Isabella Leong has been on and off since she made her official film comeback back in 2015 with Murmur of the Hearts, which is an amazing film. Se also had small roles or almost cameos on 12 Golden Ducks that same year, and got back together with Pang Ho-Cheung for a small role in Missbehavior in 2019.

From her recent interview on A Date with Luyu (鲁豫有约), you can tell that she enjoyed or had fond memories of her debut film Isabella, which Pang directed almost 20 years ago— which also amazes Leong when she realizes how fast/much time has passed. I was also amazed at how she remembered the tracking of the shot, all the more amusing when both clips were put together for contrast.

In 2020, she appeared on Ann Hui’s Love After Love, which was available to watch on MUBI in some territories, and might be available on places like Netflix or Prime, depending on your territory. Now, she’s part of the most recent Dante Lam HK film starring William Chan and Nick Cheung, titled Bursting Point (爆裂點) [Trailer], which I’ve mostly heard positive things about.

Since her teenaged (!!!) sons already give her enough time to move about life, she’s been a lot more active at events and, if you follow her on Instagram, photoshoots. Which finally gets me the reason I was writing this post- she’s the first cover of 2024 for the Condé Nast Traveler China edition, which is a luxury travel magazine based in New York.

I checked their website to see who was the photographer of the shoot, but it looks like they haven’t updated that since their May 2023 issue was published (relatable). Editorial director Shawn Ong only mentions their collaboration with Eastern & Oriental Express Southeast Asia in prep for the launch of their luxury train in two different seasonal routes. The train interiors look (and photograph) amazing. They’re elegant, colorful and textured without looking overwhelming [1][2][3].

However, this is not a travel blog. I took these bad screencaps of some of my favorite shots.

Director Ong’s post features many more pictures, in case anyone’s interested. My favorite is this out of focus one. lol

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.

So I did this.

Na hosh chale
Na junoon chale
Dil par kiska qanoon chale

Tu jaan meri
Meri jaan hai tu
Chal jaise ragon mein khoon chale

Tu kya hai
Kya ehsas hai tu
Ehsas ka koi wajood nahi

Main kaise tujhe chhu leta hu
Jab samne tu maujuud nahi

Ae jaan meri
Meri jaan hai tu
Chal jaise ragon mein khoon chale

Palko ki chhaon dhundta hu
Main teri nazar ki dhoop tale
Uss pyaase ka kya hoga bataa
Jo sabnam ke paataal pai palin

Ae jaan meri
Meri jaan hai tu
Chal jaise ragon mein khoon chale

Full version of the audio is available here.

Vishal’s version (labeled as “Film Version”) is slightly different after the first chorus, so might share in separate post.

Translations to English would be appreciated.

Continue Reading…

… is Amy.

I asked the collective conscious who the biggest Yu Aoi fan was, and it pulled this up.

I’ll take it.

Amy is the biggest Yu Aoi fan.

Oh, wow. Look at this ridiculously good-looking photo of Dita Von Teese. What a face. What a shot. Bless Beau Nelson for this shot.

credits to Dita Von Teese’s FB, who -by the way- won’t let me access her Linktree because it says it goes against community standards. Facebook has become insane. It was bad before, now it’s worse. It’s almost nearly unusable now.

Color of Yu

January 18, 2022 — 1 Comment

Hi, guys!

Long time, no see! I found these new photos of Yu-chan the other day, when my computer broke down. I finally managed to get through that hard disk.

These are done by Mana Yamamoto for Lula Magazine [2][3].

It took a while, but

Happy 1000th fan!

If you aren’t following the list yet, you might discover a gem or two!

My only Letterboxd anticipated message came in the other day, but I took a little bit longer to post because the better side of my OCD got to me.

But here it is!

I went on a Stephen Chow binge, and got to watch a bunch of Hrishikesh Mukherjee films for MUBI. Not to be the Debbie Downer of the terrible 2020, but I hope 2021 picks up. This is the first time in my movie-watching history that I only have one single 4-star rating in my Year Films Ranked list. Two titles if you consider Marona’s Fantastic Tale.

This 2021, I have decided to shut off social media and restart blogging once again. It doesn’t matter if it’s into a blackhole of information. I’ve started with this Spanish translation of a review for Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dhadakne Do, since the film is in rotation at the Indian entertainment channel ZeeMundo. We also have a proper Spanish title for Haider (!).

So Long, My Xiami

January 6, 2021 — Leave a comment

Greetings, my fellow lurkers, if you are lurking still. Knowing that I haven’t updated anywhere and I’m hardly active on social media, I just wanted to say that I haven’t died and haven’t been swallowed by the Earth. I hope 2020 didn’t wreck you, and that 2021 finds you in a more… calm path.

As I sit here making plans of wanting to do a lot of things, and then getting nowhere, I reminisce the days of internet freedom when roaming through websites was like the wild west. And that’s when I discovered Xiami— according to WP word search find, the earliest mention of the music site on the blog dates back to 2010… with an even older mention of forgotten HaoTing. lol Since then, over a decade ago and many an indie Chinese music discovery, Xiami had been part of my daily life for thousands and thousands of days.

I took a screencap for posterity! My Xiami account was supposed to last until the end of the year, and then an extra 4 months.

So it is with great sadness, but hardly any surprise, that I report that Xiami will be no more… on February 5th this year, to mark my 35ths birthday, nonetheless. End of an era for my music streaming, end of the era… of my youth, I suppose. With my only consolation prize that a lot of Chinese music is already available on not only iTunes and Spotify, but also on YouTube. I just need to re-find them and subscribe to whatever their channels are. It will be, of course, a lot more difficult to discover brand new Chinese music.