Archives For Motion

Ice-skating with the Stars

September 7, 2013 — 3 Comments

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

In Celebrity, Clips, English, Russian, Sharing, Television , , , , ,
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Ayumi Ito for Shanghai Love Fragrance

I remember the first time I got to watch Swallowtail Butterfly and found it interesting that Ayumi Ito spoke a couple of lines in Mandarin. Later I was surprised she was in the cast of The Go Master; it just seemed like Ayumi Ito had maybe some interest in working outside Japan. Interestingly, she’s also the one Japanese actress working in Kpop music videos [1], and I know for certain she speaks pretty good English.

Then again, Japan doesn’t seem to like its actresses trying to work in other markets [eg. Rinko Kikuchi, Koyuki xD]. I wonder if she hasn’t considered working in the US or Europe, or maybe they don’t consider her Japanese enough or hot enough. After all, US and European casting seems to be so random at times.

Anyway, while googling a photo of Ito for the previous post, I ended up running into this short film she did back in 2005 directed by someone called Nomura Yasuo (野村泰夫) titled Shanghai Lian Xiang (上海恋香) or translated to Shanghai Love Fragrance… or possibly referring to the smell of incense. The short that lasts 50ish minutes sees a Japanese young woman (I don’t think they mention her name) that arrives to Shanghai to deliver her grandmother’s ashes to the bay because she had spent the 1930s in the Japanese concession of the city. In there she met a young Chinese man and fell in love… and it’s all melancholy and sadness due to the events of the time.

[iframe height=380 width=580 src=”https://player.youku.com/embed/XNzkyMjg4NTY=” ]

There’s no much info except for this page.

Ito plays both characters of the woman and the young version of her grandmother, with dialog in different levels of Mandarin and Japanese. It gets a little confusing when you have to read Japanese for big chunks of Mandarin, and Chinese characters for most chunks of Japanese dialog xD But I think you get the point across.

You gotta get your Ayumi Ito fix any way you can.

There’s also a song that plays throughout~

春天来了树发芽
冬天来了飘雪花
你等的人等来了吗
我还在等我还在等
我还在等他
千山越过到你家
万水越过到我的家
你找的人找到了吗
我在寻找我在寻找
我在寻找他
夏天来了花儿美
秋天到了云追月
你等的人等来了吗
我还在等我还在等
我还在等他

Posted on September 4, 2013 In Celebrity, Chinese, English, Films, Japanese, Sharing, Short Films , , , , , , ,
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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

Posted on September 1, 2013 In Chinese, Clips, English, Music, Sharing, Television , , , , , , , , ,
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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?

Posted on August 30, 2013 In Celebrity, Clips, English, Fun, Korean, Music, Sharing , , , , ,
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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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VBAGMkTjTs

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.

Posted on August 28, 2013 In Clips, DVD/BR, English, Films, Fun, Jobs, Misc., Music, Sharing , , , , , , , ,
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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.

Posted on August 26, 2013 In Chinese, Clips, DVD/BR, English, French, Misc., Sharing , , , , ,
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Garegin Nzhdeh Trailer

A couple of months back, a trailer for a movie called Garegin Nzhdeh (Гарегин Нжде, it sounds like “neshdeh” when I hear it) was released, about the life of the — thinker and revolutionary — Armenian hero general Garegin Nzhdeh and his military path, including his less famous personal life.

I’m unsure as to what Chulpan Khamatova’s character is supposed to be, the second trailer makes it seem like she’s his wife. I guess I’m gonna have to wait a long time for it, since I have no idea how long it takes for Russian movies to generally come out on DVD. Let alone English subtitles.

But it looks pretty decent.

I also found a Making Of available without subs.

Posted on August 20, 2013 In Celebrity, English, Films, Russian, Sharing, Trailers , ,
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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

Posted on August 14, 2013 In Celebrity, Clips, English, Fun, Korean, Music, Sharing , , , , , ,
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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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzYq_m8iG9k

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.

Posted on August 13, 2013 In Celebrity, Clips, English, Films, Misc., Music, Sharing , , , , , , , , , ,
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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.

Posted on August 11, 2013 In Celebrity, Clips, English, Films, Russian, Sharing, Torrents & Digital Streams , , , , ,
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