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100 Days With Mr. Arrogant, a review by Tom

100 Days With Mr. Arrogant (2003/South Korea) IMDb | Wikipedia Winson Entertainment (Hong Kong) Director: Dong-yeob Shin Writing: Dong-yeob Shin (Writer) Length: 96 min. Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85 Audio: Korean: Dolby Digital 5.1 Subtitles: Chinese, English

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Stars:
Jae-Won Kim as Lee Hyeong-jun
Ji-won Ha as Kang Ha-yeong
Tae-hyeon Kim as Yeong-eun
Min Han as Hyeon-ju
Chang-wan Kim as Ha-yeong's Father

Plot:
Ha-young is a third year high school student who has dumped by her younger boyfriend just before their anniversary, she furiously kicks a can on the road. The can hits an expensive car owned by Ha-joon. Ha-joon demands compensation of 3 million won and Ha-young, who has no way of paying back that kind of money, unwillingly enters into a contract that binds her to Hyung-joon for 100 days. She is forced to clean the house, wash his car, and a lot more things that are far worse than studying. She bears everything at the thought of the scratch she made to the car, but then she finds out that it can be fixed with just 100,000 won. Ha-young turns into an incarnation of revenge......

Extras:

• Scene Access

I quite enjoyed this one. Just a fun light-hearted romantic comedy. I have seen this mentioned a few times as a recommendation for a South Korean comedy. It had some really funny moments in it. A few of those I found quite daring.

Rating:

(From Tom's Random Reviews on November 11th, 2010)

Serenity, a review by Jon

Serenity
4 out of 5



Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, now ekes out a living aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew, but when Mal takes on two new passengers - a young doctor and his telepathic sister - he gets much more than he bargained for. The pair are fugitives from the coalition dominating the universe, and so Serenity finds itself caught between the unstoppable military force of the Alliance, the horrific, cannibalistic fury of the Reavers - and another danger lurking at the very heart of the spaceship...

Taken on its own merits, Serenity is a great film. A wonderful unique cast of characters, sharp, witty dialogue and action scenes that are literally breathtaking. Plus a well developed back-story that stands being picked at. The only problems with the film come from it being a compromised big screen version of Firefly, so it isn't quite the second coming the Browncoat massive were hoping for, but it does reward perserverance. New viewers don't have to persevere at all and just strap themselves in! If only it hadn't have been so tough to market, a worthy franchise could have been born and the real strengths of the series could have come through in a sequel. As it is, it must have been a hard film to get the balance right.

Most of the people I know who saw this film before Firefly, did enjoy it, did understand it and did look up the series afterwards, so that tells me it did a good enough job. Plot wise it does do well to present an intricate world and introduce the characters without getting bogged down in exposition, but it does undermine a lot of the work done by the series, and that is such a shame.


Leading on from that specific point, the chemistry between all the crew is awkward. It didn't strike me as the same group of people Mal asked "will you still be here when I wake up?" at the end of the Out Of Gas episode. Interesting that when you watch the gag reel (which you must do; Fillion always does excellent gags!), that chemistry is clearly still there, but they just couldn't quite capture it in 'Movie World' until about halfway through. Deleted scenes also show moments more typical of the series (Mal and Inara flying back to Serenity), so its clear hard decisions were being made about this screenplay.

The thing is, a TV episode plot is frequently uncomplicated, but played by complicated characters who don't change much across that one story, but tease little details into an arc over the whole run. A film is usually the opposite, with less detailed characters who are visibly altered over the course of a narrative. Think of Rick in Casablanca, or Mal's pop-culture granddad, Han Solo. By essentially resetting the crew to default settings, the film has something it can work with immediately.

The other thing a film needs is a strong lead that makes things happen and for those things to have a tabgible cost. Captain Mal usually just deals with what's in front of him, but now he's the lead character in a movie, he needs a quest and a good reason for it. For my money, I think the screenplay in this respect is quite brilliant because it's usually the thing that causes TV-film adaptations to fail so spectacularly. I'm going on about this because...


In fact, all the characters get something to have a journey about. I think Whedon has shown a great deal of maturity and skill through this screenplay and his direction. He could easily cut it with big boys, if only someone would let him have a go! The final moments of this film are the best, possibly of the whole run, series and film together. His conversation with River, the quiet lashing of the rain and then the beautiful image of Serenity plowing through a storm. Then a typically Firefly full stop! "What was that?" 

I was disappointed that it had to lose some identity (it's a sci-fi action movie, with barely a sniff of a Western), but loved the film overall. The style of music is kept largely intact (all credit to David Newman, but why couldn't Greg Edmonson have got the gig?), as is the rougher CGI to some extent. And listen right to the end of the credits for a nice instrumental version of the Firefly theme...


(From Serenity on February 28th, 2010)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Marathon, a review by addicted2dvd

EPISODE 5: BEER BAD
Buffy starts behaving strangely after sharing a pitcher of Black Frost beer with a group of fellow college students at the campus pub where Xander bartends.

My Thoughts:
This episode.. while it is ok... is probably one of my least favorite episodes. I don't even know why I dislike it... I don't want to say the episode was far fetched... as what Buffy episode isn't? But to me it just didn't fit in well with the rest I guess.

EPISODE 6: WILD AT HEART
Willow's feelings of jealousy over a sexy singer at the Bronze are confirmed when she discovers the woman is a werewolf who has her eye on Oz.

My Thoughts:
This episode I enjoyed... I thought it was a good... emotional ending to the whole Oz/Willow thing. Made for a strong episode.

EPISODE 7: THE INITIATIVE
Buffy begins a relationship with Riley Finn unaware that he is part of a military organization tracking down and experimenting on the demons and vampires of Sunnydale.

My Thoughts:
OK... let me go on record of saying I never liked the Initiative story-line... and was never much of a fan of Riley either. so to me... this one was a decent episode... nothing more.

EPISODE 8: PANGS
Warned that Buffy may be in great danger, Angel returns to Sunnydale just as the spirit of a Chumash warrior rises to avenge the death of his people.

My Thoughts:
Pretty cool episode... now that Spike is neutered we are starting to see the more funny Spike... I did find a Thanksgiving episode of Buffy a little on the strange side... but I think they definitely pulled it off.

(From Buffy the Vampire Slayer Marathon on November 20th, 2007)