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.
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.
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.”
I noticed a few people popping by searching for Yu Aoi, so I went looking for news on her tonight and I ran into this photo tagged with her name on Pinterest.
If it is, in fact, Yu Aoi. This is the first time I haven’t recognized her in a photo. Not like I’m like an expert or anything (though I do daydream someone calls me for a documentary on her life LOL).
First- the hair throws me off. So it may be one of those rare instances. The themes and styles seem to fit, and the whole shoot gives you strong Dandelion vibes for some reason. But one of the reasons, I don’t think it is Yu-chan is because I don’t see her freckles. She has three particular spots that always show up on her photos: the two marks on the right side of her right eye (the ones that looked like Shiro), and the mark on her left cheek near her nose.
Top suspect? One of them Korean look-alikes [see also and this]. At first, I thought it could be Hwang Seung Un [1][CM], but after a quick read, I decided it’s more likely Son Soo Hyun [1]. Seriously, some of their similarities [check the Busker Busker MV] are uncanny.
I wouldn’t mind one of those crazy comedy projects in which the two of them play sisters but speak completely different languages when speaking to each other. Specially directed by Satoshi Miki.
I really can’t remember exactly when I started out the Top Flicks About Chicks list on MUBI, but it must have been around the same time I wrote how Chick Flicks was a doomed genre in regards of critics. So it might be almost 4 years… and I’ve finally reached 300 titles in the list!!!
A Chick Flick should center on little girls, girls, young women and women… as students, as neighbors, as friends, as daughters, as granddaughters, as sisters, as mothers, as lovers. They are simply women. With that alone, we can tell all sort of other stories that have little to do with romantic comedies.
The purpose of the list, of course, was to encompass an array of female character — not only in the binary sense, since the list also includes men/boys who identify as women/girls… and viceversa — of various cultural, ethnic, social backgrounds. Not favoring one genre over the other, not valuing dramas over comedies… just simple stories about different women.
Though I’m sure the list could be longer, that’s 300 feature length films out of the 2896 (counting shorts) currently rated on the site- that’s roughly 10% so I suppose the list could expand to up to 500 or maybe 1000 once I reach 5000 or 10000 rated films on the site.
1. Treeless Mountain 2. Welcome to the Dollhouse 3. Juliana 4. Labyrinth 5. Fuckin’ Amal 6. Mirrormask 7. Gun Hill Road 8. Pariah 9. Bend it like Beckham 10. Swing Girls 11. The Land of the Deaf 12. Sunny 13. Whip It 14. Stoker 15. Maria Full of Grace 16. Breaking the Waves 17. My Marlon and Brando 18. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days 19. Dil Bole Hadippa! 20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 21. Kotoko 22. Violeta Went to Heaven 23. Skin 24. Raise the Red Lantern 25. Incendies
I picked 25 of the 300 films to illustrate some of the variety (I hope it’s AS varied as I intend the list to be), though I ran out of picks and couldn’t include any of the ‘older’ female characters. If I could pick 5 more, they’d be: Lemon Tree, Frozen River, Late Bloomers, Mother, For 80 Days.
Has people ever ask you what’s your type? In terms of the people that you like, and you really have no idea because you’ve never really talked about. I wondered if I could see a pattern in the people I like on-screen, so I made a list of women and men — 25 picks each — and placed generally okay photos of them to see if I could see any characteristics they shared.
A few rules- it has to be people that you follow — not randoms that you just find hot. Sofia Vergara is hot but I haven’t seen her outside Modern Family or Chasing Papi. And it also isn’t about talent… completely. It’s people that you would somehow, if given the chance, do / be with / however you want to call it or do is.
Also, photos should generally be color and looking to the front-ish. Natural looks favored, but since it’s a type thing, I suppose you can use any photos you find your subject attractive in.
I ran into this article in Japanese that talked about the heat wave in Japan and how the shaved iced business has increased (to like $40B USD worth or 4000億円) with a brief mention of Yu-chan. Because Yu-chan LOVESSSSSSSS shaved ice. Even has her own machine at home, and writes monthly articles and whatnot, and apparently that’s a thing with other young women who eat their shaved ice while walking back and forth.
Yu has also talked about the perfection that is the shaved ice parlor in Taiwan. Dude, she’s serious. Taiwanese shaved ice is serious business. My Mandarin teacher told me he missed them because the raspadillas [1] here are so wishy-washy. Then I saw Taiwanese shaved ice.
The mango shaved ice that I saw in one of the brochures is still in my to-eat list. but I’m still scared of going over there in the summer season, because I’m a total city wuss that can’t take extreme weathers. I’m one of those lucky ones that can only take temperatures between 14-27 Celsius without complaining. LOL
I just watched Shunji Iwai’s Vampire – FINALLY! – sadly, it didn’t give me any important feels about it despite the LONG wait. Not even Yu-chan’s performance, though I really think having to speak English hindered her usual scene-stealing capabilities. It also seemed Iwai was slacking around with his script, and he just dropped Mina’s role for Aoi there if she wanted it at the last minute because she’s just so damn relaxed in it.
I have no feelings towards Kevin Zegers, and Iwai only used all her actresses as passersby so even Keisha Castle-Hughes (only in the beginning), Kristin Kreuk (all the way into the end) and Katharine Isabelle (somewhere in the middle for a few minuets) fans are going to be disappointed. Rachael Leigh Cook has a bigger part in the film, but plays not a very compelling character, which I think would have been a better fit for Isabelle.
A lot of people describe Chulpan Khamatova having a deep raspy voice, and I usually disagreed with them because I find her acting voice quite high-pitched… except on The Event, which no one has watched, and I think that’s a play. So maybe… she used her voice differently when she acts on stage and when she’s on set?
She definitely has two voices, as you can see from this video. Khamatova had recently received some award from the Russian government for her work as an actress, alongside another actor and a whole bunch of other people. Sorry I’m not helpful looking for links or exact words, but I want to be quick about it.
You know who else has different speaking voices depending on whether she’s giving a sponsor interview, making a commercial, regular talking in a serious talk show or just talking about acting? Yu Aoi.
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.
