Something Happened in Bali. Ep 15 brings on the cute

There are few things more adorable than Jae-Min, the morning after bringing totally drunk Soo-Jung home, in the kitchen, trying to cook for the very first time in his life (the way he is chopping cucumbers, heeee, and reading instructions to himself, and doesn't know you need mittens for hot pans) while wearing a 'hello kitty' apron to prepare breakfast for Soo-Jung.

*dies*

*briefly resurrects*

*dies again*

Even Soo-Jung is flabbergasted and then grinning when she sees.

And he is hiding it like some sort of criminal. LOL.

And the food it totally inedible.

ADORABLE.

Something Happened in Bali. Ep 15 brings on the cute

There are few things more adorable than Jae-Min, the morning after bringing totally drunk Soo-Jung home, in the kitchen, trying to cook for the very first time in his life (the way he is chopping cucumbers, heeee, and reading instructions to himself, and doesn't know you need mittens for hot pans) while wearing a 'hello kitty' apron to prepare breakfast for Soo-Jung.

*dies*

*briefly resurrects*

*dies again*

Even Soo-Jung is flabbergasted and then grinning when she sees.

And he is hiding it like some sort of criminal. LOL.

And the food it totally inedible.

ADORABLE.

Something Happened in Bali. Ep 15 brings on the cute

There are few things more adorable than Jae-Min, the morning after bringing totally drunk Soo-Jung home, in the kitchen, trying to cook for the very first time in his life (the way he is chopping cucumbers, heeee, and reading instructions to himself, and doesn't know you need mittens for hot pans) while wearing a 'hello kitty' apron to prepare breakfast for Soo-Jung.

*dies*

*briefly resurrects*

*dies again*

Even Soo-Jung is flabbergasted and then grinning when she sees.

And he is hiding it like some sort of criminal. LOL.

And the food it totally inedible.

ADORABLE.

Angst and crack...

OK, Red River manga owns me.

I just got to the scene in volume 8 which made me die. Prince Kail has to remove the arrow from Yuri’s back and of course back then there is no anesthetic or anything so he has to cause all this pain to the woman he lurves. So he gets a heated dagger and then he holds her tightly and tells her to bite his shoulder because otherwise she’ll clench her teeth so hard she’ll hurt herself, and so OMG, he is cutting the arrow out of her so she is bleeding and in huge pain and she is biting down and so there is blood coming out of his shoulder now too and…seriously. Crack.

Did I mention that she got this wound because she was there during the assassination (by evil minions of the Queen) of Prince Zananza, Kail’s favorite brother and the closest friend Yuri had in the place? Angst. And then she wakes up all bandanged after a few days, in Kail’s gigantic bed and he comes in and she is all ‘sex, now? eeek’ and he is all ‘I am not the type to take advantage of a wounded woman, but I can’t sleep since Zananza’s death but with you in bed I can maybe fall asleep’ and there is kissing and sleeping (not of sexual variety) and seriously. Crack. And the best part? I am on volume 9 now and you know what strikes me? All the adventures, scheming etc aside, Kail and Yuri have an incredibly strong and functional relationship.

Speaking of crack, I just came across this upcoming mainland China drama, The Butterfly Lovers (Liang Shan Bo Yu Zhu Ying Tai). It sounds like a Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet and how could I not love a period drama about angsty lovers.

Plot: A beautiful girl disguises herself as a man and lives under one roof with a young male scholar for three years without revealing her true identity. They become "sworn brothers," soul mates and then lovers. In a world in which marriage is determined by social status and arranged by parents, what is their inescapable Romeo-and-Juliet-type of fate?

*dies*



( Some more pictures )

Angst and crack...

OK, Red River manga owns me.

I just got to the scene in volume 8 which made me die. Prince Kail has to remove the arrow from Yuri’s back and of course back then there is no anesthetic or anything so he has to cause all this pain to the woman he lurves. So he gets a heated dagger and then he holds her tightly and tells her to bite his shoulder because otherwise she’ll clench her teeth so hard she’ll hurt herself, and so OMG, he is cutting the arrow out of her so she is bleeding and in huge pain and she is biting down and so there is blood coming out of his shoulder now too and…seriously. Crack.

Did I mention that she got this wound because she was there during the assassination (by evil minions of the Queen) of Prince Zananza, Kail’s favorite brother and the closest friend Yuri had in the place? Angst. And then she wakes up all bandanged after a few days, in Kail’s gigantic bed and he comes in and she is all ‘sex, now? eeek’ and he is all ‘I am not the type to take advantage of a wounded woman, but I can’t sleep since Zananza’s death but with you in bed I can maybe fall asleep’ and there is kissing and sleeping (not of sexual variety) and seriously. Crack. And the best part? I am on volume 9 now and you know what strikes me? All the adventures, scheming etc aside, Kail and Yuri have an incredibly strong and functional relationship.

Speaking of crack, I just came across this upcoming mainland China drama, The Butterfly Lovers (Liang Shan Bo Yu Zhu Ying Tai). It sounds like a Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet and how could I not love a period drama about angsty lovers.

Plot: A beautiful girl disguises herself as a man and lives under one roof with a young male scholar for three years without revealing her true identity. They become "sworn brothers," soul mates and then lovers. In a world in which marriage is determined by social status and arranged by parents, what is their inescapable Romeo-and-Juliet-type of fate?

*dies*



( Some more pictures )

Angst and crack...

OK, Red River manga owns me.

I just got to the scene in volume 8 which made me die. Prince Kail has to remove the arrow from Yuri’s back and of course back then there is no anesthetic or anything so he has to cause all this pain to the woman he lurves. So he gets a heated dagger and then he holds her tightly and tells her to bite his shoulder because otherwise she’ll clench her teeth so hard she’ll hurt herself, and so OMG, he is cutting the arrow out of her so she is bleeding and in huge pain and she is biting down and so there is blood coming out of his shoulder now too and…seriously. Crack.

Did I mention that she got this wound because she was there during the assassination (by evil minions of the Queen) of Prince Zananza, Kail’s favorite brother and the closest friend Yuri had in the place? Angst. And then she wakes up all bandanged after a few days, in Kail’s gigantic bed and he comes in and she is all ‘sex, now? eeek’ and he is all ‘I am not the type to take advantage of a wounded woman, but I can’t sleep since Zananza’s death but with you in bed I can maybe fall asleep’ and there is kissing and sleeping (not of sexual variety) and seriously. Crack. And the best part? I am on volume 9 now and you know what strikes me? All the adventures, scheming etc aside, Kail and Yuri have an incredibly strong and functional relationship.

Speaking of crack, I just came across this upcoming mainland China drama, The Butterfly Lovers (Liang Shan Bo Yu Zhu Ying Tai). It sounds like a Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet and how could I not love a period drama about angsty lovers.

Plot: A beautiful girl disguises herself as a man and lives under one roof with a young male scholar for three years without revealing her true identity. They become "sworn brothers," soul mates and then lovers. In a world in which marriage is determined by social status and arranged by parents, what is their inescapable Romeo-and-Juliet-type of fate?

*dies*



( Some more pictures )

Movies, movies, movies....

I’ve realized that of the movies I’ve seen in the theater this year, comparatively not that many (1/3) have been in English. This is not out of some form of snobbery because I just go see what interests me, but it is bizarre. Of course, in part this is because Last King of Scotland, The Queen etc. was showing, I was swamped. Hmm.

Here is the list of the movies I’ve seen in theater so far, in order from most fave to least. I have to note though that I thoroughly enjoyed every movie I’ve seen in a theater so far, with the possible exception of ‘The Namesake’ which is a rarity for me.

( Movie list with explanations )

But this lop-sidedness shall be remedied as I am planning to see Spiderman 3 this weekend. So excited. Spiderman 2 is my favorite superhero movie ever (it would have been Batman Begins but Katie Holmes was atrocious).

Abd speaking of movies I am planning to see. Tomorrow, I plan to see the Dutch movie Black Book.

Black Book follows the story of a fictional Resistance fighter, Rachel Stein. Rachel is a Jewish woman in the Nazi-oppupied Holland who loses her whole family when they are betrayed trying to flee. Masquerading as a Gentile Ellis de Vries, she becomes a spy for the Dutch Reistance. On a personal mission to avenge her family's merciless murder, she becomes involved - at first duplicitously, then for real - with bigwig Ludwig who's that rarest of characters: a sympathetic Nazi. This shake-up of the usual war-movie rules also applies to the good guys, some of whom are as corrupt as the enemy.

It has excellent reviews and was in fact shortlisted for best foreign picture Oscar (it made it into the final 9 but not the final 5) but I’ve been hesitating for ages mainly because of the director. Veerhoven, the director of Showgirls, directing a movie about World War II? Dutch Resistance? Jews and Nazis? Ummmm…Visions of disaster danced in my head. And then also one of the main characters is a Gestapo guy who is not completely bad. OK. Seriously. As someone who is both Jewish and from Ukraine (when I was growing up, kids still played Partisans and Nazis), the very thought of Gestapo evokes anger. And fear. And a fair deal of hate. So I wasn’t sure I was up for it. I like my couples star-crossed but not when it’s because one half is a willing participant in a genocide to wipe the race of the other out of existence.

But apparently Veerhoven used to be a really acclaimed director before the Showgirls debacle (I remember when Showgirls came out I was in high school (am dating myself :D) and I lived in a very small conservative Southern town so no theater was going to be showing it. A bunch of guys from school piled in a van and drove to the nearest big city to watch it. LOL), and the reviews were uniformly excellent, and it turned out that the Nazi was played by Sebastian Koch who I just law and loved in The Lives of Others. And I do love Erich Maria Remarque’s awesome novel A Time to Live and a Time to Die about a German WWII solider home on leave. Though Gestapo is not the army whereto you get drafted and Veerhoven not Remarque. I really should do a post on Remarque. He is my favorite author. Three Comrades, about three WWI veterans in the falling apart Berlin of the early 30s, and the narrator Robert’s soul-saving, doomed love affair with the fragile mysterious Patrice (one of Remarque’s irresistable women) is my favorite book ever. I am going to do a post on it actually because once I start I’ll never stop. And I am madly in love with Arch of Triumph, the narrator of which is a Resistance fighter tortured by the Nazis and now a refugee in Paris before the war, who is tracking his torturer with intent to kill. In Remarque’s world, you find happiness only to lose it, but you are better for having had something than nothing at all. His heroes are wounded but strong and so are his women, and the world is bleak with some individual sparks of goodness (There are marvelous movie versions of Arch of Triumph (1948) and A time to live and a time to die (cheesily rechristened A time to love and a time to die, made sometime in the 50s) but the movie version of Three Comrades makes me want to kill something. And I wish there were movie versions of his other books. Interestingly, he was married to Paulette Goddard, Charlie Chaplin’s ex. She had great taste in men ;) Anyway, that is a hell of a digression.

Back to Black Book. So I'll risk it and will go to watch it.

This review makes me at least hopeful.

( Review of the Movie )

Movies, movies, movies....

I’ve realized that of the movies I’ve seen in the theater this year, comparatively not that many (1/3) have been in English. This is not out of some form of snobbery because I just go see what interests me, but it is bizarre. Of course, in part this is because Last King of Scotland, The Queen etc. was showing, I was swamped. Hmm.

Here is the list of the movies I’ve seen in theater so far, in order from most fave to least. I have to note though that I thoroughly enjoyed every movie I’ve seen in a theater so far, with the possible exception of ‘The Namesake’ which is a rarity for me.

( Movie list with explanations )

But this lop-sidedness shall be remedied as I am planning to see Spiderman 3 this weekend. So excited. Spiderman 2 is my favorite superhero movie ever (it would have been Batman Begins but Katie Holmes was atrocious).

Abd speaking of movies I am planning to see. Tomorrow, I plan to see the Dutch movie Black Book.

Black Book follows the story of a fictional Resistance fighter, Rachel Stein. Rachel is a Jewish woman in the Nazi-oppupied Holland who loses her whole family when they are betrayed trying to flee. Masquerading as a Gentile Ellis de Vries, she becomes a spy for the Dutch Reistance. On a personal mission to avenge her family's merciless murder, she becomes involved - at first duplicitously, then for real - with bigwig Ludwig who's that rarest of characters: a sympathetic Nazi. This shake-up of the usual war-movie rules also applies to the good guys, some of whom are as corrupt as the enemy.

It has excellent reviews and was in fact shortlisted for best foreign picture Oscar (it made it into the final 9 but not the final 5) but I’ve been hesitating for ages mainly because of the director. Veerhoven, the director of Showgirls, directing a movie about World War II? Dutch Resistance? Jews and Nazis? Ummmm…Visions of disaster danced in my head. And then also one of the main characters is a Gestapo guy who is not completely bad. OK. Seriously. As someone who is both Jewish and from Ukraine (when I was growing up, kids still played Partisans and Nazis), the very thought of Gestapo evokes anger. And fear. And a fair deal of hate. So I wasn’t sure I was up for it. I like my couples star-crossed but not when it’s because one half is a willing participant in a genocide to wipe the race of the other out of existence.

But apparently Veerhoven used to be a really acclaimed director before the Showgirls debacle (I remember when Showgirls came out I was in high school (am dating myself :D) and I lived in a very small conservative Southern town so no theater was going to be showing it. A bunch of guys from school piled in a van and drove to the nearest big city to watch it. LOL), and the reviews were uniformly excellent, and it turned out that the Nazi was played by Sebastian Koch who I just law and loved in The Lives of Others. And I do love Erich Maria Remarque’s awesome novel A Time to Live and a Time to Die about a German WWII solider home on leave. Though Gestapo is not the army whereto you get drafted and Veerhoven not Remarque. I really should do a post on Remarque. He is my favorite author. Three Comrades, about three WWI veterans in the falling apart Berlin of the early 30s, and the narrator Robert’s soul-saving, doomed love affair with the fragile mysterious Patrice (one of Remarque’s irresistable women) is my favorite book ever. I am going to do a post on it actually because once I start I’ll never stop. And I am madly in love with Arch of Triumph, the narrator of which is a Resistance fighter tortured by the Nazis and now a refugee in Paris before the war, who is tracking his torturer with intent to kill. In Remarque’s world, you find happiness only to lose it, but you are better for having had something than nothing at all. His heroes are wounded but strong and so are his women, and the world is bleak with some individual sparks of goodness (There are marvelous movie versions of Arch of Triumph (1948) and A time to live and a time to die (cheesily rechristened A time to love and a time to die, made sometime in the 50s) but the movie version of Three Comrades makes me want to kill something. And I wish there were movie versions of his other books. Interestingly, he was married to Paulette Goddard, Charlie Chaplin’s ex. She had great taste in men ;) Anyway, that is a hell of a digression.

Back to Black Book. So I'll risk it and will go to watch it.

This review makes me at least hopeful.

( Review of the Movie )

Movies, movies, movies....

I’ve realized that of the movies I’ve seen in the theater this year, comparatively not that many (1/3) have been in English. This is not out of some form of snobbery because I just go see what interests me, but it is bizarre. Of course, in part this is because Last King of Scotland, The Queen etc. was showing, I was swamped. Hmm.

Here is the list of the movies I’ve seen in theater so far, in order from most fave to least. I have to note though that I thoroughly enjoyed every movie I’ve seen in a theater so far, with the possible exception of ‘The Namesake’ which is a rarity for me.

( Movie list with explanations )

But this lop-sidedness shall be remedied as I am planning to see Spiderman 3 this weekend. So excited. Spiderman 2 is my favorite superhero movie ever (it would have been Batman Begins but Katie Holmes was atrocious).

Abd speaking of movies I am planning to see. Tomorrow, I plan to see the Dutch movie Black Book.

Black Book follows the story of a fictional Resistance fighter, Rachel Stein. Rachel is a Jewish woman in the Nazi-oppupied Holland who loses her whole family when they are betrayed trying to flee. Masquerading as a Gentile Ellis de Vries, she becomes a spy for the Dutch Reistance. On a personal mission to avenge her family's merciless murder, she becomes involved - at first duplicitously, then for real - with bigwig Ludwig who's that rarest of characters: a sympathetic Nazi. This shake-up of the usual war-movie rules also applies to the good guys, some of whom are as corrupt as the enemy.

It has excellent reviews and was in fact shortlisted for best foreign picture Oscar (it made it into the final 9 but not the final 5) but I’ve been hesitating for ages mainly because of the director. Veerhoven, the director of Showgirls, directing a movie about World War II? Dutch Resistance? Jews and Nazis? Ummmm…Visions of disaster danced in my head. And then also one of the main characters is a Gestapo guy who is not completely bad. OK. Seriously. As someone who is both Jewish and from Ukraine (when I was growing up, kids still played Partisans and Nazis), the very thought of Gestapo evokes anger. And fear. And a fair deal of hate. So I wasn’t sure I was up for it. I like my couples star-crossed but not when it’s because one half is a willing participant in a genocide to wipe the race of the other out of existence.

But apparently Veerhoven used to be a really acclaimed director before the Showgirls debacle (I remember when Showgirls came out I was in high school (am dating myself :D) and I lived in a very small conservative Southern town so no theater was going to be showing it. A bunch of guys from school piled in a van and drove to the nearest big city to watch it. LOL), and the reviews were uniformly excellent, and it turned out that the Nazi was played by Sebastian Koch who I just law and loved in The Lives of Others. And I do love Erich Maria Remarque’s awesome novel A Time to Live and a Time to Die about a German WWII solider home on leave. Though Gestapo is not the army whereto you get drafted and Veerhoven not Remarque. I really should do a post on Remarque. He is my favorite author. Three Comrades, about three WWI veterans in the falling apart Berlin of the early 30s, and the narrator Robert’s soul-saving, doomed love affair with the fragile mysterious Patrice (one of Remarque’s irresistable women) is my favorite book ever. I am going to do a post on it actually because once I start I’ll never stop. And I am madly in love with Arch of Triumph, the narrator of which is a Resistance fighter tortured by the Nazis and now a refugee in Paris before the war, who is tracking his torturer with intent to kill. In Remarque’s world, you find happiness only to lose it, but you are better for having had something than nothing at all. His heroes are wounded but strong and so are his women, and the world is bleak with some individual sparks of goodness (There are marvelous movie versions of Arch of Triumph (1948) and A time to live and a time to die (cheesily rechristened A time to love and a time to die, made sometime in the 50s) but the movie version of Three Comrades makes me want to kill something. And I wish there were movie versions of his other books. Interestingly, he was married to Paulette Goddard, Charlie Chaplin’s ex. She had great taste in men ;) Anyway, that is a hell of a digression.

Back to Black Book. So I'll risk it and will go to watch it.

This review makes me at least hopeful.

( Review of the Movie )

Largely about The Lives of Others...

I have to say, I’ve got some respect for Prince Harry after reading that he wants (and will) serve with a combat unit in Iraq. He clearly doesn’t have to do so, so at least he's got some guts.

Changing tack, I keep being haunted by The Lives of Others. It is an amazing film and I’ll try to see it again before it leaves theaters, if I can.

( Lengthy spoilery ramble on the movie )

I only rarely find reviews that really express what I feel, but I found one here. It’s San Francisco Chronicle.

( Review behind cut )

Largely about The Lives of Others...

I have to say, I’ve got some respect for Prince Harry after reading that he wants (and will) serve with a combat unit in Iraq. He clearly doesn’t have to do so, so at least he's got some guts.

Changing tack, I keep being haunted by The Lives of Others. It is an amazing film and I’ll try to see it again before it leaves theaters, if I can.

( Lengthy spoilery ramble on the movie )

I only rarely find reviews that really express what I feel, but I found one here. It’s San Francisco Chronicle.

( Review behind cut )

Largely about The Lives of Others...

I have to say, I’ve got some respect for Prince Harry after reading that he wants (and will) serve with a combat unit in Iraq. He clearly doesn’t have to do so, so at least he's got some guts.

Changing tack, I keep being haunted by The Lives of Others. It is an amazing film and I’ll try to see it again before it leaves theaters, if I can.

( Lengthy spoilery ramble on the movie )

I only rarely find reviews that really express what I feel, but I found one here. It’s San Francisco Chronicle.

( Review behind cut )