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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~

I only caught a bit of Sunday’s Golden Globes, and none of the red carpet so… I missed Evan. But I did see the picture of her outfit, and totally dig her outfit and attitude. Seems like Evan’s coming back with a vengeance~

Look at THAT! I love it.

I really have no J-entertainment sources any longer xD

I just found out that Kou Shibasaki’s gonna be in this year’s Taiga drama! More spazzing? It’s called Naotora: The Lady Warlord (おんな城主 直虎). I’m sold already [1][2].

Bless us all! Look at her wardrobe~ I haven’t fangirled a Taiga since Atsuhime [1][2], which was like 9 years ago. LOL Anyone knows if there’s a subtitled version available?

Me: Celebrity endorsements don’t work.
Also me: I’m obsessed with JiNS glasses now. Thank you, Yu-chan [1][2].

You can also buy non-prescription :O That would make it less stressful to get them shipped across continent, and then just get the prescription at your local oculist.

When I went to Japan (OMG, last year. It’s already been a year TnT), I ended up getting a pair of JiNS Air Frame glasses because— 1. Yu-chan. 2. When I tried them on, they didn’t fall. LOL I don’t have a high nose bridge, so my western glasses usually end up at the tip of my nose, and they’re so heavy!! SO HEAVY! I always got a deep mark on the sides of my nose. Air Frame glasses suit me so well.

So~~~ I found out there’s a JiNS store in San Francisco (and three other stores in California— so many Asians xD), so I could totally get a pair when I visit my aunt! It also seems like they have an online store. They only ship within the US, so I suppose I could send my glasses to my aunt’s~ BUT LOOK AT THIS GORGEOUS THINGS!

I’m obsessed with it right now.

Round glasses don’t suit the shape of my face, though. hahahahaha

I also don’t change glasses style because it’s expensive, but~~~ wishlist.

Happy new year~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

YO!

For the last couple of months, and ever since I started making my own chai at home, I’ve been obsessed over ginger. I’ve always been a fan of commercial ginger ale, but it was on my trip to Japan this past March when I had a cold bottle of Asahi Wilkinson Ginger Ale at Itasoba Kaoriya (板蕎麦 香り家) in Ebisu (Tokyo), a place for soba suggested by uzaigaijin. :P After that, I spent my whole trip having ginger ale in Japan, on top of bottled Kirin Milk Tea, lol

Since then, I’ve been having ginger tea, and now— my cousin has started making ginger ice-cream as per my request xD A couple of weeks ago, my mother came over with half a bottle of Fever-Tree Premium Ginger Beer, which is just carbonated ginger water with some sugar. They also offer a Ginger Ale, as well as a Light Ginger Beer, so maybe the spice flavor is more intense on this one. I loveeeeee it.

The only bad thing is that it’s imported, so it’s kinda expensive~ considering there’s tons of locally-grown ginger, but the food industry (as an industry, not small commerce) is so lacking. It pains me to see snacks, ice creams and sodas of the same flavors churned over and over again with a different name.

Here it is! My final list of 2016~

I usually post my Top50 right after my Music Highlights, but my schedule has been all wonk this year. I know I’m very inactive on this blog, but I still hope the very few of you that still visit the site had a wonderful holiday week and that you are having a blast this New Year’s Eve. I wish for y’all’s good fortune this coming 2017 because we know we’ve had a rough 2016. Let us all recharge, and cross fingers for some very need good vibes~

Leave y’all with the link~

They’re up! It took forever to put together because I expanded the list from 10, coz I couldn’t make up my mind, to 20 (and bonuses!) LOL! The funny thing was that when I expanded the Top10, the positions changed! If that makes any sense. I had only been able to put together half the list, when some work-related business came up, so went back to it last evening and had to stay up until 6AM to be able to post today ASAP. My Top50 Songs post is still a work in progress, though~ I got enough songs (too many), so it’s just a matter of cutting down.

Without further ado~ happy listening!

What do Mamamoo and Chulpan Khamatova have in common? They all came together in a weird dream I had last night— now, the details are getting murkier, but I was walking down the street of the house where I used to live, which magically turned (I’m supposing) into some street/random place in Russia where I met Chulpan. What makes it all the more weird is that I haven’t seen Chulpan-related movies or series lately.

Suddenly we were at some high building which feature, I suppose, an incredible view of the city. It felt like we talked a lot in English… and French. I don’t even think Khamatova speaks French xD Mamamoo comes up over the fact that I, for some reason, tell Chulpan about Mamamoo. LOL AND Bryan Cranston comes up because he somehow got mad over the fact that I was talking to Chulpan about them. Hahahahaha. The dream made so little sense that the moment I woke up, I did so laughing.

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.