What’s more awesome than just animation? And origami? How about origami-animation? Japanese tissue manufacturer Nepia has a short commercial/PSA/short showcasing origami animals and some stop-motion.
I also made a [nomination] list of all my favorite foreign things of the last decade. If I had included all movies, general suspects would have applied (eg. Children of Men, Dancer in the Dark), but still remains a very ME list. I hope you like the selection, and don’t hesitate in suggesting films to watch.
What is this lady-boner that I got watching Frozen? I really liked The Princess and the Frog (despite Prince Naveen) and wasn’t much of a fan of Tangled (despite Mother Gothel)- Frozen, instead, achieves the perfect balance. And I love love love LOVE Elsa. AND I DIDN’T EVEN SEE the original audio, and I loved it.
Idina Menzel, though, wow. Vocal boner. I do kinda liked the Spanish latino version of the song, Libre Soy [1] performed by Carmen Sarahi, a little bit better in lyrics and meaning, but Menzel’s vocals take the song to unparalleled heights. Can’t wait to get to watch the original audio track.
Elsa… Elsa swings her hips when she walks! And she has a smirk! She feels and is in turmoil and doesn’t seek a man to fix her life. She wants to be left alone, but of course- all she needs is open up her heart to her sister! Of course I love it.
I ran into this clip of Chulpan Khamatova, which I thought was a Behind the Scene voice-over session for some animation, but turns out to be a music video with Khamatova (alongside Andrei Makarevich, Vyacheslav Butusov and Sergei Makovetsky) singing. Multi-talented, I tell you [1].
The song is called My Letin (Мы летим) — which translates to We Fly — and is a song included in the series Flying Animals (Летающие звери, Letayushtie Zveri), an animated charity series that aims to aid children with their treatments with the show’s profits. They don’t ask for money, they generate it by selling their products.
I almost forgot checking out this new video that’s popped up, by Russian alt rock band Neschastny Sluchai (Несчастный Случай) — Khamatova ice-skated to one of their songs #12 — and their new music video for the song Suyeta Suyet (Суета Сует) which translates as something like Vanity of Vanities, perhaps?
The music video is in the style of Her Morning Elegance [1] or Leessang’s Turned of the TV [MV] or maybe Monsieur Perine’s Cou Cou [MV], and it was directed by Russian animator Sergey Merinov (Сергей Меринов) [YouTube].
The video stars Aleksey Kortnev (Алексей Кортнев), whom I just recently found out voiced Jack Skellington in the Russian dubbed version of The Nightmare Before Christmas; as well as -obviously- Chulpan Khamatova. ;P
This also gives me reason to talk about other Khamatova music video projects~ Apparently, the music video for Arbenina’s Idi Ko Mne [1] still hasn’t been released. Add to that: DDT’s Gde My Lyetim (Где мы летим) [MV], which apparently translated to something like Where We Fly. I’m still fuzzy on Russian grammar.
I was finally doing some room cleaning, and ran into this plastic bag that had a whole bunch of the tickets of movies I caught while living/staying in Van. The results? Of course, I spent over two hours trying to make out some of the fade tickets, arranged them and put them in order of attendance.
The first movie that I caught there was Hulk at what used to be Tinseltown Cinemark. The first two columns cover my first year of studies. My maximum number of movies a month was 9 flicks in January 2004 (Cold Mountain, Big Fish, Peter Pan, 21 Grams, Along Came Polly, Monster, Butterfly Effect, The Cooler and Ginger Snaps 2), April 2004 (Hellboy, The Delicate Art of Parking, Kill Bill, Connie and Carla, Home on the Range, The Punisher, Dogville (twice) and Man on Fire), followed by July 2006 (Devil Wears Prada, The Omen,The Lake House, The King, PotC 2, Lady in the Water, Strangers with Candy, and an unidentified movie that’s already faded) with 8 flicks.
When I was little — maybe between the ages of 4 and 6 — I used to watch a really worn out tape (maybe transferred from a Betamax tape to a VHS one) about a huge furry green alien whose name was Muzzy- Big Muzzy. Many years later, many courses of English after and once the internet became a reliable search tool, I came to learn that the movie… a BBC educational video, was called Muzzy in Gondoland, though I knew it as “The Big Muzzy Story.”
As a Spanish speaker, I don’t recall ever understanding English growing up. Though I had some games and watched some animated shorts and movies in English, I don’t think the language ever registered as a language. I recall I was dreadful at it in school until I turned 10 or so and began attending classes after school. I’ve been speaking English more than half my life already, and it’s the language I primarily work in. I read, write, listen to… and consume most of my media in English. I don’t think I dream 100% in the language, but I’m known for having dreams I don’t understand — I don’t think I’ve dreamed in Mandarin, but I’ve had chunks of them in Japanese and most notable in Korean, even though my Korean abilities reach the levels of greetings, the random “I miss you,” or “this is my friend,” as well as the very helpful “I’m hungry” or “my tummy hurts.” I can also request things with the very useful three-year-old Korean level phrase of “item- chuseyo” LOL
The preferable term would be “cookie” though I’m sure Muzzy would prefer clocks or parking meters.
Anyway, I found two copies of Muzzy in Gondoland. The one that’s split in 8 segments has the original audio I remember as a child. While this version that lasts 2.30hr seems to have different voices for Sylvia, Bob The Gardener and Covax. I’m 50/50 on the voice of the Queen.
Apparently there are updates in different languages like French, Mandarin and Spanish redone in basic 3D with segments in Flash. Have been watching the French one, and they’ve omitted the fact that the Queen is fat. Obviously because it’s not politically correct to call someone fat nowadays, and the Queen does so in the adjective section. Plus, the King flatly calls her fat with the exclamation “You are fat!” which obviously is kind of ridiculous. LOL
I really can’t remember exactly when I started out the Top Flicks About Chicks list on MUBI, but it must have been around the same time I wrote how Chick Flicks was a doomed genre in regards of critics. So it might be almost 4 years… and I’ve finally reached 300 titles in the list!!!
A Chick Flick should center on little girls, girls, young women and women… as students, as neighbors, as friends, as daughters, as granddaughters, as sisters, as mothers, as lovers. They are simply women. With that alone, we can tell all sort of other stories that have little to do with romantic comedies.
The purpose of the list, of course, was to encompass an array of female character — not only in the binary sense, since the list also includes men/boys who identify as women/girls… and viceversa — of various cultural, ethnic, social backgrounds. Not favoring one genre over the other, not valuing dramas over comedies… just simple stories about different women.
Though I’m sure the list could be longer, that’s 300 feature length films out of the 2896 (counting shorts) currently rated on the site- that’s roughly 10% so I suppose the list could expand to up to 500 or maybe 1000 once I reach 5000 or 10000 rated films on the site.
1. Treeless Mountain 2. Welcome to the Dollhouse 3. Juliana 4. Labyrinth 5. Fuckin’ Amal 6. Mirrormask 7. Gun Hill Road 8. Pariah 9. Bend it like Beckham 10. Swing Girls 11. The Land of the Deaf 12. Sunny 13. Whip It 14. Stoker 15. Maria Full of Grace 16. Breaking the Waves 17. My Marlon and Brando 18. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days 19. Dil Bole Hadippa! 20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 21. Kotoko 22. Violeta Went to Heaven 23. Skin 24. Raise the Red Lantern 25. Incendies
I picked 25 of the 300 films to illustrate some of the variety (I hope it’s AS varied as I intend the list to be), though I ran out of picks and couldn’t include any of the ‘older’ female characters. If I could pick 5 more, they’d be: Lemon Tree, Frozen River, Late Bloomers, Mother, For 80 Days.
