Movie Magic

Yes Movie Magic,
Usually the first thing that comes to mind is the Makeup you see, the special effects.
But I being the person I am came to another understanding while watching John Carter.

Movie Magic is another facet of a character's personality. Take the makeup seen on John Carter - the markings seen lends to tribe markings. A mixture of the Woad  of the Celts and the salt etchings of Africa.
The combination of the two leads you to think of something primitive and yet... the culture itself is somehow more advanced. 

Make-up the Magic of Hollywood?
It things like Theatre productions and musicals makeup helps project a characters feelings and sometimes it even helps it come across better.

Naturally this led me to what else makeup can convey.
You can even see in your everyday life.
The extra flick of winged liner going up can make you appear more flirty, or going down more tired.
Darker, angular eyebrows can make you appear more angry.
Purple and brown eyeshadow under the eye - more tired
And a tint on your cheeks - warmer.

Makeup = Magic
And movies - just wouldn't be the same without it.

K-pop and music from countries not our own.

Now to the goods right
Music
I love music, listen to the right music and you can literally do anything.
Need to calm down, study hard, or get rilled up? There is music out there that can do that for you.

Whether you love listening to the melodies or even the lyrics (Music and Lyrics any one? Hugh Grant is an awesome actor). Music much like the Olympics crosses boundaries between countries. Whether you speak a certain language or not, the emotions that are put forth in a voice or even a video .. transcend across borders.

Or maybe your that person who says *troll voice* "I don't like music unless I can understand what they're saying."
To that I say *hmpf* you don't know what you're missing. Gold... solid gold.
Of course these are usually the people who are also listening to Screamo music that is so loud and garbled that I can't understand a single word.
I'm an equal opportunity listener - I'll literally listen to anything once- music wise, but as a general rule is if I can't understand it and it's in my own language then why bother... these songs are usually offensive when you can understand them or just plain screaming in your ear. And I have no desire to destroy an ear drum. But as always  there are rule breakers... Anyways

Lyrics while important can be changed, much like movies remakes are made everywhere... you don't need to understand Korean to listen to K-pop.
Why talk about a genre of music that I can't actually understand.
It's what fills up half my MP3 player these days. 
Swears and things like overly sexified comments or videos are almost non-existent. And there are these things called subtitles :D 
That's not to say that they don't exist but even then its a bit more tasteful than well a lot of the American stuff coming out  right now.
 Less auto-tune and more actual performances. Artists with a personality - or ones that are in the spotlight more often.
K-pop artists are the models, the actors in drams, the game show guests and the reality stars.
But more about that in another post.

The point that I'm trying to make is that you learn through music from other countries, it inspires -
Lady Gaga- often uses phrases from other languages in her songs, Nelly Furtado sings in two languages, Artists like Queen Latifah and Jay-Z take influences from their African cultures and use them in their videos.
Techno and house beats originally from Europe and the Caribbean now dominate the music world, Japanese Visual Kei (more in another post, this is a form of Japanese Performance music) makeup is seen on the faces of the American Classic Rock group KISS.
Whether you understand a song or not isn't the problem, it's whether or not you feel something and can take that feeling and transform it into something more.

Till next time
-Arielle