Lee El

Review – Hwayugi / A Korean Odyssey

/ Lady Divine / 1 Comment

Review – Hwayugi / A Korean Odyssey

You never know what you’re going to get when you start watching a Korean supernatural drama.  Vampires, ghosts, gumihos, goblins, demons, grim reapers, or deities.  You also don’t know how involved they’ll be in the human world.  So it’s always fun – because each show tends to write their own rules for the game.  In Hwayugi, we have demons, ghosts, deities, fortune tellers and more – and they are all heavily involved in the human world.

All the supernatural characters in this show are extremely quirky and enjoyable.  The pompous tv host demon who is trying to mend his ways, the shallow celebrity, the bratty exiled monkey deity, the male/female fairy, the demon dog and the zombie girl.  We even have a powerful billionaire CEO that spends his evenings playing a servant because these domestic chores bring him joy.  Most of these supernatural peeps have a job or something they are doing for a reason, or striving for, or living for.  They kinda make sense, motivation wise, though they are also silly and preposterous as well.  That preposterous nature is where the fun of this show lies.  It’s so over the top and silly that you can’t help but love it.  Reminds me of You’re Beautiful.  Just… fun.

At it’s heart, Hwayugi is a love story about a woman who can see ghosts and a monkey god who’s been banished from the heavenly realm.  She is an outcast amongst her own people just as he is.  She’s spent her life alienated and alone.  And he’s spent large chunks of his life imprisoned.  She’s our human, struggling with her emotions, and he’s our crazy deity, struggling to have emotions.  Problem is, she’s been transformed into a mythical monk whose blood grants powers to demons and he’d like very much to eat her and gain that power.  These two are bound to each other, with contracts and spells.

It’s a total mess.  But a lovable mess.  With outstanding costuming.

Overall Rating – 8/10.  Modern Deities Wearing Funky Fur Coats.

More discussion, musings, and spoilers follow….

Continue reading →

Review – Black

/ Lady Divine / 3 Comments

Review – Black

Black was a giant twisted MESS of a show.  Honestly, it’s like the writers were suffering from schizophrenia.  It’s a show about… rape?  Corruption?  Lost souls?  Grim Reapers?  Death?  First loves?  Child murder?  Familial problems?  Romance? Revenge?  Cop stuff?  Who knows!  It just stuck its hand in a big bag of ideas, grabbed as many as it could get its fingers around, then scattered them across the table and said, “Perfect!  That’s our show!”  And everyone else looked down and said, “Wait, what?” I am hard pressed to think of a more chaotic show than Black.  Despite the great actors and the cool fantasy aspects of the afterlife, it failed in coherence and theme.  For 20 freakin’ episodes… it was like untangling Christmas lights, except when the whole thing unraveled you discover half the bulbs are dead.

And Black, Grim Reaper 444… or is it 420?,  was a disastrous character.  What exactly happens to you when you die that makes your personality turn into a cartoon character?  His behavior was so hammy, so on the nose, so “Ha, Ha, Ha, I Don’t Like Humans Thus I Must Act Like A Childish Moron.”  It was groan inducing.

I have nothing else to say about this show.  If you want to throw away 20 hours of your life one day, like I did this Saturday, then feel free to watch this mess.

THE REAL MYSTERY OF THIS SHOW (besides trying to figure out why I watched the entire thing) is the conundrum of Kim Dong Jun… and how he’s the male mirror image of Han Ga In.  Seriously.  I thought, “they must be twins…  It’s uncanny!”  But nope.  They’re not related.  Maybe they have the same plastic surgeon, I don’t know, but geepers… it’s unnerving!

Overall Rating – 4/10.  The Afterlife Is Full Of Plot Holes.

Review – White Christmas (A Tribute to 90’s Angst)

/ Lady Divine / 1 Comment

Review – White Christmas (A Tribute to 90’s Angst)

In 2011, they gathered together all the young stars who could tear down a house with their acting abilities and threw them in a short, creepy drama together called White Christmas.  They set the entire thing to late 20th century indie music…  Primal Scream, Massive Attack, The Pixies, Alice in Chains, Velvet Underground… like a stolen mixed tape from my formative years.  The plot is simple – seven students receive a threatening, confusing anonymous letter saying they’re all cursed and someone will die over the Christmas break.  So they all stay behind, as the rest of their peers leave for the holidays.  These stragglers linger in a huge empty school building isolated on top of a snowy mountain… desperate to discover what role they have to play in this mystery.

And at its heart, the show is a mystery.  But it’s also an examination into a high pressure school system.  It’s social commentary.  It’s a therapy session.  It’s an exploration of natural violence.  It’s a story about people… and how they hurt and heal each other.  And it is DARK, people.

I’ve had it in my que for months… saving it.  Now that summer is coming to an end, I finally treated myself to dessert.  And it was exceptionally tasty.  Only eight episodes long but jam packed with mesmerizing performances, plot twists, and a startlingly original story.  It’s on Viki – go watch it now! (and please when you’re watching it take note of all the bizarre conceptual 90’s-style photoshop artwork all over the walls in every room… cause… wow… so eerie… remember the doll heads?)

Overall Rating – 10/10.  REDRUM!  REDRUM!!!

Discussion of characters and SPOILERS follow….

Continue reading →

Review – Liar Game

/ Lady Divine / 5 Comments

Review – Liar Game

How incredibly awesome was this show?  And it was the perfect length – at 12 episodes – not too long, not too short – just right.  I had read a bad review of it and skipped watching it for a long time, but decided to check it out recently… and twelve hours later, this binge-inducing show had completely swept me off the planet and into an exciting world of intrigue and suspicion!

Plot in a nutshell – a new reality show tests people moral aptitudes and problem solving skills as they attempt to win money in increasingly difficult ways.  This is a character driven show – and after a few games you are down to a small number of key players and you get a firm sense of their personalities, faults and strengths without the use of backstories or flashbacks (exception to the rule being the main three characters).   What lines are they willing to cross for money?  And is there a darker secret behind the show?

Overall Rating – 10/10.  Manipulation Is A Group Sport!

More discussion and very mild spoilers follow (cause I don’t want to spoil the excitement!)….

Continue reading →