1 Litre of Tears – R

This is a drama based on a true story of a young girl name Aya Kitou. A majority of the story is based on her life and the diary which she wrote also called 1 Litre of Tears. The Aya in the drama is renamed Aya Ikeuchi. She is a healthy, normal, and happy girl who everyone admires and likes. Her life takes on a dramatic change when she starts having difficulty walking. A check-up reveals Aya has developed a disease known as spinocerebellar ataxia or spinocerebellar degeneration. The illness causes a person’s cerebellum, the region in the brain that connects directly to the spinal cord and control movement, to slowly degenerate. The disease has no known causes or cure. Face with this sudden turn of events, can Aya fight through it to reach her dream?

Broadcasted in 2005 / Special was broadcasted in 2007
11 episodes and 1 Special in total
Overall Rating: A+

Surprise!

What’s this? A post not on Friday? Yes, as a sort of thank-you post for supporthing this blog despite the current rate of 4 posts a month. While I do enjoy Asian Cinema, school must comes first . This blog has actually reached 2,000+ visitors for the month of February – the highest so far! Yay! For your continued support, I’d like to share an awesome video from fellow drama-addict Dramabeans.

Former Miss Korea, Honey Lee or Lee Ha-nui, plays an ancient Asian instrument best described as the Asian guitar zither. She performs with one of my favorite Korean band, Epik High, to their hit song Fan. As the performance is on a stage, I’ll use that meager excuse to post that video here on the Thoughts on the Asian Stage blog. Enjoy!

Fan - Honey Lee and Epik High

Midterms are coming

By the time you all can see this post, I would have taken my second midterm, tons of quizzes, art designs that are due, and watch a play for my Theatre class. I hope you guys will have a better week. Well, at least I have my dramas and movies. I haven’t seen much because of studying as you can imagine, but what I’ve seen are pretty good thus far.

1. Honey and Clover – I’ve only seen two episodes of the show so far but they’ve been very entertaining. The director was able to create the same atmosphere as the anime which was something the movie could not do. The mixed feelings of calmness and erratic are a constant presence. College life is placid in its daily activities, but it becomes something else once you realize your future goal is almost reached. Working toward your future while figuring out your life and what you’ll do with it is what this show is about. Some choose to build their future around their lovers, some already has a bright future ahead of them, and some are trying their best to have a future. All this and funny moments of college life. Nothing better.
2. Howl’s Moving Castle – This is yet another Japanese animated movie. It is based on a novel by the same name and is suppose to be the prequel to Castle in the Sky. Same director as Spirted Away. All three movies I just mentioned are all really great, but I would say Spirted Away is first and Howl’s Moving Castle would be in second. It has a greater array of characters, but the storyline can be a little confusing. The message of film can also be a little unclear, but it is there nontheless.
3. Taiyou no Uta – This is Japanese film whose title translates to “Song of the Sun.” From what I’ve read, it’s about a girl with a skin disease and can not be exposed to the sun. Thus, she sleeps during the day and gets up a night. Her means of connecting to the outside world is through singing where she sings every night. Through this she meets a fellow teen who loves to surf at dawn (when it’s still dark?). I’m not really sure what’ll happen next. Girl gets a recording contract? Boy gives girl the courage to face the sun? Some sort of surgery to cure? I don’t know, but that’s why I want to watch it.
4. Bambino - Yet another Japanese drama starring Jun Matsumoto. He really is a great actor so I wasn’t surprise when I saw that he was the lead. This was recommended to me by a commentor of this blog. I had mistaken it as some sort of action flick for Stallone, but was fortunately proven incorrect. The title sure is familiar for some reason… It’s about the world of cooking which is completely opposite of what I had in mind originally. Action…..cooking…..well, I guess……no. I still haven’t seen it yet, but since I’m writing about it now I will watch it soon.

So that’s the list of seen and will see so far. Hopefully, I can free up some time to watch something. Until then, cheerio!

p.s. I see that I have lots of visitors from Europe (something I didn’t expect). Nice to meet you!

The Remake Continues : CJ7

In the previous post, I talked about the American movie industry remaking Asian cinemas. Today, I will talk about the opposite. That’s right, Asian directors remaking American movie. This move could be beneficial as in the case with the KDrama Fantasy Couple – a remake of the movie Overboard. I briefly talked about this drama in earlier post, but a recap is a rich woman loses her memory and is mislead to belief she actually lives in a poor household being the maid of the house. Hilarity ensues when she can’t do anything right but eventually get the hang of it. In the end, she grows to love her new lifestyle and friends (something missing in her previous lifestyle). Now another remake has been made called CJ7. The director is Stephen Chow who is most famous in the West for the movie Shaolin Soccer. CJ7  takes ideas from the classic ET by fame director Spielberg (to me that’s a remake no matter what anyone says). The story is also quite similiar. What I’m most interested in is the difference and hopefully, there will be many. Click below for the trailer.

Drama Talk

For today, I’d like to take a break from reviewing and just…talk. First, I hope everyone’s enjoying the posting schedule. It’s a lot easier for me because I can write while I’m free at school or at home and Timestamp it. Then a post will miraculously appear on the day that I want it to so I can write in advance and not actually write for many days. Likewise, I think or hope that you all will like this as well. Personally, whenever I like a blog and view it regularly, I hope to see a new post everytime I visit. So with this schedule, at least you’ll know there’ll be a post every Friday. Okay, enough of that. To the drama!

Second, I have to admit that I’ve been watching a lot more Jdrama than anything else. Coffee Prince was the only Kdrama that I saw last year and actually finish. Jdrama just has a lot more storylines to choose from and I really like the Japanese humor. Of course I’m always looking for great drama no matter which Asian countries it comes from, but lately there seems to be a lot more creativity coming from Japan. I’m excited about Honey and Clover and had just saw the first episode of it. I really like it, but the actress who plays Hagu is a bit…out of character. She smiles a lot and Hagu hardly smiles. It’s also weird because I had seen her previously in One Litre of Tears where she played a very strong character. Also looking forward to Shun Oguri’s new drama. See? So much Jdrama! However, I am very much anticipating a Kmovie called Hanzel and Gretel. It’s actually a scary movie so I’m interested to see how they’ve turned this fabel into a scary movie.

Also, this year will the year of Asian remake movies. I believe The Eyes is already out starring Jessica Alba as a woman who can see people dying with her transplanted eyes. This is a remake of a Korean movie. A remake of my FAVORITE movie of all time is also coming out: My Sassy Girl. Since it’s my favorite, I am indeed going to see it and later rip it apart on this very blog. Stay tune. On a related note, the actress in My Sassy Girl, Jun Ji-hyun, had just completed her first US debut movie. She plays in a vampire or a vampire hunter (forgot) in an action flick coming out this summer. I’m gonna watch it too, even though I don’t like vampires, but for Jun Ji-hyun I will.

So there you have it. Expect lots of Jdrama to come and rants about Asian movie remakes. I’ll leave you now with a great little video made with images from Windstruck.
NOTE:  Don’t watch this video if you haven’t seen the movie yet!  Spoiler images ABOUND.

Song by Breaking Benjamin

Nodame Cantabile – R

Broadcasted in 2006
Is based on a manga by the same name.
Also has an anime/cartoon version released in 2007.
11 episodes
Overall Rating: A+

Megumi Noda aka Noda Megumi (in Japan, the last name goes first) aka Nodame played by Ueno Juri is a gifted piano student. She has a remarkable ability to memorize a song simply by listening to it. However, she chooses to not display her talent at her music academy for she only wants to be a kindergarten teacher. This all changes when she meets Shinichi Chiaki (played by Tamaki Hiroshi) who is also a gifted individual in piano, violin, and conducting. The two might be similiar in talents and a love for music, but they can’t be anymore different concerning everything else. Chiaki grew up in a prestigious family and thus very prim and proper. Nodame, on the other hand, grew up in a large, poor family. She is also messy, eats as if her stomach is a blackhole, and has a tendency to scream two peculiar words for no apparant reason: MUKYA! and GYABO! Chiaki is attracted to Nodame because of her talents. Nodame, however, is attracted to Chiaki because he is cute and he cooks good food for her. Can this unlikely pair last?