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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……………….

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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.

1000 Days of Xiami

October 10, 2016 — 1 Comment

I’m about to clock 1000 days on Xiami logins xD

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Sad for this excitement, I know. LOL But I get obsessive-compulsive over these things easily. I took a screen grab because I don’t know whether the count will reset to zero or continue. Back in March when I went to Japan, I told my friend to login for me, so I don’t lose my clocked days, and there was a weird bug that made the counter go back to zero, so we thought for a while that it was done. A couple of days later, it went back to normal :P

I’ve been using Xiami for a lot longer, of course. And gone are the days when you could find everything on the site for stream and download :P Though you can still find stuff and download, it’s often the case when albums are empty. Recently, Xiami has taken to just be able to stream music (which is better than having blank albums), without download capabilities— Faye Wong’s most recent track is only available for stream, so you gotta find it elsewhere if you want it. The site is still a great source for Chinese music, especially from the independent scene. However, now Xiami-approved artists are allowed to mark their music as only-Mi tracks, meaning that you have to have Xiami credit on your account and not download music from your VIP free-tracks perk or use your red envelopes (points).

Having said that~~~ I have like +500 points (you get points for single days and months counted, albums added and music shared, etc.) and haven’t used them in so long. What the heck~ What are the perks of the VIP account if you still gotta pay for the Chinese music that you download; at least make it so that you use twice or thrice the # of downloads for those.

I still haven’t figured out what the note reputation is (eg. Re*), but I’m just a few hundred away from reaching the other level. Increasing my stars is a little trickier because English reviews don’t get as many likes or comments. lol

Also~ OMO! 1000 days on the 10 of 10. xD

Yo~ that’s one heck of a great teaser for an upcoming album. Looks and sounds epic.

The best? Kent gets us, songs are available for stream on YouTube. Thank you so much~

Looks like the album is available everywhere on iTunes but the US xD

Last October I reported about Yu-chan returning to the leading-lady gig with Daigo Matsui’s AZUMI HARUKO wa Yukuefumei (アズミ・ハルコは行方不明). Twitter has just shown me a first still. There’s also a music video by Ishizaki Huwie (石崎ひゅーい) titled Flower Vase (花瓶の花, Kabin no Hana) attached to the press release on natalie.mu, but it’s geo-blocked :*(

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I don’t know what Sony is doing. But it’s effing it up, I just know it. Head over to YAM Magazine for the full rant and all track/MV info. I’m just going to put this video on here, and bask myself on the beauty of the music.

We all thought Henry Zuo released a good album. Goddamn~ Su Yunying just blew it out of the park~~~ I know it’s not ideal (physical buy is always the best), but do buy the album on iTunes instead of streaming it. xD

So I’m late to the party (as always), and just started watching this year’s season of Sing my Song (中国好歌曲), which has been airing for a couple of weeks. It’s honestly my favorite of these many music contests because it’s new songs. I never ever stay through the actual contest, but… I do enjoy their blind auditions for the surprises!

Episode one, so far, has given me that awkward moment when Laurence Larson 罗艺恒 sings better Mandarin than me… nobody turns for blues singer 黄晓宁 Huang Hsiao Ning which makes David Tao cry (and reminds me of my dad, hence also making me teary), and gives us the meta moment of the night (and probably of the season) when Liu Wei 刘维 sings Because You Are Mavis Fan (因为你是范晓萱), using many Mavis music and lyrics cues, to make Mavis herself cry.

I’m a Mavis fan and I love I Want Us to Be Together to bits, so of course I loved it.

The song is available for download over at QQ (apparently, officially), but you gotta download their APP, sign up for an account (maybe pay to get the 320kbps version)… and for sign up, it’s asking for a mobile number to send a verification code, and I don’t use a phone, so I can’t sign up [Hipster First World Problems]~~~ so I only got myself a 128kbps from somewhere murky on the net LOL. If you happen to get the 320kbps one, do share it with me pretty please.

And it’s not like EVERYTHING is available on iTunes. On time.

Anupama Chopra’s Film Companion just published their interview with Anushka Sharma, where she talks about being an actress in the Indian film industry, Hollywood gender numbers, being a producer and a public figure. It all comes down to the simple~

At the end of the day you want respect.

It’s a big on the long side (33min. long), but it’s worth it. Anushka is really outspoken and it’s great to listen to with her back and forth with Anupama.

I like these one-on-one interviews, especially when you have performance-oriented people. Too bad Nawazuddin Siddiqui doesn’t feel comfortable speaking English- 1. Maybe these Meeting Ground interviews are always in English. 2. If they’re not necessarily in English, I wouldn’t understand a thing he says in Hindi. xD

This time Kangana Ranaut and Irrfan Khan are one-on-one after the commercial success of Tanu Weds Manu Returns and Piku, respectively. In the brief 20min interview, they talk about acting nuances with a super brief Acting 101, as well as people’s obsession with Box Office numbers (in this case, making the 100 crore club), the -now- discerning audience (and the massy one), not longer being a working actor who needs to constantly do movies to make a living, being an outsider, PLUS! the strength and vitriol that is social media.

Happy watching!

On the Box Office obsession and audience talks, it’s a general worldwide problem, you guys. Last year headlines declared How to Train your Dragon 2 a box office flop when it made “just” $50M USD. Joining the $1B USD club is big on studio heads, and having the most profitable franchise is a plus for actors.

The audience everywhere is half and half- good movie don’t make money, bad movies that make loads. The audience and press vitriol on review and social media. They’re not solely Bollywood problems ;)

OH, man~ the things one has to do to get Marit Larsen albums. Spark wasn’t that hard, since it somehow made its way to Amazon, but it seemed so unlikely that When the Morning Comes would show up there again, so I went hunting. It was not a fruitful web-hunt with everyone telling me they did not do international shipping.

More power to friends! Way to go, Julz~

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Marit’s 4th album has finally joined its siblings. It also means Marit’s the only 2014 album I had actively physically purchased so far, beating my 2013 record when I only got BiBi’s Unlock as a present (more yay friends!). However, I did just recently physically purchased Calle 13’s Multiviral considering it was my album of 2014. I’m surprised myself.

I’m a little sad that most (if not all) my purchases are digital.

The end of another era [1][2][3], I suppose~ xD

rapidshare-2008-2015-rip

I had never really been a RapidShare user, though had encountered the site several times over in many of my movie/TV journeys, but they’ve always been a pain for me. It doesn’t surprise me that bandwidth caps (for both free users AND PREMIUM), limited speeds and incredibly annoying waiting times that got longer and longer with captchas decreased users and traffic to finally put it out of business.

The relationship with cloud and file-sharing services with the DMCA or MPAA is a strange one. No matter what these services do to please them, it’ll never be enough.

source.