Archives For india

L’Oreal Paris has a bunch of brand ambassadors by region, and they all get invited to Cannes; among them, there’s people like Eva Longoria, Aishwarya and Sonam Kapoor, who all end up walking the festival’s red carpet events, just like last year. This time around, they got them all for this commercial that also credits J.Lo and Blake Lively, even though I don’t really spot them in it.

Those who do make it and aren’t listed, however, include Aishwarya, Sonam Kapoor, and the Bingbings– Fan Bingbing and Li Bingbing. That’s on top of Jane Fonda, and everyone’s faves Julianne Moore and Naomi Watts, who all come together to gather round John Legend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkN38gSytHk

The idea of them coming together around Legend gave me vibes of that Lux Soap Commercial that Shahrukh Khan did like a decade ago, which featured Hema Malini, Juhi Chawla, Kareena Kapoor, and Sridevi… but then I watched it again, and that one was grosser. xD La Vie en Rose, at least, is a nice soft tune to give you the feeling of floating in the clouds xD

— EDIT 12Aug’16 —

Here’s the L’Oreal India upload.

Australian upload.

 

Richa Chadha is currently promoting Sarabjit and Cabaret, so she sat down with Anupama Chopra for a lengthy chat. Sit-downs with Anupama usually don’t last this long, but Chadha is great in it– she’s open, witty and entertaining, and manages to make you wish the best for her. I know she’ll probably hate on this, but she reminded me of Tabu on this, for reasons unknown.Just gave me those vibes.

Happy watching!

There’s a really really REALLY good looking photoshoot of Tabu for this upcoming month’s issue of Femina’s Wedding Times that was shot by Jatin Kampani [Instagram][Facebook]. Clothing credits are going to Sandeep Khosla and AJSK (which I’m also supposing is clothing, though I couldn’t find anything on it). I really really love this shot. Would love actual scans of it.

tabu-femina-wedding-times-may16-jatin-kampani

[source][source][screencap source][more images here][and here]

*edited: added more photos*

The first episode/short film, The Road Trip, for Ankur Tewari’s Y-Films web series, Love Shots, has finally been released. And it’s awesome. It’s kinda sad that YRF has to put so much great talent on the web and not on the big screen, but it’s great that they put together such a great list of talent. The first episode has Nimrat Kaur, so we all can get our fix there, alongside Tahir Raj Bhasin who crept everyone out in Rani’s Mardaani. Their chemistry sizzles here. They’re both great.

Promising start for the series~

A new episode will be released every Tuesday until all six shorts are out.

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~

Continue Reading…

My Life in Movies

February 5, 2016 — Leave a comment

Will also keep this updated.

*Updated every February 5th.

Customary MUBI list.

*dies*

It really kills me that this movie is opening a few days after my birthday, and I can’t watch it. WHY DO YOU GUYS DO THIS TO ME?

Sidenote: The Fitoor promotions have brought some interesting interview bits with Tabu- like she wants to be part of Golmaal 4 (I haven’t seen Golmaal, but that’s a Rohit Shetty movie, so… xD), she’s fishing for a comedy, she likes David Dhawan’s type of comedies (which are so 90s comedy style type of not my thing), and wants to do a movie with Govinda… who, if I recall correctly, actually doesn’t like many of the 90s comedy movies he did xD

Comedy is such a particular genre, so difficult to please people.

My type of comedy, I’ve found out, is in the realm of Roxana Avalos, Rosalind Russell, and Sandra Ng. I laugh quite a bit with Hong Kong/Chinese comedies.

Ram-Leela on Ice!

February 4, 2016 — Leave a comment

Ice-skaters Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov did a rendition of Nagada Sang Dhol [clip] in their ice-skating routine (which, apparently, won them a gold medal) that made me want to watch Devdas on Ice~~~ or specifically Dola Re Dola on Ice because I’m like that!

[Original YT link seems to have been removed, the upload available at Volosozhar and Trankov’s performance channel isn’t as good quality as I remember]//240730

As you know~ Russia is big on the ice-skating events, even more so than the Koreans (who had the reality Kim Yu-na’s Kiss & Cry[1]), the Japanese who broadcast ice-skating competitions quite regularly throughout the year, and the Americans (the other day I caught a broadcast of Musselman’s Apple Sauce Family Skating Tribute on ESPN).

I never thought I’d see this fandom crossover. xD

Though Fitoor might get trapped by remaking Alfonso Cuaron’s version of Great Expectations… I’m still looking forward to Tabu as Begum. I’m also looking forward to see Haminasto (aka. also romanized as Haminastu) [YouTube] because it’s my favorite track in the whole soundtrack, even though I’ve been butchering some of the other songs out loud late at night. xD I like the song so much that I ended up looking for Zeb Bangash, found Pakistani duo Zeb and Haniya, discovered Coke Studio [1][2][3][4][5 non-Zeb related], and downloaded the compilations on iTunes [S2][S6].

It messed up my language library because there’s so much Punjabi, Urdu and Pashtu, and Turkish… I don’t know which is which xD

ANWYAY~ OCD frustrations aside~

Fitoor promotions are at full throttle~ and it includes the release of this micro clips of dialog, which I don’t understand at all… but Tabu’s just saying “Firdaus, Firdaus, Firdaus” gives me the chills.

More: Duur, Qubool.

I know… Letterboxd is trying to get me to pay~~~

Though I’m still kinda mad that they reset my movie-view count a few couple of hours before midnight, I do kinda appreciate their stats~

letterboxd-2015-review

Being the obsessive compulsive person that I am, I was kinda disappointed that I didn’t reach my 1000hrs of movie-watching, but was also glad because it turns out I’ve spent like 11% of my year watching movies. That’s like more than a whole month during a year. I’m so glad I’ve taken up exercise while watching movies xD

According to this, my bias Zhao Wei was my Most Watched Actor –though I’m missing actual numbers, I think I saw 8 films with her (including cameos) — and about 6 Anurag Kashyap movies (without the ones he’s produced). That doesn’t match the 23 movies I watched of Tabu in 2014 (LOL), and the 13 movies prior to that.

But overall, these skin-deep newsletter shows a good reflection of my movie-watching~ a little bit Chinese, a little bit Indian, a little bit European, a little bit of animation, and some Taiwanese melancholic rom-com.