Also, just wanted to make this clear~
I’ve moved most my blog activity over to YAM Magazine.
You can subscribe to all my posts there with this RSS Feed, or you know, you can just subscribe to all of the YAM Magazine Feed, but I understand if you only love me ;P
A while back I was able to catch a viewing of Tom Volf’s Maria by Callas documentary, which I adored. Some time last year (near my birthday?), I got to catch a special screening of Callas – Paris, 1958, which we got to see alongside a very very very tiny group of people ^^’
And, of course, I made sure to watch Pablo Larrain’s Maria before the year was over, because why not.
It’s the perfect Maria Callas triple feature-
My absolute favorite sequence in Larrain’s depiction is probably the whole segment at JFK’s birthday party. Though Maria’s scene with her sister is devastating.
This is likely the last post of 2024, breaking a dry spell of the last few years with a record 20 posts since 2018 when I posted 38 times.
This last post of 2024 is dedicated to Kenji Nakamura’s Mononoke the Movie: Phantom in the Rain (劇場版「モノノ怪 唐傘」), which crowfunded a while ago and has recently fulfilled orders. What an adventurous journey! We got a special credit for YAM Magazine!
It is an honor that we get to put our name in one of the team’s favorite series.
Let’s all look forward to what 2025 may bring!
I hope you all had an incredible 2024, and that you all were able to achieve what you set out to do (or close to achievement, anyway).
Promotion season has just started for this dream collaboration that all quality J-Film fandom had wished for— a Koreeda series starring Rie Miyazawa, Machiko Ono, Yu Aoi and Suzu Hirose. Loads of crossover fandoms. Even if expectations are too high and are not fully met, it will still be good.
Specially good for Yu-chan and Suzu-chan fans who have been wanting a collaboration since we saw Suzu-chan in Shunji Iwai-verse.
Yu-chan fans are also being fed well with a quick comeback since Yu-chan became a mom and did her quick appearance on NHK’s asadora. Netflix’s Asura (阿修羅のごとく) re-adaptation is also a milestone for Yu-chan because longtime fans know Like Asura is one of Yu-chan’s favorite projects.
The +30min press conference is super fun, and YouTube auto captioning Japanese to English immediate translation is decent enough, even though translate features in browsers don’t seem to be doing well translating Yu’s name for some odd reason.
Netflix only has a 1min clip of the opening (of the show?). I would love love love the name of the song featured, though. I wasn’t able to find any info on that other than it being by Takeshi Yoshida (吉田武史) and Katsura Uehara (上原桂). The show is supposed to be available in early January 2025 (though Netflix has been known to make stuff disappear in different regions).
I’m really really excited about this project.
I stumbled across a vinyl version of Meenaxi – A Tale of Three Cities, and I’m almost disappointed it’s just a generic pressing of one of A.R. Rahman’s most underrated soundtracks and, of course, one of Tabu’s most underrated gems.
For a while now, I’ve been lamenting the death of physical media in India. The movie collection is really really suffering from it.
The world is also suffering from lack of high definition promo materials and HD transfers for M.F. Hussain’s Meenaxi. The world deserves multiple color vinyl editions to play on the Yeh Rishta [MV]/Rang Hai [MV] color palette themes of the movie. Blue, yellow, orange, purple, besides the red one.
*Insert meme of “It’s been 84 years”*
After much mysterious drama, Marit and Marion have decided to come back together to make M2M a thing once again. You have no idea about the adrenaline rush I got when I saw Marit’s post, after missing the original posting on- “September 22nd, Sunday, twenty-five after nine.“
I love them. I hope they saw A*Teens performing together for their reunion at Melodifestivalen back in February this year and were washed by a feeling of nostalgia that they couldn’t resist. In fact, M2M has already announced The Better Endings Tour (to change the ending of The Day You Went Away, dorks), visiting a number of places in South East Asia were much of their fandom was concentrated, especially in Manila where they are already selling tickets.
My hope is that maybe, if they would like to increase touring chances in Latin America, they could get together with A*Teens and make it a Scandinavian thing. [Jokes on you! Who’s the dork now?] Thought I wouldn’t mind at all getting the chance to see Marit and Marion up close in more intimate venues, which are my preferred form of performances to witness live, anyway.
In the meantime, M2M have set up a website where you can join their mailing list, and follow them on their main socials Facebook and Instagram, Tik Tok, and a kinda left over YouTube channel.
I forgot to post this a while back, but this is a total feeling when you’re listening to music and the song comes up.
If twenty years ago you had told me that Crayon Shin-chan was gonna have a smoother transition from 2D to 3D than Studio Ghibli, I would’ve asked you what you were smoking. Yet here we are. lol
The plot for Shin Jigen! Crayon Shin-chan the Movie wasn’t even all that bad, and gets quite meaningful by the end! What a wild world we live in.
I never really bothered with Halsey before (I’m old, this blog is old. This is a self-hosted blog.), but her sampling of Britney’s Lucky was really well done, and the music video directed by Gia Coppola took it home. It pains me to read whether Britney gave her consent for the sample, but then felt the music video somehow violated some unspoken deal, but then took it all back and called it fake news. The whole project made me nostalgic and blue.
I often think (a lot lately) about how audiences (and now fervent fandoms) literally live off and suck the life out of our supposed favorite stars. Tear them to pieces while they’re up on the spotlight and kick them when they’re down, only to regret having forgotten them in time when they’re gone. Whichever the way— tragic death or slow and lonely. “I wonder what happened to them?“
It’s sad that she seems to regret making a comeback due to mean comments from her own fans, because her whole vibe has really taken me back to the late 90s early 2000s, especially in this “stripped” version of the song where she wears baggie jeans and hot pink glasses. The colored glasses really really took me back in time.
Thank you for this beautiful, yet sad, homage to pop stars.
You’re often on my mind.
Thank you for giving us Two Tigers (兩隻老虎) and its theme song Ke Yi (可以) [1].
And off-topic, this amazing commercial.
I’ve started buying some vinyl editions of music I’ve been listening to and things I love. I’ve got a few Regina Spektor albums, definitely some Dirty Projectors, Kishi Bashi, and Mamamoo’s Solar Yeba Sunbaenim’s Solar Emotions vinyl (which was my first). I was bummed BUMMED when I signed up to VMP (Vinyl Me, Please) because I had been dying to get Fiona Apple albums on vinyl (I settled for CD) and found out they don’t do shipping down here.
I found a couple Kpop related releases on vinyl, including from Wheein-ah, and it’s just really frustrating RBW hasn’t done a vinyl print of the perfect album for vinyl- Mamamoo’s Melting.
My mockup skills are awful now, so now this will have to do. Why aren’t we getting Melting on vinyl? Black cover and spicy swirly orange vinyl would be cool as design, though.
