Star Sparkle Blog

Since today is Hallowe'en I'm doing an extra post on scary films to watch. :) Post may contain spoilers. :)      IT (1990) This is a mini series rather than a film but I'll include it anyway! It is based on the book by Stephen King about a group of 7 kids living in the town of Derry in Maine, USA, who are all misfits in some way (because of their disability, weight, race, income etc) and come together to form the "Losers Club". Part 1- 1960 The members of the group, Bill Denbrough, Mike Hanlon, Ben Hanscomb, Beverly Marsh, Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak and Stanley Uris become friends and find strength in numbers. However, Derry is no ordinary town and the threats that reside there go beyond the local bully Henry Bowers and his gang- every 30 years a number of children are killed and the killer/s have never been found. It's only when this particular group of kids get together that they discover the killer is an interdimensional demon. They have ...

Popular Japanese singer Crystal Kay has teamed up with one of my favourite J-pop singers Namie Amuro for new song Revolution, so I thought I'd post about that today. :) Crystal (full name Crystal Kay Williams) is from Yokahama in Japan. Her mum is Korean (but I think born and raised in Japan herself) and her dad is African American. She can speak Japanese and English fluently and sings in both languages. Crystal started out singing for TV adverts as a child. She signed to Epic Records at 12 years old and released her debut single Eternal Memories in July 1999 aged 13 and her debut album C.LL. Crystal Lover of Light in March 2000. Since then she has released over 30 singles, some of the most well known are Hard To Say, Boyfriend Part II, I Like It (with m-flo ) and Motherland. Her 10 studio albums include C.LL., Amost Seventeen (2002), Call Me Miss... (2006), All Yours (2007), Spin The Music (2010) and Vivid (2012). Crystal has also brought out two EPS, Shining (2007) and Fl...

Like I mentioned in my post about J-Soul Brothers, I tend to know more Japanese solo singers and more Korean groups, lol. So I thought today I'd feature two videos, one by Japanese girlband FAKY and another by Korean American solo singer and rapper Jay Park . First up is Girl Digger by FAKY. They are a 5 member dance and vocal group, known as the Alternative girlband. They were created to represent Tokyo. The current members are Anna, Lil' Fang, Mikako and Akina. FAKY debuted in 2013 with members Anna, Lil' Fang, Tina and Diane but Diane and Tina left and were replaced by Akina. The name FAKY comes from the word Fake but the first two letters are from the word "Fantastic" and the last two from "Tokyo".  FAKY also stands for "Five Ass Kicking Youngsters". FAKY are an international group who are billingual since leader Anna is Japanese, but was born in New Zealand and also lived in Hong Kong in the Philippines before moving to Japan, and Ak...

A few weeks  ago I did a post on J-pop acts.  It was originally going to be about both J-pop and K-pop acts but was turning into a really long post, so I decided to split it up! The follow up post got delayed because of computer problems but here it is now. :) You can check out my J-pop Acts post here:   https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2015/09/j-pop-acts.html So here are the Korean acts. Some of them sing in Japanese and Chinese as well. Lee Hyori Lee Hyori, aka Hyolee, is a solo singer, who started out in the girl group Fin K.L, before going solo in 2003. Her last album was Monochrome, which was released in 2013. Video for my fave song 10 Minutes: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2012/05/weekly-music-video.html Girls vs Boys with Rain (see below):  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2013/10/girls-vs-boys-k-pop.html Rain (Bi) Rain (Bi), whose real name is Jung Ji-Hoon, is one of Korea's top solo stars. In addition to singing he dances, ac...

September was supposed to be J-pop and K-pop month but it got a bit derailed because I had computer problems! So I'm going to extend it into October. :) The last post I did was on J-pop acts . While doing that I discovered that Japanese singers Hiromi and Jasmine have new music (and some that's not so new but I don't think I've heard before). So today I'm going to feature two videos, one from each of them! First here's Hiromi's single TEQUILA SUNRISE, which came out in July. It's available as a bonus track on her compilation album BEST- FAN SELECT, which is due out on 28th October. Her latest single is BYE BYE YESTERDAY. I may feature that another week. And here is a Jasmine song, B*TCH*S. It's on her second album Complexx (2013). According to a comment on YouTube the lyrics are sexually suggestive! Update 27/5/20: Video now gone but you can find the song on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-852044490/jasmine-btchs Hope you...

I haven't been posting here for a while due to computer problems but I've got a new computer now, so hope to get back to a normal posting schedule. Hope everyone's having a good week so far. :)