First of all, love the idea. 2nd of all - you have great taste!
I absolutely Love Epik High's Sleepless In __________ so now I'm doubly interested in in watching Prison Playbook. Out of the ones listed I've seen While You Were Sleeping, Chicago Typewriter, Just Between Lovers, The Smile Has Left Your Eyes & Scarlet Heart Ryeo ; & I agree mostly with the albums you've picked out for them. Coincidentally the first time I heard that Japanese House's album it reminded me of WYWS too. Same case with JBL - The Rad Museum albums reminds me of that drama too. I absolutely love those two albums so I won't wax lyrical about it & save the sonnet :p
IU's modern times - while the songs fit well, it's overall more peppy than the drama was. It suits the jazzy past life, but I can't say it covers all the nuances of CT. Like it misses the craziness of the FL in modern life, the sacrifice & looming feeling. But overall a 75% match I'd say.
Moon Moon is such an under appreciated artist, I quite like that album of his - so I might give My Ahjussi a try little by little.
Jung Seung Hwan's new album with its songs titles, music & vibes is very apropos for ML:SHR, I like the album even more with the visual memory accompaniment you've given us. ____________________________________ A very well thought out & Well written article, you got your point across & I don't think your bias showed much. Keep up the good work. It's a lovely & unconventional approach, & my music loving self is over the moon that someone had a similar idea to mine & that I'm not crazy for being that X album is encapsulates that drama's spirit. Hats off & 3 cheers for you!
Lee Yoo Bi - Her roles in Scholar Who Walks the Night & APAD, plus her chemistry with all her costars makes me believe she'll be the best choice. I can't imagine Jung So Min with Seo Kang Joon, but she'd be a good fit for the FL's character too.
Hey duck, New to this side of dramaland here. Could you please tell me which drama the 'iconic wall kiss' is from? Also it'd have been nice if you had mentioned the dramas whose pictures you featured.
Dr Ye was totally not supposed to be the end game. The writers character assassinated Minho. While I was happy to see the FL end up with either, Minho was done dirty.
Some of my favourite kdramas have the best villains. What you said about non complex villains, reminds me of While You Were Sleeping. In that the lawyer guy is shown to be bad from the get go, but here you have all the people from the prosecution office that liked him, & they're not greedy bureaucrats, but have their own moral compass & are hard workers. I needed a reason why they liked him, & why the FL had liked him. I wanted more depth out of him.
Welcome to the club :) and Asian guys are NOT girly their beauty standars are just different/unique also known…
Lol you realise that you just generalised the biggest continent on planet earth? Asia is more than a few East Asian countries. & while most of them have similar beauty standards, the lean, clean, boyish look isn't the standard everywhere.
A very well written article. If I wasn’t already watching this I’d be super tempted to. While I agree with everything you said, I find the storyline a bit messy. It definitely skips over some explanations & little events & conversations. From a layman watcher’s eye I’d credit that to editing & direction. It would have really benefitted with having 2 or 4 more episodes. The ost is very nice , but I find it’s usage a bit too much for my liking. At parts where instrumental music would have served better we were bombarded with my everything in the background. Ep 6 was the most disappointing so far. I wish they had made use of silence & more breathy sounds...that would have gone so well with the theme.
I know it’s easy to get confused between the many people introduced in Cdramas, but I can’t help but think that you haven’t paid much attention to cultural context & what’s being said & done at all.
Biloutian is referred to as the thing which a person has will have the world. That means not a person. Secondly they keep talking about the map to Biloutian = A Place or object. Er is a term of endearment . When there’s no magic, it’s historical. If there are terms like Qi, cultivation, spells blah blah blah then it’s Wuxia. Even historicals can have the unbelievable jumping scenes, but they don’t have enchantments,curses, past life.
Many times I understand Chinese idioms, I don’t have much problem with them. The song you put in, I understand half of it & the rest I think is either mistranslated in part or I’m missing some context.
The blood coughing is annoying & you’ll just have to get over it. Yes it doesn’t make sense why the guy gets hit on his head but coughs blood. They do that to show they’re hurt. I’ve said this before,but Cdramas love blood coughing so much they’d even have it in modern dramas if they could.
Fantastic article. I noticed the slanted angles etc many times but didn't know there was a term for it. Other visual cues I've seen, phone falling, plates breaking - shows how shocked the character is. There is the foggy mirror reflection or murky rainwater reflection shot - Shows how unsure or unclear the character is about themself. Then there are the overexposed, under glaring lights shots - they show how much a character can't see, how they were/are blinded.
Many times the fashion (outfits) of the characters tells us a story. Like in Encounter - when they meet she's wearing red - sign of temptation , passion, danger. When they meet again at the hotel - she's in gray : cool, detached. Similarly when kdramas want to show that a FL's life is a mess, they give her a lot of colourful & loose-ish clothing with messy hair.
I pick up on audio cues a lot more than visual ones. Silence, scattered noises, bird chirps. They tell me of the calm before the storm.... How everything is fine or not.
I absolutely Love Epik High's Sleepless In __________ so now I'm doubly interested in in watching Prison Playbook.
Out of the ones listed I've seen While You Were Sleeping, Chicago Typewriter, Just Between Lovers, The Smile Has Left Your Eyes & Scarlet Heart Ryeo ; & I agree mostly with the albums you've picked out for them.
Coincidentally the first time I heard that Japanese House's album it reminded me of WYWS too. Same case with JBL - The Rad Museum albums reminds me of that drama too. I absolutely love those two albums so I won't wax lyrical about it & save the sonnet :p
IU's modern times - while the songs fit well, it's overall more peppy than the drama was. It suits the jazzy past life, but I can't say it covers all the nuances of CT. Like it misses the craziness of the FL in modern life, the sacrifice & looming feeling. But overall a 75% match I'd say.
Moon Moon is such an under appreciated artist, I quite like that album of his - so I might give My Ahjussi a try little by little.
Jung Seung Hwan's new album with its songs titles, music & vibes is very apropos for ML:SHR, I like the album even more with the visual memory accompaniment you've given us.
____________________________________
A very well thought out & Well written article, you got your point across & I don't think your bias showed much. Keep up the good work.
It's a lovely & unconventional approach, & my music loving self is over the moon that someone had a similar idea to mine & that I'm not crazy for being that X album is encapsulates that drama's spirit.
Hats off & 3 cheers for you!
I can't imagine Jung So Min with Seo Kang Joon, but she'd be a good fit for the FL's character too.
While I was happy to see the FL end up with either, Minho was done dirty.
Asia is more than a few East Asian countries. & while most of them have similar beauty standards, the lean, clean, boyish look isn't the standard everywhere.
While I agree with everything you said, I find the storyline a bit messy. It definitely skips over some explanations & little events & conversations. From a layman watcher’s eye I’d credit that to editing & direction.
It would have really benefitted with having 2 or 4 more episodes.
The ost is very nice , but I find it’s usage a bit too much for my liking. At parts where instrumental music would have served better we were bombarded with my everything in the background. Ep 6 was the most disappointing so far.
I wish they had made use of silence & more breathy sounds...that would have gone so well with the theme.
Biloutian is referred to as the thing which a person has will have the world. That means not a person. Secondly they keep talking about the map to Biloutian = A Place or object.
Er is a term of endearment .
When there’s no magic, it’s historical. If there are terms like Qi, cultivation, spells blah blah blah then it’s Wuxia. Even historicals can have the unbelievable jumping scenes, but they don’t have enchantments,curses, past life.
Many times I understand Chinese idioms, I don’t have much problem with them. The song you put in, I understand half of it & the rest I think is either mistranslated in part or I’m missing some context.
The blood coughing is annoying & you’ll just have to get over it. Yes it doesn’t make sense why the guy gets hit on his head but coughs blood. They do that to show they’re hurt. I’ve said this before,but Cdramas love blood coughing so much they’d even have it in modern dramas if they could.
Other visual cues I've seen, phone falling, plates breaking - shows how shocked the character is.
There is the foggy mirror reflection or murky rainwater reflection shot - Shows how unsure or unclear the character is about themself.
Then there are the overexposed, under glaring lights shots - they show how much a character can't see, how they were/are blinded.
Many times the fashion (outfits) of the characters tells us a story. Like in Encounter - when they meet she's wearing red - sign of temptation , passion, danger. When they meet again at the hotel - she's in gray : cool, detached.
Similarly when kdramas want to show that a FL's life is a mess, they give her a lot of colourful & loose-ish clothing with messy hair.
I pick up on audio cues a lot more than visual ones. Silence, scattered noises, bird chirps. They tell me of the calm before the storm.... How everything is fine or not.