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You look great in that dress Sara Sampaio (21 fashion items)3 years, 1 month ago
One Album One Band
A Perfect Death Metal Bandshotswerefired commented on a list
3 years, 1 month ago
shotswerefired voted for list
Best Face: Emma Watson vs Gal Gadot (2 person items)3 years, 1 month ago
Seagulls
I'll See You In My Dreams
shotswerefired added 1 item to In Praise of Teresa Teng list
On the significance of Teng in his movie Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996):
"If you made Comrades in America, it would probably take place in the 1970s, and the end of the movie would be the death of [Beatles member] John Lennon. That’s how important Teresa Teng was.
She was a Taiwanese singer who became big in Hong Kong and then Japan and eventually became a phenomenon in mainland China at the early stage of economic reform back in the late 1970s. So she was the first Chinese star who could sing in [mainland] China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Ironically, that is very much what Comrades is about, about Chinese moving from place to place."
"Hong Kong people would feel particularly touched because as we go through the movie, all the dates are real, they’re all tied to their own lives. They can actually relate their experiences on the day she died to the experiences of the actors on the screen.
Her lyrics are very, very important. The theme song, Tian Mi Mi, is actually the Chinese title of Comrades. At the end, when Leon is walking, the lyrics totally mesh with what’s happening on screen."3 years, 1 month ago
Crazy signs 
In Praise of Benny Hill
In Praise of Teresa Teng
Book Diary 2022shotswerefired added 1 item to In Praise of Muhammad Ali list
"When I was a little kid in the 1960s, living in a council house in the Midlands, I would sometimes get a gentle knock on my bedroom door in the middle of the night. It would be my dad, waking me up so we could go downstairs to the kitchen, put on the transistor radio and listen to the latest Cassius Clay fight, live from the USA.
My dad was a big boxing fan. He read The Ring magazine and was very excited about this mouthy newcomer, not only outclassing opponents but often predicting the actual round in which he would finish them off. Just getting up at three in the morning was exciting enough, but listening to the echoey voice of the commentator, the rise and fall of the crowd reaction, or jumping up whenever Cassius Clay, or Muhammad Ali as he later became, got the upper hand, was pure joy. I couldn’t sit too close to my dad as we listened because he bobbed and weaved and threw every punch the fighters threw.
Ali wasn’t like the other boxers. They always seemed to be battle-scarred street fighters who would hit and get hit. He was an artist, dancing and flicking out his lightening left jab, making them look slow and bewildered. The great boxing writer, AJ Liebling, described one of Ali’s unfortunate opponents as looking “like a man trying to fight off wasps with a shovel”.
As I grew up I watched every Ali fight, but it was more than the boxing. He was the funniest man on television. I never saw anyone delight a chat-show audience like he did. It’s hard to pin down those things that make us who we are but I was definitely thrilled by the idea of making a crowd laugh like that.
Ali knew how good he was and he loved sharing that knowledge with anyone who’d listen. He claimed he was so fast he could switch off his bedroom light and be in bed before it got dark. He said any fighter who dreamt of beating him better wake up and apologise. I loved him."
I met Ali, as a trembling fanboy, three times in the 1990s: a book signing where he pointed out that he hadn’t been paid for use of his image on the T-shirt I was wearing, but still happily autographed it; a black-tie dinner with his former opponent, Henry Cooper; and at the premiere of a play about his life where he would only sign the pro-Islamic leaflets that he was handing out.
He died last June (2016). I was just about to do my Saturday-morning radio show when my producer, who wasn’t aware of my depth of feeling for the man, casually mentioned that Ali was gone. Of course, I cried.
I visited Larry Holmes, another great heavyweight champion, who fought Ali when the dancing and the lightning jab was just a memory. It was a fight most Ali fans could hardly bear to watch. Holmes loved Ali, too. He knew he had to beat the fading fighter but he didn’t want to do too much damage. He assured me he punched him with open fists, thus lessening the force of the blows. I remembered watching that fight. Those punches may not have hurt Ali but they certainly hurt me."
Everyone I met spoke of Ali as a sparkling presence in their lives. When I visited his grave at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, I felt some sadness but most of all I felt grateful. What a thrill it was to watch – and listen to – him fight, to see him entertain. At his last ever post-fight press conference, one journalist stood up and, instead of asking a question, said, “Thanks for giving us one hell of a ride.” I echo that sentiment."3 years, 1 month ago
Few things I love about cinema