Not Yet.

A year ago, on this day, I was in the Philippines. After coming home, people asked how my trip was like, and all my pompous-Canadianized-ass could say is how much I hated the weather.

It’s hot, crowded and hot…I’ll never be coming back again. There’s no place like Canada. I love it here.

Eight years ago, I vehemently refused to get my citizenship. Today, I have my 50 mm x 70 mm Costco-taken-picture on a black Canadian passport. The next thing I know, I’ll be cheering for the Canadian candidate in the Miss Universe pageant; the red maple flag for the Olympics; putting “eh” at the end of each sentence. Don’t worry, it hasn’t come to that yet. I’m still gonna vote for the Filipino-American Idol contestant (and Canadian Idol is a lame, lame version).

After the Desperate Housewives incident, my friend came knocking onto my door and shared her bruised pride. I tried to conjure feelings of outrage to show my patriotism. That I still care. The sad truth is, I didn’t. And I hated myself for not caring.  Ohhh, what a horrible person you are, Jay. You’re gonna burn in hell!  I can’t even sing the first verse of Lupang Hinirang. If it makes you feel better, I only know two lines in the Canadian anthem: Oh Canada…Oh Canadaaaaaa…let’s make that two words.

Utahime [END]

The storyline for Utahime(歌姫) is a favorite of Korean Drama writers and Taiwanese copy-cats. Amnesia could have been second to Leukemia for a beaten to death theme in most Asian dramas and Mexican telenovelas. If you want to hear the usual get-go (but I’m sure you know it by heart, humor me, k?): hero loses his memory, meets his leading lady, they fall in love, but not so fast, in comes the girlfriend from his old life, he regains his memory, but forgets the present, he gets hit with a car, falls in a ditch, beaten by a gangster, ladidadida, remembers again and they live happily ever after. The End.

Expect the Japanese to have a different take on it.

How do you organize your dramas?

Year-end in 3 days. Time for some general cleaning!

One of my favorite pastimes is to organize my drama collection. It is nice if I have all the yesasia originals, but $200 per box-set is not possible at my current financial state. Therefore, 95% of my collection is burned DVDs.

I haven’t nailed down the perfect way of organization as I am continuously improving my technique over the years, so if you want to share how you do it, by all means, do so.

STEP 1 - Pending Spindle: When enough episodes of a drama can fit into a disc, I burn, label, and slide them into the “pending” spindle. I wait until either the spindle and/or hard drive get full.

I told you so.

This evening, I’ve been a sheepish recipient of an “I told you so” moment. I dragged all my friends to Johnny Depp’s new movie, “Sweeney Todd: the demon barber of Fleet street” on a promise that if they didn’t like it, I’ll treat them to coffee.

All this confidence stemmed out from reading critics’ reviews and imdb ratings.”This is gonna be so good, I swear. Read THIS review. Let’s just watch Will Smith’s movie next time, please? Pleasepleaseplease?”

A few seconds into the film, I see some kind of a meatpie production machine. Uh-oh, I’m getting a bad feeling about this. My heart started to beat furiously. I had this horrified look on my face.

“Hey, let’s get out of here!!!” I whispered.

My friends looked at me smugly, “you asked for this. SIT DOWN.”

And so this person who have never seen any of the SAW movies (albeit a big fan of Kill Bill), armed with a single sheet of napkin(for a handy eye-shield) and a friend’s shoulder (for the scene underneath Mrs. Lovett’s meatpie shop), is tempted to turn vegan after leaving the theaters.

Sweeney Todd is definitely not a feel-good movie like Disney’s Enchanted. In fact, those two movies within one sentence is a juxtaposition of all juxtapositions. On the other hand, I can’t say it’s bad. Oh no, no, no. Johnny Depp’s performance, whilst a mixture of Edward Scissorhands and Captain Jack Sparrow, is worthy of a two thumbs up sorry, let’s change that into an Award (thumbs and nails don’t sit quite nicely in my stomach right now). But Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) is by far my favorite character in the movie. This is a musical, and if you’re thinking Hairspray and Chicago…ha ha ha, think of something else…

As we all got in the car, I beat them into it…”Come one, ‘I told you so’ I know you’re itching to say it!”

The friend who was overly keen on watching “I am Legend” replied, “The fact that you can’t eat dinner tonight is good enough for me. But hey if you really wanna hear it…I told you so! ha ha”

Sigh…so much for Christmas meatpies.

(I was going to accompany this post with a picture of a meatpie…but nah…bad idea)

The Story of the First King’s Four Gods (Edited)

Edit: I hated myself after re-reading this entry so I want to fix some things before I unintentionally discourage people from seeing this show.

I feel numb, but disappointment is closing in quite fast, so before I explode, I’ll write a short an entry on this. And if you’re looking for Bae Yong Jun, I didn’t take any screenshots of him. The only time I stood up from my comfortable spot to take a freeze frame is when the Overlord of Gwanmi, guardian of the Blue Dragon (Lee Philip), showed up on screen.

Oh, shush, give me a break. I just marathoned a 24-hour drama just to see it go down the drain on its last three episodes? So the picture stays-no arguments period.

Deliciousy wicked jdrama: LIFE

 

LIFE(ライフ) is a drama based on a popular manga (again?), which deals with many controversial subjects such as suicide (again?), student-teacher relationship (again?), and bullying (again, again, again?). Well, that’s not motivating eh? Let’s try it again.

This is the first bullying drama that I’ve finished on one sitting (alright, I had to get up in the middle to get food and feed my dog).

The first bullying drama I have seen which is not episodic. It’s like watching a 7 hour movie with short bathroom breaks in between.

And finally, if you are expecting me to say it’s better than the Queen’s Classroom, it is not. QC is still the best school drama, in my opinion. LIFE is about extremities. It is twisted and cheesy… full of rough corners and plot holes, but it still does the job. It takes that stereotypical bullying scene to the next level.