Extreme love

Wikipedia says: "Limerence is a state of mind which results from romantic feelings for another person, and typically includes intrusive, melancholic thoughts, or tragic concerns for the object of one's affection as well as a desire to form or maintain a relationship with the object of love and to have one's feelings reciprocated."

Tawan and Tunn are a couple of students, dating. But increasingly, Tunn does not want Tawan to interact with anyone else but him. Until one day he chains him up in his bed, the reason being the word is a bad place and Tawan needs to be protected and taken care off.

This is definitely NOT a nice and fluffy BL but a serious drama about mental health where the main characters happen to be gay. The story is scary, difficult and tragic: Tunn has been so traumatized in his childhood, abandoned by people he loved that he does not want to take any chances of that happening withTawan therefore confining him, without realizing that he has gone completely bonkers and overboard.

The actors are surprisingly good for a school project: the one playing Tunn really gave me the creeps, so much so I FFW a lot for the first time ever. They are very much at ease with each other and the skinship scenes were rather smooth. The direction and the filming was rather correct and though it is obviously a low budget film, they tried hard. The sound recording is bad and the subs are awful!

I liked the twist in the end: the whole story was just a school project so we have the final clap and the discussion between the actors, now being themselves and the director about the mental health issues. I personally found those a bit unclear and strange. There is also a final unexpected twist in the last minutes which actually gave me a fright!

The film is a bit too long, it should have been shorter for my taste. But that is just me!

One final question: are there really groups of girls at universities in Thailand, screaming at men they ship together ? Maximum cringe!

Read More

Water, water everywhere....

I decided to be generous and reward this short film with a correct rating. It was Ok and somehow it wasn't. I liked the quirkiness of the beginning but they just had to go and ruin a cute story with stalking. When kids stalk each other it is often cute, here we are talking about adults so even though her stalking is not threatening it is definitely creepy and immature and not romantic. Still, they gloss it over completely...

The story is simple: a young woman who cannot help but hear the pattern (BPM beats per minute) in every sound, longs for the underwater silence and has only one friends, falls for her friend's boyfriend's friend Mizu and starts stalking him trying to figure out why her own heartbeat accelerates when she's near him. She records everything in a notebook titles Beats for Mizu.

The acting is excellent, the cinematography pretty, watery, subtle and light. There is a lot of water in this film starting with the story of little mermaid up to the ML's name. The music is excellent and it delivers emotions when the main characters cannot. The friendship between two young women is precious. I almost wanted this to go the GL route! The first boufriend/kis scene was hilarious: the awkward youth!

Nice short watch!

Read More

Pinky promises

I remember watching this as a drama a couple of years ago and not liking it very much: I found it messy, lacking chemistry and with low production value. Ever since then, I keep stumbling on occasional review and feeds post and they are all praising it highly. So I decided to rewatch it as a movie and to see if my original appreciation still holds!

Unfortunately it does! Even though I like this concept of red string of fate, it was nevertheless underwhelming. The motif of the red string is repeatedly used in different ways throughout the film which I found rather original: scarf, rope, pinky promise.... The characters are complete opposites: a cold debt collector and his fiery dancer debtor. Their relationship and bickering was nice, the actors were very much at ease with each other and yet still something was missing. They looked like they were not in synch while filming. The rest of the characters are just caricatures, barely sketched clichés: the cruel lady boss, the idiotic flamboyant sidekick, the mean rival (actually we never find out what happened to him after they spent so much time on him and when he left their last showdown with a cocky smirk!). And the sets? Pretty winter scenery but no heating inside: it was very cold on sets - that is very obvious!

Again, we have a korean mother who abandons her child after getting him in debt and cutting all means of communication with him. Are korean parents really this cruel? This is something that keeps repeating in k dramas so there must be a sliver of truth there. And that truth is ugly and it paints korean parents in a very bad light!

But everything considered, it is an OK single watch!

Read More

Between Love And Friendship

Never had a drama a more fitting title!
Never was there a drama for me where I did not want the main leads to end up together.
Never had I seen a couple of utterly dislikable characters with horrendous and extremely weak personalities.
Never were the truer words said than when the ML finally admits to his own shortcomings 5 min before the ending!

As the title says, this is a story of two friends who want to become more but they are just caught in a string of missed opportunities, lack of courage, misunderstandings, lack of courage, lies, lack of courage and of course, lack of courage. They are both so insecure behind the hard surface that they do not dare to speak the truth to each other. But the reason was never the obvious one: to keep the friendship intact because their friendship, even though they were close, was never really deep and sincere. They liked spending time together but both of them wanted to become more while neither of them dared to say it. It turned out to be an extremely frustrating watch.

What it proved, as if the proof was needed, is that the men are weak creatures, without spine or courage but who talk big. Women on the other hand are not afraid to talk and lie, to fight what they want, to abandon what they do not need anymore.

What I liked about this drama is the structure of it: the same story is told from the both main characters' point of view as each episode tells about the same events. What I did not like very much is the usual overuse of voiceover but that is such a j drama thing so we end up getting used to it! I loved the music : the final song was beautiful. But I did not like the ML: he is the most annoying, spineless, cowardly, stupid, idiotic ML I have ever watched. What I hated about this is the predictable ending: I did not want them to end up happily ever after! They had so many opportunities to be happy together but they let every one of those slip through their fingers so they can wallow in misery and pretend to be happy. They actually deserved to remain alone and really miserable while having huge regrets and never acting on them! It was never clear what they liked so much about each other: probably they recognized each other's flaws in themselves: they are both equally insincere!

The drama's 10 episodes, 5 from Rina's POV and 5 from Ren's, span a 7 year period: it took them over 7 years to finally realize what they wanted (especially Ren: he is an idiot when he needs his ex-wife to explain some truths to him!) and timidly try to do something about it. I really thought that Ren was going to run away again in the end when she said "No way!" to his proposal..

Interesting concept but annoying characters with an undeserving happy end! Watching suggestion: watch the two versions at the same time in this order: episodes: 1, 6, 2, 7, 3, 8, 4, 9, 5, 10.

Read More

All smiles, no substance...

Lucky My Love definitely deserve A for the effort and some consideration because it is one of the rare GLs out there. If we were to compare it to similar length web dramas, it keeps up with them. But, objectively speaking this is a badly written, acted and overall produced drama.

It is an office romance. Napdao is so unsuccessful in love that she goes to tarot reader to get some insight into her future. At the same time a new team manager joins the office. Their boss and the new team manager start competing for Napdao's attention. Whom shell she choose?

This short web drama does not raise any issue (family and society acceptance needed?). They are both independent women and we do not know much about them or their background. The biggest problem here are the love triangle and misunderstanding, though due to the short duration, those problems were quickly solved. And of course there is the obligatory mildly screeching trans comic relief character. The drama is shallow, quick and forgettable.

The production is a low budget one but that is not important especially where these rare dramas are concerned. They should have concentrated more on writing and acting because they are both lacking. None of the actors could deliver the lines correctly (and the subs on youtube are really bad so it is not about the substance but the intonation). The actress playing Napdao has an infectious smile, she is very cute and when she smiles she lights up the room. Literally!

The producers of Lucky My Love need encouragement to continue to make better dramas: this one was a cute little romance but with no substance. Hopefully we'll see better things in the future.

Read More

Weird & funny!

The synopsis says it all. I just wondered about the LGBT tag: apparently the two women living together are a couple? I think?

The story is told from the point of view of the fan: immobile(just swivelling its fan regularly from let to right and back again) and silent witness to the goings-on in the flat.

An original idea of putting a camera on the fan combines with the actors' perfect timing makes for a funny and a smart watch. The characters are all coolly (blasé) reacting to surprising presences: nobody shouts or jumps. It is more of a vaudeville show with people hiding in closets and behind coat-hangers!

It is a comedy, there is really no deeper meaning or message. A child's voice recites lines from Veda which is supposed to be about the fan, who, Godlike, bestows its silent presence onto the inhabitants of that flat.

Read More

BFF? Maybe...

I am finding it difficult to write about this drama: I liked it a lot but it stressed and angered me very much. The story follows five lonely young adults who meet through twitter and decide to meet in real life as well. They hit it off immediately, even though all of them lied about themselves. Slowly the truth comes out but instead of tearing them apart, they bond even more. They help each other and love blossoms amongst them. But the timing is never right and everything is just a string of missed opportunities and white lies.
The drama showed us how each of them grew and matured through their friendship. The drama left a lot of unanswered questions, issues touched upon and just left unsolved. Why did Doctor come to Japan with his little sister when his parents are perfectly all right and wealthy in Korea? Why does he always speak in japanese with his sister (I know a japanese drama etc.etc....)? Haru, the teacher had a lot of problems in school: with students and other teachers and then what happened, all is forgotten? Drug dealing student is arrested, she promises to help him and then...what happened next? Sexual harassment at work? Barely mentioned when Kaoru is being molested by his female boss? Kaoru's difficult affirmation of his own sexuality? How did they solve this? Kaoru commits suicide! Very "nice" solution to a huge problem! Probably realistic solution for japanese society but still...he had friends who supported him and were there for him!
The music was very nice, rocky and it fit the drama really well. I liked the cinematography and the way they edited thansitions between scenes: rather original and pretty to see! What was not pretty to see was the male actors' hair: the three of them had awful hairstyles.... But the acting was excellent, they had an amazing group chemistry though the centre of it, like the Sun, was Nakaji, the photographer, kind, sweet and helpful, everyone was drawn towards.
As I said, things made me angry, most of all Kaoru's fate, which felt very wrong. The rest is a sweet drama about young people finding their own way in life, which is easier when you have good friends to listen to you...

Read More

Crush in the open 2

I don't know what it says about this drama but I accidentally watched the second episode of this first and only realized it when the episode finished that I must have missed something but also that what I missed was not that important!

So Bam and Mike are dating now. One day, Bam's junior from schools shows up in the cafe and we find out he has a crush on him. He keeps coming back and confesses both to Bam and to Mike who is shaken by this. Mike sees that Bam and Pee get swimmingly along and feels not deserving. But Bam notices it and puts Pee back in his place.

Oh the usual trope of a love triangle! Quickly resolved but still... The acting is still just as lacklustre, but I must say the actor playing Pee takes the flower with his overacting and mannerisms! He does manage to make his character unlikeable so I guess that is a success!

The production seems to have had a bit more money in the budget so they managed to go and film a few scenes on the beach, which is always nice to see!

I often feel bad when I do not appreciate these small productions much: it is usually a labour of love! But unfortunately I have seen better labours of love .... Still, I would like to encourage them to continue: there are originalities in their work (breaking the 4th wall!) that make it worth watching !

Read More

Crush in the open!

Not bad but not good either. It is obviously made on a shoestring budget so the production is lacking. Acting as well, unfortunately! The only originality this short drama has is breaking the fourth wall by the actors instead of voiceover explaining situations and revealing emotions.

The short drama takes place in an always completely empty coffee shop where Bam gets to work with his crush, Mike who is a writer. In order to break the writing block, Mike asks Bam to help him enact love scenes for his next novel. These make Bam very confused so he confesses. Now it is Mike's turn to be confused. But Bam does everything in his power to help Mike see things (his own feelings!) clearly.

There is absolutely no chemistry between the actors who definitely need a few more acting lessons to make us believe they are at ease while acting: they were rather rigid and the line delivery was monotonous!

Still, point for the effort, the writing was solid and original. The music was too loud and cheerful and just underlined the (bad) acting.

Read More

Milady, are you daft?

This was so good until...it was not any more!

The story about a ditzy heiress/police detective and her butler was original and fun at the beginning. But then the story stayed put: no character development, no change, immobile. And that ruined it for me. I enjoyed the first half, slept through the second.

The world building is rather fun and colourful. She is kind and living in her bubble since she has no idea how ordinary (i.e. not obscenely rich!) people live. Her reactions are funny. The butler is stoic, cold-blooded and direct. Their relationship is fun.
Her boss is another rich man, completely self-centred and incompetent as a detective. So the butler solves the cases for the heiress and her boss takes the credit.

The drama is based on a manga and maybe this static characters work there but in a drama I need to see the results of the interactions between these characters. Nothing! Everyone remains in their place and while the initial cases hid this lack of development, once I was used to the format, I completely lost interest.

The heiress puts her glasses on and goes to the crime scene in a limo. Her butler follows her hidden from sight while she investigates (nobody knows that she's a heiress!) with her incompetent boss. In the evening, she tells her butler what she learned during the investigation. He insults her politely because she did not figure out who the culprit is even though it was crystal clear to him. So, over desert (hence the title of the drama!), he explains everything to her. They confront the culprit who is then arrested by her ignorant boss.

The characters are fun in small doses: you cannot binge this, it becomes quickly unwatchable! The subs made it also fun to watch because the subber made an extra effort to translate everything that was shown on the screen (there were a lot of manga like graphics!). Except for the last two episodes (one story in two parts!) which lacked those extras in english and suddenly the drama was much worse for it!

Key word here is: FUN!

Read More

First love forever....

I wonder if one day we are going to be lucky enough and have a drama in which the first love main couple does not remain together, happily ever after, but the second lead wins the girl ..... Sometimes I am really fed up with this trope. And in this drama, more than ever!

The story continues on from the first season: Futaba and Kou have sort of admitted to having feelings for each other and then he goes away on vacation and upon his return, he keeps seeing a friend from his old school and ignoring Futaba. That friend actually wants Kou for herself and makes him believe she's so unhappy and so misunderstood and so alone and so...Kou falls for it and neglects to explain it to Futaba. When she starts seeing Kikuchi and moving on, he gets too clingy, needy and jealous.

I had to keep reminding myself that this was a story about teens. But, while Futaba's words and actions reveal maturity beyond her age, Kou is the opposite. he sulks, does not talk, behaves as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders and nobody understands how brave and responsible he is. So he goes around with a sad, desperate expression on his face. And he takes it up with the whole world instead of himself. He blows hot and cold with her, sacrificing himself and not being with her but not wanting her to be with anyone else: so selfish and self-centred. On the opposite side, Futaba is the epitome of reason and generosity.

I wanted the FL to stay with the SML but I knew from the beginning that that was never going to happen. Heart wants what heart wants and the reason is abandoned! The SML acted too quickly in wanting to replace Kou but all his kindness was not enough to delete the first love, no matter how bad and unkind, from her mind.

This was an extremely frustrating slow watch. The side couples were more interesting but they were given the minimum time . Every minute was devoted to Kou and his tergiversations. One question, though: where are these kids' parents? So we have a couple of dead ones but not all of them? Do they work so much that the kids practically raise themselves? Are kids really abandoned to this extent in Japan? This made me very sad....Very often in dramas based on mangas, we never see parents! I wonder why?

Everything considered, this was an unnecessary watch they could have done away with by condensing the plot in two episodes and finished it with one season!

Read More

Date jitters!

I wish it were longer. Here with eng subs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uT_r4dZP_s

I have never watched Dilraba in anything (I am not a c drama fan! lol) but I was looking for a short movie for the alphabet challenge and this one came out on top. And boy, aren't I glad i found this!

The story is simple: we see a girl getting ready for a date. She is annoyed when her hair clip breaks, so orders one on line and is again annoyed, when the delivery guy is late. She takes out her frustration on him but is immediately sorry when she finds out that he is deaf. Just like her!

This is a cute short film: and the actress is perfectly portraying a person, nervous and anxious before a date. I wish we could have seen more of the delivery guy: he had such a lovely smile and the sparks flew when their eyes touched. I was secretly hoping he would be her blind date. But unfortunately for me, the date was not blind, she met someone she's known for a long time.

It is a cute short watch. Silent but with a great big number of text messages which are translated in english!

Read More

What a drag!

After Something Crunchy Crunchy (BL cookies in love musical! go watch it it is so weird!), this must be the weirdest, the quirkiest and the strangest thing I have ever watched. I am still trying to figure out what I just finished watching! Was it a cartoon for kids so it is not serious? Was it an adult cartoon so there is some hidden, higher, more complicated meaning behind it? Was it just what it was, a silly little story to pass time while thinking of nothing? I don't know.

Gudetama is a raw egg, who is pulled into adventure by a chick wanting to find his mother. Gudetama is only interested in soy sauce and lazing about and the quest is not his thing. On the chick's egg there was a QR traceability code while they try to find the farm and the mother (Julia) they meet different people who may or may not see them: kid in a restaurant, journalists, politician, other kinds of egg...

Even though the story was funny to begin with, eventually it became repetitive and boring and even 10min episodes got to be too long. The animation is excellent and the interactions with real actors convincing. The raw egg, Gudetama is a fascinating character with his laziness and lack of care about the future: he only perks up in the last episode!

While watching this I kept thinking of children's films like Chicken Little and Chicken Run: the story skeleton is the same just it is much more weird here! The raw egg and the chick here go through numerous adventure and eventually they find their mothers and the raw egg gets eaten (in spite of starting to rot a few episodes earlier but was cured by soy sauce and silica gel packets! That scene was rather disgusting!).

So if you are in the mood for something extremely weird japanese way, go for it! It is only about 100min long!

Read More

A highly predictable love triangle

For a moment, there in the last episode, I thought that they were going to spring a nice surprise on us and have the SML win the game. But no such luck. Well, this is a K drama and the SML is there to cause trouble between the leads not to win the girl. Unfortunately!

The drama started badly, so much so, I almost dropped it after 15min, but I persevered (another forum challenge! LOL) having decided to watch an episode a day. But after a few days I found myself glued to the screen and hitting the next episode button very quickly. The drama got me hooked from the 7th episode on. In spite of it being very predictable: the whole plot was obvious after the first episode!

What would you do if your first love, first long-term boyfriend, suddenly appears 5 years after your painful break-up and when you are in a new stable and loving relationship? The FLs solution is: LIE. And she keeps lying for 15 episodes, her friends keep lying to cover her lies, even her ex lies for her. Of course, this cannot end well!

The FL is a strong woman who's made a mess of her love life. She's very unlikeable: getting caught lying by her long suffering new boyfriend and saying "Sorry!" which he keeps accepting having decided to trust her. She never really crosses the line but she is sorely tempted and is having trouble resisting the temptation. He just keeps standing by her.

I went through all sorts of emotions while watching these two together: they were annoying, they were butterfly inducing loving, they were sad, they were happy but there was the expiration date stamped on their relationship from the get go and it was frustrating watching him do everything in his power to save their doomed relationship.

The drama credits music makes you believe this is a comedy and there are some funny bits, which are not half bad , involving support characters to balance out the heavy drama of the three main ones! The best character, by far, is the FL's mother, a drama screenplay writer: I loved her dry humour and direct and frank remarks, telling her daughter home truths she needed to hear without sugar coating anything. I wanted to see more of her!

The one original feature of this drama are the character interviews, which replaced inner monologue and narration. The idea was good, the execution a lot less: it was quite messy and often difficult to understand whether the scene was an interview or the dialogue. The interviews came as explanation parts after important events.

The acting was top notch and the chemistry was there. The music was appropriately tugging at heartstrings, heavy on violins, nice but not to be listened to regularly since it may provoke depression!

Read More

Ridiculous but fun!

One thing is certain: bls and mafia do not mix well together! This latest example is just so ridiculous that I really do not understand why they are still making this type of romance dramas? Trying to ride on KinnProsche's coattails? That one was already ridiculous enough but at least it was slick! This one is ridiculous and cheap looking.

Guy is a student who's had a crush on his only friend since highschool. On the day he planned to confess, his friend introduces him to his girlfriend. Sad and lonely, he goes into the fictional world of on line games where he has friends he's never met. They decide to meet in real life and one of them is Tew who turns out to be a mafia henchman. He falls for Guy but the mafia boss is reluctant to let him be free.

While the university, regular life parts were done correctly, the mafia bits are outrageously ridiculous. The writers must have said: everyone does mafia like this, so it must be the way it is. Allow me to doubt! And even though it is probably far from being realistic (and I am NOT looking for realism in a BL) but at least they should make it credible. The prime example is Kenji, an over the top mafia rival of Tew's with his silly hair and outrageous and grimacing behaviour: too cringy for words! Tew on the other hand, is cool, tall, elegant and taciturn, the complete opposite! While Guy is your typical, ordinary student!

The story is basically a love triangle : Wahl, Guy's best friend likes having Guy under his thumb, unwittingly, perhaps, wanting to control his life. When Guy finally manages to break free, Wahl is upset and tries to regain control. Unsuccessfully! Meeting Tew did wonders for Guy and he grows as a person. Wahl is ultimately shown as a creep who eventually learns to let go!

The online group of friends are a mixed lot, cute and fun to watch whether they bicker (Tom and Pim) or obliviously put their fut in (Muffin)! The least likeable character is Boss, Kenji's spy, and a weird, sleazy guy!

Fortunately, the chemistry was there! Meen and Ping are very much at ease with each other and it shows!

Production was a bit clunky and on the cheap side. The exception being the opening credits which were a mixture of webtoon and real images of actors: nice and original. The voiceover was a nice touch, giving us insight into their thoughts and feelings. The music was forgettable, though I noticed the usual, ominous, heavy on the percussions music in mafia scenes. The "action" scenes were iffy to say the least: the most violent bits happened off screen or were hidden by furniture while the fist fighting scenes were unconvincing, well choreographed but badly filmed and slow so it was obvious that nobody was getting really hit!

In conclusion, this was another miss for the mafia genre so I wholeheartedly hope they will stop making them! Nevertheless, because it was short and easy to watch, I give it a pass: not too bad!

Read More