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.