But the tame and harmless show is driving me to violence and evil as well, since I want to somehow eat the face of the leading man actor. Like I wish to consume his entire being. This seems ethically wrong? So many levels of wrong.
I gathered myself and cleansed my mind and watched two more episodes of squid game because, let's face it, it's a good show. Husband continues to watch it in the wee hours when I am sleeping and now I have to catch up again. I'm done with making myself a night person for the sake of someone else's inner clock. It's not a healthy thing to do for your life. Watching all this mayhem is not healthy either but I'm doing what I have to do to get through it because, because. I get the same report that it continues to be violent going forward.
Okay the Squid game show was so good that I just dealt with it, you know? I really hated the amount of violence in the show but it was there for a reason. I think that reason could have been made much clearer, because otherwise there are plenty of ways to show that horrible things are being done to people for insufficient reasons, without showing it the way they did.
I would have liked to take a bit longer time between episodes but I was having to race against someone who was far ahead of me in episodes the whole time and expecting catchup to be accomplished.
The whole universe of children of any age knows all about this including toddlers who play Roblox or whatever the hell's going on these days. There's no point shielding them from it I guess but I'm doing it anyway, darn it.
I really enjoyed the show in the moments when it wasn't violent. My real complaints are twofold: One is that it was easy to predict everything that was going to happen. Please stop reading if you don't want spoilers although I will be delicate in the phrasing. From very early on it was obvious who was running the business there. My husband thought this would be very shocking to me and to be honest he's a better predictor of such things than I am but for some reason in this case I predicted it and he did not. Thus it was not terribly satisfying for me to see what I presume was supposed to be a big reveal. The same was true for all the games. Maybe I just have an encyclopedic knowledge of such playground games even though I didn't grow up in Korea, but it was very obvious what the games were going to be before they happened. I was truly shocked about what happened with Ali, I sobbed like a baby over that and it was one of the really intense and important moments in the script from my perspective. The scenes with the two girls, likewise. Still I think I would have experience this more as It should have been experienced if it had been less predictable. The interesting reflection upon the meaning is still there but the experience is not.
My other complaint is that I felt similar themes were addressed in many a k drama I have watched and in particular in the most recently beloved one, My Mister, which managed to do it with a limited amount of violence along with the gamut of other important human experiences, and a clearer focus on what we might generally call ethics. A lot of this show by contrast seemed like drama for the sake of the disturbing drama as much as for any deeper meaning one might ponder.
But the fact that I dug down and made it through that show despite the visuals is a testimony to what was good about it at the same time, so...
Finished watching the delightful Hometown cha cha cha show. I think the title is excellent because if it seems off-putting to you, this is not the show for you. Yet if you wonder what that might mean and if it might involve kindly grandmothers cleaning squid by the seaside, and a fancy urban dentist finding love with a handsome rural jack of all trades, you definitely need to watch it. The last few episodes were so nauseatingly treacly with the favorable outcome of romances and life histories that the writers were compelled to have two of the supporting characters remark dryly upon how annoying all the romantic happiness was becoming. But it wasn't really becoming annoying. There are too many shows about ugliness and cruelty already. In this show there is a hedgehog and a boat up on top of a hill and people making a lot of food for one another, and the happy resolution of dental problems. Even the side characters get to have fully formed romances so it's almost a three-in-one deal.
The main character guy... I don't even know. He's not Quite as good looking as Jin. That's all I can say. I felt things. I felt the tectonic plates creeping along beneath me and I felt the gravitational pull of distant stars. It's both the actor and the character, because the actor is not quite as compelling in other shows. This is a particularly good blend of character and actor. Yes, I will indeed live with him in his seaside apartment filled with homemade soap and liquors. However, in the last few episodes he does so much fake crying that I was able to detach myself somewhat from the feelings of wickedness and vice. The neck under his chin doesn't look all that great, and the crying was so fake and the tears made it look like he was wearing heavy makeup, and that sort of helped tamp down the unseemly feelings of covetousness for an unripened mere mortal.
I have attempted to find another show but I'm unable and I am waiting to invest in the movie Pete keeps recommending until I can actually have two uninterrupted hours. I think I have exhausted the pool of kdramas on Netflix that I actually want to watch. A new one called the Kings Affection has been foisted upon me and I'm sure I will finish it out but I can't get involved in a show that won't be done until November. After watching this one about idyllic seaside strolls with attractive men, and the previous one about the inexplicable burdens and dilemmas of human life, I am unable to take interest in other shows that don't reach somewhere to this level. Well, I was stuck in the grocery parking lot for a few minutes and realized that I had spent like 5 minutes looking at a GIF of Jin in a banana costume. I guess that counted as higher level. Just when you think you understand yourself you become both less complicated and more inexplicable.
I began watching this ridiculous show called Start Up because one of the two male leads is played by Kim Seon Ho, who was our beloved lead character in Hometown Cha Cha Cha. Even as I write these things I recognize it is a symptom of something amiss inside my brain. Be that as it may, the show is absolutely hilarious and I am squawking like a chicken because I cannot handle how funny it is.
Poor gorgeous and fascinating Kim Seon Ho is presently involved in a real life terrible scandal involving his ex-girlfriend. I don't understand why this is a career ending scandal in Korea, but he will certainly fare well if he brings his powerful dimples right over here to the US and makes shows. So given my helplessness in the face of his dimples, I decided to watch this other program he was in. I was not seeking a cure for my madness; I was only encouraging the madness further. I gave in fully to the madness; I said, madness, you have seized me and I might as well just go on ahead and watch this other show so I can watch that man's face make words and expressions. It is one of the joys of life left to me.
Well! A bizarre miracle has occurred. It turns out that, although I still am pretty sure I'm unusually thoroughly heterosexual, which is unfortunate because otherwise I could have been some sort of nun or lesbian biker, I began watching this startup show and discovered that my favorite character is neither of the absolutely gorgeous men who are competing in a thrilling love triangle for the attention of some non-descript but inoffensive chick. No - it turns out that the lady hires another lady (this would require actually explaining the plot and that's pointless - I am not watching this thing for the ridiculous plot), and I absolutely adore this second lady for reasons that remain obscure. Why do I love her? No idea. But I find her absolutely hilarious and perfect. She is like a bit part character so rarely on the screen at the moment but my goodness, I love this woman! She somehow manages to express my inner essence, while being very tall and fashionable and imposing. Like this is how I wish to be except that I'm a hobbit! I guess it's like watching an avatar or something, like watching your own character played on screen by somebody who's a lot cooler than you. Anyway, we'll just have to watch and see what happens. Is nun life in my future? I feel very grateful to have been cured of these unwanted feelings for Mr. Kim Seon Ho, whatever the cause may be.
Ghosts, a show about a young couple that moves into an old mansion, and after a brain injury, the female of the couple is able to see the ghosts that live there. I started watching the American version on network TV, which has 2-3 episodes out at this point. Then noticed that it's a remake of a British show, and the British has 3 seasons available on HBO Max, so I've been watching the British version as well.
Initially you may turn this on and think, "it's maybe the stupidest thing I have ever watched but it amuses me in my state of physical and emotional exhaustion, so I will allow it to do that as it may."
Wrong! Stop right there! It will not be long, dear self, before you find yourself engrossed in this stupidity as fully as if you had lived at yourself. You will be ready for violence. You will be screaming things out loud at your television. At first you think there will be brief screaming but then the screaming will continue and get louder and more indignant and outraged. You will vow to track the human "characters" in the show down and slap sense into them. If necessary you will travel straight through the passage of the mind of their creator by whatever means necessary - maybe that means you'll have to hook this screenwriter up to electrodes and do who knows what to make the torment stop, but that's what you're going to have to do.
You console yourself only insofar as you are wise enough to recognize the dangerous serpent-boy as soon as he appears. At your old age with your experience you know exactly what is going on. He seems troubled and sympathetic, does he not? He's an artist and musician who sheds a tear. NO! He is a demon. RUN, stupid girl, RUN from that one and IMMEDIATELY date the arrogant curly-haired rich one!!! MY GOD WHYYYYYYYYY what does the curly haired man have to do to demonstrate his perfection to you? We old ladies see it immediately. He is bored and wounds others only because he has been so thoroughly wounded himself and you will save and heal him girl I know this sounds crazy right now but you will save and heal him.
I haven't really gotten far enough into the show to know whether she succeeds but I know that if necessary I will throw her into the ocean and take care of it myself.
After spending a little more time absolutely screaming, just outright screaming at my television right there in the kitchen, and after nearly having a heart attack both because of the plot of this "boys over flowers" show and the sight of the main guy's cheekbones, I did a little research and found out some very interesting information! It turns out that this absolutely ridiculous and absurd program is one of the most popular ever, and the actor who has fully murdered and destroyed me with a single cheekbone is one of the if not THE single most popular of all these Korean screen actors.
Whatever that bone is behind the eyebrow, the side of the eye, the whole jaw, cheekbone, side of the eye - I don't even know what all that is but it killed me. There was a moment the man was upset and jealous and looking a certain way and they showed the side of his face and it was like being punched hard right in the sternum, I swear to you. I don't know where they have been keeping this man but by some miracle I have never seen this man before.
This man also turns out to be 34 years old and that's enough, that's enough. There is a pinnacle of good looks and if this is not it I don't know how it could ever be achieved by a human.
Having watched this 25 episode series - and each episode feels like 4-5 hours, I don't know - I want to stab someone but don't know who's to blame. Did someone force me to watch this? Was I not able to get up and walk away or change the channel to football? In theory I was able. The person who needs stabbing turns out to be me.
After 25 episodes the two main characters of this both epic and ridiculous and embarrassingly stupid love story have finally gotten together, despite many ups and downs and togethers and aparts, absolutely none of which made sense. At long last why are these people together? Because not just figuratively but literally they both have some kind of brain damage. I don't mean only that the main character is autistic, although she clearly is, but that she also on top of this does things to inflict brain damage on herself for no reason. Actually, in both cases the damage was mostly self-inflicted and pointless.
From this I can only conclude that this is the ultimate message to the viewer: you watched this when you had every ability to choose something differently. Isn't that exactly what you have been screaming at your television these last several days of your life? That people should be choosing something differently so that they would not need to endure suffering and, ultimately, brain damage? Well, honey, the joke is on you, because nobody in this show has made worse life decisions than you did by watching it all the way to the end.
Just to rub salt in your wound, we're not even going to let the two characters of the semi-interesting side romance have their own romantic scene - these people could all literally be priests and nuns and never have violated any of their vows, so heaven knows we can't even let those hopeless side-show people kiss once in 25 episodes. I have had more intense sexual experiences while 100% fully clothed and dancing to ABBA in a disco then any of these people have had on the screen, yet here we are still watching as if we expect something. When the main characters do manage (Rarely) to kiss, they will bring their lips together in slow motion and freeze it there without moving it all afterward as if that was the end and nothing else could possibly proceed from that point. If children were allowed to watch only this show for dating advice, the human race would not be able to propagate itself further.
I will congratulate this show on managing to find a dozen different excuses to film Lee Min-Ho without a shirt, however. The last time this happened he was in a sauna, sweating. The whole body was wet with droplets. I had to replay the scene three times and nearly passed out right there in my kitchen atop the hot stove.
Nobody who has read this review should ever in a million years ever watch this horrifying extravaganza of k-drama that apparently set the tone for the entire last 12 years of the sport. The ending where he asks her to marry him (the first time) has left me gutted like a fish. I expected something ridiculous and romantic but in fact it turned out to be a worthy scene, after so much ridiculousness. I don't even have tears left to cry; I feel gas cramps instead. I am normally not prone to gas cramps so it's quite clear that the show has caused it.
I could never begin to list all my other complaints, but it boils down to the fact that they disrespect the viewer by not caring as much about their own creation as the viewer was forced to. They made us worry about a man who's in a coma, for example. They made us think it was important to the plot. Then the man with the coma wakes up and it's totally pointless. They made us think there was some importance to this grandpa character and a chef, and there was nothing gained from it. They all kept hitting the woman in her supposedly broken shoulder. Everybody in the show gets to have romance but this one guy who's the son of a mafia boss doesn't even get to go on so much as a date! I think he casually dances once with a blonde chick and walks around with some other chicks and that's all!! Nothing in the whole script makes sense. None of it. Plus, the type of love they are selling us in this show is nightmarish and requires nothing but suffering. So why would a person do all this?
One simple reason: the man who plays the lead character in this show is so good looking that the sight of him makes a person nearly woozy. My husband had to come in and turn on the full sprinkler system of his charms and make his dimple show on purpose, to remind me that he's better looking, but damn is it a close call. And this guy doesn't even have even, white, regular teeth, which is normally kind of a fetish of mine. His teeth go this way and that way and stick out a little - he did not experience orthodontics, let's put it that way. But the teeth are even part of the charm. My tummy hurts, I can't take this kind of thing anymore.
Watching an interesting documentary show about drug trafficking on Amazon prime as a distraction from you know what and you know who... Please consult shower scene above for detailed references. I'm not able to walk around through my day in this physical and mental state!
For reasons that aren't clear I find myself watching a show called:
"Tundukken Playboy Itu"
It's not worth explaining how we got here. I'm not even sure I was awake - it could be I rolled over on the remote and somehow arrived?
The main character guy also has this lovely pet black cat. I am fascinated. A hero who has a black cat! They're architects! And they're clearly going to hate each other and fight before they figure out their joyful destiny. How can I not watch this? It remains to be seen what a Tundukken Playboy is.
(Edited: my apologies but for reasons I cannot explain and that no mere mortal could ever in a million years have predicted, I had to remove most of this review for Reasons. I can't comment on most of this show publicly.)
Last edited by Phoebe on Fri Nov 19, 2021 1:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The good ones: Fruitvale Station - Ryan Coogler's debut with Michael B. Jordan acting masterfully, poignant stuff, though the criticism about it being maybe too many poignant events for one day in a based-on-a-true-story film has a point.
Black Narcissus - wild classic film, loved their Red Shoes, and this has some great scenes, a suspenseful finale, and jaw dropping cinematography, but also a bunch of silly stuff too -- ya know, what you get when you watch a classic film by great directors about a faraway country. Kinda racist and backwards stuff ya know.
Killer of Sheep - Some films you know what they are getting at before and you can enjoy it, but in this case, I wasn't sure what I was getting from Charles Burnett. I think a rewatch will help but felt the scenes mixed between moving and beautiful and dull and poorly acted. But dull vs. beautiful seems to be part of the point.
Mulan - not as bad as i was told. I liked it! For one, it's beautifully shot. And action scenes are done well and I kinda liked how Mulan was portrayed. I think part of my enjoyment is because I didn't grow up on Mulan -- it was released when I was a teen -- the story and the characters and the songs were not sacrosanct. And I like that it was different than the original too. Why retell the same story the same way. Maybe... the best live action Disney remake yet?
The History of the Eagles - a three hour documentary on The Eagles, featuring a lot of wonderful harmonies, great stories, and grumpy assholes being mad at each other 40 plus years later. It's very entertaining! More warts-and-all documentaries, please!
The Witch - spooky as hell. Wild. Beautiful. Silly too. Like films that presuppose the myths were true. I know completely different tonally, but Hail Caesar did similar when it came to Hollywood communists.
and the best of the month:
Ran - rewatch, Kurosawa masterpiece, most striking colors in maybe all of film. A retelling of King Lear and after this, maybe my fifth rewatch, maybe I should finally check out this King Lear.
The Rider - Chloe Zhao won an Oscar this year and has seemingly made the most disliked Marvel film too, so a perfect time to check out her 2017 film, "The Rider" which is WONDERFUL. This may have been the prettiest month of movie watching, as this one has jaw dropping cinematography too. October, the month of my dropped jaw. And a moving story and wonderful characters -- many of whom were playing versions of themselves -- Brady as Brady, Lane as Lane, Lilly as Lilly. I think you will all like this one, so check it out.
First Cow - women directed Westerns for the win! Kelly Reichardt makes slow movies, ones that love to sit and watch. Long shots, shots that invite you to stay with the characters and their surroundings. Knowing this will help you if you ever watch this-- which I think you should, it's slow but if you're up for a wonderful heist film with memorable characters, including, you guessed it, a charming cow, check this great mooooooooooovie!
Oh yes, I forget there is a live action version of Mulan now! I need to see that. Also the Rider looks interesting - do you mean by the other film "Eternals" or something else?
I watched an interesting movie that was on YouTube called Happiness, and I can't find it right away on the normal browse of google but have not put effort in - anyway the link is here:
This is a movie from Mongolia and the title is a multi-edged sword because there is an awful lot of not-happiness to be observed here. It's a VERY sad story but I was in a deep meditative state and was able to make it through without crying - bizarre for me. Maybe there was a little crying at the end but far less than you would expect from the waterworks over here.
To be honest I think it was all a little too profound for me to follow properly and I ended up with many thoughts but few answers. What is this life? What in fact is the value of happiness in the first place, or what is it? I don't know. The movie challenges us on these points.
However, several moments in it are incredible and surprising, as they don't follow the narrative structure or story progression you would expect in other films or stories. You are introduced to characters and aren't quite sure what to expect from them - in another movie they would be either bit roles, meaningless, or comic relief, or something bad might happen to them or because of them, but in this movie they would suddenly become heroic, helpful figures of love and compassion. Maybe that's one of the "points": out of nowhere people - even those who seem cranky, or incapable of it, or potentially dangerous or undesirable - might just turn out to be angelic and heroic. They might do things - ranging from small to large - to have a powerful impact on other lives.
The goodness of the human will and spirit is profoundly portrayed here, along with the tragedy that can accompany it for no reason. No explanation for tragic things. Yet people are persisting and surprising us with the goodness, and bizarre coincidences also surprise us with joy.
Because of other people sharing my home, I am watching a 40 episode show about Bruce Lee. Called the legend of Bruce Lee. I was sucked into this because even though it is a really wretched and terrible show, it's Kung Fu!
Again edited to remove the unsayables.
Last edited by Phoebe on Fri Nov 19, 2021 1:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Updates: All About Eve or whatever that show is called... the Three Faces of Eve... Killing EVE! That's it. Killing Eve. That show continues to be SO GOOD and I want to remind the viewer that Phoebe Waller-Bridge wrote the first season. We are now on season three. Shocking events as usual, it's not a show for children! Both the main characters are still so appealing despite their, ah, issues.
Now we come to Bruce Lee, episode 34093460294u6. (...)
UPDATE: I have AT LAST figured out what the heck Tundukkan Playboy Itu means! My mistake was in thinking that it referred to a guy, like the Girl from Ipanema or the Six Million Dollar Man or something. No! It is a command, in fact: "subdue that playboy!" Guessing that "subdue" carries the sense of "reform" here?
(Edit: had to almost totally redact this because we live on a planet filled with the most bizarre coincidences we can imagine.)
Last edited by Phoebe on Fri Nov 19, 2021 1:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
To cleanse my mind and reinforce my witch nature, after concluding that other horrid show I started watching the first episode or two of a show called the Inheritors, or The Heirs, a K drama on Netflix starring Lee Min-ho. I believe the woman who co-stars with him is also someone he dated for a long time, and I like her so far. I think the show is supposed to be a frothy kind of "real love story set amidst the Dynasty-style backstabbing of the very rich". However, for me it has turned out to be a tearjerker drama because the sight of Lee Min-ho's face can literally make me cry because it is so beautiful. My husband was mocking me for this because he knows he is better looking at the end of the day, but seriously the mere sight of this man's face makes a woman weep because it is so painfully beautiful. It hurts you somewhere mid torso to look at his cheekbones. I'm not even a big fan of cheekbones. I want to emphasize it's not just me who's having this kind of mental problem, it's approximately 3 billion women around the globe. This guy is probably the single most desired movie actor; he's way beyond your random Brad Pitt George Clooney kind of low level thing. Sometimes in the media he is referred to as "the God Lee Min-Ho" or the "God of Asia" or other such ridiculous things. But it gives you a sense of where people are on this matter. The only thing that troubles about me is I think they changed his teeth from when he was a younger actor. He used to have a really cute mouth with slightly irregular teeth and they put him in braces or something. He still has a fairly large and protruding nose, but it's possible they also did a little bit of plastic surgery on his nose. It slowly dawns on me that a lot of these guys have had plastic surgery to reduce the nose, which is tragic because in many cases you're looking at them and thinking, this guy is very attractive and charismatic except for his extremely tiny nose which could be larger and then he would be good looking. So I hope they didn't do that to Lee's nose, because why would you take a perfect flower and cut a chunk out of the middle of it? But they did rearrange his teeth and that was a mistake so who knows what they may have done to him. I can't even imagine how good looking he's going to be when he's like 50. I think I will be in my 60s then? That seems like a lot more realistic scenario doesn't it?
I got distracted earlier from my other purpose which was to say I'm watching Yellowstone in the manner of osmosis common to much of the viewing. I have osmosed enough to know that it is truly terrible, even though it has some good actors. At one point I rolled over with a sigh and before going to sleep said, this was written by some rich white dude who thinks Montana is Texas. I was just teasing him but it turned out to be true.
In other news here's what we can determine from the world of K-drama: the leading man who is intrigued by our heroine but not yet reformed by her goodness leans in close to her face with his own gorgeous one, gives her a sexy glance, and asks if she's afraid that he's not just a wealthy drug dealer but also a trafficker of black market organs who is only offering her free snacks and lodging so that he can harvest a kidney. Does she still have her kidneys?
Is there another man on the face of this earth besides Lee Min-Ho who could use "do you still have both kidneys?" as a successful pickup line?
(Answer: yes, my husband, but he is not an actor.)
Last edited by Phoebe on Fri Nov 19, 2021 1:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
This show which is variously translated from Korean as the Inheritors or the Heirs is so good. Like many of these things it starts off slow, and you don't think it's going to be that great, and next thing you know it's life-changing and earth-shattering and you're crying and laughing and overwhelmed with all sorts of thoughts and feelings.
Most of my thoughts and feelings about the show have to do with Lee Min-Ho. I'm way too old to be embarrassed by how absurd this is; all I can do is report on my experiences as they are without judgment. Trust that I am judging them privately as flawed! Nevertheless, the facts on the ground are that the sight of this man's face doubles my resting heart rate and causes all of the fluids in my body to flow this way and that way erratically. Even though I grasp that my husband is better looking than him, and that I don't know this man and he is a total stranger that billions of women and men would find good looking and millions are actively obsessing over even at this very moment, none of that matters to me. It is a mere historical accident that we are separated by space and time in the way that we are. It is simply an unfortunate accident that he lives on the other side of the globe and is significantly younger, but not too young. It is slightly more inconvenient that he seems to date a lot of Korean ladies who are a lot different looking than I am in many ways. However, though you think these facts would somehow dissuade me from having certain feelings, they only increase my confidence. Of course it is not easy for a perfectly beautiful and clever creature like myself to find her match on the surface of this earth. And yes I already did find one. But it also happens that there is one in Korea and he's an actor. I understand he likes dogs and that's handy.
Let us put Lee Min-Ho aside - hahaha what an absurd suggestion! as if this could be done! - and focus instead on another important show I need to tell you not to watch. Or if anyone else in your house flips on the Netflix and thinks this might be a good idea, tell them no, and this is why:
Netflix is advertising to us presently a show called "Love hard". I know, I know, it wasn't my idea to call it this. Insert your jokes here. It's supposed to be a play on "Die Hard" as a Christmas movie, for dumb plot reasons, but that's not what's wrong with this show. The entire premise is disgusting, racist, sexist, and above all, colossally stupid in all ways.
The main woman is trying to find love on the internet, and the main guy lives in another town so she decides to go Surprise! visit him for Christmas. He is an Asian man who has presented himself as a white guy, and I think the shows presupposition is that the white guys supposed to be better looking than the Asian guy, but since this is false on the face of things we already have a problem, on top of the fact that this assumption is just so incredibly deeply racist and the racism goes downhill from there. Also, every other idea of the show. Nothing happens to redeem it whatsoever.
Hello, I write this as a ghost from the beyond, because whoever wrote this "Inheritors" show has killed me. I have just spent two hours crying and I'm not even close to the season finale yet. I don't want to give spoilers but there was a breakup and the man basically handled it exactly like I would. After I realized I am him and he is me, I decided to try loving guy #2 instead and then they had the girl's mom feed him supper and that was the worst moment of all, because it turned out what he needed was not a girlfriend but a mom, and that is when they truly stuck in the knife and destroyed my soul along with the body. I tried to restore myself but they keep going. Now they're hurting guy #1s mom and the main woman is just destroying souls left and right on her own for no reason. I want to run in there with the sword of justice and fix this but life is doom and suffering, and I'm a ghost so can't lift it.
Okay I'm updating this now that I have seen the finale. Everything was really good until we got down to about the last 20 minutes and then I think the producers stepped in and prevented the writer from ending the show the way the writer would have wanted to. There's literally a place where the script breaks off and it's like someone dropped in a montage with all the romantic moments from the past episodes, so that the audience could relive it. By this point they know that it's hugely successful show - they keep changing up some details as if they edited in response to that.
You think it's a show about romance, and initially it is, and then you think it's a show about the kinds of infighting people undertake for the sake of greed for power and wealth. But the show really turns out to be about moms, and that's why it was so devastating to me. Every person in the show has a mom whose choices and personality have determined the outcomes and qualities of life, and the moms are the ones who undergo the greatest character development and complexity outside of the two major guy characters. It's funny because you start watching the show thinking it's about the main woman, our heroine of the romance, later the object of the love triangle between these two other guys, but the only character development she experiences happens very early. Pretty soon everything is about the guys and then it's about the moms and the moms and the guys and so forth. But they know their audience, because it's mostly people like me, and it show about the moms and the guys hits us where it hurts the most. We never really cared about that young chick, particularly after she was so stupid as to not listen to her boyfriend and cause all kinds of problems because of not listening to him. We older and wiser ones would have listened but it's water under the bridge now - I just think it's funny that in most cases I would have blamed the writer for screwing all this up (as in the dodo lala soso show, which I'm still bitter about because they chose that terrible twist of plot!), but in this case it's clear some type of meeting was held in which the writer protested and nobody cared and they forced them to put musical montages in all over the last episode.
Lacking the time to invest even in a bedtime hourly drama series, I instead spent a week watching a movie called "Don't Go Breaking My Heart", recommended by Netflix. Some initial probing revealed it was set in Hong Kong and they were speaking a non-Mandarin dialect, which intrigued me, so I kept watching.
Initially, our Heroine has been dumped by her boyfriend, who also dumped his stuff on her when he left. Turns out his stuff includes a LOT of alcohol, which is useful when our Heroine runs into a down-on-his-luck fellow who is very interested in drinking himself into a stupor over the long term. He gladly accepts the alcohol and a pet frog that was also abandoned, and he sells off the rest of the boyfriend's belongings and then gives the proceeds to our Heroine, which is a bit of a surprise since he seems like a homeless dude who needs the coin.
No: he is an architect who was once successful but has lost his mojo. Our Heroine seems destined to bring it back. Dude is super nice to her and insists that she spend every dime of ex-bfs money on transforming herself: cute haircut, new outfit, snacks, etc. They have a grand time drinking his booze collection. BUT THEN...
Meanwhile our Heroine is making googly eyes at some other dude who occupies an office across the street, but their windows face each other. As a result of wanting to date googly eyes dude, she stands up drunken architect pet frog dude when they had agreed to meet! This even though architect guy is clearly about 20x better looking and cooler than googly eyes dude.
Just in case anyone wants to watch this movie - because I'm going to tell you, I nearly peed myself with shock between about the 1:30 - 1:35 mark when the plot conflict hit its peak moment, as I did NOT see that one coming and nobody could - I won't give other spoilers. However, a LOT of drama ensues. It doesn't feature sexual assault the way the Malaysian tv drama did, but there is definitely a moment where I was like WHOAAAAAAA THIS BE RAPE! and I was rather shocked they would present it, though it turned out rape did not occur. Almost!
The rest of the movie is basically you, mystified by trying to understand a story that might as well be told by Martians, screaming expletives and other choice judgments at your screen because it makes no sense! Our Heroine is extremely foolish most of the time! It turns out that figuratively BEING a Martian is also part of the story here.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, at a critical juncture in the movie our Heroine takes refuge in her family home. Her mother and grandmother are home. Grandma is eating brunch at the time our distressed Heroine shows up. She continues eating without batting an eye or acknowledging this new visitor, even though granddaughter has come to China from Hong Kong and doesn't visit often. Instead, Granny finishes draining her soup bowl and then asks someone to bring her more milk. !!!!!!!!!!!! Later, this same older lady is watching a TV drama while her daughter frets over what might be wrong with our Heroine. Granny has no Fs or moments to spare away from her show, where one woman is attempting to DROWN the other in a bathtub full of rose petals (?!) and grandma is laughing, laughing, laughing about this! She will not be diverted from her program by others, but instead feels hungry so flings A SHOE at her daughter to induce her to prepare a meal.
Some type of deep comment on the entire human condition and meaning of life was present in this scene but, being myself a Martian, I did not understand it at all. Earthlings made comments on earth life and this Martian did not grasp it, but it was RIVETING AF.
Rain or Shine
New K-Drama - young people who survived a traumatic building collapse now deal with stuff ten years later, try and fail to date one another, etc. I love it - it's all about dealing with pain and they're all so reflective and philosophical, and there are also many powerful and hilarious elderly people in the show. The main grandma character is am absolute goddess. She runs an illegal medical clinic.
The person who wrote one of Lee Min-Ho's smash hit dramas, The Inheritors, for whatever reason ended up writing his 2020 starring role in The King: Eternal Monarch. Whoever this person is, they understand and love Lee Min-Ho (let's just call him LMH) as much as the millions of people around the world who all agree on this.
What can you do with this person as an actor? You've already got problems casting the movie because most of the people who are going to be standing in the same room with him are going to start giggling and snorting and maybe just faint right there on the ground. You've got to get a lot of hard-minded and tough, cynical people. Then you've got to find some realistic way of presenting him, because he's not like a normal person and can't be believed as such.
He's also not much of an actor, truth be told: he has but two modes and both of them are perfect and beyond anything imagined in mortals. The first is that he is hilarious, and the second is that he is an elemental force of desire. You might think these things don't go well together in a script, but they do. They just need to find a way for him to run around saying hilarious things with his comedic timing and expressions, and then every once in a while turn on the fireworks and emote something like lust or woundedness or pensive longing or whatever it is. He can't do the latter all the time or everybody watching it would be dead, so they have to mix it up and sprinkle it in with light comedy.
The point is that the writer understands these things, so he or she decided to make a show where LMH would literally be a king who falls into our world from a parallel universe. In other words, it's a documentary.
From the moment he lands in the middle of a downtown intersection on top of his beautiful white horse, the whole thing is ridiculous and nobody else could pull it off. But LMH does. For other people this would probably just be a light-hearted fun show to watch, with some intrigue and drama and violence and time travel mixed in.
I have managed to watch two episodes while keeping a lid on the functioning of all of my body parts and neurons, but to be honest with you, from time to time the memory of some scene will pop into your mind and you find yourself sitting there, giggling uncontrollably, shedding inexplicable tears, and staring into space with a s*** eating grin, because that's how good looking he is. He's so good looking it actually hurts somewhere in your torso and makes you cry out tears. I'm not even joking.
I do think they did some kind of bad plastic surgery on him, which maybe was an act of mercy for the rest of us, so he could be even better looking than he is and I don't even know how to imagine what it would be like if he was getting older with his original face exactly intact.
Thankfully he reminds me vaguely of big bird, like the one on Sesame Street, which is weird because my husband also vaguely reminds me of big bird, but let's put that aside for now. The good thing is that he's really tall and skinny and that's not normally my type of guy so I can get past it and live while watching the show once in a while. I don't know what I would do if I actually liked tall skinny guys. I don't know if I'd be able to handle this.
Last night I decided to put on a face mask. One of the various items of Korean culture I have absorbed lately along with music and books and television and a little bit of language is The Face Mask. My kids were into the Western paste a bunch of crap on your face version of these, where you then get the fun of peeling it off after it dries, and your mom gets the fun of cleaning up the bathroom properly afterward. Or just having a filthy bathroom, there's that aspect too. Anyway, I first bought these on a lark, and out of a desire to have a clean bathroom while letting my kids have the fun of doing a face mask. Eventually this led to me doing one because they are cheap and smell good. Now we are led to this question:
WHY do these masks work at all?!
My understanding of dermatology is that most of what you can do fixes things from the inside out and that there's very little you can do from the outside in other than keeping the area clean and possibly medicated with a few very limited items shown to have benefit. But that was before I encountered the reality of the empirical experiment with the face mask. Whatever magic is infused into these things, they make your skin absolutely soft and plumpy and radiant looking. The effect doesn't last for very long but it's a real effect. I was expecting no effect.
Now that you have the essential context to explain why I would do the ridiculous thing I have been doing, I feel I can reveal it. I couldn't see all the way through to the TV to experience the joy of Lee Min-ho's face while I was wearing this face mask - the realness and severity of my love for him may be evidenced by the fact that my husband has taken to calling him The Ho because he now perceives him as an actual rival (this is flattering in its own way, since my husband apparently sincerely thinks I could beat out all the 25 million who would want this man ahead of me) and resents the ho-ing out of his face that has me and another 25 million women and men completely enraptured. To be honest I've started to appreciate his hands as much as his face and now I find myself staring at his beautiful hands which have both length and grace but also a satisfying thickness and heft to them. We should really not talk about this further.
The point is that I was unable to watch what I wanted to watch, So I systematically went through Netflix changing all the icons of the account owners in my household. This has been done to me so many times I finally wanted to select my own icon (The squid game umbrella of course) and impose a few on others (She-Ra, Shaun the sheep, Cobra Kai). During this process, I discovered that Netflix, that pervert who now needs monitoring I didn't realize, has been suggesting to my daughters that they watch a show about young people trapped in swimsuits on a deserted tropical island, which apparently they can only escape by deciding to go on dates together or something. Dating looks to be one of the last things on their minds from the trailer, which was not safe either for work or my daughters. However, I gaped at this in amazement because I had been subjected to an advertisement for the same kind of show except it was the Korean version! Both appear to be produced by Netflix. Both are about trapping a bunch of young single people on an island and making them pair off in order to leave it. But every single other thing about these shows is radically different in a way that reveals incredible things about the differences between cultures and also the reason why I prefer the Korean shows to any other. I could not get very far into the Western version, because it was basically a horror show, but I started watching the Korean one and even though it is cringe-festy and absolutely disgusting, it is such a different show and so much better than the other one that I was fascinated and started getting into it. My kid who was laying there with me as we were reading decided he wanted to watch it too, and I guess this is as good a time as any since we're having those conversations in greater frequency. You know... So, this show was an occasion for a gentle examination of the various parameters of interaction, and we are able to do this with the Korean version in a way that we absolutely could never do with the other one. The prospect of packing up my kids and whoever else wants to come and leaving this country looks better by the moment.
Anyway, If you're interested in this experiment, The Korean version is called something like island inferno? Something to do with an inferno that I can't remember. The point is that the island is hot and then the English version is called something like too hot to handle. The westernized one has to proceed by imposing some kind of limitation that creates a financial penalty if the people attempt to mate up with one another! I don't really know what the rules of their mating are because I didn't watch that far into it, but the meeting/mating procedure is radically different between the two shows, I can tell you that much.
The Korean guys are all practically caricatures in the sense that they have enormous chesticles but very little else going for them physically.
Luckily none of them is attractive to me at all. Not even in the slightest. There is no Lee Min-ho in this bunch, only guys who seem pretty vain and spend way too much time on gym machines drinking protein powders or something.
The gals are far more interesting on this show because the one that all the guys like I think is horrid, and the others all have talents you would not guess initially, and they're rather interesting and clever.
Anyway, We shall see what comes of this because I intend to wash dishes and get through like two whole episodes cleaning the kitchen.
Somehow I made it this far in life without ever having seen this movie. I loved it. A liking for baseball is not technically necessary to appreciate this movie but it probably helps. It's about people who do baseball analysis and manage teams, and how that process changed in a way that had some expected and some unexpected consequences. I don't know if the real life version was as dramatic and hilarious as the way they presented it happening here, but this was a good story. The manager is also a character very well matched to Brad Pitt, and the other guy (Jonah Hill), well, I love him. Holy cow I just googled this man because I wasn't sure what his name was and he has changed for the worse in later years! In this movie he is adorable, however.
I would give it 4 out of 5 stars because it's not earth shakingly profound, but it's a really enjoyable movie.
I finished watching the bizarre Singles Inferno program about Korean singles in their 20s and early 30s trapped on a presumably hot island, attempting to seek love. It was a fascinating learning adventure. The hot beachy deserted island where the singles were supposed to cavort in swimwear turned out to be visibly freezing cold, and by the end they had all given up and made a bonfire on the beach and were wearing gigantic winter coats like they were on a ski trip. Some "hot beach shots" devolved into the guys only, running into the surf with body language like it was about 55 degrees. Maybe it was one of those places where it's warm in the daytime sun and cool in the evening, let's just say.
The people also turned out not to be looking for love so much as for really nice meals in a hotel. They didn't feed them very well on the deserted island and they forced the people to cook their meals for themselves and draw their water from a distant well. But if they could pair up with some other unhappy single and pretend to be finding love, they would be taken to a hotel where they could order as much delicious food as they liked.
In short, the system was quickly gamed for treats. Will any of thes couples last? Maybe. The important thing is that we learned about dating in a different culture, and boy howdy was it different. There was simultaneously no communication and way too much highly specific communication. It would be like, I saw you look at me this one time and then from that I concluded that you wished me to have your babies, but then you made it clear that you liked this other girl, so now I don't know. Those things would be treated as normal comment. There was an enormous amount of inquiry into what the ideal type of the other person might be, and the answers were another bizarre combination of the wildly abstract and highly specific. Like you might hear that somebody liked open or sexy or sweet or positive people - okay, yeah? - but also that they needed to have a specific height, eyelid shape, and nose size???
In addition, only one person on the entire show struck me as a basically attractive or good looking person, and at least that was correct insofar as she works as a model of some kind, but inexplicably she was rejected by all of the guys, except for one, for whom she wasn't even the first choice. I can't say that I know what most guys would find attractive, but she definitely had the best physical body by some generic contemporary US standard, and was also petite, so I have no idea what the problem was. I have a vague suspicion that they felt her skin was too dark?! The relative preference for light skin was so blatantly expressed here, it was absolutely disgusting. Not to mention that the ladies were definitely doing things to their skin to make it look lighter, and they were all wearing so much makeup, like YouTuber levels of makeup. Indeed, the woman the men were all going wild for is a professional YouTuber, and I must tell you, I cannot even begin to understand why this person would have been judged more attractive than the others, especially by hetero men. Her personality was vapid to the point of being completely non-existent (okay am I answering my own question here?), and her body fat percentage was approximately 0.2, which I'm not saying is a bad thing, but it's usually not what guys seem to like. The relevant context here is that all the women except one would be considered extremely thin by Western standards. Not just thin but extremely thin. Among them this particular woman was the thinnest, and was wearing the most makeup, and was the most robotic and bland, and this was the one the men were wild for. ??? The whole thing was a great mystery.
From that part of the show I observed much and learned little, but the other thing that amazed me was the participants were forbidden to discuss either their ages or their jobs. So these two things are apparently the number one factor people would otherwise be worried about, and indeed they were very eager to find out these things about one another and clearly were using them as the main rating scale for dating desirability, along with whiteness of skin. In the same way that watching other programs like K dramas provides evidence of a beautiful and nuanced culture, this show provided evidence of much the opposite. However, put it in context: on the western version of the show they could not possibly run with the equivalent parameters, So they instead have to penalize the participants financially by reducing some sort of prize money every time they engage in illicit matings, which they are completely incapable of avoiding. You learn this in the first few minutes because I couldn't watch beyond that. So at least the singles inferno version was superior in that respect. The other fascinating thing about the show - and I have no idea whether this is on the duplicate but I doubt it - is that they have a chorus of four people whose job is just to watch the show and commentate on it. Their purpose may be to encourage you to continue watching, since maybe you're part of some simulation of a social activity if you are also watching along with this group of strangers? Or maybe it's to make you feel better about yourself for making the horrible choice of watching, since if nothing else you have managed to maintain a certain detachment from the proceedings in a manner that this bizarre chorus of onlookers has not (but of course they are paid not to). It was also strange and yet sort of interesting? Still I would not recommend it to anyone.
Rewatching 30 Rock. I used to watch this nearly daily for a good seven years. The humor as it does, then started to wear off, and I took a good five or six years off. Returning to it, I am very happy at how it holds up. Rapid fire jokes, be it in 30 Rock, The Simpsons, or Airplane / Naked Gun, seem to hold up really well. I've heard people in the last few years claim that it's actually a conservative TV show, and I don't buy it. Jack is a conservative, Liz is a liberal, sometimes Liz is swayed by Jack, sometimes Jack is swayed by Liz. That's how situation comedies work.
I would rather watch this than watch Caillou. So what does that make this?Negative 3 Stars. As an experiment I tried to telekinese some type of object to slap whoever wrote this, so if I was successful maybe they were wandering down a street and some kind of tree or shrub branch whapped them in the face suddenly, or a bird got lost and ran into them. Something. Or maybe I failed.
Katla- a moody scifi/drama series on Netflix about dead people walking out from a volcano under a glacier in remote Iceland. Slow and contemplative, but very well done.
Billions. It's a Showtime show and I don't know how we get it, maybe via payment to Amazon? This show represents the intersection of our two highly divergent tastes here. I love Taylor so much and this is about as close as I come to loving a non-man person. They have lovely eyes and expressions, but also too feminine for me so, I don't know. But that's the closest insofar as Ideal Personality. Oddly I also love Wagner and consider Wags to have an ideal and highly attractive personality. He embraces his desires without filter or shame, is brilliant, and also 1000% loyal. Of course I love him. So. I don't know. I'm a twisted soul I guess. I hate Wendy and Axe both but Wendy more. Loathe her. Live to loathe her manifestation on this show. It's a highly entertaining show. Paul Giamatti makes it genius.
Revolutionary Love, a comic K-drama vaguely mirroring the real life experiences of its star who apparently grew up as a chaebol heir. In real life he became a pop star with Super Junior, and it shows insofar as his acting is not subtle, but he is endearing and charismatic and so we root for his character. The rooting is necessary because he plays the little brother who has not taken an interest in the functional activities of his family company until recently, when he decided to become a reformer of the capitalist endeavor due to his effort to impress the main woman of the show. Unfortunately, this show is a genuine love triangle that doesn't get resolved for a long time, because our young heir has long had a responsible guy as his confidant and shadow, who is focused on the success of the company and literally takes all the beatings for this kid and gets him out of trouble over the years. And you guessed it: This guy from a normal humble background has long been enamored of our main heroine. The show was very fluffy and silly but also pleasing in its idealistic and quaint focus on the plight of the workers and such. Without offering any spoilers about how it ends, most of the show is about the efforts of the heroine and heir to liberate the workers in capitalist paradise by improving their working conditions and giving them more opportunity, while exposing the corruption and graft of various bad actors. No actual revolution is on offer here, just mild-mannered reform. An appealing subplot involves the mother of the heir, who supports our young heroes from her perch as pampered wife of the hot dad who owns the company. Refreshing to finally watch another show where the old dad is the hot one, yes, like Itaewon class. The heroine is a very cheerful, can-do sort of gal, living with the tragedy of the loss of her father. Of course, he used to work for this company that stands in need of a mild pro-capitalist reform! They drove him into an early grave! How can this be fixed in a light comedy?
Korean drama starring the main character of Crash Landing on You, who is delightful both there and here. Really good actress. In this show, she plays a mid-thirties woman who ends up dating the younger brother of her best friend who is in his mid to later 20s? I forget the exact ages, but there's a big age gap and it's clearly a big shocker in Korean society, on top of the problem that these people are friends of the family and have known each other for many years. It strikes them all as completely impossible and shocking that this relationship could have developed.
The development of the relationship, however, is truly a thing to behold. These people are absolutely charming and adorable and this is one of the few times you see a relationship develop on these that actually feels and seems like a real one, as opposed to a kind of pantomimed one or a highly stylized one full of drama and emotion. Like if somebody said this was a reality show where these two people were going to walk off into the sunset together and get married, you would absolutely believe it, except that the main actress is in fact getting married to some other actor in real life as far as I know - her co-star in Crash Landing on you.
Anyway, there are lots of delightful subplots in the show that review a range of human foibles: sexual harassment and generalized demeaning of other people in the office, nosy co-workers prying into each other's business, violently obsessive ex boyfriends, annoying AF jealous non-girlfriends who would like to be the girlfriend, parents trying to control their children's lives, parents messing up their children's lives by being unethical, people who screw up their own lives by being too paralyzed with fear to take the appropriate action, and so on. A useful laundry list of life lessons and moral insights, to go along with our main story of these adorable people who are trying to have a relationship even though it is taboo for older women to date younger men and people are freaking the hell out. They also touch on usual issues you would expect a couple with different ages to have: the woman being a lot more independent and intimidating than the guy is accustomed to dealing with so far in his life, the woman afraid that she has no hope of competing with all the other beautiful girls who want to date her boyfriend - and are younger than him and not going to create inherent problems for him in the process. Resistant parents and siblings. Co-workers making remarks. All this sort of thing comes up and they deal with it in a light touch.
Besides the completely swoon worthy, beautiful relationship of our main characters, the other thing I like about the show is that it's very realistic and not one of those cheesy set piece dramas. All of the characters and problems are familiar from life. Even the situations that seem most exaggerated and extreme, like the woman's obsessive ex, or the boorish men in the office, are actually tame in comparison to real-life situations of that nature. For me personally the show also resonates because I was very close to my parents and had been staying with them when I started dating my now-husband. I used to sneak back into the house the way that she does, feeling the same absurdity of being a 27-year-old who didn't want to disclose her dating situation despite clearly being an independent adult. And then one morning I remember sleeping through the alarm just like she did, and arriving home to discover my dad coming out to get the paper at about 4:45 a.m., very much like a scene in this show. It was so cringe, exactly like this scene, except worse for me because we just looked at each other, acknowledged in total silence the obvious facts, and then went on with our morning. Luckily the whole "requesting permission to marry" conversation transpired not long after that, so I was spared a certain amount of grief because I think it was assumed that engaged persons were going to be staying together, in these reckless modern times! My experience growing up with my parents seems a lot more like what some of these cultural experiences of growing up with Korean parents are like, rather than what many of my friends experienced with their parents. There is kind of a generational difference: most of my friends have boomer generation parents and as a rough generalization, they took a different approach to parenting from my own older parents, who are a lot more traditional. Sometimes my husband and kids don't understand that even today and I have to impress upon them there are certain things Grandma and Grandpa are not going to understand or appreciate even when explained! And I do prefer my parents the way they are, so... Watching this show was a reminder.
Not done with the show yet but have reached a part where inevitably they have to start telling people about their relationship. I appreciate that there was no cutesy reveal by accident - various people come to learn about it for good reasons, and each has their own unique reaction. Overall the pace of events is slow but it's very touching and a real tour de force of acting, from all parties. Love it.
