lesbiassparrow

I've been slowly catching up on the Korean version. Hmmmn. I'm not sure: some things I quite like about it - they've certainly got the best Domyouji incarnation (and he can do intimidating plus besotted plus quite bonkers which is a hard combo) but... I really find the more I watch the less I like the girl playing Jandi. Admittedly, she is struggling against the world's most unflattering bowl hair cut, a hair cut no human being should be forced to wear, but, still, that can't be what's impeding her acting. The Japanese version's Makino had a spark that appealed as much as how very cute the actress was, Barbie Hsu as Shan Cai in Meteor Garden was both charismatic and had a will of iron that never wavered, but Jandi is just okay. She's better when they're not making the actress mug for the camera but she still comes across as flat a lot of the time.

I'm up to episode 11 and I am delighted that we have finally a (sort of) return of the Giant Hair. Wife is also still crazy and puppy hating and so deliciously evil that she is running neck and neck with Crazy Eyes from Stairway to Heaven for sheer entertainingness.

( Cut for spoilers for a show you will probably never watch. And pictures of Giant Hair )

I am quite excited by the sheer number of WTF doramas I have the opportunity to watch: the one about the man stalked by deer and, of course, RH+, that excellent show about gay, teenage vampires who fight crime and other vampires with silverware.

I watch a lot of rubbish. A lot of rubbish. But sometimes I find* a show so bad that it needs a post with pictures to share the glorious awfulness of it all. Here I bring you RH+ a story of gay teenage vampires who fight crime in modern Japan. And are watched over by a really creepy older vampire who likes to do a lot of wrong touching. And there is (as an added bonus) cross dressing as school girls.

No, there is no lower that my viewing can go. I am a bit impressed by that.

( Come on: you know you want to click. )

*I forgot: credit must be given where credit is due! I would never have found this wonder of modern television without calixa. I'm blaming her for all of this.

So. That was about the best thing ever. And it ended about as well as you can expect a series about a bunch of freedom fighters struggling against a colonial power to. Especially when that colonial power doesn't leave until 1945. But there was one scene which just ripped my heart out, threw it up in the air, and then did a little dance on it with spiked heels.

Naturally to reduce my trauma I felt I needed to post pictures.

( Picspam of lovely people fighting for Korea's freedom behind cut. Also spoilers )

ETA: I finally received Last of the Mohicans and am watching it but, um, I am a bit shocked by the scene in the fort between Daniel Day Lewis and the Colonel's daughter. You know what I am talking about. Zip is also a bit strange in that you never really know what you are going to get. They've gone from Babylon 5 to Veronica Mars (and god knows when I will get another Young Riders DVD).

( Last of the Mohicans comments. )

This will, I promise, be the end of my moaning about this kdrama. The strange thing is that I can see that this has a lot of good bits and if I did not by now loathe the hero so much (not to mention Hee-jin, the Secondary Female Lead) I think I would find it a lot better at the end. As it is, I just think he's a complete jerk and completely self-absorbed. And I still want him eaten by bears. Big, angry bears.

But most of all I hate Hee-jin. I especially hated it when we got the big reveal that her current illness was...anorexia. Look, I don't mean to say that that's not a serious illness but this being used to rouse up my sympathy for her tragic circumstances when she looks perfectly healthy and seems to be doing alright for herself what with Daniel Henney hanging around her all the time like a lost puppy who has just smelt bacon. Also, I don't think that much of the actress. She's only (IMO) got three facial expressions - all of which I am supposed to find endearing - and I already got bored of them in 'What Planet Are You From.' And I know dorama science is not exactly science of this world* but do they normally do cat scans and head x-rays when they bring you into a hospital with anorexia? It seems a bit of overkill to me and I would think they'd be worried about other bits of your body first.

ETA: I should say that what I do love is Sam-soon's family. Her sister and her mother are quite smashing especially when they are beating people who have done Sam-soon wrong about the head. Sometimes they beat other people too and that is almost as entertaining, though I do like the bits where they hit Sam shik the most. I would probably have liked this show if after episode 7 or so all it had was various members of the Kim family hitting Sam-shik.

* We should never forget that it was a dorama that confidently asserted that a car accident could give you eye cancer years later. Stairway to Heaven, your cracktastic plots will never cease to amaze.

I swear, I am on the final episode and I couldn't be happier. I got a terminal illness! And someone walked into the sea! And there was lots of coughing of blood and crawling around hotel rooms and drama and people turning up too late and quoting of Italian movies and self-sacrifice (that bit was actually really boring).

While not quite hitting the cracktastic height of Stairway to Heaven (that one had amnesia, blindness, step-sibling love, and a terminal illness) it came pretty close. I am a bit sad now it is almost over. I should probably watch something good next but instead I am going to watch Winter Sonata. Because I have no taste.

ETA: Apparently I am not going to watch Winter Sonata because it doesn't have subtitles. I like melodrama but I don't think I'm up to watching 18 episodes of something where I only understand 'really,' 'why,' 'hello,' 'let's go,' 'I love you' and 10 other words.

1. Massively attractive people all of whom angst very nicely

2. Lots of standing in snow and rain for OTPs. I am always impressed by this. More so by the snow standing than the rain standing as the later often involves getting unattractively damp

3. Guilt trips of the sort that the nuns in my secondary school would be impressed by (and, trust me, they knew their guilt trips). The Secondary Male Lead (I don't like him so I refuse to use his name) admittedly can pull the 'I gave you my kidney' line with the hero, Dong-Joo. With the heroine he just keeps pointing out that he will go insane if she doesn't marry him. And then gives her things she doesn't want. And helps out her useless brother in ways that make him even more useless - against the heroine's wishes too. Of course, he's doing it all for her

4. Many, many stand-offs between Dong-joo and the Secondary Male Lead. They just sort of loom at each other while both saying that they will die without the heroine. There is the implied threat of violence or hostile takeovers but nothing is ever said except through subtext

5. The heroine, Ji-soo. I really like her: she is saddled with obsessive love, useless brother, dead parents, having to drop out of college because of money issues, a sequence of horrible jobs, the hero's brooding and she still is pretty cheery and stands on her own two feet. And also withstands the impressive guilt trips of the Secondary Male Lead

6. Men in suits. Kdrama fashions often wound the eyes and soul but here they've wisely gone the suit route which means much less experimentation (there are some unwise sartorial choices by Secondary Male Lead in the start but now he has become an important heir to a company he has stopped that).

7. Cracktastic plot lines. No one has gone blind yet, but I suspect it or a terminal illness is coming. Or someone running another character over with a car. I look forward to this with the glee of a five year old contemplating Christmas. So far we have returns from the dead, plotting mothers, obsessive love, evil dads, suddenly dead heirs to major corporations, and MANY OTHER THINGS.

ETA: 8. The heroine. I know I've said this before but I admire how - even though she is surrounded by all this mad angst and drama - she is sensible. Even if it does mean that she turned down the hero when he asked her to go to Japan with her because she a) doesn't speak Japanese and b) would be totally dependent on him. I feel this is probably taking principles too far but at least it made sense especially given her somewhat traumatizing experience with Secondary Male Lead

Please be aware I don't mean objectively good, but I am enjoying it immensely which is surely more important. It revolves around that tried and true specialty of kdramas, first love lost. And then regained in the angstiest of circumstances. Though the hero, though very comely, seems to creating pretty much the entire angst himself.

Anyway three young children (2 boys, 1 girl) have an idyllic (sort of) childhood together until one of them falls into a river and is believed drowned. Is he dead? Of course not! Where would the fun be in that? He is instead discovered and adopted by a passing Japanese couple (that bit hasn't been fully explained) and lost his memory a bit. I am not sure what bit because it seemed okay but I think it was the name of the town where he fell into the river. (Very selective and useful plotwise memory loss).

After the hero's (Dong-joo) first encounters with the heroine, Ji-soo, where there are misunderstandings and attraction despite her being a not very good paparazzi trying to photograph him with some actress ALL IS DISCOVERED. But oh noes! He cannot confess his love because his best friend from those childish days is also in love with Ji-Soo and is really nice even if his horrible dad hates him and publicly humiliates him for some reason. This is about where we are at. And naturally Ji-soo works at the company of the hero and he spends most of his time looking longingly at her and being caught on stairwells passionately grabbing her hand leading people to think that she IS A WOMAN OF ILL-REPUTE AND UP TO NO GOOD. After she tells him to back off he naturally is all drinking and broody and staring.

Dangermousie did a picspam here

Behold, calixa's post on death by flying carpet, surely one of the worst and most unexpected deaths to ever occur in wuxia. It is excellent and comes with many vivid graphics and hilarious commentary.

I continued in my watch of Silence. Wow, the hero's dad is a right bastard in excellent dorama tradition, isn't he? But I can never quite work out why the evil dorama dads are so ham-handed in their infliction of angst. Given a chance they will always organize a completely uncomfortable social situation where they will announce the hero's engagement and insult his OTP. The end result is always the hero stomping out, mother wailing, and complete estrangement of their only son and heir. Which is apparently okay because you will totally screw yourself and your family over in order to prove a point.

I still love Evil Secretary and Barbie Hsu lookalike. Though I can't work out why dad is such a twit as not to realise that she, as his illegitimate daughter whose mother he cast aside, might not harbour some resentment. I am a bit astonished that his company is still functioning given such examples of stellar judgment.

ETA: By my count Vik Zhou has had his brow mopped at least 57 times in the dorama. I tell you that the director is convinced he is Little Nell.

1. Gave up on 'Sad Sonata' because there is only so much melodrama and cheese that even I can take. I lasted up till episode 12 or so, which is when the heroine impressed everyone in Korea with her singing, hero creepily decided not to tell heroine that he was still alive but spent huge amounts of time angsting and staring at her and her fiance having physical contact of any sort, and secondary male lead got punched by his dad for selling shares or possibly something else - I was a bit of a ffing machine by that stage. Anyway, I am sure it was one of the doramas where everyone dies unhappy and cries a lot and has terrible emotional crises at pivotal points in the episodes. Heroine was particularly drippy and annoyingly unappreciative and kept moping about her (not actually) dead first love when I felt she should have appreciated falling on her feet with secondary male lead.

2. Started watching multiple doramas at one time. This is probably not a good idea as I suspect I will get them horribly confused and wonder why there are not hot, tortured policemen in shows set in the world of fashion design. Or in coffee shops.

3. And relating to 2, I watched about about an episode and a half of 'Time of Dog and Wolf.' I felt a bit conned by so long being spent with childhood versions of Hero and Heroine at the start as I was really watching this for Joon Ki standing around being attractive and emoting and I was denied this for much longer than was surely necessary. I am not certain what I feel about this: I am not a huge fan of cop shows in general and although this isn't bad it very much is a secret service/cop show. With, of course, the kdrama standards of first love lost and forbidden passion.

4. Kept watching Silence, which is on course to rip my heart out by carefully and cunningly exploiting all the usual cliches. Damn you, and your skillful use of Vic Zhou angsting.

AND ONTO THE DOCTOR WHO PORTION OF THIS POST

5. There's been a lot of gnashing of teeth about the fact that now all of the Doctor companions fall in love with him and then are lost and lonely once he dumps them because their time is up and they are no longer puppyish and attractive. I have the perfect cure for this problem: he needs to find a dorama hero or heroine who already has a first love. As anyone knows who watches a dorama, there is a 95% chance that you will die a sad and lonely person if you cannot find the person you fell in love with when you were 12 and you will never, never love anyone else once you have given your heart in the way that children do. So, basically all the Doctor needs to do is find himself one of those and it wouldn't matter if he regenerated into Jeremy Northam, Hugh Jackman, or whoever, they still wouldn't love him.* The downside is that they might end up dying tragically and beautifully on the console at an inconvenient time but that's a small price to pay for emotional peace in the Tardis.

* One of them resisted Daniel Henney. I think if you can cast aside Daniel Henney in your search for your first love, you'd easily dismiss David Tennant.