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Toxic masculinity and accountability
D.P. mixes a cocktail of abuse, desperation and isolation. It's an extremely heavy subject and the production spares nothing to lighten the impact.It's dark. Not just a portrayal of a dark side of human nature, but almost every scene is shot in some degree of darkness.
There's an extreme amount of violence, blood, blunt objects, knives and guns.
Jung Hae In is a private from a dysfunctional family that finds kindred souls in the deserters that he's been charged with bringing back to the military. Koo Kyo Hwan plays the reluctant but clever senior soldier that provides the little bit of warmth and lightness to the show. Both play their roles very well. Jung Hae In, despite his youthful appearance, is far more natural as an actor in this role than his filmography would suggest. There isn't a weak performance in the show although when a lot of the dialogue is reciting a soldier's rank and name over and over again, maybe it's not the most challenging material. One performance, albeit brief, however that is scintillating is Go Pyung Po in a guest role in the first episode.
The storyline is somewhat disconnected as each of the first few episodes are self-contained around the pursuit of a particular deserter. Each deserter is a victim. The soldiers of their units are the villains. The D.P. are out to bring back the deserter to help that soldier before he irreparably harms himself. Each story has its own twist but the fact that all fit the same profile does lessen the impact as the series wears on.
Rather than generate a novel backstory for a deserter, the storyline coalesces around a single soldier over the final two episodes that builds to a climactic showdown. The downside to the buildup is that it adds this element of action to what had, up to that point, been a raw and fairly powerful view of emotional scarring. It's a context that begs for less moving parts and more quiet. Instead, it's a series of unreasonably unlikely events (cops that inconceivably don't call for backup, characters surprised that their cell phones don't work when they're deep in a cave, three characters in a car accident and it's the one without a seatbelt that walks away unscathed, etc.) that lead to the final confrontation which ends in a manner that is entirely unsurprising. The quality of the dialogue and the acting dip here too as the characters become more cliche. It absolutely dampens the impact that the show had been building. Instead of humanity, we get spectacle.
Certainly it's an ambitious concept and points should be awarded for making a show that won't make friends with anyone that looks unkindly at any criticism of the military. It gets a recommendation but D.P. should have been better.
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A welcome diversion off of the beaten path but perhaps a bit too far
“The Sound of Magic” is very much not a typical Korean drama. It’s a bit of a musical although there are times when there are long elapses of time between musical numbers. It is a scant six episodes. It can’t completely leave behind school bullying, tiger parents, useless school administrations or class divides but its heroine and her journey are neither a Cinderella story nor a rehash of other familiar rags-to-riches storylines.A note before diving into the heart of things…
The Netflix influence is obvious here and it works well in some areas and very badly in others. The production value is phenomenal. The special effects are maybe not Hollywood summer blockbuster level, but they are as good as it gets in streaming. And this is a narrative that very much fits in a smaller number of episodes rather than the typical 12-20. On the other hand, the Netflix full season drop rushes the viewing process, increases likelihood of spoilers and deflates the suspense that should be building from episode to episode. This isn’t a new issue, but it’s not dissipating as Netflix makes further inroads in the genre.
Ji Chang Wook plays Ri Eul, a mysterious figure living in an abandoned amusement park. Why the amusement seems to be unsecured and intact allowing him to live there and anyone else to wander through it is never explained and perhaps that’s because no sane explanation could be invented. Same for why the local police seem to have hardly any awareness that it exists. Regardless, the script throws attempt after attempt to make him an ambiguous character but with uneven success. Despite some gaping logical holes though, Ji Chang Wook not only imbues the character with the Top Draw Talent Charisma but nails the quiet mysteriousness and elegant physicality of Ri Eul. Among his recent work, it is several steps higher in quality than anything else.
Choi Sung Eun has a more generic character as Ah Yi, a teen abandoned by her parents, living in poverty, picked on by schoolmates and with a firehose of bad luck aimed directly at her. It’s not whether she’s got things the hardest in this show, it’s whether a similar character from the industry can match her distress. Despite not breaking any new ground, Choi Sung Eun dispatches the song and dance numbers with aplomb, manages to keep an inner core of joy & hope deep down inside the character and never lets the bigger names in the cast push her presence out of the spotlight. There’s perhaps a bit of a missed opportunity that perhaps this actor could have taken a more complex and original character much further, but possibly that’s something for future roles.
Hwang In Youp completely switches gears from his most recent work to a bookish star student and it’s a mixed bag. He can pull off the young skinny kid with glasses look, but the macho baritone delivery that pops up on a fairly regular gives it away that this is not a natural thing for him. The character heads in an awkward direction too as his Il Deung is not quite an academic rival, nor a very good bff and not convincing as a boyfriend for Ah Yi while the short runtime doesn’t allow him to generate any meaningful connection with Ri Eul either.
Ah but the supporting and guest cast is magical. Im Ki Hong is always a delight. Choi Young Joon, Kim Hye Eun, Yoo Jae Myung and Yoon Gyung Ho sparkle. The standout, however, is Ji Hye Won as a classroom instigator that checks all the boxes for enmity without the over-the-top mustache twirling melodrama typical bully act.
Given the character sketches, the narrative setup is easily apparent. Ri Eul gives Ah Yi moments of relief from her dreary life. But is he for real? Director Kim Seong Yoon does a nimble tightrope walk between musical & fantasy & more generic teen coming-of-age slash the drudgery of present day reality and the desperate yearning for escape to a more magical world. He keeps the plot moving. There is plenty of tension buildup and cliffhanger suspense throughout. As for whether he nails the landing at the end, eh, it’s not entirely clean. Things don’t clearly resolve for anyone but one minor guest character. Maybe that’s more like real life and makes it better? Maybe but if so, then it’s perhaps not the musical or fantasy show deep down that it was advertised to be. Maybe it would have been better re-genre’d as a Nancy Drew or Scooby Doo teen mystery than a Roald Dahl musical fantasy.
Still, while the destination may not be Shangri-La and “The Sound of Magic” is likely an also-ran for any year-end lists, the journey there is a treasure with no shortage of excellent acting and production and a refreshing plot. Recommended and fairly strongly.
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You sly dog! You caught me monologuing!
It's not monologuing that weighs down "Gyeonseong Creature" as much as it "dialoguing".There's some very credible attributes of this drama and it deserves some accolades. The photography is terrific. The pyrotechnics and slow-motion shots are stunning. There's a few low light scenes in the countryside that are jawdropping. The score is solid. The wardrobing, at least to this layman's level of expertise, is exquisite.
There's some solid supporting characters and actors . Jo Han Chul, in particular, is as good here as he has ever been. There's several great actors that just don't have the character depth unfortunately though. The talents of Im Ki Hong, Im Chul Soo and Ok Ja Yeon are almost completely wasted. For the villainry, Kim Su Hyun and Hyun Bong Sik and Choi Young Joon all play extremely terrible and awful monsters. But then there's a lengthy list of other wrongdoers and each time one of them absorbs any of the focus, it detracts from developing the main antagonists.
And there's plenty of bloat all around. Kim Hae Sook is listed as a lead but there's no need for the character to appear at all. Wi Ha Joon disappears for vast stretches and when he is visible, is bland and forgettable.
As for the leads, when given the opportunity to showcase their strengths, they deliver. Han So Hee and Park Seo Joon deliver in the action set pieces and exhibit all the grim resolve a viewer can handle when things get dark. Sadly, these moments aren't enough.
While the structure of the show is compelling, the ground-level narrative is twisted so badly with unnecessary side- and back-tracks, incomprehensible gaps in plausibility (the ventilation shaft that literally holds an entire squadron of soldiers is particularly laughable), interminable stretches where the highlight of the program, The Creature, is forgotten and, egad, the dialogue! The production team apparently thought nothing of stopping gunfights and melees and action to have some of the most saccharine and cliche and dull exchanges between characters. Of what had most likely been hundreds of pages of script, they needed to be reordered on a wholesale basis and almost every line rewritten. This was a concept that begged for a brief backstory up front and then a deep and long and uninterrupted dive in to a suffocating, claustrophobic, dark and forbidding place. Instead, "Gyeonseong Creature" is a tedious mess.
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Potemkin Family Villa
"There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman. Some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me. Only an entity. Something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there." -from the opening monologue of "American Psycho"While no one in "Romance in the House" is chopping unsuspecting victims to bits with an axe while jamming to Huey Lewis and the News, this drama is not hip nor square nor a shape of really any kind. It's an amalgamation of scenes and characters and workplaces and drinking scenes and backstories that not merely don't add up, but don't make any semblance of an impression at any point.
No actor and character, whether lead or supporting or guest, connects convincingly with any other. Perhaps it's a function of how stock the roles are - the driven, young, humorless corporate salarywoman, her flippant younger brother, the cute boyfriend that's both connected to power & money and with a tragic family backstory, the collection of stereotypically nosy supporting characters, the office gossipers and the former hero athlete. To his credit, Ji Jin Hee goes full tilt to bringing Mu Jin to life, but there's nothing to connect him to. Kim Jee Soo's Ae Yeon is so busy being resigned to her fate that their rekindling romance never feels credible. Meanwhile, Son Na Eun thankfully gets a role that isn't the petulant pretty girl but she overcompensates by being so grim and cranky that she comes across as an unpleasant scold. And Choi Min Ho is simply not a lead actor. He's a cute and chipper supporting gem, but he simply can't express any emotion other than wide-eyed aw shucks surprise. Even when he's acting out a scene where he's supposed to be in a rage or inconsolably sad, he looks like, on the inside, he's just jazzed about the mint chocolate chip ice cream cone with extra sprinkles on top that he'll get as soon as the director yells "CUT!"
The plot attempts to gin up tension by concealing the mystery of Mu Jin's whereabouts for years, his reason for suddenly returning and how he acquired new wealthy status during his absence. The issue is that the tone of the production makes it impossible to imagine that all the hints and speculation of possible illicit means being involved could be true. With no believable mystery of whether Mu Jin has a dark side, there's just a lot of aimless and circular meanderings until the inevitable pairings and reunifications conclude.
The result is much like Patrick Bateman's description of himself - an empty shell - only without the catchy 80's pop tunes and exquisitely crafted business cards.
Not recommended.
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So many glaring defects and yet still a likable and fun ride
A pun? Who thinks that naming a show with a pun is a good idea? The only possible answer to that is someone that knows that their title sequence is so painfully bad that papering it over with a ridiculous pun will distract from the ineptitude of the opening credits.The bad things just keep rolling though:
The supporting cast has some highlights but also some of the worst performances of the current calendar year.
The music, whether during the title sequence or outside of it, is sensationally poor.
There's innumerable unnecessary and sloppily choreographed fight scenes.
The twists are so unsurprising that whether they were intended to be twists or reveals has to be questioned.
There should be some buildup of tension and intrigue as pivotal conflicts approach, but instead they just seem to randomly cut from a nondescript scene to a major confrontation.
It's so frustrating to watch everything be so ineptly put together because
[DEEP BREATH]
...the scenario is fresh and it works, it really works, even with all of its deficiencies. Firstly, because Kang Mal Geum is a shining beam of unfiltered warmth and joy as Do Bae Man's aunt. Every moment she has on screen is a delight.
Second, vengeance is probably not a good real life pursuit but man is it almost always a terrific basis for fictional dramas. And this is an above-average revenge backstory.
Jo Bo Ah and Kim Young Min are both well-suited for their characters, Actually, with more developed and complex characters, both could have been stellar here. Points for the casting director getting these two on board.
But mostly, while the lead cast is fairly strong, this is a show centered on Ahn Bo Hyun and he delivers. Granted, it seemed that the first few episodes were rough. With the show switching from serious to comic on a frequent basis, there's a serious case of actor not knowing what to do with his character. After not too long though, Ahn Bo Hyun settles things down with more gravitas and only enough wry sarcasm to give Do Bae Man an extra dimension. That Ahn Bo Hyun is one of the most physically imposing actors in the industry aids in giving the military prosecutor an ominous presence, but it's balanced by a kind and empathic air.
Will this lead to award nominations for Ahn Bo Hyun? If it does, that would be more than mildly shocking. But it absolutely should convince other productions that he's more than viable lead actor for future productions (which hopefully will have better pieces around him).
Not strongly recommended but still qualifies as a recommended watch.
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An exceptional work of craftsmanship from script to casting to direction to acting
“Those who do cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” - Harvard philosophy professor George SantayanaSometimes we hear these phrases, like the one above and others, and they sound wise at first glance so we accept them as wholly and universally true. But if there is a whole and universal truth, it is much more likely that there are no whole and universal truths (except for, paradoxically, this one). “Our Beloved Summer” is a show about repeating the past - Woong and Yeon Soo having different values and backgrounds but loving each other despite them. In their past, the differences overcame them and they could not stay together.
Ironically, it was impossible for Woong and Yeon Soo not to remember their past as it was filmed in a documentary which remained popular into their adulthood. Can their familiarity with the past help them not to repeat it? That’s not really the issue though, whether for them or anyone else. Knowing the past but not recognizing how to change the present and future is useless.
The show isn’t built around the soundtrack like an idol drama, nor does it feature innovative or elaborate production design or wardrobe. But the crew for these elements were terrific. V’s “Christmas Tree” was one of many outstanding songs featured. The wardrobe for Woong in particular was stellar. And the locations where this show was shot were tops.
Woong is almost a polar opposite, on the exterior, of a typical male lead. Outwardly, he’s lazy and a coward. In the hands of a less talented actor than Choi Woo Shik, Woong could have been a disaster of a character and sunk the show. But this performance is mesmerizing and further solidifies Choi Woo Shik’s status as one of the most talented actors of any age and hailing from anywhere. That Woong is talented as an artist is made clear from early on but it is his inner emotional strength, that he will shrug off his own troubles and stand beside and lift up someone else who is suffering is where Woong really shines as a character.
If there’s a trope that “Our Beloved Summer” fails to avoid, it’s that if the two main characters had simply communicated openly and honestly with each other, they could have avoided many of their troubles. Well, hard to avoid here since the foundation of the story is that they’re separated after a five year relationship. But the show misses when it spends almost its entire first half focusing on the narrative primarily from Woong’s perspective. Yeon Soo’s inner thoughts are only momentarily illuminated until after the midpoint. The result is that she’s portrayed as an unapologetic bad guy between the two and Woong is the innocent victim. While the reality is that she did break things off, there’s much more nuance to Yeon Soo but it’s not revealed for a long stretch.
Once “Our Beloved Summer” delves further into Yeon Soo’s character, however, she comes alive as a layered character, tragically unselfaware while driven and loyal and smart. As the show proceeds, particularly in the final few episodes, Kim Da Mi’s portrayal gets better and better. She deftly alternates between lighter humorous scenes and raw emotional displays. There are probably examples of a finer pair of performances by both male and female leads in a production, but none spring to mind immediately.
The two secondary leads, unfortunately, do not leave the same impression. Kim Sung Chul and Roh Jeong Nui are both fine actors and perform admirably. The characters they play, however, are lackluster. Kim Sung Chul’s Ji Woong is an emotionally stunted friend of the main characters that is effective only briefly as a prop to move the arc forward between Woong and Yeon Soo. His own storyline is far and away the least compelling portion of the production. Meanwhile, Roh Jeong Nui’s NJ is an atypical idol with a crush on Woong. She has a brief but unnecessary subplot of her own that primarily just whets a viewer’s appetite for a return to focusing on any other part of the show.
An additional note is that “Our Beloved Summer” has one of the finest supporting cast ensembles of any show. If there is an easy layup in drama casting, it is to always, whenever possible, include Park Jin Joo as the female lead’s quirky bff. She’s as marvelous as ever here. But there’s standout performances as well from Ahn Dong Goo as Woong’s manager, Seo Jung Yeon and Park Won Sang as Woong’s parents, Jo Bok Rae as a senior television producer, Jung Kang Hee as a neighborhood hardware store owner and the sublime Kwak Dong Yeon makes several guest appearances as a fellow/rival artist to Woong.
Kim Yoon Jin nails how to handle the key emotional scenes. He lets the actors take over. The soundtrack takes a pause. There’s no moving cameras. The best example is the scene at the end of episode 11 where Yeon Soo struggles to find the words she wants to say to Woong. Technically, it is as simply presented a scene as a viewer will find. But it is an emotional powerhouse of a scene. Narratively, the show only strengthens as it nears its end. It continues to deliver humor, warmth and tenderness until its final moments.
If “Our Beloved Summer” were to be summed up in a single word, it would be warmth. We can all use more of that and so it is most highly recommended.
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Could have chosen the path less traveled
"Imitation", to its credit, has some intriguing pieces which push it towards being an entertaining vehicle for a good portion of its run. Unfortunately, after starting to fit nicely together, things break apart again and it never recovers.The cast is a bit uneven. Park Ji Yeon and Kim Min Seo are the highlights, but Danny Ahn and Im Na Young pull their weight too. Lee Jun Young has a promising comedic touch as Kwon Ryok but the character spends almost the entire show either cranky or depressed so those lighter moments are easily forgotten. Jeong Ji So ends up as the centerpiece of the show and, unfortunately, this is not the best fit for her. She's very nice and she's capable, but she tends to repeat a limited repertoire of notes. The HMU team didn't help her either.
As far as stories go, the underdog story of Ma Ha moves a bit too quickly early on and the redemption story that picks up after it only starts to gain momentum and make sense at the very end. Although it closes strong, there's a good stretch of the show that can only be charitably described as filler material.
The whole production was built around two primary columns, Ma Ha and Kwon Ryok. That's what the industry tends to do and the team here got stuck following the typical structure. The result is that there's two characters that are asked to carry far too much of the narrative and several dozen side characters that have painfully little space to contribute. Had the show been structured as more of an ensemble with six to ten characters all sharing time more equally, this could have been a compelling gem. As made here though, it's just a few moments of charm that's not worth sifting through the long intervals of unremarkable storytelling.
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Needs a prescription for revision
One of the interesting queries that pops up when watching “Ghost Doctor” is, if this production team would be in charge of putting together a K pop group, would they select a host of actors to try their hand at being musical entertainers? It’s because three of the leading cast members were idols prior to becoming actors. One of the supporting cast is the brother of an idol (and that idol also makes a guest appearance) and another became well-known for appearing in music videos. How does littering a medical drama/buddy comedy with idol cast members turn out? It’s an uneven affair but to their credit, much of that can be attributed to other causes.“Ghost Doctor” primarily follows Rain’s Cha Young Min, an ace cardiothoracic surgeon who ends up wandering the hospital as a ghost after he ends up in a persistent coma. He discovers a connection with Kim Bum’s Ko Seung Tak, a new resident and member of the hospital’s ownership family. There’s also Uee’s Jang Se Jin who is a neurologist and Young Min’s ex and daughter of a conglomerate chairman that had spent the past several years in the US. Her half brother (Lee Tae Sung’s Min Ho) is scheming to take over the conglomerate and Tae In Ho’s hospital administrator gets involved.
Once Young Min is stuck as a ghost, he’s encumbered with certain rules about how far he can go, but he can go farther if he is possessing a person, and how to change clothes and open doors and eat and drink, etc. These rules make very little sense, but it’s a ghost story and it’s necessary for the narrative so, uh, whatever. But as he can interact with Seung Tak, much of the first half of the run is laboriously spent on getting Young Min and Seung Tak into some sort of working arrangement. The only respite from this glacial pace is a lot of open heart surgeries that viewers with weaker stomachs may want to skip through. And there’s a few other ghosts floating in and out but they have little connection to what’s happening through at least the first half.
After Young Min and Seung Tak finally work out their cooperation, the story lurches forward with Young Min hoping to regain consciousness, reestablish a relationship with Se Jin and foil the nefarious plans of the baddies. Along the way, it’s one odd couple after another with the previously mentioned up and down results.
Rain is clearly a performer that is a natural on stage. Everything is big - the gestures, the expressions, the volume, the attitudes and the moods. The moments when he is at ease are spare. The effect is that Rain comes across as someone playing multiple characters - arrogant Young Min, lovesick Young Min, passionate doctor Young Min and so forth. But the different character/moods don’t integrate together into a single character.
Meanwhile, Kim Bum’s Seung Tak is an aloof but affable and easy-going loafer that has bursts of insight and empathy. It’s clearly meant to be a balance against Young Min’s extremes but Kim Bum’s portrayal is, at best, odd and awkward. He rarely seems to have a comfort level with what type of character Seung Tak should be and it’s compounded by times where Kim Bum is really Young Min in possession of Seung Tak’s body. It’s a role that either is beyond this actor’s talents or that needed markedly better direction.
As a duo, the two together don’t mesh well. One is a roulette wheel of extreme personalities and the other’s real personality is the true apparition on the show.
Fortunately, as the primary arc accelerates, the rest of the cast and the subplots can get some screentime. And the more the focus shifts on to others, the better. Sung Dong Il is terrific as the patriarch of sorts among the ghost crew. Son Na Eun spends most of the first half AWOL but has some nice scenes later. And the trio of ghosts played by Yoon So Hee, Choi Seok Won and Han Seung Hyun is the highlight. Their backstories are poignant. The relationships between them are warm. And their narratives are by far the most compelling. But like with Son Na Eun, they spend a seeming eternity for their arcs to gain any traction.
Meanwhile, the villain barely appears and when he does it mostly just waiting for things to happen. The entirety of the senior medical staff are badly written comic relief and with questionable competency as doctors. Some leeway should be given to a fictional vehicle to stray from reality, but to have a hospital with only one or two surgeons that can actually operate on a patient is a gigantic stretch. Outside of the open chest cavities, the production value isn’t anything special. If there’s an OST, it’s not noticeable. Although there is a nice guest spot by Hani and the writer appears to have an outstanding knowledge of medicine (or at least enough to fool anyone but actual medical experts).
What “Ghost Doctor” really needed was someone to significantly edit the screenplay to accelerate the events of the first eight episodes and emphasize a more ensemble approach to the show. Had something like happened, this show might have been a tremendous success. But instead it’s an average show with a few nice moments and some painfully tedious filler.
Not recommended.
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Class is in session. This is Drama Dumpster Fire 101.
Director: "Good morning everyone! Welcome to our first readthrough of 'Blood Free'! We're so excited to have you here. I mean the talent we've recruited to be part of this cast is simply amazing!!! Shall we proceed?"Han Hyo Joo: "Before we start, can I ask a bit about how you'd like me to portray my character, Yoon Ja Yoo?"
D: "Robot."
HHJ: "I'm sorry, robot?"
D: "Yes, robot."
HHJ: "Can I add some vulnerability at any point? A bit of emotion? A smile?"
D: "Nope."
HHJ: "A wink?"
D: "No."
HHJ: "Anything? Anything at all?"
D: "Have I not been clear here? Hello? Robot, robot, robot."
HHJ: "You know, I've won awards and stuff. I have talent. I can keep it lowkey and just let out the human stuff at the right time and at like barely discernible levels. I'm really really that good. You're paying me a lot too so I just think maybe you might want me to, y'know, show off a little bit of the goods."
D: "God no. Robot. 100% robot."
Ju Ji Hoon: "Mr. Director, uh, I've seen her work. Han Hyo Joo is amazing! I think maybe you should let her maybe explore the human side of her character a bit."
D: "Thanks for the input, but she's a robot and let's just get your character out of the way too. Robot. Occasionally a fighting robot but a robot. No smiles. No emotion. Oh but the fighting robot has a cat and the cat is NOT a robot so we're cool, right?"
HHJ: "Sir, you're in charge so we'll do what you say but I'm just curious, wouldn't the drama be more interesting if the two main characters who are going to be on screen together for so much of the show be more entertaining if they, I'm just spitballing here, weren't robots?"
D: "Ahhhhh! I think we've found where we're not on the same page here! So just FYI, the further along we go, the less you're going to be on screen together and when things get really exciting at the very end, your character isn't really a part of all that stuff. There's gonna be other people whose characters are just annoying windbags that take over at that point. It's gonna be awesome!"
JJH: "Sorry, we're the main characters, right? Shouldn't we be in the middle of things when the important stuff happens?"
D: "Crazy talk! You're robots! You've been robots through the whole show! Episode one, robot. Episode two, robot. Etc. Etc. and then we'll just go through almost entire episodes without you two appearing hardly at all. But it's fine because nobody cares about your boring robot characters!"
Even a robot wouldn't recommend this show.
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Whiplash and the art of motorcycle maintenance
A friend in graduate school at Northwestern during the late 90's and early 00's spent some of his free time working for the college radio station. On occasion, he had the opportunity to interview one of the alternative artists as they would appear in the Chicago metro area. One such artist (Neko Case) not only had performed on stage multiple times during his stint on radio but also had a mutual who regularly hosted parties and they bumped in to each other a few times in this context as well. When Ms. Case was headlining the music stage at the local summer arts festival, I expressed to my friend how much I enjoyed her music and hoped to catch her performance. Surprisingly, my friend had no such warm and fuzzy feelings towards the alt-country singer. He recounted that both as an interview subject and as a person in a personal setting, she was not at all interested in discussing music or seemingly anything else with anyone who was not a fellow musician.This anecdote may not paint Neko Case is the most positive light but her solo music remains magnificent and her vocals with Vancouver's New Pornographers are among the finest to be recorded in the last thirty years. This retelling is not so much about her and her shortcomings as a human being but as a relief upon which to discuss musicians and music in general and art and what's it, y'know music and art, all for? What's so great about it?
In "Glass Heart", Satoh Takeru's main character, Fujitani Naoki, is a genius. Viewers know this not only because viewers see him extemporaneously turn a simple melody in to a Mozart-level composition, but also because every character around him says at every opportunity that he's a genius. The first part of that is enough. The second part gets a bit tiresome. Nevertheless, Naoki is a genius and recruits fellow aces of guitar, keyboard and drums to form his new band. To the extent that "Glass Heart" succeeds, it's thanks to the perfect casting of Machida Keita as the stoic and aloof-on-the-surface guitarist and Miyazaki Yu's ferociously unhinged musical sequences on the drumkit. And the camera work and editing for said musical sequences are legitimately stunning.
But the plot is wafer-thin and meanders in-and-out of Naoki's troubles which never really create any emotional impact because Naoki himself doesn't seem to feel anything other than a compulsion to write more songs, perform once in a while and have somewhat robotic interactions with people who have either supported or antagonized him. Had any of the bandmates showed some exasperation with Naoki like any normal human being would have, it would have added some badly needed connection with how things usually operate here on Planet Earth. And Naoki is exasperating. As a positive, he's somewhat mercurially amusing as this easily distracted, stream of consciousness creator. But he's also sporting some pretty toxic and unhealthy traits that get the "it's ok because he's a genius" treatment.
Further, Saijo is a confounding character. While playing the drums, she's an absolute mastodon. When she puts the drumsticks down, she's a mouse. This character needed to be more mastodon. Much much more mastodon.
Where "Glass Heart" really falters is that it very explicitly wants to express why music is so great and important and how this musical genius' creativity is so wonderful. And it's not at all convincing.
The primary issue is that it's all entirely inward-looking. This wonderful thing that Naoki does is generally accomplished with him in some sort of trance where he's wholly unaware of his surroundings or attempts by his bandmates to communicate with him. The big transformative experience by the members of Tenblank is their realization that their performance as a band IS how they live and that their lives without their shared musical exploits are less meaningful.
Which is great.
For them. The musicians.
But music that is only meaningful for the musicians is just a series of notes and words strung together. "Glass Heart" makes some glancing attempts to involve other characters but it's the half-brother from a rival band (musician), a manager who wanted to be a singer (musician), a sinister record exec who's background is a songwriter (musician) and a messy idol-style singer (musician). None of them nor any audience member or anyone have any impact on what "Glass Heart" proclaims as its message. To be clear, it's great that the creators enjoy their process and are fulfilled in their pursuits. But to "Glass Heart" that's the end of it. Music for the musician. It's enough to be the tree in the zen proverb of the tree falling in the forest when no one is around. Hint: that's not all it's supposed to be.
For those that are interested, "Inside Llewyn Davis" is a master class on a musician discovering fulfillment in his art.
As for "Glass Heart", it's fine as an extremely long form music video but isn't much of anything else.
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Punch, chop, yawn, shoot, punch, chop...
Mindless, cartoonishly violent melee-fest movies, even those that recycle mad scientist and power hungry soldier antagonists, can be great fun. And "Badlands Hunters" has lots of ingredients for a successful martial arts brawl-a-thon.The setting, a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Check.
Comic relief sidekick? Check.
Young, innocent hope for survival? Check.
A steady stream of gangsters and baddies entering from all sides to be dispatched with a single blow or wound? Checkity, check, check.
And a Michelle Yeoh type martial arts badass female? Ahn Ji Hye crushes this.
But "Badlands Hunters" never quite puts all the pieces together for very long. Instead, it's much like the populace constantly seeking morsels of food and a bit of clean water, the fun appears sporadically and, when it does, too briefly. Part of the issue is that the first half frequently sidetracks for small laughs or plot devices that later turn out not all useful. Another part of it is that there's simply far too much invested in transitioning Roh Jeong Eui's young hope-for-humanity from a wasteland origin to the apartment building as utopia/evil mad scientist's laboratory.
The main issue, sadly, is that the big action star in the middle of it, the legendary Ma Don Seok, doesn't seem all that invested in what he's doing. Or at least not very often. The character is meant to be stoic and business-like. That's expected. But having such a character as a baseline really only works as a contrast to when they are shaken out of their typical personality and a fire inside of them is ignited, the intensity ramps up and they get super mad and go bonkers getting even. That never happens here. It's martial arts and knife fighting and shooting machine guns with all the vibrancy and fireworks of stapling insurance adjuster reports together.
Punch. Stab. Shoot. [sigh]
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A monster series with big teeth and a bit of a limp
"What makes us human?" is one of the biggest questions in any art medium and the zombie genre has made exploring this question one its most consistent themes. While "Sweet Home" is not a true zombie production, it shares enough characteristics to fall somewhere in that corner of horror entertainment. One of the common threads that pops up here is that sometimes the most evil beings are the ones that are still unaffected-on-the-outside humans. The twist, and it's a good one, is that not all the creatures that look like monsters are monsters.It's particularly poignant with Song Kang's Hyun Soo who alternates between struggling with wanting to live and a battle to retain his humanity. Although there are some exceptional human vs. monster melee's, the high points of "Sweet Home" are unquestionably the quiet exchanges between Hyun Soon and Go Min Si's Eun Yoo. The quality of Song Kang's work tends to peak and valley and this is definitely among his finest performances. It does falter and the show does in general in the final two episodes as the first primary arc pushes to a resolution while setting up the next act.
The crew has put together a mostly excellent package of special effects, sound and camera work. There's a couple of instances of less convincing cgi that detract but it's a minor distraction.
It's a fairly solid cast although only a few stand out with notable performances. Kim Gab Soo is one of them who exudes optimism balanced with knowledge of the grim reality. Lee Shi Young and Park Gyu Young both shine as strong women battling both personal emotional loss and deadly creatures.
A few holes emerge too. Although the setting is an apartment building in Seoul, there's not just a massive amount of people that never appear, but there's no attempt to explain their absence. Dozens (possibly?) of creatures appear outside the building in moments, but that still leaves millions in the city unaccounted for and scores within the building. Two mutants appear, one early and one late, that fall right on the human/monster line and seem ideal for additional attention, but don't receive it. Overall, the coherence of the narrative is uneven but the spotlight is focused enough for the most of the series. But when the plot has to expand to incorporate new introductions and beyond the group's struggle survive within the apartment building, the tension subsides and the flaws begin to protrude.
Some entries in this genre are must-watch even for viewers who aren't hardcore horror buffs. "Sweet Home" falls short of that bar, but it is an entertaining and, at times, compelling series. Whether it remains so in a follow-up season will require more disciplined storytelling as it appears multiple arcs will splinter off. And it may need more range and intensity from Song Kang than his body of work has shown he's capable of providing.
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Not the most novel storyline but enough bright spots
There's a distinct lack of tension and intrigue to this show as its primary arc of the office romance between Ro Woon and Won Jin Ah sticks to checking the usual boxes. It's not altogether unwelcome though and even has some very nicely executed moments, particularly in later episodes. Ro Woon undoubtedly is effortlessly charming and has all the other attributes to carry a show as the central character. As a bonus, his sibling chemistry with Wang Bit Na and Ha Yoon Kyung (his older sisters) is marvelous.The slow build of the pairing between Na's designer and Lee Kyu Han's chairman is a nice secondary storyline and the chairman provides some badly needed lighter moments. The most compelling secondary plot, however, is Ha Yoon Kyung's splintering marriage and this deserved far more screen time than it received.
Sadly, the show has limitations which ultimately cap its appeal as anything more than an amiable enough but not compelling production. Among them is Won Jin Ah who is a capable actor but not dynamic. The office crew around our main duo is present in many, many scenes, but they are rarely noteworthy. A strange subplot of a video channel run by a mask-wearing host appears, then disappears for almost the entire duration and then needlessly and distractingly pops up in a later show.
But the most serious flaw is the character of Lee Jae Shin and his portrayal by Lee Hyun Wook. The character is alternates from boor to bore. While it is theoretically possible to be a less sympathetic character without being an outright serial killer, it's a matter a relative degree. It's far, far beyond credible not only that three other seemingly bright and mostly morally upright characters would tolerate him and even have strong emotional attachments to him. Trying to shoehorn in a childhood broken family backstory to drum up sympathy only prolongs the discomfort. It doesn't help that Lee Hyun Wook's range is limited to sullen and petulant to sullen and irritable. The show would have been far more compelling to jettison his presence after the primary arc no longer required it.
What will stick (hopefully) is that Ro Woon should be in high demand to lead a show with a more complete package around him.
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Pigpen from the Peanuts comic strip has only one joke really
Charles Schulz created one of the most iconic comic strips of the 20th century with his warm and charming characters idly navigating school and youth baseball and adolescent crushes but layered with subversive and existential themes. Kids with absolutely no parental involvement. Bullying laughed off as kids being kids. A consistent message that practice and trying hard does not actually always garner rewards. Alienation, melancholy, anxiety, et al. It just so happens, however, that one of the oft-overlooked characters from "Peanuts" is the ideal metaphor for "Namib".Pigpen is mostly a backdrop for the main characters and rarely gets a line. Namib has been garnering ratings of under 3 percent viewership.
Pigpen has the basic construction of other Peanuts characters. Big round head with close-set eyes, a few wisps of hair, trapezoid-shaped body and oversized shoes. Namib has the diva female lead, the angtsy male teen, the awkward girl with a crush, the cold and conniving CEO, the bad boy peer and the princess in distress.
Pigpen, in the comic strip, has a single gag which is that he [dramatic pause] cleans up [TA DA!!!! Jazz hands!] but as soon as he does, he almost instantly gets covered with dirt and dust again. It's not really a great gag but as mentioned above, deep literary analysis of Peanuts is about as light and fun as a semester studying Dostoyevsky and Lermontov at a little known liberal arts college in rural Indiana (if that sounds oddly personal and specific, well, yeah it is).
And that cycle is pretty much "Namib" in a nutshell. It's a mess. Throughout. Unrelenting. Except for a couple of really great scenes.
Gyo Hyun Jung is absolutely lost as Kang Su Hyeon. The character doesn't make sense, either in the backstory or her actions through the course of the show. She seems nice and smart and intuitive on the exterior but the primary plot requires her to do things that are unconscionably cruel and dumb and hurtful and the portrayal doesn't even show a lick of internal "I know I have to do this but I feel really awful about it". Instead, Gyo Hyun Jung sleepwalks through her scenes with about as much emotional heft as if she were ordering a diet soda through a drive-thru.
Lee Seung Joon is a terrible villain. The writing for the villain isn't great. It's irredeemably dumb that he has some sob story and a parade of misunderstandings about why he's such a jerk. Just make him a jerk. Less backstory. More present day jerkiness. And with a better actor. Lee Seung Joon is about as menacing as a one of the horses on an antique carousel that doesn't even bob up and down.
And the cliches. And the poor blocking. Some weird editing. One of the weakest supporting casts of any drama. Questionable wardrobing. Even the name makes so little sense that an awkward explainer scene has to be inserted so there's at least an attempt to make it make sense but in the larger context of the show, the explanation is profoundly nonsensical. It's an almost wall-to-wall mess.
But like our good pal Pigpen, it has a couple moments where somehow, someway, it has a terrific sequence. Every once in a while, Ryeoun (our angtsy teen heartthrob whose psychological issues need SERIOUS psychiatric counseling but instead gets haphazardly used as a plot device and then immediately glossed over) sings a ballad. And there are ballads in just about every drama. And they are almost always fillers for some montage so the production can eat up a few minutes without having to stretch some flimsy dialogue even more thinly across a sixty minute runtime. It's typically a perfect opportunity to use the 10 second skip ahead button until the schmaltz stops.
Not these. Man, this young man can sing. Act? Debatable. He had moments in "Twinkling Watermelon" but he's certainly not elevating a character beyond its weak writing here. But sing? [long dramatic pause] Sweet holy infant in a Middle Eastern manger. He could probably get the most machismo-fueled, fundamentalist Christian, straight-for-life Navy SEAL to think twice about his sexuality.
And then like Pigpen resuming his dirt & dust covered wallflower existence, Ryeoun stops singing and "Namib" goes back to its messy dialogue and trite characters and other assorted forgettable wreckage.
Not recommended.
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"All of it, boiling it. I looked inside, man, and it was turning gray"
Admittedly, it's a stretch to find a connection between "Apocalypse Now", Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War opus that's a modern homage to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", and "Wedding Impossible", a rom-com-ish enemies-to-lovers chaebol-family-corporate-succession drama. But hold tight for a moment.One of the "Apocalypse Now" characters in its journey in to a deep and dangerous Viet jungle is somewhat unbalanced Louisiana native nicknamed Chef. During one of the quiet interludes on the boat, one of the handful of other soldiers asks Chef how he got the Chef nickname. And Chef responds with a story about how he was going to study at an exclusive French culinary school and instead ended up in the US Navy with the intention of being a cook. And then one day:
"They lined us up in front of a hundred yards of prime rib. All of us, you know, lined up and looking at it. Magnificent meat! Really! Beautifully marbled... magnifique! Next thing, they're throwing the meat into these big cauldrons. All of it, boiling it. I looked inside, man, and it was turning gray. I couldn't f**n' believe that one!"
Much like Chef and his hundred yards of gorgeous beef, "Wedding Impossible" has the ingredients for a bountiful feast of a drama, but renders it through an uninspired and worn and clumsily exposited narrative that ends with a production far short of its potential.
But the ingredients? [chef's kiss]
Jeon Jeong Seo certainly isn't the classic siren type. She's naturally abrasive and blunt. Her history suggests she's far more comfortable with action and tension than light comedy and romance. But it's this genuine awkwardness that makes her No Ah Jung lead so endearing.
Moon Sang Min is rock solid as Lee Ji Han. He's not just the tall pretty boy. And he's got the "I'm cool on the outside but I'm a raging inferno on the inside" acting thing DOWN.
Kim Do Wan is one of the very best second male leads. Any doubters should skim through his scenes in "My Roommate is a Gumiho" where he throws down a masterpiece performance. Casting him as the closeted gay Lee Do Han, a LGBTQ character that is a three dimensional real human who happens to be homosexual instead of a paper-thin stereotype that populates most dramas, is a perfect choice.
There's a couple noteworthy supporting actors too - Park Ah In as the scheming older half sister is very, very good and Seo Woo Jin crushes as Ah Jung's cute young nephew. Song Sang Eun and Min Jin Woong have some nice comedic relief together.
It may not be a legendary pantheon of heavyweights, but it's a very solid group of actors and characters.
And then it greats dropped in a cauldron of boiling chaebol succession blah blah blah. Press conferences. Paparazzis. Living room confrontations. USB drives of CCTV videos. Secretaries. Suits. Snore. Snooze. Sigh.
It's still great fun to see young actors get a chance to be leads and to work incredibly well together. Despite the plot weakness, the two leads are terrific together. It's a fun show to watch when it sticks to the rom-com side of things. Unfortunately, there's not enough of a story there to fill in 12 hour long episodes and everything else is trite and uninspired.
Lightly recommended.
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