Rich Man Poor Woman - End, Crazy Stupid Love

Well Rich Man Poor Woman ended up being a dud as far as I'm concerned. Despite the fact that I love Oguri Shun, it just didn't give me enough to root for the couple, nor be happy with the choices the leads made throughout the show. I get forgiving your best friend and ex partner for betraying you but it was really stupid to take him back to the company. Anyway this was not a good purchase but I would have regretted it if I missed it since everyone seems to love it.

Crazy Stupid Love - Ryan Gosling is a good looking man and a good actor too (yes that is all I'll say about this film)

Meanwhile the Unconsoled is still in that similar state of things (dream/science fiction) but I'm enjoying it despite it now being my least favorite Kazuo Ishiguro novel - and it being least favorite of his, means I like it a lot better than many many other non Ishiguro novels out there-.

 

Rich Man, Poor Woman Eps.1-3

Yes thank God the three dramas I have ordered have safely arrived and I have already started Rich Man, Poor Woman. This show is loved by everyone I read online and I really like Oguri Shun and I'm enjoying the drama but the lead lady has such fat lips (not like Angelina Jolie's, a different fatness, these look like meatballs) that I'm constantly distracted in a bad way whenever she is on screen which is all the time since she is the lead lady. Well I'll have to get over that since the drama is really nice.

There is the damaged Genius billionaire dot com inventor etc. with a shady not genius but cunning partner. Our heroine is a plucky girl who graduated from one of the best universities in Tokyo but cannot find a job since she is very timid. Our leads meet and they complete each other. He gives her confidence she helps with his memory (he has a memory deficiency) and makes him more human by giving tips on being nice to people.

But she came on his radar only because she faked her name. The first time these two met was in a small seaside town (he doesn't remember it because of his memory illness) and he was looking for his mother - whose name our heroine used to get is attention when they first met-, our girl already knows the mother but she explains that she doesn't want to meet her son - it is weird but she just doesn't, one of the reasons for that, only one of the reasons mind you, is that the son will ask why she left him- anyway she makes our girl promise not to tell anyone. At the initial questions she keeps her promise but as the young man stays at her family's small inn, she gets to know and like him better so she begs the mother to tell her son but she cannot find her and then she decides to tell him anyway but when she returned to the inn he had already left.
So she uses the name of the mother -one of the few names our hero remembers- to get his attention, and it worked. And now she wants to tell him the truth (his sly partner already knows and wants her to keep the charade up) and gets drunk but both of them are in such a good mood which turned out to be like an impromptu date or something, she just keeps on delaying the confession and then accidentally slips it out - but of course not the whole story, just the bad bits- and he says that he never wants to see her face again :(

The Unconsoled is getting better now as the characters and situations change. The dream like atmosphere continues but I like the characters I'm reading now better than the ones the day before.

Kahaani

Kahaani is really very good. Despite the fact that I have guessed what the twist would be right away (side effect of watching too many films), I enjoyed this film very very much. The cinematography, the music, the acting were all top notch. Parambrata Chatterjee is someone whose work I'll seek in the future. Not only he is good looking but he also very agreeable on screen presence.

I'll admit to not warming up to Vidya Balan. But in this film I was under her spell. It is a great part and she did it full justice.

All in all this film is one that I'll view more than once since a well told story is more than its twist.

Meanwhile The Unconsoled is slowly entering into the boring land. It is not the prose (which I love) but the chracters and their trials. The dreamlike state of the story doesn't allow me to be interested in either character. I hope this will change since I actually am falling asleep reading this.

Aaiya

Aaiya is a very entertaining film. There is no way of knowing whether it is my voluntary drought of Indian films or whether these films genuinely appeal to me since now it is two out of two- yay! It is not a secret that I love Rani Mukherjee and she is so good in this one. From the dancing, to the mugging, the acting and generally being cute she lights the screen up. Prithviraj is not my type of handsome man but I had no trouble believing in Rani's crush on him and it is kind of funny that even at the role reversals stalking is a type of courtship as far as the Indian films go.

The things I didn't like were Rani's family, they were over the top, especially the grandma. This is not the fault of the actors though since I think they were directed this way. Other than that I really enjoyed this film and it also visually appealed to me.

I can recommend this one without any problems but know this that it is the type of film you need to be at the same wavelength to enjoy. And lucky for me, I was.

Meanwhile The Unconsoled gets more interesting with each page. I think Mr.Ryder is a type of person who absorbs general depression and unhappiness - through an art medium, in his case it is a piano. But the way he goes from person to person with leaving the previous person just there makes the whole thing a bit dreamlike coutering the science fiction angle. But eitherway the prose is so good that to be still in the beginning of it makes me happy since it won't end so soon.

Players

Well thank God my films have arrived safely and I have decided to give Players a try first.

Being ready for yet another dud film starring Abhi (Dus levels of suckage) I have found myself entertained throughout although probably not the way the film makers intended. It felt like a 70s film (nothing to do with Vinod Khanna guest starring in it) and everyone, and I mean everyone's performances were so bad that I actually found myself laughing out loud. Seriously star kids (and Bipasha), seriously. This one is so bad that it ended up being good - for me. Two things to note:

* Even in this cast Bobby Deol stood out. He was hillarious really. It is quite an accomplishment to act worse than Sonam, NNM, Abhi and Bipasha combined but the guy did.
* Abhi, why do I love you? In this film your acting was on par with everyone else (except Bobby that is), you don't look good, you can't dance. Why? But I do, love you. The heart wants what it wants....- is my consolation for this unexplained and seemingly permanent crush.

The Unconsoled is turning out to be very weird. It went into Murakami territory for a while but now it exceeded that and I'm getting curious. Will this turn out to be science fiction like Never Let Me Go? or is there something wrong with our hero Mr.Ryder?

Scent of a Woman -End, Nights in Rodanthe-End, The Unconsoled

Scent of a Woman was very good to the last drop. I cried and cried and cried but it was good kind of crying (as opposed to say Grave of the Fireflies, heartwrenching sort of crying). Kim Sun Ah and Lee Dong Wuk chemistry was off the charts, I loved the soundtrack and tango references. All in all I'm very happy with this purchase (I'm so happy that so far three out of three of my purchases are good ones).

Nights in Rodanthe was very good too. It is a short novel (almost a novella) and the film was a very good adaptation.

And now I'm giving myself a treat for all the crying (yeah unsuprisingly I have cried reading Nights in Rodanthe too) I have started Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled and right away my heart swells with the thankfully familiar pleasure of reading great prose.

I'm thinking of taking a break from dramas and East Asian films and watch Indian films. This is of course because I have taken the plunge and gave an order last week and they all arrived today, thank God :)

Scent of Woman Eps 4-6, Strip Jack - End, Nights in Rodanthe

Scent of a Woman is wonderful, the best thing is the chemistry between the leads, simply insane.

In the last 3 episodes, Rich Bitch got even worse, our leads are totally into eachother but she tries to supress it since she thinks he is out of her league not to mention he is engaged to her nemesis and he is in complete denial so far but his actions prove that he is in love.

Meanwhile Cute Doc, as we find out is also in love with our female lead.

Strip Jack ended brilliantly. I love Ian Rankin.

To go at a different direction I have started reading Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks. I love the film and the book is so far decent.

Scent of a Woman Eps 1-3

Last night I gave in and started yet another Korean drama, this time a weepie (but a warm and hopeful one, you know terminal disease, importance of living your life etc.) I liked it a lot since I do like the male lead Lee Dong Wuk who is realy georgeous but not in that otherwordly way (you know like Song Seung Hun or So Ji Sob) and he is a decent actor too. The female lead is Kim Sun Ah who is very likable and will be in my good books for she is the lead of one of my favorite Korean Dramas, My Name is Kim Sam Soon. And there is the added bonus of Om Ki Jun, who came into my radar with the Worlds Within.

Yeon Jae is our lead who is working at a travel agency doing everything her colleagues don't want to do themselves. She was a contractor before and became permanent after much work and since she is 34 and unmarried(!) it is not easy for her to get another job so she sucks the insults etc. and tries to save money by being really prudent. Even when she is accused of stealing a ring of one of the agency VIP clients - for whom she had been the tour guide- she tries to keep her job above anything else. But she finds out by accident that she has a malignant tumour and she is cancer and she has only about six months to live. The doctor is her elementary school friend but he is one of the cold doctors who does not get friendly with the patients.


Well first of all she stops to receive insults and stands up for herself. She resigns in style and slaps the rich bitch who slapped her without even checking whether she is guilty or not.

Our male lead meanwhile lives life as if he is dead. He is not interested in anything and agrees to be streered through life by his father (who owns the above mentioned travel agency) and is engaged to be married to Rich Bitch. He is neither happy nor content but even that doesn't matter.

After Yeon Jae buys fancy clothes and gets herself an expensive makeover, she flies to Okinawa and decides to enjoy her trip, she sighs that it would have been much better if she has a man but she decides not to dwell on it.

And there our couple meets cute when he mistakes him for his tour guide (he is on research for more tours) and she lets him be mistaken since she has a huge crush on him. And eventually our ice man dissolves and starts to enjoy himself. He even laughs - and I love that one of his teeth is slightly crooked-. But of course Rich Bitch (whose ex bf was blackmailing her father with some photos he had of her and she has just found out what a bastard he actually was, since he never really loved her) decides to be nicer to her future husband (who is distant but not unwilling to get along) and visits Okinawa to join him in his business trip. She comes across our couple throughly enjoying themselves laughing and joking after a great day and ruins their moment, especially after realising that Yeon Jae is the employee who slapped her back - of course after resigning her job- getting enough of her insults.

Well also Strip Jack gets even better as I read. Ian Rankin, great writer.

No Strings Attached, Kill Bill Volume 1 & 2, Strip Jack, Crimson - End

Well Crimson ended on a predictably feminist note. I'm not really complaining it is just that in the end it is a bland book.

I have started Strip Jack by Ian Rankin it is a not so early Rebus and I'm loving it.

I have finally managed to watch the rom-com starring Natalie Portman (for some reason I like her a lot) titled No Strings Attached and it was not very good.

I have watched two volumes of Kill Bill and now both films are really very very good and no matter how many times I have watched them (more than normal apparently) I still love the rewatch just as well. Quentin Tarantino is a filmmaker to my own heart. Way to go.

The Yellow Sea

The Yellow Sea  I don't know what made me decide on this one last night. I was not in a particularly good mood and pretty much guessed this film was going to be depressive. It is a good action film though so I thought I'd give it a go. Loved it but in the end it is a film you only want to watch once (something similar to I Saw the Devil in that regard).
Ha Jung Woo is a handsome man and a good actor too. Well despite the fact that he had to deglam for the role, he still was so good looking that I wished some other person would act the part, someone not so good looking, maybe Shin Ha Kyun would have been better (apart from the georgeousness, it was a flawless performance). Kim Yon Suk on the other hand was excellent. It is a good, showy part and he made the most of it without going overboard. I compared his performance to Choi Min Sik's - since some scenes brought to mind the famous corridor hammer fight, although Park Chan Wook is a much more style conscious visually than Na Hong Jin - and I have to say I like this ajusshi better than Choi (but I never really liked him, maybe because the first film I watched him in was Shiri and the next Failan both unlikable characters).

Anyway the action was really good, gripping so much so that I have found I was gripping my duvet throughout a chase scene which started of at a dock, followed by inside a ship, than sea, than TIR then car. Now I really liked the directors previous film The Chaser and I knew not to expect a happy ending from this, although it still hurt in the end.

All in all this is recommended if you like action, want to see what's going on when you are watching action, prefer realistic looking action to stylised version (I like both) and don't mind blood and nudity.

Rooftop Prince - End

I couldn't hold myself and watched the last episodes of Rooftop Prince (and a little of the special features) last night. The last two episodes I was in tears and it ended on a beautiful note.Logically it didn't make any sense but it was fun and the last two episodes made me realise that I cared about some of the characters more than I thought I was. This is a win :)

Crimson is going good. It is not a great book and it especially feels thin in comparison with Dark Places but I think it was just what I needed. Rich romance writer and her three grandaughters and her considerable inheritence. The book is now telling me how Elinor (Grandma) has become what she is now, and I do like its hillariously unsubtle feminist messages but it is just not very good prose. At least the story is interesting enough to make me want to read more.

Rooftop Prince Eps.15, Dark Places - End, Crimson

Rooftop Prince really hooked me. It feels like the first time I have watched dramas. I just want to watch and watch and watch. This is extra amazing because I don't even like either lead that much Park Yoo Chun was nice in Sukyunkunkhwan Scandal but I was much more impressed with Yoo Ah In and Song Jun Ki much more than I was with him. And Han Ji Min was the unlucky female lead of Cain and Abel one of the few K-Dramas I really didn't like but only watched because I paid for it and So Ji Sub is georgeous. Well I liked her much better in Capital Scandal and here I love her to bits. First of all she is "angel" archtype - my favorite- and she looks her age but pretty, nothing seems artificial and I hate the baddies who want to harm her.

All in all this is not a good drama, full of cartoonish side baddies, logic leaps but it is also very funny and emotional. I hope it doesn't go bad on me in these last 5 episodes.

Meanwhile Dark Places was such a treat. Seriously this was one good book and I can't wait to read Gone Girl now.
As usual after all the darkness I need something lighter and picked up a book by a writer called Shirley Conran. The book is titled Crimson. I remember reading a novel by this lady where women got trapped at a desert island or something but I also remember I didn't really appeal to me. I liked the TV series Lace (adaptation of one other novel she wrote) well at least the first episodes since they are the only ones I can remember. The novel started as usual and I'm interested so far - but of course it is nowhere as good as either Gillian Flynn or Barbara Cartland. 

Rooftop Prince Eps 5-6, Dark Places

Rooftop Prince continues to be entertaining when I watch it but I'm not missing it during the day or anything like that. In fact I was so close to reading and finishing Dark Places last night but I was afraid of bad dreams (and Thank God they stopped last night and I don't even remember what I dreamt about but it was not I guess). The novel is very powerful and the language is suprisingly great for a novel of this kind. Things get worse by each page and the construction of the novel allows me to discover new things with each page. Great use of flashback here.


Rooftop on the other hand is sweet and the angst is truly serious (being put in a truck and when you shout for your stepsister - par alliance, no blood relation - she just leaves you in the truck and turns away. The truck has an accident and you lose your memory, becoming an orphan 9 nine year old. Someone from U.S.A adopts you and you only find your father (who was also looking for you all these years) 3 days after he passed away. Your stepmom is not a bad person but she of course would prefer her blood daughter over you and that stepsis is an evil bitch.

You start to have crush on a Joseon Crown Prince who time travelled from yore and he is being very kind to you and you have good chemistry and easy friendship but he used to be married to the evil stepsis 300 years ago and he is still in love with her.

And when your stepmom is run over by car driven by stepsis' evil bf (the cousin of the chaebol who is  Crown Prince's reincarnation but was killed by the said Evil Cousin) and you see your Stepsis but instead of coming to help or check whether her mother is OK she just turns away and leaves (because she and evil Cousin are having an affair and they plan on getting married, but evil Cousin thinks her mother is a professor in UK while in reality she sells fish at a wet market). And this trauma brings back your lost memory and the enormity of evil that has been done to you and when you confront Evil Stepsis, she is even more arrogant and shameless then you realise that your Crown Prince gave the bracelet you said every woman would like to your evil Stepsis (btw no one knows their relation, Evil Stepsis never revealed it).

Well if this is not real angst.... On the other hand I like the fish out of water parts of the show and there is a certain bubbly feel to it, like you know "everything is going to be alright" if this show turns 180 degrees on me I'll not be happy.

And still in comparison to Dark Places this one is a happy show. 

Rooftop Prince Eps 3-4, Dark Places

Rooftop Prince continues to be adorable and fluffy with some low degree angst (the issues are high degree but the angst is mixed since I have not yet bonded with any of these characters).

Dark Places on the other hand continues to own me with each page. Libby is now beginning to think that maybe her brother Ben is after all innocent like so many people around her are saying. There is also the money issue but I think she is beginning to get into this and would go on even without the money. Of course with each chapter more is revealed such as Ben's unfortunate dating with a 5th grader (the 5th grader is very mature and sort of leads him on but of course this is no excuse) and his mother getting an official complaint (also she hears it from Aunt Diane who visits the morning of the murders). Meanwhile Ben goes out of school in a very crappy mood (not only he was caught looking into a cupboard in the locker room he was cleaning but also 5th grade teacher caught him sneaking around kid's cupboards in their classroom. So he goes to a hangout where he has been before with his nasty girlfriend where he met the satanist guy. The people who hang there are 20 and older and he is just 15. So he talks about Satan etc. to impress them and get free beer and joints. Furthermore before going to school he had an accident with his bike and he has a bleeding head wound (which is no doubt clouding his judgement). Trey the satanist takes him out of there to hang at the nasty girlfriend's house (her parents are never around) to wait for her (she is out of town in the morning). I'm scared for Ben now and what would those weirdos do...

Rooftop Prince Eps 1-2, Dark Places

Last night I felt the need of some sort of fluff because

I have started to read Dark Places and love Gillian Flynn even more with this second book. It is even better than the first one. I wish I had bought Gone Girl (but maybe it is better to wait until it comes in paperback). Anyway this book's lead is a woman who survived a family massacre when she was 7 years old. She was hiding in her mother's bedroom while her mother and two sisters were brutally murdered. She has hear his 15 year old brother and all the time thinks he is the one who committed the murders (he is a teen who is into heavy metal and he is friends with the wrong people). She has lived using the donations until she is in her early 30s but now the money is finished and she is not emotionally equipped to have a job. This is not a nice person. She steals, she lies, she is angry and scared all the time (well, understandably). She agrees to attend as a VIP guest to a convention of true crime enthusiasts and she realises that there are people out there who think that her brother Ben is innocent of the crime. They argued with her she didn't actually see what was going on and that there was another shoe print at the scene. At the time people think it was a satanic cult murder since brother Ben liked to listen to Slayer and there were symbols etc. drawn on the walls using blood. So she starts to think about the whole thing and remembers that she has heard other voices along with her brother's that night. And the reader knows that the brother is hanging out with shady characters (a bored rich girl and her distant relative who likes to put Ben down at every opportunity). So because of economical reasons - she correctly thinks that people will pay her to talk to various related people in the case and she also thinks that she can sell her family's stuff as mementos (her Aunt took them and she kept them unopened all these years.

So it is obvious that I needed some sort of fluff and I have decided to watch Rooftop Prince. I don't really care for either lead (although I did like Han Ji Min in Capital Scandal) but I have watched a promo for it and the fish out of water scenes were very funny. All of these are in Eps.2 and they were really hillarious. Joseon Crown Prince and his three subjects in today's Seoul got loud laughs out of me but my dreams are still not very happy (this is the third night I'm having truly weird dreams, maybe I shouldn't have started Dark Places - heh).

Whispering Corridors, The Black Panther - End

Whispering Corridors is a film I have been meaning to watch for a long time. I simply couldn't find a decent copy. Well in the end I'm content. It is not a great horror film but it is decent enough and I liked the way that real life was more horrible than the scary horror. A teen has to deal with lots of stuff and I think they were decently presented.

I have finished The Black Panther this morning and it ended on a great note. WTG Barbara Cartland.

Boys Over Flowers - End, The Front Line

Boys Over Flowers is finally finished and it is not a good drama but one that is entertaining to watch. Mostly I had a good time for 25 episodes and even though Taiwanese version is still my fave, Lee Min Ho made the best Doumyoji/Jun Pyo. I know can understand why so many people like him - sadly I was introduced to him in City Hunter in which he is unimpressive (and I'm being kind here). I bet I would have felt more charitable if I had seen BOF first. He even surpasses Jerry Yan and his crazy eyes (which is quite a feat).

The Front Line is a war film and I'm not very fond of those but I liked this one. Good acting, good production and an intersting story and some of the parts reminded me of JSA (a film I love) which turned out to be not as suprising since it is the same writer. There was only one weak performance and it was a crucial character acted by Go Su. And sadly he is the most good looking of the bunch but it didn't mean anything since he couldn't act half as well as the others. Everyone else were very good though.

The Black Panther keeps being good.