I was looking for Chulpan Khamatova news (she’s gonna be acting and co-producing a film on the life of writer Vladimir Mayakovsky, if you must know), and ran into news about this short documentary for the Sheredar Foundation [Facebook][Twitter][VK.com] titled The Man from Sheredar (Человек из Шередаря), and it’s got to do with charity work.
I haven’t watched the whole thing (just ran into the subtitled version), but it seems to deal with children with severe illnesses and the rehabilitation they get through this charity fund, which allows over 100 children to get the help they need.
The Vimeo version available is HD but lacks subtitles.
The documentary is also competing at this year’s Kazan International Festival of Muslim Cinema in the category of Documentary, so I don’t know if there’s a longer cut of the film available since it’s not considered Short-length.
National Geographic programming usually shifts from interesting to completely eye-roll worthy, but this particular special on these three particular transgender people — simply titled American Transgender — is something I’ve seen a couple of times. I think that when it first aired, I saw it twice in a row. I think it might have been because LGBT media, especially in regards of transgender people, is just really downright depressing, so it was surprising to see something quite uplifting. I mean, Claire, Jim and Eli are damn lucky and it’s so good to see.
How many times do you get to see a wedding? A boy became a woman, and the girl became a man. They met, fell in love, and got married. How perfect is that? Overcoming struggle, and the importance of the support of family. Fiction will never be as good as that.
While getting acquainted with Chulpan Khamatova’s work, I ran into this video clip of the Arbenina’s song Come to Me (ИДИ КО МНЕ) — and I’ve been polishing my non-existent Russian trying to learn how to pronounce that… Idi Ko Mne. If I apply my Spanish, it sounds like Idi Ko Mie.
The thing is… that Making Of was released back in January, and I wasn’t able to find the actual music video, which makes me think it hasn’t been released yet. I’m not used to that. Korea and Taiwan have spoiled me completely.
About a week ago Nat Geo was showing a new episode of Tabu Latinamerica, which happened to focus on food. One of my favorite subjects. Thinking about food makes me hungry. But this is Tabu, so obviously we weren’t going to be talking about regular food. While the episode focused on Mexico and Venezuela, with their talks on eating rata campestre (countryside rat??? not from the sewers of course) soup, and… some kind of tarantula/spider?
Anyway, part of the episode also focused in Peru, where they showed a town called La Quebrada, in Cañete, they prepare cat. I haven’t eaten cat — at least, not knowingly… though once while we were eating rabbit chicharron, we suspected we had been given cat because the “rabbit” was bigger and had more fat in it — but I’ve eaten a lot of other things. Of course, guinea pig is kind of a regular “bizarre” food, and I guess rabbit is bizarre to some people. Suri (the worm) is also tasty when fried (it’s almost like crispy pork skin), as well as an assortment of fishes~ Including the palometa (which I’ve heard it’s a piranha’s cousin LOL) and paiche. Shark’s fin soup and swallow’s nest soup apply.
It’s kind of always been common knowledge that people ate cats in Peru- my family (and I’m sure many other people) often joked about it, it’s like joking about everything being chicken, or eating the insides of animals — horror movies and 4D jokes are perfect. Let me tell you, thank you Afro-Peruvians for developing Anticuchos. As a Peruvian who has finally learned to eat without asking (much), and not judge cultures by my own point of view, it saddens me to see people’s comments. Especially considering that we’re all Latin Americans.
Does it feel good to call other people ignorant, or small-minded? Is it wrong to eat something just because you think it’s your pet? Is it not wrong that we eat cow so easily when Indians see them as gods? We’re eating their gods, sending them to slaughter houses, and people judge these people because they eat their pets in a non-industrialized way. This is kind of the same issue I had with The Cove [1].
I’m not much into fashion, but I ran into this documentary called About Face: The Supermodel, Then and Now, which featured (besides Isabella Rossellini and Christy Turlington) Carmen Dell’Orefice. I was immediately struck by the shape of her face, the lines that form when she’s posing.
Remember the days back back in the day when MTV was about music videos, and they had a show called Making Of the video before premiering a music video? Remember when they used to announce music videos and it was important? I miss those days…
And even though these music video directors talk about the big budgets given to only top artists, it feels like it’s been ages since I’ve liked a western mainstream music video. The Rihannas and Britney Spears don’t impress me — though, I gotta admit, I didn’t mind that Katy Perry music video for Wide Awake.
I don’t mind Lady Gaga, but her last couple of MVs have been lost to me.
There are some other music videos that are not so mainstream that have indeed peaked my interest… but I’m taking my eye candy — all of it — from crack Kpop music videos. Because… you know When Kpop Went Beyond American Pop.
The 2NE1s, Big Bangs, and other idol groups with their glossy and marvelous candy music videos infect my eyes and earworm into my brain. It’s hard for Korea to actually put some emphasis into their creatives and they should, so we must work with them on that. Otherwise… how will people know about directors Hwang Soo Ah and Cha Eun Taek?
Your music videos matter, Korea. Pull yourself together!
You know, Japan is YouTubizing itself. I didn’t know Asmik Ace had a YouTube channel.
ANYWAY, browsing their uploaded videos I found the trailer for Fukushima Hula Girls (がんばっぺ フラガール!), which has narration by Yu-chan… because, you know, she was a Hula Girl. xD
Is that Yu-chan’s voice in the trailer? Coz… she sounds, so different. If I didn’t know she was doing the narration, I wouldn’t know it’s her voice. This is a new voice… different from the one she uses in CMs, her screaming (Shiro, Raiou) voice, and different from her talking voice. Yu-chan is developing her narration voice.
If there’s a DVD with English subtitles, I will get it to support Hula Girls and Fukushima… coz, was this done to support them? Are we donating money with this? I just realized I have no idea. O_O
Cocaine Unwrapped in a documentary by Rachel Seifert on how cocaine consumption affects South America’s production of drugs.
Agency: Leo Burnett London
Production house: Stink
Postproduction studio: Platige Image
Director: Tomek Bagiński
CG Supervisor: Grzegorz Kukuś
Producer: Agata Socha
Art director/Concept Art: Piotr Jabłoński
Compositing: Alan Uran
Rendering: Mateusz Bargiel, Grzegorz Kukuś
Animatic: Damian Nenow
Modellers: Mateusz Gajewski, Artur Owśnicki
Textures: Bartłomiej Walendziak
Additional Technical Director: Mateusz Popławski
Offline: Adam Kałuski
Conforming: Piotr Popielawski
DOP:: Kamil Pohl
Camera assistant: Maciej Żak
Make-up artist: Monika Bagińska
Cast: Karolina Mann
Here’s the Vimeo link. There’s also a YouTube version available.
