Archives For brown eyed girls

Now this is what we can call a comeback COMEBACK, not a regular Kpop Comeback. xD Years since their last album, Basic back in 2015, Brown Eyed Girls went their personal projects way— GaIn and JeA with solo music, Miryo releasing singles and participating on Unpretty Rapstar, and Narsha with varieties as well as getting married~

It’s good to have them BACK!

If you want to support Brown Eyed Girls’ RE_vive album cover compilation, you can order it at Ktown4u where it counts for Hanteo Sales. Album comes out on the 30th. YesAsia also carries the album with the poster tube, and without it.

Mamamoo has officially become the group with most albums in my music collection— officially 8 albums; but honestly it’s 9 albums (with a double Purple edition), plus a SolGam tape, a SolGam LP, two kihno kits, a DVD and a BR of Moosical. LOL

Once upon a time, there were five albums by P!nk, but there were also six albums by the BackStreet Boys, six Hanson albums, six Westlife albums, four turned to five Marit Larsen albums, five Salyu-related albums, five albums eventually turned to seven by BiBi [it became viral on Weibo xD], seven albums by Shiina Ringo, seven albums by Bjork— altogether, I have 6 Brown Eyed Girls-related albums but that’s three albums, a fancy collectible repackage and two GaIn minis. Phew.

Also~

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goran kudasai, dozo~

Bless their hearts.

Mamamoo and being a Moomoo has made me realize that I should be a better fan to my idols, so I’ve been reconnecting with my Everlasting roots. Bless Brown Eyed Girls, bless JeA, bless Miryo, bless Narsha and bless GaIn. They were my original favorites back when I got into Kpop, but never had enough to really get into them. I swear, if there was a MamamooTrans version of BEG back then, I would totally be a hardcore Everlasting.

BEG are so SO funny, I’ve been recently watching their Mepsi appearance, and I don’t even have an interest in makeup or actually get half the show since it’s a mix of Korean with Chinese subs, and my makeup-beauty Chinese vocabulary is poor. LOL I caught a glimpse of them learning Mandarin and I couldn’t resist, though. I’m usually a JeA racoon-leader stan [1][2], but I’ve gotten acquainted with my new-found love for Miryo. I really lost it when she try telling her model that she’d be doing her eye makeup, but came out as “Wo EYE Ni” xD

Then there was their presentation on Weekly Idol, of course. Weekly Idol was one of the shows that got me into Mamamoo as well, and I remember watching BEG’s and finding it hilarious. They can be so much alike in their Random Play, but also comically true Adult-dols, especially JeA and Narsha asking for Red Ginseng and Oriental Raisin Water xDDDDDDD

Of course I’m still hung up on the perfection that was Sixth Sense, I do not regret buying the regular version AND the collector repackage. It’s really my most precious BEG possession.

Also! Request for having a show with Mamamoo or BEG where they learn a language. There’s actually several shows on NHK where idols/actors learn French, Spanish and Chinese (and various English language shows), so this can totally be a concept.

Biases, biases everywhere!

I don’t really follow Chae Ri-na, but even she’s super hilarious too! And, damn~ I missed Kahi. And damn~ Narsha the instigator. Damn, Hyori’s variety skills [1][2][3]. Damn, my Family Outing heart. I’ve had so many feels with Hyori’s Comeback -especially Black [MV] with subbed lyrics- and her Comeback Stage at Show Champion. And the crowning of IU, and the looking at the Mamamoo kids.

I had a wild week~

Here it is! My final list of 2016~

I usually post my Top50 right after my Music Highlights, but my schedule has been all wonk this year. I know I’m very inactive on this blog, but I still hope the very few of you that still visit the site had a wonderful holiday week and that you are having a blast this New Year’s Eve. I wish for y’all’s good fortune this coming 2017 because we know we’ve had a rough 2016. Let us all recharge, and cross fingers for some very need good vibes~

Leave y’all with the link~

I’m not a social media fan, though I do spend a lot of time posting links on the YAM Magazine Twitter account. Less active on Facebook, though I regularly use my own profile. No Instagram or any other site. I’m mostly active on movie websites— still active on IMDb, because they make searching for stuff easier [year, country, language, etc. filters], still active on MUBI (and helping with profiles and database submissions), and Letterboxd coz they help keeping an orderly diary of movie-watching.

No longer have music sites, and Living Social FB apps have long gone.

I’ve always been reluctant in creating new profiles, new accounts, new emails and different passwords. However, my level of obsession with Mamamoo has reached such point that I finally logged in V Live with my real-life identity, and though I’ve only left like 3 or 4 comments (so far), I’m a Level 5. Each artist you follow starts with a Level 1, adding points by watching videos, leaving comments and who knows what else, but I digress~~~ I wanted to comment on V Live as a platform. I’m amazed by it. I don’t exactly know why. I’ve seen countless of web stream concerts [1][2], I’ve seen a couple of Facebook Live sessions, but somehow V Live sessions make me feel closer to artists.

Of course, they can start a random session just like in Facebook, though FB is always a 1:1 ratio, no? There’s comments, and the artist can actually reply to your comments, which is something V Live doesn’t have since comments are live, they scroll as they keep coming just like in a YouTube stream. But YouTube streams always seem so impersonal, more like online TV broadcasts, which is actually GREAT for TV broadcasts [KBS World 24][KBS World]. Add to V Live multi-camera broadcast, HD quality, multilingual subtitles and there’s just this added something to it.

I recently saw Brown Eyed Girls’ JeA’s Orgel Live with JOKER, a 50-min multi-camera phone shot in portrait. I didn’t watch it live, because the show began at 6AM, but the replay was available quite fast — in probably just a few couple of hours — with subtitles in English, Chinese, Viet and Korean; and available auto-translate for others like Spanish. They started reading some of the comments, I lamented not being able to say hi to JeA [this is what I’m talking about], and proceeded to perform a couple of songs, while also going through the live comments.

Fans are also allowed to give ‘hearts.’ Though, I haven’t actually figured out how to give hearts (it’s not by clicking the heart icon, lol), I supposed it’s just pasting hearts in the comments, and that’s why users can give multi-hearts all around. Since a video can have 200k views and one million hearts. :P

And apparently, if you have the V Live App, you can chat with your faves. I don’t have mobile, so……………….

jea-joker-live-v-live

If you could do this for movies, it’ll be amazing. About 8 years ago, I wrote a proposal for screening movies like this xD but I didn’t know how to go through with it. Imagine you have a screening event, fans gather online 30min. before the movie begins, they chat among them. The movie streams, and afterwards there’s an online Q&A with the cast/crew. Because videos from the Q&A and the movie to be screened are different video sources, you can only have the Q&A available for replay instead of the movie.

See? Someone make it happen.

Mina-san! Genki? Ha!

Forgive the complete absent from the blog recently (two entries last month, and this is the first one this month!), I’ve been generally “more busy” updating the MUBI (the site formerly known as The Auteurs lol) database than even actually keeping up with news (trailers/music) on YAM Magazine or watching movies and shows. I’ve also been occupied watching Korean shows, which tend to make everyone procrastinate. And it’s not like it was priority-watching, either~ I’ve been watching Solar and Eric Nam’s We Got Married episodes, but my favorite watch and re-watches was Mamamoo x GFRIEND’s Showtime.

I don’t actually stan GFRIEND, and I already have biases. Bless.

moonbyul-sinb-new-girl-crush

Bless, SinB. Bless SinB with Moonbyul, Bless New Crush Star. LOL

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I ran into this video on YouTube from the Off the Great Wall channel, and they got a bit of flack over the fact that a vast majority of their picks (3 picks for each of the four speakers) were East Asians xD — only one South Asian pick, because Aishwarya has to be everywhere xD, and then there were the Asian-American (Lucy Liu, I don’t think she’s mixed… is she? And she makes it twice~), the Euro-Asian (but basically) Asian-Americans (Maggie Q + Olivia Munn), and (off the official list) the Euro-Asian (Thai-Swede Praya Lundberg).

The thing is beauty is such a subjective element- whatever floats your boat depends on who you are, cultural background, upbringing, etc. But I do agree with Dan (though he doesn’t apply his own rule when it comes to Munn) — especially when making lists — Staying Power is important.

So I do agree 100% that Gong Li deserves that spot. She’s fabulous and continues to be even more fabulous… In Bollywood talk, Gong Li basically started her career doing de-glam roles in banned Zhang Yimou movies. She was a villager so often, wife of gangsters; and in her 40s, she became an Empress. That’s the complete opposite of the typical Bollywood heroine. She hasn’t been acting much, but a couple of years ago she romanced Andy Lau in a sick powersuit, and just a year or two ago broke everyone’s heart as the wife of a writer during the Cultural Revolution. This year? She’s the baddie in one of the blockbusters on this season- The Monkey King 2. And yeah~ she still looks as fabulous as ever at 50 years old.

Besides staying power? Talent, especially when it comes to celebrities, you know? Someone that can do their job like no other? Interview (variety show appearace) perception is a big plus, but CV is important.

But sometimes, so it happens, I also break my own rules~ lol

Also~ my Pakistan, South East Asian, Middle East and Russian games are not strong. Neither is my Asian-Latino game. So forgive the lack of names there, and I do take suggestions (especially if they come with great movie recommendations~~~).

All below listed by seniority~

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They all come to me~ xD

Bjork, Miyavi, Big Bang, JeA~ Too bad I don’t have my dad to be my music companion :( He would’ve loved seeing Laura Marling in a cozy musical setting. He was that kind of person. We would also be waiting for Adele, Shiina Ringo and Faye Wong. lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ta7OMbqfVc