Giuca

What do you do when you really, but really do not like an actor but would love to see the drama because the theme is supernatural and you love it? So you try watching it, even finish it! But you hate every second of it! Even though you tried liking it. Well, that's me with this drama!!!

So, I am really biased here, but I cannot stand the sight of Lee Dong Wook. He may be a very nice person but his acting is not! He ruined the whole drama for me! He always sports a sinister smirk, a cary half smile which is permanently glued to his face and is immuable like the universe. His only moments of grace, in my eyes, were when he slayed the bad supernaturals. But the rest of the series which he spent pining and swooning and crying ... it was just awful! The only moment I really liked the drama was the very last MINUTE of the very LAST episode. Up to that point, it was draggy and messy. Characters strutting around, being cooly dangerous. Or the main couple being all lovey dovey in the midst of all the chaos! Nice! Major events were being planned and plotted leaving tha main baddie enough time to figure them out and come with a counter attack plan! The main couple seriously lacked chemistry in my book and they were so evidently unhappy when they saw each other again but could not say anything because they spent 16 episodes pining for each other, and offering to die for each other frequently. When the banality set in, they were bored and not interested in each other any more. All those scenes of domestic bliss following the cringy nature wedding (rings made of grass! Original! What else?) felt so false, wrong. Which was proven in the last minute of the drama. Domesticity kills the romance. And the romance was high when they were risking their lives every day but not anymore....

I liked seeing the actor from To My Star being all young and eager: I almost did not recognize him, he was so different here! Well done!
I usually like Kim Bom but here his character felt off, his acting was all over the place.
I liked that grim reaper couple: the husband was so funny with his wife and their banter was great.

What else did I like? The money they obviously spent on sets, cinematography, costumes shows clearly which was nice! And that's it!

And the final remark about Lee Dong Wook: he should be in a vampire themed drama or a movie, as a vampire obviously! That I would watch!

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The clueless prince and his smart consort

You know how often in K dramas you have a strong female character at the beginning of a drama. She is smart, intelligent, sassy and beautiful. She has a brain! And then she falls in love and her every brain cell stops functioning: she can barely speak, she keeps falling over, she becomes stupid and incompetent. Luckily there is the MAN to save her and get her to hospital when she cuts her finger on a piece of a broken glass.

I do not know if it is the same in c dramas: I am a relative newcomer and all I watch are short costume dramas.

And this one did a K drama turnabout on me, with a twist! The one losing all brain power us the man in the story! Reversal of typical drama character roles! Interesting and novel choice of plot device!

So the first season ended with her finding out that he had been leading a double life. She angry about it and she leaves while he is left weeping in the middle of the road! Two years later he is still horribly missing her, he's depressed and moping about having no will to do anything. His father decides to get him married again but his brother and his mother plot against him in order to get rid of competition for the throne. The girl finds out and comes back.

The second season is her show: she's the one thinking, seeing the plots behind fake smiles, figuring out how to bring the palace plotters to light. While she is thinking, he is just following her around like a faithful dog so happy to have her back! This season is also more about the succession struggle and palace conspiracy than their love story which takes a back seat. They love each other, she is back, he is happy. That's it for him and them!

Unfortunately we do not get to see his alter ego, the white haired fan thrower, or enjoy the funny banter between them. The spark is missing from their romance and from his character! What a let down! He eventually defeats all plots and wins the throne but only after a few important people had died and with him just being completely clueless throughout! The only thing really important to him is her and even when he finds out she had been lying to him, he does not care as long as she stays with him! His behaviour is akin the usual drama FL!

The story was boring: plot upon conspiracy upon lies in order to win the throne. The main couple really took the back seat here: I guess they did not have anything more to say about them so they expanded upon the side characters.

The actors were charming and had good chemistry. The kissing scenes were bad, yucky to tell the truth: it looked like they did not really know what to do! The guy playing the third prince was rather amazing going from sweet to scary to mean to polite quickly.

You can watch this if you want to see how they end up together but they could have done it in twe episodes instead of 18 mercifully very short episodes.

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A Fairy tale...

Or a tale about a fairy on his(because it is a handsome guy!) way to grant his first wish and it goes awfully wrong! But he realizes that only ten years later! When two baseball playing best friends make a wish to stay together forever, this is not how they imagined it would be: one of them became a girl overnight and the other moved to USA. When he comes back he meets and falls for the girl version of his friend.

While watching this I could not really focus on the plot: I was constantly thinking of trans people and recent scandals and cancellations of suspicious celebrities! If all those articles about transphobia had not been on my mind, I would have probably enjoyed this much much more.

The story is sweet and nice, not an evil ex in sight, minimum toxicity and a lot of fluff! The actors could have been better: the ML was wooden and monotonal, looked depressed and generally unhappy most of the times. The FL was supposed to be a boy iso she is a bit rougher and tougher than the usual FL, speaking with a deeper voice and a bravado of a boy. The cutst of the lot was the Fairy who had the best chemistry with the FL.

This is a tale of friendship, love gender and baseball! It is a cute short watch with nice music and solid story! What else can you ask for or need one Sunday night?

I don't care if what you are; I like you as a person! Awwwww, so cute and PC!

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Relationship handbook or how they should be!

Finally, I managed to finish this even though it took me longer than I intended. The reason? This drama is a rollercoaster ride but not in a good sense. It starts slowly with annoying main characters. So annoying, I almost dropped it but since I promised to watch it I persevered. After the episode 6 it suddenly gets better, more exciting and faster only to slow down a few episodes later turning into a boring mess. It picks up again towards the ending when it became necessary to give resolution to different storylines.

This is a love story between a doctor and a funeral director. The doctor has abandoned doctoring because of a personal tragedy (death of a brother) and the funeral director needs to earn some money to ease the burden on her father. But she has a magic touch: when she touches a dead person, they wake up and get to have a last wish granted. After the initial scare, she takes care of 21 wishes she was supposed to get. We discover in the last episode the connection between these 21 people and the funeral director with a magic touch. The drama deals with relationships and what do they mean: family, friends, coworkers, religion and how they help us deal with life and death situations, what is acceptable and how we are perceived by people around us, both known and unknown and how we deal with that!

I liked the story, the fantasy element was original. I liked the overall optimistic outlook on human nature: the vast majority of people are nice and kind and really good. I often wonder if they really are or should this as well be counted under the fantasy element (my cynicism is showing!!)?

After my initial annoyance with the leads: I found the FL brazen and rude and the ML a spineless wimp, they grew on me and were really good together. Their relationship managed to avoid those pesky misunderstandings, influence of a toxic ex and last episode break up only to meet after a time skip! So surprising for a K drama!It was not all smooth sailing but it moved nicely forward without being boring! Well done!

There were some amazing support characters the best of which were two uncles: a single man with a funny haircut and a priest! Their bromance and the banter, verging on a BL, were really funny. Only that makes this drama worth the watch! And of course there is the funeral director's best friend with a crush on her boss, slowly pursuing him, making sweet faces and rolling shyly her eyer until he succumbed. Cute! By the way, why isn't Tae In Ho getting better and bigger roles? He deserves much better than the endless string of support and guest roles!

The music was lovely, the songs were appropriately sweet and slow with enough emotions considering the subject matter.

Now that I think of it, this seems to be another entry in the list of dramas dealing with recently deceased and their wishes and last moments (Tomorrow, Move To Heaven etc.) I must have sen others as well! I wonder why are there often such dramas coming from Korea! I do not remember watching as many western shows with such theme (Pushing Daisies, I Zombie...were mostly comedies!). The comedy here is just to give you a breather between serious scenes! The balance between serious and funny was perfectly attained!

I don't like the drama poster: already seen elsewhere and therefore not really attracting attention: so much so I almost missed this drama! Which was an OK watch but I will never rewatch it since it is not bingeable and it did not strike me as memorable!

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I was bored!!!

I think I might be getting fed up with all these "classical" Sherlock Holmes versions. All of this has been seen so many times and the only originality here is that it takes place in Japan today. The rest is just The Hound of the Baskervilles. I am blessed in a way, since I usually do not remember the plot of these movies (and books - the same is with every Agatha Christie book: as soon as I finish the book, my brain refuses to retain the name of the culprit so it is always new! For me, at least!). So even though I have seen every other version of this story, I cannot remember the plot. All I remember is that it takes place in the countryside.
So that is the case here. There are a couple of murders and kidnappings, rich families and their secrets and an earthquake punishing everyone, one way or another.

Shishio and Wakamiya are back, more annoying than before. Shishio looks like he just came back from Afghanistan, wearing ample robes and looking scruffy and unkempt. Wakamiya is imagining himself a detective like SH but he is too pretty to be convincing so he just struts around, following Shishio and failing at being helpful. There is no more chemistry between them that made the series such a fun watch in the beginning. Shishio just seems bored and Wakamiya is just a lovely wallflower!

What I loved was the cinematography: beautiful shots of mountainous and misty island, scary mine shafts and subdues colours verging towards grey, cold tones! And the music! Something special. The background score evolved as the story progressed, from the cello grating noise to the sweeping orchestral pieces to the final credits beautiful song, "lullaby" by YU-KA.

Last but not least, thank you eveychooey for the subs! I do not regret watching this: having these excellent subs just added to the pleasure of discovering a new exciting movie!

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Three micro dramas wrapped in a forth

A mix of romance, fantasy, adventure and chinese short dramas, Serendipity is a quick and fun watch. The story follows a student who accidentally touches a spiritual lamp and finds herself going from one book to another and finishing quests in order to earn more spiritual energy to get out of the book. She is accompanied by a history professor travelling through books. They go through three books, each adventure taking about three and a half episodes (the length of those micro c dramas!).

This drama is seriously woke feminist: each task the girl is given is about women empowerment be it a housewife, a princess or a businesswoman. The FL is a smart strong kind and beautiful, she has everything going for her. Kudos for the production team: they managed to keep everything streamlined, especially the plot. They did not have much choice, this having only 12 episodes. The pacing was perfect, the cases were fun and watching the romance evolve before our eyes was sweet and cute. The actors had good chemistry. The music was excellent and I loved the final credits song. Apparently this drama had a limited low budget: well it does not show it! The cinematography and the special effects are top notch.

Now for the negative parts: the plot was a bit messy. The explanation of the spiritual book travelling quests were unclear: why was it there? What is the professor doing and why? Wan Wan the book spirit and his role in everything. And of course; that ending. Where were they and what were they doing for two months? No answers whatsoever! And do not start me on those dead fish frozen kisses! Last but not least, why is the ML speaking as if he out of breath, soundlessly. I do not get this need to whisper loudly!

If you overlook these little details, this is a really fun watch! People say c dramas are full of silly damsels in distress. I have yet to watch a c drama to find one. I haven't seen that many, it's true, but damsel in distress? ....well it is not the case here.

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And the point of this being...?

Can I have the time I wasted on this back? Why was this compilation made? It is about 80% recycled material from the series and the rest is useless new event (a shady journalist investigating SH with the help of the naive JW in love). Only to tell us that Shishio is alive and well, three years later fascinatingly annoying like before.

There must have been a point to this special: I guess to remind people of the events in the series just before the movie is released. And reminding we did need since the drama was boring and easily forgettable! I had just finished watching it yesterday and I could not remember half of the cases - That's how invested I was in it!). So I hoped for a better ending with this episode

The guest actors reprised their roles perfectly. But the character of Wakamiya reached the new levels of cringe: crying like an abandoned lover, pretending to be SH and failing pitifully. While he did have some character and a backbone at the beginning of the series, SH managed so well to train him that he became a willing cult follower without his own will, he had become SH's shadow, useless and there!

Fortunately, SH was only heard of but not much seen except for the violin playing montage. I guess he knows how to play only one piece of music.

This was a disappointment. They did follow the original books: SH and Moriarty fall down the Reichenbach Falls and disappear only to show up out of nowhere as if nothing happened some time later. Arthur Conan Doyle tried to get rid of the character who was ruining his life with his popularity but could not and had to bring him back. So he did but it was lazily done. Here it is unacceptable!I wanted to find out more about Moriya, their disappearance, what did he do and why. Nothing! Ep 10 they fall into the bay and vanish and then he shows up at the crime scene three years later. Easy! The magic of Sherlock Holmes?Yeah, right! No thanks!

I'll be watching the movie next, hoping it is better but not really believing it!

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Dans le pays des Bisounours....

In the land of Care Bears everyone is pretty, cute and nice, they care for each other and help each other, there are no conflicts and no bad bears.

Well, this drama is a live version of that cartoon series! That is the only comparison that works actually! I wanted to compare it to a fairy tale but in every fairy tale there is a conflict, there is an evil character (usually a witch of a sort!). So that does not work!

This is a story about two people who meet through the dating app on Monday, get married on Tuesday, fall in love on Wednesday, meet mothers on Thursday, promise to stay together for the next 50 years on Friday and get married again on Saturday! On Sunday, I guess, they rest gazing into each other's eyes with a huge smile while the sparkly hearts and flowers keep popping around them . Well that is what I saw (except for the last thing, which I imagines while I was dying from a sugar overdose induced diabetes coma!)

Somewhere in between gazing lovingly and being lovey dovey, they pretended to work which was just an excuse to be cute and smile and cup one's face with hands. Those poor actors must have suffered severe facial cramps from all that wide smiling!

I cannot stand the grown women in j dramas acting cute! It definitely is a cultural difference for me. Being cute is for kids: when I see kids acting all cute, it is so adorable and endearing. Adults acting that way is distracting, cringy, immature . Why do you think that Japan has a problem with birth rates? When you have adults behaving like children, why make real kids? Just my theory!

Anyway, this was just awful, definitely not my cup of tea! It is a live action manga: and again, for me the plot that works in a comic form, does not necessarily works as a live drama! Just my 2 cents!

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A promise of a gl in an ad

Your Ship Is Real gets the credit to be a promise of a gl. I gather that China is no more favourable to GLs as it is to BLs.

The actresses are cute and have a correct chemistry. The scenes from the historical drama are well filmed and their interactions are fun to watch. I would like to watch the full version of that drama (if it was a short drama!). Outside drama they keep circling around each other, trying to figure out what is going on between them: there are meaningful glances and hesitant touches which were cute and sweet!

But this is an ad and you need to keep that in mind: so we get choppy storytelling, choppy editing, choppy music, choppy watch experience. It is only 10 min long but I was bored after 2 min because of all the choppiness! The story was difficult to follow because it kept jumping from historical fiction to ad to something in between! And those jumps were not smooth! I guess you cannot do much in this short time!

This drama special is too long to be a good ad and too badly produced for a movie. But kudos, nevertheless, since it was made in China and we all know how brutal the censorship is there!

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Acquaintances to friends through panic

Kota has always had bad luck. At the university he notices Naoya who seems to have extraordinarily good luck. Moreover when Kota is next to him his bad luck disappears. So one day he approaches Naoya with an offer of friendship but it is badly phrased and Naoya accepts to be his boyfriend. From that moment on, Kota is in eternal panic mode, jumpy and incapable to deal with the consequences.

I usually drop manga adaptation when they look too much like an anime and not enough like a live drama. I dropped this one halfway through the second episode (when he got all wrapped in yarn!!) but chose to pick it up in order to complete a challenge.

And let me tell you what a challenge it's been to finish this drama.

Kota is a very unlikable character. Immature and silly. He was formed by his relentless bad luck from childhood so he avoids having friends. Pretending to be interested in Naoya is too much for his feeble character: he misunderstands Naoya's every word and action. We are privy to his innermost thoughts as he is narrating it but what we get is panic. His every reaction is panic. His every thought is panic. He is jumpy, hugging the walls and trying to keep low profile. (though his very attempts to be invisible are so conspicuous! go figure!). He is afraid of contact and he does not know or want to respond to Naoya's affections. He's a typical victorian virgin. In 21st century! I found Kota extremely annoying. Even his evolution towards the end, is not really convincing: I think he cares for Naoya but more like a friend than a lover.
Naoya, on the other hand, had been blessed with good luck he decided to use for good, be nice to people but, just like Kota, he never really got close to someone. Until one day he sees Kota smiling and falls for him. I could believe that. Someone's sunny smile can make a person happy. Is it love? Probably on Naoya's part since he already knew he was attracted to men. He was so deeply taken that he chose to ignore Kota strange 'manga anime) behaviour.

Their relationship is more of a bromance than a bl romance. Kota is never, not even in the end, at ease with physical closeness.

So the romance is really not good. What is good here are some side characters: group of gossiping girls Kota listens into, psychology classes in an open circular classroom (well done stage manager!), Naoya's friends who are underused. What is surprisingly missing here are a number of tropes (childhood relationship, crazy ex etc.) which makes this a rather refreshing watch.

I was right to drop this initially and only the actor laying Naoya made me go through this annoying show. Sato Yusuke is a very talented actor who managed to portray the happy exterieur and the sad interior feelings of Naoya with a smile and a look. Amazing acting skills! The other actors are not worth mentioning because they do very little acting just by standing there and I do not want to talk about Sota Ryosuke. Actually I should, because he brought to life the most annoying character in BL since Kieta Hatsukoi. If he was supposed to be so annoying, then well done Sota. If not, well, it is a problem!

The story centers on these two characters and nothing exists outside of them: family or the society in general it is a moment in time in a microcosme where there is no prejudice!

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Lift the veil

Veils is a short movie about two women in a relationship who would like to have proof of their commitment to each other in a form of wedding photos. They have trouble finding LGBT friendly photo studio and those they do find offer single photos. While one of the women would like to drop it , the other one is fed up with the sort the japanese society leaves to them and decides to complain. And it works and they have their wedding photos taken.

This was a nice short movie about ordinary people facing daily challenges because of who they are. They are both more or less closeted: one does not dare come out to her parents and the other is reluctant to talk in public about her partner. But that is the result of deeply rooted cultural prejudices, as far as I know. Even though marketing yourself as LGBT friendly commerce (photo studio) is good selling point in today's more tolerant and open societies, there is usually nothing behind it, as the women find out. To bring the change about in a society, one needs to be willing to fight for one's convictions. And that's what they end up doing. By taking photos in wedding dresses, the women wanted to lift the veil off of their own relationship.

The movie is a slice of life kind, where we find out a lot about the characters through conversation and simple remarks and glances. It was well produces, though toned down colours and shaky cameras are things y=they could have done without.

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Timeless

TRIGGER WARNING: People smoking a lot. And inside!

I loved this. In spite of it being 15 years old, it still looks fresh.

This is a kind of omnibus drama, stories about different people loosely connected. And in this case, the connection is the restaurant that is open from midnight to dawn! The restaurant owner just sits there smoking when he is not cooking and listens to his customers lives without interfering. We do not know anything about him. Not even his name: everyone just calls him Master!

Each episode deals with a customer's problem: love, parents, friendship, children, jobs. Master is there to give them their comfort food and listen.

I love this kind of dramas so I enjoyed it a lot. The stories are told in short 25min episodes but are completed, sometimes there are even time skips (months, weeks) but this is not an artificial passing of time (for the dramatic effect) but it is life: the characters needed that time to show us how their stories were going to finally turn out (an actress needed to complete the movie for example!).

The cinematography is amazing: shots of Tokyo at night, the bustling streets give way to a small alley. The music is amazing: I do not know anything about japanese music but in any case this is not pop music.

People are lovely and what every one of us needs is a plate of comfort food and a friendly non judgemental ear. And that is what this Midnight diner provides for its customers. Warm and welcoming.

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Cinderella....again?!?!?

Yes it is a timeless story! No matter how many times they remake it, how many different variations they manage to come up with, I am going to lap it all up and ask for more!
Actually, I dropped this after the first episode: I really did not like the female lead actress. No, I really did not like any of the actors because they look too old as teenagers. But eventually, since ALL of the actors looked too old, I got used it and did not mind it at all.Still I took me about a month to pick this up again. And I binge watched it overnight: episodes are short so it is an easy watch.
Ugly duckling in school, Hagino adult has become a beautiful woman and a make up expert thanks to being cruelly rejected by her highschool crush. Angry, after a fight with her best friend, she tears a photograph of them together and is transported to time when the photo is taken. She realizes she had become a teen again but kept her adult knowledge which she uses to become a swan and have her crush fall for her.
Time slip is one of my favourite tropes. The reason for the time slip was a curse put on her by a jealous other best freind of her best friend.
Here it is used to show the FL that her extreme shyness is not wrong and that people can actually SEE her behind the mask she wears. Beauty is only skin deep and real friends and lovers see beyond that. In the beginning she wanted to hold on to her newfound high school popularity but eventually came to understand that she was cheating and that all her life experiences had made her the person she's showing to her high school friends. And even though her friends and her crush did not want her to leave, she explained her reasoning to them.
The pace of the drama was changing all the time: sometimes very slow and repetitive then too rushed towards the ending. I felt like there were two episodes too many in the first helf and an episode missing in the end.
The main couple had decent chemistry and they were quite cute together. The best friend was a bit disconcerting: she wore a happy go lucky face at all occasion but it was obvious she had deep wounds she was hiding and did not know how to deal with them but avoid them!
This turned out to be a decent watch, not too complicated and charming with lovely music.

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Beauty & the Beast

A naive, inexperience and innocent young woman falls for a brash, rude and fake rebellious girl in her class. They are put together for an assignment where they have to pretend they date. The first girls kindness melts the second girl's icy heart.

So nothing new and revolutionary here: just a simple story of opposites attract, enemies to lovers. I found the characters a bit extreme in their kind: the nice girl is extremely nice, the rude girl is extremely rude. So one evening they meet in a club. The nice girl cannot dance (I always thought that you just needed to listen to the music and move but I guess there are tone deaf people who cannot do even that! granted!) so she sits and downs half a bottle of vodka (aaahhh, liquid courage!) and that helps her stake a claim on the rude girl who is oh! so touched by that!

Even though this is a short webdrama, it is just a string of romcom clichés starring unlikable characters. That's what I did not like about it: not the clichés but just bad writing. The talk by the teacher at the beginning of the class, though was excellent and I think we should all listen to those wise words about love and relationships and respect. But then they went down the politically correct woke university road asking about pronouns, gender etc. Nice thinking!

Production obviously did not have much money and it shows: it is cold and sharp and it sounds empty. I did not notice any particular song or music, if you do not count the one it the club.

It is a correct single watch which has the merit of being a GL which are few and far between so as more are made, the better they will get!

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Too much romance, not enough ghosts!

I love me a good ghost story and this one had everything going on for it. So why did it turn out so bad?

Kevin, born and raised in the US comes to visit his aunt and cousins in Thailand and do some ghost hunting while there. He falls for her aunts handyman. Lots of fluss ensues. And a little bit of angst. But then they reconcile...

It starts really well, with a minor mystery but it is unfortunately abandoned by the episode 4 and after that we only get the usual romance with the usual problems and misunderstandings.

The title is a bit cryptic but everything is explained by the end of the first episode: the aunt and her family have been ghosts for about a month before Kevin arrived but nobody seems to know that (how come!). The unfinished business kept them from passing on. They were the most interesting characters of the lot.

Kevin and Pleum, the handyman, got together fairly quickly for a drama: they were sleeping together from the ep.4. I have to give it to the actors, their chemistry was good and they were really at ease with each other. The skinship scenes were some of the best I have ever seen in a BL; filmed in soft light and well choreographed. After they got together the focus of the story shifted to the couple and the ghosts were left far in the background serving as means (the cousins wasting their merit points on them!) of making the lovers' relationship stronger.

As I was watching this, I kept wondering if there was anything more to this story. I was waiting for a big twist, something along the lines: one of the boys is a ghost but does not know it. But no, no such surprise so the story chugged along those well known romance lines including a break up and a time skip! I did not like how they dressed Kevin: through his costumes they showed him become softer as he was getting to be more and more in love: large flowy blouses, shorts, purses while Pleum was always dressed in black. Is it really necessary to shove it in our faces top/bottom distribution of roles, in case we did not understand. At least we do not hear wife/husband in Thai bls anymore, so I guess we should thank god for small mercies!!!

And lastly, I did appreciate the fact that this was a ghost story where the ghost was not the love interest. But I would have prefered this to be more mystery than fluff orientated ghost story!

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