Frances Ha

I watched this in the beginning of my vacation... So about the end of April. Frances Ha is a film that is recognized, but most likely not enough.

Directed by Noah Baumbach (known for work with The Squid and the Whale, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), and also written by him and the leading actress, Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha follows Frances, a woman in her late 20's trying to make her career work out in NYC while juggling self-loss, self-finding, friends, and acquaintances. The outwardly pressure of the society combined with raw explication of internal struggles that are not faltered by aesthetics makes Frances Ha one of the most captivating films I've watched recently.

Yes, it is a comedy, but maybe because I am also a somewhat-lost-trying-to-do-the-right-stuff-girl-in-her-twenties, this drama hits the emotional home run. I see my vices and habits of non-productivity and envy within Frances, plus I also see other positive attributes I know I encompass and the guaranteed reward that ultimately comes about for all of us that strive.

Trailer:

As you can see, the entire movie is in black and white. However, it is a little bit more modern... Consider the movie to be in a permanent Instagram-like, beautifully filtered black and white. Not only does this characteristically sets the film apart from the others, but the lack of colour aids the viewer to carefully follow the screenplay and the unconcealed expressions of the actors' faces to further delve into the emotions they are to convey. The screenplay is another story. It is just so delightful. I do not remember the soundtrack, but the quotes!

"Sometimes it's good to do what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it."
- Frances

"Don't treat me like a three-hour brunch friend!"
- Frances

"I'm poor."
"That's actually offensive to poor people."
- Frances & Benji

"It's just this apartment is very... aware of itself."
- Sophie

..........And the recurring "undateable" chats between Benji and Frances!!!

"Are you still undateable?"

"Oh yes, very undateable."

To top it all off, Adam Driver is in this movie. And we all know that this guy has an irresistible charm even though he is SO unattractive. I can't get enough of him! His face! His voice! His next upcoming movie to hit the theatres is Tracks with Mia Wasikowska. That flick looks pretty amazing, too. Anyways, I didn't quote any of his lines, but they are great! In spite of his character being the most stereotypical and flat in the entire story, he nonchalantly delivers witty lines that generate laughs when they are needed to get away from Frances's anxiety and stress. 

Frances Ha is most conveniently available on Netflix, so if you've got 90 minutes to spare... Prioritize this. 

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The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The Corrections is a very American novel with paragraphs formed of only ONE sentence, yet beautifully and lengthily written by Jonathan Franzen. Recommended and highly praised by my book lender/best friend Samantha, I worked on this one book ALL SUMMER. The problem was that I had gotten stuck at a character profile thing of the father, Alfred. It was such a booooore. However, after that one "reader's block," (and quitting my job which resulted to an infinite amount of time for myself) this book was a page turner. I even had to read it when I was at the most gorgeous lake house retreat where mimosas were made at a tilt of a head.

So the novel was published and out in the world in 2001. And if it is a VERY AMERICAN novel which deals with AMERICAN ISSUES around the CURRENT TIME PERIOD/EVENTS.. oh. It's about the turn of the century. There ya go. It's also about the MIDWEST (and CLINICAL DEPRESSION) and the other sorts of gross stuff that the Midwest is known for. It's actually more about this family, an older couple, Alfred and Enid, and their three children, Gary, Chip, and Denise. So the book goes through the minds & background stories of each character.. profiling them while making the whole story happen. With more understanding of each character comes more guessing and anticipation from the readers. Additionally, more understanding of why these bleeping crazy psychotics ARE psychos!!!!!!!!!!!!! The reason cannot be that they are from the Midwest. That's too cruel. Even for a fiction.

Just some clippets I liked..

PAGE 82-83
But TV caused him such critical and political anguish that he could no longer watch even cartoons without smoking cigarettes, and he now had a lung-sized region of pain in his chest, and there was no intoxicant of any sort in his house, not even cooking sherry, not even cough syrup, and after the labor of taking his pleasure with the chaise his endorphins had gone home to the four corners of his brain like war-weary troops, so spent by the demands he’d made of them in the last five weeks that nothing, except possibly Melissa in the flesh, could marshal them again. He needed a little morale-booster, a little pick-me-up, but he had nothing better than the month-old Times, and he felt that he’d circled quite enough uppercase M’s for one day, he could circle no more.

PAGE 175
After lunch he took his mother and his son to the St. Jude Museum of Transport. While Jonah climbed into old locomotives and toured the dry-docked submarine and Enid sat and nursed her sore hip, Gary compiled a mental list of the museum’s exhibits, hoping the list would him a feeling of accomplishment. He couldn’t deal with the exhibits themselves, their exhausting informativeness, their cheerful prose-for-the-masses. THE GOLDEN AGE OF STEAM POWER. THE DAWN OF FLIGHT. A ENTURY OF AUTOMOTIVE SAFETY. Block after block of taxing text.

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아이들의 권선생님

MMMmmmmm webtoons are Korean mangas. Mmmmmmm. I read a lot... Mmmmmmm first it started as me reading Korean and improving Korean, and now it's just I read it on the phone or when I want to procrastinate and now I read just like a lot. But I mean, once in awhile, you come across one that you just get HITCHED to, y'know ? It's just pretty much immaculate and yer all about it. Well this one's one of them for me.

Errr, all you need to know is that the guy in the suit is basically Korean mafia trying to kill time as a teacher in middle of nowhere town. And then he develops all these connections with them. Ultimately, this one's fiction and it's really reaaaaally reeeeeaaaaaaaaally touching.

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OBEY x Keith Haring

OBEY x Keith Haring -- Available at Urban Outfitters.

OBEY x Keith Haring from Urban Outfitters on Vimeo.

I want to go into menswear.

@rachelchungg

L O O M S T A T E

I came across a fantastic brand called Loomstate located in NYC but also available worldwide through their online shop. It's special for everything is made out of certified organic cotton using SOCIALLY & ENVIRONMENTALLY responsible production !!!! They fully supervise the factories and manufacturers they get their beautiful clothes produced !

Founded in 2004 by designers Rogoan Gregory and Scott Mackinlay Hahn, their collections are just pure casual classics. They claim to have "washed and softened fabrics to tumble and aged hardware" which truly rings through when you browse through the pieces. Now they have many special projects such as Zero Waste which is done with a prof for Fashion Design and Sustainability from Parsons The New School for Design !!! I actually came across Zero Waste first (on Twitter, of course) and then travelled to Loomstate ! Zero Waste's limited design is a beautiful anorak that goes for $345 and only pre-order through online and will ship November 17 - November 21 2011. It comes in an organic dark ish grey and has this high collar which calls for NECK & CHIN WINDSHIELD WOO HOO !!!!! Since I've been working at JNBY, I found new appreciation on neutral tone colours and sustainable and high-quality materials. This anorak is 100% wool and it sure looks like it will keep you 100% warm & stylish !!

Loomstate has both MENS & WOMENS collections along with accessories and more special projects. Here are some of my favourites from both Mens & Womens collections that they have; I especially love their "Classics" line, and it's phenomenal how they can make sustainable DENIM !!!! I'm so impressed, hahaha :') :')

The paragraph below is from Loomstate's About page regarding their sustainability:

Loomstate is fully committed to organic farming, which is a form of agriculture which avoids or largely excludes the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, plant growth regulators, and livestock feed additives. Organic cultivation requires managing and preserving the sensitive ecosystem as opposed to stripping the land of its resources as conventional farming does. Loomstate uses 100% certified organic cotton from various regions of the world such as Turkey, Peru, Africa, India and the USA.

Visit Loomstate's page
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[May 27th 2011]

End of may. Hailing in the morning upon waking. Grab a thin Dior parka, AA toque over unwashed hair, cheap H&M shades, favourite (now lost) Agatha necklace, thick KISSA heels, and for some absurd reason, I also bring my 5-year-old Macbook in my Lululemon backpack. HEAVY HEAVY LIFE IS HEAVY MY EYELIDS ARE HEAVY.

Lack of sleep, I eat at Burgoo on Tenth Ave. The food is good, but not much appetite; it's a goodbye thing for Moon unni. Bye Moony. Your life is looking damn fine over the Pacific, in Korea. I guess the excuse I - perchance we - have in looking like SHIT in these pics is that school had just ended, and Moon also just finished her convocation.

As the day progresses, I make my way across town to Chinatown for some social time between conference execs. I try to make myself as comfortable as I can as I sweat in my AA toque. Hail clouds were then replaced by sun. Fuck Vancouver weather. On the other hand, I was having a good time drinking red wine (continuously) and nomming on handmade potato fries + lots of aged cheddar. Courtesy of Costco and Ira.

Busy Eatin' from Rachel Chung on Vimeo.

The weather stress I had during this day is NOTHING compared to the timetable stress I've got right now.
But let's not complain about university.
#firstworldproblems

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M O O O viez

Breathless, "I don't know if I'm unhappy cuz I'm not free or because I'm not free, I'm unhappy." This flick's so sexy, so scrumptious + so sad that I cry cry cry. French is a film language and Godard is a masterpiece himself. "Two things are important in life: for men, women; for women, money."


Walkabout, I watched this movie basically twice back to back. I just HAD to watch it again with commentary on. It was such a special film with grand ideas poised in smaller things. Definitely recommended to only those who can sit through lots of silent, background music filled scenes with not too much action or dialogue. It teaches us, as participants of the modern society, what true pureness and innocence that can only be found outside our everyday lives are.
Beautiful cinematography + original sound track. Casting's spectacular.


Transformers 3, I'm such a sucker for blockbuster's. I just can't wait til I watch Cowboys + Aliens. Hehehehehehehe. Cried a lot during this third installment of the series... Rosie Huntington-Whitely over Megan Fox ANY DAY. Shia will always have my respect. He's carrying Hollywood on his perfect shoulders. I wonder what kinds of films he's going to do in the near future...


Horrible Bosses, talk about a good comedy gone bad when it lasted for TWO hours. Horrible aftertaste. It still had its funny moments and I would say that this is Jennifer Aniston's ONLY decent movie that she has ever made. She was in a total of 20 minutes... Maybe that's an exaggeration and she was in about 28 minutes of the movie...... Yup, not a fan.


Midnight in Paris, Classic Woody Allen with wonderful acting. This one is on my BUY ON DVD/BLURAY list. FOR SURE. I would watch it over and over again since a) deals with my favourite time in history, the 20s b) has Fitzgerald as like one of the main 20s characters, c) Adrien frickin' Brody, yo !!!!! Okay, yeah. This movie's near perfect.


The Trip, I really need to watch this movie ASAP. Excited to see Steve Coogan act again !! :D



*************************************************************************************************

Korean TV survival show- That phrase sounds lame. But this show is not lame. Like all Korean things, it is obviously OVER-DRAMATIC and its purpose is to MAKE EVERYONE CRY and leave the audience an unforgettable IMPRESSION. So at first, I was just like MEH. And then it started getting reaaaaaally good and I started getting as obsessed with it every Sunday afternoon, just like my father.

It's called 나는 가수다 (I Am a Singer). The 7 singers that are battling each other are all legendary in Korea; they are the top of the top in all different genres. At the end of three weeks that include two live performances, the singer with the lowest amount of votes is sadly eliminated. That may sound somewhat rude to have a reality show with these top singers, but in fact, this show makes them even better. They feed off each other, the energy, and the chances given to them to break through walls they didn't even know that existed. For me, this is truly inspiring, but just really entertaining. HAHA. It kind of makes me feel pathetic though.. it's like WTF am I doing....... ? Heh. Heh heh.

YouTube is no good... Listen on 4shared..... ?
1) 김조한 Kim Johan http://www.4shared.com/audio/El6942HJ/_-_____.htm
2) 자우림 Jaurim http://www.4shared.com/audio/Jvahwie7/_-_____.htm
3) 조관우 Jo Gwanwoo http://www.4shared.com/audio/W5A2NxuV/_-______.htm

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SWASH bucklin'

Recently going over a few files, I came across Swash's spring summer 2010 lookbook. Swash is a small thing not really well known over here in North America. Based in London, it is a fashion partnership between Sarah Swash and Toshio Yamanaka who both studied fashion design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Every collection that they come out with is a brilliant mix of patterns and prints and quite heavily Japanese-inspired, though it pulls off the total British vibe. That's what makes Swash breathtaking, in my opinion anyways.

Swash's Spring Summer 2010 Lookbook

Yamanaka had also completed various courses in technical fashion design and trained as a pattern cutter at Kingston University and the London College of Fashion. His technicality totally shows through and maybe this is why they can also construct successful menswear accessories. I personally love their BIG bags that seem to be so big that you can probs fit your whole life in it. Hehe.

Swash grew in Japan then won lots of awards in Europe. What we want is for them to branch out into North America, and for that to happen... North Americans should start opening up to a stronger silhouette, funkier architecture, and anything goes prints. Let's have more fun with our clothes, shall we ?

Swash's scarf designs Spring Summer 2011

All about animals, dogs, zebras, slinkys, giraffes, basically anything goes. Not just the animal prints, but also the animal HEADS. These are scarf designs, but they design beautiful clothes that include turbans, wide-legged jumpsuits, maxis, draperies, leggings, and even to simple tees. Such an eclectic mix of character and vitality !!! LOVE !!!!!!

click click VISIT SWASH'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE click click
click click VISIT SWASH'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE click click
click click VISIT SWASH'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE click click