You would have to forgive me as I don’t really follow Ayase Haruka’s career, but she did kinda win me over when she played Saki on that freaking successful jdrama known as JIN [1][2], which got me to give a peak to Ayase’s pop culture oeuvre — Hotaru no Hikari, which okay. No, I couldn’t digest it. So forgive me if I’m late to the party, but- OMG! A WHOLE FREAKING YEAR! 50 episodes of a girl that likes guns? In a period setting. I love it.
Plus it’s got Joe Odagiri at some point in the show.
In all honesty, I had a lot of Spice Girls fun when it happened, but the best part of the whole thing will ALWAYS be this animated GIF. Thank you forever and always, Lainey. (more…)
The commercials for Nintendo featuring Penelope Cruz and her sister work great. They still make me laugh. This one is still my favorite though;
Though, the other one with Mario Bros still has its charm. It’s also great to see that both versions in Spanish or English are difficult to pin-point which one was the original language. It doesn’t look like it’s been dubbed… or maybe it was shot twice, but it’s hard to tell if both version are slightly different.
The Apocalypse came and went, and we made it through to live one more Christmas. I love Christmas music (so sue me!) — and Americans have the best cheesiest Christmas music that makes you all cheery and bright. The classics are unbeatable by newer songs (except for NSYNC’s Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays [MV]). Some of my favorites are Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (the Rosemary Clooney version she did for the Rosie O’Donnell Xmas special), Here Comes Santa Claus (the Disney parade version), Do You Hear What I Hear, Sleigh Ride (either the Disney version or the Billy Gilman + Charlotte Church duet), Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, Last Christmas (ok, not so ‘classic’ xD) — DISNEY WAS MY LIFE!
… and of course, Jingle Bell Rock~
So here is SunnyHill performing the song and wishing us Merry Christmas :)
Merry Christmas, everyone!
If you visit the site regularly (or just happened to pop by), make this a Christmas miracle and fill the comment section.
Brown Eyed Girls has been very busy this week promoting their upcoming Xmas +19 shows in Seoul. Besides doing SNL Korea, they’ve been doing all sorts of interviews. In the latest one on Guerilla Date, they talked different things like what would Ga-In erase of her past, who’d be the one to get married first…. and they talk about their ideal type (??), which JeA says Josh Hartnett with the following message:
… which, of course, it’s hilarious.
I honestly think she did say “I will meet you” (with a really pronounced ‘t’ by the end of ‘meet’). I’m not sure where the “to” in the caption comes from… if it’s either a regular typo happening in Asian varieties, or if it is indeed part of the joke that she said “meet to.”
You know when sometimes you watch an interview with who you think is your favorite band or artist, but the interview is so bland that your fanaticism just dies a little bit and your love for the subject is never the same?
SunnyHill passed the test. Even in this short interview.
And you know what’s even cooler? LOEN subtitling their videos, specially with groups that don’t have massive large fandoms like SunnyHill or Brown Eyed Girls. It’s a great feature. So thank you so much, LOEN, for the hard work and the effort.
This year, Colombian music really threw me off with a few couple of tracks. Monsieur Perine is one of those new groups. Their sound is infectious, taking me into the world of Sylvain Chomet’s Triplettes of Belleville. xD
Exciting things are going to be happening in the musica latina scene, it feels.
Korea has a show called Immortal Song that basically pits popular singers performing songs of a selected theme/singer/era in front of the audience made out of people who listened to that type of music. Think of it as a show where you would gather the likes of Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, sprinkled with a few picks like Demi Lovato and whoever people think are good vocalists nowadays, and having them competing against each other in things like “Themes from the 80s” and having all of them battle (A vs. B) with a song performance to move onto the next battle.
Once a week. Yeah, impossible to do in America.
But so good for ratings, no? Could you imagine? I would pay money to see Christina Aguilera vs. battling with Britney Spears — not a duet, a performance battle. Simon, get to it.
ANYWAY, I completely digress.
Brown Eyed Girls member JeA has been on the show’s newest season, and though she lost her battle — T_T — the second half of her performance is pure perfection. She started off breathing too much into her microphone, but once the high notes began, she seemed to have gotten her footing and by the time she had to deliver those whispery notes… it was too much.
JeA is singing The Winter Rain Falls (겨울비는 내리고) by Kim Bum Ryong (김범룡), in honor of this week’s 80’s songwriter theme.
I would never… in a million years — or five years, give or take — would have ever imagined that I would see the day of Kpop groups performing specifically for a Latin American audience. So the musical event known as Music Bank was held in Chile last month [1], featuring Super Junior, Afterschool, MBLAQ, Davichi, CNBLUE, and Rani and…
Sure, they did the mandatory Livin’ La Vida Loca performance and the mandatory Kpop Gangnam Style, but they also did Lambada — which is in itself quite impressive, even if~~~ a little clumsy with that stage — and then they went on singing El Hombre Que Yo Amo, and Gracias a la Vida, at which point they had already delivered. I mean, they didn’t need to, but they did.
Music acts in other places, other than Japan (and maybe China), are not required to perform in other languages. We’re all accustomed to sing in English when Aerosmith comes over, and we sure as hell don’t expect Justin Bieber to sing in Spanish, even if pop groups in America used to have one or two tracks in Spanish (or other languages). No, it seems now other language versions are left to the fans and their covers, which aren’t half bad – just check out the Spanish version of Call Me Maybe [YouTube] or G-Dragon’s Spanish version of Heartbreaker [YouTube] or Big Bang’s Love Song [YouTube] or GD&TOP’s Knock Out [YouTube] — or just check out Seba Dupont’s YouTube channel, they have LOADS of covers.
So for the groups to have learned these Spanish songs to perform for this show in specific, it takes dedication and a respect.
It feels good to dish your money when that happens.
