Bless my heart~ I’m the only one celebrating 15 years of Shunji Iwai’s All About Lily Chou Chou xD but if you are too, drop me a line! Tell me how much the film has affected your life~ As a celebration, I sat down for a re-watch and a brand new ‘more professional’ review.
I also sat down for my first watch of Shunji Iwai’s latest— A Bride for Rip Van Winkle. It was glorious. At the moment, it’s battling it out with Kubo for my #1 spot~
How dare you, Studio Ghibli, do that this weekend?
It’s my dad’s third year anniversary, and I’m Setsuko in this GIF.
Grave of the Fireflies is remains my favorite animated film, and the only animated film in my overall Top10 favorites.
Shunji Iwai’s neo-classical romance, Love Letter, about the woman who wrote letters to her deceased lover and got responses back, is over 20 years old now since its release. However, its mark as a pop culture reference across Asia is undeniable. In its time, the film made actress Miho Nakayama a household name, and it launched Shunji Iwai’s filmmaking career (and hence has given us: Ayumi Ito and Yu Aoi).
The film’s style and cinematography, courtesy of Noboru Shinoda (RIP) has inspired countless of filmmakers across East Asia who have headed to Otaru (小樽市) or other similar snowy places to capture the essence of the film [cue: 张一白 Zhang Yibai’s segment in Run for Love (奔爱), which featured Eddie Peng and Zhang Ziyi], and the classic (though simple) quote of “o-genki desuka?” (お元気ですか？) [1] has been referenced in various places…
Just look at the members of -relatively new- Kpop group G-FRIEND, who played a round of movie quotes to decide who would be the host of that specific One Fine Day episode’s segment (10 months after their debut). The group is formed by 6 young women, all who were born post-95. In fact, eldest member (and leader of the group), Sowon, was born almost 8 months after the release of Love Letter. But it is member Yuju (’97) who first references the movie with the knowledge of all the group.
So if you put your hands close together to shout out the words “o-genki desuka?” and the person in front answers back the same way with a “atashi genki desu.” That’s a Shunji Iwai shout-out to ya~
Mina-san! Genki? Ha!
Forgive the complete absent from the blog recently (two entries last month, and this is the first one this month!), I’ve been generally “more busy” updating the MUBI (the site formerly known as The Auteurs lol) database than even actually keeping up with news (trailers/music) on YAM Magazine or watching movies and shows. I’ve also been occupied watching Korean shows, which tend to make everyone procrastinate. And it’s not like it was priority-watching, either~ I’ve been watching Solar and Eric Nam’s We Got Married episodes, but my favorite watch and re-watches was Mamamoo x GFRIEND’s Showtime.
I don’t actually stan GFRIEND, and I already have biases. Bless.
Bless, SinB. Bless SinB with Moonbyul, Bless New Crush Star. LOL
‘Tis a thing of pure beauty.
Otherwise known as SamuraiDroneCatIdolSuperhumanRubeGoldbergViewerWarningTooExplosiveHighSchoolGirl (侍ドローン猫アイドル神業ピタゴラ閲覧注意爆速すぎる女子高生) — I don’t exactly know how the translation in English came to being, but in the Japanese, there’s a mention of Pythagora (as in PythagoraSwitch).
Also, obvious dig at Shideido’s commercial.
Just taking the chance to dump all Over Fence images I’ve found in the last couple of weeks~ Cinema Cafe has recently published a couple of new stills from the film, which opens on September 17th.
A few items on Yu Aoi’s upcoming film, which we are calling The Lonely Girl Has Gone, but it should be noted that IMDb has it listed twice— one as Japanese Girls Never Die, and the other as Haruko Azumi Is Missing. Therefore, there is no official English title for the movie, despite the book being listed with the name in YesAsia [1].
According to Eiga.com, the film is set to close this year’s edition of the Shinjuku Cinema Qualite Film Festival (新宿シネマカリテの映画祭) in Tokyo, as part of the Qualite Fantastic! Cinema Collection 2016 (カリテ・ファンタスティック！シネマコレクション2016) presenting 71 films from 16 countries… including Taiwan’s Our Times [Trailer], which I totally recommend for a fresh rom-com.
The collection will be presented from July 16th to August 19th. In addition, there will also be presentations at Cine Libre Umeda (シネ・リーブル梅田) in Osaka between August 6th to the 26th, and Nakagawa Corona Cinema World (中川コロナシネマワールド) in Nagoya, Aichi, between August 6th to September 2nd.
I also ran…
I haven’t seen a Hayato Ichihara movie in a long time, but I was just looking at his photos xD
I could care less for smokers, though~
It’s tomorrow, but still~ worth a mention!
I also updated my Yu Aoi Films Ranked post with an Umineko watch, which was better than I was expecting from its IMDb rating. It’s totally worth the 6.5-7 rating on Douban, though… even if Yu-chan is barely in it. The subtitles available are poor, though, but they make do~
I can’t believe it’s been 8 years since. Last month I remembered Last Friends and Juri Ueno, and all my Asian entertainment fever years, which is coming back, I can feel it. Going to Japan, having Kirin Tea, Calbee potato chips, getting JiNS Air Frame glasses, eating tokoroten~ the whole fan experience. lol
So~ to celebrate this fan-niversary, here’s an image of Yu-chan in her Oha-garu days~
So there’s been some rumors around, I’m not going to discuss… but they did turn out this super duper cute kiddie picture of Solar, and after I went all lady-like saying “omygoshshessocuuuuuuute,”
