Movie Report: The Princess and the Frog

Happy Holidays to all! I'm here to report on Disney's newest animation princess film, The Princess and the Frog (which I'm sure everyone has seen previews for!) My best friend came home and the first thing we vowed to do over our Christmas break was to watch it! Being an avid Disney animated movie fanatic since I was little, I was more than excited to see this movie. I grew up living and breathing Disney movies. I have just about every Disney animated movie you can think of and I still know every character's name (well, most of them! yes, like Smee and Clayton and Phil...and even Rajah! Kudos to you if you can guess which movies those characters are from!) I already had high hopes for this movie because it was drawn traditionally, just like the movies from childhood, it features for the first time in history, an African-American princess, and the best part...IT'S A MUSICAL! Everything about this movie is wonderful. The movie is set in New Orleans, Louisiana in the 1910's-1920's; at the height of the Jazz revolution and the end of World War I. With music by Pixar's famed composer, Randy Newman, the score and tunes envelop the vision and sounds of Louisiana and its culture. In my opinion, this movie teaches many different messages and morals; many of which taught me something to apply to my own life. This movie inspired me so much and made me cry more than once (despite only being one hour and a half). If a movie (especially animated) can make a person cry, you know it's gotta be worth it. I don't want to give much away about this movie, but I definitely recommend this movie for anyone who loves Disney and appreciates traditional 2-D art.

After the movie, me and my friend contemplated many issues and ideas approached in the movie. A few concepts we noticed that differentiated this movie from other Princess and Disney movies in general:

~This was the first Disney movie where the Prince falls in love with the Princess for her personality; not her looks (Aladdin first revolutionized Prince (rather..."street boy") falling for Princess....however, he fell for her for her looks because he knew nothing about her.)

~This movie was the first to show a woman (especially a "minority") in charge (Refer to the song "I'm almost there" and the last few moments of the movie)

~The first African-American Princess (duh!)
~This movie makes the audience try to understand and interpret the fairytale for themselves and has many different twists and takes that keeps the audience bewildered and stumped about what will happen next.

~It shines light (no pun intended) on minorites and personifies those of low income/class/education/background (through the characters of Ray, Tiana, and Naveen) and age (through the character Mama Odie) in a new way; as noble and respectable people; no different from anyone else. (Refer to the song "Dig a Little Deeper")

~It's the first time there is a friendship between two distinctly different women; Charlotte and Tiana (through the color of their skin and their backgrounds).

~It's also the first time that the Prince's feelings, personality and life is developed.

~It teaches that while it's good to dream on a star and hope your wishes come true, it takes a little bit of one's own hardwork to make that happen.

~The movie goes beyond the concept of living the "true" fairytale life, redefining it, where instead of the prince and princess living their days in royalty, doing nothing but loving each other, instead, it shows the Prince (Naveen) wanting to escape that lifestyle and having both Tiana and Naveen living their days well spent and earned thanks to their hardwork.

There are many other interesting ideas we came up with but we'll leave them up to you to figure out for yourself to get the meaning out of this movie!

The concept of this movie is summed up in this statement repeated frequently throughout the movie: "Never knew I needed". My favorite character has to be Ray. He's such a sweetheart. I also love love love Prince Naveen! Best prince ever! He's just so dreamy! And everyone says that the live Prince Naveen at Disneyland fits him perfectly! haha! If you haven't seen this yet, go go go! It's worth the money. Disney has succeeded in creating yet another wonderful masterpiece; one where they have been able to overcome the animosity and barriers of racism, sexism and other socioeconomic issues to bring about to the public a movie that teaches life lessons all the while keeping the magic and wonder of its fairytales alive.

Music Spotlight: Beast is the B2ST

Hello~It's been quite some time since I last updated! I have a lot to blog about but there never seems to be the time. :{ School is really crazy! Oh well...In other words, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Remember what to be thankful for and spend time with your family and friends! I've been in the kitchen helping my mom throughout this morning but now I have some time to relax and work on my humanities essay as well as update! Okay, enough of this, on to the real story!


If anyone knows me well enough, they know that I'm obsessed with boybands; especially those of the Korean assortment. Yesterday evening, being the lame-o that I am and practically the ONLY student in my college library the night before Thanksgiving researching for her essay, stumbled upon B2ST's new music video; "Bad Girl" after browsing around youtube. One can only imagine how extremely hard it was for me to *not* freakout into fits of fangirlism. It was torture to say the least. I quickly researched some information on them, [the little that there is] and I'm here to report the latest on this brand-spanking new boy band from Korea!

This 6 member[and absolutely gourgeous!]boy group consists of Yoon Du Jun, Son Dong Woon, Yang Yo Seop, Lee Gi Kwang, Jang Hyun Seung and Yong Jun Hyung. In my opinion, Jang Hyun Seung reminds me of SHINee's baby; Taemin and I can't help but think that Yoon Du Jun looks too much like Seungri from YG's Big Bang! They are a group released under Cube Entertainment and their acronym; B2ST stands for Boys 2 Search the Top. According to their wiki, B2ST is officially known as BEAST, for they changed their name a few days before they debuted and is an acronym for Boys of EAst Standing Tall. October 14, 2009 was the release of their first mini album Beast is the B2ST. The tracklisting consists of 5 songs: 1) Beast is the Best 2)Bad Girl 3)Misery 4)Yet and 5)Oasis. The first song; Beast is the Best is more of an introduction, using techno elements mixed with rap and lasts for about 1:30. Bad Girl is the kind of music that makes you just want to get up and dance and sing along! Misery, surprisingly reminds of some rap music I would expect from American rappers; at least the introduction. But it is a pretty easy listen. Yet and Oasis are their slow pieces; both very beautiful. More information can be found at allkpop.com. as well as on their website here: http://playb2st.co.kr/

Their music video "Bad Girl" looks very futuristic and bright; somewhat reminiescent of G-Dragon's Heartbreaker music video from back in August of this year. The boys adorn intricate all-white ensembles embellished with chains, sparkly accessories, necklaces, and scarves galore. The music video talks about how the "Bad Girl" of their lives has up and left them coldly and while they are upset, they miss her and the chorus echoes their sentiments of the whole ordeal. In my [bias] opinion, this music video is simply all kinds of awesome and should be watched religiously.

I was able to find the High Definition/High Quality version WITH English Translation underneath for "Bad Girl" so please enjoy!



From what it seems, this band looks to be very promising and I'll be looking forward to new music from them in the future. Two thumbs up in mishi's opinion for this new group who has earned the right to be added as a group of the hallyu wave of Korean pop music.

~mishi

What's all the Drama About?

Friday night, nowhere to go and my room to myself. Avoiding my homework, I was watching Super Junior M's new music video "Super Girl" (which is in Madarin Chinese- those boys are amazing! Super Junior M features two Chinese members; Henry and Zhou Mi). After watching the video for the nth time, I came across a commercial for a Taiwanese Drama called "Romantic Princess". Usually, I skip over dramas as I had always thought that English dramas were quite boring and wasn't interested in getting involved in an extremely long drama. Besides, the only dramas I had seen before were TVXQ's various mini-dramas...(which are definitely worth watching if you are TVXQ obsessed like I am). So anyway, what drew me to this specific drama was the cute clips they were showing. (And the extremely good-looking main character; Jin). I instantly typed it in and started searching for the first episode with english subtitles. Once I found them, I started watching. I've instantly become a fan (and gone googoo for the actor Wu Chun)! I've finished watching the first few episodes (they are each almost 40 minutes long), and it really is a lovely story. And it's a very short drama, only 13 episodes that aired in 2007.



The story centers around a young girl, Xiao Mai, who has grown up for 17 years in poverty with her parents only to find out that she is the granddaughter of Huang Fu, the richest man in all of Asia! Her parents were unable to conceive, and Xiao Mai was given to them after she was found as a baby abandoned. She finds out that she was abandoned because she had been kidnapped from her wealthy parents and that her grandfather was searching for the entire time.She is immediately deployed into a life of luxury, surrounded by four attractive young men; one of them being Jin. Despite his charisma and wealth, however, he has a horrible attitude. Speaking of Jin, the actor Wu Chun, I SWEAR looks exactly like one of my high school friends-Eric. He really does!! ANYWAY, I don't want to give away too many details, but I definitely recommend this drama to those interested in "shoujo" style romance stories! It's a very cute and fairytale like story; full of love, distress, morals, power, and real life problems. I've provided the opening song entitled New Home to the drama. The music is by Farhenheit, a Taiwanese boy band-and guess what? Wu Chun is a member of that boy band!



mishi