So close to perfect styling, I’m crying. TuT
Silver, pink, dark brown (white balance seems pushed) bop, long dark.
I’m supposed to be focusing on work, LOL. But Mamamoo comeback news, flood of content. Moo tears, everywhere.
No high resolution pictures (yet), but you can check the Girl Group Zone thread for all the BNT pictures.
Most important quote of Life of Pi.
“I learned at my expense that Father believed there was another animal even more dangerous than us, and one that was extremely common, too, found on every continent, in every habitat: the redoubtable species Animalus Anthropomorphicus , the animal as seen through human eyes. We’ve all met one, perhaps even owned one. It is an animal that is “cute,” “friendly,” “loving,” “devoted,” “merry,” “understanding.” These animals lie in ambush in every toy store and children’s zoo. Countless stories are told of them. They are the pendants of those “vicious,” “bloodthirsty,” “depraved” animals that inflame the ire of the maniacs I have just mentioned, who vent their spite on them with walking sticks and umbrellas. In both cases we look at an animal and see a mirror. The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.”
You know I’m a big fan of NHK’s Okaasan to Issho, right? Like, I’ve been watching it for years, I don’t have children, and my Japanese isn’t improving anymore… but I still watch it. LOL I’m still super shocked that Yoshihisa Kobayashi (小林よしひさ) – the guy that does the gymnastics – is still around since my original post a decade ago. He’s survived like two or three puppet changes, and this is like his third round of hosts— Takumi Mitani left a few years ago, and Daisuke Yokoyama officially left last year, giving way to Atsuko Ono subbing for Takumi, and Yuichiro Hanada taking over Daisuke.
I still miss Itou Mayu, tho xD
Anyway, I digress~ during the many changes in themes and puppets, they started showing the Galapico Poo (ガラピコぷ〜 , GARAPIKOPu) segment that begins with an animated intro that I’ve always been a fan of. It’s been years on air, and there’s no official clips (only poor TV-to-CAM captures, because LOL NHK), but I finally found Kuno Yoko (久野遥子) [Tumblr][Twitter] was in charge of the animation. FINALLY.
You know, for a year when I didn’t watch that many movies, I’m doing pretty good. LOL Confession! I haven’t been following award season, it does feel like it’s my second or third year already. I do know that people have been freaking out because all critic guilds and industry guilds have been awarding all different movies. As the saying goes~ todos parecen más perdidos que cuy en tómbola!
Here’s my Spirit Award one.
Light blue highlights mean watched, hot pink are pending, and green on the queue already.
My favorite competing film this year (so far) is Lady Bird coz it got me in the feels. I wouldn’t mind The Shape of Water winning, though. Considering BAFTA nominations (Producers’ Guild win and Directors’ Guild nom), The Shape of Water does seem to have a love more momentum than actors-backed Three Billboards, and this one also has a strong BAFTA showing.
Fun fact, yo! Darkest Hour, Phantom Thread and Victoria & Abdul are [most likely] the first Chinese-backed films that make it to Oscar. All backed by Perfect World Pictures (北京完美影视传媒) [1].
Interesting! I figured I watched less movies this 2017 than I did in 2016, but turns out I got a couple more films/hours logged. And there were a couple more titles that I didn’t log because they’re not on Letterboxd. They just happened to be not current movies, I suppose.
I’m still, currently, very much obsessed with Mamamoo, though. LOL That’s 30% of my movie-watching time doing Mamamoo-related stuff.
2018 doesn’t look to be an improvement to 2015 levels xD
I’m also not sure whether Ryo Kase is my Most Watched Actor this year, considering I went on a non-logged marathon of Shweta Menon movies— like 4 or 5. But, once again, latest highest-rated movies reflect some of my movie-watching; a little American indie, a little Indian and a little Chinese.
I did find enough for my usual Top30 Favorite Film Discovery post :)
And a super lengthy post on my favorite films this year, which has already changed xDDDDDD
Well, that was an exciting early morning. I got really hyped 10min. before the pre-orders for Moosical Bluray started because I wasn’t sure I was gonna get a copy, after what people went through while getting Solar’s Emotion. But everything went well, and then I was attacked by Paint Me (칠해줘).
I, obviously, have all the feels. The song DOES get better with replays. It did sound very West power pop ballad to me, which is explained by the fact that the song was composed by Mich Hansen, Peter Wallevik, Daniel Davidsen, Chelcee Grimes, and Kara DioGuardi, who happened to have worked in Christina Aguilera’s Back to Basics, which I loved. What really sold me the song are the lyrics, though. Written by JYP’s Jowul (조울), the structure of the song is telling the story of lovers— the beginning of love, the happiness of being in a relationship, the passion, and the heartbreak, with an abrupt ending that works thematically. It’s also a freaking sexy song, so I won’t lie that I wasn’t thinking that my favorite Kpop MV director, Hwang Soo-ah, should’ve done it. LOL
The song really called for a MV with storyline, but I know Mamamoo’s strengths aren’t on acting (‘Be Normal’ xD) and I also understand that Mamamoo aren’t in the position of not showing their face on their MV yet. But I imagined a very intimate MV with actors xD
I’m really looking forward to what they do in the album, even though I’m not looking forward to Sleep in the Car (잠이라도 자지) [1] AND Paint Me being in the same album [see: making albums].
Having said that— the promo photos. Whee-in, you bias wrecker, you. So I finally decided to put together my favorite era looks for each member ^^ Continue Reading…
My yearly tradition~
(even though I haven’t been writing at all~~~ lol)
I hope I get to be more productive next year.
Happy listening~
There was a time, a long time ago, when I really took to streaming music. My music buying habits, but specially my music download habits, changed to basically streaming to the point when licensing and catalogs began changing, and I found my music collection shrinking. In the end, I started downloading once again.
I have come to the realization that I buy less and less physical albums, or it takes me longer to buy them. :(
As I found myself deeper and deeper into Kpop fandom once again, so deep into Mamamoo fandom that I begun to get irked by fans who publicly post about their illegal downloads AND complain about numbers of comebacks/group activities. I ended up writing this nonchalant post about music earnings, as well as other Mamamoo activities fans can support besides comebacks [1][2][3]. Yes, I’ve become that type of fan. The old one. LOL
As a grown-up who loves the arts, I always try to remind people that if they love and support their artists that they should buy instead of stream because streaming doesn’t pay. I was literally shook when Hyori mentioned that she had learned that PSY’s Gangnam Style only made $38k [1]; even though I knew some of the horror stories like the one of musician Lee Lang (이랑) who, during her acceptance speech for winning Best Folk Song at the Korean Music Awards, stated that she had only made $370 USD in total earnings on the month of January, so she decided to auction her award starting from the base price of her rent [1].
You can support Lee Lang by buying her album, Playing God (신의 놀이), on Bandcamp :)
And to my surprise, one of my favorite groups this year~~~ the lovely girls from Bolbbalgan4, who are considered digital monsters with their songs almost always charting within the Top10 of Melon, South Korea’s most used music site, had made only $61k USD by August this year [1]. Red Diary Page.1 didn’t drop until a month later, and all 5 songs in the album charted within the Top15. But that’s still besides the point. The point being that your faves don’t make money because you stream music on YouTube or Apple Music or Spotify.
So stop demanding expensive music videos that can cost from $100k-$500k for an average medium size budget, or go up to $1M for the splashy ones that we don’t often see nowadays. At the height of the music video era in the 90s, Michael Jackson and Madonna’s most expensive videos hovered the $5M budget without adjustments for inflation [1]. Stop demanding multiple comebacks a year with infinite number of physical prints (these cost production budgets AND storage budget for large stocks) that you will be waiting for price drops and re-sellers.
So now, let’s do some math~
Let’s say a physical album, a regular jewel case priced at -let’s say- $10 USD. According to prices in 2017— Apple takes a 30% cut [1], Bandcamp takes a 15% cut for digital sales and a 10% for merch [1], whereas CD baby takes a 9% cut off digital sales and $4 USD off physical sales [1]. That means that by selling a $14USD album, the independent artist makes $10USD. In the parallel universe in which your fave is an independent, they keep $7 of those $10 in iTunes, but if there’s a label, the artist (meaning singer) probably gets $1 of those $10. If they’re their own lyricist, musician, producer or sound engineer, fees are different.
Streaming is a whole different beast— according to this post on Digital Music News from 2016, to make a single dollar $1 in Tidal, Google Play, Apple Music and Deezer; you gotta play the song +180 times. 196, to be exact, for Apple Music and Deezer. Make that 279 times on Spotify, 483 times on Vevo, 766 times on Soundcloud, and… at the end of the list, YouTube, where you gotta play songs 776 times to make that one dollar. That means a song/music video that has 100 million views on its YouTube official channel, has made roughly $125k USD, which would be made by selling 12.5k physical albums on CD Baby.
So remember, the next time you complain about X official store prices or limited stocks, it’s because all adds up to the price. If you found a cheap album, it’s because someone along the way lost money.
Yes, I’m low-key talking about Bizent LOL I’ve compared prices with YesAsia, and since I don’t get YesAsia free shipping, that’s paying double shipping because the YA price includes the Bizent $20 shipping fee. I’d rather that money go directly to Mamamoo. xD
