More Fruits of Korean Study with DVDs
Yesterday I finished watching 누가 그녀와 잤을까?, for the first and last time. Anyone want to buy it off me? Below is some of the Korean I didn’t know in it, and under that are my five Hanja characters to learn today.
- 불어 - 프랑스어
- 다정하다 - 정이 많고 마음이 따뜻하다
- 포근하다 - 1) (날씨나 닿는 느낌이) 따뜻하고 부드럽다, 2) (마음이아 분위기가) 따뜻하고 편안하다
- 수상* - receive a prize
- 죄 - 양심, 도의, 종교적 가르침이나 법에 벗어나는 잘못된 행위나 생각
- 화끈* - a sudden flush, glow, burning sensation
- 불량배 - 몰라요, 내일 부인한테 뭐인지 물어볼게!
- 앞두려! - 앞두다 ?
- 몽둥이 - a stick, club, cudgel
- 쭈욱 드세요 = 쭉 드세요 - gulp it down, one shot!
- 꼬욱 - 몰라요, 내일 부인한테 뭐인지 물어볼게!
- 재수 없이 - 좋은 일이 생길 운수
- 2) 다, 48 - 다수, 다량, 다행*, 다소, 다양하다
- 4) 수, 135 - 수화기, 수락*, 접수*, 수난*, 수동적
- 4) 상, 117 - 상품, 상금, 상타다, 입상*, 상장
- 5) 죄, 222 - 죄악, 범죄, 살인죄, 무죄, 죄송합니다
- 12) 재, 201 - 재물, 재정, 재무부, 문화재, 재단
Later that evening, I watched 미녀는 괴로워 with my wife and sister-in-law who’s staying with us to see her neice. It’s English title is 200 Pounds Beauty; not the best of English titles sure (couldn’t they have given it to a native speaker to check out for 2 mins before they released it worldwide?), but then “It’s distressing and difficult being a beauty” that the Korean means doesn’t exactly roll off the tounge either. As I write this I realise that it came out late last year, and 누가 그녀와 잤을까? did too, so despite what I said yesterday it may well be possible to get cheap pirated Korean DVDs after all, but only about 4 months or so after they come out in the cinema. I may go to Nampo-dong again this weekend and see what’s available these days.
Unlike my last choice, this movie was actually quite popular in Korea, and so seeing as we had the DVD then my wife and I had been meaning to watch it for a while. Actually, it’s not bad. It’s not high drama, but its nice and has it’s sweet moments, which makes me wonder why the promotion company came up with the poster above - it might give the wrong impression. This time I suspected the movie would be okay and so I watched it with English subtitles, meaning that I can watch it again on the weekend with Korean subtitles to study Korean, but with knowing the story to help me. My wife, notorious for watching the same Friends episode 3 times in a day, will probably be happy to join me.
I remember when it came out that people compared it to Shallow Hal, but their only similar point is having a heavily obese woman in both. I may link to reviews on the weekend when I discuss the Korean I’ve learned from it, but probably not: it’s not exactly a deep movie (not that the last movie was either: I went a bit overboard there). So I wouldn’t go out of your way to see it, but if your girlfriend suggests watching it at a DVD 방/room then you could do much worse. For those of you that are still interested but lazy, see here for Wikipedia’s entry on it; if you’re sufficiently interested to click there, then seeing the spoliers probably won’t put you off watching it.
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This movie drove home to me how different attitudes seem to be among students, versus in society in general. I saw it after weeks and weeks on end of students all affirming that plastic surgery is okay, acceptable, up to the individual, fine, no problem. I thought they were reacting in a way they thought was pragmatic to what they assumed would be my critique of plastic surgery as a bad thing for redirecting focus to an unhealthy degree on appearance. But when I saw this film, and how far it went to defend a woman’s right to, um, exercise and get plastic surgery in order to succeed because fat people cannot and never will be able to do so, I realized they were just reacting to the boring old “natural woman=good, plasticked up woman = bad” thing.
Amusingly, I had some students discussing this topic in an exam recently. An older man said he liked “natural women” and not “plastic women.” The young woman who was his discussion partner pointed out that his favorite star, whom he’d mentioned minutes before, was TOTALLY remade under the knife and barely looks Asian at all. It was fascinating to watch them try to work their way past this fact and on with the discussion.