Category: Television

  • Yu Aoi is Acting for Galileo

    You know, since Yu’s Itoh website re-vamp, the site sucks. They haven’t updated since forever, and they took out the section where Yu sometimes did short postings. However, the biggest drawback has been the lack of updates, and this is why I found out that Yu was on one of the episodes of Galileo 2 through tweets mentioning it (on June 3rd). So… nobody knew, I suppose?

    So I had to catch up with Galileo 2 episodes, since I wasn’t watching the show due to the lack of much Shibasaki Kou, and was conveniently waiting for the subtitles (and a blank space in my schedule) to actually watch Episode 8.

    I had missed Yu-chan so much.

    yu-aoi-galileo2-ep08-048
    Busted!

    As you know, or maybe don’t, Yu’s been improving her cold-heart crime-committing girl persona. She did pretty great in her guest in Unubore Deka, and was great in Shokuzai. She’s actually been doing her bad girl characters a lot more interesting that her good girls (Double Face, Mottomo Toi Ginga). In Galileo 2 she’s playing an actress who’s obsessed with- hmm… let’s call it ” hardcore method acting,” so she’s obsessed with recording every bit of conversation she has in every day life, as well as her experiences, including how it feels to get away with 1st degree murder.

    Though the episode seems to play straight-forward with a locked-room case and Yu’s character having the motive and access to commit the crime, there’s a twist- which is pretty obvious when you re-watch the show haha (the framing shots give it away), but with Yu’s acting going from calm to elated (for getting away with it), from elated to poker-face, to poker-face to complete hysterical satisfaction and landing in cruel reality… I don’t think I’ve ever seen Yu go through so much in one single sequence.

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  • Need a Dose to Melt my Frozen Heart

    A dose of Ashida Mana’s cuteness pick-me-up~

    ashida-mana-melts-your-cold-heart

    I know she’s growing up so quickly, and she’s got a small role in Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim — probably that one small scene for which she got papped in Toronto. I suppose she’s playing a kid version of Rinko Kikuchi… I never though they would look like each other, but I guess it works for Hollywood.

    I swear, every time I search for photos of Ashida Mana, I end up cooing and awing. She really melts all my sorrows away. It doesn’t matter if she grows up because we will have Mother, and hopefully (giving much much good vibes for that) she will have a good childhood and grow up to be a sensible adult and not be effed up by this business. Those are my wishes. Will always be.

    My mother says that she could stop wars with that smile.

  • Kaze Fuiteru~~~

    Who grew up watching the Street Fighter II series?

    I used to tape this every afternoon because I was never on time from school, they used to show it after Gargoyles on Frecuencia Latina, and then after we got cable for the first time- actually a few years after that, I think — Cartoon Network Latin America got all big on showing anime series, and among the Inuyasha or Rurouni Kenshin episodes they used to broadcast, they also had some of this.

    I remember they also used to show Sakura Card Captor and Corrector Yui [1, with latino audio].

    Around that time, it was when I was trying to google this song online but back then it was nearly impossible to find song information if you had very little info, especially if you didn’t speak the language. I did eventually find that this song was called Kaze Fuiteru (aka. The Wind Blows, 風吹いてる – by Yuki Kuroda), and that my friend had a CD with songs that were anime themes that contained the track.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pOqYuKIGZo

    Of course, the Spanish version they did [1] is not as good as the original. But I’m glad that they at least kept the original music, instead of changing it to something “hard rock” like in the American broadcast.

    Lookie 1, lookie 2

  • Los Premios Tony son más Grandes con Neil!

    When I translate things, I usually go from Spanish into English, so when I listened to (and obsessed a little) over Neil Patrick Harris at the Tonys, I thought that it’d be good practice for a quick English to Spanish translation exercise.

    Lyrics in English taken from Playbill.com

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  • Neil Patrick Harris is Bigger for Tony

    Is this the resurrection of Broadway?

    Neil Patrick Harris just pulled off a massive introduction for last night’s show, not only including fellow show nominees, but they also included some snarky blow at Shia LaBeouf, whose theater scuffle made it outside Broadway circles. I have no idea about Broadway news and the who is who, but I knew about it. Go figure.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=danBaPWT09A

    I know tickets have been down for Broadway shows- all shows across all media, I believe. So I hope last night’s award show boosts the popularity, because if the numbers keep going down, there’d be no place for…

    There’s a kid in the middle of nowhere who’s sitting there living for Tony performances. Singing and flipping along with the Pippins and Wickeds and Kinkies, Matildas, and Mormonses. So I might reassure that kid, and do something to spur that kid. Cause I promise you all of us up here tonight. We were that kid.

  • To Crazy People and the Losers Who Love Them

    When Hannibal started airing, I gave the show a watch (the first two episodes seemed like a lot) but since it seemed to stressed me a lot, I decided to stop watching and not be waiting for the latest episode, like I used to do for some of my now-not-so-current television watching. And though I had decided to not watch the show, I found myself catching the episodes on the weekend showings on AXN Latin America.

    Two episodes a sitting- it doesn’t even matter if you skip a week, since you can catch up the next week! And it’s perfectly timed with my dinner on Sundays, so I don’t get eerily hungry whenever they show Hannibal cooking.

    hannibal-feel-unstable

    During the commercial for tonight’s episode, Dr. Alana Bloom talks to Will about her decision to not pursue him as a love interest… because he’s unstable. And obviously, as a Wonderfalls fan [1], I immediately though of Jaye as a crazy person. It’s like a perfect conversation!

    wonderfalls-clinically-insane

  • Even if I say so myself~

    I’ve got some pretty nice recommendations to share.

    yammag-amy-recommendations

  • Sue Johanson vs. Alessandra Rampolla – FIGHT!

    When I was in Canada, I spent some of those Sunday nights watching Sunday Night Sex Show with Sue Johanson, and then my mind was blown. With her as-a-matter-of-fact tone, and some of the most bizarre requests [raw meat, anyone? Somebody said Athlete’s Foot?], Sue delivered sex knowledge and opinion like I have never had heard or seen before. It also happened that Sue wasn’t like how the media had made me imagine sexologists were like.

    WARNING: This Hot Mix is both HILARIOUS and NSFW!

    All the while, coming over down here, I saw the birth of Alessandra Rampolla and her show, which has in part revolutionized Latin America, I suppose. The difference with the both of them is, I suppose, culturally. While Sue’s show was set for call-answering ANY question, Rampolla’s show is set more like a talk show… which is more like a familiar format for the region, but doesn’t allow the same topic freedom that the other format offers.

    I like that Rampolla’s way of talking is a lot like a kinder or primary school teacher explaining — still — the finer points of being bisexual to her audience with ease and humor. Rampolla’s style is more like Sexologist 101, while Sue is more Advanced Studies.

    I didn’t find any cool YouTube mix of her, so this interview with her by Magaly Medina will have to do. Medina isn’t a sexologist or all that serious when she does her entertainment show, so some of her comments are a bit eye-roll worthy, but Rampolla really is that lovely.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtCKegCHxqU

  • Kodomo Ningyougekijou – Me lo Contaron en Japon

    kodomo-ningyougekijou-children-puppet-theater-me-lo-contaron-en-japon-kaguya-hime

    This is the first time I ever found the Japanese name of this show. Kodomo Ningyougekijou (こどもにんぎょう劇場) or Children’s Puppet Theater, known in Peru (and maybe Latin America) as Me lo Contaron en Japon.

    Though the DVDs are available on Amazon Japan — at a whopping price of nearly $50USD (over 4500 Yen) per volumen at 3 episodes a bundle [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], which results into over $600USD for 36 episodes. WHY, Japan? According to its Wikipedia page, the show possibly has over 50 episodes, running from 1990 to 2011.

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  • We eat more than cows, chickens and pigs~ so what?

    About a week ago Nat Geo was showing a new episode of Tabu Latinamerica, which happened to focus on food. One of my favorite subjects. Thinking about food makes me hungry. But this is Tabu, so obviously we weren’t going to be talking about regular food. While the episode focused on Mexico and Venezuela, with their talks on eating rata campestre (countryside rat??? not from the sewers of course) soup, and… some kind of tarantula/spider?

    Anyway, part of the episode also focused in Peru, where they showed a town called La Quebrada, in Cañete, they prepare cat. I haven’t eaten cat — at least, not knowingly… though once while we were eating rabbit chicharron, we suspected we had been given cat because the “rabbit” was bigger and had more fat in it — but I’ve eaten a lot of other things. Of course, guinea pig is kind of a regular “bizarre” food, and I guess rabbit is bizarre to some people. Suri (the worm) is also tasty when fried (it’s almost like crispy pork skin), as well as an assortment of fishes~ Including the palometa (which I’ve heard it’s a piranha’s cousin LOL) and paiche. Shark’s fin soup and swallow’s nest soup apply.

    It’s kind of always been common knowledge that people ate cats in Peru- my family (and I’m sure many other people) often joked about it, it’s like joking about everything being chicken, or eating the insides of animals — horror movies and 4D jokes are perfect. Let me tell you, thank you Afro-Peruvians for developing Anticuchos. As a Peruvian who has finally learned to eat without asking (much), and not judge cultures by my own point of view, it saddens me to see people’s comments. Especially considering that we’re all Latin Americans.

    Does it feel good to call other people ignorant, or small-minded? Is it wrong to eat something just because you think it’s your pet? Is it not wrong that we eat cow so easily when Indians see them as gods? We’re eating their gods, sending them to slaughter houses, and people judge these people because they eat their pets in a non-industrialized way. This is kind of the same issue I had with The Cove [1].