You’re often on my mind.
Thank you for giving us Two Tigers (兩隻老虎) and its theme song Ke Yi (可以) [1].
And off-topic, this amazing commercial.
Archives For Moving Media
It’s been about a month or so since the first reports of Nicole Kidman’s AFI Lifetime Achievement Award started trickling. I had already read that she was thanking the audience that had stuck by her doing some of her weird little films, but it was still different watching the video and hearing her say it.
the audiences that have stuck by me through everything — I just want to say thank you because there’s so many little weird films I’ve done and I know there’s people out there that go and find them and watch them. You’ve stood by me and stuck up for my weird, weird choices and I’m so grateful for that.”
I was obviously to young to watch To Die For or Portrait of a Lady in the mid-90s, but it is no wonder I’m thought of as one of those odd ones when I had dragged friends from school to watch things like Birthday Girl or Steven Shainberg’s Fur, which I have rewatched this past weekend. Reese’s speech about Kidman’s passion for cinema just reaffirms my love for Nicole and her body of work throughout these past two decades, in which she has been resurrected by the press more than once with so-called “comebacks.”
Here’s to two more decades of amazing films (and series). *Cheers*
I was doing one of those random searches I do (every other year now) in search of an old show from early to mid-90s, which featured Canadian actress Lani Billard, who later starred on 1993’s Ready or Not alongside Laura Bertram. It was called F.R.O.G and it aired on Discovery Kids Latin America. The show, which apparently was produced by Toronto’s OWL TV (maybe PBS in the US?), was a shown now commonly known as “edutainment” -entertainment with an educational take- about a group of children that used to get together to discover or solve a physics/mechanical/nature/science issue of the day.
I clearly remember two episodes of the show— one featured electromagnetics, which were used to power racing toy cars. The other one featured hydronic heating systems, which were built with a water hose installed on the roof of a shed to “warm up” with the sun. Apparently, the show only featured 13 episodes, to the surprise of everyone’s brains who feels like shows used to last forever, but they were all miniseries (eg. The Storyteller, Mr. Bean, old Shogun, etc.).
My old scattered cable magazines must be somewhere around, but that’s basically the only hard copy I have of the show’s existence. I have never been able to find digital proof of the show ever existing, except for this low resolution picture I just found on one of the few videos that talk about old Discovery Kids Latino.
I barely recognized it, mainly because that’s Billard in the pink sweater. I suppose the kid in blueish green could be Gideon Arthurs, while the kid in red could be Ivana Shein.
I also found this Reddit thread saying it’s “Fully lost” and learned (finally?) that F.R.O.G stands for “Friends of Research and Odd Gadgets,” ha! I had no idea.
According to one of the links above, and the info on WorldCat, the show’s distribution is or was done by Bullfrog Films. For educational purposes, Bullfrog Films used to offer a VHS tape per 30min episode at $50 on a dedicated F.R.O.G page that is no longer available. I tried browsing through their catalogue and doing a search to see if I could find more info on the show, but no luck. I even went through all their YouTube archive to no avail, even though they are still releasing material. In theory, you should be able to order these from them.
In related things— I did find the whole original Ghostwriter series, which had been released on DVD back in the day, as well as a whole collection of Lost Telecourse, which includes a series on American Cinema, and a series about physics and mechanics (also done by TVO) called Eureka!. Outside the collection, I also found some episodes of Newton’s Apple, episodes of Art Attack, and episodes of Pingu.
On December, I wrote about a couple of my concert music DVDs rotting away.
And the YT algo just popped this on the feed, talking about a number of Warner Bros titles that are apparently being affected.
Somebody on forums (!!! They still exist!) posted a list of probable affected titles, and to my dismay, the Greta Garbo and (both) Joan Crawford collections are affected. I just popped Mata Hari and Possessed on the player and seem to be playing fine.
Another one of the fears with (new) media and products that developed in types of plastic is that they’re decaying faster than people expected. I’ve had older (retired) players that were kept on storage that have a general sticky texture after a while. However, this doesn’t seem to happen to players that are in general exposure, not directly with sunlight, but in a generally airy room that’s in use, unlike a display room. I also happen to live in the mildest of climates, though high in humidity, temperatures never go above 30C (above 90F) or lower than 14C (lower than 55F). So maybe these conditions are affecting the storage of physical media.
I did the vast majority of my library collection before 2007, though. I did buy a number of things in between the mid-2000s to late-2000s, so if disc rot is affecting a general batch produced in between 2007-2009, it is a concern. I’m generally more worried with collections I keep in drawers instead of a regular shelf display.
Not gonna lie and say I haven’t been obsessing over the trailer for Crew since it dropped, and looking at the clips for Ghagra [1] and kinda giddy at the cover remix of Choli Ke Peeche [1].
I even finally re-watched Idhi Sangathi (with synced subs!) because of it.
Tabu finding riches in highly unusual places!
My only grip with the film, currently, is that my suspense of disbelief is dropped when I see them carrying kilos of gold. Autistic.
Other than that, I’m a super fan of potty-mouthed Tabu (I hope the announcement that theatrical was edited only means we get the potty-mouthed version on Netflix), and I want someone to ask them how much of the funny bits were ad-lib and improv, because that scene where they tell Kriti to sell her assets and the reaction to it was hilarious.
Buying physical media has been a chore lately, you gotta keep an eye out so you make sure you don’t miss your delivery because, for some reason, people cannot just leave your package any longer.
Plus, distributors are doing physical media less and less. The whole of the Indian Cinema industry has decided to phase out physical media in favor of going all in on OTT and VOD. Even enormous hits like RRR are left with no physical release, even in the West. Even Disney is letting Sony handle its physical media, which seems like the end of an era. Then there’s the whole thing about editing and disappearing media from libraries.
So these are some of the most recent -and not so recent- films that have been added to the physical library. I wish I had more disposable income because there are a bunch of titles (and upgrades) that had been added to the wishlist.
These on top of some Bluray upgrades like Sion Sono’s Love Exposure, Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying, brand new Criterion’s for Los Otros and Laberinto del Fauno. Some random BR UK release for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Also, this post makes it so that this year is the most I’ve blogged since 2020. I’m coming for you 2019. Four posts in Feb’24 is the most continuous blogging since Aug’18.
Having debuted back in 2022 under the name Song Soowoo (송수우) with the edgy-sounding song Love Me or Hate Me [MV], Song is back under the name NINA (니나) [almost impossible to look up without running into other Ninas] with the music video for Love Like This, directed by Jonah George.
Alt link available at Super Sound Bugs!
Which, if you’ve seen the Bugs thumbnail on YouTube, looks Yu Aoi-inspired. I say Yu Aoi-inspired, because it’s mostly Yuki Tanada’s One Million Yen Girl and heavily references Shunji Iwai’s Hana & Alice for obvious shots. However, it also heavily references Iwai’s 1995 Asian hit Love Letter which has inspired a whole generation of filmmakers [1][2] and idols.
That’s me. People will ask me if I’m watching which and what show, and I would usually say that I really don’t have time to watch much television. However, the past week I’ve been catching up with my “to watch” list and inundated.
I watched one single episode of Prime India’s Jubilee, which I’m looking forward to finishing. And I just binged through Apple’s Pachinko. I’m usually hit or miss with Kogonada (After Yang was excellent), but my only complaint about Pachinko is that I really wish American series would do their just one off series and not make me wait for two or three seasons.
I’ve also just started Nicole Kidman’s Nine Perfect Strangers (after going through Hulu’s Tiny Beautiful Things with Kathryn Hahn). Going though Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird, and have been catching Demon Slayer episodes, as well as rewatching shows like Cowboy Bebop and Orange Days (went through Tiger & Dragon, as well as Quartet a while back). Picking up old school Trigun, and planning to finally go through Emily Blunt’s The English and FINALLY trying to get through McQueen’s Small Axe.
Not even counting that I really wanted to watch that Prime The Underground Railroad series.
The original latino dub of my Operación Dragón de Bruce Lee memories. After years searching, several copies acquired (The first thing I did when I bought my Special Edition DVD was check the dub). I even had to go through several copies of Spain’s Spanish, only to find out that the Latino version had a do-over, and that the original Latino dub of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon was probably lost media.
I even wrote to OG Hector Lee, who was the original Bruce Lee voice in the film.
It has not been lost. These are my memories. I will cherish them.
Happy sort of belated Christmas, everyone!
I’m bummed! I was expecting to spend a quiet Xmas day with my mother, as we had agreed to catch a viewing of Celtic Woman’s A Christmas Celebration, which I happened to own a DVD of. Everything was going smoothly, we were already finishing Green the Whole Year Round when the DVD stopped playing. After checking again on the same player, through the track selection page, and testing a different player. I determined it was a disc issue.
It’s the dreaded disc rot.
I ended up testing my other two Celtic Woman DVDs. When they both had similar issues, the Celtic Woman 2005 release gets stuck at Orinoco Flow and A New Journey gets stuck at Panis Angelicus, I got worried similar DVD releases (that might be even slightly older than these) stored in the same place might have similar issues. However, it doesn’t seem to be a storage issue, as it’s a Manhattan (Now Capitol Music Group) release issue. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to post this on Amazon to try and find someone that might have similar issues, so I decided to post here just in case someone might be searching for this specific issue.
At the moment, both Celtic Woman and A New Journey seem to still be available on Amazon through sellers (wonder if they have similar disc rot issues), and A Christmas Celebration offers copies of upwards $30 from other sellers not the same ‘url product’ where it was originally purchased. A New Journey remains the only release errrr “easier” to back up in case of physical loss.
The fact that other Arista and Sony releases that are slightly older and stored in the same condition as these show no signs of rot tells me that smaller no-label releases are the most in danger of decay and most in danger of becoming lost media.
If you have a good copy of the 2005 Celtic Woman concert or A Christmas Celebration to share, please, let me know through a comment or drop me a line.
