Category: Clips

  • Happy Ganesh Chaturthi

    Ganesh will always bring me memories of Asami Mizukawa [1].

    Here’s a clip of the show featuring Black Ganesha. xD

  • Ice-skating with the Stars

    I subscribed to the KhamatovaInfo YouTube channel not long ago and they uploaded this clip of what seems to be the latest season of Lednikoviy Period (Ледниковый период) — or Ice Age, if you must. An “ice-skating with the stars” kind of TV contest. In the clip linked above, there’s a tiny appearance by Khamatova as guest (or maybe guest judge??), so I went quick-digging… and found this~

    Scottish ice-skating turned ice-skating Riverdance with a totally focused Khamatova.

    Apparently Chulpan was part of the first series of the show that aired back in 2007, in which she was paired with ice-skater (ice-dancer???) Roman Kostomarov, and pushed ahead to become the winner of the season. This is the moment that I grin knowing Chulpan is multi-talented — and actually remember that she used to ice-skate before an injury.

    Plus, it’s really an advantage that the guy leads.

    Here are the list of her performances I could find:

    1. Hip Hop (I suppose? or Urban?) – Performance 1 – Give it to Me by Timbaland ft. Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake
    2. Performance 2 is listed above. (Perfect Score)
    3. 50s Rock n Roll? – Performance 3 – I Put a Spell on You by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
    4. Classic ? – Performance 4 – (Perfect Score)
    5. Samba? (Maybe Latin?) – Performance 5 – Mas que Nada by Sergio Mendes
    6. French? – Performance 6 [alt. link with audio] – Padam Padam by Edith Piaf
    7. Full-on Russian – Performance 7 – Love and Poverty (Любовь и бедность) from Hello, I’m your Aunt! (Здравствуйте, я ваша тётя!) [1]
    8. Contemporary ? – Performance 8 – it’s supposed to be a piece from O Clone, the Brazilian soap unless there’s something else that’s called Clone. However, I haven’t been able to identify the name of the track.
    9. Classic (or Broadway??) – Performance 9 – Jesus Christ Superstar
    10. X – missing clip??
    11. Classic Russian – Performance 11 – The Woman Who Sings (Женщина, которая поёт) by Alla Pugacheva
    12. Russian Alt Rock (or Rock n Roll Twist??) – Performance 12 – What Do You (Что ты имела) by Neschastny Sluchai (Несчастный случай)
    13. Full-on Russian – Final Performance – Music Unknown

    If I spoke fluent Russian, I would’ve taken a plane to watch her doing theater. xD

  • Hey Jude~ Hey Simon, Hey Bi Xia~

    This year’s season of The Voice of China is a bit on the meh side compared to last year’s. Some good talents, but not as awing as some of last year’s. This battle for Wang Feng’s team, though, from Simon Chung (鐘偉強) of Hong Kong singing it out with Beijing-based Bi Xia (毕夏) with the classic Hey Jude was pretty emotional.

    The whole father/daughter interaction going on, because Simon took the time to guide Bi Xia through the song and Bi Xia’s knowing what he’d done for her makes the whole elimination process all the more painful.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzTgyORzEAA

    Other battle highlights~

    From Na Ying’s team:
    Yi Guang Nian (毅光年) Vs. Sheng Yin Yue Tuan (声音乐团) – I Surrender (没离开过)

    From Amei’s team:
    Zhang Xin (张新) Vs. Liu Zi Chen (刘籽辰) – What’s the Trouble in your Mind (你在煩惱什麼) + We Are Young

  • Missy Elliott is back with the Dragon

    Not exactly a strong dream collab of mine, but I’m sure GD was psyched to do this. I’m just glad to see Missy back after launching a couple of video-less singles [1] last year. She’s looking great and they both seem to be having a blast here.

    The question now is… when do I get to download this track?

  • Let the Drum Beat Roll – Dholi Taro Dhol Baaje

    This is my first (proper) Aishwarya Rai movie, and though I wasn’t blown away or bothered by her acting (maybe yet); Sanjay Leela Bhansali more than over-compensates for his direction. While watching Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, I just kept thinking “this has got to be the most artistic movie to ever have a fart joke in.” It’s a pretty gorgeous movie to watch.

    While watching the performance for Dholi Taro Dhol Baaje [lyrics + translation], my brain just went “OMG, this is a beautiful sequence.” Then again, so was my reaction while watching Black. And so it was with Khamoshi: The Musical. Can you tell I’ve been taken by his directing?

    And the music in this was awesome. Is it really true that they spent two years working on it? Coz with IMDb, you never really know these things for sure.

    Think this already deserves an India tag.

    I just checked Amazon (and other online sources), and there doesn’t seem to be HD releases of his movies, though. It pains me so much.

  • I’m Muzzy, Big Muzzy~

    When I was little — maybe between the ages of 4 and 6 — I used to watch a really worn out tape (maybe transferred from a Betamax tape to a VHS one) about a huge furry green alien whose name was Muzzy- Big Muzzy. Many years later, many courses of English after and once the internet became a reliable search tool, I came to learn that the movie… a BBC educational video, was called Muzzy in Gondoland, though I knew it as “The Big Muzzy Story.”

    As a Spanish speaker, I don’t recall ever understanding English growing up. Though I had some games and watched some animated shorts and movies in English, I don’t think the language ever registered as a language. I recall I was dreadful at it in school until I turned 10 or so and began attending classes after school. I’ve been speaking English more than half my life already, and it’s the language I primarily work in. I read, write, listen to… and consume most of my media in English. I don’t think I dream 100% in the language, but I’m known for having dreams I don’t understand — I don’t think I’ve dreamed in Mandarin, but I’ve had chunks of them in Japanese and most notable in Korean, even though my Korean abilities reach the levels of greetings, the random “I miss you,” or “this is my friend,” as well as the very helpful “I’m hungry” or “my tummy hurts.” I can also request things with the very useful three-year-old Korean level phrase of “item- chuseyo” LOL

    The preferable term would be “cookie” though I’m sure Muzzy would prefer clocks or parking meters.

    Anyway, I found two copies of Muzzy in Gondoland. The one that’s split in 8 segments has the original audio I remember as a child. While this version that lasts 2.30hr seems to have different voices for Sylvia, Bob The Gardener and Covax. I’m 50/50 on the voice of the Queen.

    Apparently there are updates in different languages like French, Mandarin and Spanish redone in basic 3D with segments in Flash. Have been watching the French one, and they’ve omitted the fact that the Queen is fat. Obviously because it’s not politically correct to call someone fat nowadays, and the Queen does so in the adjective section. Plus, the King flatly calls her fat with the exclamation “You are fat!” which obviously is kind of ridiculous. LOL

    Also, the AEIOU song doesn’t translate well.

    I also found the original animation in Esperanto.

  • BEG is like Good Ole’ Kimchi

    I was a little disappointed with a mention of an unmentionable during the Soompi interview with the girls — I think IT was mentioned by Narsha. But they totally made up with this interview with Ask in a Box.

    Also makes me love JeA even more. LOL And she won the Kill Bill battle! But really, what got me laughing like an idiot was the response to describing BEG as a flavor, to which Narsha quickly responds “Oriental medicine” xD ‘coz it’s boiled for too long. LOL

  • Bhangra Bistar – Dil Bole Hadippa

    When women play tomboy girls or girls who have to pretend to be boys on screen is hardly believable, mainly because mainstream actresses are normally TOO pretty and productions wouldn’t bump the masculinity to make them look less like girls — at least that USED to happen in a film like Queen Christina (and Morocco, though I don’t think Marlene Dietrich intends to play tomboy as much as play Dietrich on that) [1].

    Actresses like Bynes in She’s the Man [1] didn’t exactly hit the mark, though it could come close to Ella Chen’s level in Hana Kimi [1]. However, the other adaptations of the same manga series- the Japanese version of Hana Kimi with Horikita Maki [1] or the most recent Korean version To the Beautiful You with f(x)’s Sulli [1] suffer from similar problems. Same could be said for Zhao Wei- maybe I could overlook her role in Red Cliff [1][2], but I definitely CAN’T overlook her prettyfied self in Mulan [1].

    In general, though, Taiwan and China leave me very surprised with the gender-bending… intended or unintended. It’s countless the times that I’ve asked myself whether I was seeing or listening to a boy or a girl. It doesn’t help that most names (without characters) look very gender-neutral.

    ANYWAY, I’ve gone way off topic here. The main thing in this post is supposed to be Rani Mukerji, whom I saw for the very first time in Dil Bole Hadippa. Though it’s a pretty decent film, I’ve come to appreciate it more now for Rani- especially for her mannerisms in the Bhangra Bistar number. Though the number is before she gets to pretend to be a guy, her character works as a performer at a moving acting troop, with the lack of a leading man… she’s made to play the part.

    And she does it perfectly.

    I usually very hard to please on these issues, but Mukerji sells me the role of ‘the dude’ in this one. She pulls it off better than Ella or Bynes, though all of them get to be funny while doing so.

    You can even see a bit of the shooting of this part of the film [1].

    There’s also an official upload, but quality is not as good and they only include the musical numbers without context.

  • The Man from Sheredar with English Subtitles

    I was looking for Chulpan Khamatova news (she’s gonna be acting and co-producing a film on the life of writer Vladimir Mayakovsky, if you must know), and ran into news about this short documentary for the Sheredar Foundation [Facebook][Twitter][VK.com] titled The Man from Sheredar (Человек из Шередаря), and it’s got to do with charity work.

    I haven’t watched the whole thing (just ran into the subtitled version), but it seems to deal with children with severe illnesses and the rehabilitation they get through this charity fund, which allows over 100 children to get the help they need.

    The Vimeo version available is HD but lacks subtitles.

    The documentary is also competing at this year’s Kazan International Festival of Muslim Cinema in the category of Documentary, so I don’t know if there’s a longer cut of the film available since it’s not considered Short-length.

  • The Event, Sobytie

    This is one of the last movies I saw with Chulpan Khamatova in — titled The Event or Sobytie (Событие), it’s supposed to be a stage play or something by Vladmir Nabokov, but somehow it’s dramatically shot by Andrey Eshpay, who has directed Khamatova in Deti Arbata (Дети Арбата, aka. Children of the Arbat… or The Children of Arbat Street) as well as Mnogotochie (Многоточие, Ellipsis).

    I haven’t been able to watch all of Deti Arbata because it’s got no subtitles AT ALL, but the first episode seemed kinda good. Mnogotochie is supposed to be good, but it’s also sans-subtitles and I fell asleep. Also, Khamatova doesn’t play such a big role in that film, so maybe my bias made it possible for me to sit through Sobytie and enjoy it A LOT with or without subtitles.

    It’s a really quite gorgeous piece of cinematic theatricality.

    On the split YouTube uploads, it’s not as evident… but you could try to see for yourself. It’s dramatic as Russian theater can only seem to be, and Khamatova sports some very drastic style that actually… suits her really great!

    I have a thing for Khamatova’s hair style changes for roles. It’s crazy, she’s nuts. I’ve never seen anyone sport the hair she’s sport in the history of the worldwide arts EVER. She really REALLY must love her characters. xD

    If any Russian-knowing kind person stumbles upon this post, would anyone care to help me work out subtitles for it? You guys, where do you hang out for subtitles? So many films left without subtitles!