<Korea In the Past and Present>

If you want to roughly take a look at Korean history, just visit the Korea.net website! It has articles that summarize the history of certain eras, so you would want to check it out before diving deeper into Korean history. If you don't have enough time to cover the whole thing, you could just choose one or two that catches your eyes and read! I guarantee you, it's so easy as ABC!

• What kind of device should an ASMR YouTuber use?

#2 Soundproof Studio

A quiet environment is as important as having a good mic. It is best to have a soundproof studio of your own, and it would cost about $1500~$4500 to make one. I used to have a soundproof studio at home but I wanted to separate my work space and home, so I moved the studio to another place.

#3 Tips on Making ASMR Content

I personally meet up with people to get ideas for a new video. When I talk with different people, I get different ideas. It’s also good to visit shops with special themes. For the editing part, I use Final Cut Pro X with Mac Book Pro. I first started using the program three years ago, and I have watched tutorial videos on YouTube. There are plenty of tutorial videos on different editing programs, so make sure to watch those as they’re all free!

It is really important to find what you are interested in, as it is more than just making money. You can easily lose interest when your video does not receive that much interest from the viewers. Hence, it is important to find what you can have fun with, and what you find the most helpful for yourself!

Going back to school has certain feelings of anticipation, nervousness, excitement, and even a bit of dread. It’s a mixed bag of emotions, and especially with all the stuff going on in the world right now, it can be more daunting than ever. If you’re looking for some K-dramas to watch that will help you escape the nerves and overall stress of school, here’s a look at 10 K-dramas set in high school.

• Paik’s Pollack & Bean Sprout Ramen

#1 토트넘 대 에버턴 (Tottenham vs. Everton)

#2 크리스 에반스 (Chrise Evans)

#3 블루 제이스 대 메츠 (Blue Jays vs. Mets)

#4 chris evans

#5 chris evans instagram

#6 블루 제이스 대 양키스 (Blue Jays vs. Yankees)

#7 ifuncle video kr

#8 에스턴 빌라 대 맨유 (Eston Villa vs. Manchester Utd.)

#9 원피스 990 (<One Piece> Ep. 990)

#10 김소월 (Kim So Wol)

As the last days of a dismal summer dribble into a potentially even more dreadful fall, we’re seeing a crucial inflection point for the future of theaters, online streaming, and big honking blockbuster movies.

Normally, movie news this time of year is dominated by what’s being shown at the triumvirate of prominent film festivals in Telluride, Colo., Venice, Italy, and Toronto, Canada. Typically, the festivals spotlight awards contenders and some big-name holiday features before audiences of critics, media, international buyers, and hardcore cineastes.

But when it comes to movies the rest of us can see in theaters, Labor Day Weekend mostly showcases the dregs of the release calendar. Films released around now either weren’t good enough for a summer release to a wide audience or smart enough for release this fall in the hunt for awards. They’re dumped on the dog-days dung heap to clear the way for the good stuff to come.

Except in this crazy, mixed-up, messed-up year, when we didn’t get a summer blockbuster season (Palm Springs? The Old Guard? Hamilton, the movie?) because we didn’t have theaters open. At the current rate, we won’t have much of an awards season either (the Oscars were moved back two months, so the accolades chase is going to seem longer than the presidential campaigns).

Two very different blockbusters on Labor Day

And of course, all those Life In Bizarro World changes mean we’re getting not one but two blockbuster movie debuts this weekend, on very different platforms: Christopher Nolan‘s typically complicated take on a thriller, WarnerMedia‘s Tenet, and Disney‘s $200 million live-action remake of one of its beloved 1990s animated films, Mulan.

How each fares amid shifting viewing habits, deeply troubled theater chains, rapid adoption of new streaming services, a growing recession, and a still-nasty pandemic will say a lot about how Hollywood handles its highest-profile products.

That’s because the two films represent Hollywood’s two paths forward. Both films were among the few big summer tentpoles that studios didn’t reschedule into 2021 or beyond. Both saw their theatrical releases repeatedly rescheduled. They are, in some ways, joined forever in Hollywood annals as it looks back on a century of business practices and forward to an unprecedented streaming future.

Finally, Disney gave up on a theatrical release for Mulan amid the summer spike in COVID cases that kept most theaters around the country closed. It made the film available to the more than 60 million households that subscribed to its Disney+ streaming service, as long as they paid a further $29.99 for “premium” access.

That relatively steep price gives unlimited online access to the movie, three months before it becomes free on Disney+. For a family with a little sword-wielding Mulan-ista or two, that’s still probably a good deal. For the rest of us, well, we’ll see.

And then there’s Tenet, which is opening in theaters because WarnerMedia wants to appease its creator, a longtime champion of the in-theater experience. WarnerMedia’s solicitousness is understandable: his Batman origin trilogy together grossed more than $2.5 billion for the studio. Now they’re just hoping the pell-mell reopening efforts by AMC and other theater chains will attract whatever counts as a big, or at least a sustained, audience in Bizarro World.

Experiments that could reshape Hollywood

The outcome of the two experiments will help shape Hollywood Conventional Wisdom for months to come. If Disney scores big, other studios likely will release even more of their feature-length projects directly to streaming, possibly bypassing theaters altogether. If Tenet does well, that may embolden studios to reopen their pipelines of already-produced projects sooner than next year.

This isn’t a perfect, double-blind scientific exercise, anymore than those Russian vaccine “trials.” For one thing, critical reviews for both movies have been good, but not great. That may affect turnout for one or both films, especially given the pandemic fears on one side, and high cost/subscription requirement on the other.

Nolan has many devotees of his narrative origami that folds time, space, and causality on itself repeatedly (indeed, Tenet the movie and Tenet the movie title are both palindromes, reading the same forward and backward). But unlike his Dark Night movies, Tenet won’t have benefit of a big existing franchise or big-name stars (while I think highly of John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, and Elizabeth Debicki, Nolan is the real star). And critics have called the film “chilly” and complicated.

Mulan reviews have been a little complicated too, suggesting Disney princess fans will love it, while others may be less moved. That probably makes it a good candidate for a streaming-first release. The company won’t have to spend as much on marketing to reach its target audience, and can keep considerably more in revenue. It may also lower subscriber churn, the biggest problem facing all the major streaming services.

Restarting production faces lots of problems

It’s also worth noting that the restart of film and TV production isn’t going great. Pattinson himself was just diagnosed with COVID, putting on hold the making of the next–not directed by Nolan–Batman film. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson said this week that his entire family contracted COVID. (They have all safely recovered.) And John Nolan, a Texas-based assistant director, just died after developing coronavirus symptoms while working on a commercial shoot in July.

All that makes it difficult to guarantee that studios will be able to consistently supply reopened theaters with new films. And if people don’t embrace the chance to watch Tenet for a couple of hours in the dark, inside, with a couple of hundred perfect strangers during a pandemic, what lesson will studios draw?

“No one can live without films seen in a movie theatre, on a big screen, with an audience, with all the chatter and the silence,” said a declaration at this week’s opening of the Venice Film Festival from executive directors of seven major European festivals.

No one can live without movie theaters? It’s a noble, if somewhat antediluvian thought. But we’re about to find out what part of it is true, and what part is Hollywood desperately holding onto last century’s business model. Regardless, this will be a weekend to remember.

Groups of conservative provocateurs, QAnon supporters, and others on social media have jumped on the release of the French coming-of-age film Cuties and a trending “Cancel Netflix” hashtag to associate the company with pedophilia.

This isn’t the first time that people have tried to cancel Netflix. Republicans tried it in 2018 following Netflix’s confirmation that it had signed a multiyear deal with Barack and Michelle Obama to produce a series of titles. Earlier this year, people threatened to cancel Netflix over 365 Days, a movie that petitioners argued glorified sexual violence against women. And, at the same time that people are calling for others to cancel Netflix over Cuties, there’s a petition from fans of shows like Jessica Jones, The OA, and Anne with an E, hosting a “cancel Netflix” campaign to try to bring attention to their favorite series that have been canceled.

But while some of those cancel campaigns are pretty direct — Republicans don’t like the Obamas, Jessica Jones fans just want more Jessica Jones — the Cuties situation gets very complicated very quickly. It moves from people being upset about the way young girls were positioned on a poster in a marketing campaign to QAnon supporters using this as proof that their dangerous conspiracy theories are real.

Alright, let’s back up.

WHAT IS CUTIES?

Directed by Maïmouna Doucouré, Cuties is a French movie that critiques society’s sexualization of girls. The movie follows an 11-year-old Senegalese girl living in Paris who dreams of joining a local dance clique. She decides to protest her parents’ strict household and join the other girls in dancing their way through competitions, trying to make a name for themselves.

Cuties uses “uncomfortable images to provoke a serious conversation about the sexualization of girls — especially regarding girls of color, the policing of a girl’s sexuality, double standards, the effect of social media on kids, and how children learn these behaviors,” one critic wrote on Roger Ebert. Doucouré’s intent is to show “that our children should have the time to be children,” she told TIME magazine this month. In using imagery about exploited youth, Doucouré wants to hit home just how important innocence is, and how much it’s taken for granted today.

The film even won the World Cinema Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance Film Festival this year, and it was widely praised for its depiction of the pressures of girlhood. Netflix secured the global streaming rights to the film, with Variety noting at the time that Cuties would be translated into more than 40 languages. Under the Netflix umbrella, the film would stream in 190 different territories that Netflix operates in, excluding France where it had domestic distribution.

Attacks on the movie began before people had even seen the film. Criticisms lobbed against Cuties and Doucouré came from people who saw a poster and assumed the film was one thing, and as the backlash grew, it became apparent that criticism was disingenuous, based on preconceived notions of what the movie was without having sat down to watch it. Which is why Netflix only made it worse.

NETFLIX’S GAFFE

Despite the film existing for some time, it wasn’t until August that people really became aware of it.

In August, Netflix tweeted a teaser for the movie’s release date that came with a new poster. Designed by Netflix’s team, the new poster seemed to present a different type of movie than the one Doucouré made. The original French poster framed the main cast of girls as that — young girls, walking through the streets of Paris, waving around shopping bags and having fun. Netflix’s now-deleted poster positioned the girls as older characters, similar to posters for other dance movies like Step Up. Here’s a side-by-side comparison.

Not long after Netflix tweeted the poster, including descriptions of the movie as 11-year-old Amy becoming “fascinated with a twerking dance crew,” tweets sprang up calling Netflix to take the poster down. Those tweets then snowballed into a few different Change.org campaigns decrying Netflix’s decision to carry the film, garnering tens of thousands of signatures. Within a couple of days, Netflix had removed the poster and used different artwork for the film on its platform.

“We’re deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Cuties,” a statement posted to Netflix’s account on August 20th read. “It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which won an award at Sundance.”

A statement and removal of the poster didn’t clear everything up. By September 3rd, a Turkish media watch group demanded the film be banned from Netflix in Turkey over concerns that the movie promoted child exploitation, Reuters reported. Several high-profile, conservative commentators picked up on the story, too. They started tweeting about Netflix “grooming” children and arguing that it’s “pedophilia soft-porn.” Former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch demanded Netflix “remove the film” entirely. The accusations lobbed at Netflix also found their way to Doucouré who told Deadline she received countless death threats.

“I received numerous attacks on my character from people who had not seen the film, who thought I was actually making a film that was apologetic about hyper-sexualization of children,” Doucouré said.

Doucouré received some support from celebrities and high-profile Twitter users alike, including Tessa Thompson, who noted she was disappointed by Netflix’s marketing campaign. Thompson added she understood people’s response to the post, “but it doesn’t speak to the film I saw.” Again, much of the complaints at the time were coming from people who hadn’t seen the movie, while defenses came in from people who had.

As Rolling Stone’s critic wrote in his review of the film, “Out of context, the girls’ outfits look questionably flashy and trashy; seen in context, as the costumes for a hip-hop dance troupe competing for a grand prize, you understand how they function in regards to a bigger-picture message that Doucouré is trying to get across.”

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos called Doucouré to personally apologize for the poster the team created. She’s currently working on another project for Netflix and told Deadline that despite the negativity associated with the poster, she had many back-and-forth conversations with Netflix to avoid this happening in the future.

A NEW WAVE OF ATTACKS

The “cancel Netflix” trend picked up again on September 9th alongside Cuties’ release. But unlike the original controversy a few weeks prior, attacks online became far more aggressive and targeted.

The fact that Cuties is streaming on Netflix, a big entertainment company with deep tech roots that’s perceived as “liberal,” also plays into this equation. Tech companies with liberal-leaning policies have found themselves at the center of anger and discourse from right-wing and conservative groups. Netflix deciding to carry an evocative film of this nature easily lends itself to those critics.

Posts went around Twitter and Instagram tagging critics who reviewed the film positively, calling them out as promoting dangerous material, but it was also a way to mobilize harassment against those writers. Conservative provocateurs like Steven Crowder and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones dedicated videos to calling out the “leftist media” that praised Cuties. Writers and personalities from conservative publications like The Daily Caller and Breitbart also criticized the film’s content.

Actress Evan Rachel Wood posted a series of Instagram stories about the film’s use of child exploitation. Republican Senator Josh Hawley commented that Netflix might “like to come talk this over before Congress,” retweeting a Daily Caller columnist. Senator Ted Cruz called Netflix carrying the film “deeply disturbing.” On Rotten Tomatoes, the film was review bombed, with plenty of audience reviews calling the film sick and twisted.

Unfortunately, a marketing attempt to promote a coming-of-age movie took on a life of its own beyond Netflix and Doucouré, as conspiracy theories about deep-rooted pedophilia rings in Hollywood — a popular theory within QAnon circles — grabbed hold of the story.

Supporters of QAnon, a group that believes Hollywood is controlled by a cabal of pedophiles, seized on the backlash. Tweets littered with hashtags like #SaveTheChildren — known for its connection to the group — started populating, and soon it was a perfect storm of anger centered on Cuties that had nothing to do with the film itself.

Not all of the criticism came from people who openly support QAnon. But the backlash makes Cuties an easy target for QAnon supporters to spread conspiracy theories. The focus has shifted away from the actual movie, including its purpose and contextual uses of certain scenes, because of the resurgent backlash. But as a critic wrote in his Rolling Stone review, Cuties is not “a salacious bit of pedo-bait designed to appeal to baser instincts rather than better angels.”

THE SUPPORT

Alongside all of the criticism and backlash that led to #CancelNetflix trending, there’s also been a show of support for Doucouré and Cuties. Several film critics have tweeted positively about the movie and the director, alongside their own published reviews. Their words echo the message that Doucouré worked to show in her film: giving the audience a chance to experience what it’s like “to become a little 11-year-old girl in today’s society and not judge her,” as she told film site Shadow and Act. Netflix also issued a statement decrying the criticism and supporting Doucouré’s film.

“Cuties is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children,” a Netflix spokesperson told The Verge. “It’s an award-winning film and a powerful story about the pressure young girls face on social media and from society more generally growing up — and we’d encourage anyone who cares about these important issues to watch the movie.”

Cuties’ message can get lost in the sea of backlash, online rage, and conspiracy theories that have found themselves attached to the film, but Doucouré wanted to tell a story that was close to her own life. In interviews she’s given, she’s expressed hope that people will watch the movie before they make a decision about whether they think it’s good or bad.

“My one message would be that childhood is precious and we all have to protect our children,” she told Shadow and Act. “We all have to come together to figure out what is best for our children so that we can give a beautiful space to our children to grow up safely and peacefully, so that they can have the freedom to choose who they want to become and the best version of themselves.”