Chrasy » senses

Beautiful Days

Tracey — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:40:13 +0000

I love Arashi but their music is so hit and miss for me. Step and Go: Hit. One Love: Miss. Truth: OMG AMAZING YESSSSSSS (Hit.) Kaze no Mukou e: Miss.

Beautiful Days: Miss. This song bores me. I don’t even think it’s going to grow on me.

I was totally imagining Ryuusei no Kizuna to be amazingly angsty, but THIS is the opening song? All my predictions of depression and angst flew out the window. Ugh.

Mayonaka no Shadow Boy

Tracey — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:10:32 +0000

They all look amazing. Really, I think JE gave HSJ the best stylists in the Jimusho. They looked hot in Your Seed and they look amazing in this one too. Like I can’t even pull one person out that looks better than all the rest.
Chinen’s high voice kind of pisses me off. Like, it throws out the whole feeling of the song. Normally I find Chinen awesome, but in such a dark PV/less happy song than normal, it doesn’t work!
Once again, JE proves how damn literal they can be. Mayonaka no Shadow Boy, THEREFORE, there must be SHADOWS in this PV.
Is Takaki becoming more and more like Jin every PV?
Yuto looks so much older than fifteen and reaaaaaallllllly good. If he was a little older I wouldn’t feel so weird about this! I adore the part where he says “Shadow,” and does that look thing.
Not sure how I feel about the part where all 10 of them are dancing. SORRY, but they’re so out of sync 95% of the time and it makes me cringe D:
“Kocchi muite, cherry,” is a really hot line.
The transition from verse to chorus weirds me out.
Ryosuke at the end, with that smirk = GUH. WHY MUST HE BE YOUNGER THAN ME? But also, why does Ryosuke get more screen time and more lines than everyone else? :@

Ensemble c’est tout

Tracey — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:35:17 +0000

It’s cut very funnily, but it’s very cute and quirkily. It’s not… quirky in the style of Amelie, it is very much more subdued than Amelie, but don’t feel compelled to stick it in the same category as Amelie simply because Audrey Tautou is in it.

There are some scenes that make me ask “Is this taking me anywhere with the story?” but I have complete confidence that it will lead me somewhere. I feel like… It’s the kind of story where every little part is essential either for character development or for plot continuation.

Philibert is very, very cute. Like, not in an attractive hot way but in a bumbling older brother kind of way. He’s very adorable but very fragile. To be honest, I feel a lot more empathy for him than I do for Camille or Franck.

Koizora

Tracey — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 07:26:51 +0000

A little bit too fast paced… things happened SO SO quickly to Mika and Hiro. I mean how many super awful, earth shattering, heart breaking incidents do you think you can fit in a 2 hour movie? Normally there’s only one… Right? And then after that everything is so amazingly happy and bright and you’re crying your eyes out because it’s just SO GODDAMN HAPPY and then when it’s over you grin and say “Whoa, that was so great, all the suffering was so worth it.”

This movie isn’t like that. Instead of one massive thing happening, there are like FIVE fucking awful things that go on between them and I swear, every single one of them made me weep and smash my keyboard in frustration in the following way: sdfklghadslkfhglakjsehrtlgkjsbhdljkgb ARGHHHH WHYYYYYYYY?!?!?!?! dfkjgfakjsdghasd laskdjgfksahgfksgdkjg *cry*

Yeah so not really a good movie to watch when you feel like shit. I mean, there are pretty little moments where they’re happy for a while, and the beginning is especially lovely (before all hell breaks loose) and then EVERY FUCKING THING GOES WRONG. I don’t know how this is meant to be a “the human spirit will prevail!!!!!!” kind of movie when I just UGH WANT TO CRY.

Halo

Tracey — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:23:12 +0000

I really liked Bloc Party’s first two albums - Silent Alarm’s jumpy, erratic riffs and intelligent lyrics really appealed to me, and A Weekend in the City’s strings and mushy words were different but still musically interesting.

And then I heard Halo for the first time last night. And I find it kind of… Insipid. It’s like Kele Okereke’s vocabulary has decreased 55% since his last album. Lyrics are a massive part of English language music for me. It’s kind of different for music in a different language, but because I understand music in English, I want them to make me think! I want metaphors I have to decipher! I want lush descriptions. Lyrics are part of why I love Tori Amos and Fiona Apple - Yes, their music styles evolve, but they are still able to create lyrics that provoke emotion and involve clever wordplay.

Your Seed

Tracey — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:43:06 +0000

Things that ran through my mind during the initial viewing:

Are they saying “biri biri” or “believe”?
Whoa! Overload of Takaki and Yamada. Not that I’m complaining about the Takaki bit.
Chinen is wearing GOD AWFUL CROPPED PANTS. WHY? WHY STYLIST, WHY? Why does Hikaru always get the nice clothes?!
What the hell are those head sprouting movements? It’s like… they’re growing a venus fly trap out of their heads.
Even after I looked for Keito, I only saw him for a total of ONE second.
I kind of regret not forking out $18-ish bucks to have this on DVD.

I swear, this PV is one of the things I love JE for. Sheer WTF-ness. And seriously, what does “Your Seed” mean, because I don’t ever think of it in an innocent way. Too many trashy romance novels twist the connotations of normal words. STOP HARLEQUIN, STOP.

If you’re curious, watch the PV: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=tg_zWECGvFc

Truth

Tracey — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:11:41 +0000

I have become so accustomed to Arashi’s bubblegum super-rainbow-filled music that I completely went “WHERE THE HELL HAVE MY RAINBOWS GONE?” when I heard this song. But really, about about 459847 repeated listens, I think I’ve fallen love and I love the use of the strings and the piano, especially in the instrumental. I do quite like the phrasing, you know, the broken up way they sing the first few lines of each verse. I like that gappy kind of thing. The music snob in me that absolutely dies every time I listen to JE is telling me “See, this is what Arashi could be.” but that’s not why I love Arashi. I’m torn. Very torn.

Listen to Truth here: http://www.imeem.com/nomanymore/music/670ITN9O/arashi_truth/

Gokusen 3 - Episode 06

Tracey — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:55:57 +0000

I am really only watching this for the hotness that is Takaki Yuya. Because seriously, one of Yankumi’s students getting into trouble and then Yankumi bashing up about 20 guys single handedly and then lecturing her students is getting really old. In fact, it was pretty old after about seven episodes into the FIRST season.

Seriously, this drama is a launching pad for younger JE guys into the dorama world. COME UP WITH BETTER IDEAS, PLEASE.

Persuasion

Tracey — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:30:39 +0000

Sometimes Pride and Prejudice is just too happy and perfect for me. Because really, of all the Elizabeth Bennets in the world, how many are really going to get their perfect Mr. Darcy? Yeah, like one in ten million. This is where Persuasion comes in - Both hero and heroine are flawed. Captain Wentworth is resentful, cold and Anne is no longer beautiful. They break up because of a busybody, Captain Wentworth writes a letter I would kill to have addressed to me, they get back together. It’s happy, but not too happy.

Read Persuasion online at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/105

DARLIN’

Tracey — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:48:10 +0000

Funky, funky, funky song. Pretty much like all Domoto Tsuyoshi’s stuff, super danceable and if I could speak Japanese properly I would probably be singing this song all the time. There’s something about his voice which just adds sex to it. I think it’s the lazy drawl he has. The only off putting thing about this is… He can’t really say darlin’ properly. Sometimes it comes out as “Darrin” and sometimes it comes out properly. Nevertheless, I ignore this and focus on it as a whole. Pure funky fun.

Listen to DARLIN’ (and his funny pronunciation of the word) at http://www.imeem.com/dannyblue84/music/fZm6T_-h/endlicheriendlicheri_darlin/