Shot by Steven Meisel. Not digging these because they feel way too much like Meisel’s work with Dolce & Gabbana. It’s less obvious in his single-model portraits (ie: Sasha Pivovarova’s first campaign with Prada), but Steve M loves group shots of models staring intently at something while laying around collectively. Prada SS09′s campaign feels so blah compared to some of the last few seasons’.
Here’s one of my fave campaigns, also shot by Meisel. Dolce & Gabbana, Fall/Winter 07.
Upon rewatching this scene for the thousandth time, I realized what was bothering me about it the first 999 times — color scheme.
First, the lighting doesn’t help. The four are in an indoor basketball court with white lights, and they all look pretty ghostly to begin, but the lighting highlights this even more severely. Second, the thing that bothers me most, is that Yi Jung’s damn paisley bandanna matches the walls of the court, and Woobin’s hoodie matches with the dark blue stand of the basketball stand.
Dark blue, dark green, and dark red are all really strong colors by themselves and it’s hard to make them look good together. Granted, I’m fussing about colors on a basketball court, but that in conjunction with Yi Jung’s green bandanna and Woobin’s dark blue hoodie, it’s just too much. It bothers my eyes! And ultimately, Boys Over Flowers has already proved itself to be pretty undependable in terms of artistic merit…
In terms of the acting in this scene, I’m once again asking myself why Lee Minho shines so much more than all the other actors. I think part of it has to do with the obviously more complex character of Jun Pyo, but aside from that, in comparison to Kim Bum’s Yi Jung, Lee Minho’s reactions are a lot less forced. Kim Bum was very loud with his anger and to it didn’t convince me of the logic of Yi Jung getting riled up over this turn of events. Yes, YJ could’ve felt that Jun Pyo was really being a bastard in cutting ties with Jandi, but this isn’t congruent with the way that he’s been acting in the series thus far. He’s been rather vocal about siding with Jun Pyo during Jun Pyo’s quarrel with Ji Hoo, and he’s made several statements about how someone like Geum Jandi could shake up the F4 dynamic. He could’ve changed because of Ga-eul’s implication that he’s scared to fall in love and is thus angry with Jun Pyo for not taking advantage of what he has, but really, I don’t believe this. I guess overall, something about Yi Jung rubs me the wrong way and I’m not inclined to give him benefit of the doubt.
Kanye West’s cover for his single “Love Lockdown” on the left and the cover for his album “808s and Heartbreak.” Both are amazingly simple and effective. My two things to look for in any piece is 1) color scheme and 2) simplicity. Both deliver. The cover on the right of course is more complicated, but it also has adds a nice sense of humor and a comic book feel to it, which belies the emo angst that is this album. (The album starts off well and then progressively gets worse but I still enjoy this album more than his others. I like mellow music?)
Another cover that uses the heart imagery so well:
Utada Hikaru’s single “HEART STATION/Stay Gold,” which I think was one of the best Jpop singles from this year, and was subsequently included in one of my favorite albums of the year. :)
I don’t care about Iljimae or anything related to it, but I just saw the promo poster from over at Dramabeans, and I was so annoyed by the shot that I had to post. (Ah, the habits of an avid blogger.) As someone who is really OCD about typography on a piece, the font and font sized used for the “一枝梅” text bothers the crap out of me, so much so that I want to redo it myself. I don’t think it would take too much to fix it. If I were the graphic artist in charged, I’d change the font to one that looks more hand-written, reduce the size of the text dramatically, and place it closer towards Jung Il Woo on the poster.
Also, I wouldn’t leave the actor so far off the right of the frame, I’d bring him more towards the center as well. The way that the text is placed on the poster really makes you focus on a whole bigass block of text that you may or may not know the meaning of (it says “yi zhi mei,” which is the hanja for “Iljimae”). Yes, it’s important to know that this is going to be called “Iljimae” about the character, but for a large audience that may not be East Asian or know how to read Chinese characters, it’s a basic thing to know that the guy on the right playing the character is most important. Therefore, the text shouldn’t be stressed as much as it should be now.
