Archive | October 2018

The Smile Has Left Your Eyes: Ep. 1 review

Oct4

Especially because remake The Smile Has Left Your Eyes (or Hundred Million Stars from the Sky) is a thriller, I think it’s a bonus to have not seen the original Japanese show. No frustration over character or plot changes or the faint boredom of already knowing how the story ends.

Refreshingly, Smile, episode one doesn’t not begin with a bang, something  many of the thriller/action K-dramas try to do. The problem with this is that often spectacular first episodes are followed by mediocre one that progressively deteriorate both in substance and excitement. A few like The K2 mostly live up to their exciting first episodes, but for too many the writing just peters out. As this is a remake, it will help that the writers have an original to work off of.

We are introduced to various characters in episode one, all interacting and presumably going to become intertwined by the end of the series. The first main character we are introduced to is Kim Moo Young [character and names spellings from Asianwiki], played by Seo In Guk. The episode opens on a murder scene in which the TV plays in the background. On the TV a psychologist is being interviewed and mentions an usually 8-year-old boy and how he wonders what he is doing now, as he must be about 30. It cuts to Kim Moo Young working at his job at a beer distributer and the natural conclusion is that he is the same boy all grown up.

The next introductions are brother and sister Yoo Jin Kook and Yoo Jin Yang. Jin Kook is played by the often hilarious Park Sung Woong and is a detective or former one who now has more of an administrative job. He also appears to be a man always on the clock, a natural sniffer out of mysteries and when things just don’t sit right. At the murder scene investigation, he shows up even though he’s off duty and the team lead Lee Kyung Cheol (Choi Byung Mo) seems less than thrilled to have him around, while young detective Eom Cho Rang (Kwon Soo Hyun) has a brotherly camaraderie going on with him. Yoo Jin Kook runs across Kim Moo Young in the course of his day and puzzled that his face seems so familiar.

Yoo Jin Kook’s younger sister Yoo Jin Yang is played by the petite dynamo Jung So Min. I will have to keep watching to really figure out what Jin Yang’s job is, as it wasn’t very obvious from the episode, but it seems to be either advertising or something with design. She is invited to a very important party and supposed to talk up a VIP about contracting with her company, but this never happens as the party is for a good friend of hers and she spends most of the time joking with her brother, who arrives late.

Nothing is particularly striking about the first meeting between Yoo Jin Yang and Kim Moo Young, though they are the main characters. Kim comes across as a somewhat gruff blue collar worker, and it’s strange to think that this weathered life-hardened man is the same actor who played the softy Louie in Shopping King Louie. Seo In Guk hits all the right notes of this character, from his nonchalance, quick observance of everything around him, and the quiet malice pervading him in which his smiles never quite reach his eyes. Shades of David from Hello Monster are there, but Kim is a decidedly different person, likely to be truly dangerous, and a killer. How Seo manages to so transform himself for every role, I don’t know, but it is the reason some in the industry call him an acting genius.

As the party progresses we learn something about the damsel it is for, an artist named Baek Sung A, played by Seo Eun Su. Baek Sung A soon reaches the standard calling for damsels, to be in distress. The distress is largely caused by herself, as Kim Moo Young quickly finds that she is not as sweet and innocent as she looks, and takes advantage of that to do her a good turn and woo her away from her boyfriend in the process. Flipping back between their budding relationship and the investigation of a murdered 22 year old, we are presented with the sobering thought that Baek Sung A may be just the next girl to fall prey to serial killer Kim, who seems to be too smart for his own good. Shades of Cheese in the Trap are here, too: Is Kim just strange or does he actually have a psychological problem? Is he a killer and a sociopath or is it all just perception?

I’m looking forward to seeing what The Smile Has Left Your Eyes brings to the table in future episodes. The acting is great so far, but the only ones with clear chances to shine so far are Seo In Guk, and perhaps Seo Eun Su as the damsel.  The other characters don’t really have much uniqueness about them so far, and the brother and sister duo give me a an old cinema vibe as if they would be a sunny counterpart in a Hitchcock movie or something.

Speaking of Hitchcock, a few of the shots so far are breathtaking and I think they really got the mood right, a simmering slow burn that will ratchet up as the series progresses. This doesn’t appear as if it will end as a happy story, but will give us profound moments in which we desperately wish it was. For the joking brother and sister, we may find they have a darker history behind all of the smiles, and there’s a hint of it in the animosity Yoo Jin Kook experiences from the detective team lead and the fact that his sister doesn’t seem to be terribly good at her job.

I for one love a good mystery, so I’m hoping we have a lot of good twists, turns, and revelations to come.

How to Stop Time: Love

Oct1

A couple of housekeeping things to get out of the way, and then I’ll dive into the book review.

Things I’m grateful for: Friends and family I love to spend time with. Fall in Minnesota even if’s it’s cold and rainy one day and blazing hot the next. My apartment complex finally turned on the heat, a big reason I have come to love October when it rolls around. Crazy, brilliant dreams. This time of year I have these weird complex dreams I half remember in the morning. Some good story ideas in there.

The Smile Has Left Your Eyes: It’s not often that I watch Korean dramas as they are being aired each week, but I make exceptions for either stories or actors that I really like. Viki.com has gotten the license for The Smile Has Left Your Eyes (or Hundred Million Stars from the Sky). Hopefully, I will get my review of each episode out early in the week, but it just depends when the English subtitles are added. Amazingly enough, even though I’ve watched a ton of Korean TV, I am not yet fluent in Korean. The Smile is a creepy murder mystery starring my current favorite actor Seo In Guk. He finally has his dream of playing a villain. Also starring the delightful Jung So Min from Playful Kiss and D-Day. This is a remake of a Japanese show that was pretty popular awhile ago.

Book review: How to Stop Time by Matt Haig isn’t so much an instruction manual as a thinking manual. Sometimes it’s fun to dream about living forever or near-forever and just having so much time to do whatever. The story is narrated by Tom Hazard, a man who has loads of time and opportunities, but just can’t get out of his old man head.

Like Tom, I am now in my forties, and it’s true the older you get, sometimes the memories from the past just come flooding in, clearer than you would have thought possible, and if your mind dwells there, you can miss the very real and awesome present. At first Tom seems only old and jaded. He has a rare medical condition in which he ages slower than the rest of humanity, so at forty, in regular years he’s hundreds of years old. As we get more into his thoughts, though, we realize–and so does he–that he’s just stuck dwelling on time instead of enjoying it.

The book also involves a bit of intrigue. There’s a shadowy society protecting others who have this condition–think passing reference to X-Men–and a couple of tight moments that get resolved a little too easily, but the book isn’t so much about the plot as about Tom finally changing his thinking.

Imagine yourself now having whatever time you think you have left, and being afraid to ask that person out or jump into a relationship or really get to know your kids, grandparents, friends, etc., because there just isn’t enough time. Or you’re afraid you’ll spend too much time with them, get attached, and fall to pieces if you ever lose anyone of them. Now magnify that fear across hundreds of years. How do people ever overcome this fear? Using the only way they can overcome it, like the way Tom overcomes it: Love. He falls in love, he finds someone who loves him back. It’s really not that complicated, but people live their whole lives standing on the brink of happiness and never, ever jumping. They have not learned how to trust the power of love.

Aside from the musings on life, time, love, etc., as an avid English reader and writer, I love the nods to Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, and the like. It makes me feel proud to be a part of this heritage, this heritage of speaking, reading, and writing English. I can speak a smattering of words and phrases in other languages, but even if I was fluent in them, they wouldn’t be my heritage.

Okay, back to love. How, you are asking me. How exactly does this stop time, Pixie? Think of the best times of your lives. You’re at your brother’s wedding, you’re hanging out with your friends, you’re babysitting your grandkids and laughing up a storm with them. You’re at a funeral, but there’s so many friends and family to see and talk to and catch up with. You’re staring into your darling’s sparkling eyes. At those times, in those moments, is it not as if TIME itself does not exist? God is LOVE and love is outside of time.

In How to Stop Time, Tom learns to enjoy the present of his days and to stop worrying over the past and the future. He learns to to put the guilt aside and marvel in the moment. He learns that the risk is worth it and he can finally let go of the albatross hanging around his neck that is telling him that falling in love is a waste of time. I felt bad for him. The guy was essentially stuck in a Groundhog Day (and if you don’t know what that is, I suggest you watch the movie, starring Bill Murray, immediately.)

In reading the book, it’s impossible not to start thinking about time and how we spend our time. Most of my best times are spent with my family, friends, and fellow Christians, and I know that people are really the only things we can take with us to heaven, and that God has put us all together on this rock to be blessings for each other and to love each other. Everything else becomes so unimportant in comparison.

At the beginning of time, humans did live for hundreds of years and they probably got as downhearted and depressed as Tom did, but unlike Tom, they had a Creator and Savior who loves them to look to for comfort and strength. And I think that’s why some leap so easily into love instead of dithering on the precipice. They know that even if their fellow humans fail them, God never will. Some days I think my faith is that strong, other days not so much. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to live forever and with a start have to remember I will live forever, just in a new heaven and a new earth. Jesus’s love made it possible. Anyway, I don’t want to get too religious about it, but that’s what I thought of at the end. I will live forever in love and with those that I love. It’s pretty amazing. It’s like having a secret super power.