Archives For Films

We are only one spot away from completing our lists of the 20 to Watch Between 25-30, so I thought it was time to show you some of the names that didn’t make it. Just like in my first list of people that didn’t make it, I seem to have an overload of actresses, and never enough guys.

In no particular order~~~
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Whatever your thoughts are about Toy Story, and Toy Story 2, if you got the chance to grow up and grow old with the Toy Story franchise, you’re going to feel like Toy Story 3 will be pulling your heart strings. I wasn’t emotionally attached to the franchise, and I still felt the nostalgic ending, quite reminiscent of the ending in the Winnie the Pooh books. That of having to grow up, and let go.

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Early YAM 010!

June 12, 2010 — 5 Comments

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.

I just want you to head over here.

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.

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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.
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I don’t know if you had heard about Disney’s Rapunzel that suddenly got changed to Tangled. Anyway, the trailer for Tangled, the animated Disney film formerly known as Rapunzel, just hit the net.

And I’m loving it.

Especially because it’s set to Pink’s Trouble music.
I love that album, and that song rocks.

and the trailer is so SO funny.

[iframe width=”560″ height=”349″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/TrStddEYYn8?rel=0″]

Look! It’s the girl from Center Stage!

Hmm… seems like these films take FOREVER to be released.

[iframe width=”560″ height=”349″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/RgZjaxrnlPc?rel=0″]

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.

that is fascinating.

For one thing, Chris Lee doesn’t have the best voice, she doesn’t have the best dancing, or the best lyrics in her album. However, she writes her own music and lyrics — she seemed to have done so in her self-titled album — , she dances, she even directs her own music videos [one of them Youth of China], and has begun her acting career — in the awarded Hong Kong production of Bodyguards and Assassins, for which she was named Best Newcomer of the Year by the Hong Kong Directors Guild. To top it all off, she’s tall — at least, taller than her Asian counterparts — has an amazing face, and stands out from a crowd by being Chris Lee in a room full of other women.

Multiple-talent threats are often easy to hate because they think they do it all, but in reality they don’t really excel at anything. A few singers who think they can act come to mind, or actors that think they can sing. And even though, Chris may not really excel in any, she’s so difficult to hate because she doesn’t have that superiority air that plagues self-professed artistes. Every time she’s on stage performing or receiving some award, she stands there with an air of a person that’s cool, but also with hints of humility.

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Forget the Film, Watch the Titles just posted the opening titles for Splice, that film by Vicenzo Natali with Adrien Brody and Sarah Poley… which I am dying to see.

While watching the titles [you can WATCH IT HERE], was anyone else reminded of Ang Lee’s Hulk? You know the whole genetic experimentation business… and it’s green. LOL I am one of the few people that actually liked that movie, aren’t I?

I have a slight suspicion that this will get a Best Visual Effects nomination this year, definitely a candidate. It looks fresher than Iron Man 2, you know since it’s not a sequel. Like I said, dying to see.