Archives For musical/choreography

A lot of people don’t seem to like Abhishek Bachchan. I don’t particularly find him attractive, but I do think he can act a lot more easily, than- let’s say Hrithik Roshan, who -I think- is SUPER hot. But maybe my opinion on the both of them is biased considering the first Abhishek film I saw was Yuva, and Hrithik got stuck with K3G. Also, I haven’t seen that many Hrithik movies, but at least he was good in Guuzarish.

Obviously, I have more fun with a Shahrukh Khan/Rani pairing, but if I didn’t have to count Bunty Aur Babli (Ok, and maybe KANK), I’d put the Abhishek/Rani pairing ahead of Aamir/Rani. Rani has loads of chemistry with Shahrukh and Abhishek… especially in Yuva. They’re loving each other one moment, and exploding into serious argument the next. And the resolution to their conflict is pure serious drama, I love it.

The track Kabhi Neem Neem is pure A.R Rahman crack. According to the online dictionary, ‘neem‘ refers to a tree whose bitter bark is used as tonic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEIKdvQ28IE

Have I told you my iTunes library is now filled with Bollywood soundtracks?

Normally… normally I wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to watch Vidya Balan and Tabu (together!) on a film, which is the case with Urumi (English complete title~ Urumi: The Warriors Who Wanted to Kill Vasco da Gama), but I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s gonna be more than two hours of cringe-worthy cartoon ‘demon-white’ colonialist with random musical numbers. I could maybe take it for two hours sans musical numbers and loads of pumping action fight sequences.

You can try it out even without subs.

Plus, it’s a Malayaman film, so I bet they’ve got their voices dubbed. As an alternative, I found their item songs. Though I’m unsure if Vidya has a more extensive role in the film, Tabu’s credit on IMDb lists it as a special appearance.

The original track song is called Aaranne Aaranne [clip], but the Telugu dub upload is much better for obvious quality reasons.

Vidya’s number after the break~

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I haven’t done a fake Criterion fanart in a long time — possibly in over 4 years [1] — but after seeing M.F. Husain’s films, I couldn’t resist. Besides Madhuri Dixit- DUDE! Tabu as Meenaxi. I can’t possibly resist.

Fake Criterion Collection: M. F. Husain - Gaja Gamini Fake Criterion Collection: M. F. Husain - Meenaxi

I do believe that Tabu acted miles around the material that Madhuri Dixit got, and that M.F. Husain should’ve used a lot more of Madhuri’s dancing skills and charisma to get his muse concept across. Especially considering how she was his muse and all.

Full set on Flickr and MUBI.

Oh, man. I ran into a random photo of Tabu when she did a small part in Hum Naujawan back in 1985. My first reaction was “she hasn’t changed at all.” Then, I was pretty amazed at how easy it was to find a clip of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCnLzWQgSe4

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.

APTOPIX Sochi Olympics Opening Ceremony

Some more photos after the break~
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Happy Chinese New Year y’all!

Here’s my Voice of China 2 fave gurl Yao Bei Na singing an epic number for CCTV’s annual Spring Gala Festival, proving (once again) that The Voice of China voters don’t know how to vote. Such terrible exercises on the democratic system as well as the selected democratic system, LOL.

Other notable numbers on the 4hr show:

The performance by Attraction, the Hungarian shadow theater. If you ever wondered where Sophie Marceau was, she was celebrating the Chinese New Year in China with a performance of La Vie en Rose with Liu Huan [1], and the example of what Chinese people think is flexibility.

Also, there’s an official YouTube Channel for the Spring Festival Gala now.

Best of the Foreign 2000s

January 24, 2014

experiment-awards-foreign-best-of-2000s

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 film cut of the Zipang Punk play [1] they did last year is being released on March 29th, so we -unlucky ones- will get to see Yu Aoi singing and dancing in a wacky period punk musical. It looks super funny, but I doubt it’ll ever get subtitled or er… shared.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc5L6WGqUCk

We’ll always have this trailer, though.

Oh, wow~ it never occurred to me to search for Black on YouTube, or else I would have seen this performance the main cast of the film put together. Is this like a thing the International Indian Film Academy Awards does? Letting each nominated film present itself with a special performance? Do they generally do like an item song and that’s it? Because I loved that they sort of did the whole film into this 10min. sequence. Spoiler and all.

I would love it at the Academy Awards, instead of a movie montage.

According to a comment on YouTube, the whole performance was choreographed by Shiamak Davar and performed by his dance company.