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Movie Streams, VOD, and Worldwide Online Distribution

I’m still not sold on Netflix- never to this date I’ve ran into a film that I wanted to watch on it. At least in terms of this region, which doesn’t count with as much content as the US or Canada one. Similar issues with iTunes… and Amazon is out of the question.

I used to subscribe to MUBI for a long while (at least for a bit over a year), but eventually turned off my subscription because I wasn’t watching anything, while things I had added to my watchlist stopped being available, and the selection of their films eventually was reduced to their now curated content. I’m only subscribed to EROSNOW now, and have seen a few couple of films there, but had to turn to other mediums when found links that were region-restricted or surprisingly without subtitles.

My experience with streaming has been decent- and for as cheap as $5-9 bucks you can watch a lot in a month, and it just makes your life quite easy. Similar flawless experience with my first Vimeo On Demand watch. Thanks Joss Whedon for the heads up, and actually putting the film up there right after its premiere. To top it all off, subtitles in Spanish, German, French, Portuguese and Japanese (plus English CC) were available making it the smoothest watch if you decided to watch it with any bunch of people.

Paying $5 to stream a new movie can seem like the best way possible to make it look as if you’re going to the cinema. It takes me back to those days where I would watch 2 or 3 new movies a weekend. If studios ever decided to really go off their way to online distribute their new movies almost simultaneously, I’d be willing.

Here’s In Your Eyes.

Apparently Vimeo streaming is not as smooth (or at all) if you don’t have a Vimeo account, though. Take it as a good chance to get one, or don’t complain. I really don’t know any other streaming (paying) website that would let you use their content without an account. You need one in iTunes, in Amazon, in Netflix, HBO, et all. So please, people, stop complaining about THAT.

Spanish (more serious) related note.

Posted on April 22, 2014 In English, Films, French, Fun, Japanese, Jobs, Sharing, Spanish, Torrents & Digital Streams, Trailers blog, digital content, distributors, industry talk, international, internet, itunes, joss whedon, peru, subtitles, technology, theauteurs.com

JeA, You’re Killing Me~~~

Oh, heck yes, I’m GOING~

THEY ALL COME TO ME. First, Bjork, then the BackStreet Boys, Miyavi and (bonus for) Big Bang. Now it’s JeA’s turn. Maybe you don’t know, JeA is my BEG bias.

After much deliberation with a friend, we decided to crash the Lunafly concert for JeA, just to get a glimpse of her.

Posted on April 12, 2014 In Celebrity, Clips, English, Fun, Korean, Music, Sharing, Spanish backstreet boys, big bang, bjork, brown eyed girls, concert, cute, fandom, huzzah, korea, miyavi, peru

1 Comment

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.

In Sharing 2d classical animation, alfonso cuaron, amy wong, ang lee, animation, aoi miyazaki, audrey tautou, awards, ayumi ito, bae doona, best of, black and white, by amy wong, canada, carly pope, chang yung yung (sandrine pinna), child actors, china, chulpan khamatova, contemporary classics, discovering new actors, eita, eva green, food, france, gael garcia bernal, gong li, guillermo del toro, hayao miyazaki, india, japan, jay chou (zhou jielun), jean pierre jeunet, joe odagiri, juliette binoche, kore-eda, korea, kou shibasaki, latin america, lgbt, louis garrel, madhuri dixit, maggie cheung, marion cotillard, mika nakashima, miki nakatani, musical/choreography, nobuhiro yamashita, nominations, noomi rapace, penelope cruz, peru, rani mukerji, rie miyazawa, russia, ryo kase, salyu, sanjay leela bhansali, satoshi tsumabuki, shakespeare, shugo oshinari, shunji iwai, soundtrack, spain, special effects, studio ghibli, sweden, tabu (actress), taiwan, takeshi kaneshiro, tetsuya nakashima, tilda swinton, tony leung, ueno juri, vidya balan, vishal bhardwaj, wagner moura, whale rider, wong kar-wai, yam, yu aoi, zhang yimou, zhao wei (vicky zhao)

Five YAM Magazine Posts for 2014!

January 1, 2014

Happy new year, everyone!

Sorry for the lack of posts last month. To make up for it, here are five posts so you can catch up to my 2013 and to get you going this 2014.

amys-top50-songs-2013

2013 in Movies (Silly Edition)
Top50 Songs of 2013 [Xiami sorta complete Playlist]
The Indian Movie Journey – Phase I
Indian Cinema Success
Diez Peliculas del 2013 [spanish only] [google translate]

Hoy Voy a Verte de Nuevo~

… voy a alegrar tu tristeza
vamos a hacer una fiesta
‘pa que’ste amor crezca mas.

In all seriousness, most snarky Peruvians would probably mock Gianmarco’s vocal abilities, but I don’t know any of those snarky ones that would mock his composition skills. I think there’s a strong 90% who would praise them. Hoy by Gloria Estefan is one of the most popular ones he’s written, and the video was shot in Cuzco to top it all.

And Hoy isn’t even the most complex of the songs he’s written. But it’s still a really good one.

Quickie literal lyrics translation after the break.

Posted on September 12, 2013 In Celebrity, English, Music, Music Videos, Sharing, Spanish by amy wong, gianmarco, latin america, linguistic, music video, peru, super hard to find lyrics, translation

2 Comments

Top Flicks About Chicks

August 18, 2013 — Leave a comment

I really can’t remember exactly when I started out the Top Flicks About Chicks list on MUBI, but it must have been around the same time I wrote how Chick Flicks was a doomed genre in regards of critics. So it might be almost 4 years… and I’ve finally reached 300 titles in the list!!!

A Chick Flick should center on little girls, girls, young women and women… as students, as neighbors, as friends, as daughters, as granddaughters, as sisters, as mothers, as lovers. They are simply women. With that alone, we can tell all sort of other stories that have little to do with romantic comedies.

The purpose of the list, of course, was to encompass an array of female character — not only in the binary sense, since the list also includes men/boys who identify as women/girls… and viceversa — of various cultural, ethnic, social backgrounds. Not favoring one genre over the other, not valuing dramas over comedies… just simple stories about different women.

Though I’m sure the list could be longer, that’s 300 feature length films out of the 2896 (counting shorts) currently rated on the site- that’s roughly 10% so I suppose the list could expand to up to 500 or maybe 1000 once I reach 5000 or 10000 rated films on the site.

1. Treeless Mountain 2. Welcome to the Dollhouse 3. Juliana 4. Labyrinth 5. Fuckin’ Amal 6. Mirrormask 7. Gun Hill Road 8. Pariah 9. Bend it like Beckham 10. Swing Girls 11. The Land of the Deaf 12. Sunny 13. Whip It 14. Stoker 15. Maria Full of Grace 16. Breaking the Waves 17. My Marlon and Brando 18. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days 19. Dil Bole Hadippa! 20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 21. Kotoko 22. Violeta Went to Heaven 23. Skin 24. Raise the Red Lantern 25. Incendies

I picked 25 of the 300 films to illustrate some of the variety (I hope it’s AS varied as I intend the list to be), though I ran out of picks and couldn’t include any of the ‘older’ female characters. If I could pick 5 more, they’d be: Lemon Tree, Frozen River, Late Bloomers, Mother, For 80 Days.

In Celebrity, Chinese, DVD/BR, English, Films, French, Fun, Graphics, Japanese, Jobs, Korean, Misc., Russian, Sharing, Spanish, Swedish actress, alfonso cuaron, amy adams, animation, anne hathaway, aoi miyazaki, audrey tautou, ayumi ito, bae doona, best of, bjork, canada, china, chris lee (li yuchun), chulpan khamatova, contemporary classics, disney, elle fanning, ellen page, emily blunt, eva green, evan rachel wood, france, gaichu (harmful insect), gong li, greta garbo, guillermo del toro, hayao miyazaki, his dark materials, huzzah, independent, india, japan, joan crawford, julianne moore, juliette binoche, kate winslet, korea, kwai lun-mei, lars von trier, latin america, laura linney, marion cotillard, meryl streep, mia wasikowska, miki nakatani, movie classics, naomi watts, natalie portman, nicole kidman, nobuhiro yamashita, noomi rapace, olivia williams, pan's labyrinth, penelope cruz, peru, philip pullman, quiet room ni youkoso, rachel mcadams, rani mukerji, rankings, russia, saoirse ronan, sarah polley, shinobu yaguchi, shunji iwai, spain, studio ghibli, sweden, swing girls, taiwan, tetsuya nakashima, theauteurs.com, ueno juri, whale rider, yu aoi, zhang yimou, zhou xun

Oh, The Memories of Home

August 15, 2013 — 1 Comment

home-old-sweet-home

Google Maps has finally activated Street View in my city — mind you, it’s still a work in progress, and I’ve already encountered places I can’t access. But as anything Google Maps goes… I’ve already visited my current home, and of course my school. But the place I was most eager to check out was my old home. I still remember how to get there!

The market and the park are still there, and livelier than I remember them being. xD

In English, Screencaps, Sharing, Snapshots, Spanish amy wong, google, musings, peru

Which Race Box Do You Choose?

Thanks to the American way of thinking, for a while now I’ve been thinking a LOT about race. It didn’t use to be a problem, I didn’t care about race because Peru was supposed to be this mix of races of white (mostly Spaniards), Andean people, Black, Asians (mostly Chinese and Japanese).

For a while now, while completing polls and documents, people have added the race option that usually carries some of these: Caucasian, Native American, African-American, Asian, Polynesian, Latino, Other. Though, recently I’ve seen the added option of Mixed, besides the Other option.

Perhaps I didn’t notice this before as I was a minor and my parents would be filling documentation, but I remember I’ve always checked the “other” option because I can’t consider myself Asian… and I’ve stopped considering myself fully Latin American because it just doesn’t feel that way any longer. Not when I’m nudge on the street as people either say “oppar Gangnam Style” or relate my slanted eyes to either Jackie Chan or Jet Li. I’ll actually take them over Psy and the horse-dance though.

So I understand your pain, guys, for either being told they don’t fit within the black or latino communities, or being told to act a certain way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT7_oQzDYMw

Also, don’t forget Alexis Bledel speaks perfect Spanish unlike America Ferrera — come on, her Spanish is competent, but not in the level for the roles she usually gets — so not having Bledel speaking Spanish in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was a total missed opportunity since no one freaking expects Alexis Bledel to speak Spanish.

And yes, Hollywood expects his latinas to look like Sophia Loren.

I need to be a casting director and throw the whole casting process on its head.

Posted on July 14, 2013 In Celebrity, Clips, English, Rants, Sharing, Spanish latin america, musings, peru

2 Comments

Your President Speaks Mandarin, but my Ex is Funny~

Okay, I gotta admit South Korea- I’m jealous.

Some of you may complain about the political implications of choosing Park Geun-hye’s party, but you’re getting the cake. This is coming from someone less privileged than you in terms of political options. I don’t want to talk about my current president, but since President Park Geun-hye just made a splash on my TV speaking Mandarin at a speech she delivered just this week at Tsinghua University during her visit to Beijing [1], which apparently is self-taught [1][2] (that’s even way more accomplished!), I want to give a good mention to my Ex-Pres.

A couple of years back, when (now Ex-) President Hu Jintao was visiting the country when Alan Garcia was still president — and he gave us THIS SUPER AWKWARD photo of himself trying to hug/kiss Hu — Alan had the BRILLIANT idea of giving HIS own speech in Mandarin, even though he knows a lick of any Asian language (I doubt he knows anything about Asian culture outside what to eat at a Chifa [1], explaining why he tried to hug/kiss Hu, LOL).

The end result is, of course, madly hilarious if you speak Spanish.

Besides trying to sound out Mandarin, which you know it’s nearly impossible, he sounded out some “words” that sounded similar to other words in Spanish, included the now political-satire-classic “Soy chanchin,” which is a cute modification to the word “chancho,” meaning “pig.” So basically it sounded like he said “I’m a little fat.” Hilarious history in the making right there.

Surprisingly, Hu had the biggest poker face EVER. He didn’t blink, snorted, NOTHING. He’s either the best politician in the whole wide world, or his team warned him about this Garcia Mandarin stunt and he turned off any of his hearing aid, if he used any.

Posted on June 29, 2013 In Chinese, Clips, English, Fun, Korean, Sharing, Spanish china, funny, funny captions, korea, peru, political

The Sword of Omens is Real Yo!

I still haven’t been able to locate a photo of me as a child in my family’s house garden waving the yellow and lime green plastic Sword of Omens I had as a child. However, these guys are designing weapons or designing pretty awesome real props, and have made my dorky childhood dreams come true.

Its amazingness is beyond words.

And YES. Even though Thundercats aired in the mid-80s, I saw them in the early 90s in their dub version, and it was still pretty goddamn awesome.

Posted on June 26, 2013 In Clips, English, Fun, Sharing, Television design, dork, fandom, latin america, peru, tv drama / tv series / miniseries, why the 90's ruled

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