Archives For Screencaps

I recently bought myself a bluray copy of the Mayday 3DNA film/concert, which I didn’t love at first. But Mayday was my dad’s last favorite band, and I found that he had been carrying Mayday’s music on his phone and on a USB drive, alongside a copy of the movie; so now it just brings memories of him to me.

I remember I re-watched the movie on his first commemorative month, and I cried a bit with the whole Lam Suet is a dad LOL but I just truly lost it with the storyline of the brother and sister. On last night’s rewatch, however, it was all tears when listening Ashin singing during the concert. Even during Liang Ai-I-N-G (戀愛ING) [MV] LOL I need the subtitles, though.

so I’m all like~ Huh… this movie is not that bad. I still think the ending feels very forced with the stealing (WHY couldn’t they all go to the concert, yo!). But feelings nonetheless~ I miss my dad, but specially yesterday. And it wasn’t even any special day… just one of those blue ones.

Wow~ it’s been AGES since I’ve done one of these [1][2][3]. Most likely since The Academy decided to change their one-page printable ballot into a two-page one. But~~~ I feel this is my best watching year in a long time xD

Correction: I did one xD

I was secretly looking forward to my Letterboxd Year in Review newsletter :P Compared to last year, my hours watched dropped in a staggering 32% yo! And it’s not even because I’ve been watching shorter movies LOL The total number of movies watched also dropped around 32% (31.89%). I still haven’t decided whether that’s because I got obsessed over Mamamoo or because I got caught up with work.

This year I made it a point to brush up on my Chinese cinema, but it doesn’t make sense that Johnnie To is my most-watched director because I can only recall watching 2 movies of his last year — Office in early January and Mad Detective was my last watch — LOL Oh, nevermind, I also watched Three xD which matched the three other movies I saw in 2015. And yeah, Anna May Wong was definitely my Most Watched Actor with 7 titles— The Thief of Bagdad, ImpactThe Toll of the SeaA Study in ScarletDaughter of the DragonBombs Over Burma, and Lady from Chungking.

The movie-watching also got very influenced with the #52FilmsByWomen project [1][2][3].

My 2017 didn’t start off with a bang, so I’m just hoping to match my 2016 record~

sighs-boy-groups

it’s like impossible for girl groups to make it.

We’re all missing out on this amazingness~

I’m not a social media fan, though I do spend a lot of time posting links on the YAM Magazine Twitter account. Less active on Facebook, though I regularly use my own profile. No Instagram or any other site. I’m mostly active on movie websites— still active on IMDb, because they make searching for stuff easier [year, country, language, etc. filters], still active on MUBI (and helping with profiles and database submissions), and Letterboxd coz they help keeping an orderly diary of movie-watching.

No longer have music sites, and Living Social FB apps have long gone.

I’ve always been reluctant in creating new profiles, new accounts, new emails and different passwords. However, my level of obsession with Mamamoo has reached such point that I finally logged in V Live with my real-life identity, and though I’ve only left like 3 or 4 comments (so far), I’m a Level 5. Each artist you follow starts with a Level 1, adding points by watching videos, leaving comments and who knows what else, but I digress~~~ I wanted to comment on V Live as a platform. I’m amazed by it. I don’t exactly know why. I’ve seen countless of web stream concerts [1][2], I’ve seen a couple of Facebook Live sessions, but somehow V Live sessions make me feel closer to artists.

Of course, they can start a random session just like in Facebook, though FB is always a 1:1 ratio, no? There’s comments, and the artist can actually reply to your comments, which is something V Live doesn’t have since comments are live, they scroll as they keep coming just like in a YouTube stream. But YouTube streams always seem so impersonal, more like online TV broadcasts, which is actually GREAT for TV broadcasts [KBS World 24][KBS World]. Add to V Live multi-camera broadcast, HD quality, multilingual subtitles and there’s just this added something to it.

I recently saw Brown Eyed Girls’ JeA’s Orgel Live with JOKER, a 50-min multi-camera phone shot in portrait. I didn’t watch it live, because the show began at 6AM, but the replay was available quite fast — in probably just a few couple of hours — with subtitles in English, Chinese, Viet and Korean; and available auto-translate for others like Spanish. They started reading some of the comments, I lamented not being able to say hi to JeA [this is what I’m talking about], and proceeded to perform a couple of songs, while also going through the live comments.

Fans are also allowed to give ‘hearts.’ Though, I haven’t actually figured out how to give hearts (it’s not by clicking the heart icon, lol), I supposed it’s just pasting hearts in the comments, and that’s why users can give multi-hearts all around. Since a video can have 200k views and one million hearts. :P

And apparently, if you have the V Live App, you can chat with your faves. I don’t have mobile, so……………….

jea-joker-live-v-live

If you could do this for movies, it’ll be amazing. About 8 years ago, I wrote a proposal for screening movies like this xD but I didn’t know how to go through with it. Imagine you have a screening event, fans gather online 30min. before the movie begins, they chat among them. The movie streams, and afterwards there’s an online Q&A with the cast/crew. Because videos from the Q&A and the movie to be screened are different video sources, you can only have the Q&A available for replay instead of the movie.

See? Someone make it happen.

1000 Days of Xiami

October 10, 2016 — 1 Comment

I’m about to clock 1000 days on Xiami logins xD

xiami-1000-days

Sad for this excitement, I know. LOL But I get obsessive-compulsive over these things easily. I took a screen grab because I don’t know whether the count will reset to zero or continue. Back in March when I went to Japan, I told my friend to login for me, so I don’t lose my clocked days, and there was a weird bug that made the counter go back to zero, so we thought for a while that it was done. A couple of days later, it went back to normal :P

I’ve been using Xiami for a lot longer, of course. And gone are the days when you could find everything on the site for stream and download :P Though you can still find stuff and download, it’s often the case when albums are empty. Recently, Xiami has taken to just be able to stream music (which is better than having blank albums), without download capabilities— Faye Wong’s most recent track is only available for stream, so you gotta find it elsewhere if you want it. The site is still a great source for Chinese music, especially from the independent scene. However, now Xiami-approved artists are allowed to mark their music as only-Mi tracks, meaning that you have to have Xiami credit on your account and not download music from your VIP free-tracks perk or use your red envelopes (points).

Having said that~~~ I have like +500 points (you get points for single days and months counted, albums added and music shared, etc.) and haven’t used them in so long. What the heck~ What are the perks of the VIP account if you still gotta pay for the Chinese music that you download; at least make it so that you use twice or thrice the # of downloads for those.

I still haven’t figured out what the note reputation is (eg. Re*), but I’m just a few hundred away from reaching the other level. Increasing my stars is a little trickier because English reviews don’t get as many likes or comments. lol

Also~ OMO! 1000 days on the 10 of 10. xD

Bless my heart~ I’m the only one celebrating 15 years of Shunji Iwai’s All About Lily Chou Chou xD but if you are too, drop me a line! Tell me how much the film has affected your life~ As a celebration, I sat down for a re-watch and a brand new ‘more professional’ review.

yu-aoi-all-about-lily-chou-chou-glider

I also sat down for my first watch of Shunji Iwai’s latest— A Bride for Rip Van Winkle. It was glorious. At the moment, it’s battling it out with Kubo for my #1 spot~

 

How dare you, Studio Ghibli, do that this weekend?

It’s my dad’s third year anniversary, and I’m Setsuko in this GIF.

grave-of-the-fireflies-hotaru-no-haka-setsuko

Grave of the Fireflies is remains my favorite animated film, and the only animated film in my overall Top10 favorites.

Shunji Iwai’s neo-classical romance, Love Letter, about the woman who wrote letters to her deceased lover and got responses back, is over 20 years old now since its release. However, its mark as a pop culture reference across Asia is undeniable. In its time, the film made actress Miho Nakayama a household name, and it launched Shunji Iwai’s filmmaking career (and hence has given us: Ayumi Ito and Yu Aoi).

The film’s style and cinematography, courtesy of Noboru Shinoda (RIP) has inspired countless of filmmakers across East Asia who have headed to Otaru (小樽市) or other similar snowy places to capture the essence of the film [cue: 张一白 Zhang Yibai’s segment in Run for Love (奔爱), which featured Eddie Peng and Zhang Ziyi], and the classic (though simple) quote of “o-genki desuka?” (お元気ですか?) [1] has been referenced in various places…

Just look at the members of -relatively new- Kpop group G-FRIEND, who played a round of movie quotes to decide who would be the host of that specific One Fine Day episode’s segment (10 months after their debut). The group is formed by 6 young women, all who were born post-95. In fact, eldest member (and leader of the group), Sowon, was born almost 8 months after the release of Love Letter. But it is member Yuju (’97) who first references the movie with the knowledge of all the group.

one-fine-day-ep3-gfriend-yerin-sinb-yuju-shunji-iwai-ogenki-desuka-love-letter

So if you put your hands close together to shout out the words “o-genki desuka?” and the person in front answers back the same way with a “atashi genki desu.” That’s a Shunji Iwai shout-out to ya~

Mina-san! Genki? Ha!

Forgive the complete absent from the blog recently (two entries last month, and this is the first one this month!), I’ve been generally “more busy” updating the MUBI (the site formerly known as The Auteurs lol) database than even actually keeping up with news (trailers/music) on YAM Magazine or watching movies and shows. I’ve also been occupied watching Korean shows, which tend to make everyone procrastinate. And it’s not like it was priority-watching, either~ I’ve been watching Solar and Eric Nam’s We Got Married episodes, but my favorite watch and re-watches was Mamamoo x GFRIEND’s Showtime.

I don’t actually stan GFRIEND, and I already have biases. Bless.

moonbyul-sinb-new-girl-crush

Bless, SinB. Bless SinB with Moonbyul, Bless New Crush Star. LOL

Continue Reading…