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I’m one of the very few people that actually enjoyed The Golden Compass, and I must admit that I’m always the skeptic, but this latest trailer for HBO-BBC’s His Dark Materials adaptation has raised my expectations. I’m never a fan of season series, but I’ll allow three for this, of course.

I’m a hyper-real animation skeptic, as well. But it certainly works best in mixed media than *coughliveactionremakescough*.

I hope there’s blood in the bear fight. That always irked me.

I was looking for a decent quality image of Alexander Walker’s Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Star book cover, but I couldn’t find any :/ so I decided to scan my own. Take it as a service to the online community. I was going to watermark it, but decided not to. A link back or a shout out would be nice, tho :)

Most important quote of Life of Pi.

“I learned at my expense that Father believed there was another animal even more dangerous than us, and one that was extremely common, too, found on every continent, in every habitat: the redoubtable species Animalus Anthropomorphicus , the animal as seen through human eyes. We’ve all met one, perhaps even owned one. It is an animal that is “cute,” “friendly,” “loving,” “devoted,” “merry,” “understanding.” These animals lie in ambush in every toy store and children’s zoo. Countless stories are told of them. They are the pendants of those “vicious,” “bloodthirsty,” “depraved” animals that inflame the ire of the maniacs I have just mentioned, who vent their spite on them with walking sticks and umbrellas. In both cases we look at an animal and see a mirror. The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.”

Life of Pi, Chapter 8.

Life of Pi: The Most Dangerous Animal in the Zoo?

I started listening to Chen Weilun (陈伟伦)’s album, Think Miss Sorrow (念思愁), which just came out last week. While adding it to my iTunes library, it struck me how difficult it was to translate the song names. xD

For those who don’t know because you’ve just stumble upon this post, I usually keep a very organized library of foreign music, which includes ‘Original Name (romanization) – English Name/Translation’; so I was looking if there were official English titles for the songs on Chen Weilun’s album available on Xiami, KKBox or iNDIEVOX. There were not. On my search, already on title #3, I realized they were all titles (or most are, I haven’t gone through all of them yet xDDDDD) for Li Qingzhao (李清照), who is known as the greatest Chinese female poet of the Song Dynasty, mostly for her ci (词)/lyrics form of poetry [1][2].

So this is going to be a (hopefully brief) project to translate just the song names xDDDDDDDD

  1. 一剪梅·红藕香残玉簟秋
    A Twig of Plum Blossoms: The Jade-like Mat Feels Autumn’s Cold [1][2]
  2. 念奴娇·春情
    The Charm of Nien-nu: Spring Feelings [1][2]
  3. 如梦令·常记溪亭日暮
    Like a Dream: I Will Always Recall that Day at Dusk, the Pavilion by the Creek [1][2]
  4. 相见欢·无言独上西楼
    Happy Meeting: Wordless, A Lone Ascend Up the West Tower [1][2]
  5. 浪淘沙令·帘外雨潺潺
    Waves Against Sand: As the Rain Patters Outside the Drapes [1][2][3]
  6. 声声慢·寻寻觅觅
    The Sounds of Adagio: Searching and Searching [1]
  7. 渔家傲·秋思
    Fisherman’s Pride: Autumn Thoughts [1][2]
  8. 行香子·述怀
    Incense Burning: Describing my Emotions [1][2]

I only got three so far. xD

— September 22nd 2017 —

There~

I check the Yu Aoi search word on Twitter from time to time (not as often as I used to), and I ran into the posts announcing that Yu Aoi shot a movie adaptation of Mahokaru Numata’s (沼田まほかる) Kanojo ga Sono Na o Shiranai Tori-tachi (彼女がその名を知らない鳥たち, which translates to ‘The Birds She Doesn’t Know the Names Of‘ but there isn’t an official translation of the novel… yet.), alongside Sadao Abe.

I’ve still yet to watch Over Fence and Haruko Azumi, but with the Giuseppe Tornatore movie and the adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul, and this… 2017 is proving to be an active Yu-Aoi-fan year!

I’m a happy fan!

I’m also a lazy fan, I’ve only google-translate the article so I don’t know much about the movie, other than Numata’s mystery novels are in the style of Kanae Minato, and the wiki includes this priceless quote~

There has been an iyamisu (eww mystery) boom in Japan since around 2012. Iyamisu (eww mystery) is a sub-genre of mystery fiction which deals with grisly episodes and the dark side of human nature. Readers blurt out “eww” when they are reading iyamisu (eww mystery) novels.

Iyamisu, I love it. LOL Eww mystery. Adaptations of Kanae Minato’s novels are also pretty good.

source: Cinra.net

I’m not going down alone~~~

Remembering when you used to liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive for a fandom? Spending time online reading about it, researching about it, writing about it— I possibly spent all the time reading and waiting for Forever Knight to be updated, because somehow I broke my rule of reading “completed” fics only. But I was hooked; NC-17 + Hermione + Vampires? I was in.

forever-knight-delivermefromeve

img credit: harmonyfanficrec

Thank you, Delivermefromeve, for the wonderful and angsty hours of reading. I don’t think I ever read any fanfic ever again the same way I read yours.

I can’t believe it’s been ten years since~ To celebrate, Studio 4C is publishing a Tekkonkinkreet Artbook. 100 copies (which are already gone) signed by director Michael Arias. Another 292 copies that will come with a hand-drawn slip in between the book. Both priced at Y2980 JPY (at around $26 USD at current exchange rate). The shipping to South America is more expensive than that xD

Anyway~ for those interested; here’s the LINK.

tekkonkinkreet-sky-black-so-blue

Kuro, when the sky turns black why do I feel so blue?

*update*

Also in 日本語!

tekkonkinkreet-sky-black-so-blue-jp

クロ、空の色が黒くなってくるとさ、なんだかシロは悲しい気持ちになるの、どして?

7 years — SEVEN FREAKING YEARS! — after starring on Yuki Tanada’s One Million Yen Girl, Yu Aoi is finally going to star in a new movie as a lead. The lucky production? An live-action adaptation of Yamauchi Mariko’s (山内 マリコ) book AZUMI HARUKO wa Yukuefumei (アズミ・ハルコは行方不明), which translates to Azumi Haruko Is Missing, which will be directed (and most likely adapted) by Daigo Matsui (松居大悟).

yu-aoi-azumi-haruko-film-announcement

My Japanese is going to the gutter. lol

BUT! The internet (meaning me) is all excited about it! Actually, I see a lot of tweets on it, but I’m too lazy to read or google-translate them, so I will just pretend we’re all excited about this.

YesAsia has an “English title,” and lists it as Lonely Girl Has Gone.

I don’t know what the book is about, if you do- tell me. Other essential info? Apparently it started shooting in mid-September, and it’s set for a 2016 release.

Sources: Natalie, Yahoo JP. Big version of this photo on Eiga.

tabu-the-namesake

img source

Well, this week has been an active Tabu week~ first, news that Rekha had backed out of Abhishek Kapoor’s Great Expectations adaptation, Fitoor, and having Tabu land on the gig. Then the hindi Drishyam team teased a shot of Tabu in cop get-up in prep for the release of the trailer (my gosh, the movie promotion machine these days). I think they also announced Manoj Bajpayee’s and Tabu’s upcoming film Missing [1], while putting in on the table that Tabu will be playing Katrina Kaif’s sister in Fitoor and not a crazy aunt. Ha, they look nothing alike. Reminds me of Chinese movie-casting.

Phew. I think I covered my basis.

Tabu is going to eat people alive on that set. I know Cuaron’s version is not very popular, but I love it.

UMPH!

All credits to Tea Mint.
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