Skip to main content

The Boys

There is a cultural school romance phenom in Asia that has been churning out heartthrobs for the last twenty years, and yet remains virtually unknown in the West. Boys Over Flowers, based on the 1992 Japanese manga Hana yori Dango by Yoko Kamio, is that star maker. This story is also so beloved that it's been turned into romantic drama series not only in Japan, but also in China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan and now Thailand with F4 Thailand: Boys Over Flowers.

The basic premise is a poor girl on scholarship to a rich kid high school tries to stop the top elite four male students (teen rockstar types known as F4 or the Flower 4) from bullying a friend, and instead becomes their target. That she fights back and refuses to give in and bow down to these guys is more wishful thinking than anything (did the writer even go to high school?) but that defiance helps the story evolve as not one but two of the guys fall for her. The play of group versus outsider dynamics is pretty interesting, and the poor girl is a heroine to basically every adolescent girl who wistfully looks at a rich guy and wishes she were pretty/well-dressed/popular enough to have a chance with him.

I've watched the Japanese and Korean versions, so I was expecting more of the same, but the Thai version has some nice differences. All of the actors are extremely attractive, so it's kind of hard to know who to root for (and you do even when you know how it will end like me.) The characters are portrayed with more complexity in this production, and emotions run much higher. It's more serious than goofy, and there are some really amazing moments between the poor girl and one of the four who ends up broken-hearted from failing to win his first love. I'm only about halfway through the series, so I can't give you a final verdict yet, but this very well may be the best production yet. Available to watch on Viki.com.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.
Post a Comment
Read more

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to
Post a Comment
Read more

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.
Post a Comment
Read more