Y’all, here again to spotlight another cute webseries I’ve fallen in love with. I don’t like it as much as any of my hallowed eight, but it’s romantic and fairly fast-paced and the leads have good chemistry together. Call Me Katie is loosely based on Taming of the Shrew and is somewhat similar to 10 Things I Hate About You. If you’re like me, you just want to see the Good Stuff, i.e. the leads interacting with each other, so here’s the first instance of that.
Category Archives: film & television
Webseries Love: ‘Call Me Katie’ based on The Taming of the Shrew
Korean Drama Review ‘The Time I’ve Loved You’
The Time I’ve Loved You is a Korean drama remake of Taiwanese drama In Time with You, and just started airing. In Time with You, though it kind of self-destructs in its home stretch, is one of my favorite dramas, thoroughly lovely and extraordinarily well-written, that rare story that often transcends its medium to tell something real and gripping about human life and love (I wrote a full review earlier today).
The Time I’ve Loved You can be viewed one of two days: as an original story by those who haven’t seen the Taiwanese drama, and as a remake/new interpretation by those who have. Either way, I can say this: both will find it an unexceptional drama. The premise itself of two 30-something best friends who fall in love is strong, but not a guarantee of success, nor unique (9 Ends 2 Outs had the same premise). What matters is how you take that story and run with it, whether or not dialogue and music, casting, visual and pacing choices add or subtract from that premise. In this case, all those variable choices mostly subtract from it. Editing choices are odd – the drama uses an odd kaleidoscope effect to shift abruptly from past to present and back again – and the pacing is slower than in the first drama.
Share this:
Twdrama In Time with You Review
Taiwanese drama In Time with You is one of my favorite dramas of all time – I watched it in a glorious summer haze two months ago when I was in the middle of a mild depression, and watching this in between and around bouts of baking and cooking was therapeutic. It’s a story of best friends falling in love, and a rare story in that it’s both slice-of-life with a close attention to the daily details of how people live, and also fast-paced and incredibly romantic. Chen You Qing (Ariel Lin) is a highly driven and capable retail manager of a high-end shoe company. She’s been with the company for years and handles her taxing job with mostly calm aplomb, committing long hours to it with a smile. Lin Da Ren (Bolin Chen) is her long-time best friend, the kind whom she casually picks up the phone and calls any hour of the day and who drops by her house for her mother’s cooking. Da Ren is a manager at an international airline, equally successful in his own right.
Share this:
Korean Drama Review: Emergency Couple
Emergency Couple is a fantastic drama, fast-paced with incredible romantic nuance and an aching, so-real-it-hurts chemistry between leads Song Ji-Ho and Choi Jin-hyuk. Medical dramas always sound boring, but I’ve discovered over years of drama-watching that in fact they’re wonderful fodder for romance, mainly because it sets up the leads to work together in a high-stakes, dramatic environment in which they are constantly forced to interact.
Share this:
The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy Season 2!
New Adventures of Peter and Wendy is back!
Share this:
‘Anchors Away’ written by Mindy Kaling and starring Mindy Kaling, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Chris Messina
Share this:
Korean Drama Review: ‘High Society’ First Impressions
High Society is a new Korean drama. It stars UEE as an heiress – the youngest daughter of a family that owns a huge corporation – and Sung Joon as as a businessman from a poor background (his mother is a cook for a rich household). I was initially interested in it partly for the cast – I love UEE and like Sung Joon – but I’m astonished to find this drama completely charming and slightly magical.
Share this:
New Web Series: ‘Young Like Us’
Young Like Us is a smart and funny new (ish) webseries about three best friends in New York City. Charlie is an aspiring actress/musician. Ava is trying to figure stuff out while balancing her demanding job. Mia has just moved in with her long-term boyfriend. The ebb and flow of their quick, looping dialogue feels incredibly real, as does the friendship between them, and Mia’s gym-rat boyfriend is a hilarious standout (appearing in the 7th episode). I like it.
Share this:
Anne and Gilbert – “Falling Slowly”
In memory of Jonathan Crombie, here’s an absolutely lovely video from Sullivan Entertainment, the production company behind the much-loved miniseries adaptation of the Anne of Green Gables books.
Oh, and if you haven’t seen it, you must watch Green Gables Fables, especially the final episode of the first season, which I highlighted in my Literary Web Series Roundup
Share this:
Caffeinated Links: Far From the Madding Crowd, Steven Spielberg to Direct Ready Player One, ‘The Flash’ Stars Sing the Serenity Ballad
Fox Searchlight released the first, gorgeous poster for the upcoming adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, starring Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts.
In news that had me gibbering with nerdy glee, Steven Stielberg is to direct an adaptation of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. Ready Player One is a hugely popular sci-fi/dystopia novel that is a blast of inventive good fun as it follows the adventures of Wade Watts, a brilliant, somewhat overweight pop culture fanatic (I mention this because I wonder if the film will be true to this or replace him with someone who looks like, I don’t know, a Hemsworth) who spends his life, along with most of humanity, inside a massive virtual reality game.
The Flash‘s Jesse Martin, Carlos Valdez, and Rick Cosnett sing a gospel, acapella version of The Serenity Ballad and it is everything you want from life. Apparently it was a big thank-you to Joss Whedon for donating a large sum to their Kickstarter project.
Coffee and Irony 