It’s winter and that means Christmas time~

Since I haven’t updated in a long time, I’ll update with videos of yesterday (12/15 JST) performances from Japan TV’s “Best Artist 2010″.

This post will continually be updated with the performances.

Here’s a list of the artists: AKB48, Arasi, EXILE, Hey! Say! JUMP, Fukuyama Masaharu, FUNKY MONKEY BABYS, Hamasaki Ayumi, Hirai Ken, Ikimonogakari, KAT-TUN, Kobukuro, Koda Kumi, NEWS, Nishino Kana, Perfume, Tackey & Tsubasa, TOKIO, and Yuzu.

AKB48

Koda Kumi

TOKIO

Hey! Say! JUMP

Just to let you all know… the concert sold out in about 1-2 hours. Maybe you’ll find some on ebay.. or most of you probably know Jin himself, so just ask him.

All songs will be in English. Hopefully all the fans can understand it.

Shaun Evaristo and Lyle Beniga will be at TM Studio’s in Fullerton for their “Korean Night: Where You At?”

So if you’re in town and want to learn these cool dances go check ‘em out!

This is interesting. My friend Sam from North Carolina (raise up, take your shirt off, spin it like a helicopter) brought it to my attention.  This  video is of a Korean boy band doing my disturbia choreography to the song “just dance” by Lady GaGa. This was probably taken from our WOD Pomona video. You can see the actual choreography from that video here (starts at 3min)

This whole thing kind of boggles my mind. How can the “choreographer” take pride in their work knowing it isn’t really theirs? I mean congrats you copied the choreography dead on, but that’s about all you really did. I bet it would have been easier to come up with simple yet affective two steps for these “talented” dancers than taking the time to learn my routine off of youtube anyway. If you like the choreography that much then why not do it to the song it was intended for? There was a lot of thought put into the movements that directly correlated to the actual song. Now the choreography means nothing at all. I mean sure it gets the job done but it’s just movement now. No meaning, no depth, no substance, just movement. From the looks of things they have a pretty big budget so why not just ask me to do something for the artist. I would be more than happy and being that i am not considered a big name i would have probably been cheaper than anyone else.

In the end there is little to no chance at all of me getting compensation let alone any credit for this. It just sucks that those who take the time, effort and hard work to create can go over looked by artist and labels. In the end we are small fish in their pond and as of now there is little we can do about it. Thank God for Movement Lifestyle…

-Pat

All I gotta say is …..

source: Pat Cruz’s Tumblr

If you’re wondering what I’m talking about and you haven’t heard, Nick Simmons, son of Gene Simmons is under scrutiny by the manga fans as well as his own publishers.

Nick set out to release his new “manga” called Incarnate.

It was brought to Kubo Tite’s attention yesterday when he received message overload on his twitter stating that someone in the U.S. is copying his work of Bleach.

I’m not going to go into the whole debate about it. You can read and a very well written article about it by Deb Aoki.

For full comparison’s between the two you can see it at Bleachness@LJ.

Now for my comparison to the SuJu situation before. Honestly, I’m only writing about it because the two situations are very very similar.

If I was mangaka and people were making fan-art of my work, that’s a huge compliment. It means that my story, my art work is liked/loved by many people. Enough so, that people want to re-produce it in their own eyes. But, if someone blantly took my work, like straight copied it, got it produced in mass production and sold as ‘original’ I’d be mad.

Realize Japan is on a whole different level when it comes what is entertainment and what sells/works. What works in that country won’t work here. It’s been tried and failed.

This is like the Super Junior ‘copying’ 2 of Lyle Beniga’s choreographies. After reading about this situation, one can actually say they plagiarized his work.

How? The difference of people learning a choreography and posting it on YouTube and having an actual Idol group perform it on national television (and in a dance battle that they ended up winning) is pretty big. There is no fine line in that sense.

The situations are very similar in this case. Fan-art is copied but at the same time has the artists’ own style (or flare) to it. They aren’t getting paid huge amounts of money. Yes they are attempting to sell it, but like most of what twitterverse has been saying, they don’t make that much money and sometimes end up in the red.

What Nick did was not only copy the original work, but claimed it as his own. He is a ‘celebrity’ and is/was going to make profit. It’s the same thing with SuJu. While they didn’t say it was their original choreography, they didn’t give proper credit to it’s original creator.

Both situations have a celebrities who ‘traced’/'copied’ another’s work. It wasn’t just the story line, it was character design and drawing style as well. Both situations included people who in their own genre’s are famous, but not as famous or paid as ‘well known’ as the celebrities. (Although Nick is living off his dad’s name.)

There’s a fine line between fan-art and plagiarizing.

What do you all think?

There’s also a facebook group that has a list of other manga’s Nick is accused of plagiarizing.

While our opinion doesn’t matter and the only opinion that does matter is Lyle’s, he tweeted a short answer to answer the question about SuJu copying his choreo.

Don’t mind the thing above it… he tweeted this yesterday.

“it doesnt matter if suju claimed dat my choreo was theirs or not, they still used it w/o permish, profitted frm bein on the show & they won! … which is wrong. don’t forget that these are our careers people! ~a quick answer to a repeating question.”

While I’m not sure if he meant to say “it doesn’t” or “it does,” that’s his answer.

By the way, we still think you need to get paid for those two that they took. You earned it!

J-Pop artist Thelma Aoyama made a special guest appearance at Big Bang‘s Budokan concert, singing her collaborations with TaeYang (SOL) “Fall in love.”

Big Bang also gave a message to PON and asked Okada-san advice on a new introduction for the boys. You can see it at the end of the video. TaeYang went on to say that it’s because of everyone cheering them on that they are able to have concerts in Japan.

I’m loving TOP‘s short hair, but sometimes I’m reminded of Spock.

source: ibigbang, sanspo

Starting today 2/17, cell phone users will be able to carry Tohoshinki every where with them. Users will be able to purchase a kisekae kit with groups Tohoshinki and AAA for “kisekae♪mu-mo.”

Kisekae are theme’s for your cell phones. So from today on you can Tohoshinki your phone out with a theme to make people go “Who is that!?” Photo’s from Tohoshinki’s first BEST SELECTION 2010 album will be used in the kisekae. The kit includes “Special Shots” of the group taken for the album.

AAA, Koda Kumi and EXILE are also part of the kisekae and users will be able to see photo’s from the artists newest albums. Ayumi Hamasaki‘s kit includes photo’s from her “Calendar 2010 Special Shot.”

source: natalie

They are conquering the drama world by storm.

This time Lead leader, Hiroki Nakadoi, has been chosen to play ace gymnast in a new drama, Tumbling. The drama starts in April on TBS.

The drama is a comedy about a boys gymnastics team. Also starring is Yusuke Yamamoto, Kouji Seto, Shouhei Miura, Takahiro Nishijima (AAA), Azusa Okamoto and introducing a new face, Rei Okamoto.

Hiroki was chosen for the role because in every drama that he has appeared in he has played a high school student.

“Although I don’t have a lot of experience in doing dramas and I am really nervous about this one, I am thankful for this role that will let me use my athletic ability. I’ll give this my all,” said Hiroki with a lot of enthusiasm.

Lead will also be having their fan club event this summer, Leaders Party 7, starting 3/27.

If you didn’t know Hiroki is also a B-boy, so doing all those gymnastic moves should be easy. I’m happy that they chose him to play a lead role.

Lead Upturn 2009 Dance cut

source: natalie