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Il Mare, a review by dfmorgan

Il Mare

Year: 2000
Director: Hyun-seung Lee
Cast: Jung-jae Lee, Ji-hyun Jun

Overview: "Il Mare" is the name of a seafront house where two lovers reside in at two diffrent times. Sung-hyun in 1997 receives a strange letter one-day, reminding him to be careful of the snowstorm in 1998. But it is posted in 1999. Time travels backward again when Eun-joo sends him a letter of request, asking him to look for her lost cassette recorder at the train station where Sung-hyun finally gets a glimpse of her. Pusan International Film Festival 2001.

Watched: 13th. Nov 2010
My Thoughts: This is the Korean original film that the Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves 2006 film The Lake House was based upon. A couple comminucate with each other by letter except that they are separated not by distance but by time, he lives in 1997/98 whilst she is in 1999/2000. The common factor is the house, Il Mare, that they both owned at separate times and the mail is sent to each other via its post box. I need to rewatch The Lake House now to clarify some things in my mind, some subtle differences between the two e.g. the ending, but overall I enjoyed this film as much as I recall enjoying the remake.

My Rating: A very enjoyable 4

Dave

(From Dave's DVD/Blu-ray Reviews on November 13th, 2010)

Dracula (1931), a review by addicted2dvd

Dracula (1931)
After a harrowing ride through the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe, Renfield enters castle Dracula to finalize the transferral of Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula, who is in actuality a vampire. Renfield is drugged by the eerily hypnotic count, and turned into one of his thralls, protecting him during his sea voyage to London. After sucking the blood and turning the young Lucy Weston into a vampire, Dracula turns his attention to her friend Mina Seward, daughter of Dr. Seward who then calls in a specialist, Dr. Van Helsing, to diagnose the sudden deterioration of Mina's health. Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to prepare Mina's fiance, John Harker, and Dr. Seward for what is to come and the measures that will have to be taken to prevent Mina from becoming one of the undead.

My Thoughts:
This is the first movie I ever watched with  Bela Lugosi in it. And one of my favorite versions of Dracula. I think Bela Lugosi does an outstanding job in the title role. What with this movie being over 75 years old... I wasn't expecting much from the audio and video on this release. But I must admit I was pleasantly surprised. Though I did have to turn the volume up on my surround sound a little... the quality was impressing. There was some noticeable dust on the video... but nothing that bad at all. It was a very good presentation... and the DVD gives us a nice collection of extras. though I only watched the Theatrical Trailer so far... I like to watch those before the movie to help me get in the mood for what I am about to watch.

(From Classic Monster Movie Marathon on May 15th, 2008)

Tom's Glee Marathon, a review by Tom

Glee
Season 1.13 Sectionals
Writer: Ryan Murphy (Created By), Brad Falchuk (Created By), Ian Brennan (Created By), Brad Falchuk (Writer)
Director: Brad Falchuk
Cast: Dianna Agron (Quinn Fabray), Chris Colfer (Kurt Hummel), Jessalyn Gilsig (Terri Schuester), Jane Lynch (Sue Sylvester), Jayma Mays (Emma Pillsbury), Kevin McHale (Arty Abrams), Lea Michele (Rachel Berry), Cory Monteith (Finn Hudson), Matthew Morrison (Will Schuester), Amber Riley (Mercedes Jones), Mark Salling (Noah "Puck" Puckerman), Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina Cohen-Chang), Eve (Grace Hitchens), Patrick Gallagher (Ken Tanaka), Iqbal Theba (Principal Figgins), Anna Camp (Candace Dystra), Patricia Forte (Donna Landries), Michael Hitchcock (Dalton Rumba), Naya Rivera (Santana Lopez), Heather Morris (Brittany Pierce), Bill A. Jones (Rod Remington), Harry Shum, Jr. (Mike Chang), Dijon Talton (Matt Rutherford), Josh Sussman (Jacob Ben Israel), Peter Choi (Emcee), Thomasina Gross (Perfect Engleberger)

This episode was supposed to be the season finale. At first only 13 episode were produced for the season. But because of the success of the series, another 8 episodes were ordered to make it a full season.
And it is very noticable that this is written like a season finale. They have their first competition here.

Brittana:
This is the episode, in which a throwaway line started to plant the idea of a Brittana relationship:
During a telephone conference call with half of the Glee club:
Santana: Sex isn't dating.
Brittany (oblivious to what she is revealing): If it were, Santana and I would be dating.

Finncompetent:
Finn, having have found out, that he is not the real father of Quinn's baby, leaves the Glee club just before there first competition. And everybody is thinking, that without him, they have no chance. Really?! Hard to believe. In my opinion he is dragging down their performance. As later seen, when he comes back just in time for their performance. For me it doesn't look like he is contributing something essential (except if we did not get to their whole performance).

Favorite moments:
Santana admitting that Glee is her favorite part of the school day and she wouldn't have told Sue their setlist so that she could sabotage their performance. I like it, because it seems true. Even though she is more of a background character up to this point, it always looked like she is really enjoying it, when they sing and dance.

Notable music:
I like Rachel singing "Don't Rain on My Parade":


I also really like their choreography to "My Life Would Suck Without You". It solely consits of callbacks to other song choregraphies they have done up to this point. It's the last song of the episode and with that one it is really obvious, that it was supposed to be the season finale:


Rating:

(From Tom's Glee Marathon on August 28th, 2012)