Archives For maggie cheung

Oh, Happy Chinese New Year! Let’s start my (supposedly) bad-luck Goat Year with the now-mandatory Letterboxd list of my film collection~

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I have a really weird history with films– born in the late 80s, you’d think I would’ve grown watching loads of 90s kids stuff, but I actually grew up with a lot of Silly Symphonies (which were released in the 30s) and loads of Disney 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s stuff, plus a lot of more grown up 80s movies. Poltergeist, The Thing, The Fly and The Stuff were particularly scary stuff (and I’m pretty sure I was scared of yogurt or white stuff at some point).

I don’t ever remember buying any original VHS tape, except for the rare birthday gift of a Disney’s Sing-Along Songs chapter or that X-Men tape I have. My first DVDs buys were Coyote Ugly, She’s All That and Loser — you can’t blame me. I was a 15-year-old girl. The collection grew bigger, and possibly exploded during my years abroad. I’m nearing my 500th movie.

amys-favorite-actresses

Too much awesomeness into one.

What made it to the list and where it placed? Some of my biggest biases placed lower than expected, and some that I don’t want to be my bias placed high on there~

Head over there and do your thing~

Best of the Foreign 2000s

January 24, 2014

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I also made a [nomination] list of all my favorite foreign things of the last decade. If I had included all movies, general suspects would have applied (eg. Children of Men, Dancer in the Dark), but still remains a very ME list. I hope you like the selection, and don’t hesitate in suggesting films to watch.

Check all nominees and comment here.

A little bit more than ten years ago, Anita Mui passed away leaving a legacy of music and movies that will be remembered. Even my dad knew Anita Mui (besides from Jackie Chan movies), he told me he knew her from her singing the Song of Sunset (夕陽之歌) [1][2], which he loved both in this version and its Japanese original.

Ten years after her passing, her (very famous) friends got together to put something really special… a super performance to remember her by. Titled Anita Mui. 10. Longing. Music. Concert (梅艷芳。10。思念。音樂。會), the event garnered an array of Hong Kong (and overall Chinese) best — of the best for a night of music and memories.

Jacky Cheng, A-Mei, HOCC was there, Miriam Yeung, Sammi Cheng. Eric Tsang being melancholic, Jackie Chan throwing a joke… Eason Chan with his hair~ Maggie Cheung was freaking there, Aaron Kwok swung his hips, and Carina Lau introduced her hubby Tony Leung, and Tony SANG! People cheered. At a point in the concert, I told my mom “the only one missing here is Andy Lau.” Lo and behold, who turns up for one of the last numbers~

The only one I missed was Faye Wong. Just coz.

Anyway, my dad would’ve been happy with this show. I hope he and Anita are sharing a drink together up above.

I’ve got some pretty nice recommendations to share.

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After some flame from their compilation of 135 Shots That Will Restore Your Faith in Cinema [1], Flavorwire is back with a new compilation~~~ this time around focusing on faces, their emotions and their beauty… to relative success. I don’t think I could fault them… I had enough with Wong Kar Wai (included multiple times), multiple Zhang Yimou shots (and a double appearance of Gong Li to boot!), there was Park Chan Wook, Guillermo del Toro, Leslie Cheung’s face.

It was a thing of beauty.

The only face I could possibly suggest would have been Greta Garbo’s last shot on Queen Christina, but I’m content.

I don’t watch as much i.Sat as I used to, but this is my favorite commercial I’ve seen from them.

I’m so glad they have it on their YouTube account. xD

I literally burst out laughing when I saw this on the DVD

It’s supposed to be a deleted scene from In the Mood for Love — understandable considering it totally kills that moody setting throughout the whole thing. But the part of me that laughed heartly would have loved it included…

Going through my last batch of DVDs to arrive, there’s some pretty kick-ass extras in the Criterion edition of In the Mood for Love. And why wouldn’t there be, right? It’s Criterion! Listen to Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung speaking in English is… something else. xD

There’s a quote from an essay included in the DVD that struck a chord and wanted to share

As an African-American singing in Spanish, [Nat King] Cole embodies American Culture’s ability to absorb, transform, and commodify the exotic for its own ends. In other words, America takes from the world and sells what it has borrowed back to those from whom it was taken.

In the Mood for Love
Hong Kong, 1960s Introduction
Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction by Gina Marchetti

Amazon.com | Google Books

Re-pimping this old list~ xD

It’s always been tough to be a working actress on the big screen, as you turn a little older, offers often seem to be linked to “being someone else’s mother,” but cable television seems to be becoming more and more attractive to not only writers – because they get to write more challenging stories and skip censors – but also to women who were movie actresses and have found new complex roles to take on.

you can read the whole thing on YAM Magazine~