When Harry Met Sally

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When Harry Met Sally it has been so long since I have watched it and it is still very good (yeah I shed tears in the end)  

American Crime Story: The Assasination of Gianni Versace

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American Crime Story The Assasination of Gianni Versace turned out to be more to my liking than the O.J Simpson one. The characters were more interesting, the acting better and all in all it was a good show from the beginning to the end. The way they told the story backwards worked for me and make no mistake this is actually the story of the killer, not Versace. Darren Criss did very well with the role.


Also I really liked South Beach and Ocean Drive and it felt good to watch these places. 

Kingdom

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Kingdom turned out to be a great show. I'm not a fan of zombie genre (did not even watch The Walking Dead) so normally I wouldn't watch this but Joo Ji Hyun is one of the actors whose every work I try to watch. I like his facial features so much that I enjoy looking at them. Fortunately he choosed good projects and this one turned out to be very good indeed. It is zombie horror but there is political intrigue, light humour, mystery and action. There are 6 episodes on Netflix and I thought the story would end but not only it didn't end but the last episode ended on such a cliffhanger that I felt lost. Eagerly awaiting the rest of the story. 

Smokin' Aces

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Smokin' Aces is a film that turned out to be a miss. But I kinda liked it better for it. They had a decent story, a team of talented actors/stars and they came up with this mediocre effor which is not even funny. But I liked it for trying and watched till the predictable end.

The internet at home is very slow and keeps getting interrupted. So these are some of the films I have downloaded ages ago. I was not able to finish one of them (a French horror comedy)

The Lathe of Heaven

The Lathe of Heaven turned out to be interesting and well written but science fiction is just not my genre. The reader was decent except while reading the female part. 

Touch of Evil

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Touch of Evil I wanted to watch because I do not remember watching any film directed by Orson Wells (I know, I know) and this one did not endear me to his work. Firstly some of the Mexican parts were played by caucasian actors -most notably the lead Charlton Heston-. This was kind of distracting. I liked Janet Leigh and amazing Marlene Dietrich and the suspense filled first shots but that's about it.

Funny thing I noticed while looking this up on imdb. This film's Turkish title is Bitmeyen Balayı - translated as The Honeymoon That Doesn't End. Seriously. 

The Perfect Nanny

The Perfect Nanny ended up being a very good novel. Not a mystery but exploration of characters and their circumstances to the upcoming tragedy which is presented to us right in the beginning so there is no mystery regarding what happened and who has done it. We slowly get to know how and try to figure out why. The novel did not really agree with me but this is a problem of reader/writer connection rather than the style of prose. I'm willing to read more from this author actually. 

Baazaar

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Baazaar is a failry faithful remake of Wall Street (starring Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas) and I liked watching it but it didn't leave much of an impression. I think Saif Ali Khan is a better actor than I thought him to be (despite Omkara in which he was excellent, playing against type, I still did not really liked him, a waste on my part). 

Close

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Close showed up on Saturday and I watched it Sunday morning. The main reason is that I liked Noomi Rapace. I like her facial features and it doesn't matter which type of film she is in, I usually watch it. This time it is an action film and Noomi is a former soldier turned elite bodyguard. Some of the fight scenes were very good but some of them were unintentionally bad (underwater scene) all in all I ended up liking it more than I would have if any one else starred in it but I recommend if you like action and female centric films. 

BuyBust

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BuyBust was added to my watch list right away but then forgotten until I saw a review of it on Vern's site. He liked it very much so I gave it a try and I liked it too though not as much as he did. Some parts were really good and it was so good to watch a protagonist (a Final Girl if you will) kick ass and survive. 

Eega (Watched as Makhi)

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Eega (I watched this as Makhi) this one is apparently a Telugu film but the Netflix copy I watched was dubbed in Indian. I have heard about this but never felt in the mood. I decided to give it a try and as usual in Indian films (south or Bollywood doesn't matter) I was sucked into it right away. This film was unusual in that the lead character is the villain of the piece. The other two leads are our protagonists but the villain carries the heavy load of both acting and plot. This villain kills our main protagonist because he is likes and liked by the girl the villain is into. But lo and behold, the guy is reborn as a fly. And he decides to protect the girl he loves from the despicable villain. It is amazing that both villain and the love interest easily accept the reborn part and I loved the fact that she still loves hanging out with the guy in a fly disguised. The parts were the fly works out to become stronger were intentionally hillarious. And he manages to disrupt the villain's life and carry out his threads. It is a hillarious film with decent computer graphics. 

Revenger

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Revenger sounded very much like my thing and it was kind of. But I have been spoiled by The Raid and ever since can not really like fight scenes as much. The ones in Revenger are not bad, you can see all of the scenes and there is one where the camere is place from the attacker's point of view that is very realistic. But the whole thing felt a bit dry. S. Korean's are usually very good in melodrama but there was not much of it here. I liked the lead guy (yeah strong silent type) and was totally rooting for him. 

Beautiful Gong Shim

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Beautiful Gong Shim was there on Netflix winking at me but I read the plot and was not interested until I saw this recapped at dramabeans.com so I decided to give it a go and I loved the first 15 episodes of it. The last five were not as good but still entertaining. This drama actually is one of the few that made me laugh out loud while watching and more than once in each episodes. I love the female lead and the male lead both (and this is the first time I remember watching them in a drama). I started watching another one starring the same guy Min Nam Kong since I liked the guys voice - yeah I'm a sucker for that-. But that drama is not a rom-com. Maybe I'll continue to that I don't know.

Anyway I'll actually leave a thank you note for the recapper on dramabeans for this. I smile even as I remember some of the scenes. 

A Place Called Freedom

A Place Called Freedom yeah I purchased it both on audible and a second hand book shop on line. And this is not the first time it happened.

Anyway I liked reading and listening to the novel. The novel itself while not in The Pillars of The Earth calibre, is still entertaining and felt more like a romance/action novel than historical fiction. 

Moon Embracing The Sun

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Moon Embracing The Sun well as I have finished the contemporary She Was Pretty and enjoyed it a lot, I felt ready for this AU Sageuk everyone loved back then. Well I was not really that eager to watch it since I don't particuarly care for the cast but I love old Korean costumes and more importantly melodrama so I started this one. The childhood sections were kind of alright but it got sillier and sillier towards the end. Yeah I grumble about it but I have finished the 2 episodes and cried a lot, especially during the final episode. Man that Kim Soo Hyun is not my type but the man can cry. I have seen three different teardrops falling from one eye. And despite not really a fan, I like Han Ga In ever since Architecture 101, I love that film and watched more than once. She has a calm, unhurried air around her I like a lot to watch (maybe because I'm a fusser who has to do everything right now). I don't even want to list all the ridiculousness, seriously, this would have been a guilty pleasure but I don't feel guilty, I just feel irritated. 

Along With The Gods: The Last 49 Days

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Along With The Gods: The Last 49 Days is a film I didn't know existed. I actually watched and loved Along With The Gods: The Two Worlds but had no idea that it is a two parter. I dived right in and it took me only a few seconds to recall the first one easily. I liked this one just as much. Great cast, good effects and a sad melodramatic story with little childish quirks. Tailor made for me and tears flowed like rivers. 

Stories of Your Life and Others

Stories of Your Life and Others ok this is different from my usual reading choices and took a lot of time to finish because I liked the writing but not interested in some of the stories. My favorites are Liking What You See: A Documentary and Hell Is The Absence of God. I loved the notes on the stories in the end too about how he thought of them. I think this is a very talented and smart writer but the genre in which he writes is not one of my favorites. 

The Audible version is ok.

She Was Pretty

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She Was Pretty turned out to be a nice rom com with less angst more comedy (still I cried a lot but it was due to upcoming period rather than the melo level of the show) I actually laughed out loud during some of the scenes. I also liked it a bit extra because her hair during most of the show looks a lot like mine (curly and frizzy). Anyway I like the male leads and loved the frienship dynamic and the lead character is so adorable that I actually enjoyed watching her being blissfully happy and successfull throughtout the last episode (ooopppsss spoiler!) 

Kill Creek

Kill Creek interested me because I liked the plot and it ended up being very nice but not really scary and it didn't have much of an impact. I recommend getting the audible version for this since the reader Bernard Setaro Clark did such a good job that I think I liked the novel better for it. 

The Greatest Love

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The Greatest Love aaaand just as I was coming down from the heights of Six Flying Dragons, I have found that Netflix added one of my favortie Korean dramas. The Greatest Love has a wonderful script where we see how dangerous it is (to people on the receiving end) to malign someone on line just because they are not very likable to us. While I don't send posts on line saying bad things about celebrities I don't like, I'm guilty of not liking some of them without any reason. Of course we are only presented with their entertainment persona and they may be very different in real life but I'm talking about the entertainment persona they presented to viewers. Gong Hyo Jin for instance is one of them. She is a decent actress and a definite fashionista, one of the people who can wear anything and make it look good. But there is something about her that does not appeal to me. So in this drama she is a woman who is the target of dislike from viewers, unluckily became the victim of baseless slanders etc. in real life she is a very nice, smart, grounded woman who is the head of the family and looks after his brother, his brother's son and their father, going to humiliating gigs to make money in the industry she began to work when she was barely out of her teens. And there is the male star, the darling of the country, very successful, smart and entertainment savy but he is also emotionally stunted and overly tired of the fakeness and back stabbing of an environment in which he is one of the masters. So they meet cute and he falls in love with her - unrequited for some time- . I just love these two, the way he likes her honesty, humility and kindness and they way she sees beyond his tantrums and childish behaviour, the man who is not perfect maybe but the man who loves her no matter what.

This is I think the third time I watch this drama and still love it. It just doesn't get old. 

Six Flying Dragons

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Six Flying Dragons turned out to be awesome. I have inhaled the 50 episodes and felt great that I was able to watch it at a legal platform with good subtitles.

The show tells a slice of Korean history, the time in which Joseon is founded (instead of Goryo) and its first few kings. This is a historical drama but with some action (surprisingly violent) and a smidgen or romance. It is mostly show to where the ideals lead depending on the actions of the owner of the ideals. The six dragons in the title is some of the main and side characters of the show. But the two real main characters are the ones in the above photo. One is Jeon Do Jeon (the architect of Joseon) and the other is Yi Bang Won (its third king??) acted by Kim Myung Min and Yoo Ah In respectively. This is amazing since I love both. They are among my favorite South Korean actors. Both are very talented and have a knack of acting just how the project requires. They are also very pleasing to my eye.

The other characters are a general, later the first King of Joseon, two warriors and a spy. Well of course there are many other spies, secret organisations, various types of scholars and warriors. The most interesting for me in this show is how out antagonist becomes one after being a protagonist for the majority of the show. (A similar thing happened at the only good Turkish show about Ottoman times "Soleiman The Magnificient").

There is very little romance and the main characters are driven by their ideals and political desires. A character whose death during the last few episodes had a wife and son that were never mentioned and I only know about them since I saw them at his funeral.

The women are given good roles as spies and warriors. They are smart, capable and driven even more than the men. Unfortunately they don't have enough screen time but still I liked it that they are presented like that even when they are in romantic scenes. They don't wait to be rescued, they rescue themselves.

There was a big glaring casting mishap and it is this guy

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Byun Yo Han has a good on screen presence, very likable and I loved his character in Mr. Sunshine. However (or "Hauna" as they say in Korean sageuks) He just was not on par with the rest of the cast in this one. He just was not believable as the best swordsman. His acting skills were behind the rest of the cast and he is physically tinier. He has to stand on higher ground when talking to his love interest (tragic story that one and got many tears from me). At one very crucial scene he couldn't produce tears to save his life and it kind of jarred. He was better cast in Mr. Sunshine where he is not the warrior but the scholar and his range has widened a bit.

The main female lead is Shin Se Kyung, an actress I don't really like (ever since I have seen it in A Tree with Secret Roots??) but she was very good here. Despite not really caring for her, I appreciated that she was A LOT better actingwise than the first drama I have seen her in.

And now Yoo Ah In, for I feel like writing about him. Firstly I love the way he looks, he is not conventionally handsome I suppose (probably had a nose job too) but his looks are very very pleasing to my eye and more often than not I have found myself sighing at how handsome he looks. Furthermore he is a naturally talented actor who can act the way the project requires. This historical drama called for exagarration at some scenes, some melo and grander reactions and he supplied them all. I have watched him in a couple of episodes at an art drama called The Secret Affair (hope no intimate scenes in this one and it was really boring so I dnf'ed pretty early despite Yoo Ah In) his acting is subtle and minimal. I loved him in Veteran as the despicable villain. Also I think I have a fondness for actors with different eyelids (Song Kang Ho, Cha Seung Won, Yoo Ah In).