Freitag, 27. Mai 2016

White Night

!Warning! This is a Boys Love movie - don't like it? Then ignore it.


백야 (White Night, also known as One Night and Two Days) is a South Korean boys love movie directed by Lee Song Hee-il and was released in 2012.

Story: Kang Won-gyu left Seoul after traumatic events and comes back two years after what happened. While memories just come to live again, he meets Lee Tae-jun online. The two of them spend a special night together but not simply in a way one would expect - unexpected things keep happening especially to Tae-jun who doesn't know why Kang Won-gyu returned.

Cast: Won Tae-hee as Kang Won-gyu is actually an interesting character with a lots of secrets around him in the beginning that the viewer wants to solve out of curiosity. His acting in this movie is pretty good and I enjoyed watching his character after all. The reason I was dying to watch this movie as soon as I found out about it was Lee Yi-kyung though and his character Lee Tae-jun is more badass and less quiet than I expected him to be at first. I really liked his acting as well. I don't really know what I should tell you about it but sometimes I just felt like his characters thoughts were written all over his face but I still couldn't fully understand it.
After all this was a really interesting combination of actors and their characters as well as the way they acted and it in fact did work while at some point I just missed something like.. the chemistry.


After all this movie gets a 6.5/10 rating from me for a few reasons. It's fast-paced since it only has a runtime of 75 minutes so they needed to use that time. The acting in fact was good though the chemistry is missing up to some point. The music was beautiful but nothing too special. The setting was really beautiful, I like the place pretty much giving a view over certain parts of Seoul.
But at some point this movie again lacked just some exciting factor for me so sometimes I found myself rather bored.
It's not bad and I'll probably watch it again someday just to get the full story, preferably without subtitles so I don't need to rely on translations as much as I need to as of now.
But one thing: Won Tae-hee speaking a few lines of German in this movie is just too cute but I didn't really understand it's German at first. That accent basically killed me, it's adorable!

Freitag, 20. Mai 2016

Twenty Years Old

Just a short writer's-note: This was my 50th K-Drama so it is a milestone~ Yay!



스무살 (Twenty Years Old; also known as 20's) is a South Korean drama series consisting of four episodes with a duration of 20 minutes that aired on January 6th and 7th 2014 on tvN.

Story: This short drama series tells the story of Kim Hye-rim who fell for one of her seniors but one night he tries to take her to a motel and her romantic love story ends. After being home for a few days her best friend and housemate Oh Ga-young takes her to a concert of popular idol group BEAST. Ga-young really likes member Lee Gi-kwang who was one of Kim Hye-rim's classmates in middle school.
After the concert, Hye-rim and Gi-kwang meet again and the story of their past becomes relevant again as Gi-kwang shows interest in Hye-rim after four years.

Cast: I think the first person I just need to talk about on here is Lee Gi-kwang as.. himself. Well, yes, it makes sense that his acting therefore wasn't too bad because after all.. who knows a character better than actually the person who is or was the model for this role? That does not mean that I don't think he might be a good actor but probably his role in this one wasn't the hardest to play but then again I don't really know his personality. His acting in this was just okay, pretty much okay and nice but nothing special and he might not be the best idol-turned-actor of all time but I will probably check that out some time later.
Secondly, there's Lee Da-in as Kim Hye-rim. She's pretty but I just came to laugh about how innocent and naive a young woman can be. But that means her acting was in fact believable though it seemed ridiculous how innocent she acted.
Other actors in this drama include Kim Hye-ji as Oh Ga-young and Kim Dong-seok as Kim Tae-woo.

Soundtrack: Is there even a soundtrack besides some of BEAST's songs that are playing in this series? There were a few tracks I've noticed but I don't know the titles or anything about the soundtrack in general. The music is supporting the drama itself and it doesn't have a bad impact on the rating but it is not outstandingly good as well.







A 6/10 might seem to be a kind of low rating to those who have read a few reviews but for me this is solely based on one important factor: the story. The story itself delivers the feeling of a fanfiction, there is literally nothing outstanding about it. It's a story 13 year old girls think about and publish something similar on myfanfiction.com or asianfanfics or I-don't-even-remember-how-many-sites-exist. It simply lacks individuality, the special factor. The character design is alright, the story has the usual elements teen-dramas include.
Character development is difficult to show in such a short series so this didn't really influence my rating.

For fans of BEAST and in general short idol stories this is a cute love story but if you're looking for something more special, this drama might not be the one you should watch. It only has the length of a movie though so it's not a waste of time if you decide to watch this.



Freitag, 13. Mai 2016

L: Change the World

Lの本当の秘密 (L: Change the World) is a spin-off and the last movie to be released belonging to the Death Note-series. The movie was released in 2008.

Story: After Watari's death L receives a "gift" - that's actually pretty much alive. L gets to know that the child he received as a gift is the only survivor of an exterminated Thai village. Behind the exermination of the village is the last enemy, the "Death", a virus created by humans with no vaccine yet.
While taking care of the little boy another visitor drops in. A girl named Maki who's father has been working on biological weapons, to be more exact he created the virus himself. In order to stop terrorism he infected himself and destroyed the only vaccine he had created that far.
The terrorists appear looking for the virus and L puts everything on the line, trying to protect the children, stop the virus and solve his final case - while he has only 6 days left to live.

Cast: Basically the only character remaining in this series is L played by Kenichi Matsuyama as always. And what is obvious is, that after two years as L, he did a pretty amazing job in this one again. Even if I don't want to think like that, to me, L and Kenichi Matsuyama are basically the same person.
Youki Kudoh is in this series as basically the main antagonist - while the other members of the group are dangerous as well - her intelligence makes Dr. Kimiko Kujo even more dangerous.
Masanobu Takashima is the second antagonist as Daisuke Matobe who makes things a little more interesting. If I remember right, greed was his main reason though he also claims to be a member of the "Blue ship" but then again the viewer doesn't really know if saving the planet through destroying humankind is really his goal or if it's only about money for him.
Mayuko Fukuda as Maki Nikaido is the key to the mystery around the virus and also the vaccine. While she's after Dr. Kujo for her revenge as well her acting is really good to watch, she's one of the few characters that make this movie for me.



As I don't know that to tell you anymore, I'll get straight to the point: the rating. 5.5/10.
In the very beginning I thought it would be worse but the ending of this movie was actually a good one. However, I do think that this has nothing to do with the first two movies released and that it should have been more clearly seperated. Also, in the beginning, the scenes seemed to be nothing but a mess. Nothing made sense at all, and when those scenes appeared showing that village in Thailand I felt like I was watching a completely different movie.
The movie itself is enjoyable. It is not outstandingly good but then again it does have some interesting scenes, especially in the latter hour. But honestly, 129 minutes were too long for this movie, the story wasn't created to fill two hours but probably 30 minutes left.
That being said, I sometimes just had to laugh about how the events were shown because it was ridiculous and also that enviroment-protection-whatever-group made me crack up. As much as you hate humans for destroying this planet, I cannot imagine such an extreme would ever happen so I just couldn't help laughing about them as well.




Freitag, 6. Mai 2016

Death Note: The Last Name

Death Note: The Last Name is a Japanese movie released in 2006 based on a manga series:


Story: As in the first movie, Death Note, L and the team of detectives trying to find kira. Light joins the special unit after the death of his former 'girlfriend' Shiori. Now being placed next to L, he wants to get rid of the ones in his way. As L is still suspicious he decides to observe Light closely.
Suddenly another kira appears and needs to be found. Both owners of the Death Note's together would be even more dangerous since one of them is a good strategic player while the other seems to see the name of the victim..

Cast: Okay, so I have no idea what I should really put on here. The main cast is of course the same as in the first movie. Kenichi Matsuyama as L and Tatsuya Fujiwara as Light Yagami. While in this movie Light seems to be more insane than in the first one which makes the acting more intense it's as good as in the first movie as well.
And let's not forget about Erika Toda as Misa Amane. While I love her style I think she's a little bit too psycho in a different way due to a trauma. All she wants is to be loved after all.
And there's Nana Katase as Kiyomi Takada who would do basically anything for her career.


I personally really liked how things involved. Many things were easy to understand because of the connections between the characters. Nothing seemed to be just fate but a plan carefully made.
The story is a little bit too crazy later though. This might be a spoiler but Light seems to have gone completely mad.
So my personal rating is a 7/10 which is not as good as the first movie but still not that bad.