Midnight Sun- F.CUZ

Not much to say in the info for this, but the “Other Things” section should be interesting.

Lyrics: 4/5
The song is almost an internal argument the singer is having with himself. He repeatedly says the love is over and that they will forget the horrible person they’ve been dating. They however can’t erase them and beg them to come back. It bounces between the two quickly. Overall it is a pretty great song, I don’t think the rap (or speaking part, whatever) fits into it very well though…
“Love will die/ such love will end/ I can endure it/ I will forget someone as terrible as you/ I want to forget you/ and erase you/ the cruel you/ I want it so bad/ I wanna go back to you”

Dance: 5/5
This is my favorite dance for F.CUZ. It’s very precise and together, but that could also be it’s fault. There are no backup dancers, just the main 4, and with them moving in sync I’d say 85%-90% of the time it can make for a very repetitive video that won’t hold the viewers attention for the last part.

Story: NA
The set is an old manor, but beyond that there isn’t really a story. This MV was made to draw total and complete focus to the group members, with little distraction allowed.

Other Things
This is part of a “Final Throws” promotion for F.CUZ. That means this could very well be their end. “Jiggy” and “No One” promotions did not do very well for the group and so they were supposed to disband. They got permission from their company to try one last time, to avoid being labeled as a “Failure Group”. For this song in particular the thing they were most proud of is that no auto-tune was used, they are all singing as they would live. Well… I guess it’s good that they are showing off their vocals, but they should have been doing that from the start, it isn’t like they have a bad sound.

The big news with this one was the teaser, which was pretty steamy. It included, among other things, a shot of a hand (supposedly one of the members’) reaching down into one of the girls shirts. Well, that never appears in the MV, and neither do the other extremely controversial shots, so don’t worry. You get several shots of models that look totally strung out on drugs or something, and a few shots that kind of seem to hint at drugs (fire melting stuff over a drink), but it’s pretty PG, kids wouldn’t pick up on anything. There is no groping in this MV. The teaser served it’s purpose: getting attention for the group through shock value.

Personally I hope the group sticks to this style, it suits them better and they will stand out more as a group rather than just kind of blending in to all the others out there. Now if only they could figure out that to have a successful album you need to ACTUALLY APPEAR ON VARIETY SHOWS then they’d be guaranteed another album.

Miss You- SM The Ballad

Not awkward!

Lyrics: 6/5
I love sad songs, and this is a truly beautiful one. The song is about being in love with a girl who cannot forget this guy she used to love, and they cannot continue to love her because it hurts them too much. They aren’t saying they are giving up on the girl, they are saying they will miss her until she is ready to forget the last love and return. They say they should forget her and ask if she is ready to come to them yet. It has a brilliant pace and the lyrics are very clear. As trademark of a ballad song the chorus is very short, and the verse controls most of the song.
“My love can’t come to its place/ it’s going as far as the many tears I’ve cried/ I have to forget you/ I miss you so much/ Even if you don’t know that it hurts/ I forget”

Dancing: NA
SM The Ballad is not a dance group, they are a ballad group, so they stand in place.

Story: 5/5
See??? When you give them a storyline the members do not look so darn awkward around one another! I’m sorry I don’t know the names of the two lead actors, I know one was in a popular drama recently, I think “King of Baking”, but I’m not sure who the girl is, just that she works for SM Entertainment (at least that’s what my Korean roommates told me). The story is a bit fairy-tale like, but it fits very well with this song. A young man wakes up one morning and gets a call from a friend about a meteor (or at this point is it called a meteorite?). The man takes a few pictures of the thing as it crashes, flaming, to earth and continues on his way. On the way to wherever he’s going he sees a large crater in the road with feathers all around, he continues past it and sees an angel curled in the alleyway. Her wings retract to reveal bad cuts, so he takes her back to his place and takes care of her, cleaning the wound on her back (and not knowing it heals on it’s own as soon as he is gone). The two quickly fall in love, but two guys who look like pimps in white suits (presumably other angels) come after her. The guy tries to save her from them, but they try to kill him until her wings reappear and she throws them back. He wakes up again in his bed just like the day before, but when he turns on his camera to see the pictures of the meteorite he sees images of a flying angel.

Other Things

The group is MUCH easier to watch now that there are others to hold the focus of the MV. There is less awkward hand action (but Kyuhyun still does that half-up thing with his arm) and some of the shots in the story are a little corny, but all together it fits really well. I like this MV TONS more than “Hot Times”, and I hope to see a lot more STORY MVs from them in the future ^^

Hot Times- SM The Ballad

This has to be the most awkward MV I’ve ever seen~ It was a bad idea from the start, but I’ll get into that later.

Lyrics:  3/5
The message of the song is a little confusing, and the English doesn’t fit with it. You can usually figure out what they were trying to say, but sentences are incomplete or mistranslated… Anyways, the main song is reminiscing over a relationship. They always refer to it in the past tense, but also say they “don’t want to test our love”, so I’m not sure if the relationship is supposed to be over or what… I think it’s just supposed to be in a rocky place. They talk about the more passionate times in the relationship as well as describe themselves as being alone and afraid before meeting the girl.
“Hot times/ when I open my eyes to you/ all my life time/ it’s ok if I only have you/ Even if you shake me or test me/ I can’t do anything but endure it/ You’re my only person”

Dancing:
As the name suggests, SM The Ballad is a ballad group… AKA- No dancing… That might have helped with this awkwardness though…

Story: NA
The sets are dark and relatively bare rooms where the members are singing, sometimes together, sometimes individually, and sometimes just a couple of them with no sets. In the background a lot is a dancing couple, they are never explained and don’t tell a story or anything.

Other Things

Ok, why they should be called (at least in this MV) “SM The Awkward”: The singers are the sole focus of this MV. Directing 101 tells us that when you have a serious ballad group who doesn’t dance at all you ABSOLUTELY AND POSITIVELY CANNOT make them the focus of your MV. There always has to be a story playing (think of any 2AM MV). The issue here is that the members are always on screen, and they are definitely not comfortable. The hands are what kill me- they don’t know what they’re supposed to do, so they tend to wave them around pointlessly, and just look awkward.

Member Kyuhyun (from Super Junior) is particularly awkward in this, but it’s fun to watch: he doesn’t know what to do when the camera is on him like that, but he doesn’t want to raise his arm, yet at the same time he can’t just leave it there. The result is little flapping motions that do not extend above hip-level. Also, when he is in the background but not singing he’s staring off into space with this bored-as-hell face. Keep an eye on him and you’ll see.

The only person who does well (or at least less awkward) in this MV is Jay (from TRAX). He’s used to being the solo singer. He puts tons of expression in his face to compensate for the awkwardness. The most overdone award goes to Jonghyun (from SHINee) who I think will go postal if they don’t give him choreography soon, he’s EXTREMELY twitchy! He’s another one who is fun to watch. And Jino has that newly-debuted awkwardness that’s kind of adorable, so you just have to smile when he’s on screen ^^

I like how the MV was filmed with very dim colors. It looks cool, and it would be a great look for this group in any other MV. But for a song called “Hot Times” you kind of expect more color… This looks more like “Nap Time”.

Visually this is the most awkward MV I’ve ever seen. Not bad, but cringe-worthy.  The group’s first MV was much better. I hope they learned their lesson about avoiding making ballad singers the sole focus of an MV, especially for a song of this tempo that could support choreography.

And a bonus live performance, which was not awkward since they had microphones, so that means they didn’t have to do any awkward hand-twitches. Keep your eyes open at 1:44 – 1:50 for, what I think, is the BEST expression ever given to a camera during a song. Kyuhyun definitely practiced making faces in the mirror before going on!

Announcement- Merry Christmas (if you celebrate)!!!

Ok, so in the interest of being Politically Correct (which sucks and who would ever want to try~): MERRY HAPPY! Whatever, you get the idea ^^

I promise after this Christmas I will be better at updating! I’ve got a few more movie reviews to post for you all, and some shows, and then I’ll tackle new music videos!

Thank you to everyone who has been frequenting the site lately! Visitors have more than tripled and I’m glad to see you all enjoying this page so much ^^

 

**Announcement- Super Junior/ Hangeng Update**

The results of Hangeng’s lawsuit against SM Entertainment were released today.

Seoul courts found in favor of Hangeng, meaning his contract with SM Entertainment is void and he no longer has any ties to them. He also does not have to pay the (hefty) penalty to SM he would have paid should he have lost the lawsuit.

**Announcement: Super Junior M UPDATE**

Sorry I’m like a day or two late on this one, I just flew from Korea to the US, so I think that’s a good excuse!

One Way’s Chance (One Way is another group) was tweeting about Super Junior M’s recording (I guess he’s helping as a technician or something):

“Working with the M Brothers” (Super Junior M), followed by “Just finished Ryeowook’s part. Taking a break. Hanging with Henry and Zhou Mi”, followed by “Now recording SUNGMIN’S part”. He deleted the last and said “oops… don’t think I was supposed to say that”.

Leeteuk has also apparently hinted that Sungmin AND Eunhyuk are now with SJM, but I haven’t seen this yet as apparently the hint was on twitter recently, so I haven’t seen a translation (I only know a little Korean thus far).

So what do you think? Does this mean Sungmin and Eunhyuk are in SJM, or just helping on the album?

Announcement- Yeah, I know…

I know I haven’t been making changes to the site in the last couple of days, it’s finals week here in Korea and I’ve been busy.

Mini-Mini Rant:

Why is it I always get put into Teams with people who don’t do their work and are lazy??? Seriously! The university thing I’m in Korea for requires us to work in Teams of 8 and present a group project at midterms and finals. I did 80% of the last project because no one else would help and this time I’ve done 100% of the project. When I ask one of the guys if he remembered to find out the information he was supposed to get (our Team leader) his answer was “I have better things to do… You should go ask one of the Koreans.” (-_-*)

I hate people right now…

 

But anyways!!! I’ll try to survive finals, my last one is in 7 days~ So far so good though! Then I will update the site for you, put pictures in the reviews, and make everything generally prettier ^^ Hope any of you suffering through finals can hold in there and do your best! ^^

Cirque Du Freak

I was IN LOVE with the books and so I had to see the movie, but I was a broke high schooler when it came out (or a broke college student, i forget when it came out) and then forgot, but the important thing is that I saw it today!

Plot: 1/5

The writer gets yelled at for this one. They decided to combine the first 3 Cirque Du Freak books, and then threw stuff in from the 11th and 12th for no good reason. They made characters who were never good nor evil decidedly evil and revealed plot secrets that will keep the story from ever progressing. Honestly, if I was Darren Shan (the writer of the books) I would be pissed.

So forget Cirque Du Freak the books, here is the (horrendous) movie plot:

Darren Shan was a well behaved and generally good boy until one day he slipped out of his house to go to a freak show with his more wild and trouble causing best friend Steve. At the show Steve calls a performer out for being a Vampire. Darren, who loves spiders, is enchanted by this “Vampire” ‘s pet, a strange tarantula (which is so obviously bad CGI that even I, a horrible arachnophobic, was unimpressed) who is said to be extremely venomous. Ok, forget that the spider acts more like a dog than anything.

Anyways, Darren decides he HAS to have the spider, so he sneaks back stage when the show is interrupted by cops and nabs the crawler. He hides in a closet to hear a very awkwardly scripted and generally embarrassing dialogue between a completely forgettable “Vampire” and the one from the show.

You basically learn that Vampires do not kill humans when they feed, and are in the middle of a very tenuous treaty with the Vampaneze, Vampires who kill humans. A Vampire general was killed and so they need to get revenge, but don’t want the war to start again. The conversation is interrupted by Steve who runs in demanding to be blooded and talking about how he hates life. Creepsley, the Vampire, suddenly decides to test the boys blood, says it is evil, and rejects it. Steve gets pissy and leaves.

Next Darren escapes the closet through a secret door and is picked up outside by Tiny, a fat man with a creepy Vampaneze. He basically threatens Darren, but honestly it sounds more like pedophilia bait… Whatever. Darren gets dumped back at home.

In school later Steve catches him with Octa, the spider. Octa gets loose and tries to escape (by lifting windows… like a said, more of a dog or human than spider 99% of the time). Steve attacks her and so she bites him. In order to save Steve’s life Darren agrees to become a half-vampire assistant to Creepsley, who suddenly, in the middle of ranting about how he doesn’t want Darren and hates Steve, decides to test his blood. It’s good, so he turns him into a Vamp in literally 1 second.

Darren’s death is faked, the evil Vampaneze attacks while he’s being dug up. He goes to live with the Cirque Du Freak (The traveling freak show) and makes friends. Meanwhile Steve, who figured out pretty damn fast what happened), is turned by the Vampaneze and becomes evil, killing a teacher and taking Darren’s family and new Cirque friends hostage. Everyone fights in a theater.

There is no arching plot to the story, just several separate things. All of which amount to a depressingly under-written yet over-written movie. Worse even that the half-filmed movie “Airbender”.

Acting: 1/5

It’s weird that this is getting a low score. John C. Reilly is NOT usually a bad actor. He plays Creepsley here. I don’t think his acting is bad here, but the jerkiness of the script and directing makes him out to be. Take any single sentence and he’s perfect, but when you put them all together it’s just bad… I should rant about that in the “writing” critique though, nothing against Reilly.

The two lead boys, Steve and Darren, are awkward at best. They both seem determined to take the characters to some kind of 16-year-old idea of a “cool kid”. It’s really cheesy and cliche.

Directing: 3/5

Some shots here work, some don’t. I think the directing really falls apart at the fight scenes. This director is more suited towards dramas or something with no major fighting. When the fighting starts they stick too close to the two fighting, and swap cameras around them constantly, so you can’t follow what is happening. At one point a character is somewhere in a back hallways and you don’t know how the hell they got there.

Writing: I hate you/5

You can easily, with a little editing, make the first two Cirque books a movie. But the first three are too different. You can mentally split the movie into 3 parts, each book. The action all takes place in the same area, and characters do that direct ask-and-answer thing as “Airbender”, what, as I said in the “Airbender” review, they teach you in the INTRODUCTORY Film Production classes at my college is evil and never under any circumstances to be done. The dialogue is awkward at it’s best moment, and often can’t balance between relaxed and severe emotions. The story is choppy and they totally ruined the series.

I hope no other “Cirque” movies are made. If they are, they will need to start from scratch. A new cast is mandatory. A new director and writer are too. Or at least an aid for the Director who can help with the fight scenes. The whole movie drips of awkward, it’s worse than “Eragon”…

The movie overall isn’t horrible, but it’s depressing as hell after the masterpiece of the books.

Announcement- Super Junior M Update

Super Junior M has made a statement about their new album. Instead of telling you about it you can hear it straight from them:

Kind of bummed that they aren’t speaking much Chinese, but Kyuhyun gets major cute points for trying!