Music Obsessions – April 2022

Welcome to this month’s Music Obsessions! Nothing like some music to soothe the mood. Especially as I’m drafting this up and there’s quite a bit of stuff to plan out. There are some new releases this month that has been rather fun.

豐乳肥臀 BBBB: Big Boobs Bubble Butt – 鄭欣宜 Joyce Cheng

I’ve been following Joyce Cheng on Instagram the past year or so. She has truly broken away her parents’ shadow and proved not only that she is talented in the singing business but also her confidence about her body in general especially since being larger size is such looked down upon in the Asian society (at least from my own experiences). I still remember when her biggest news years ago when she went through some intense diet regime which was published as a book. But now, she is promotes self-respect, self-love and self-confidence. This video itself is a lot of fun as well plus she does show off her really good vocals. I’ve shared some of her music before as well and she’s also been releasing some good singles. Looking forward to see what else she releases.

Blow – Jackson Wang

Jackson Wang is really made some fantastic music lately. I do enjoy that he’s branched away from the hip hop music. I think he is a really great rapper and has some nice singles but this new path in his last few releases is truly so much fun. His latest song, Blow’s music video almost has that musical and theatrical element that makes it pretty entertaining to watch but the song itself is so upbeat.

香水 Perfume – MAYDAY 五月天

It seems like a great time to share the latest video from Mayday, a Taiwanese band that I’ve probably shared before (but I’ve done so many of these that I can’t remember anymore). Mayday celebrated their 25th anniversary which is a fantastic milestone considering this band hasn’t changed its members for the all these years and always deliver quality music. There’s so many songs to share in their discography.

Monica – 張國榮 Leslie Cheung

Its hard to resist sharing Leslie Cheung at the beginning of April as his passing is so close to my own birthday that I always remember this Hong Kong superstar when April 1st comes around to listen to some of his music. Thinking about it, March would have been a great time to do a Leslie Cheung movie marathon. Either way, Monica is probably the first song that I loved from his because it was so upbeat mostly because I listened to this when I was a kid and not exactly caring too much about anything other than the music but it still holds a special part in my heart. Not to mention the corny dance moves but its one that makes this song so fun and hard to resist doing it when you hear it.

明星 – 張國榮 Leslie Cheung

I’m not sure if its a coincidence but when we look back at Hong Kong superstars, they are always scared to lose what they’ve achieved and their talent. They want to be remembered and that’s exactly what Leslie Cheung’s song is which is a little bittersweet as its about a star that’s left and being remembered. I think its suitable song to listen to during this time that truly captures how much his fans still miss him a lot because he was a one of a kind talent.

That’s it for this Music Obsessions!
What have you been listening to lately?

Valentine’s Double Feature: Krrish (2006) & Little Dragon Maiden (1983)

Nothing does better than a foreign film double feature, right? Haha. Its the reality over here however, with a Bollywood superhero/romance film Krrish and a Shaw Brothers film, Little Dragon Maiden, I’m hoping that these two Netflix alphabet selections will grab some of your attention. I had no choice because the choices were really limited for these two letters plus let’s be honest that a Bollywood viewing has been overdue.

Let’s check it out!

Krrish (2006)

Director: Rakesh Roshan
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Rekha, Sharat Saxena, Manini M. Mishra, Naseeruddin Shah

Krishna is forced by circumstances to use his superpowers and become a masked superhero, Krrish, before getting drawn towards his lost legacy. – IMDB

Being the very clueless person that I am, I totally didn’t realize that Koi Mil Gaaya is actually the movie before Krrish which this movie refers to quite a bit but still stays self-contained so not watching the previous one didn’t affect my understanding of this at all. With that said, this one is a Bollywood superhero movie which starts off pretty heavy on the romance and Bollywood bits with the second act being more Krishna (Hrithik Roshan) discovering his way to be helpful but keep his identity hidden as a superhero/vigilante. The third act is being a lot more action-packed with more fight scenes.

Starring the very handsome Hrithik Roshan (who I first saw in Dhoom 2) and the beautiful pre-Hollywood Priyanka Chopra, its really quite fun to see them together although the romance bits are pretty much really cheesy (as you would expect in a Bollywood film). At the same time, the story is pretty innocent especially because Roshan’s character Krishna has lived most of his life away from people and big cities so when he goes to Singapore to follow the love of his life, he’s a bit like fish out of pond sort of deal which always brings in some laughter but then he is always incredibly smart because he has special abilities. While the romance parts took up most of the first act and a part of the second act, it still felt not as effective as the center of the film being about Krishna finding the way to become Krrish, a masked superhero who ends up saving the day when a fire breaks out at the circus and then leading him to discover his own background especially his father’s past against the evil man of a big corporation who dreams about building a machine to see the future and become God. This part all links to the first film mentioned above because that story is told there.

All in all, as great as Priyanka Chopra and Hrithik Roshan is in Krrish, the romance didn’t grab me a whole lot and the songs weren’t really my taste either. However, while the romance here didn’t quite work, the superhero aspect did. Sure, there was some unrealistic CG effects going on here but then this movie is in the 2000s so its easy to overlook it. I’d be interested to eventually catch up with the first film and the movie after this one, oddly titled Krrish 3 (which made me think that there was a Krrish 2 until I did further research).

Little Dragon Maiden (1983)

Director: Shan Hua
Cast: Leslie Cheung, Jing-Jing Yung, Kuan Tai Chen, Leanne Lau, Ni Tien

Little Dragon Maiden mixes the old with the new to create pure golden magic as kung-fu fighting veterans Chen Kuan-Tai and Lo Lieh join relative newcomer Leslie Cheung in a far-out swordplay love story that rocks. – IMDB

Guilty as charged that I haven’t really seen any Shaw Brothers films. If I have, it was when I was really young that I don’t even remember it. However, big fan of Leslie Cheung here and Little Dragon Maiden is a story that almost everyone who knows the Chinese culture has heard of and know at least the basic love story involved. Even though, I haven’t seen a whole lot of movie interpretations of it before, this might be the first one that I finished, its a familiar story.

Somehow pairing this with Krrish works because most of the story is about Yang Guo played by Leslie Cheung who starts off as an orphan and ends up being taken in by who he learns is his father’s killer who doesn’t want to teach him martial arts and when asked, gets sent to join a martial arts sect who bullies him because of his father and he ends up seeking refuge in the Ancient Tomb sect which is where the Little Dragon Maiden is. Because of a promise she made, she ends up taking him in despite the sect’s rules. The obvious happens where they do fall in love. I can get that this story would be touching but due to the length and how its executed, its more outstanding in its martial arts and personality development in Yang Guo rather than the love story which involved some misunderstandings and some bad stuff that happens to the Little Dragon Maiden.

With that said, the fight scenes here and the martial arts bits and such are really fun to watch. Similar to how I liked the creatures in Labyrinth, Little Dragon Maiden has the magical Condor who is a key element in the actual book that its based on which ends up making a late appearance but the design as silly as it looks because it just didn’t age well, there is this fantastic charm to it. You can see it in the poster above.

That’s it for this Valentine’s double feature for the K & L selection!
Have you seen these two foreign films? If so, thoughts?