I was wondering about my rather quick faded interest in Min Hyorin, and just found out she just signed a new contract with JYP [1]. I hope that doesn’t mean less interest in movies and more focus in music, because- Buah~ wasted potential there, because look:
BiBi did a rendition of Mavis Fan & 100%’s Who Gives a Damn What Song Is On (管他什麼音樂) [MV] in a mash-up with ABBA’s Thank You for the Music that everyone loved landing her in the #2 position behind GEM.
Frankly, I wasn’t completely feeling her version of the Mavis Fan song, because- DUH! Mavis Fan sings it best. It’s an attitude, nothing about the voice. But I’m sick and tired of people complaining about BiBi- when I love her arrangement to highlight her voice, they say it’s boring. When she delivers this type of performance, they say she can’t sing. Worse yet! They complain her voice is nasal. WTF, BiBi’s voice is the complete opposite of nasal, people generally confuse it with a male’s voice!
Get a grip and take a chill pill.
… and Esquire Magazine likes covers with women shaving their fake beards.
I don’t like Sonam Kapoor. Seeing her name on a movie I’m about to watch (or should be in queue) elicits a groan from me, as it happened with Bhaag Milkha Bhaag or Delhi-6, which I must admit was successful and made me not hate her so much. But I’m also not madly in love with Fan Bingbing, so there.
Though I do think that Fan Bingbing is a better actress than Sonam Kapoor, I did find something that the two of them have in common. They’re both fashion ladies. Now they also have photos shaving their fake masculinity, with Sonam being photographed by Rohan Shrestha for… whoever the heck knows this is for.
Facebook has always been crappy with most image uploads that aren’t necessarily photographs uploaded onto their albums. Forget uploading clear shapes and illustrations without adding noise to them, they’ll look pretty hideous. [example]
Recently, I noticed that Twitter had changed it’s picture upload to include the ‘:large’ suffix once you enlarge a photo to see its (Twitter max) full size. However, I also noticed a change in the way pictures are uploaded and that clear shapes and chunks of colors (hence illustrations) were also uploading in some dreadful quality. [example]
They’re especially rough on reds.
On the contrary, Weibo (instead of saying ‘a Chinese Twitter-like version’ let’s call it ‘Twitter on Steroids’) does a super (and I do mean SUPER) crisp upload, plus adding the customary Weibo URL, username and Weibo logo fix. No one can beat them. The only (kinda) sad thing about the modifications in the Weibo picture upload is that with implementations of galleries (that Facebook has also implemented not long ago), people have stopped making image collages.
If more people I knew were on Weibo, I’d be more active there.
BiBi placed last this episode. WHATEVER. I’ve already explained my opinion on people’s voting and how faulty the democratic system can be (specially on reality television and competitions). All that matters is that BiBi sang a GREAT arrangement of David Tao’s Black Tangerine (黑色柳丁).
It was around 9 years ago when my friend introduced me to David Tao via Ghost (鬼) and Black Tangerine, and I’ve never regretted it since. Then I discovered BiBi via the Beijing Olympics, learned about the Chinese music scene and the rest has been history. My relationship to Black Tangerine is a very strong one, and I’m usually not one for covers of great songs, but that was a great fresh arrangement. It was the song and it wasn’t — both at the same time. It was like listening to it once again and discovering it all over again.
That’s a great feeling to have.
It doesn’t matter if you placed last in this show, BiBi. You can very well go home knowing you did an amazing arrangement of a great song.
I have far too many audience discrepancy, it seems. For some reason, people believe that the performance I liked the least (an admittedly funny but kinda cringe-worthy latinesque rendition of The Little Tigers (小虎隊) Green Apple Paradise (青蘋果樂園)) has been BiBi’s best performance. Okay.
So far, BiBi’s managed to escape elimination, but she’s been quite inconsistent with her placing. She’s literally been all over. In here she’s in the bottom half with a rendition of Jacky Cheung’s Slowly (慢慢) that almost made people cry… once again.
Happy Chinese New Year y’all!
Here’s my Voice of China 2 fave gurl Yao Bei Na singing an epic number for CCTV’s annual Spring Gala Festival, proving (once again) that The Voice of China voters don’t know how to vote. Such terrible exercises on the democratic system as well as the selected democratic system, LOL.
Other notable numbers on the 4hr show:
The performance by Attraction, the Hungarian shadow theater. If you ever wondered where Sophie Marceau was, she was celebrating the Chinese New Year in China with a performance of La Vie en Rose with Liu Huan [1], and the example of what Chinese people think is flexibility.
Also, there’s an official YouTube Channel for the Spring Festival Gala now.
I knew I enjoyed All About Love and A Simple Life, so I had some of Ann Hui’s filmography on my to-watch list that I’ve been going through for my Best of the Decade post. It turned out I LOVED The Way We Are, Boat People blew me away, and The Goddess of Mercy made me squee for Zhao Wei some more.
With the release of this prettyful poster for Ann Hui’s dream project The Golden Era (黄金时代), which supposedly has taken her 40 years to fulfill [1], the movie has just shot right up to my most expected movies.
‘Tis a thing of beauty.
Everyone is freaking crying. Tears rolling down their eyes because BiBi is performing a Mavis Fan song called Cried (哭了), and BiBi keeps bringing it vocally despite some fierce competition from Luo Qi (罗琦, dubbed China’s First Rock Girl) and her performance of I Look Forward To (我期待) [clip], as well as GEM’s own interpretation of Mavis’ I Want Us to Be Together (我要我們在一起) [clip].
I obviously have a bias. G.E.M’s performance was pretty good but the song is a rocking one to start. She kept it to the good standard and gave it a spin. People were bawling with BiBi’s performance. Performance-wise, I’ll take G.E.M and vocally, it’s gotta be my gurl.
My dad would’ve approved.
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.
