269. Golden Cross 골든 크로스 (2014) Korean

Kim Kang Woo Lee Si Young, Uhm Ki Joon, Han Eun Jung, Jung Bo Suk

Drama Rating: 3/10     Neck Score: A+++

Let's take a guy with a normal family who has struggled a bit because they are as good as they are normal, even though they fight and stuff and don't get why they have to suffer when they are good, and then let's ruin their lives completely just to give us the premise of this show: a secret chaebol organization that steps all over normal people for their greedy, economic controlling power.  There, we have the set up for a perfectly normal revenge drama.  Prosecutor in training, who also happens to be a former Taekwondo star, whose family struggles because of his super upright, honest banker dad, losing everything when his said upright, honest dad is framed for murdering his little sister.  It's obviously set up so this prosecutor will go on a holy rampage and take this secret organization down with his smart brain and snazzy taekwondo skills.  His crush is both the villain's daughter and the prosecutor of his father's case, that's going to lead to a bit of drama, exciting!  Typical revenge melodrama, right?  Well, let's take this typically set up plot and logical progression and do the opposite of everything logical.  That equals this show.  I was so disappointed.

267. Sound of Your Heart 마음의 소리 (2016) Korean

Lee Kwang Soo, Kim Dae Myung, Jung So Min, Kim Byung Ok, Kim Mi Kyung

Drama Rating: 9/10     Neck Score: A

I was so sad when I couldn't find this anywhere, because you all know how much I love Kwang Soo.  He is my #1 actor who rivals even GD in my heart.  I had to watch him be Cho Seok, because I also am 100% in love with Sound of Your Heart and have read everything that has been translated on Line Webtoon.  Sadly that is just a fraction of what there actually is, sniff.  Basically, there is a certain laugh that I have reserved just for Sound of Your Heart.  Lizabreff knows only one thing can make me laugh like that, so she knows what I'm reading.  This show was the same.  I laughed so hard!  I think it did a good job capturing the right feeling.  Their actor choice was perfect for all of them.  Every new person introduced I was like "Yeah!  They're perfect for it!"  It was delightful.  Even before we found it on Netflix and were just watching random clips on YouTube, I was just laughing.  They did a good job.  It's a slightly different experience when the naked/bathroom humor comes in, cuz it's live action vs just the drawings.  You realize just how tall and skinny Kwang Soo is when he's streaking through the city with his bare legs and censored blur.  It was hilarious.  I loved it.  I also like how they managed to keep the webtoon feel to it, while also connecting them into a somewhat cohesive story, with some character growth and some tied in themes.  It brought it all back in for a good ending to the series, so we didn't get left hanging.  It was well done.  Highly recommended.  I want there to be more seasons.  All the seasons in the world!  More Sound of Your Heart!  More Kwang Soo!  Hurray!

262. Father is Strange 아버지가 이상해 (2017) Korean

Kim Young Chul,  Kim Hae Sook, Lee Joon,  Jung So Min, Lee Yoo Ri, Ryu Soo Young, Min Jin Woong, Lee Mi Do, Ryu Hwa Young, Ahn Hyo Seop

Drama Rating: 8/10     Neck Score: A+

I love a good 50 episode family drama, and that is exactly what this was.  So many wonderful characters that you can just grow to love, because you have all the time in the world.  I love it because you can take time to develop characters fully and let relationships build naturally.  This usually makes me way more invested in all the characters and all the relationships to the point where I'm crying and giggling at any wedding or big event near the end.  This was no exception.

The plot of this was a bit interesting, since it is focused on a family with three strong minded girls who all take after their strong minded mother, and then the one older brother who takes after the easygoing sweet father.  However there are, of course, family secrets- practically birth secrets here- when an idol turned actor shows up looking for his father who happens to be the dad of this family.  This is potentially bad because the main OTP is clearly this actor (Lee Joon) and his manager, who is the third child in the family (Jung So Min).  But they let us slowly unravel the secrets until all the crap hits the fan and it's all dramatic, and all that.

K-Con Concert Day: Trip Day Three

The day that we're all waiting for, Saturday, the day that we'd go to all our artist engagements and eventually the concert.  We would have loved to have gone to both concert days, but that was a lot of money for groups that we had less investment in.  We're not made of money.

We like those groups, but we LOVE Vixx and Super Junior.  Let's be honest, I also love Girl's Day.  So it worked out that they were all going to be a part of the Saturday Concert.  We had to prepare well, because this day was going to be an all day thing.

270. I Order You 당신을 주문합니다 (2015) Korean

Jung Yoon Ho, Kim Ga Eun, Jang Seung Jo, Baek Jung Won, Jo Yoon Woo 

Drama Rating: 5/10     Neck Score: A-

I never thought I'd live to see Yunho out acting anyone, but he was way better than our female lead in this.  He wasn't amazing or anything, but he was decent.  The show was just fluffy, but that is what we wanted.  Nothing better than a web drama when you want fluffy, because they can't afford to waste time on anything, although they still managed to do it.  We burned through the first like 12 episodes in one night, and let me tell you they were the best episodes, full of her falling in love with his face and cooking over and over, and him falling in love with the way she appreciated his food, over and over.  He was on the teasey side, which was generally cute.  He could also be a bit of a butt.  She was generally smart and nice, although she was not great at acting.  The flowerboy coworkers were the best.  It was literally The Flowerboy (who is in all the flower boy dramas) and this tall oppa that we liked.  He was smiley.  Also, her younger brother is pretty cute and awesome too.  Just saying.  The second male lead was a cutie too, I called him Diddy Kitty (like the Diddy Kong of Kitty- aka Kim Jae Joong) because he looked a lot like Kitty.  This, of course lead to much TVXQ jokes.

The last four episodes were needlessly dramatic and mopey and since we saved these for the next day, we were even less able to pay attention while the shiz hit the fan and the girl literally became the worst person in the world.  She was even worse than the last minute bitca they added.  So it ended.  Like I said, fluff.  But while it was mostly enjoyable, it had way more drama then say Wednesday at 3:30, which is a comparable web drama full of fluffy Beanie.  So, this is still good if you want a bunch of cheesy fluff and happen to like Yunho (which I not so secretly do now, how did this happen!?!?!) but be warned, it is also ridiculous and mopey in spots.

Korean Movie Night: Battleship Island 군함도 (2017) Korean

Hwang Jung Min, So Ji Sub, Song Joong Ki, Lee Jung Hyun, Kim Su An

Movie rating: 7/10     Neck score: A+

This was definitely set up as a wartime/survival/underdog movie.  We have a bunch of Koreans forced into a labor camp on a coal island off of Nagasaki.  Tricked and then forced into slave labor.  So naturally, since this is a WWII movie, the Japanese are going to be super demonized.  Just letting you know.  They're basically the worst in this.  Not just kicking the puppies, they're outright killing the puppies.  The other worst is that it's a fight to survive in this camp, so Koreans are turning on Koreans, especially the ones who kiss up to the Japanese to get favorable treatment.

So we're following a musician (Hwang Jung Min) and his band, and his daughter (Kim Su Ah), who get forced into going, along with a boatload of "drafted soldiers" and a bunch of women who were brought to "help".  They're just trying to survive, but even with their letter of recommendation, they are forced into the camp.  So Ji Sub is one of the drafted.  He's a gangster with authority issues.  He starts a fight on the boat over, and has an awesome run in with Lee Jung Hyun who is basically boss and can hold her own, which is great because she can help protect the daughter, who's like 10, but is still separated out with all the women.  They all get forced into the coal mine labor camp, forced slavery or indenture, since they force them into debt along with everything else they do to them.  Once in the camp, it's basically just survival.

It's funny because this one was a lot more action packed, but because of that it felt less harsh than the brutality that was in A Taxi Driver.  There was plenty of violence and fighting, but it was the kind we were used to?  Not all of it, just in general.  There was still plenty of shuddery violent scenes, and anxious ones, such as the bathhouse fight, which was awesome as it was scary because fighting almost naked in a bathhouse, so in and out of the bathtubs.  But that was the way to do a bathhouse fight (cough cough The K2 cough cough).  As they were coal mining all the time, there was plenty of almost naked men, which could go both ways depending on who the man was.

I always felt the most anxious for the daughter the whole time, because she was just a kid and had to face some pretty nasty stuff, but that's the reality of that time, so they weren't pulling too many punches.  It's a good thing that she was super smart along with everyone else, or there is no knowing what could have happened.  Shudder.  It was a little bit like Life is Beautiful, the Italian Holocaust movie, if you've seen that, but much more action packed and a whole lot less tear jerking, which is not to say that it isn't tear jerking, because it's a Korean movie, but nothing makes me cry like Life is Beautiful.

I kind of like how ambiguous Song Joong Ki's character is.  I'll just leave it at that.  He's special forces, but what is his mission?  Duh duh duhhhhhhh.  That's one of the things I liked about everyone.  They're all on their own side, which might be the same side, if they could figure it out, but the number one objective for everyone is survival, and then they have to figure out how and with whom, etc.  I liked it a lot.  I probably liked A Taxi Driver more, because it was more sentimental, but I did like both.  I'd recommend it just for that cool three screen deal.  I'm not a fan of 3D, so this was a much cooler alternative for me.  I felt very surrounded, which was awesome in those mine scenes.

Day Two: First Official Day of K-Con LA 2017

So starts day two of our K-Con adventure, this one is focused on exploring, since we had some flexibility.  It started later, so we got there later, and miraculously missed all the traffic.  Our hotel was farther from the convention center, but still situated so that we would miss the bad traffic if we left at the right time.

No one died while I drove in LA.  In fact, I was once again pleasantly surprised at how decently everyone was driving, not that I loved the traffic, it was just more predictable than freeway traffic where I'm from.  People know how to merge a bit better, haha.