Greenlemon
Based on a book and on a real life empress, Princess Wei Young depicts the fight of a woman for justice and her love for a man that loved her back in equal measure despite the political plots, vengeful twists and turns and machinations to keep them apart. The drama however masked under a quest for vengeance is a pursuit of happiness in the form of love, greed, revenge, ambition and desire for power which contrasts with the reality of ancient times where love didn't rule the world and women were nothing more than possessions to be disposed off by their fathers into marriage to strengthen their family's power.
The characters and performances
Wei Young is an interesting character albeit mellow and reactive; she's doesn't set the pace, she follows it. She's soft even when she can't be bordering on aloofness, a contradistinction with her strength and drive on paper and most likely with her real life persona. Wei Young ought to be fierce, driven, determined, proactive and engaging, but she's not yet somehow despite the flaws the character is likeable.
Touba Jun looked most often than not a lovesick man pining for the woman he loves. Without the period wardrobe he would be just another contemporary man running after his love. For a male lead he lacks spunk which might be attributed to how the character was written or how the director wanted it to be performed. Regardless Touba Jun is visually appealing to watch on screen therefore what is lost in character is gained in beauty, not entirely a bad thing if the drama was a period adaptation of Boys over flowers in the palace.
Chang Ru and Touba Yu are machiavellian scene steallers. Chang Ru is a weed pretending to be a naive flower that uses people to accomplish her own personal agenda without them knowing about it. Clever, manipulative and ambituous, she's an expert at deception like Touba Yu, the man she loves; the man that wants Wei Young. Both characters are complex and have such a strong presence on screen, that is fascinating to watch despite all their plotting and coniving misdeeds.
The music
The opening theme is A-Lin's A Moment ir Romance, a sweet ballad about loving someone until one has to say goodbye, wanting to be together. The closing theme, Gifted is sang by Princess Wei Young's leads Tang Yan and Luo Jin. Both reflect the story well and are sang beautifully.
Overall
An interesting story with a good cinematography, well crafted and visually stunning that is both enganging and moving, despite the flaws of the lead characters, that acted more like secondary characters in their own story. Someone's loss is another person's gain and Chang Ru and Touba Yu took the opportunity prsented to them and showcased episodes of pure magnetism on screen, therefore, for all the above I rate it 7 out of 10.
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It reminds me of the 90’s, no mobile phones, no computers, no social media, no music streaming, no downloads, no iPods, no internet friends...it reminds me of days where things were more organic, more simple, when your mother told you off for spending too much time on the phone to your friends, when you wrote letters to your idols and posted them hoping to get a reply, when you read girly magazines all the time and dreamt about your gorgeous idols and recorded their favourite videos on VHS and after a while screamed at the TV because the image started to break down as the tape started to erode from the millions of times you watch that recording. Why is the tape ruined? Why? Why??? Those were the times where you listened to music on a walkman, tape after tape after tape, those were the times where you spoke to your friends on your house phone and met up after school to go out and your parents didn’t call you to find out where you were because they knew where you were and it was safe to play outdoors and hang out with your friends... yeah, the popular kid would always exist, fun, cool, amazingly gorgeous and the bad boy, the epitome of an outcast, exuding this charm one didn’t quite know how to define... Old times....
Those who experienced the 90’s one way or another will relate to this movie a lot. It’s all there, the wanting to go to a concert and don’t find tickets, the favourite singer or the favourite band one will always remember with fondness... Andy Lau, yet it could have been Savage Garden, Bryan Adams, Bon Jovi... the one guy that made your heart beat so fast it seemed like it had a life of its own and would come out of your chest straight into his to show him just how much you cared...the guy that defended and protected you, the guy, that guy...then then...the now...the job you worked hard to achieve, the long hours you put in to go be hated by your colleagues or envied...the gorgeous boyfriend that becomes like a comforting piece of furniture, instead of the man you’re with...the routine...and the looking back to the days when you were happy, when you fought for something that mattered, when you were with people that mattered, longing for the guy that mattered, realizing that your life resembles nothing of what you then thought it would be, that your adults days are filled with...a whole lot of emptiness... you look back and see what you were and what you have become, what you wanted and what you’ve got, you realize that you’re not happy so you decide to take control of your life and start to live it the way you were meant to live it all along but life... life that has given you everything had actually not given anything worth fight to keep until now.
I cried watching this movie. It’s not often that a film brings me to tears but Our Times did. It was not their times, it was our times, it was not their story, it was our story, our, mine, yours, our story, our times. Maybe if it was now or even 10 years ago the story might have been different but as such is a fantastic homage to a decade that meant a lot to so many girls and still means a lot to so many women.
Funny how, despite Our Times have passed things still remain pretty much the same nowadays with social media and phones and streaming and the lot... well, the gist of it at least, the idols, the pop culture, the friends, the hot guy, the troublemaker...so it makes me wonder if our times are really over or they never will be over as they live with us in our memories. Our Times will always be ours, will always be special and will always be part of us whether we’re 20, 30, 40, 50, 50, 70 or 80 years old and that friendship, that love and those dreams no one can take away from us.
For all of the above, to me the movie is a perfect 10 out of 10.
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The plot was nothing special but it was something many would probably have imagined through fan fic and maybe dabbed at it either through reading or writing. A famous, illustrious idol actor hits the spades with his anti-fan. Throughout the course of a few movie minutes audiences are awarded a walk down memory lane with a Full House esque theme minus Rain and Song Hye-kyo. Antagonists become lovey dovey and spades turn into hearts. Very touching yet very predictable. Points for the originality of the idea, nil. Points for reinventing and modernizing the idea 10 out of 7. To make it a 10, the blend would actually have to be fluid with less over the top annoying I’ve seen better than this moments before in another movie/drama. The movie is in fact based on a manhwa of the same name.
The performances were okay. Maybe I’m biased as I can’t stop comparing Chan Yeol’s character to Chan Yeol in EXO next door. They seem the same which is not the ideal thing as this would mean he has a long long long way to go as actor. Branching into a male lead role might have been fine if he was an experienced thespian. As he’s not he might benefit from developing his craft by undertaking smaller roles and gaining acting experience before venturing into a production he might have gotten an offer to for being an EXO member and the group’s popularity in China. Yuan Shan Shan’s performance was equally bland however I found it to be slightly better than Chan Yeol. She is an experienced actress compared to him but her performance was for the most part utterly annoying and loud. The rebel I hate you act is good when it’s properly done and that means subtly done at times otherwise it’s too much and at times it felt too much. Saying this I liked it more than I did Full House and that’s saying a lot.
The soundtrack, I didn’t pay attention to it apart from the Tango. I liked that scene with the piano. It was filmed beautifully. Apart from that every song was forgotten. Chan Yeol and Shan Shan did sing a song for the movie called ‘I Hate You’ however meh.
The re-watch value is 50/50. It depends on the day, it depends on the mood. I liked the movie. I had fun watching it and I’d recommend it, that’s all and EXO are really talented entertainers and they dance, wow how they dance!
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The first half of the drama is interesting and university students/recent graduates/young female professionals might agree that is fairly accurate and relatable. The hard work, the expectations, the dreams, the senior nasty supervisor/colleague that seems to exist with the sole purpose of making life a living hell professionally. The second half is a pastiche of attitudes, nastiness and backstabbing, which while indispensable in some dramas, in the Interpreters was unnecessary.
Cheng Jia Yang is a successful Chinese/French interpreter with high work standards, a strong code of conduct and sense of decorum. Outwardly he appears inflexible and strict, a man not to be trifled with but inside is warm and caring. He falls madly in love with Qiao Fei becoming her knight in shining armour with a black car in place of the white horse.Qiao Fei is an honest, hardworking, independent cinderella esque woman that wants to become a Chinese/French interpreter. She falls in love with Cheng Jia Yang. Both Huang Xuan and Yang Mi perform their roles beautifully. They have great chemistry on screen and bring so much energy and so much life to the characters, to the point where one nearly forgets that the Interpreters is a drama and not a slice of real life minus the hyperbolic idiosyncrasies.
The supporting characters are an attention-grabbing mix. The ‘the golden couple’ shippers, their best friends: Wong Xu Dong and Wu Jia Yi against the destroyers, Cheng Jia Yang’s evil mother, Qiao Fei ‘s jealous former colleague and Wen Xiao Hua meet neutral Gao Jia Ming, Cheng Jia Yang’s brother, father and co-workers. The shippers are two fun, young and joyful characters overall with Wong Xu Dong being mature and responsible and Wu Jia Yi being literally the opposite. Together the contrasting personalities are cute on screen. The destroyers always have a bone to pick with; the evil mother with Qiao Fei, the former colleague with Cheng Jia Yang’s. Their characters are so utterly demented they ought to be institutionalized in the countryside or in a fishing village to develop their humanity. Gao Jia Ming starts the story as a lunatic man/doctor but evolves into a brilliant caring surgeon. Like his mother, he’s one of the Interpreters biggest catalysts.
Song wise, Mon Chéri, The Interpreters’ main ballad exquisitely reflects largely storyline catharsis in all its different edges.
Overall the Interpreters is a fantastic story, that despite being told beautifully in the first half and train wrecked in the second remained addictive to watch every day and highlighted great performances from Huang Xuan and Gao Vengo, without whom Cheng Jia Yang and Gao Jia Ming’s characters might have been just another script writer’s creation instead of men with interesting lives to watch developing on screen across 42 episodes. Should the Interpreters have had a lesser number of episodes and refrained from the common, clichéd shenanigans the drama would have been top notched with an overall rating of 10 out of 10.
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The heroine was just too obsessive, too focused on the guy she loved. At first I found her too desperate but teenagers tend to find things the end of the world and she was no exception. Everything was a drama, even when to confess to Rita that she loved him and has always loved him. Then she became really bothersome borderline on maddening with all the spectacle and theatrics, all the infantilism of the child she no longer was but somehow on an unconscious level seemed to believe to be. It’s seems the only logical explanation for her irrational behaviour!
Rita is weak, as a teenage boy he’s weak, as a boy he’s weak, as a teenager he’s weak and he never stops being weak. I wonder if the manga author created the character so incredibly full of flaws, so physically and psychologically weak on purpose. How can a male lead character be so utterly uncompelling is beyond me. There’s not a single time throughout the movie I find him interesting. Having Rita as the main male lead...why? To show that men can be weak? Men can be weak but Rita takes male weakness to an entire new level, the level of absurdity!
At the end of the movie I was drained and relieved that it was finally over, finally!!!
The only thing I liked about the movie was the photography but it wasn’t enough to save a poor story who became a poor film on the screen.
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Did Moorim fullfill all my expectations? Yes and no. Yes because I wasn't disappointed neither was I depressed most of the time and no because I wanted those 4 episodes I felt KBS denied us viewers of due to the appalling ratings to put it mildly. I also wanted a Big Bang concert in Europe and that didn't happen either. On the other hand 'A', 'D' and 'E' were brilliant. After all 'If You'...'Let's Not Fall in Love'!
I bought into the premise of the story as much as I bought into the premise of 'MADE' being released in parts, I always had something to wait for and it was going to be totally worth it but it wasn't, not in the beginning. I thought the drama had a slow start and 'M' was too far off my reality and I couldn't identify myself with any of it, regretfully. Supernatural, adventure, martial arts, quests...great but what about the rest? What about the pace? What about the dynamics? What about the connection with the viewers? With the audience? It wasn't there! The beginning was simply bland for Moorim School.
Then came the intangible metamorphism like new personal discoveries, personal development... knowledge. Moorim School seemed different from the usual trademark of K-dramas so I was flabbergasted with the criticism, the ratings and the reception the drama had.
I liked the story, I still like the story albeit still mulling over the rushed end and the lack of pace in many episodes considering it was know far ahead of time that the drama was going to be shortened to 16 episodes, giving the writers ample time to kick-start the drama's dynamics and elevate it, proving critics wrong, proving KBS wrong, proving themselves wrong but they didn't. They seemed resigned to doing 16 episodes as if the drama was still going to have 20 episodes and giving us viewers who spent 16 hours of our time glued to the screen, an understatement drama that was just passable perhaps due to their defiance towards not reinventing the last episodes and make it 'Bang Bang Bang'. There was no 'wow Fantastic Baby', almost as if each of the writers felt like a 'Loser' in Bae Bae's music video which in the end they probably were.
The acting was average, nothing special but to be brilliant would be to expect Big Bang to sing Opera in hypothetical attempts. With practice it's achievable without it, well 'Haru Haru'!
Overall it's an enjoyable drama for those that like the story and relate to the characters, otherwise 'MADE' DVD will be a nice alternative to it. Add the music videos, the interviews, the extras and so forth and you can spend 16 hours of your time being a VIP. The choice is yours!
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Being familiar with previous dramas there was never an inkling to watch Bromance. It’s like eating the best ice-cream one has ever eaten in their lives. Once one has that experience it becomes borderline impossible to find another ice-cream whose texture might be better than that one. Coffee Prince, You’re Beautiful and Beautiful Boys are like vanilla, strawberry and chocolate ice-cream; the most amazing flavours in the planet for some, for others, might be mango, lemon and raspberry or any other flavour, perfect, unique, irreplaceable.
Bromance will not top up the most amazing ice-cream one will ever have within the genre. Not because it’s bad overall, not because the script is bland, blasé, inconsistent and positively appalling, not because the acting is awful dabbing into dreadfulness at times making one cringe in agony, or the music so loud one that one is left tuning the sound down as not to hear the screen coil in desperation. Bromance will not become a favourite ice-cream flavour for either aficionados or newcomers for the simple reason that afficionados already have their favourite ice-cream and unless there’s nothing to watch, which there is with interesting plots most likely will stray from it and newcomers have their flavours to discover and Bromance does not make the top list, regretfully.
Bromance is a really good drama surprisingly and rather addictive from about minute 2 of episode 1 to the point where one will want to binge watch it straight.
The script is very consistent and full of texture like a raspberry sorbet, with the right balance and essence; the acting from an audience point of view is compelling and believable, bring the story to life in what seems like an effortless manner alternating scenes of pure screen silent screaming to giggles to a very loud laughter and nearly jumping on the sofa like a teenager being silly, enjoying a really tasty ice-cream, and not feeling one bit bad about it. The highlight being the end of each episode with entails the start of the next one when one binges on 15 episodes of Bromance in a day and half. To think that there are dramas that still have that effect on someone after countless dramas, some really spectacular, others not really but that’s the life of a drama enthusiast.
Zi Feng is a triad leader and the general manager of an amusement park. He commands respect although not as a villain but as a man who works hard, loves his family and protects those he cares about. Zi Feng is so incredibly human that is surreal and that humanity is what makes the audience empathise with him. He’s lovable as a male character; he’s honest and caring, incredibly loyal with a great sense of justice and responsibility but also struggling with his feelings for the person he loves in the beginning, a woman pretending to be a man. Zi Feng falls in love with Pi Ya Nou as a person, not caring whether or not Ya Nou is a man or a woman.
Ya Nuo is a young woman living as a young man due to a fortune telling prediction that she should leave as such until she reached her 26th birthday. She meets Du Zi Feng with whom she becomes sworn brothers but over the course of time develops feelings for him. Ya Nuo is fiercely loyal, kind and generous putting everyone’s needs in front of hers. She complements Zi Feng in ways that many female characters do not complement the male and for that the writers should be credited for. Megan Lai performs Ya Nuo brilliantly giving the character a life of its own.
Zi Feng and Ya Nuo should go down in Taiwanese drama history land as one of the most amazing couples ever to grace the screen so in tune they are with one another, like Ying and Yang.
The OST is particular vibrant with two solid exciting tracks performed by Bii, Ephocal Times & Back in Time.
Overall Bromance is a breath of fresh air in drama sphere biased towards old conceptual premises, however the mix of flavours between gender bender echo chic cliché with an original setting and character frames is like putting different ice-cream flavours in a blender. One might think that the consistency looks slightly off, that the taste might be just too familiar to give it a try but it’s left in awe wonderland when trying it out, wishing for more, needing more, wanting more and realizing that the ice-cream is nearly over so it’s better to start enjoying it while it lasts and before it melts.
The best things in life are those one has to wait the longest to achieve but in the end it’s all worth it!
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Rather than dab on the tone of the movie whose premise nowadays is far too cliché to be continuously addressed, I want to reflect upon love as love is the silver lining of the movie. Not love towards career ambitions but love between a man and a woman as that is the love that has most romantics drawling in anticipation.
Go Lala Go 2 has that driven almost obsessed eagerness to be professionally successful at a high profile or high end job, believed to bring satisfaction but that type of satisfaction is like coffee, addictive at first, creating a vibe of can do it all, want to do it all, achieve it all, need it all but ultimately comes the realization that triumph like coffee can be bittersweet in the long run and that love well...love is love and what is life without love? An ocean of emptiness.
Bolin Chen is an eye candy rather than a strong performer but when the other main male lead is Vic Zhou, is Vic Zhou who steals the show and brings an ordinary story to life. Wang Wei loves a woman, loves her madly. He supports her, he defends her, he longs for her. All those emotions are there in his eyes to see, in his actions to interpret, in his love for Lala, a woman who waivers but never truly forgets, a couple that loves and hopes for love.
For Wang Wei, for Vic Zhou and for the love that is more than a romance, is a feeling, Go Lala Go 2 is a really good movie to watch. Love exists. There is hope!
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Itazura na Kiss is a fantastic story but reality is that is a bit outdated and doesn't really reflect society nowadays no matter how romantic one is or is not on my opinion. Kiss me instead of sticking to the original and become known as just another remake of the story, it elevates it to an entire new level by giving it their own spin of it and make it actual without compromising the essential storyline.
Naoki aka Tenten is fantastic to watch. He's relatable as a person, not the arrogant genious every other version tried to make him as. Yes, he's a genius but he's human and the humanity of the character that Mike D'Angelo portraits is what differs Tenten from all the other versions for me. Tenten is by far the most complete character of all the versions.
Kotoko aka Taliw...she's sweet and clueless at times and she's simple but she's caring and genuinely in love with Tenten without going overboard or being annoying like other versions I believe, which makes me like the character and empathize with her.
Kiss me is not a copy paste of the other versions, making it more authentic and interesting to watch. The soundtrack is also quite good.
Overall, it is a great adaptation of Itazura na Kiss!
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The story per say was too bland and blase on my opinion. Nothing unusual or different or even unique but visually it captured the mood of the story, it reflected the script and added layers of atmosphere to the performances which were what stood out to me. Hiroomi Tosaka as Hiroshi Haruyama was truly powerful. He owned the screen every time he was on and he made the character one that could be related to, one that could be understood in the actions taken independently on whether or not the audience agreed with the character's choices. Rena Nounen's performance I found rather bland. Perhaps it was because her character Kazuki Miyaichi seemed rather bland and didn't leave any scope of manoeuvre in terms of how it could be performed, perhaps it's the actress who is like that, with limited facial expressions, perhaps it was how the character was written or the actress interpretation of the character. I do not know but I didn't particularly like her as I found her too weak and spineless for nearly 100% of the movie.
The end well....I enjoyed it. I thought Kazuki Miyaichi character to be more human and adult rather than the spineless teenager I considered her to be so to me, the end was satisfying. Hiroshi Haruyama was good and that was good for me! Overall I liked the movie!
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The movie is truly an emotional roller coaster that will have you smile one moment, want to scream at the screen the next and finally get the grip of everything that happened to lead to that key moment when you understand the true meaning of love.
I loved Haruma Miura as Hiro. He's an amazing actor and what he did in Koizora was take his acting skills to an entire different level as he embodied the soul and the energy of the character he performed. I loved the photography, the scenery so much I would have visited the filming location had it been closer to Tokyo. One day I still hope to visit it!
It is my favorite Asian movie of all time and one whose story I carry deep in my heart!
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