I just finished watching Utahime (dramawiki site is here), a nostalgic romance set in the mid-1950s.  What an excellent drama!

The drama starts off with the trials and tribulations of Akira (played by TOKIO lead singer Nagase Tomoya), a young man who loses both his job and his fiancee in one fell swoop.  His mother, a famous singer, sends him off to the final showing at a run-down movie theatre off in the boondocks, an old  movie called "Utahime" that she assures him will change his life.  Akira, not pleased, heads off to the tiny seaside fishing village where the theatre is located, and gets drawn into the film, as it seems the film is actually about his own grandfather:

The movie's story revolves around Taro (also Nagase Tomoya), a soldier who washes up on the shores of a beach on the last day of the war.  He is rescued, but has no memory of anything that happened before.  For ten years, he lives with and works for the man who rescues him, a movie theatre owner.

The younger daughter of the family, Suzu (Aibu Saki) is a feisty girl just on the verge of adulthood.  Suzu is in love with Taro, but he seems not to notice.  In the meantime, a local yakuza thug, "Croissant no Matsu" (a hilarious Sato Ryuta) has fallen hard for Suzu and is determined to make her his wife.

Most of the drama is focused on life in their tiny rural fishing village and how Suzu and Taro deal with their evolving relationship.  Things become more complex with the appearance of Miwako (Koike Eiko), a woman from Taro's past who is determined to make him remember the person he once was.

Utahime didn't get very high ratings, but I absolutely fell in love with it.  I'm not sure if it was because of the 1950's setting, or because of the story itself, but it is one of the most original and entertaining dramas that I've watched in a long time, even with the rather hokey premise.  The acting was all-around excellent with an especially talented supporting cast and the story kept me riveted.  Taro and Suzu have a very electric relationship--and it turns out the two actors playing the roles later got together in real life. Highly recommended!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

I finally had a chance to finish watching Hotelier, a Korean drama about a bunch of hotel workers reacting to a merger.  I reviewed the Japanese version of this drama here.  Although I enjoyed the Japanese version a lot, the original Korean version was far superior.

The story remains the same:  After the death of the Seoul Hotel's Chairman, feisty hotel manager Jin-Young (played by the appealling Song Yoon Ah) is sent to fetch back a former co-worker (and former lover as well) Tai-Jun  (the manly Kim Seung Woo), to become the hotel's General Manager.  Tai-Jun, who left the hotel after being accused of scandalous behavior with a female guest, is living the low life in Las Vegas and doesn't particularly want to come back.  Jin-Young, however, convinces him.  He brings along with him a teen-aged girl that he took in at the request of his pastor, Jenny (Kim Na Rae).

While in Las Vegas, Jin-Young comes across a Korean-American lawyer, Frank Shin (Bae Yong-Jun).  Frank is immediately smitten by her.

Meanwhile, after the Chairman's death, Evil Chairman Kim Bok-man (Han Jin Hee) is determined to acquire the Seoul Hotel by any means, fair or foul.  He hires Frank Shin and his law partner to do the deal.  Frank agrees and heads to Korea.

Meanwhile, Chairman Kim's daughter, Yun-Hee (Song Hye Gyo) has met and fallen for the much older Tai-Jun, and finagles her way into a job at the hotel as a waitress. The hotel owner's son, Young-Jae (the very handsome Park Jung Chul), falls head-over-heels for Yun-Hee, which sucks for him because Tai-Jun is like an older brother to him.

Still with me?  Good, because it get even more complex.

Tai-Jun is an excellent General Manager, and he soon uncovers Frank Shin's covert attempts to buy the hotel.  The two men become rivals in business as well as in love.  Meanwhile, Jin Young is torn between her loyalty to her work and her love for Frank.

Mix into this a lush setting, adoptions, lost siblings, backstabbing office politics and inoperable cancer, and you have yourself one heck of a riveting drama.  Really, it was much better than it sounds!

The Korean version, at 20 episodes as opposed to 9 for the Japanese, had time for far more character development and outrageous sub-plots.  The acting of the entire cast was superior, especially the three lead characters.  The dialogue seemed witty from the subtitles (although unlike Japanese, I speak absolutely no Korean, so I can't get a good feel for that aspect of it). Although I must say that whoever subtitled these used far too much English slang for characters that wouldn't possibly speak that way--it felt a bit weird at times. The last episode was a two-hankie tear-jerker.  Very highly recommended and available on Region 1 DVD.

Hotelier

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Just got back from the Iowa Caucus.  Whoa, what a madhouse!

This time, our precinct (the Fightin' DUBUQUE 19TH!!) met in the hospitality room on the third floor of the Carnegie-Stout Public Library.  219 people showed up and tried to fit in a room meant for 50.  Despite the -2 degree windchill outside, the place was like a freakin' oven.  I'm sure all sorts of fire codes were broken, but oh, well.

Bob and I showed up early, about 6 pm.  We lined up at the registration area, a long table with names divided into alphabetic subdivisions (A-G, H-L, etc), signed our names and also indicated which candidate we intended to caucus for.  This part isn't officially official--it's just a way for them to get a beginning headcount so that the chairman can figure out which candidates are going to be viable.

There's some mathmatical formula that I don't know that indicates viability.  A candidate has to have 15% in order to obtain one of our precinct's seven delegates.  With 219 people, this meant that a candidate needed to have at least 33 people in order to be viable--that is, in order to obtain a delegate to the Dubuque County Convention.

The room was already packed when we got there.  We ended up sitting next to an elderly couple who were from Illinois and had come to observe the caucus.  I spent a good 15 minutes explaining how the process worked to them and telling them about the last caucus, four years ago.  I also told them to watch the guy from Kuchinich's camp, because he would argue about almost anything and it was hilarious once he got started.

After sitting around for an hour (the law says the Caucus has to admit people until 7 pm), the Caucus finally started.  First, there was some Democrat Party business to take care of, an envelope was passed around to raise money for the State Democrat Party to pay for the caucus, and then each candidate had a representative give a small speech about why the undecided people should vote for them.  Then the primary totals were given out to see which candidates were viable as yet.  Obama was by far and away the most popular, and Hillary had enough for at least one delegate, but everyone else was not viable (ie: did not have 33 people). 

People split up into their candidate groups at this time and started arguing about who was going where.  This all took about 30 minutes.  Bob and I were caucusing for Bill Richardson, but he only had 8 people, so we held out for as long as we could, then the group split to give John Edwards the votes he needed to get a delegate.  We were technically supposed to go to Obama, but we wanted to vote for Edwards since our guy was out of the running and Obama really didn't need any more people, while Edwards did.  There was a lot of cheering from the Edwards camp when we showed up.  Yes, our votes actually made the difference!  Democracy at work!

After the final count of delegates from our precinct (Obama 3, Hillary 2, Edwards 1, Biden 1), we snuck out while the gettin' was good, as in before the traffic around the library got snarled up.

From the news coverage, it looks like Iowans came out in record numbers to caucus.  Right now, it looks like Obama 38%, Edwards 30%, Hillary 29% and Richardson 2%.  Not sure what the Republicans are doing, but it seems that Huckabee is well ahead of Romney, which is no surprise considering the number of Catholics in this state.  (Actually, the only Republican I can stand is John McCain--not because I agree with him, but because he is a veteran and has more experience than the other yahoos from that party, but since I'm a Democrat, it hardly matters).

Now the craziness is over.  All the candidates can move on and the press people can go home, and we can go back to the usual peace and quiet of semi-rural life.

(X-posted from my LiveJournal)

Read and post comments | Send to a friend