Mark Ronson featuring QTIP and MNDR.
I really enjoyed Ronson’s last album, and I think he’s a really great producer. However, I think he really dropped the ball with this song… or maybe I just don’t like his type of music any longer. Honestly, it’s been ages since I heard anything from him xD
But the French and Japanese? Sounds so weird.
Does anyone feel the video is so Liveman or Flashman? [why the 90’s ruled]
It’s super short, but better cut than the 5min clip.
and it’s got the Yu Aoi credit!!! Yay!
Okay, now… really. Yu Aoi news overload much??
We have been talking about Mobile Phone Dramas for a while here… a little more than half a year.
Then there’s Mobile Phone Dramas. Sort of a hybrid between a series and commercials.. or other PR material, maybe a mix between short films and commercials that end up becoming a movie…
…
While Asia is taking product placement and marketing to a whole new level, here… they try to shove ads and other silly commercials on printed media. And more commercial time. And more clicking banners.
It seems BeeTV, which focuses on broadcasting dramas through cellphone carrier DoCoMo, has grown into more than 1 million subscribers paying $3 a month to watch this 5min pieces. Dude, that’s $3M a month for roughly 30min of footage in a cellphone.
Hollywood is jealous.
BeeTV broadcasts more than 20 short programs in eight genres like drama, music and comedy and plans to add shows on cooking, fashion and beauty for a total of more than 50 programs. The two most-popular are drama series “Love Letter in Five Years” and “Death Game Park.”
…
Some of BeeTV’s more popular shows are later released on DVD. The saucy drama series “Women Have Fun Twice,” starring five well-known actresses, will be screened in late June at the Taipei Film Festival after the number of episodes downloaded hit 900 million, a BeeTV record.
via Japan Now.
Women Have Fun Twice is that Asami Mizukawa mobile phone drama I was telling you about. And, OMG! It’s going to be screened at the Taipei Film Fest? Jealous!
I am eating up all this commercial stuff. Geez, and I don’t even own a cellphone. xD
I am not prepared for this type of marketing~
Hi, China! You rock.
Right next to Haoting.com, there’s Xiami.com – whose name makes little sense to me… apparently it means Dried Shrimps. Huh, right? xD Anyway, seems like it has a pretty collection of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Western music…
No region restrictions!
Highlights? Which we reviewed and rated on the latest YAM~~~
Just hit the PLAY button there.
Also, big info!
Bibi’s soon-to-be released i.Light.Fish album contains a song written by Diane Warren. *Excited*
I thought I would never EVER say this, but this is too much Yu Aoi.
The TBS website for the upcoming drama Unubore Deka (Conceited Detective) just announced guest-stars, and Yu Aoi will be appearing on the 2nd episode. Also guest-starring, actress Kanako Higuchi (ep03), and Kyoko Koizumi.
Mika Nakashima stars on the show alongside Tomoya Nagase, who plays the deluded detective.
A 30-year-old single detective (Nagase Tomoya), who is under the illusion that he is popular with females is called ‘Unubore’ by friends. He is an ultra romantic and susceptible to conceitedness. He has such a strong desire to marry to the extent that he has bought an apartment for his newlywed life. He falls in love with female criminals at first sight each time. While the sheer desire to meet wraps around him, he will get proof that the female is the culprit. And so, he will thrust both the arrest warrant and marriage papers at her, proposing with the words, “If you marry me, I won’t arrest you.” If that still does not work, he will hold out an engagement ring and his handcuffs. In the end, the criminal will choose to be arrested and his heart will be broken. He will cry as he puts the handcuffs on her…
via DramaWiki.
To be honest, the premise sounds BLAH.
But Nagase is funny… at least he was on Tiger & Dragon, but that was a different monster. However, I will probably give it a go… after all, if I don’t like it, it’s only going to be two episodes. [added to the calendar]
Let’s play 6 Degrees… Mika Nakashima starred on Worst by Chance — and Yu Aoi made a short appearance there. Tomoya Nagase was on Tiger & Dragon with Yu. Kanako Higuchi played Aoi Miyazaki’s mother on Atsuhime… Miyazaki is besties with Yu. And Kyoko Koizumi starred on the stage piece Gakuya with Yu.
MY85 made me realize that tomorrow is the 13th, so I decided to release this today.
Thanks to Julz, who’s always a diligent writer.
and MY85… and well, Maca who keeps tracks of her films.
Alongside Kimura Takuya [SMAP] (37), and Tadanobu Asano (36).
Takeshi Koike was an animator on the 1995 animated film Memories, was involved in The Animatrix short Program, as well as directing one of my favorite Animatrix shorts… World Record, and worked as the lead animator on the film Taste of Tea (Cha no Aji).
Movie and CM director Ishii Katsuhito created the original story and explained why he picked those three actors in particular. “For this movie I wanted to get the actors I personally respect the most,” he said.
…
Aoi has been one of his favorite actress for many years as well. You could say that he is really looking forward to have his favorite actors lending their voices to the characters he created himself.
Sorry for the lack of comment activity yesterday, there was a weird mixed up with me, my server, and my ISP… which was fixed NOT by Telefonica, but my server providers~~~ They’re the best. You should all work with them.
Anyway, a lot of stuff… besides the World Cup,
whose Opening ceremony I missed, because I couldn’t wake up for them…
Toy Story 3 screening in the morning! So I’m making this short~
First~ as you may (or not) have noticed, I have added a Yu Aoi Event Calendar to the right, below the Ads. That’s to help us all to keep track of what’s going on and when. As you can see, Flowers opened today.
Continue Reading…
As the name suggests, this 2003 drama is about a high school teacher who is dying of an inoperable brain tumor, then one night he meets Hina, a 16-year-old girl who is pretending to be a 20-year-old beautician. They end up in his apartment for the night, even though nothing happens. The next day, she discovers he is her new high school teacher.
Of course, she keeps trying to get with him, and he tries to keep his distance… after all, he is dying. Then, with those crazy Japanese-language misunderstandings, Hina believes she’s about to die. Suddenly, the teacher finds solace in her… and that’s when it just gets creepy and frustrating.
I understand hot-for-teacher.
But I spent 98% of the time watching this [I just finished episode 8] saying how inappropriate.
First, the male lead was just so… ugh, infuriating. I guess it’s not really him, it’s the character that annoys me. I could get it, the way he is for the first 2 episodes. He’s dying, he’s afraid of being forgotten, whatever. However, by episode 7, it just gets tiresome. Man up already! But instead of manning up, and telling Mina that she’s not dying, so she doesn’t need to find physical pleasure to feel alive… because, well… she’s got time.
He goes and diddles the student.
Is that supposed to be romantic?
And then people go on and tell him he looks different, more relaxed. Of course! He’s diddling the student! whom he lied to by saying she’s got an inoperable brain tumor. And the doctor plays along? Lying to her?
Mina should totally sue their asses.
Gosh!
Okay, having said that. Reason why I watched this? Of course, Yu Aoi. I wasn’t gonna watch it because the title is so bland, and I don’t normally do jdramas. However, while looking for the latest Anan photoshoot, I ran into a post that talked about a “rape scene” [on ep08] in the series, so I went all “OMG, I need to check this out.” So I did.
Besides the dragging storyline of the dying teacher who diddles the student who thinks is dying, the series talks about suicide, depression, prostitution, and bullying. The big bad of the series is Yuki, played by Hiroki Narimiya — whom I had already eyed on Tiger & Dragon, and Nana LOL — but his crazy antics get tiring by episode 7 too. I mean, he’s just bad because he’s bad, unlike Koike on Love Exposure who is bad for being bad with a background.
Continue Reading…
Holler if you just said “What?”!
You might be asking me why I would put Natalie Portman as #3, who is virtually known by everyone, and is the role model of virtually 95% of late teens/early 20s young actresses around. We admitedly find Kristen Stewart’s fangirl-y-ness kind of cute and amusing [1][2]. However, if we decided to put Natalie Portman as our #1, then that would be a little bit boring, right?
Plus, this time we are choosing quality over quantity. ;P
So~~~ on our list of 20 Actors to Watch, here it is: Doona Bae on #2.
Born in Seoul, South Korea on October 11th 1979, this 30-year-old actress is best known as archer Park Nam-Joo in the monster film The Host (Gwoemul) by Bong Joon-ho, as well as playing activist Cha Yeong-mi in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance by Park Chan-wook.
Born to famous stage Korean actress, Kim Hwa-young, it seemed that Bae was born with acting in her veins. However, she always felt that acting was only for people of extraordinary talent, so she kept away. One day in 1998, after graduating from university, Bae was scouted by a model agency, and one year later she was already debuting on the KBS TV drama School — which earned her the KBS Drama Award for Best New Actress, while making her big screen appearance with a brief role on The Ring Virus, the Korean remake of the Japanese horror RINGU.
In year 2000, she was cast as Hyeon-nam in Barking Dogs Never Bite, directed by Bong Joon-ho due to her willingness to appear without makeup, which many other South Korean actresses refused to do. This earned her another award as Best New Actress, at the Blue Dragon Awards. She followed it with two films that were received positively by critics, first in 2001 with Take Care of my Cat by Jeong Jae-eun, for which she earned Best Actress by the Korean Critics Association, the Korean Film Directors’ Society (Chunsa Film Art Award), and the whole South Korean entertainment industry with a PaekSang Arts Award. And in 2002 with Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, for which she earned a Best Actress at the Director’s Cut Awards, chosen by Korean Film Directors, and would lead to a future collaboration.
After two weak films in 2003, Bae decided to take some time off from acting, in which she took up photography, and participated in the stage production of Sunday Seoul, co-written by Park Chan-wook.
In 2005, she went across the sea, and starred in the Japanese cult hit Linda Linda Linda, playing a South Korean exchange student in a Japanese girl rock band trying to play at the school’s festival — for which she recorded an EP titled We Are Paranmaum under the name Paranmaum — by Nobuhiro Yamashita, which also became a favorite of the film festival circuit. The year after it, she had a supporting role in Bong Joon-ho’s South Korean biggest box office success The Host.
Bae also appears on a few music videos, and has released Photo essays for London, Tokyo and Seoul. Finally, in 2009 she played an air sex-doll in the Japanese drama Air Doll by acclaimed director Hirokazu Koreeda. For the role, she earned Best Actress wins in festival circuits, as well as nominations at the Asian Film Awards, and the Japanese Academy Awards.
What’s next for Doona Bae? We have no idea. But if she’s making us wait another 3 years for a new movie on the big screen, and it’s as GOOD as Air Doll was when we waited those 3 years after The Host. Well, it’s all worth it.
