Maggi64

I read that the two of them also became good friends after making "God's Own Country." In fact, I read that the same happened with Jake Gyllenhal and Heath Ledger after "Brokeback Mountain." I think it's because directors have them do special "intimacy workshops" wherein they learn to trust each other. I suppose there's a hurdle to pass for hetero guys to do gay sex scenes, and that trust is paramount. Heteros who refuse to do gay kisses are simply not committing to their roles as actors.

Incidentally, a gay man, James Ivory wrote "Call Me by Your Name" and a gay man, Luca Guadagnino, directed it, and both were pissed that Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer refused to do a sex scene. They had to cut a whole scene from Ivory's script and do that stupid scene of Timothee sucking Armie's finger instead. Ivory was so pissed that he even gave interviews saying, point blank, that he "was not a fan of the film."

Yes, I know, but the director is a gay male. I think it brings a different sensibility to a show. It's not exactly controversial to say that different genders bring different sensibilities. After all, critics often praise movies with female directors by saying that they bring a women's perspective to a story.

But you haven't seen "Night Flight" yet, right? I recall that you were hesitant because you'd heard about the scene of violent homophobia. If so, watch it anyway cuz one of the leads gets the most satisfying revenge on the homophobes.

That could happen if they base them on novels (which have more detail and depth), instead of mangas (which are short and simplistic by design). Or if gay men start to write/direct them, instead of all hetero women which is the case now. Women do this fluffy stuff where the men behave like, well, women. There's all that crap with bubble baths, candlelit dinners, walks on the beach, etc. "The Pornographer" and "End of the World With You" are the only 2 Asian BL's to feature the sort of grunt, animal sex that men actually want, and that's because a gay male directed both those shows. The director of "In God's Own Country" is also a gay male.

To be clear, I'm not talking about just sex scenes. Gay males bring a different sensibility that goes beyond the sex scenes. The overall plots, themes and characters feel more raw and authentic. "Maurice" is another good example of an authentic gay love story which was directed and produced by gay males (Merchant and Ivory) and based on a novel by a gay male (E. M. Forester). I'd recommend it, but I'm sure you've already seen it, lol. However, you have not seen "Night Flight" yet and that's also, yep, a gay male director/writer. I know you loved "No Regrets" and it's the same director/writer. So go watch "Night Flight" right now!

I know! I loved how the Yorkshire lad was so closed off and angry until his sweet Romanian slowly opened his heart. He was so closed off in the beginning that he didn't even know how to kiss! Remember how the Romanian had to teach him to slow down and kiss? Before that the Yorkshire lad would just shove a lover's face against a wall and butt fuck him without even knowing his name.

I disliked the character of Teh too much to fully embrace the show. He does that shitty thing to Oh-aew with spying on his poor test score and then humiliates him about it in front of the whole group. I know he felt badly about it later, but he's still the kind of person to do this in the first place. In fact, we see that it's part of his core personality because he does the same thing in the sequel. To wit: the scene where he humiliates Oh-aew in front of a group by making fun of his desire to quit acting. Ultimately, I saw Oh-aew as sweet and cute, while Teh was a meh-looking douchebag.

Thank you! The plotline with the baby angered me even before it caused the guys to break up. It's grossly irresponsible to bring a life into this world simply to prove a point to homophobic parents. I was so annoyed by this that I'd already mentally checked out by time Meiko succeeded in her ulterior motive of breaking up the boys. And she didn't merely break up the two guys, but also trapped one of them in fake hetero marriage. She'd essentially taken Meiji hostage for life. I hated, loathed, detested her character. In fact, let's just retitle this show "The Fag Hag from Hell."

Wow, 7 of your Top 10 are also among my Top 10. The 3 that I don't list are ITSAT, IPYTM, and HisMODC. Otherwise, we have the same taste in BL's. No surprise, right?

Yay, you've got your lists going again! And I just love how you and I both started off thinking Thin Lips' acting was affectless, but now list him as one of our faves. His real name is Matsuda Ryuhei, but let's just stick with Thin Lips, cuz they are thin, lol.

You still need to see him in "Tada's Do It All House." Thin Lips and Nagayama Eita have a killer bromance. And then Kora Kengo pops up in a support role looking hot as hell. Come to think of it, Kora Kengo is in another one of my Top 10 Japanese Films, "Fish Story," which also has Mr. Cigarette. I give TDIAH and FS both a REC4.

(oops, I tried to edit this comment but ended up deleting instead -- here goes again).

With so many idols doing BL's and succeeding to get praise for them, I don't get why any idol would refuse to do a gay kiss. Do you think maybe it's a case where BL's truly do help the idol's career, but the idols and their agents are still stuck in the mindset of a decade ago? Is it a case where they have simply not kept with the times and thus don't realize that BL's can actually help their careers?

You asked how the country folks would view gay men, and I thought of an interview with the director of "God's Own Country," who is from the same rural Yorkshire moors where that movie was set. He said urbanites assumed there'd be homophobia when, no, the country people are actually rather protective of each other. It's outsiders they fear. Indeed, while nobody in that film had a problem with the local guy being gay, there were those xenophobic bartenders who definitely had a problem with his boyfriend's being Romanian.

OK, not a sponge bath, but a Hira-Kiyoi water fight. I prefer a water fight because it's not as cliched as the constant sponge baths in BL's, while also more common in reality than 2 dudes sponging each other down.

The cops discovered that Makoto was the murderer after they had stopped him from killing himself, and read the confession that he'd made in his suicide note. Makoto's suicide note explained that he was raging with jealousy at Kazuki because his favorite sexual partner had told him that he was having sex with Kazuki.

Thus, in a moment of jealous rage, Makoto attempted to strangle Kazuki with a piece of rope . Given Kazuki's expressed death wish throughout the movie, this is the moment for which he'd been waiting and, therefore, he welcomed Makoto's act. In fact, when Kazuki realized that Makoto was too weak, and not up to the task of murder, he grabbed Makoto's hands and used them as an instrument to choke himself. Makoto was powerless to stop him -- thus making him a sort of marionette whose strings Kazuki had pulled to kill himself.

Makoto's humiliation had led to his own existential crisis and subsequent failed suicide. This made sense to the cops. However, they were puzzled as to why it was Ariyoshi Jun, not Makoto, whom they found choking Kazuki's corpse. Therein lay the crux of the murder mystery.

It was a mystery because they did not understand Ariyoshi's motive. You see, Ariyoshi was not strangling Kazuki's corpse out of hate. Rather, Ariyoshi loved Kazuki and, as such, he wished that Kazuki had chosen him to be the instrument of his death rather than the weak Makoto. Ariyoshi was so upset that Kazuki had let someone else perform his death, that he strangled his corpse. This is how the prison guards found the scene of the crime and why, furthermore, they had initially suspected Ariyoshi of the murder.

See my comment under the spoiler tag if you were confused by the ending, and still uncertain of the murderer's identity.

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"Blue Spring" is regarded as a minor classic in Japan, and for 3 good reasons. First, the director maintains a swift pace and holds your interest despite the absence of one overarching plot (instead, the plot's fueled by a number of different acts of alienation portrayed by an ensemble cast). Second, it features then unknown teenage actors who went on to have extremely successful careers -- eg, Matsuda Ryuhei, Arai Hirofumi and Nagayama Eita. Third, it is set in the late-90's, right when Japan's economic bubble had burst and the nation was reeling with unemployment, bankruptcy, crime and the inevitability of angry, futureless teens forming gangs.

It's this third element more than anything else that accounts for the movie's fame, because this era looms so large in the Japanese psyche that they even refer to it as "The Lost Decade." And it was the teenagers of "The Lost Decade" who felt the brunt of economic despair the most because they were at what should've been the start of careers but were, instead, at the start of a road to nowhere. The movie conveys this hopelessness with excellent dialogue, such as the following exchange between a teen, and a teacher wherein the teen compares himself to a flower:

-- "Teacher, aren’t there some flowers that never bloom?"
-- "Flowers are meant to bloom, not to dry up. That’s what I choose to believe. It’s a very important thing.”

The blooming of flowers is a recurring metaphor, which is also expressed with an inner monologue of a boy who's just dropped out of school. He has realized that his life will never bloom and that he is, as he calls himself, a "loser."

-- "I staked my whole life on baseball. My only goal was the nationals. In this shithole of a school baseball was my only flower. I staked my life on my bat, my dreams on my pitches all to make the spirit of baseball bloom. In the midst of the roaring crowd, a glimpse of my mother's face. She's always there to love even a fool like me. Always ready to smile. I love you so much for that. Even if my body was broken and all my tears and sweat dried up, my dream remained the nationals. No regret for my youth. Loser."

What's especially marvelous about "Blue Spring" is how the theme of teenage alienation is conveyed just as powerfully with a punk rock soundtrack as it is with such dialogue. That is to say, it's the nature of punk rock to speak of the same raw, angry nihilism of futureless youths. And the song "Drop" from the uber cool J-punk band "Thee Michelle Gun Elephant" is pitch perfect for the final plot point.

Music, acting, setting, characters, and theme all converge seamlessly to create a movie that's just as compelling for contemporary audiences as it was to those actually experiencing "The Lost Decade" back then. You see, the movie succeeds as more than a cultural commentary about a specific era, and it does so by evoking a timeless, universal theme -- which is, of course, the timeless, universal theme of teenage alienation.

You are welcome. Because the hysteria over spoiler tags on MDL is one of my pet peeves. The misconception of what constitutes a spoiler is so bad that I have even seen them demand a tag when a person said that a romantic comedy had a "happy ending." It's a freaking romantic comedy, so OF COURSE there's going to be a happy ending. It's the very definition of the genre.

What do you mean by sm?

As usual, we agree 100%. I really enjoyed the first eps because the sexual tension was palpable. I know a lot of people disliked Yoo Jae because he was angry and jealous, but it was precisely the smoldering anger and jealousy that made his unspoken attraction to Han Joon so hot. And I freaking loved how Han Joon said to Yoo Jae, "You are all I ever think about." That's exactly how it is when you fall in love -- ie, you think about the person 24/7.

So, ok, it was moving along nicely for me for 6 episodes. I even liked it despite the terrible editing and all those quick cuts from scene to scene that made no sense. I let that go based on the heat between the leads. In fact, I had assumed that the fake kiss at the end of ep 6 was just one more case of bad editing and that the kiss would continue in ep 7. I had assumed there'd be a real kiss regardless of that actor being an idol because, as I said in my comment below, tons of idols have done real kisses in BL's and it actually helped their careers.

So I honestly do not understand the situation with idols and BL's. On the one hand, we see BL's helping an idol's career, while at the same time we see certain idols exhibiting a homophobic resistance to gay kissing on screen. In short, I get contradictory messages about this whole situation and cannot figure out what the real deal is.

Well, whatever the deal is in Korea in general, one thing is for sure: Star Struck did NOT help this particular idol's acting career.

I checked his filmography and it's largely support roles and guest appearances, with only 3 leading roles other than this. So I do think the guy is still trying to establish himself as an actor. But he sure as hell hasn't won any fans with this show.

As for his defending his appearance in a BL, why? I'm not being sarcastic, because I'm truly confused about this. After all, tons of idols in Japan and Korea are appearing in them and it's helping their careers. The kid who played Kiyoi in MBM did so well with that BL that he even got a role in the famous director Miike's newest Crow's Zero movie. I mean, there's a reason idols keep popping up in BL's, right? It's cuz it helps them if they do it right.

You are 100% correct. If you did not see the movie then it was impossible for you to have given a spoiler. Indeed, it is impossible for anyone to give spoilers for this particular movie because it has not even been released yet. Hence, the most a person can do is make "guesses" about the plot. And no, "guesses" do not constitute true spoilers. Moreover, the average review by a professional critic in a magazine gives a plot summary. That is also not a spoiler. Whenever people demand that I include a spoiler tag for things that are not true spoilers, I simply ignore them. It's best not to encourage their misconception of the term.