Junho's baritone will shake your boots

A good watch, a romantic historical drama from 2021. Junho's baritone will shake your boots and the FL, Lee Se Young, always refuses to be a doormat (no midway sudden caving into passivity). A very very excellent script properly restrained by historical facts, which imagines real people struggling in a real world with love, responsibility and agency.

On a cautious search for oldies but goodies I found this and recommend it for 3 reasons. 1/ It makes really good use of the idol-actor Junho. 2/ It is the very best kind of pleasant sageuk -- real content, real problems, best outcomes possible within limits. 3/ A great example of 2 of the best features of asian dramas in general: the use of dramatic problematics (underlying social issues) and the humanization of villains -- especially in formulaic romantic and comic dramas.

1. Junho was brilliant in Just Between Lovers/Rain or Shine (2017), but for just a second or two I warily watched him here for King the Land signs of blandness; decided it is how the script and director use his talents that matters. As an ML who hesitates to be vulnerable Junho's stolidity works. As Crown Prince Yi San/King Jeonjo he is at his most masculine and charismatic -- that voice! The underlying problematic of the show is issues of consent, and without Junho this would skirt ugliness. With him it is a swoon a minute.

2. Sageuk is an unexportable Korean miracle due to the unique continuous history of Korea -- C-drama is similarly so. I absolutely adore the rationality/ethical concerns of Cdrama and I equally love the emotional royal family contretemps of sageuk. The soundtrack has a hopeful sweet lilt, factions at court and within the royal family are clear (no confusing three or four old ministers dressed the same with similar facial hair). True love eventually sort of wins but real social problems are not glossed over.

3. In historical or history-fantasy dramas, the dramatic use of modern problematics does not feel anachronistic; rather, it is used to deepen or heighten the surface emotional response of viewers to the basic plot. By problematics I mean underlying issues which are treated as recurring dramatic notes or nexus, not for exposition or persuasion. The issue of consent deepens our understanding of the sadness of the situation of the court ladies who are prisoners for life within the palace.

So many of the supporting characters in Red Sleeve have little perfect moments of lived life in the show, but especially the villains are treated as flawed human beings in an inhumane world. The old King, paranoid, ruthless and beloved by his grandson the ML, is developing dementia. Lee Deokhwa as the King is amazing, watch the good and the bad of his character unfold through the show.

Leia Mais

A comedy set in the entertainment industry wrapped in a domestic espionage plot

A fun binge, opening summaries and predicts are clean enough for more intermittent watching too. Tight script, excellent soundtrack, cool cinematography with a sixties spice. A comedy set in the entertainment industry wrapped in a domestic espionage story with lots of corruption. The final episode is a great classic wrap-it-all-up ending with a few twists.

There end up being 2 romances, one involving a love triangle, both engrossing. The usual weird English title points to another strength -- very solid, interesting relationships amongst the main male actors -- especially the ML, an international ghost agent, Seoul Woo (played by Park Hae Jin), with an action film star, Um Gwang (played by Park Sung Woong) and with an NIS prosecutor, Dong Hyeon (played by the wonderful Jung Man Shik).

I dont usually go for complete name listings in the interest of brevity, but I wanted to mention here that the strength of SK comedy depends on a deep deep 'backbench' of very experienced comic actors and crew who work together like a well-oiled machine.

This kind of comedy has a cringey edge like a Steve Martin film which wears away as you watch and as the characters, after the stylish opening, move towards more sincerity. The main OTP also definitely becomes more attractive over time.

What is your normal laughter range? Because this is not a slapstick comedy you will express yourself mostly in a lower register; my usual chuckle, giggle, or snort actually flowered into that weird satisfied noise SK actors make after drinking soju, and lots of continual smiling.

Poor Kim Min Jung is stuck playing a cutesy-mousey a-little-bit-stupid FL, who actually has an important job in the company but doesnt act like it. Anything Korean before 2018 (B4#metoo) is Dark Ages in my opinion, for women. In 2018 Min Jung plays a magnetic hotel owner in Mr.Sunshine, see the difference? (now/2024 she plays a sleek manager in the Hanyang inn sageuk)

But it is a comedy. Entertainment. Afterwards you will not regret watching this despite DOHa slow reaction times.

Leia Mais

Atmospheric and inconclusive. But fun. Great music and cinematography, although sometimes too dark for a laptop to display properly.

I can blithely kick back and watch Kim Go Eun and Lee Do Hyun drum, dance and chant while everything burns down around them, but that anima-spirit they fought was really disturbing. Horse blood and wood against the burning god of war. Wasnt sure it would work at all.

I think it is the strength of the back bench of korean acting talent that makes a film like this work well. Sang Deok and Young Geun, the members of the cursed family, and even the monk who we only see twice are all vital to the story and equally powerfully portrayed.

I wish that all that supernatural hullabaloo had protected Korea 'forever', or had epically pretended to flush out all the bad memories of the 20C, but the film, like reality, didnt promise that in the end. It was just business, just a job, and the team's everyday fried chicken dinnertime swallows up the horrors.

Leia Mais

simple pleasures for vacation time

Simple Taiwanese romance drama -- a noona in a workplace setting. Naturalistic, youthfully modern with progressive issues, but some seriously controlling female characters. Two out of three mothers and a manipulative girlfriend wanna-be are the kind that make one curse the screen, so you should close the door while watching so as not to disturb others in the household. T

Otherwise the formula works well and the aesthetics (dessert shop in pink, the usual upper floor flat, the found family dinners etc) are pleasant. The really cute Fan Fan Di as the ML interprets passion and desire well, and he and the FL do a good job depicting a relatively realistic relationship. Definitely messaging that patience is a virtue in producing commitment.

Not much symbolism or visual care but nothing glaring. The street scenes are pretty but perhaps that is just the wealthy neighborhood used for filming. At the big corporation the meetings are unusually pleasant to watch (nice lighting, walls are not blank, camerawork is good) and a huge oval (I think?) stairwell is used for emotional perspective -- one woman whom one wishes to punish leaves alone, another time the ML sees his mom being kind, contrary to his (and our) opinion of her. 24 eps at 1hr ea, so a large time investment, but if you are just after simple pleasures go for it.

I dont read others' reviews until I am done, precisely so that I wont do this, but a quick correction, sort of. Yes, suicide and family secrets and the usual accidents and sudden illnesses make this not as smooth a ride as I may have implied. I am a kdrama obsessive so it all seemed pretty mild to me. It may be too strong for you, watch with caution if you have no idea what I am talking about..

Leia Mais

Style, emotion and amazing stunt choreography

An amazing binge for martial arts lovers. Always in my top ten or twenty best ever thriller/action dramas and good for a rewatch any time. Ji Chang Wook's excellent interpretation of a damaged ex-mercenary with PTSD and a murdered lover in his past, who falls for an emotionally disturbed woman imprisoned by her abusive political family, is classic international noir stuff. It is Korea, so this ML instinctively protects the elderly and seeks emotional refuge with them when wounded. He can break tempered glass with just a chisel and his work boots.

The K2 has the intense emotions and atmospherics and great editing of most k-drama thrillers. The usual brilliant kdrama humanization of villains is complete genius in this show.As always, great supporting characters with enough comic strengths to divert the intensity momentarily. It is a romance, too, but given the genre one expects some twisted perspective and it arrives with a vengeance.

On my third watch I realized how much I utterly love the villains of the piece, almost more than the sweet leads. Their ever-evolving plots involve the explosion and recreation of changing alliances like the huge schools of fish who revolve, collide and coalesce endlessly in the sea.

One of the all time worst (or do I mean best) product placement involves the lovers eating at Subways in a dream sequence within the ML's coma. There is also a marginally more tasteful and very funny naked male group battle scene in the corporate showers.

Mainly the K2 is a piece of masterful stunt artwork played out to 'Dies Irae' while black-suited corporate 'security guards' ballet about with 'body guards' from the opposing faction of an extremely corrupt Presidential election campaign. Ex army members are in cahoots with corrupt ex administration officials.

Watching JCW attack from an aerial 45 degree angle is priceless fun and for me, it doesnt ever get stale. So I call this a show perfect in itself. 2018, 16 eps of std. length. A sophisticated and classy production from Studio Dragon with the composer Kim Se Jin. Writer -- Jang Hyuk Rin.

On my top ten best ever kdramas list as of 12/24: Goblin, Hwayugi, Because This Is My First Life, Just between Lovers; the K2, Run On, Doom at Your Service; Tomorrow, Alchemy of Souls (earliest to latest) and Mr. Plankton .

ps. I salute the heroic efforts of women in kdrama and film industry to obtain more varied roles in order to develop themselves as artists, to seek better funding for those roles and more directorial support -- all in an atmosphere where part of the audience seems to need to see a lot of damaged or infantile FLs, and where creators therefore indulge them with female characters who are more symbolic than real, embodying the 'soul' psychic energy of the plot.

simultaneously posted on viki

Leia Mais

Unique, edgy and brilliant

One of my top ten favourite kdramas from the past few years. Unforgettably sad, unforgettably funny. Also, an excellent introduction to the pressures of life in Korea, some of which are universal but some of which are unique to the history and sociological culture of the peninsula.

A fusion fantasy/scifi/healing drama about an understaffed, experimental and not very gentle team of Grim Reapers tasked with easing the pressure that Korea's high suicide rate is putting on an overcrowded Hell. A Korean Hell just for Koreans, by the way -- one of my favourite scenes has the head of the Grim Reaper Escort Team, Park Joong Gil (played by Lee Soo Hyuk), rescuing a group of Korean souls during WWII who were being stolen off to a Japanese Hell by a pair of Japanese Reapers!

Euphemistically named the Risk Management Team of the Jumadeung Corporation, the Team Manager is a parolee from Hell, Koo Ryeon (played by Kim Hee Sun), who has a tough love approach to her work. For example scaring silly a van full of would-be suicides using online instructions, by driving the wrong way through traffic until they beg to be allowed to live. When this fails she uses her supernatural powers.

Her only employee is Lim Ryung Gu (played by Yun Ji On) who refuses to work more than his 8 hr shift (so rebellious in SK context!). The Jade Emperor(ess), the CEO of the squeakily antiseptic white-walled corporate Jumadeung skyscraper, decides to add a recently comatose soul wandering freely as a temporary worker to the team. Choi Jun Woong (played by Kim Seok Woo a.k.a. Rowoon) had just begged the heavens to give him an employee ID card by any means, when he fell off a Han River bridge trying to stop a suicide jumper.

The Team is alerted to each case by a 'negative energy' alert monitor app and they use a variety of scifi methods to investigate each one: entering the subject's dreams or their memories (with very Matrix-like FX), observations of their work environments along with persuasion on a personal level.

Jun Woong slowly transforms Koo Ryeon's approach to suicide prevention as he matures from a bumbling and irrepressible newbie into a hugely compassionate and effective intervention agent. The absolute and pure warmth of Rowoon's performance elevates what would have been a grittily comic Reaper story into something only Korea could have produced, a full length (16 eps at 1hr ea.) clear-eyed depiction of the cascade of forces which drive a person to fear tomorrow more than death.

I stopped at over two dozen listing all of the misfortunes woven into the stories of the dozen or so individual cases the Team handles, Each crisis is developed in original ways, often with an interesting point of view.

One woman feels so guilty over not believing the stories of the suffering of the Korean 'comfort women' enslaved into prostitution by the Japanese Army of WWII because her best friend was taken by them, that she contemplates taking her life. The Team asks her to meet with another sufferer who wanted to see someone who had known their mutual friend before she passed away, and so their pain is sweetly dissolved through tears.

The IMF crisis which deprived so many families of their livelihoods is seen through the eyes of a little child who only remembers a miraculous birthday, and the fried chicken event staged by the team helps to save him as an adult struggling with exam failure. The threads connecting the past with the present have seldom been so delicately indicated,

The show balances the unchanged penalty for suicide in the afterworld as a crime with deeply moving episodes portraying individual suffering which elicit compassion from the viewer. The joy of Tomorrow is two-fold; to watch Koo Ryeon stomping the bejeezus out of all the cruel and thoughtless people who torment others to make themselves feel better is exhilarating, and to see Rowoon's unique ability to project sincere love, care and compassion as the one true message of this beautiful show.

A StudioN/MBC show, with the composers Jo Seung Woo and Won Ho Kyung. Writers -- Park Ran, Park Ja Kyung and Kim Yu Jin.

On my top ten best ever kdramas list as of 12/24: Goblin, Hwayugi, Because This Is My First Life, Just between Lovers; the K2, Run On, Doom at Your Service; Tomorrow, Alchemy of Souls (earliest to latest) and Mr. Plankton .

The creators of the show, the writers and the directors deserve enormous credit. Hoping to see more of their work.

Leia Mais

Underground resistance fighters battle the occupiers, moral ambiguity and romance complicate things

A good watch, 2hrs and 20mins, a spy thriller from 2015, very successful at the box office in SK. Good costumes and sets, very cool acting.

Do not watch on a whim late at night as I did, only to realize 15 minutes in that I had completely lost track of events. The first scenes are set in 1911, in the 6th year of the 40-year long Japanese Occupation of Korea, and the main assassination plot takes place in 1933 in the 28th year of the Occupation. If you prefer to prepare with a complete spoiler the Wikipedia article on the show itself is very clear. I dont do spoilers but I offer two pointers, one to plot and one to perspective.

1. The premise is set up clearly in the first few scenes but do not be kdrama lazy and assume all will be made clear, this is a spy thriller and you have to keep on your toes. Pay attention to Yem and to Kang later on, respectively the resistance fighter captured after the weird attack on the rich collaborator, which results in the killing of Kang's wife, and the loss of one of his twin baby girls (spirited away by a chinese midwife).

2. Try this rough imagination hack to understand the twisted lines of loyalty and love in 1933 Korea. So, if Germany, France and the British Isles correspond to Japan, Korea and China imagine:

-Germany had successfully invaded France in 1940 and set up a puppet govt which was only ousted after a gigantic international war in 1975-1980 (cruelty, torture, massacres, the suppression of the French language in schools and all civil institutions).

-Meanwhile Germany used France as a base to wage a protracted war from 1968 to 1980 against a distracted UK riven by an internal civil war (coastal British cities sacked and occupied, war crimes galore).

-An assassination plot targeting a 1968 wedding in Paris of a German general's son to a rich Frenchman's daughter falls into chaos like Casablanca on steroids due to the usual divided alliances and survival needs of the people involved and the way romance and family have a tendency to transcend allegiances. Love espionage, nothing like it.

simultaneously posted on viki

Leia Mais

Espionage done right, a balance of style, grit and gore.

Wonderful show. Espionage done right, a balance of style, grit and gore. Murky office politics, alliances that break and are reformed and just enough of the lone wolf, Nam Koong Min, stubbornly struggling to understand himself and to find the perfect mole. Very nice plays on the genre. Lots of fights. I like them but you may not. My favorite things: 3 fully characterized female colleagues sharing the screen time, none of them all good or all bad. NM, as a stoic muscular handsome beast, both puzzled and pugnacious.
My warning, requires as much intellectual fortitude as much shorter novels or movies but for 12 hours. You Must Take Breaks, or you risk breaking your mind. Eps 13-14 are a prequel set in the 20teens.

Leia Mais

imaginary history but still tugs at yr heartstrings

I cried tears of happiness at the ending -- one through-line from pansori to kdrama! The drums, some poetry, flashbacks, magical events, a family reunites and right on cue, we weep!

A great watch, imaginary history of course with a nice back-and-forth between the "invention" of the second great pansori tale, the Simcheongga, which involves a dragon-king under the sea and a noble self-sacrificing maiden with a blind father, and the plot of this movie, involving a blind daughter, a mother kidnapped to be used as slave labor and a poet-singer father. Not to mention a gosu drummer, a very shabby monk, an aristocrat in disguise as a drunk and many good pansori village audiences. Eolsigu! (yippee!) Jalhanda! (well done!)

simultaneously posted on viki

Leia Mais

famous cult show, Hong sisters' 5th

Recommended for sheer joy. 2009, 16 eps at 1hr ea. The Hong sisters 5th show, not a big hit on local tv, blew up in popularity on contemporaneous Japanese tv and thereafter online. It is has been a cult show for years. Smooth as silk kdrama, laughter and tears regularly provided. Essentially a teen love story about a teen band, mostly situated in their "dorm", an utter pop 60's fantasy piece of architecture, but all organic curves (what is this building??).

First hook-- a separated-twin story and a twin-masquerade story (in the West, 12th Night and The Menaechmi likewise floated to the frothy top of their respective cultural scenes).)

The opening scenes have a mediterranean feel, is it the "technicoloring", the nun costumes , the naked marble statues or the scooter jokes? Thereafter the show is about the emotional interactions of a small cast. So deceptively simple.

Second hook -- missing parents and other relatives provide the nec. structural mystery, and they and the antagonists swoop in and out of the 2 main sets as if they are making stage entrances.

In an HS script, look for what the HS do better, those places where their absolute bravura breaks through; not essentially in original plots or characters , but in how well they do them.

1. In this production, the use of what is essentially a chorus in ancient classical comedy/tragedy is wonderful. The fangirls who camp outside the company (afterschool?) wail and beat their breasts astoundingly and comment upon the action in silly ways. In the countryside visit the three old women are incredible, not only does their performance have perfect comic rhythm, but HS weaves in references to trot singers and specialized tv shows where the other half of Korea gets its impressions of entertainment. A quick meta to the history of music in SK, in an idol drama!!!

2. The recognition-of-the-lovers section comes a little later than expected, but when it does the carefully built-up system of metaphors and puns explodes as the characters deploy them in the service of conversations practically in code. The light of the "star" (and awfully, the moon as reflector of it/the sun) versus the light of the sun which blots out the recognition of others, darkness and light, hiding and paying attention, seeing and not seeing, showing and not showing. The ML has night-blindness, oh yes he does. The pleasure of the final tensions being resolved in poetic language is so intensely the HS' territory.

it is not useful to trace influence in a hectic renaissance time like this one where dramas run only for 2 months, performers and writers work for cheap for companies which have state monies to spend, and where many of the behind the scenes creatives have one of the excellent university degrees in theatre and film available in SK. The consequence of the hurly-burly is that any successful show is instantly imitated piecemeal by competitors looking for that secret sauce. Only those on the scene have any memories of what went into that creative process.

You're Beautiful is a show on par with Hwayugi in characters who are almost instantly recognizable after just the 1st episode. I loved Lee Hong Ki there as the unforgettable PK (and Lee se Young as his zombie friend Richie!) and I love him here as Jeremy, a character who reflects a prototype love-is-love theme. Jang Geun Suk rises from the ashes of HGD as a Heathcliff-ian ML. Yonghwa of the band cnblue is the 2ml in semi-love triangle!

Park Shin Hye is one of those heroic kdrama actresses who started working at the age of 13 and is still going strong 33 dramas later. Although her trippy little dove-of-christ characterization made my teeth grind, I can believe that that sort of naivete existed somewhere before my own era--nowadays most nuns and novitiates after Vatican II are amazingly truehearted, practical and energetic persons. And of course, PSH's performance is a perfect, absolutely perfect, foil to the comedy (the term 'straight man' in reference to comic pairs is now unusable or I would use it).

Here is a question, are the Hong sisters basically insanely lucky in casting and directors so that their intelligent, flippant and tightly constructed scripts are thus given that HS stratospheric oomph?

first posted aug 12th, 2024 on Viki

Leia Mais

Gong Yoo shines brilliantly in the dark

A melodramatic thriller centred on 2 leads and the collision of the utter snakepits each of their lives have become individually. Psychologically claustrophobic plot. Gong Yoo (as Han Jeong Won) and Seo Hyun Jin (as Noh In Ji) work brilliantly together as 2 anti-heroes who yearn for happiness but are trapped not just by manipulative and abusive friends and family, but by their own numbed and stilled psyches.

Gong Yoo, suffocated and angry, as always emotes with every careful move of his body and gaze. Seo Hyun Jin's character uses her beautiful closed face to survive so the actress clearly indicates her thought processes by her timing and her movements. When Inji loses control and starts in on the usual FL idiocy (taking all the blame on herself etc.) it doesn't last long. The strengths of the performances of Jung Yun Ha (as Lee Seo Yeon the ex-wife) and Cho I Geon (as her own temporary husband, Yun Ji Oh) are central to the plot and to the success of the show overall.

The main set, the home of Jeong Won's dead parents is one of those architectural excesses symbolically perfect for the hermit-crab existence of JW in the grandiose ruins of his horrible family history. The central element is a modern chandelier of grotesque Versailles proportions hanging over a two story central space off which open all the living areas.

In Ji is inserted into this cave-like structure by a semi-sinister version of a matchmaking bureau which specializes in discreet temporary contract-marriages for transactional reasons. JW's ex, a malevolent architect herself, also fits into this set as an absent presence, since she herself actually engineered the whole premise of the show, the dual contract-marriages.

This is a good watch for fans of kdrama for whom plot doesn't matter as much as camerawork, soundtrack and the play of formulaic expectations. A great watch for Gong Yoo fans who always knew he would be smoking hot in bed. But it is a show which bends the rules for the OTP so far that it will be up to you to decide whether or not you have been emotionally deceived and how cynically this was done.

At 8 episodes of 1hr ea. we are looking at one of the new lengths for a kdrama. At this point writers and directors have to decide which standard elements to keep, how much time to allot to them etc. In my timid opinion (timid bec the extremely distinguished director, Kim Kyu Tae is obviously fully intentional in his choices) this type of story needed a 10 ep. structure in order to more firmly establish a key anchor for kdrama, the relationships of family and friends over time as context. At 8 eps, the show was way intense, and the standard time-jump later on in the show felt more jarring than usual. I didnt feel ready for it.

My advice for getting around this is not to binge the whole show at once and go to sleep unhappy, as I did. I woke up the next day with a completely different perspective and decided I loved the Trunk. The next day I disliked it, and the next day etc.

I needed time to appreciate it, and in a classic 16 ep form that appreciation would have been done in tandem with the usual chorus of observers (families, friends and village idiots) within the drama itself. Although those characters were in the story, afterwards I literally felt they needed their own small corners (time, musical themes etc) to thrive in. Without them, the development of discussion and perspective has to be internal to the spectator, as in a movie....

Addendum 31/12/24
The symbolic frame of the Trunk was obscure to me on the first watch but one interpretation bobbed up (!) from the subconscious today, just as the two trunks did in the show’s really distracting anticlimax.

Two trunks, large enough to contain lives, pertain primarily to previous events in the lives of the ex-wife and the hired live-in wife. One loses a child and the other is abandoned at the altar. The trunks are submerged amidst confusing events. The overt issues between the psychologically imprisoned pair have already been somewhat resolved before the trunks actually show up again.

The dramatic action of the Trunk moves from the light of reason in the public lives of the two protagonists down into a dark psychological space for most of the show, only to emerge again as public at the very end. The trunks follow this trajectory. For me the status of the trunks as luxury items was somehow offensively distracting, although practical from the point of the plot (luxury items are easier to trace).

The twinning of the trunks makes little sense because it confuses the simple parallels between the pairs of lovers which is the main story structure. The trunks emphasize the ML as the antagonist in his wife’s story as a parallel to the FL’s stalker. As a weird result, the hired live-in husband of the ex-wife is unjustly sidelined. It is not a pleasant surprise when poor Jun Ji Oh suddenly appears in the trunk narratives. He wasn’t given a proper role in the showscript, so this looks like random improvisation, which is impossible in a pre-produced show?

The fundamental traumatic events in the women’s lives are not clearly acknowledged by their men, although we are to infer this, I think; JW understands that IJ is from a background of privilege similar to his own and that she is stuck in a posture of abandonment and Ji Oh intuitively, I think, understands that Seo Yeon is acting out an extreme need for control of her life because she is still grieving her loss.

All due respect to the director, but if a woman had directed the show I think that emphasizing the experiences of both of the two main female characters would have helped the balance between the main ML and the 2ML, and developing the men’s responses would have deepened their own emotional performances as well.

Leia Mais

This is not a romance. It is about love.

Whoa. Great binge. 2025, 8 eps at 50mins ea. An elegant piece about the universally crazy search for love when we are very young. Some people are found by love, others are not, others really make a mess of things. A BL but it might be a bit too toasty for the Aunties who like mostly the cute little BL romances. Definitely for grown-ups and literary fans, this is not, I repeat not a romance. It is about love.

Excellent cinematography, script and cast. One of the choicest things-- this series exactly and economically fits into its 8 ep. frame, unlike several other shows lately who shall not be named. This one neither bores nor confuses.

The frame is classic -- a young writer transmutes his/her own personal love life into great fiction. The voice-overs as the series follows his stories are just right -- not too intrusive, but they follow his evolving perspectives. The story is set in Seoul and the writer is a young gay man, Go Young, played brilliantly by Nam Yoon Su.

The series is not an ensemble cast. The three other 'princesses' are his drinking buddies for troubles and joys, but in the show they function as a chorus, not individually. They can be very funny -- a 'visit' to Go Young in the hospital is a classic. Mi Ae (his friend and roommate at university), his lovers one by one, they all come onstage and then off they go. Go Young experiences so many almost-love-but-not relationships; look for the live-in lover blues, a form of marriage fatigue. You will love or hate each trope -- really icky, the leftist who wanted to hide the relationship away --but most are not two-dimensional characters, to give Go Yeong (as the writer's alter ego) his due in perception.

Nam Yoon Su is one of those actors whose face the camera adores, all angles and mouth and eyes. He uses his lanky frame well, too -- the shambling choreography with the wonderful Gyu Ho was great. He is so good at vulnerability, at sulkiness, at joy -- what good memories I have from this show. Just wonderful. Nevertheless there is a lot of pain in the show. Family division and homophobia, HIV (the crisis may be somewhat past but for those who have contracted it it's a real cross to bear) complicate the decisions Go Young and his friends have to make. In essence this is a realistic portrayal of a place and time.

I prefer to think that Go Young ends up ready for true love, after having gone through all of these negative experiences, some of his own making! Ever the optimist I hope it will be Gyu Ho who comes shining in the door.

Leia Mais

really wonderful watch, part one

A story of mages and magic with both western and wuxia elements woven together. Recommended for fantasy lovers. Excellent world-building by the Hong Sisters ( their 13th script). Good CGI. An insanely cool soundtrack with a huge range, by the great Nam Hye Seung. Classy cinematography throughout never misses a beat -- a big budget production by Studio Dragon. 2022-3. Comical, thrilling and cute with a really epic romance, you can skip the intellectual understory or be amused by it. Classic Hong Sisters.

In two parts, not seasons. Likewise two separate reviews here on mdl are as one. 30 eps at 1hr.20mins ea. = about 40hrs watch-time. Part One is 20 eps and Part Two is 10. Its all, both parts, worth it.

Lee Jae Wook. then 24, took the world by storm as the ML, Jang Uk. LJW is a meticulous, skilled, flexible and charismatic actor. Jung So Min plays one-half of the FL (I wont list all of their names); a powerful, intelligent and experienced actress, together with LJW she took the series to a higher level. The talented and gorgeous Go Yun Jung, the other half of the FL, begins and ends the series with great panache , matching LJW in romantic intensity and comic interludes throughout.

Out of many great performances in the main and supporting casts I would pick out three favourites. Shin Seung Ho, as the Crown Prince, actually carries the main plot through Part One, more so than the adorable lovers. Jo Jae Yoon, as the discontent Jin Mu, is the most wonderful creepy villain ever, a consistent scene-stealer. And Im Chul Soo as the hempen Master Lee, the Hong Sisters' "deus ex machina", stole everyone's hearts just a little.

How can there be two actresses and one FL? Easily. The body of the first actress is destroyed and via the 'alchemy of souls' the soul of the first actress (Go Yun Jung as Naksu) inhabits the body of the second (Jung So Min as Mudeok) for Part One. Or, to put it another way, Jung So Min portrays the soul of Naksu inside the body of Mudeok.

The 'alchemy of souls' goes beyond the standard body swap. Forbidden sorcery, the powerful use it to steal new bodies and they employ skilled assassins to dispose of the unfortunate souls trapped in their old bodies. At different points the FL and ML are employed to kill one end or the other of this devils bargain.

How is our identity connected to our souls or our bodies? The Hong sisters pose this question off and on again in their inimitable way through this whole series. Is who you are due to genetics? Is it due to your life experiences in this body? Is your soul, in this popular sense it means consciousness -- is your consciousness separate from your body? Do you have a destiny and does that pertain to your body or your soul/consciousness, or do you create that from the choices you make as you move forward? These questions are not limited to vague popular ideas of reincarnation throughout Asia or to the theological conundrums of body and soul that leak into horror and occult films in the West. Its all one.

So, therefore; the ML was conceived while his father's body was forcibly and temporarily occupied by the soul of a creepy king near death. Is Jang Uk the son of his father, a great skilled mage who crossed a line in his magical practice, or is Jang Uk the son of the previous king and since the childless king's brother acceded to the throne, thus a cousin (mentally/physically..which?) to the current Crown Prince ?

So, therefore; the FL, a skilled assassin, mortally wounded, performs the alchemy of souls on the nearest healthy woman she can find. She wakes up in the body of a blind woman named Mudeok being sold to a brothel/pleasure house for debts, temporarily disoriented and mildly amnesiac. The energy of her soul as Naksu can heal the blindness and her memories return slowly, but neither memory or soul can restore to her the lost athlete's body.

Fate brings our soulmates together not without a lot of noisy complaining by both. The merry flirtatious upper class Jang Uk, desperately seeking a master who will open his gate of energy, suddenly recognizes a girl attacking him with a crab leg as soul-shifter by the blue marks in her irises.

The rest is an enormously fun show. Enjoy. Since I am doing two revuews for two parts, hint hint, an absolutely enormous cliffhanger ending to part one which cannot be revealed heer can be gently hinted at in the part two review.

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Yah! A Woman Blows Her Top

Park Bo Young plays one of the great funny heroines, Tak Dong Kyung (DK), who, liberated by a prognosis of brain cancer doom, blows her top at her horrible boss. "Yah!" , best described a a pragmatic expression of extreme annoyance on steroids, effectively freezes the recipient in his/her tracks. Love it. And she keeps on breaking out of her good-girl place.

Really really great script. Phooey to the critics. Huge themes, huge reversals, very tight very funny dialogue. Four main sets, the office of the editing co, the cafe at ground floor, a huge man's living room in gray and stone which MM attaches to one wall of DK's yellow and pink (with red accents) rooftop apartment and the hospital.

Seo In Guk as Myung Mal/Kim Sa Ram/Doom (MM) and the adorable Dawon as DK's younger brother, are the foils to Bo Young''s performance. MM is an embodiment of a word like doom used to describe a person's allotted (i.e. semi-ordained) lifespan and fate combined. He is not a helpful Grim Reaper guiding souls, but more like a fail-safe for death's prerogatives (similarly to the Greco-Roman Nemesis).

He is DK's "doom" and she is his fate. A 6 ft. tall black-clad wish-granting boyfriend with a bad temper and a webtoon editor fall in love, perfect. She ends up facing a choice between the entire world being destroyed or her boyfriend ceasing to exist, but NB. this choice is governed by a contract which MM/Doom made with her while in a self-destructive mood.

DK also gets to meet God, or at least the god of this world, who describes herself as the gardener of the Garden and MM as a butterfly. The metaphor is shifty, but the hospital is the scene of much of the action, the lovers meet there, the family unites aroung DK's illness, and god in her current incarnation is a child with a heart condition.

Dk does go into the noble self-sacrificing mode (its all my fault blah blah blah) for an episode but it doesnt last too long. Luckily the 2couple-plus-a-spare are the actors Lee Soo Hyuk, Kang Tae Oh and Shin Do Hyun, who all should get respect and better roles than they have had so far. They are brilliant here.

A Studio Dragon show with the composer Lim Ha Young. The writer is Im Me Ah Ri (beauty Inside).

On my top ten best ever kdramas list as of 12/24: Goblin, Hwayugi, Because This Is My First Life, Just between Lovers; the K2, Run On, Doom at Your Service; Tomorrow, Alchemy of Souls (earliest to latest) and Mr. Plankton .

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