According to searches, you just can’t get enough of 4th-Highest-Paid-Actress-Worldwide and Only-Woman-of-Color-in-the-list (yet the palest of them all) Fan Bingbing… so here she is in all her visual glory for the latest Vogue Taiwan shot by the wonderful Sun Jun [1].
Look at that gorgeous cape and fabric!
Catch the rest of the photoshoot at Aiya!
ESPN has been re-broadcasting the best bits of the Sochi Olympics, and in true Winter Olympics nature, la creme de la creme of winter sports is usually women’s skating. It’s hard to pin-point what the most popular event at the Summer Olympics is (is it football? volleyball?), but the women who skate are the queens of the gala.
This year, there was a rather nasty controversy between eventual Gold-medalist Adelina Sotnikova (back then only 17) and eventual Silver-medalist and retiring Kim Yuna. The name-calling online got ugly and tiring, proving once again that -as a general rule- fans can suck so much. I can imagine what a cesspool YouTube commenting would be like if it didn’t require Gmail account linkups.
As far as the skating goes, I was dazzled when Kim Yuna won Gold at the Vancouver Olympics, where she skate for her life with such delicacy and grace. In Sochi, though, as much as she could have been pitch perfect in technique (we all do admit skating looks effortlessly when she does it), I was a bit bored. Then again, I’m just a fan who’s never picked up a pair of ice-skates in her life. I’ve never seen a frozen lake or ever stepped on an ice rink before. I’m just mostly disappointed of her fans.
Sotnikova’s choreography, however, surprised me the first time I saw it, and still manages to thrill me to no end. During my second time watching, I thought I might have been influenced by the ESPN Latino commentator who was pretty darn excited with her program, so I decided to look it up-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrVL5tM926s
Still gives me the chills.
In honor of the release of Haider today/tomorrow and me not being able to watch it until it hits the DVD/Bluray shelves… or EROSNOW (or someone else) decides to VOD it early or *cough*… I had been curating a YouTube playlist of all the music sequences -choreographed or not- (and item songs or special apperances) in Tabu’s filmography, which has resulted in a list of over 83 clips (est: 6 hours) from Tabu’s participation not only in Hindi films, but also Telugu, Tamil… and the random Malayalam clip that I was able to find.
The list has time to expand with rarer to find clips, I suppose, including (at least) one or two more clips for Idee Sanghati, as well as other regional movies that aren’t on YouTube. There are also clips that are included in their dubbed version (with the original title and the language they’re on), because the original audio isn’t available… as well as repeated clips in better resolutions than their “official” uploads.
Li Bing Bing looks all regal in this shoot for the just-around-the-corner issue of l’Officiel China under the magic lens and post mumbo-jumbo of photographer Sun Jun (孙郡). See, I’m trying to be a good fandom blogger. With a quick search, you’ll find SunJun’s Weibo and Portfolio.
More images of this shoot on Cfensi, and Sun Jun’s Weibo [1][2]
The other day I caught a rerun of Moulin Rouge! on tv, and this is the first time I’ve lived it — I not only sing out loud, but recite as well as cry during the whole show… so, yeah~ I LIVE IT — since I started watching Indian films. The only thing that would make that movie better is to have had Urmila in there for the Chamma Chamma [clip] sample.
You can’t really get any more Indian -near masala levels- than this, and of course my mind had to have a Battle of the Courtesans between Satine, The Sparkling Diamond and Chandramukhi. It’s a visual battle between Baz Lurhman and Sanjay Leela Bhansali, a flawless duel between Nicole Kidman and Madhuri Dixit, and a fight for the dramatic between Moulin Rouge! and Devdas.
On one side, you got the courtesan manipulated to stay that falls in love with the mistaken penniless writer, until she finds out the evil duke will kill her loved one- oh, and she’s dying of tuberculosis. On the other, the courtesan lives in a mysteriously super posh and luxurious whorehouse, and is the most sought after until she falls in love with the rich lawyer who’s suffering of a broken heart and likes to get drunk to forget his sorrows… that is, of course, until he dies of liver failure after a long period of continuous intoxication.
Jesus, Chandramukhi. Forget, Devdas, and elope with Christian.
I’ve been binging on Madhuri Dixit clips once again because it’s her birthday! I’ve been watching her clips from Devdas multiple times just tonight- I think this is the first time I decided to search for the clips in the best resolution possible. This is the first time I catch the EROSNOW 1080 clips, so I just noticed how cleaned up the image is- like, this is the first time I’m seeing the Devdas print without the orange tint. LOL
So… if EROS has the cleaned up print in high resolution~~~ why the heck aren’t they’re releasing it on Bluray already? I’ve only seen the film once, but it looks odd without the weird coloring… like they cleaned it up and color corrected it wrong. xD Anyway, I’ve settled for a lot of Hindi DVDs already — the YRF DVDs are particularly decent — but I won’t settle for less from Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Being able to just stream the movie is not enough either!
Because look at her! She owns it, and you sorta wish SRK wasn’t overacting so much in it because he’s ruining my mood in here. And I’ve learned to love SRK, but come on!
With that song~ Maar Dala~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX1ro0AJk_I
How can I not add the pretty of that to my collection? PLEASE!
Don’t make me do questionable things for high resolution video!
… or what I think it’s an upcoming issue of Filmfare, anyway.
I just ran into this lovely photo from the Filmfare editor’s Twitter account [1][2], and if you zoom into the images, you sorta can read those first two pages. Otherwise, I did a search and found nothing yet. According to the main quote, the most note-worthy thing Tabu said was “Apart from a child, a man can give me diamonds,” which is not, considering that she says she wanted to learn ballet. Now THAT is interesting!
In general, prima ballerinas are thought to be small… though that is apparently changing now that people are taller. Imagine a danseur that is 5’11 or 6 feet tall with a prima ballerina that is only 5’2. If Tabu had problems with her height in an industry that could pull off camera tricks, I can’t imagine if she had follow through with ballet.
Other notable comments from the images were the ones she made about her moving from Hyderabad to Mumbai. It’s interesting because it goes so in contrast to her early interviews. And she hasn’t read Shakespeare. I hated reading unfiltered-yet-translated Shakespeare in school. LOL Anyway, having said all of that, Haider is really one of my anticipated films this year :)
Oh-oh, and she wants to do an action film where she does her stunts. While watching Jai Ho, I wanted her to go all Mama Bear before she had to call Salman- like, THAT would have made the movie actually a lot better. It wouldn’t have made sense with anything in her current backstory, but they could’ve made it work. Tabu just hitting bad guys.
*May22’14 Update*
I could see why some people would think Meenaxi was a self-indulgent movie, but who am I to deny myself the self-indulgence of a lens focused solely on Tabu? Beautiful cinematography with a soundtrack by A.R Rahman to top it all off. I can’t. I could watch this film forever.
Oh, gosh. It hurts just to look at all this gorgeousity.
Some very beautiful images came from the broadcast of the Sochi 2014 Opening, besides the snowflake glitch, but massive prettyful posts seem hard to find. I also couldn’t find any information on the budget for the show.
My Olympics Opening Ceremonies Ranked post has been updated.
Some more photos after the break~
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