Sunday, July 2, 2017

Angel Eyes

     I've completed yet another series of Kdrama...this one is called 'Angel Eyes'...a fairly old one which came out in 2014...at a time when I was neither into Kdrama nor had the time for such indulgence...still, one is never too late to watch a 'first love which was separated by tragic circumstances only to meet again to face more tragic circumstances' kind of drama...there's only one reason why I loved this drama...and it's Lee Sang Yoon, who played the adult Park Dong Joo (who's the male lead of the drama)...yes, I've finally found my Korean actor crush in Lee Sang Yoon...him with his smiling crinkly eyes...and creased forehead when he has his serious intense look on...I know, I'm weird that way...smiling crinkly eyes get to me...everytime...I had a crush on Hugh Grant for the longest time because he had smiling crinkly eyes...Oh, and Lee Sang Yoon has a degree in Physics...totally my kind of geek...smiling crinkly eyes and a degree in Physics...perfect combination...

     Otherwise, the drama was good enough to be a tear-jerker...although personally I felt there were too many plot-twists and subplots which I had figured out way before it was finally revealed...but still, a first love that never waned definitely appeals to many...including myself...made me wished my first love had lasted...that even after 12 years of separation, we had never forgotten how we felt about each other...but of course, everyone's love story has a different beginning and an ending...like how Park Dong Joo replied to Kang Ji Woon (Soo Wan's present boyfriend) when asked how long did his first love last...and Dong Joo answered, it hasn't ended...awww....

     I really love Lee Sang Yoon's character...from the beginning when he fell in love with Soo Wan who was blinded from a tragedy which claimed her mother's life...to helping her out from her depression and guilt...but then tragedy struck again when Dong Joo's mother passed away...Soo Wan received corneal transplant from Dong Joo's mother but Dong Joo had to go to US for his sister's treatment...so they were separated for 12 years without news of each other...thanks to Soo Wan's father's misguided intervention...

     When Dong Joo came back to find Soo Wan, he realized she didn't recognize him as she had never seen his face...and she already has a boyfriend who's a neurosurgeon in her father's hospital (who eventually is revealed as the person who hit-and-run Dong Joo's mother)...anyway, to cut the long story short, Soo Wan found out about Dong Joo and they decided to be together again...and then Dong Joo proposed to her at the observatory...I must say that was probably one of the most romantic proposal ever...but then as with all dramas, the ghosts and sins of the past always come to haunt the present...all the secrets that Soo Wan's father had been keeping was eventually revealed and caused chaos in their relationships...but as with all dramas, eventually love conquered all and they ended up getting together again....finally, after Dong Joo almost died getting run over by a car, Soo Wan got her senses back and decided to not keep hiding from Dong Joo...if I had a guy like Dong Joo loving me, I don't think I'll ever be like how Soo Wan was...I won't let him out of my sight...ever....

      Oh, did I mention Park Dong Joo is a cardiothoracic surgeon? What is it about Kdramas that the male leads who are in the medical profession are either neurosurgeons or cardiothoracic surgeons? And occasionally paediatric surgeons or hepatobiliary surgeons? Plastic surgeons too glamour for kdramas is it? Anyway, love most of the songs from the OST...although I wish when they sang in English they would have worked on their pronunciation...I still have problem figuring out the lyrics for the sound tracks which were in English...oh well, I'll just indulge myself in the songs anyway...and maybe I should put in that application for my fellowship in Korea soon...a girl can always dream yea?

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Beautiful Mind

    Ok, I have to say I love this one even more than Blood...and I definitely love it more than Doctors...which is why I cannot in the life of me understand why they had to cut down the number of episodes for Beautiful Mind because its viewer ratings were lower than Doctors...I mean, both dramas had a main lead who's a neurosurgeon...and Beautiful Mind had more intense medical scenes, a psycho-thriller kind of genre and dealt with more ethical and medicolegal issues...how can that be less interesting and exciting than a love story between 2 neurosurgeons? And it's not like Beautiful Mind didn't have romantic scenes...I actually felt that the romantic scenes meant even more because of the disability which the male lead had...

    Anyway, I used to want to be a neurosurgeon...look how the mighty has fallen...but neurosurgeon or not, I wished I could be a doctor like Lee Young Oh (the male lead who developed antisocial personality disorder from being brought up as such by his adopted father who is also a neurosurgeon)...I know, I know...why would anyone want to be labelled a psychopath/ monster right? He may lack empathy and be unable to feel the pain and suffering of his patients, but he had such rational and logical thinking that he is able to diagnose diseases and conditions accurately...and because he feels no fear, he is able to perform surgeries with astounding accuracy and precision...I wish I can be such a good surgeon...

    His adopted father kept telling him that he's a monster and he is different from normal people when he was growing up..and that he had to learn how to pretend to be a normal person...but as far as I can tell, the only monster in their relationship is the father...and his colleagues and superiors at the hospital call him a psychopath, gossip about him and tried to terminate his service as a doctor because he was trying to expose a big cover up for malpractice involving a multi-million dollars stem cell research...all I see are monsters around him with greedy, selfish ambitions for power and fame...he tried so hard to be like a normal person...although he cannot feel emotions...but I think it was actually a good thing that his judgments were not swayed by emotions...so his morals are not tainted with feelings such as envy, jealousy, hatred, greed, selfishness, self-centredness and fear...how many times in my life have I wished I made decisions that were not influenced by my stupid emotions? I've lost count...

     So Lee Young Oh initially had a 'love interest' who is a neurologist...he even proposed to her and wanted to marry her...but she betrayed him in order to advance her own career...so I actually fail to understand why he is the monster who doesn't empathize with patients but she isn't a monster who betrayed her lover for her selfish ambitions ...just because she has 'feelings'? How absurd is that? Anyway, the main female lead wasn't the bitch who betrayed him (although I must say she was the pretty one)...the main female lead was actually a younger police officer who had valvular heart disease and was treated by a cardiothoracic surgeon whom she had a crush on initially...the actress isn't pretty and she didn't even fix her teeth like how all the other actresses did...but I digress...

      I actually loved how the romance between the psychopathic neurosurgeon and the obtuse idealistic police officer developed...there was a scene in the first episode where the neurosurgeon looked like he was trying to murder the police officer but in fact he was draining her pericardial effusion...yea, I know...only happens in drama...I think what I find enticing about their romance is how the male lead developed an affinity towards the female lead (read: fall in love) without him (and even her) realizing what's happening...but the ultimate proof of his oh-so-true-love was this (spoiler alert ahead): he donated one of his lung to the police officer as she was having pulmonary failure from pulmonary fibrosis...damn! I cried as hard as I did when Song Joong Ki 'died' in DOTS...maybe harder... but the best part is that to Lee Young Oh, it was just a mean to save a patient's life...only made me cry harder...I mean, how many humans with feelings will even think about donating an organ to a family member? what more a person unrelated to him/ her? If a guy were to do that for me, I don't care if he's a psychopath, I'll be with him...for good...I know, it doesn't make sense...real psychopaths don't do things like that...and lung transplant from live donor is illegal and will never happen in Korea (or Malaysia for that matter)...but that's why I love fiction...coz in fiction, everything and anything is a possibility...

     There are not many songs in the OST...and I only liked 'Dirt' by Bernard Park...it's a beautiful song for such a beautiful drama...and I think the ending for this drama is just perfectly beautiful...Lee Young Oh in his mental monologue said: I cannot feel your heart; I cannot even empathize with you, the only choice I can make is to love you.” But isn't that what we've been told all this while? That love isn't just about feelings? That love is about making the choice to stay with a person for better or worse and in sickness and health?

Sunday, June 4, 2017

Blood

    I'm a sucker for vampire stories...so it's a given that I would love the kdrama 'Blood'...the male lead is a top hepatobiliary surgeon who happened to be a vampire...there's even a scientific basis for his condition...his parents were conducting some research on some virus named VBT-01 and they were both infected with the virus, which produces symptoms similar to vampirism...thirst for blood, light hypersensitivity (sunlight at dawn and strong UV light is lethal), superhuman strength, ability to grow fangs and claws, and ability to change the colour of iris...so the male lead was a pure-bred vampire as he was the offspring of a vampire couple (which according to the drama, is a mutation in itself)....combining the supernatural and science is so my cup of tea...

    Of course, this drama in its essence is a romance as well...watching a vampire slowly falling for a human is such a beautiful thing...to be honest, there weren't that many lovey-dovey scenes as they needed to put in the action and fighting scenes in a 20-episode drama...there were only about 5 scenes where the male and female lead were hugging each other...a few save the damsel in distress scenes and 1 kissing scene...oh, and one 'watching the sunrise while the male lead is dying' scene...and yes, i'm not embarrassed to admit i was bawling my heart out watching that scene...probably one of the most heart-wrenching scene I've watched for a long time...

    I love how the male lead who initially was this cold, unfeeling creature (at least on the outside) slowly and awkwardly became a warm-hearted human...there was a scene where the female lead was trying to imitate another couple playing the 'find me' game...which even I felt was pretty stupid and silly...so the female lead went into this flower bed and pretended to 'hide' and asked the male lead "where am I?"...and the male lead just answered "there"...the female lead reprimanded him for not playing along and he answered, "how can I not see a talking flower?"....cheesy I know...but still amazingly adorable... 

    So I found out that the male and female lead in that drama actually took their romance off-screen and are actually married in real life...that is pretty sweet in itself...i suppose the male lead was chosen because he did look good as a vampire...and i'm still wondering how they made him look even better in his 'dying moments'...coz initially i had some issues with his looks...i'm not sure if he had gone under the knife before but if he did, it looked like the surgeon didn't do too good a job...coz at some angles, his columella looked deviated...and his lips are slightly lopsided...but then again, who am I to comment anything...this guy is a model and actor...surely his looks are good enough to be this in-demand...

    It has become a habit to listen to the OST of the kdramas I've watched...and I must say I love the instrumental OST of Blood...the songs aren't too bad...but the instrumental ones really set the mood for the dark, mysterious scenes...and then there are those few sad and melancholic ones which I love the most...namely 'Vampire's Love', 'Love and Salvation' and 'Someone's Pain'...

Saturday, May 13, 2017

W - Two Worlds

    I just finished watching another Kdrama "W - Two Worlds" last night...I must say this one hits eerily closest to home than all the dramas I've watched before...just a little background on the main female lead: 30 year-old cardiothoracic resident who created her dream guy in the form of the main male lead (the main character of the famous webtoon "W" drawn by her father)...ok, I can't draw to save my own life...but if I could, I would have drawn and created my own dream guy...of course nothing is stopping me from creating my own dream guy in my imaginary world and imagine how our day-to-day sweet romance would play out...but I'm digressing....

    Anyway, I loved this Kdrama...it's a fiction fantasy, sci-fi, psycho-thriller, mystery, drama and romance all snowballed into one...my mind is still reeling from all the suspense and plot-twists...it gets a little messy at times...and confusing too...what with all the movements between the real and cartoon worlds...not to mention that I don't understand Korean and the English subtitles sometimes don't exactly convey the actual meaning of the lines in Korean...still, I loved how this drama gives you the idea that perhaps in every created worlds (even cartoon worlds), the characters in the worlds are really alive and sometimes develop their own will and desire....

    I think another concept that many would find attractive is that 2 people from 2 different worlds can meet and eventually fall in love with each other...actually that's pretty cliche...but i think in this drama it's more like the girl created her dream guy who lives in a parallel world but eventually ended up saving his life and brought him to (real) life...now who doesn't love the idea of a dream guy turning into reality? Doesn't matter if he has no identity or money in the real world...

    Although initially I didn't think the main actor of the drama is good-looking, he actually fits his character well...he does look like as if he came out of a comic book...he's tall, fair with a cute boyish charm that befits a main character of a webtoon...the main actress is quite pretty...but I do wonder why they always make the female lead awkward and easily flustered...especially when in front of the male lead...and somehow, although the male lead doesn't think the female lead is beautiful, he finds her charming in her own ways and falls in love with her...does this even happen in real life?

    In the drama, there are a lot of variables in the cartoon and real world which changes the dynamics and course of the cartoon world...and because the female lead (from the real world) went into the cartoon world and became the female lead in the cartoon world, the original female lead in the cartoon world started to disappear because she has lost her purpose of existence in the cartoon world...which got me to think, sometimes in life, your happy ending might have been someone else's sad ending...and I wonder if maybe that's why I think I don't deserve a happy ending...because my happiness is at the cost of another person's sadness and suffering...

    Anyway, there are some nice songs in the OST of this drama...and the songs are very suitably written for the drama...i don't usually like songs with rap, but "In the Illusion" feels like the perfect song for this drama...a friend asked if he should watch this drama, so I told him that if he liked the idea of cartoon characters coming to life and real people going into the cartoon world, then watch it!

Saturday, May 6, 2017

My Kdrama binge: Of mermaid and time traveller...

    So it has been a little more than one year since my last post...I guess my life in Malacca had been so uneventful that I hardly felt the urge to type out a post...true to my INFJ self, I'm turning into a hermit who drama binges...previously it used to be Taiwanese drama series but I must have been bitten by a Korean bug recently...so I'm binging on Kdramas: Doctors, Descendants of the Sun, Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, Romantic Doctor (Teacher Kim), Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, The Legend of the Blue Sea and Tomorrow With You...

    And the poison is working its way into this jaded myocardial tissues...so I need to purge them out by typing them in a blog post...I didn't want to watch the Legend of the Blue Sea initially because it revolves around reincarnation of a man and his mermaid lover...I thought it might be boring...but after the first 2 episodes, I was hooked...must have been Lee Min Ho's too-beautiful-eyes-for-a-man gaze that did me in...and I did love the idea of a love that transcends time and death...that 2 people who loved each other will still be destined to love each other in their reincarnated lives...except that I can't believe in reincarnation...anyway, with love like that, it's only nice and wonderful if you're the leading man and lady who are in love with each other...if you were the other guy who was in love with the leading lady or the other girl who was in love with the leading man, imagine being reincarnated and still suffered from unrequited love...yea, life's just unfair that way I guess... 

    I was very intrigued with Tomorrow With You because it was about this guy who's a time traveller...I'm a sucker for time travelling stories...it all started with Back to the Future (I think that was the first movie that got me so fascinated about time travelling)...then there were Star Trek, The Butterfly Effect, Jumper, The Time Traveller's Wife and Midnight in Paris...anyway, what I loved about Tomorrow With You is how two people who were never destined to be together in their lifetime somehow got their lives intertwined with each other because someone meddled with their lives in the future...the guy and girl escaped death from a subway accident 7 years prior...guy lost his parents in the said accident and somehow developed the ability to time travel (only to the future) when he rides the subway which passes the accident site...he met another time traveller who guided him in the ways of time travelling...present time was set in 2016 and somehow the guy could not travel pass 2019...he eventually finds out that he died in March 2019 and there was a girl who died at the same time he died...so after being advised by his time travelling mentor, he decided to meet the girl and try to change their future...

    So as how most dramas start out, guy and girl didn't like each other in the beginning...but the guy decided to marry the girl within 3 months of their meeting because of the things he saw in the future...i loved how their love developed in their marriage...how being able to see what happened in the future made the guy want to love and protect the girl even more...and made him treat her even better than he would have...I loved how despite the guy's self-centredness and selfish motives and the girl's inferiority complex and feelings of inadequacy, they fought through their differences and cherished the moments they had in the present...I loved how both of them tried to become better persons for the other person...I loved how when the guy disappeared into the future and the girl continued to wait for him to return...

    But somehow, it seemed like no matter how hard the guy tried to change the future, it didn't seem to work...and for some time, his present self was stuck in a future that was past his date of death...which meant he didn't die on the day he was supposed to have died...but the girl did...so he tried really hard to get back into the present time before their death date and succeeded...eventually he managed to save them from dying but it wasn't without a sacrifice...I suppose time travelling is a fascinating but scary thing...it's like the more you try to change the past/ future, the worse things might end up...but I do wonder how it might be like to be a time traveller's wife...or even to be a time traveller...the burden of knowing what will happen in the future and yet not able to change it...

    I guess we all have things in the past we wished we had done or hadn't done...and we all have wished we could go back in time to do/undo the things we regretted on...and if I could go back in time, there's really one thing I would have wanted to do that perhaps would have changed the present in a much better way...but of course that's not possible...and I've always been a worrier of tomorrow...it would be nice to be able to see what the future holds for me...