![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jan. 3rd, 2009 07:25 pm- It's official: I really need to hear the Sunny OST. Sometimes I play the movie in the background just to hear Su Ae being accompanied by a bunch of soldiers (and sometimes clicking over to see her dorkily and awkwardly learning some "sweet" dance moves from her bandmate). I need to know if the OST has Su Ae's renditions or the originals of the songs she covers.
- I have started too many books that I don't seem to be finishing! Currently reading: Spook by Mary Roach (and it's surprisingly funny in its cheekiness, even while being informative; gonna heve to read her other book, Stiff, about corpses), Bone Black by bell hooks, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching, Aimee & Jaguar by Erica Fischer (translated by Edna McCown), Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen, and Whores on the Hill by Colleen Curran. This list's size is depressing when compared to my (kind of) recently finished reads: a/f/k by Ruthann Robson (why do lesbian novels seem to try so hard?), Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (with a lot of black humor, but really funny), The Chinese Garden by Rosemary Manning (ok, I get that this is a re-discovered lesbian text and it can be considered "classic" by virtue of its being old, but I cannot stand the person switches in the narration--I can forgive switching between first and third in between chapters, but in the same paragraph? NO), and Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao (the only not-lesbian text in the bunch. Oi). I totally blame raiding Cambridge's used book stores and Borders' semi-annual sale. I am also building up a list of books I want to read. The trend seems to be lesbian or Asian. It's rare to find a read that includes both--and usually not by an Asian author, i.e. The Painter from Shanghai, which I have been stalking the library for, is by Jennifer Cody Epstein. =/
- Speaking of the gay, OMG, Moon Geun-Young and Moon Chae Won took home a "Best Couple" award for The Painter of the Wind? I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that they gave it to the ladies. While Korea seems to be cashing in on the homoeroticism of romance between men (upcoming movie Frozen Flower has an explicit relationship between its eye-candy male leads), I don't think I've stumbled upon a Korean work that explores women romantically loving each other. PotW abandoned their pseudo-lesbian storyline once the gender confusion was cleared up--and even then, the backlash from viewers can be surprising. The "relationship" was only one-sidedly between two women; the other was under the mistaken impression that her affection was for a man. A pretty and short one. Of the Asian media circles, Japan took a bold plunge into lesbian stories with recent drama Last Friends (which I abandoned watching pretty early in), and a number of Chinese and Taiwanese films have been made that are even somewhat positive and hopeful (Butterfly, Blue Gate Crossing, Drifting Flowers, etc.) Here is a small, far from complete, but helpful list of lesbian Asian films over at the AsianMediaWiki. (Notice quite a few are horror films.)
( More unrelated randomness )
- I have started too many books that I don't seem to be finishing! Currently reading: Spook by Mary Roach (and it's surprisingly funny in its cheekiness, even while being informative; gonna heve to read her other book, Stiff, about corpses), Bone Black by bell hooks, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching, Aimee & Jaguar by Erica Fischer (translated by Edna McCown), Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen, and Whores on the Hill by Colleen Curran. This list's size is depressing when compared to my (kind of) recently finished reads: a/f/k by Ruthann Robson (why do lesbian novels seem to try so hard?), Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (with a lot of black humor, but really funny), The Chinese Garden by Rosemary Manning (ok, I get that this is a re-discovered lesbian text and it can be considered "classic" by virtue of its being old, but I cannot stand the person switches in the narration--I can forgive switching between first and third in between chapters, but in the same paragraph? NO), and Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao (the only not-lesbian text in the bunch. Oi). I totally blame raiding Cambridge's used book stores and Borders' semi-annual sale. I am also building up a list of books I want to read. The trend seems to be lesbian or Asian. It's rare to find a read that includes both--and usually not by an Asian author, i.e. The Painter from Shanghai, which I have been stalking the library for, is by Jennifer Cody Epstein. =/
- Speaking of the gay, OMG, Moon Geun-Young and Moon Chae Won took home a "Best Couple" award for The Painter of the Wind? I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that they gave it to the ladies. While Korea seems to be cashing in on the homoeroticism of romance between men (upcoming movie Frozen Flower has an explicit relationship between its eye-candy male leads), I don't think I've stumbled upon a Korean work that explores women romantically loving each other. PotW abandoned their pseudo-lesbian storyline once the gender confusion was cleared up--and even then, the backlash from viewers can be surprising. The "relationship" was only one-sidedly between two women; the other was under the mistaken impression that her affection was for a man. A pretty and short one. Of the Asian media circles, Japan took a bold plunge into lesbian stories with recent drama Last Friends (which I abandoned watching pretty early in), and a number of Chinese and Taiwanese films have been made that are even somewhat positive and hopeful (Butterfly, Blue Gate Crossing, Drifting Flowers, etc.) Here is a small, far from complete, but helpful list of lesbian Asian films over at the AsianMediaWiki. (Notice quite a few are horror films.)
( More unrelated randomness )
