My brother came back from the States for a 2-weeks holiday on Wednesday. I didn't join my dad and sister in picking him up at the airport because I figured he'd have luggage, and the 3 of us kids all count as adult-sized now, nevermind the fact that my dad drives a MPV.

So I was on the couch reading when my brother came in through the front door, and I had a seriously Jacob Black moment.

See, the last impression I had of my brother is that he's slightly chunky and that he will probably come home with a mop of hair because he used to complain about how expensive haircuts are in US.

Instead, I could have sworn he grew taller and more built. My sister said that it felt as if he had grown taller as well, even though my brother said he hasn't grown at all. It must be because he lost weight and is keeping up some sort of a fitness regime now. Also, instead of a shaggy head of hair entering the house, his hair was cropped short and everything.

So, yeah. A Jacob Black moment there. Especially when he started walking around the house in a grey sports singlet and black shorts.

Of course, when he burst into my bedroom strumming his guitar the next morning, I realised that it was really my brother that came home.

He is still complaining about the weather in Singapore. At this rate, I'm expecting him to end up staying on in USA after he finishes graduate school.

So, asides from the soon-to-be blockbusters, Avatar and Sherlock Holmes, what other movies has been overshadowed but is truly a gem? I give you Bodyguards and Assassins.

Because there's Donnie Yen. Any movies with Donnie Yen is bound to have an 80% possibility of being a good movie.

And then it's also set in the beginning of modern China... Okay, my China history is shady at best but there's Sun Yat-Sen in it so it couldn't have been that far back, could it?


Title: Bodyguards and Assassins
Genre: Kungfu / Historical
Starring: Tony Leung, Leon Lai, Nicholas Tse, Fan Bing Bing and of course, Donnie Yen and other well known actors.
Director: Teddy Chen?
Anticipation: I want to watch it... like right now.
Release date: Out

So okay, the trailer is not the best I've seen but the scale of the production is probably bigger than Ip Man and probably going to be similar like it. I still think Ip Man is better though, but for those who are suckers for tear-jerking patriotism type of movies, this is just the thing for you.

I really think Hong Kong should make more of these sort of films, those set in post-colonial-slash-modern China era rather those braudy period (guzhuang) movies like Red Cliff (which remains to date one of the worst adaptation of The Three Kingdoms ever made). I mean look at the success of Huang Fei Hung and Ip Man. Period movies should be catered to the horror, wuxia novels crowd like Qian Nu You Hun and Dong Fang Bu Bai...

It is a good thing Yuletide is more than half done as today a printout of selfsame Yuletide damaged me severely when I reached into my purse just as I left the house and its corner drove into my nailbed argh, what does it look like to passing drivers when a girl is hopping up and down with her middle finger stuck in a snowbank. For such a minor injury it is DEBILITATING as my typing is at 1/3-speed and I cannot wash my hair or play with T's cat or cook until the tip of this finger can take pressure again. And I have a whole list of things I want to cook this December, from sushi to Hainan chicken rice to Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon.

Real life, don't force me to make a "bizarre injuries 2009" tag.

I was watching 女人我最大 and think that all girls (and guys) should watch it, just in case. Never know when it might come in handy.

女子当自强神奇简易防身术

Hey guys, know of a place in Singapore that will give me a good price for 2 nd hand manga and books? I want to clear out a whole load of them. Locations, please?

David Byrne just now, via mailing list: "[some stuff about releasing a record, but whatev] In the meantime, I have decided to rebrand myself, inspired by Philip Morris changing their name to Altria, Blackwater to Xe, and the train I'm riding on right now that calls itself Acela - none of which mean anything, but they are cleverly evocative. When I decide on the magic word, you'll be the first to know."

I have studied the above trend in b-school marketing class and believe I'm supposed to consider it clever, but can I just say that I hate how these companies are polluting the high fantasy worldbuilding namespace!!! Srsly guys haven't you done enough harm in the world, now you gotta take the geeks on too!

(Not you, David Byrne, you can be an Eddings character if you want.)

1) Legend of the Seeker: no one ever mentioned that Sam Raimi was producing a TV adaptation of Terry Goodkind's books... at least, not until naanima like two weeks ago. WHAT I DON'T EVEN ETCETCETC

This and Robert Jordan were my first online fandoms! Back when everything happened via Usenet and private mailing lists! The Goodkind ML taught me the meaning of the word "spoiler" when I uhh jumped the gun on a who-killed-Dumbledore moment before everyone had finished reading. Or it may have been my BFF at the time, I no longer remember. (The same one I watched Star Trek with. We later fell out of touch; I went into anime and she into Buffy.) In fact I still own the first books in guise of souvenir from another friend who moved off the continent a decade ago, but whom I still hear about via mutual circles. And who is visiting Montreal next week, apparently, so this may or may not be a harbinger of epicness. As with Jordan, Goodkind was one of those cases where in the interim between books coming out I uhh sort of grew critical taste, but the TV series has merits. XD

2) Lilith Fair 2010: this is, literally, the ONE SINGLE SOLITARY THING I've always been pissed off at missing during the 90s, because they never played Montreal and I couldn't blow town by myself. Well, now that has changed.

I guess this whole "shiz I was into age 17 coming back: exciting" aspect of pop culture today means I am OFFICIALLY OLD etc.

Today's not!Advent thingy. Requested by woodburner back in, I believe, 2007; better two years late than never. XD;; I originally had some Japanese paper with which I meant to make origami packaging for the CD, so here is a digital version of sorts.



Mononoke: The Fan Soundtrack

Fuka Vincente - Tempura Soul
David Bowie - Beauty and the Beast
Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart (Familjen Remix)
Laika - Black Cat Bone
DJ Krush with Shinichi Kinoshita - Beyond Raging Waves
Gorillaz - Ghost Train
Nick Cave - O Children
Florence + The Machine - Blinding
Hajime Chitose - Kono machi

Total Time: 40 minutes



Keepin' it short: one track per story arc, roughly, plus the Medicine Seller, plus Kayo, plus intro - but in listening rather than chronological order. (Who knows what the chronological order of the arcs is anyway?) It is all about funky shamisen cutz~♥ I'm pretty sure the one was off moebius_rex and the other from jantalaimon, even after all this time.

Aka That One Viewfinder Fic. First bit in a twelve days' thing or whatever XD; (the actual Twelve Days of Christmas are after Christmas, but that never seems right to me psychologically). I've been posting this to yamane_ayano, backdated in order not to bother the flist overly (some ppl have seen the first chapters several times over the years), but this is the compilation post. Thanks again to sub_divided and marej, who did the most to make this happen.

Traffic
Chapters: Parts I-II | Parts III-IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII

( Author's Notes )

Snowflakes on my profile page! (...Snowflake cookies?) Thanks so much everyone. ^_^ I'll have to figure out how to send them.

Comprised of some of the stuff I've been spinning on the Chinese radio show lately. Station charter rules are that 7% of prime time ought to be Canadian music (something like that - rule of thumb is one song per hour-long show), and the policy is to keep it French. So I cheat by playing the one French track anglophone Quebecer artists include on their albums for this very purpose XD; (sometimes it's a bonus track: see Feist). The first two are from a "Montreal Attractions" segment on jazz.

Susie Arioli - Lumière de nuit: current incarnation known as "Susie Arioli Swing Band". She's pretty famous here although I don't know about elsewhere. This is the same idea as Feist's "Amourissima", actually - wistful evocation of tinny 1920s phonographs and sepia-poster radio-show girls in cloche hats.

The Lost Fingers - Coeur de loup: three-piece from Quebec City who specialize in upbeat gypsy jazz covers of 80s pop classics. They do a mean "Billie Jean"... come to think of it I should probably have uploaded that instead. XD; You'll know this one if you're French though ahaha.

(Philippe Lafontaine was Belgium's Eurovision entry in 1990 - with a song about a Macedonian girl, confusingly.)

Marie-Chantal Toupin - Avions de papier: Everyone liked this one, but then it's very Asian pop. XD;; I'm pretty sure I've already had it on a mix somewhere. From 1998, though this wasn't the album that broke her, and she hasn't done much like it since.

Not played on radio:

Jeff Buckley feat. Elizabeth Fraser - All Flowers In Time Bend Towards The Sun: found out about this (and its back story) from that interview Liz Fraser recently did with the Guardian. Was I the last person on earth to know this existed?! (jokersama?)

Been playing Heaven and Las Vegas quite a bit, although last.FM refuses to log it for some reason. Last heard it probably in 2001, at which point I wasn't entirely able to appreciate it - although my understanding of Cocteau Twins is largely informed by the acts they inspired, like Faye Wong and Yoko Kanno (well, no one's said so but it's obvious). Since I'm supposed to work on a half-hour Tuesday culture show now I may use Faye Wong + Cocteau Twins in my pitch to Y.* Then I guess I'll have to do the Damon Albarn one I keep avoiding writing.**

***

Decade's End: I don't really want to start on this stuff until January, actually, since 1) I'm pedantic, 2) no one's paying me to stick to their schedule, and 3) I seriously believe cultural decades are staggered from calendar decades anyway, like the 00s didn't start until 9/11 (and centuries are staggered by a decade's worth or so: the last century didn't really kick off until the Titanic / Great War, and it's only now - 2010! - starting to feel like we're living in the 21st instead of the hangover of the 20th. This is why I've been reading so much SF, by the way). But I have to make some notes, or I'm just going to forget. XD;

So I have to write about:

--Utada Hikaru
--Kings of Convenience / Erlend Øye (although that would require me to listen to the Whitest Boy Alive albums which... I haven't)
--Relatedly, the whole recap on Postal Service / "bedroom electronica" / Morr Music / Junior Boys etc., the xx probably goes here which makes it actually current + maybe I will just do a flowchart of 00s Dance/Electronica, post it, and ask ppl to critique
--Peter Doherty (guaranteed the only Libertines essay you will ever read that's mostly about Saint Etienne)

And 2009 writeups:

--Surgeon
--Animal Collective: The Wank (siiiiigh)

--


* with added bonus that no one can tell these songs are being sung in English
** with added bonus that I can steal content off the blogs of those Asian girls who follow Graham Coxon around, /jk /jk

have you heard the song "homeward bound" by marta keen?

the band sang it today as part of the pass-out parade programme

"set me free to find my calling, and i'll return to you somehow"

songs that make me want to cry