same time. It was like listening to it once again and discovering it all over again.
That’s a great feeling to have.
It doesn’t matter if you placed last in this show, BiBi. You can very well go home knowing you did an amazing arrangement of a great song.
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.
I also made a [nomination] list of all my favorite foreign things of the last decade. If I had included all movies, general suspects would have applied (eg. Children of Men, Dancer in the Dark), but still remains a very ME list. I hope you like the selection, and don’t hesitate in suggesting films to watch.
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*
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.
Happy new year, everyone!
Sorry for the lack of posts last month. To make up for it, here are five posts so you can catch up to my 2013 and to get you going this 2014.
