If Women Ruled The World...
This drama is just bursting with hope, positivity, empowerment and fluff... while it does have some common ground with other dramas within its tags... It stands out for it's slightly naive execution mentioning a lot of the issues that face mostly woman both at home and in the workforce by making it seem just a little bit to easy to overcome these and move on... Something that can be really dangerous in real life yet felt good at the same time...The relationships and especially the romance in this drama are slow paced, slightly frustrating at times but it also leaves time for things to change, showing us that thee is a process behind every change, with ups, downs the regular cliches... Making this more of a business, self development, friendship type of drama while the romance gets to take the passenger seat... or maybe even the car behind the friendship... with lots and lots of groundwork, great chemistry, bickering fun that does not really seem to end...
What i l loved the most about this drama was how they showed the importance of a nurturing environment... As a person needs support to find the strength within... The toxic environment will more or less kill you, and it is hard to develop on your own. But Jus meeting one person who believes in the good in you may just change not only your life but also the people around you... fluffy, lovely and all nice giving me butterflies and making me just feel all good inside... even without the romance.
There are some parts that seem a bit boring here and there, I am not sure how necessary they actually were for the plot but seeing how everything comes together is actually pretty impressive.
Bingeabilaty: 9
Power to the women: 10
Romance: 8
Friendship: 9
Annoying characters: medium low
Consent: it has a unicorn but also a pretty bad way to handle the unicorn so,.. maybe an 8
A show i do recommend, just remember that not everybody has access to this type of environment, but it is nice to dream now isn't it... so go dream away, do not let me stop you...
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I regret watching this one because it was a bit too long and also kind of messy. BUT there were also some redeeming qualities overall. Likes:
- I liked the fantastical elements even though the graphic effects were bad. I enjoyed that there was some mystery to it as well as mayhem. Was it done well? Not super, but it was cool that it was there
- Soundtrack was not too bad, props for creativity on storyline and the mythology as well!
Dislikes:
- The reveal of the villains :( Not worth it as I rooted for them at the beginning
- Main female lead was a bit annoying and at times watching her and listening to her was insufferable, but it got better towards the end when she found her footing.
Watch if you're bored, but tbh can skip. If you want a run down of the story, PM me lol.
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La suerte está echada
There are quite a few Spanish references in this drama, so it’s only fair that I pay homage to it by giving my review a Spanish title, which was referenced in the closing scenes of the final episode and translates as, “the die is cast”.Sinister Beings is a TVB police procedural that focuses on the HK law enforcement system, specifically the police - through the departments of Organised Crime and Triads Bureau (OCTB), Criminal Intelligence Bureau (CIB), and the Special Duties Unit (SDU) - and the justice system via its prosecutions division. It also features vicious terrorists, shadowy triads, corrupt tycoons and their conglomerates, genius computer hackers and the elusive dark web, high-flying unscrupulous barristers, greedy investment fund managers, deeply disturbing sociopaths as well as psychopaths, and plenty of beautiful seductive temptresses. In addition to police investigation, action and crime, this drama has plenty of romance (including love triangle), slice-of-life and showcases themes of friendship, brotherhood/ bromance, and certain scenes/ side stories of an “adult-oriented nature”. This drama really does have it all.
For regular TVB drama viewers or at least those who are familiar with their offerings, this isn’t groundbreaking content for the typically formulaic crime genre that has been done countless times. But, while many similar productions in the past are a hit-or-miss, for the most part this one has been quite well executed albeit not without flaws. The technical aspects are commendable while recycled plotlines feel somewhat refreshingly updated rather than dated.
For the uninitiated or newcomers to TVB productions, Sinister Beings would be great as your first HK drama. This is especially so if you’re a fan of the police investigation and crime genres.
What I Liked
The cast. The 2 male leads are veterans of the industry and their experience truly shows. Ruco Chan (Sun Sir) and Ben Wong (Nic Sir) elevates any production with their finesse and approach to interpreting characters. With the former, you know you’re in for action-packed sequences while the latter gives us nuanced portrayals. Both of them have their own little moments of bromance which were endearing to see. Rosina Lin (Wing) is much more understated here while Crystal Fung (Ana) is somewhat more vibrant as a Spanish-speaking South American-raised overseas Chinese. I particularly enjoyed Joman Chiang’s depiction of Hazel, the highly competent and professional lawyer. Jonathan Cheung (Marco) and Moon Lau (Rachel) put an interesting spin to their colourful characters. It was a pleasant surprise to see Michelle Yim and Chin Siu Ho in their guest roles, among many others who were involved.
The action. Blazing gun battles, unarmed combat sequences, and car chases are depicted throughout. The choreography, stunts and pyrotechnics are generally well-rendered.
The cases. In addition to the overarching mystery and main investigation of terrorist attacks, we have a number of other unrelated criminal cases written in. They include armed robberies, high-profile kidnappings, murder mysteries, gangland warfare, cultists, and arsonists, among others. A number of the cases are quite cleverly written and compelling, although a couple of them seem quite generic.
The romance. Not all of it but in particular the relationship between Nic Sir and Hazel. I had fun watching these two dance around each other, where I felt that their interactions were portrayed in a very mature and relatable manner. They even have their own “couple OST” in the form of Masha Ray’s Sweetheart, which brings along a certain quirkiness to their scenes at times.
The music. I’m quite enthralled by the mood-inducing tone of the ending theme, the slow-rock ballad Secret Garden by Hana Kuk. The original music score accompanies some of the more emotional scenes, instead of stock music. There are 3 tracks in general:
Adversity (逆襲) by Hubert Wu
Secret Garden (秘密花園) by Hana Kuk
Hasta La Vista by Masha Ray
What I Didn’t Really Like
The slice-of-life. Particularly aspects involving Wing’s mother and her obsession with her daughter’s wedding as well as meddling in her personal affairs. Most of her scenes are fillers which take up more screen time than was necessary.
The love triangle. This side story dragged too long towards an unsavoury conclusion. I honestly feel this prolonged and slightly melodramatic arc is redundant and overshadows the main story at the tail end of the drama.
The adult-themes. Scenes of seduction, cosplay and role-playing, sexual innuendos are becoming a norm for TVB dramas these days. It wasn’t always like this, while even C-dramas and K-dramas in general are not as explicit with such depictions. I know TVB is constantly attempting to reinvent and modernise its productions to attract viewers in sustaining drama ratings. This is made all too obvious with the inclusion of a great many scantily-clad voluptuous women in plotlines that incorporate gratuitous sexual behaviour and violence.
Overall
Sinister Beings is one of the few TVB dramas of late that I’ve found really enjoyable. It maintained the momentum of its pace and, as a result, sustained my interest over a large part of its run. But as is typical with its formulaic approach, the ending is always rushed to accommodate elements other than the main story. There are even rumours of a sequel, depending on the success of the drama. Because of the earlier-mentioned dislikes as well as the bittersweet nature of the closure, my overall enthusiasm was slightly tempered towards the end. What could have been an 8.8 ended up being a 7.8, which still represents good value for your consideration.
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CHECK OUT SOMETHING ELSE BEFORE WASTING YOUR TIME HERE
Honestly Episode 0 was the only decent thing about this romp trying to pass for a series... If cheating and whiney people is what your into, look no further. Firstly, the protagonists are awful; One is an airhead that can't get over being ghosted after a 1NS, while the other is dude who thinks its okay to sleep with whatever breathes and says he "might be in love" with the some guy he ignored for 3 months.. Secondly; the supporting characters add as much to the story as crumbs to bread... in the end they just fall away and don't matter.Honestly I think the people who made this must have been smoking the same crack as the guys who made Physical Therapy / Dark Blue And Moonlight. Give this a pass and save a couple precious hours of your life. You can thank me later.
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An Epic. Nothing more to say
"Nothing Gold can Stay"I have no clue what that means.
I always loved to watch Chinese Movies.
There is much to learn from China's Rich Culture. I wanted to watch a Chinese story from a common person perspective. Majority of the movies/series that comes out are related to their dynasties or some warrior movies and their politics. I wanted to see how a common person lived in that period. This series depicted that so well. I was lucky to stumble up on this series. Wonderfully put together. They took their time to develop the characters in the story. The actors and actress were simply superb.
Warning: This series is very addictive and you may not sleep for days until finish the series.
Around the world power corrupts, china is no exception. You see some of that weaved in to the story. Last three or 4 episodes, I could clearly see things were rushed to complete this epic series. Cast were reduced to few main characters except for few scenes. The story was also moved along quickly. Having said that, this is a fantastic series and you should watch it.
I have re-watched some of the episodes to get a better understanding of the story.
This show was free via Amazon Prime, not any more. It is available in youtube, quality and subtitles are not up to par.
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The world is not ruined by the truth
The King's Letters gave a fascinating glimpse into the creation of Hangul, the Korean alphabet. It was set in 1442 with King Sejong the Great determined to do something for his legacy as the sands were quickly running through the hourglass of his life and reign.The Joseon court was largely ruled by ministers and scholars schooled in Confucianism and Chinese writing. They were not at all interested in developing easily learned phonetic letters for their language. Sejong wanted all of his people to learn to read and write which would have meant more competition and a threat to their power and positions.
King Sejong was not to be deterred. An envoy of Japanese monks arrived demanding the Tripitaka, the oldest collection of Buddhist scriptures written in Hanja on over 80,000 wooden blocks. A series of dots connected him, with some help from the Queen, to the Joseon Buddhist monk in charge of the Tripitaka. Sejong discovered the monks could chant, read and write in Sanskrit which was based on phonetic letters. His Eureka moment occurred after years of failed attempts to create an easy and useable alphabet. Promising the monks he would build a temple in the capitol if they would help him with the alphabet, an uneasy alliance was formed.
Much of the film covered the monks and king working through their language and breaking it down into a total of 28 consonants and vowels. Instead of memorizing thousands of characters, what they were developing would make it much easier to be literate. Sejong wanted the letters to be elegant and concise like geometry using only lines, dots, and “facets”. The major conflict of the story was keeping what they were doing from the Confucian court. Due to conflicts with the Buddhists during the Goryeo Dynasty, there were hard feelings on both sides. Most of the tension, however, dealt with the ailing king fearing he wouldn’t live long enough to not only create the letters but also to spread their use so that they would be protected and take root.
Spoiler alert! Of course, they succeeded as we all know. Sejong did end up giving the Confucians credit to try and gain their support. It took time for the “vulgar” or “women’s” script to be accepted. Thankfully, women and fiction writers used it as well as Buddhist monks which kept it alive until it took hold. In 1849, it was adopted as Korea’s national writing system. Even the Japanese during their occupation who outlawed it, couldn’t kill it.
The King’s Letters did tend to slow down and become repetitive in the latter part. I am enough of a documentary geek that this felt like an enjoyable one only dressed up and with excellent acting. Song Kang Ho (King Sejong) had great chemistry with both Park Hae Il (Monk Shin Mi) and the late Jeon Mi Seon (Queen So Hun). The cinematography, sets, and costumes were all lovely.
King Sejong was playing the long game, he wanted an educated people who would only make the country stronger and more enduring. His vision didn’t come to bear overnight or even in his lifetime, but he planted a seed that did take hold, blossomed, and bore fruit. Is still bearing fruit. A legacy of knowledge which can break down class lines and open communication is not such a bad legacy after all.
10/10/22
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From the title and the description, I expected something totally different. There was barely any story, except maybe the last episode. A lot did not make sense to me, for example, the doctors role or why Wu Suo Wei lived there, that could have been because of the really bad English sub that I watched, I don't know. There was no chemistry between the main characters and I really don't know what that was between them because they just called each others names and then Chi Cheng groped Wu Suo Wei, who fought against it. And this over and over. That's basically what this is about.The actors were alright, even though the roles they played were ridiculous.
Music was there, but I don't recall it.
And I will certainly never watch this again.
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Sensitive and gentle
The film is successful and very different. And you really need to keep an open mind and not jump to conclusions right away. All three characters were engraved in my soul, and not only because of the way the actors portrayed them, but also thanks to the fate of Pol, I raised the original rating of the story from 8 to 9.The music was sensitively chosen and perfectly suited to the style and character of the project, the processing was very fine and its highlight was the scene of Pol and Migs making love. Beautiful experience.
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PD. You do need a lot of tissues.
PD2. Wish I hadn't watched it, maybe then I wouldn't have became a physician.
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Interesting way to tell a story
Short and sweet.Talks about love, first one sided... This love is shown in words, time is different for the couple. He always talks about her. She talks about life, herself and the realisation of boy becoming a man and the difference between the way she looked at him in high school and university...
STORY - simple, with just one direction
ACTINGS - like it, enough for the personality of the characters.
MUSIC - like it
REWATCH - don't think so, even if it is sweet and short. Since it's a simple story, there isn't much to find in a rewatch, maybe just to warm our heart.
OVERALL - nice to spend some time watching this. A good short drama.
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I have 3 big problem with this drama
Seven Tan & Jing Bo Ran... Of course here I come...I have 3 big problem with this drama. Haha....
1) The duration.... OMG this is one f*cking long drama, without so much problem to solved. Make me quite bored watching this. For me this drama don't need to be this f*cking long duration or ep, maybe around 20s ep is actually enough.
But yeah like ChineseDramaFan wrote: "This is a lovely series which can be boring for some for its slow, everyday life story, but lovely for many for its quiet romance, a romance many can relate to - no fanfare, just love and devotion (if such elements still exist)." If that's what you looking for, this drama actually quite good. Drama filled with a little flashback, every day boring life with a little interruption about SWAT team mission.
2) I really have hard time to differentiate between the past & present time.... There's no much diff in the appearance of Lu Chen (LC) & Gui Xiao (GX) past & present, no diff color to differentiate the timeline, nothing to make us easier to differentiate past & present time. Maybe just the dialogue they said or little background. But hell I'm still sometimes have hard time to differentiate the timeline. Gonna be better if they choose diff actor to play the past, at least then we know for sure it's the past time...
3) After I read shiro review it make think, about the children, aka Qin Xiao Nan (XN). Yeah how pitty he is. He just moving from 1 house to another acting like it's a usual thing for him. But my problem it's not that... Haha.... The biggest question is where the h*ll is his mom.... Qin Ming Yu & his wife divorce, and at the beginning they tell us XN's mom always want to care for him. But she's really missing from the picture, not even care that her son is transfer to Beijing & his living condition. She can go to court to get custody, even at first the court side with the dad doesn't mean the circumstance can't change. But yeah of course they're not the main couple, so I think they don't need to think too much of this situation.
What I like about this drama:
+ The chemistry between Seven Tan & Jing Bo Ran. I love it... I can feel the attraction between them.
+ The solidarity between the SWAT team & friends
+ The adorable Qin Ming Yu & how he tries to chase Duan Rou.
Overall this quite good drama that you could watch.
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The story is a good one. For those that need romance there's not only a 500 year old longing, but a new budding romance with 2 very odd characters. For those that like supernatural, there's plenty. The ghost and demon effects were nicely done. There's even action and fight scenes for action addicts like myself.
Although the story is good, it wouldn't have been anything if it weren't for the outstanding cast. Choi Won Young never disappoints me. Sometimes what he's in does, but he never has. He was wonderful as Guibangjang. Hwang Jung Eum was very good, but I couldn't help staring at her lips. It appears she had injections. They were very unnatural. But she was playing a spirit so I guess whatever works. Yook Sung-jae rounds out our leads. I loved his scenes with Choi Won Young. I think he's a natural at bromances. He played Kang Bae with the right amount of charm, naivete, and hope. It made you root for KB from the very beginning.
The music was good I guess. I'm happy they didn't play the same sappy song in every episode like a music video. There were no flashbacks of scenes that were shown, thankfully! I really would love to see another season, but I don't think I'll re-watch MPUB again, at least not in the foreseeable future.
Overall, it was a really enjoyable show. Nothing truly deep and heavy. There are a lot of smiles to be had and perhaps some tears for some. I truly recommend it.
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Personally, I really like what I'm seeing and I really like how the old cases were given a new life in this new season. Honestly with every different Johnny's we got to see different ways as to how each Kindaichi were intrepreted and one can't help finding new sides to the familiar characters. And Michi, just as his predecessors, have done well in bringing out Kindaichi's charm. That said, it's always so interesting to see how any new adaptations of the Kindaichi series be given a new life either in drama form or anime as they were never really written to be exactly like in the manga and will have different changes added to make each adaptation s different.
Only downside tho, no Detective Akechi again in the new series. Gotta say we're still not getting new Akechi actors in recent Kindaichi dramas ever since Tsuyoshi's run. As in the past series after season 1 and 2, all of the plot where Akechi originally appear in manga end up being transferred to Kenmochi or other characters.
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This is a remake of the Korean drama, but I haven't watched the Korean version. On its own, the Thai version is good.Namtan is convincing as the twin sisters with different personalities, Meen and Mind. The rest of the cast is really good too, especially Jamie as Kat in a supporting role. Krist is good as Natee though one may wish that Natee were a more multi-dimensional character.
I'm not sure how much credit goes to the original Korean scriptwriters, but the story is interesting. The plot about Mind as a badly bullied girl losing her memory and being taken as Meen is complemented with a suspenseful subplot about the death of a girl called June (Meen's friend).
The series seems to be targeted at teenagers and surfaces a lot of issues confronting teenagers, from school bullying to parental expectations and stress over grades. This series contains some of the most astonishingly terrible examples of parents I have seen (particularly the parents of the bully, Tida). In fact, for a large part of the series, Natee's father and Meen's mother are the only truly good parents. Ironically, Meen's mother does not even have any biological children of her own and she is a better mother than those who have given birth to their own children.
It is not very convincing when most of the parents (e.g. Pete's mother and Gun's parents) become better quite suddenly, and there seems to be an excessive eagerness to send a positive message in the last episode. This undercuts the seriousness of the problems in society, such as the bullying of an orphaned girl to the point where she attempts suicide. However, this doesn't affect the show much.
I believe the weaknesses of the original Korean series are present here as well. The depiction of Gun seems a little formulaic (the second-male-lead syndrome strikes). Kay has performed the role of Gun well, but Gun doesn't seem to contribute much to advancing the plot (especially in the later part of the series) and appears to be merely there so that the female lead has not one but two ridiculously wonderful guys as suitors.
While the plot and acting are good, there could perhaps be more distinctions between the Korean series and the remake. From the comments I have read, the changes are minimal. Working towards a different ending would have been interesting. For someone like me who has never watched the Korean version and don't intend to, however, this is still an engaging series.
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