Sunday, March 29, 2009

Screenings #4: Change in Language

Just ended:
1. Full House (loved this! plus great soundtrack)
2. Witch Yoo Hee (not much cute guys)
3. Coffee Prince (lots of eye candy!)
4. Dal Ja's Spring (funny...)
5. Vineyard Man
6. Bright Girl's Success (the first I ever watched.. and loved!)
7. My Love Patzzi

Currently showing:
8. Boys over Flowers

My exposure to K-dramas is quite recent (yes, I am very behind times). They really seem to like the "poor girl becomes maid to rich guy" theme quite a bit (Full House, Bright Girl's Success), or the 1 girl + 2-3 guys theme (Witch Yoo Hee, Coffee Prince, Vineyard Man, My Love Patzzi). Most of the time the girl is some headstrong, non feminine, non-traditional type who through various twists and turns gets the guy to fall in love with her. I find J-dramas a lot more varied and interesting in theme and subject matter, but that could be due to me having access to a much larger range of J-dramas.

Anyway, my current screening of Boys Over Flowers is actually based on a Japanese story. It's quite impressive how this story has been showed on TV as a Japanese Anime, Taiwanese Drama, Japanese Drama, and the very latest is in Korean. What next.... American TV? (Oh wait. Is Gossip Girl supposed to be sort of a version of it???)

It's been a pretty big hit internationally, I guess girls can't resist the story of poor girl fall in love with rich good-looking boy who loves her so unconditionally and how they overcome the usual obstacles to be together. The incidents that happen are more or less the same across all versions, although strung together slightly differently. So far my favourite version of the lead F4 (Domyouji / Dao Ming Si / Jun Pyo) is the Korean one, simply because he's the best looking of all! My favourite version of the female however (Makino Tsukushi / Shan Cai / Geum Jan Di) is the Japanese one because she is just so cute and strong.

The original name "Hana Yori Dango" loosely translates as "boys over flowers" in English. What it actually means is "boys more than flowers" or "boys (who are) prettier than flowers", although its actually a pun on a Japanese saying. Don't ask me why the Taiwanese version is called "Meteor Garden / Liu Xing Hua Yuan" though!

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