GLEE: Review

Glee: Drama where I found myself

Glee is an American musical comedy-drama television series that airs on Fox in the United States, and on GlobalTV in Canada. It focuses on the high school glee club New Directions competing on the show choir competition circuit, while its members deal with relationships, sexuality and social issues. (From Wikipedia)

List of Songs I love!!!

- All by myself

- Billionaire

- I look to you

- Loser like me

- Marry You (singing at a wedding)

- Listen (Dreamgirls)

- Blame it (on the alcohol) > my personal favorite movie clip!!!!!

- Forget You

- Pretending & Light Up the World (low quality picture)

- Jar of Hearts (sung when Rachel is betrayed by Finn)

- As long as you're there (Vocal Adrenaline performing)

These songs I have listed above are my favorite songs that I put in my mp3 player and listened to over a hundred times, I guess. I think these songs are amazing and they can be considered as classics. (My definition of classics: any kind of art, in this case songs that makes us feel better no matter how you feel before that)
I have watched whole 2 seasons of glee over a couple of times. When I watch dramas, it's not that there is a specific characteristic that I like, but I evaluate how I feel after watching it. Glee turned out to be very satisfactory, probably because there were whole bunch of great songs that are sung at right moments of these high school students' lives. Also, although these casts are not actually high school students, just thinking of high school in America just makes me feel excited and connected. Characters in glee go through a lot of difficulties, including girlfriend and boyfriend problems, homosexuality, teachers and students, conflicts between different clubs, family issues. Quinn, one of the characters in glee, made a baby with Puck while she was cheating on her boyfriend Finn Hudson.

It seems like, for most Korean students, that american high school students do not learn a lot or study so much compared to koreans. However, I personally think that what they learn through all these experiences are more valuable and extraordinary than merely sitting in a chair looking through textbooks. Through my indirect experiences in glee, I sometimes found myself in these characters, often in a negative way and found some ways to deal with this. Also, I could experience what will happen in my college life in America beforehand, so that it would be easy to solve these commom issues that will attack me in my near future.

While I was watching glee, I found myself sniffling with tears in my eyes or sometimes laughing with these characters. I tend to be very emotional in any kind of films, even with animation movies. This may look very stupid, but I really enjoyed sharing feelings with the characters when they faced problems that seemed like they could never be solved.

One thing I'm disappointed about glee is that the season 3 glee suddenly became terrible. There are no more wonderful songs and the story is so obvious. Also, the characters used to deal with their problems pretty well, but they started to become erratic students. I really hope the director would just get back to the original story again!

Rating:
Season 1:
Season 2:
Season 3:

FRIENDS - Review (The one I want to be graded)

Friends: The Drama I want to write a book on. (Or a research paper like in Mr. Ganse's class...)

Friends is an American sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994 to May 6, 2004. The series revolves around a group of friends in Manhattan. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television. (From Wikipedia) 
When I first came to know <Friends>, I was watching it just to spend my remaining time. Then, as soon as I was watching about 3 pieces, I was slowly falling in love with this drama.

This is the blooper for friends season 8 and 9, just for fun introduction!!! ;)

     <Friends> was always with me since I was in second grade of middle school. I went through tons of stress coming from my studies, my family and my friendship problems during this period of time because <Friends> was there for me, waiting to be watched(?). ;) To sum up how much I love this drama, there are 10 seasons, with each seasons consisted of about 25 pieces, each 30 to 40 minutes, and I have watched at least three or four times of all these. If it weren't for this drama, I would have just given up everything and deviate from my goal completely.

     I was so into <Friends> for several elements and I personally think this is the most perfect drama series that humans ever created. As most people would know, there are 6 main characters, Pheobe Buffay, Chandler Bing, Monica and Ross Geller, Rachel Green and Joey Tribbiani. None of them speaks more or takes more part than others and each of them have their own, very distinct characteristics, which always justifies them for doing weird things. The story itself consists of both big and small experiences these characters go through, including marriage, divorce, workplace experiences or girlfriend boyfriend problems.

     What I learned most from this drama is, definitely love. While GLEE taught me how to deal with high school and university problems that are very trivial and a lot of times fake relationships, Friends gave me lessons on serious relationships, such as guys who would marry me, or even more than that. It's true that I observed many couples and watched in a very close distance of my parents, I never looked from their perspectives. However, in Friends, out of six characters here, there are four of them who get married, and I could observe very serious relationship slowly developing, with so much difficulties and conflicts, then finally reaching a point at which they get married. I don't know how the director did this, but he drew highly sophisticated picture of this process, full of pure emotions, eliminating all the fake behaviors most people do today. I really liked how such comical story developed into such an emotional story, resulting in tears in my eyes.

     To prove that I'm not the only one who was greatly moved by the drama, let me give you some statistics. It is unprecedented to continue one drama for 10 years, with 10 seasons with the exact same flow of story and exact same characters on it, from 1994 to 2004. Of course, their style of wearing clothes or how they wear make-ups have changed a lot during 10 years, but the storyline hasn't changed in a single way. Also, by the time they were filming season 10, the advertisement fees in between the air of Friends skyrocketed. Friends was broadcasted in America every week, on Thursday 5 o'clock in the evening, and by the time season 10 was being aired, the New York city became so quiet suddenly, as all the people were at home, watching Friends at the same time, as there were no prevalent downloading sites on the Internet at the time. In 2004, the weekly salary each of the cast received was over a billion dollars.

     If anyone of you who is reading this haven't watched Friends yet, I strongly suggest you to watch it before you die, unless you'll regret after you die. ^^

Actually I want to give 10 stars out of five, but this is all I can do!

The Body Reading Journal #1

EdUcAtIoN

     God, only if I could teach these kids and keep them under my nose! It's all I could think about as I was reading this book for about 30 pages. The four main characters, Chris, Teddy, Vern and Gordie all come from the family environment where they are not taken such good care of with tenderness and affection. They are either getting too much attention; beaten to near-death like Teddy, or is completely ignored from their parents like Gordie. The worse part is that they themselves know that others think of them as idiots, as they all come from such a terrible family background. People just make conclusions so fast like that, without trying to understand what they have been through and how they have changed. This was very evident when Chris said,

     "And you know what, Gordie? By next June, we'll all be quits." "It's not gonna be like grammar school, that's why. You'll be in the college courses. Me and Teddy and Vern, we'll all be in the shop courses, playing pocket-pool with the rest of the retards, making ashtrays and birdhouses. Vern might even have to go into Remedial. You'll meet a lot of new guys. Smart guys. That's just the way it works, Gordie. That's how they got it set up." Then Gordie said, "Meet a lot of pussies is what you mean." But then Chris gripped his arm and said, "If you don't, then you're an asshole." "What's asshole about wanting to be with your friends?" 

     I was really moved and surprised at the same time at how matured and grown-up these kids are, at least in the inside of their hearts! They do go smoking and stealing guns and talk about weird stuff that I do not understand why, but they do think about their friends so deeply and care for each other all the time. Then I asked myself, 'With these kind-hearted minds, why are they acting so inappropriately all the time, losing their minds once in a while and doing things they're not supposed to?' The answer just came into my head like a lightening: EDUCATION.

     We often say that the best teacher is our parents, and if we take a look at the family situations of each kid we can easily realize what kind of education they received as a child. Teddy must have learned violence and anger from his crazy father and Gordie must have learned to deal with everything on his own. And all four of them, of course, were never treated with tenderness, even at school. I think this environment of the kids have made them so vulnerable and naive. If anyone paid attention to the guys and taught them just a little bit of life lessons or maybe just gave them some interesting and didactic books to read, they would have had much more confidence, wisdom and knowledge.

My sister's keeper

Movie Review #1: My Sister's Keeper

Official movie trailor:

"Most babies are accidents. Not me. I was engineered. Born to save my sister's life."

This line by Anna, the narrator of this movie, simply summarizes what this movie is all about. Anna is a younger sister of Kate, who was born to cure diseases of Kate by implanting all kinds of her organs to Kate's body whenever needed. Kate innately had terrible health, slowly dying from leukemia. She often choked up with blood, and was often suffering from medication treatments. I was even worried that her blood would soon be depleted as she was excreting too much blood from her body. Due to this, Anna received unwanted surgeries over ten times, by her age of 11.

At this age, she started to acknowledge what was happening to her and finally came to understand that their parents were violating her rights over her body. Not only that but her sister Kate also suddenly said she wants to stop all these. All the surgeries, chemical treatments, hurts and fights going on over her parents because of her.

Therefore, Anna finally chooses to file a law suit against her parents for violating her rights to make decisions over her body.
Later in this movie, the doctor feels that it would be better to just give up and make Kate comfortable until she dies. So her father and brother Jessie takes her to the beach, a place where Kate likes the most. However, her mom becomes nuts about this and wants her to get medication and keep on trying until she cures. Nonetheless, the family all just go down to the beach and enjoys the beautiful and pleasant ambience of the beach. When Kate comes back to the hospital where she had been staying almost all of her life, she receives a photobook, filled with photos she and her family took, all of them smiling.

That night, Kate and her mom cried themselves to sleep. And that night, Kate died.
Right after the movie ended, what came to mind was, life is so transient. I've been thinking about death a lot recently, and this movie seemed to just put all my scattered thoughts into order. You NEVER know what will happen just one second later, and your life just goes by.
I think the reason why human beings are so afriad of death is because they really don't know how they will feel or what will happen after they die. Humans have knowledge boundaries that are so wide and deep that it is impossible to become aware of all of them during lifetime. However, there are also plenty of things we do not know, like death. As everyone has to go through death and nobody knows what will happen, it is quite natural to be afraid of it. But, whatever happens in the future, I think going against nature is always wrong. Anna's birth, at the first place, which was also against the nature, was the start of all the conflicts and fights and pain. Of course, in terms of birth itself, it should be celebrated, but it certainly brought lots of anguish. Moreover, at the end of the movie, the mother keep on tries to continue the chemical medication, which hurts Kate so much, she wants to stop and give up. This, making a frantic last-ditch effort, did not work in the end, and it only brought fights and pain to everyone. Thus, I think we should never go against the nature of what will happen, especially if it is impossible to be controlled with human power.


Rating :

Reflective Essay of Kim Gi Duk's movie, Spring

    In the movie, the teacher teaches a boy a lifelong and valuable lesson by making him experience what the animals have went through. The boy tied up a fish, a frog and a snake with a rope to a stone so that they wouldn’t be able to move properly, so the teacher did the exact same thing to the boy, instead of beating or yelling at him at all. The teacher made the boy a new person without saying much words or effort.
    My mom used to use this teaching method a lot to me and my sister, which greatly changed how I behave and act towards others. Back in my first grade in elementary school, I used to visit a lot of my friends’ house for birthday parties. Since they were my closest friends, I simply thought I could take some toys or books from their house without asking and return the toys back when I’m done playing. I simply thought it wouldn’t really matter if I gave them back and place them where they were. When my mom found out about this, she didn’t show any outrage or anger towards me nor said anything harsh to me. However, suddenly my top priority objects were constantly taken away and put back again, and it infuriated me. They weren’t there when I needed them, I didn’t know where to find it because I didn’t know who was the thief, and this was utterly uncomfortable and annoying all the time. Sometimes I was so angry I was yelling, jumping around all over the house, calling, “Who’s the thief! Who’s the thief!”. But slowly I came to realize that the thief was my mom and she did this to teach me that taking things without telling is same as stealing even if you take them back where they are, and it annoys the owner even though you put them back right in. If, just hypothetically, my mom yelled at me for stealing or beated me, I wouldn’t have known why would that we stealing and argue. Then I would have done it repeatedly until I grow up enough to know what is the difference. From this experience, I personally think this teaching method is very effective and useful.