Archives For September 2014

I obviously didn’t know about this cover because it predates my Indian movie journey… but it’s just so damn good, you gotta put it out there, you know? Mother India is so the quintessential Indian movie that every single person (in Peru) that has ever spoken to me about what Indian films they’ve seen, they’ve all name-checked Mother India. Regardless of social status… university professors, business owners, bloggers, taxi drivers, waiters… they all name-check “Madre India.”

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It’s always interesting to see educational (short) clips about different languages; did you guys ever see the one about the guy that could speak like 20 languages? At that time, my niece (6) and nephew (5) were struggling with picking up Italian and English at school, while they spoke Spanish and Swedish at home. That was, of course, on top of their other school subjects like math, because schooling is just incredibly ridiculous nowadays.

The only bad thing about the clip is the incredibly boring tone of the voice over. In any case, I thought it was funny they lumped Mandarin, Cantonese, etc into one big chunk of Chinese language. I thought the formal label was “Sino-Tibetan language,” even though Tibetan feels more like it would be more like Indo-Aryan, no? Isn’t Sanskrit both part of Tibetan and Indo-Aryan languages? Sighs.

I don’t exactly understand how branching works with languages, how does Indo-European come about? Isn’t that like stretching things out? What would languages like Spanish, German and Hindi have in common with each other? And how does Japonic or Koreanic come about? And how do they have more in common with Mongolian than with Chinese?

I’m starting to feel… as a Yu Aoi fan, that I’m out of a job. Though I’d like to believe that the information I add to the Yu Aoi posts I publish have a little something extra. I mean, I really don’t have any other reason as to why I wasn’t aware of these photos (et more) from two years back. Plus, there are tons and tons of Yu Aoi related Tumblr pages [tag][1][2][3].

However, the craziest one I found was sorekara’s aoi-yu-tagged stuff. There are tons of photos of Yu with her shorter hair in shoots and ads, there’s older photos that I had only seen in tiny version, there’s old photos that I wasn’t aware of. I’m old, and I don’t have the will to get a Tumblr account to follow.

You can’t even subscribe by tags! Anyway~

I couldn’t find the photographer, but this Chanel product placement on the Special section of Vogue’s Dec’12 issue is called 『True White 白という名のモダニティ。』 promoting the J12 White Chanel watch series that costs a fraction of your car (if you use one) — priced between 3.3k pounds to 10k.

Hahaha. I mean, seriously, who would’ve thought 100 years ago that needle watches would become a status symbol.

The concept was that Yu Aoi personifies the concept of the (truthful) pure, modern woman image. And the website is still active, though I had some trouble getting the actual link. And you know what it is with them Flash-based websites, it will eventually go offline- so people took screencaps~

Plus! No one like Vogue to style your fresh short hair.

yu-aoi-true-white-shiro-toiu-chanel-dec12-003

Kore, nani nani nani??? Kirei~~~ xD

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Here’s Vishal Bhardwaj’s The Blue Umbrella. I think he’s missing a children’s film to make it a full trilogy alongside Makdee, which -in fact- would make it a Little Girl’s Trilogy. Come on, do it, Vishal. Pick another girl and pair her against another great actor. My pick is Naseeruddin Shah.

The introduction to this movie against the snow is very reminiscent of Iwai’s Love Letter. o-genki desuka? Why the random link-up? There’s random Japanese in the movie. xD What Japanese tourist travels with their Japanese-styled umbrella? xD

Since I got my computer back (and found a set of hindi fonts too), I’ve been playing around with a basic Rani Mukerji Fake Criterion collection. I decided to skip Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, but include Aiyyaa. I actually like the movie a lot more than I initially did. Plus, it’s not a supporting role, so it beat out roles in Yuva, Bombay Talkies, Veer-Zaara, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or Talaash.

Fake Criterion Collection: Rani Mukerji - Aiyyaa Fake Criterion Collection: Rani Mukerji - Black

Fake Criterion Collection: Rani Mukerji - Laaga Chunari Mein Daag Fake Criterion Collection: Rani Mukerji - Paheli

Serious dramas lend themselves out for cooler Criterion covers, though I must admit that I liked the disorder in the Aiyyaa cover. And I have to apologize for the Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, I just couldn’t think of any particular symbol from the movie… but at least I got to test out that new (tricky) hindi font.

I think I might do a Sanjay Leela Bhansali set.

I still think Paheli deserves a bit more than its current 6.8 IMDb rating, though I’m pretty sure it’s gone up a couple of decimals since I first rated it. I just don’t know why it was so difficult to find this clip of the ending credits song, Phir Raat Kati, which translates to something like Then the Night Passed. It sorta tells you a story throughout the song, and the choreography is super fun while not being your typical Bollywood number.

The music in the movie is also pretty good, with lyrics by Gulzar.

Too bad it’s in this pretty bad quality clip, though it’s better than the good rips of the credits with the small window.