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.
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 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.
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~
All these feelings~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et3j-ZsZ-k8
Next week (+ one day) is also my dad’s 3rd anniversary, so this just hit right in the feels.
The agency in charge of the campaign of Dream Fearlessly [also] was BBDO New York.
… from 10 miles from the movie theater xD
It’s like bright highlighter marker color xD I love it. There’s been a couple of other Chinese posters [the series for Song of the Phoenix (百鸟朝凤), and Big Fish & Begonia (大鱼海棠)].
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.
Bless, SinB. Bless SinB with Moonbyul, Bless New Crush Star. LOL
‘Tis a thing of pure beauty.
Otherwise known as SamuraiDroneCatIdolSuperhumanRubeGoldbergViewerWarningTooExplosiveHighSchoolGirl (侍ドローン猫アイドル神業ピタゴラ閲覧注意爆速すぎる女子高生) — I don’t exactly know how the translation in English came to being, but in the Japanese, there’s a mention of Pythagora (as in PythagoraSwitch).
Also, obvious dig at Shideido’s commercial.
Apparently, BiBi now has an official Facebook page (finally!). And it turns out that I’ve missed a couple of photoshoots, since BiBi has been promoting the release of Cold War 2, one of them a shoot by an unknown photographer for the July issue of Harper’s Bazaar China, featuring this gorgeous dual cover.
So I was browsing album covers on Xiami when I ran into the one for Ivana Wong’s latest single, Goi Sei Dik Faai Lok (該死的快樂, translated to Damn Happy)… which turns out has a brand new video. And I was like- where have you been all my life when I started going down her discography~
Jyu Jat (如一, As One) is great. Siu Sau Seot (小手術, Minor Surgery) is amazing with the Lyrics Video. It’s also helping me practice my Cantonese xD My jyutping game is totally poor. I also hate that sometimes I’m fixing my music library and it’s not Cantonese but Mandarin, so I gotta fix my romanization. But I’m totally digging her music. More her less popular songs that are not straight up sappy ballads. Her piano skills seem to be on point.
Not new talent, but total new discovery.
