Friday, June 16, 2017

Wonder Woman | #FeatureFriday

It's time for #FeatureFriday and I going to try my best to share about Wonder Woman, so bear with me. Also, consider yourself warned NOW:



THERE ARE SPOILERS. 
DO NOT CONTINUE READING UNLESS YOU WANT SPOILERS!


Synopsis:
Before she was Wonder Woman she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained warrior. When a pilot crashes and tells of conflict in the outside world, she leaves home to fight a war to end all wars, discovering her full powers and true destiny.


You ready? Here we go!

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"The Posters"

Let's just talk about this for a minute. More often than not, a poster showcases its lead actress for one of two things: her face or her body. This poster that they created for Wonder Woman not only DID NOT show her face, but instead silhouetted it, creating an air of mystery, but even in showing her body, one does not feel that Wonder Woman was cheapened into a sex icon of any kind. Nope. This woman's silhouette is equal parts majestic and powerful and I LOVE that they did this.



I'm unsure whether or not these posters were meant as 3 standalone or if I simply don't  have an original image, as the line is TECHNICALLY, "Power. Grace. Wisdom. Wonder", but you have to admit that this is cool. I personally feel that out of the three, Courage is the best. Power, I am inclined to state here that maybe those moments where her gauntlets were glowing or when she's charging through something may have a more powerful feel to them, but well, people may disagree. 

My main bone to pick with these is "Wonder". I feel like aside from showcasing that she's Wonder Woman, the poster doesn't do much. Quite frankly, with all of the other posters showing her as Wonder Woman, this one is a little lost. My thoughts on a substitute for this poster would be to instead showcase the look of wonder that Diana gets when she finally realizes that she's a powerful woman who can scale walls with her bare hands just by pounding the wall in because she's that strong and capable of doing so. That moment was SO precious, I wish they had highlighted it in a poster.


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"Wonder Woman & Steve Trevor"




Let's just get it out there that Chris Pine is an awesome actor and I love his acting. Now, with that fangirl disclaimer out of the way, let's get to it. Dad likes to poke fun at the "nude" scene with Steve Trevor (Chris' role) saying that that's the part the girls love. I'd like to say that I like that scene, but for a completely different reason that does not focus on his abs. 

There's obviously the clear "Diana has never seen a naked male body" joke, but I love that she's just genuinely curious about EVERYTHING whether it was his body or his watch. 
It wasn't overly sexualized, but was a genuine scene of curiosity. Good job, WW director. :)

I also especially love that at every turn of his being a gentleman, he doesn't FORCE Diana to do anything she doesn't want to. By the same token, the film didn't go overboard in promoting the strength of women to the point of making men look weak and stupid. The difference in their strength was that she was a goddess and he was a human. An (to quote the movie a little here) "above average human", but still. 

This is my main issue with people getting mad at me for not declaring myself as a "feminist". My issue is not that women shouldn't be treated better and given respect. No. What I have an ISSUE with, is the thumbing down of men in the attempt to lift up women. Why can't women be raised up without putting men down? Both are strong in different ways. I love that Steve Trevor, while being painted as a "weak human" was never painted as a "weak man". 

Neither gender is BETTER than the other.
Let's make that clear right now. 

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"The Amazons"



On that note, who DOESN'T love seeing powerful women portrayed in film? 
Many types of women exist, and another issue that I have with feminism is that meek and submissive women are seen as weak. Um. WRONG. But that's a topic for another time. 

For now, I'm going to focus on what the movie did extremely well, which was POWERFUL WOMEN. I especially love the fact that they got women from all occupations that require a high degree of physical fitness to as the Amazons. 

I can't share the crazy amount of detail regarding who the Amazon warrior actresses were, but I found two articles that share more about them. WOW these are some strong women.

http://thenerdybird.com/who-is-she-meet-wonder-womans-amazon-warriors/
http://thenerdybird.com/who-is-she-31-more-amazons-from-wonder-womans-themiscyra/

I also fell in love with the beautiful costume design and the wonderful color palettes of the Amazons' outfits. Gold and dark leather. Does that scream Ancient + Powerful army or what?! I also loved how they did the Queen's outfit. <3

I want to make a note that I actually didn't research anyone from Wonder Woman because I was actually mildly panicking that it'd be really bad. Can you believe it? lol

Anyway, when I first saw Antiope, I was like "wait, I know her. But from where?" (lack of research, folks, sometimes it's a lot of fun) And then it hit me that she's the freaking princess from Princess Bride. Cue internal screaming. 


A friend of mine (Mae) posted this on her Facebook. Um. YES PLEASE.


Can I get an AMEN because this is freaking awesome?! Thank you.

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"Where'd the Shield Go?"





One of two points that I really...just CANNOT get past. Also, sword in the back of your dress? Honey, you'd have grown a steel tail that you wouldn't be able to explain. I don't care HOW nice your posture is.

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"Ares the Giant Stag Beetle"

No pictures, but really. That's what I thought when his armor showed up.
Ares, the earth-shakingly powerful God of War...looks like a bright and shiny giant stag beetle. I can't deal with this.

Ari out.

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All right, the fangirl rant is TEMPORARILY over :P
Next time on #MusicMondays, I'll be sharing about a lovely couple that creates some of the sweetest music videos I know. You'll love them. :)
Of that I have no doubt. <3

Subscribe (top right, click on SUBSCRIBE and enter email) if you haven't already!!
Byee~

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Kuaula Wedding | #WeeklyWednesday

In all honesty, I...want to sleep for a week. Sorry, guys, this isn't going to be terribly wordy because I was running around doing a ton of things to the point where I really don't have much of an opinion on anything at this point, but as promised, here are photos. Once again, unedited photos. Sorry :(

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"The Kuaula Wedding"
Program
After a long and grueling two days of decorating with things happening almost every day that made the process go longer and later than originally planned, we're done. Many things went crazy at the last minute that I don't even know about and quite frankly, I'm not going to try to guess. We did it, it's over, I'm almost positive the bride and groom loved their wedding, and that's enough for me.

That said, let's begin with the reception! Okay, THIS one, I have to say something about. What was originally planned as: 

"Tables + Chairs Set-Up on Wednesday night" and "Decor Start at 1pm Thursday night"

turned into "Tables + Chairs Set-Up at 4pm on Thursday" because we were unable to receive the keys to the reception area. This scheduling upset pushed EVERYTHING back. 
I personally had to leave at 11pm because I was ALREADY TIRED and didn't want to work myself SICK (something you can ask anyone I'm close friends with happens more often than I'd like), but the lead decorator, Ms. Helen, didn't leave till 2am. Yep. Pray for her. 

Unsurprisingly I felt really AWFUL leaving early when the decor wasn't done, but I just couldn't push myself anymore. She had me take a break for 10 minutes and when I had to get up again, my legs were glued to the floor. 

There was one point where she asked me why I wasn't slowing down and why I was moving so fast to get everything done, and my brain only had two things in mind:
1) move faster = done faster = go home faster 
2) if I slow down, I will SHUT DOWN

So yeah...while it may seem selfish to some that I left early, I was SO DONE with the day, I just had to leave. I was not going to be of any good to anyone in a half-dead state, and this was the first day and we had two more to go. If this was a one day thing and I had nowhere to be the next day? Sure. I'd stay till the end. But I had two more days of needing to function in high gear, so I hightailed it out of there.

Here are pictures of the reception area (pre-decor):


This is what it looked like 3.5 hours later (after putting out ALL tables, covering chairs with covers, and laying them down, 7 chairs to a table):


Ribbons (tied by me) to distinguish the reserved seats for the bride and groom's family.
My personal preference would've been to use a gold or green from their color scheme to make the bows pop more, but I guess subtlety was a theme here (which is fine). I did these at the ceremony venue as well. I'm calling them butterfly bows. No idea what they are actually called though. lol XD

Setting tables:


Place Setting:

Completed table setting:

Small bit of drama here that I didn't know about till the day, but apparently the florist put the flowers in the freezer and killed them all the day before. YIKES! Fortunately, God worked a miracle and got us more flowers THE NEXT DAY! PHEW! Talk about an event saver. Much of the decor was relying on the live flowers and to NOT have them would've been very very bad.

This is what the head table (for the bride, groom, and bridal party) looked like. They had more elaborate settings with different plates and their table was covered in a rosette tablecloth and mirrors. Very "classy" and majestic in appearance.




Let's hop over to the place where the ceremony took place. Tulle was done by me, candles and mirrors on the ground placed by Ash. We had to be careful to make sure that there wasn't a chance of someone knocking over a candle or pulling on the tulle because that fire hazard would be...well, BAD.

And now we're at the day itself!!
Here are some photos from the ceremony. Some are dark, sorry :(
The brighter ones were too bright to see clearly because the light bouncing off of their white outfits drowned out their faces. :(

I also want to go ahead and state here that by this point, I was exhausted, so my makeup and what my face looks like in general isn't that great. :/ Whoops.


Danae and Olivia, our wedding music instrumentalist duo lol





Presenting, Mr. and Mrs. Musumhi!!

And since Africans LOVE dancing, there were some of the dances that I managed to record (albeit, not well because I was trying to hold my phone above peoples' heads, and as such, can't see what's on my phone at all times...). Also, sorry for the inconvenience, but these two were too large to load TO the blog, so here are the links for them in Google Drive.

Bridal Party Dances:

#1: the Bridal Party "enters"

#2: special Bridal Party dance (I personally liked this one a lot)

First Dance as Husband and Wife:

Managed to snag a quick photo with my pilot bro, Chris, in his groomsman outfit. He looks good, no? :) The groomsmen were all in white suits with emerald green vests and bow ties. The bridesmaids were in emerald green dresses with gold jewelry and gold strap heels.

All looked great :D


And on our way out, Ash and I managed to catch the bride in the corner as she waited for Kudzai to finish his mother + son dance with his mom so that she could do her father + daughter dance with her dad.

We love you so much, Paula!!
Congratulations!!!



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Surprisingly, I managed to squeeze in some time to watch Wonder Woman last week with some friends. I'll be sharing my thoughts about the movie on #FeatureFriday, so don't miss it! Subscribe at the top right of the page if you haven't already!!

Cheers!~

Monday, June 12, 2017

JuNCurryAhn : BTS(방탄소년단) - Blood Sweat & Tears(피 땀 눈물) VIOLIN/DANCE COVER | #MusicMonday

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I gave you a heads up last week, so here's the SECOND cover of BTS "Blood Sweat & Tears". No, I'm not saying I'm in love with the song, but I AM in love with these covers!!

Also, remember how I said Alexander Rybak is European Lindsey Stirling? Let me now introduce you to Korean Lindsey Stirling lol XD

Firstly, he goes by "JunCurryAhn" online. Which KILLS me, because his real name is Jun Sung Ahn, and "CurryAhn" is a word-play off of "Korean". XD
Secondly, he's an adorable human being and he's essentially become a K-pop star of his own making, which, let's be honest here, is actually really amazing. Long story short, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE JUN. He's so talented and cute to boot :P
Sorry, my fangirl is showing >_<

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I don't need to belabor this song anymore. You already saw the cover from last week.
Anyhoo, I love that they're doing this song in suits. It just makes it THAT much more attractive because they look sleeker and classier throughout the dance.
These guys, particularly Jun, clean up nice :)



Hope you loved this MV!
Yes, I'm aware I'm biased because I love Jun :P


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See you Wednesday!
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