Ganesh will always bring me memories of Asami Mizukawa [1].
Here’s a clip of the show featuring Black Ganesha. xD
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:
If I spoke fluent Russian, I would’ve taken a plane to watch her doing theater. xD
Korean girl idol group Piggy Dolls was making a comeback — after the quite catchy and makeover-ish The Girl that I Know (아는여자) [MV], which gave a terrific hair style to singer Lee Ji Yeon — only to run into the video for Ordinary Girl (보통여자) [MV] and see that I didn’t freaking RECOGNIZE ANYONE! At first I chugged it to maybe having actors not on the MV, but apparently- yes, they’ve changed all members.
I don’t even know why bother keeping the name of the group. It’s just lazy management and creates an even bigger image problem. And here I was looking forward to Ji Yeon’s latest makeover. Though I must admit, her hair color and shape was perfect the last time.
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
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?
*pats, pats*
I really need to make time to watch Rena Nounen and have a clear opinion on her, instead of clouding it with Ama-chan.
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.
I really can’t remember exactly when I started out the Top Flicks About Chicks list on MUBI, but it must have been around the same time I wrote how Chick Flicks was a doomed genre in regards of critics. So it might be almost 4 years… and I’ve finally reached 300 titles in the list!!!
A Chick Flick should center on little girls, girls, young women and women… as students, as neighbors, as friends, as daughters, as granddaughters, as sisters, as mothers, as lovers. They are simply women. With that alone, we can tell all sort of other stories that have little to do with romantic comedies.
The purpose of the list, of course, was to encompass an array of female character — not only in the binary sense, since the list also includes men/boys who identify as women/girls… and viceversa — of various cultural, ethnic, social backgrounds. Not favoring one genre over the other, not valuing dramas over comedies… just simple stories about different women.
Though I’m sure the list could be longer, that’s 300 feature length films out of the 2896 (counting shorts) currently rated on the site- that’s roughly 10% so I suppose the list could expand to up to 500 or maybe 1000 once I reach 5000 or 10000 rated films on the site.
1. Treeless Mountain 2. Welcome to the Dollhouse 3. Juliana 4. Labyrinth 5. Fuckin’ Amal 6. Mirrormask 7. Gun Hill Road 8. Pariah 9. Bend it like Beckham 10. Swing Girls 11. The Land of the Deaf 12. Sunny 13. Whip It 14. Stoker 15. Maria Full of Grace 16. Breaking the Waves 17. My Marlon and Brando 18. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days 19. Dil Bole Hadippa! 20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 21. Kotoko 22. Violeta Went to Heaven 23. Skin 24. Raise the Red Lantern 25. Incendies
I picked 25 of the 300 films to illustrate some of the variety (I hope it’s AS varied as I intend the list to be), though I ran out of picks and couldn’t include any of the ‘older’ female characters. If I could pick 5 more, they’d be: Lemon Tree, Frozen River, Late Bloomers, Mother, For 80 Days.
