Category: Film

Watch Liu Yifei’s audition tape for Mulan

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A photo of Liu Yifei in 2005 that recently made its rounds on Weibo. How is she so adorable all the time.

Mulan director Niki Caro recently released a clip of Liu Yifei’s audition and Liu Yifei is soooo cute in it. This was right after flying from China to the U.S., too. In the lines, you can tell they allude to the story of unable to separate between male and female rabbits from the original ballad of Mulan. Niki Caro also released a few audition tapes of other actresses, including Leah Dou, Lan Yingying, Zhang Yishang and Yang Caiyu.

The film’s been pushed back to July 24 as of now, but I assume it’s all up in the air.

Category: Drama

Mulan delayed, round-up 4

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Liu Yifei at the Mulan Premier earlier this week.

Mulan Promos Round-Up 1; Round-Up 2 ; Round-Up 3

According to Variety, Disney’s Mulan has been delayed indefinitely across the globe due to the coronavirus. I’m actually really sad about this, and I really hope we can see this film soon.

I went ahead and got the book of the live-action. The story feels more “Disney princess-y” in terms of her transformation, and Mulan’s decisions feel less subtle, but overall it follows the same plot as the original film and Mulan has the same heart. Some people were accusing Disney of removing Li Shang because he’s too queer, but that’s definitely not the case based on the book. There’s an exchange between Mulan and the new male lead that’s way more queerbait than anything in the original.

A new Mulan clip (spoilers) of the moment Mulan decides to go on her journey:

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Category: Film

Liu Yifei sings Reflection, more by Chen Man, and American merchandise round-up

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The Mulan poster by Chen Man we deserve.

Mulan Promos Round-Up 1; Round-Up 2

Liu Yifei covers the classic Mulan song Reflection. She sounds flawed but still beautiful and more importantly, it sounds like her. I’m really happy that they didn’t over-autotune her too much for this song like they did for the other princesses. My only complaint is that the erhu is a very minimum-effort addition, but I like how the rest of the music was re-arranged to fit her voice.

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Category: Film

Round-Up: Mulan Promos and Merch

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Awkward phone interview between Liu Yifei and Awkwafina here. The photoshoot is gorgeous, though.

Mulan Promos: Round-Up 1; Round-Up 2 ; Round-Up 3

A round-up of Liu Yifei’s Mulan promos so far. The stunts look a lot better in the featurette than in the trailers, although I’m still iffy about all their decisions (one of the producers recently blamed cutting out Li Shang on the MeToo movement!)

Since tickets are now out in many places, here’s a mini round-up of some of the promotional stuff as well as a couple of merchandise. All the interviews are mostly just various people praising Liu Yifei and how hard-working and awesome she is. For example, co-star Jimmy Wong tweeted that the male soldiers couldn’t last 2/3 of the time in training as Liu Yifei.

Playlist of trailers, interviews, behind-the-scenes of Mulan:

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Category: Drama

Friday Photos

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Liu Yifei photoshoot and interview by Awkwafina here

Posters, stills, and photoshoots that caught our eyes this week. Feel free to share your own finds in the comments!

Ju Jingyi
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Category: Film

Mulan final trailer

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Watching recent Disney movies’ attempts at showing fighting choreography (instead of just editing a bunch of fast takes together) have really made me realize that for all the surreal moves in Chinese wuxia, they’ve managed to extend physics in a way so that even the casual viewer can discern what looks “right” and what’s “impossible” even though it’s all impossible. Reason #1million why Disney shouldn’t have had an all-white crew.