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Oh, Happy Chinese New Year! Let’s start my (supposedly) bad-luck Goat Year with the now-mandatory Letterboxd list of my film collection~

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I have a really weird history with films– born in the late 80s, you’d think I would’ve grown watching loads of 90s kids stuff, but I actually grew up with a lot of Silly Symphonies (which were released in the 30s) and loads of Disney 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s stuff, plus a lot of more grown up 80s movies. Poltergeist, The Thing, The Fly and The Stuff were particularly scary stuff (and I’m pretty sure I was scared of yogurt or white stuff at some point).

I don’t ever remember buying any original VHS tape, except for the rare birthday gift of a Disney’s Sing-Along Songs chapter or that X-Men tape I have. My first DVDs buys were Coyote Ugly, She’s All That and Loser — you can’t blame me. I was a 15-year-old girl. The collection grew bigger, and possibly exploded during my years abroad. I’m nearing my 500th movie.

The end of another era [1][2][3], I suppose~ xD

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I had never really been a RapidShare user, though had encountered the site several times over in many of my movie/TV journeys, but they’ve always been a pain for me. It doesn’t surprise me that bandwidth caps (for both free users AND PREMIUM), limited speeds and incredibly annoying waiting times that got longer and longer with captchas decreased users and traffic to finally put it out of business.

The relationship with cloud and file-sharing services with the DMCA or MPAA is a strange one. No matter what these services do to please them, it’ll never be enough.

source.

You tell them, Janeane.

I’m totally not the demographic for Bravo, but here goes Janeane Garofalo telling it like it is- like my mom told my school 20 years ago when they “required’ her to do parenting lessons for my catechesis. I’m totally bummed she’s no longer on the show.

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I apologize for having a job. I’m sorry I make a substantial income to pay for your green-grocer small-batched locally-sourced farm-to-table ethically-butchered hormone-free gluten-intolerant bills, but- here’s the thing; I don’t work, my kids don’t go to school. So if you wanna call and tell me tuition is free, I’d be happy to be here for Story Time, and Arbor Day, and kids court, and snack bar, and talent night, and the Nose-Picking Olympics, and every other bullshit holiday that costs me a fortune. But if you’re not gonna tell me it’s free, then I gotta work, ‘coz I’m a working mother… with a boatload of mouths to feed.

Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce 1×03 – Rule #47: Always Take Advantage of “Me” Time

Except for the mandatory appreciation for Boyhood (the Patricia Arquette show) and Whiplash, which had me contorting from all the conflictive feelings, I’m feeling rather lukewarm with this year’s award season as you can see from my 2014 Films Ranked compared to my Academy Award Watchlist.

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Hot pink is watched, light blue on to-watched queue, highlighted in green haven’t been found yet. My excuse for lack of documentaries and shorts is because of access. I find them extra difficult to get. Also, any respectable award show needs the presence of Haider. LOL And I could do a LOT LESS from Clint Eastwood. I’m not even one of those complaining for lack of women behind/in front of the camera, the nominees are just so damn BLAH! except for the few couple of surprises- some spice with Marion Cotillard (even though I don’t feel strongly about the movie), Ida and Mr. Turner in cinematography… and The Tale of Princess Kaguya.

Farah Khan’s and Shahrukh Khan’s latest Happy New Year [Español] just hit the market officially with VOD… or as they’re calling it DTF (Direct to Fans), which is less technical and much more personal. It’s also way cheaper than regular VOD too, which usually charges $5USD per one-time stream or 4-5-day rental. You basically get to download the movie for that price. I’m just supposing it’s subtitled (being aimed at all markets except India and China), but I could be supposing erroneously [1].

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No cons, just pros really. It would have been much cooler and much more trailblazing if this had happened on opening week (or the week later), but it’s something. I’m just hoping UTV (EROSNOW had its one moment with the pretty horrible Lekar Hum Deewana Dil) gets their shit together with the distribution of films like Haider and PK, really because those two are my bias at the moment. Imagine if more European and other big Asian movies did the same. Isn’t THAT what they want? Piece of the Hollywood pie? You need to indoctrinate people first, get them on the habit of watching you. Hollywood’s been doing this to us for the past 70 years.

Here’s the link.

Ooh, Tamil Looks Intimidating

December 22, 2014 — 4 Comments

I was watching Madharasapattinam last night, and I said to myself “let’s see about that Tamil.” If Amy Jackson could try, so could this Amy, amirite? However, I’m not gonna lie to you- Tamil intimidated me from the get-go. There’s something about those long *VERY LONG) words and all those Rs, Ps, Ks that just made my tongue a mess. But at least I can sorta tell the Tamil alphabet apart, which isn’t the case with Telugu and Malayalam. You have to admit it MUST look really foreigner to outsiders~

tamil-alphabet

I sorta can guess how it works, but I need a place/link where they teach you how to write the alphabet in order. For example, how do you begin writing the symbol for Ai (ஐ)- is it in one stroke? Do I do it like a toppled over 3 with an inverted one, or does it start more like an incomplete heart. Is A (அ) more like two strokes? And what about Aa (ஆ). And the I (இ) looks suuuuuper complicated. Is that on one go?

If anyone stumbling on this post knows Tamil, please, give me some pointers ;) I, at least, would love to pick some up.

When visiting IMDb, you’re reminded that Jennifer Beals is turning 51. 51! The last time I saw her on TV was in her small role in Castle (which my mother loves), and I have to admit that I hadn’t follow through any of the actresses post-The L Word. And to be honest, I was much too preoccupied with Shane and her love life to care much for Bette.

But alas~ TCM Latin America has been running Flashdance quite a bit, on top of the numerous references to the movie this year (eg. Cuban Fury, Happy New Year), so I clicked on Beals name wondering what she’s been up to, and was eventually directed to this video of the Flashdance screening celebrating 30 years of the movie. I was shocked, she looked freaking amazing. Like- I’m even jealous of how good she looks in there. She even looks better on that clip than this photo from the event~

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Most people need expensive lights to be well-lit and make you look like a million bucks. Jennifer Beals looks like ten million bucks in that poorly-lit shot for the fansite. I also wasn’t aware that she and my bias Olivia Thirlby had made a movie together. Now I have to find it.

 

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets Metamorphosis meets Eega.

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It’s pretty awesome. You can watch it on AnimatorExpo.com

Oh, who am I kidding. What I love about the end of the year is all the Best Of lists, rankings and voting. Expect my annual Top50 Songs of 2014, My fave movies of the year, and My fave local 2014 releases. I might even have enough material for a 2014 Music Highlights.

We started voting early on the YAM Magazine lounge because we are all lobbying for our favorite films, and prepping our personal End of the Year lists. I’m the most serious of all because lists can only matter when you grab the biggest possible sample. Not watching Indian movies meant that I wasn’t watching roughly 30-35% of the worldwide output.

So this is my first year online voting for Indian movies! I actually kinda like how MANY categories there are for actors to get a nod. LOL They don’t always make sense (Superstar of Tomorrow, hahahahaha and the Male Thriller/Action is quite rubbish), but I’m generally happy when I get to vote for Tabu, Madhuri and Rani without much conflict. So~ YEAH!

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You can vote here.

A country bumpkin (with a heavy Shandong accent, I suppose… with my level of Chinese, I can’t tell.) and a cow are the only survivors of a terrible Japanese airstrike during the Sino-Japanese War. I never thought I would ever say this, but that’s the best damn cow performance I’ve ever seen in my life. Alongside Dolly (the dog performance in Korean film Blind), it might be one of my favorite animal performances on film.

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Even though it didn’t slay in any categories in my Best of 2013 post, The Chef, The Actor, The Scoundrel (厨子‧戏子‧痞子) was one of my favorite movies last year. After Cow (斗牛, Dou Niu), I’ve become a Guan Hu and Huang Bo fan.