Tracklisting:

1. 믿어요 (I Believe) [MV]
2. Thanks To [MV]
3. Tri-Angle (ft. BoA and Trax)
4. 내 여자친구가 되어줄래? (Will You Be My Girlfriend?)
5. Whatever They Say (A Cappella) [MV]
6. Million Men
7. 지금처럼 (Like Now)
8. I Never Let Go
9. 꼬마야 (Hey, Kid)
10. 넌 언제나 (You Always)
11. Hug [MV]
12. My Little Princess [MV, A cappella MV]
13. The Way U Are [MV]
14. Tri-Angle (TVXQ Version) [MV]

This is where it all started, the first tentative steps into full-blown superstardom that was Dong Bang Shin Ki. Fresh faced and thirsty for the spotlight, these five boys, who never actually knew each other before joining the trainee ranks at SM Entertainment, brought ambition and incredible talent to the table and came up with one of the most promising debuts from a pop vocal group.

Tri-Angle is definitely the type of album you want for a group of teenagers just starting to cut their teeth in an industry oversaturated with candy pop. Lyrically the album is what you’d expect from a group of teen boys — a lot of love songs and beat-heavy ballads. However, what makes this album so singular is just how heavily rooted in 90s R&B it is.

It’s an interesting move to place so many ballads on a debut album, especially when the goal is to introduce a fresh, energetic group of kids to the world. However, for the purposes of garnering a very young teen demographic, it makes sense to get the girls swooning early, and surely Micky Yoochun’s throaty introduction (in English) on opening track I Believe had girls screaming from the start.

To be honest, Tri-Angle’s construction in terms of placement and song composition makes the album lack focus. The title track includes an “interesting” black metal break — compliments of SM’s first rock group TRAX — and a cameo from SM’s biggest seller at the time BoA, a jarring juxtaposition against the boys’ deeper vocals and the darker tone of the song. Placing this power track after two ballads and preceding a song that asks Will You Be My Girlfriend? is a puzzling approach to say the least.

Tri-Angle’s only other upbeat song, dance track The Way U Are, also seems a bit strangely placed, seemingly tacked on to the end of the album just to ensure a dance track made the cut. And in the midst of the more vocally mature balladry, tracks Hug and Hey Kid seem haphazardly placed, highlighting the boys’ sugary innocence for the sake of a younger audience. It’s not unexpected to find these two tracks on a debut album by and targeting teens; however, in the grander scope of the album, which seems to focus mostly on the group’s supposed vocal maturity, these are odd additions that have little effect.

However, once you get past the odd song choice and placement, you’re struck by just how powerful the group is vocally. When stripped of the music, the boys are in a class all their own. When experiencing the album in its entirety, it’s shocking just how incredible their ability to blend really is. Tracks like Whatever They Say and My Little Princess are powerful simply for their implication. Here we have a pop group that’s all about getting young girls to fall in love with them. But many of the tracks draw heavily from a different pop/R&B perspective, targeting an audience brought up on the likes of Boyz II Men and Shai. It’s a brilliant move, bringing in the newer generation of teenyboppers but reaching out and grabbing fans of a golden age in vocal excellence.

As far as debut’s go, Tri-Angle isn’t one of a kind, it’s not an obvious indication of the group’s dominance over the next few years, and ultimately its influence for about the past decade. It’s a pop album, plain and simple. However, what it does is bring into focus the very real and very obvious talent and chemistry the boys had. Tri-Angle is simply a good pop album, lacking seamlessness and a bit of focus but is still a testament to their natural vocal ability.

Rating: ★★★¼☆ 

Standout Tracks: Whatever They Say, Million Men, Like Now, My Little Princess, Tri-Angle

You can listen to Tri-Angle on Xiami. You can buy it at YesAsia, DVD Heaven, and Kpop Town.

Release date: March 29, 2013
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Screenplay by: Derek Cianfrance, Ben Coccio, Darius Marder
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Dane DeHaan, Emory Cohen, Ray Liotta, Ben Mendelsohn, Rose Byrne, Mahershala Ali, Bruce Greenwood, Harris Yulin

Disclaimer: I have yet to see Blue Valentine. I know, shame on me.

Anyways, Derek Cianfrance teams up with Ryan Gosling once again offering three stories for the price of one in The Place Beyond the Pines.

The first story begins through Luke Glanton (Gosling), a locally famous motorcycle stuntman — Hey Drive… how you doin’? (Glanton is definitely a lot more vocal than Driver, though) — who just found out that he had a son with his ex-lover Romina (Mendes). Despite Romina not wanting Luke to be part of her son’s life — she has moved on with another man (Ali) — Glanton starts robbing banks in order to support his own son.

The second story revolves around Officer Avery Cross (Cooper), who has just become a hero after solving a crime that almost ended his life. Cross is pretty much a honest man, which leads him into conflicts with how his workplace is corruptly managed.

The third story takes place 15-16 years later and follows AJ (Cohen) and Jason (DeHaan), two young boys who befriend each other in high school. However, their respective origins and personalities end up clashing, and let’s leave it at that.

The Place Beyond the Pines deals with fatherhood and fate through Glanton and Cross, two men of different lifestyles who eventually clash with each other and then we see the consecuences of their actions played out in the third story. I also have to say that the second story serves the purpose of developing Cross and works as an interlude for what’s to come later on. While the screenwriting for the film is pretty damn interesting (in a good way) and very ambitious, the execution of the film felt progressively overlong following the first story.

The cast isn’t to blame for the film’s ambitions: while Ryan Gosling shined strongly in the first story alongside Eva Mendes, and Bradley Cooper did the best he could with the post-Gosling parts of the film, the acting from Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan wasn’t good enough for their own storylines, even if the final scenes made The Place Beyond the Pines as a whole come into full circle. If I have to mention other highlights from the film, those would be the score from Mike Patton and Ben Mendelsohn’s charming performance as Robin, who is used importantly to advance the storylines.

All in all, The Place Beyond the Pines is a very interesting film to watch — the first story is easily 4-star material thanks to Ryan Gosling’s charisma and acting talent alone. If the screenwriting was more polished and balanced for the other portions of the film, which reminded me of Django Unchained for all the wrong reasons, this would have been fantastic considering there was a good amount of things happening in all the stories.

Rating: ★★★¼☆ 

SATURDAY

So yeah, we saw the Doctor Who series 7 finale. And we got John Hurt! And he was introduced as The Doctor. And I choked a scream. So yeah, we’ll have to wait until the 50th anniversary special to see how that turns out.

Damn, Kid Loki is totally killing in this preview of Young Avengers #5. Also, as usual, the variant cover is way more awesome than the regular: one!

On other comicbooks news, we have Pinkie Pie cosplaying as Optimus Prime! Yup, we got a crossover between My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Transformers.  Hey, both are owned by Hasbro, so no prob!

So Wal-Mart gave us a pretty nice Man of Steel featurette, where we see images from the movie, as well as some commentary from the director, producers and the more-or-less atractive cast~

SUNDAY

OMG! We got two versions [1] [2] of Only Lovers Left Alive‘s presskit and they are glorious! OK, the designs are nothing to write home about, but the pictures are very pretty!

OMG why am I poor! J.K. Rowling’s annotated copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is going to be auctioned! It even includes 22 illustrations of scenes and characters, and the copy is one of the 500 First Edition prints. So, what kind of hand-written notes could you find? Here:

Perhaps Hufflepuff house would have the respect it deserves from fans if I’d stayed with my original idea of a bear to represent it?

When geeks have free time on their hands, they like to speculate. A lot. Here’s the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. trailer breakdown!

And continuing the speculations, Star Trek Into Darkness gave us some things to think about, and maybe some plot holes can turn into plot points for the sequel! I specially care about Klingons, Khan and Starfleet~

Release date: October 5, 2005
Director: Noah Baumbach
Screenplay by: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline, Anna Paquin, William Baldwin

There’s just something about Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale that makes you want to punch every character you meet in the mouth. However bad that sounds, it’s actually exactly what makes it such an amusing film.

Baumbach hones in on the messy way these people deal with life by focusing on the Berkman family of four. Bernard (Daniels) and Joan (Linney) are both writers, but the man of the house finds himself at the end of his wits when his wife begins to get more recognition than he does. They decide to separate, leaving their children Walt (Eisenberg) and Frank (Kline) to deal with the repercussions.

As far as the plot setup goes, it’s nothing special, but Baumbach’s real talent lies in the writing of his characters and their dialogue. There’s a moment about ten minutes into the movie, just after Bernard reveal to his children that he’s moving away due to their separation, that Owen Kline delivers the first trigger for laugh out loud comedy in what seemed to be a rather dramatic film. This is a child that seems about to burst into tears because of his parents divorce and he simply says, “Across the park. Is that even Brooklyn?” For this kid to take something that trivial and make a huge deal out of it shows a sort of disdain for privilege from Baumbach to the point where it’s all one big joke.

That’s where a character like Bernard, played like a true elitist asshole through and through by Jeff Daniels, is so important to the story. While Laura Linney’s character is just as influential to many of the irrational decisions that her children make, Daniels’ overbearing presence can be felt throughout. His pompous opinions on everything, that no one but one of his son’s truly wants to hear, are a plague on his family. With each critique of a literary classic, he further drives a wedge between them all, and his older son takes it all to heart to the point where he practically loses his own identity. Walt repeats his father’s quotes on novels, assumes that he could create something that has already been created, and even falls for the same woman his father has fallen for. It’s a desperate cry for help that no one can listen to, even when they all hear him play Pink Floyd’s Hey You at a talent show.

Owen Kline, who I dare say is the real stand-out of the cast even against Daniels’ great performance, lets his character have a more balanced blend of his mother and father’s qualities. His indiscretions are far more overt and unsettling than his brother’s, and yet it’s exactly what makes him the more amusing of the two. Every time Frank refers to himself as a philistine after his father explains that it is someone who “doesn’t care about books and interesting films and things,” it makes you laugh because of how ridiculous it is.

This amusing side in Frank can almost be attributed to Linney’s rather refreshing character. While she is just as much to blame for the breakdown of their relationship, every scene we see her in reinforces the fact that she’s just plain tired of this pseudo-intellectual man she married. Again, however, she is neither the victim nor the executioner, as it’s the double dose of narcissism in both of these parents that triggers the mess everyone falls into.

For all the humor laced into the writing, Noah Baumbach’s story (which is in part autobiographical) is rather sad to experience. The funny lines may distract from the depressing events unfolding, but The Squid and the Whale is still at its core a story about the breakdown of a family that just doesn’t know how to handle a divorce. At times delightful and at times sad, it’s an interesting watch to see just how well Baumbach can handle his characters.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Release Date: May 21, 2013
Label: B2M Entertainment

Tracklisting:

1. Holly Jolly Bus featuring Soonshim the Dog
2. 미스코리아 (Miss Korea) [MV]
3. Love Radar featuring Beenzino of Jazzyfact
4. Bad Girls [MV]
5. 내가 미워요 (I Hate Myself)
6. 사랑의 부도수표 (Bounced Checks of Love)
7. Full Moon
8. Trust Me
9. Special
10. Amor Mio featuring Bak Ji-yong of Honey G
11. 누군가 (Somebody)
12. 묻지 않을게요 (Wouldn’t Ask You)
13. 미쳐 featuring Ahn Young-mi (Crazy)
14. 쇼쇼쇼 (Show Show Show)
15. Better Together
16. 노 (Oars)

The Queen of Kpop is back after a chunky 2010 comeback [1], but Monochrome brings her back in better shape than ever as she puts together a team of creatives that includes Norwegian composing team Dsign Music and even Taiwan’s singer-songwriter Joanna Wang, who — I’m sure — collaborated with Jaakko Salovaara and Matti Mikkola on that Finnish creative songwriting camp she attended. But don’t take my word for it.

At first view with singles Miss Korea and Bad Girls, you might think these are complete opposite styles of music and themes. However, these work as opposite sides of the same coin, working together instead of working against each other. Monochrome seems to be an amalgam of genres, from the familiar electro dance pop that would be Bad Girls, to rock & roll, Korean latin-esque love ballads to honky-tonk blues and country blues.

The Queen of Kpop is honky-tonk, yo! At the hand of Kim Tae-chun, who takes Hyori completely out of her musical comfort zone and pushes Monochrome into trailblazer pop territory; the album is infused with so many musical genres, but it never truly stops being pop, which is a feature, unlike Christina Aguilera’s Back to Basics or any of the Jay Chou albums that might have included honky-tonk [1][2].

The shocking thing is that starting out, Lee gives us Holly Jolly Bus with a bluesy introduction that then gives us its pop verses intertwined with those familiar harmonica interludes and some barking from Soonshim (that’s her dog, alright), and while Miss Korea gives us the impression that the whole album might follow a more blues-infused road, she gives us Love Radar which is a great electronic pop song with a great interlude by Beenzino.

The structure in the album gives us her most Hyori track in Bad Girls followed by a bluesy pop ballad (I Hate Myself), some country (Bounced Checks of Love), rock & roll (Full Moon), taking us back into bluesy pop (Trust Me and Special) and hitting us hard with Amor Mio, which surprise with its ability to take the most from Hyori’s vocals in contrast to Bak Ji-yong’s deep vocals. I would have probably dared to cut the album there, if it hadn’t been for that other Kim Tae-chun track titled Wouldn’t Ask You.

While I do think that Monochrome runs a little bit long — I would probably cut I Hate Myself  and Show Show Show off the tracklist, shifting Oars up to make Better Together the album closing track — it’s got great production work, taking Hyori on a road where very few Princesses and Queens of Pop [1] have dared to venture. Even when Madonna tried making country work, she only did it by image [1][2]. It’s quite a daring attempt by Hyori and her creative team, making the wait for Monochrome all the more satisfying.

Highlights: Amor Mio, Wouldn’t Ask You, Love Radar

Rating: ★★★¾☆ 

You can preview the album on Xiami | Like it? You can get the album on iTunes, and YesAsia as the Normal Edition and the Special Limited Edition with the 156-page Photobook.

The music video, which was directed by Philip Di Fiore, follows a couple played by Julia Stiles and Fran Kranz who arrived to New York City as excited a couple can be, when things take an eerily disturbing turn as someone begins torturing Stiles physically and emotionally.

You can follow Caveman on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Soundcloud.

Titled Irohanihoheto (いろはにほへと) — the incomprehensible title for those with a less moderate use of the Japanese language and culture — refers to a pretty old Japanese poem that dates back a thousand years that uses every single letter of the Japanese alphabet just once, and still makes sense. It still makes sense- how is that possible?

The poem known as Iroha (いろは) talks about the concepts of Buddhism such as the unpredictability of life, and the ever-changing nature of things [1], with a first verse that gives Ringo her title. So could I translate the title to “Colors Will Fall” or maybe “Colors Will Fade“?

A flower in full bloom with beautiful colors will fall off some day.
We living in this world also cannot live forever.
Surmount this mutable and changeable deep mountain of waver now,
And reach the world of enlightenment.
You will be in a quiet state of mind without having an empty dream
Or being drunk with the illusory world of phenomena.

The music video was directed by Yuichi Kodama (児玉裕一) who had previously directed Ringo and Tokyo Jihen, as well as Perfume, Salyu, Polysics, Mr. Children and Namie Amuero.

You can also try catching the video on this YouTube link.

Irohanihoheto serves as the main theme for the FujiTV drama Bitter Sweet Home Kyoto (鴨、京都へ行く. -老舗旅館の女将日記-), and will be officially released as a single on May 27th (hopefully will show up on time on iTunes) alongside Dawn of Loneliness (孤独のあかつき, Kodoku no Akatsuki).

The new trailer also features some new gags, and some snatched glimpses at the university’s Scare Games, which sees the pair and their fraternity face off against the other houses.

Monsters University is directed by Dan Scanlon and features music from Randy Newman and Axwell & Sebastian of Swedish House Mafia. The voice cast includes Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Dave Foley, Julia Sweeney, Joel Murray, Peter Sohn. The film premieres on June 21, 2013 and will also be available in Disney Digital 3D™.

They have just released the final 10th music video titled Dear Tree Holllow (親愛的樹洞, Qin Ai de Shu Dong) at the hand of COSMOS.

Dear Tree Hollow follows the release of The Flowers Have Blossomed (花又開好了) [MV], Heart Is Still Warm (心還是熱的) [MV], Girl-like Women (像女孩的女人) [MV], Repair Me (還我) [MV], Don’t Say Goodbye (不說再見) [MV], Can’t Wait (迫不及待) [MV], Hereafter Hereafter (後來後來) [MV], A Brand New Me (明天的自己) [MV], and The Tree at that Time (那時候的樹) [MV].

You can purchase the Blossomy DVD on YesAsia, but be aware that there are several versions that don’t include both DVDs, instead including the original album with the SHERO DVD.

The film stars Sarah Bogler as Lucy, a teenage girl who is reaching maturity just around the same time her parents (Claire Danes & James Marsden) are losing theirs. While Lucy is figuring out her life and what comes with being a teenager, her parents aren’t faring well with their marriage as well as raising their daughter whose existence they hardly acknowledge.

The cast includes Jeremy Sisto, Jon Tenney, Peter Fonda, Thomas Mann, Anika Noni Rose and Alanis Morrisette, who stars as herself in the film.

As Cool As I Am is adpated from the 1994 novel of the same name by Pete Fromm and it is directed by Max Mayer and the screenplay was written by Korus Spragg. It is set to premiere on June 21, 2013.