Blah-villera

I see this drama is described as heart-warming so sorry not sorry that my cold heart made me drop this boring tripe.

The premise is something that could be wrapped up in a 2 hrs long movie yet somehow they decided to stretch it into 12 episode drama and they already ran out of gas in episode 3. This is basically a drama that builds to only 2 things: whether the hot pouty ballerino is going to win the National competition (the sensible story), and whether the 70 years old man with no prior dance experience is somehow going to perform ballet on the stage (the nonsense story). The rest is no1curr filler about the grandpa's good-4-nothing children, romance between the hot ballerino and grandpa's granddaughter plus her employment woes, ballerino's part time job woes, ballerino's convoluted rivalry with some blond soccer punk, ballerino's strained relationship with his jailbird father who has something to do with blond punk's grudge. None of this has anything to do with ballet.

Grandpa actor is the highlight but his character quickly goes from endearing to delulu and annoying for he apparently really think that he could and should perform on the stage like a pro. Song Kang aka the hot pouty ballerino pouts a lot and it's really ridiculous how obvious it is that he isn't performing even the most basic ballet. The switch between his sweaty head-to-shoulders closeup and "headless" dancing by the real ballet dancer was hilarious at first but irritating the longer the drama went. It really takes you out of the experience. I liked Song Kang in Sweet Home where his catatonic pouty acting style worked perfectly. Not so much here or in the boring Love Alarm. No one else registers cause they are all in the skippable filler described above and responsible why it's so skippable.

I watched first 3 episodes in full and the next 3 with a lot of skipping. Now I have dropped it for good which sucks because I like ballet, Black Swan is one of my all time favorite movies, and I greatly enjoyed even the trashy Tiny Pretty Things series. But this is a dumb premise that doesn't have much to do with ballet and the level of boredom makes it recommendable only to insomniacs.

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Like Moon Eclipsing the Sun, Kids Eclipse Adults

Story: IT syndrome strikes again as the drama loses its luster once the tween and teen cast is replaced with adults. I stopped watching after episode 8 for neither the older cast nor the story after the time jump worked for me.

Acting: all stars go to young cast who are phenomenal (Ep 1 - 5.5). That's one constant with K dramas - child actors always deliver. Adults didn't measure up so I docked 2 stars. Why couldn't they tell the story without the time jump? It would have spared this drama the convoluted identity mystery that totally ruined otherwise strong set up.

Music: don't remember.

Rewatch value: This is a tricky one. Like IT, the first part with kids/teens is fantastic and rewatchable. But the second part with adult versions drops the ball. So re-watch while characters are young and then pretend the story ended with them.

Overall: I was meaning to watch the new show Moon Rising from the River but thought that it was called Moon Rising from the Sun. So wrong key words led me to this show. It really should've been only about those tweens and teens. I'm yet to see a show or movie where child versions don't eclipse adults and had a better story too. IT, Slumdog Millionaire, this drama are just some examples. Writers should trust kids. Look at Harry Potter. They made Harry Potter universe movies with adults (Fantastic Beasts) and it didn't work.

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Kwilight: Breaking Star Kim Ji Woong

I admit I gave this terrible cast a 5 only because Kim Ji Woong is mesmerizing as a bisexual bad boy vampire in a Matrix trenchcoat and he elevates every scene he's in. As far as teen vampire performances go, this is a better one. if you liked Vampire Diaries' character Damon Salvatore and True Blood's character Eric Northman, you'll like this character and actor. He's the only one who does a good job and looks fab despite cadaver make-up and blue contacts. His presence is felt and the show (well, 10 min long episodes) come to life only when he's on the screen.

Make no mistake, this show is bleepin terrible. The plot is some nonsense about wine, super special blood (that Gary Stu ML has) , love triangle (between ML, FL and bad boy vamp) and all vampires walk in broad daylight. I would not recommend to anyone to sit through the whole thing. Just fast-forward to the sexy vampire. He isn't in the first episode (so that's automatically the worst one), but his roles grows so I'll stick around to see what happens to him and only him.

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My Name is Mary Sue

Revenge dramas are such cliche that if you've seen one you've very likely seen all of them. Let me just list some of cliches appearing in this drama:

Main character has love/hate relationship with the relative who gets killed. Main character goes "I hate you! I wish you were dead!", but 5 min later, when the relative actually gets killed, main character goes "Nooooo, I want revenge! I want to kill [whoever made my wish come true]". That's a bad writing and handicaps the main character from the very start cause that isn't characterization. That's just drama for the sake of drama.

Main character puts the trust in the person most likely to have killed the relative, since that person was the closest to the deceased. I figured out the killer in the first 10-15 min and Google + My Name + Ending Explained revealed that I was right.

The killer never does the most logical thing - kill the main character since she's seen him even in disguise - but decides to train her to be tough, thinking that will mislead the main character, but also because main character is special. At the end of the day, it all boils down to character being special especially in female revenge fantasies.

They form a surrogate parent/child relationship which goes to hell once she falls in love with a nice beta orbiter that works for the good guys. (I spoiled myself just to see if I was right in this prediction and yep I was!)

Main character wins competitions with very little training because her new patron saint and father figure tells her to attack vital points instead of relying on physical strength that she doesn't have. As if, you know, other fighters with many years of experience don't know about that. :eyeroll:

Main character is always special be it the only girl among men (such as in this drama), or the youngest and least experienced new member among older and much more experienced (also the case in this drama). As you can expect from a special character, she excels at everything, earns everyone's respect by the sheer power of her specialness, or characters simply start liking her because , you guessed it, she's special. All the while, her acting is either po-faced "steeliness" or histrionics. No middle ground.

Since I was this close to punching the screen every time Mary Sue was on it, I decided the best course of action was to simply drop this drama or otherwise would have to buy a new set.

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Blech

Story: something something ghosts monsters reapers super clan this super clan that

Acting: posturing, more posturing and even more posturing. But actors were good at it especially the Brother and his red-haired boyfriend.

Music: hard rock. This type of music in fantasy movies is meant to tell you that you should not take the story seriously. As if we didn't get it already.

Rewatch value: low. This felt like a pilot that never spawned a proper series.

Overall: I would have awarded this movie higher marks had it not been for interminable borefest that was the last 1/3 of the movie. SPOILERI hate CGI driven action scenes and this had the most ridiculous giant green-haired monster that ruined everything. SPOILER ENDS Without that, it would be a diverting fluff but ending really dropped the ball and made me look at the watch.

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Bull ____: Immortal Souls Jump the Shark

Talk about going from Bulgasal to Bull_____ in an episode and a half, all thanks to the dumbest WTF twist created for the sole purpose of enforcing a romance between characters who would never fall in love otherwise.

The most annoying thing is that the drama had a great twist before the one that jumped the shark and nuked the fridge all on the same tab. So SPOILERS ahead:

Our ML is a Goryeo monster hunter who, for unexplained reasons, was cursed by Bulgasal as an unborn baby. First episode is worth seeing for his birth. Not gonna spoil but boy your jaw will drop. Anyway, Bulgasal (a very beautiful woman) also saved his life when he was a child and he developed a life-long sorta crush on her. Which turned to hate when she killed his wife and son, after he'd returned the favor and saved her from other monster hunters. And then she mortally wounded him and sucked his soul thus switching their fates - he became the new Bulgasal (soulless) and she became human (soul). But then, he turned around and killed her and with her dying breath she said she would be reincarnated as a human from now on while he would remain an immortal monster muahahaha bursts into ashes like a vampire (which Bulgasal kind of is cause they feed on human blood). So our ML gave an oath that he would hunt her down like she hunted him when he was human and she a Bulgasal. So far so good. Then it gets better.

In Joseon era, ML tries to track her down by posting Wanted drawings of her and that bears fruit - a creepy looking painter shows him a gorgeous painting of her that he made and then reveals that he killed her! Turns out, now that the ex-Bulgy has the monster hunter's soul in her, all monsters who reincarnated as humans or semi humans (don't expect dramas to have rules of the universe, they bend to the plot demands) recognize his soul and want revenge on him who is now in her. So the creepy painter with vampire teeth was actually reincarnated Dukshini monster whom ML killed in Goryeo.

I really loved this twist! ML can't claim his soul back if she keeps croaking before he can get to her. So for 500 years since then, he unsuccessfully raced against time, until 2006 when his life and the quality of the drama changed forever.

How Bulgasal Jumped the Shark and turned into Bull_______

in 2006, we meet ex-Bulgasal's teenage reincarnation...except that it's a twin! Yes, she is now reincarnated as 2 twin girls, one who remembers her past lives, what she was and did and that Bulgasal is hunting her, and the one without memories who is technically speaking innocent of her twin's crimes and isn't a monster. Also, the innocent one has ML's soul cause reincarnated (ex)monsters can sense it in her but not in her twin sister (who said she wasn't really her sister so not really human). So this is a massive copout in order to get the innocent twin and ML fall in love since he wouldn't with the monster twin who killed his family. Conveniently, soulless twin dies a sacrificial death without reincarnation (no soul no reincarnation) so that her soulful twin could live and kill Bulgasal that the soulful twin believes killed the soulless twin, their mother and almost killed her. But we know that wasn't ML cause the killer's face was obscured and ML would never kill innocent bystanders. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

So in one fell swoop, balloon popped, drama dropped.

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WTF did I just watch?

I tried one episode of this drama out of sheer curiosity for its ridiculously high TV ratings, This drama is blowing up week after week so I wanted to see what the hype was all about. Oh boy! Worst drama ever and this is saying something cause, if you look at my reviews, dramaland has enough turkeys to feed 12 Thanksgivings every year. And this one is Turkey of the Turkeys! If there was 0 star option, I would award it that. Alas.

So from what I figured out after just 1 sample episode - dramas are no rocket science, folks, and your kitten would figure them out since numerous flashbacks explain everything from relationships to cookware - this is a modern take on "governess romance" (think Sound of Music or Jane Ayre) with K drama's favorite trope of tropes - amnesia - thrown in for a good measure. So K Baron Von Trapp (read: much older widowed/divorced ML with kids) has amnesia and thinks he's a young man of the pretty governess's age, which would be 20something, yet for unknown reasons acts like he's 5 throwing childish tantrums every 5 minutes. That's supposed to be funny except that it's not. I was horrified and embarrassed for actors, audience that likes this and myself for watching. The latter embarrassment was too much so I did the only reasonable thing - dropped this drama and wrote this review to purge it from the system. Feels better now.

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