evacuatewithstyle

Out of all the zingy career-oriented serials, law stuff never caught my eye. I’ve watched a lot of Greys’ Anatomy, House, and Alias, but could never go back to try out Boston Legal or Law and Order. So, with Partner, there was undoubtedly a lot of law talk. Lots of propositions, explanation of law terminology and at the moment, with only having watched 2 episodes, I’m not exactly loving or attentively following the law case story lines. Admittedly, I did get a lot more invested in the case starting in the second episode, but I’m not completely wow’ed yet.

But, I am very interested in how convincing a secondary female lead Honey Lee will play, and how good the chemistry will be between Lee Dong Wook’s Lee Tae-jo and his hyung, the secondary male lead. Onto some introductions & thoughts on the eps!

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There is not a single thing I don’t like about this song. The beginning of the song is something I will never stop gushing about to anyone who will listen, and the performance really just goes nicely with the song. It’s just a shame that this wasn’t a title track and I’ll probably never see it performed more than five times in Taeyang’s career, but I think “Prisoner” is one of the best examples of a truly good song in Kpop — the song itself, the singing from Taeyang, and the visual presentation of the performance. Swoon. This song was also definitive of my summer last year, and I always come back to it when the weather gets warm.

These are the most weaksauce campaign photos I’ve seen from Louis Vuitton in…forever. What is up with the bad coloring, repetitiveness, and general mediocrity?

I also hate it when these high-end brands obsess over getting a celebrity to model for their ad campaigns. Scarlett Johansson for LV a couple seasons back, Katie Holmes for Miu Miu, Kirsten Dunst for Miu Miu, Victoria Beckham for Marc Jacobs… Let’s be real, fashion is all about trying to sell an idea of beauty that those selling it believe in, and if you’re going to be as un-PC as possible, why not just sell the idea of beauty as per models? This is generally a problem with fashion nowadays, this obsession with celebrities when models can do the job much, much better. It’s so rare to see a model on the cover of a fashion magazine, when models are all that used to be on covers.

Gut reaction: The longest action film ever, but so good. Better than the first. Shia Lebouf is worthy of better things than this, to be honest.

And now the slightly longer, more in-depth look at two new characters that critics have said are “racist” caricatures. Minor spoilers ahead!

So there are two new characters introduced into this movie, named Mudflap and Skids. I don’t know anything about the Transformers universe, so I Wiki’ed the two characters, and the important things I’ve gathered from the characters are that:

Mudflap’s character in the original Japanese version was named Demolisher. In the American animated series, the character had a variation of a French accent.

Skids was originally named Diaclone. “Skids was characterized as the perfect absent-minded warrior. Highly intelligent and always collecting data, Skids is nonetheless always daydreaming. He is a scientist first and foremost, and has made many valuable discoveries.”

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I’ve watched the first two episodes of Partner and I’ll get around to recapping/reviewing those, but just the mere watching of Lee Dong Wook in something new makes me superbly happy. So happy that I rewatched “My Girl” just for him. (I just have to say — of all the old-ish K-drama classics that almost everyone watches after they get into K-dramas, “My Girl” is probably my favorite. Even if I didn’t rewatch every single minute of “My Girl,” I would never, ever make myself re-experience “Goong,” “My Name is Kim Sam Soon,” etc etc over again. I’ve still never watched hardcore classics like “Lovers in Paris,” “I’m Sorry I Love You,” or any of those seasonal dramas (and I don’t plan on doing so), but if I had one comfort drama, it would be “My Girl.”)

Anyway, off on a tangent. In the leagues of Hallyu wave actor-leaders, I don’t think Lee Dong Wook ranks high — even though “My Girl” is one of the best examples of dramas in Hallyu’s waving of drama and angst — and that’s always surprised me. He’s done a decent amount of acting in dramas, even if everything before MG was virtually unknown, but then he disappeared off drama-making for three years after MG and came back with the dark “La Dolce Vita.” LDW is a pretty good actor and even though I wish he were a teensy, teensy bit better with the anger/rage/tears-n-snot scenes, he gets the job done and is really pleasant to watch. He really surprised me with how good a comedic actor he was because I had expected a lot of the Joo Ji Hoon-esque stiffness of playing a really sober chaebol/high-status male lead but LDW totally let loose when it was required of him in MG.

There’s also the way he tends to carry himself for the characters he plays. As Seol Gong Chan in MG, he knew how to look annoyed in the patient, restrained way only chaebols can look (lol) and he was amused in a very precise I-must-not-let-my-hair-get-ruffled way. That’s why despite the story flaws in “Partner” so far, I can’t wait to see more of how LDW’s character develops. He’s really getting down the sleazy, arrogant, prickbastard role down pat — can’t wait to see him taken down a notch or two and see what LDW does with his character.

And in terms of comparison, I finally get what people mean when they say that Lee Minho reminds them of Lee Dong Wook. It is COMPLETELY true, y’all. Except, I think Lee Minho is even better than Lee Dong Wook, but they both have a really great sense of cool and stoicism that makes their characters completely believable. And maybe it’s because I keep smushing all my K-pop crushes together, but Super Junior’s Kyuhyun’s real life demeanor also really reminds me of Lee Dong Wook’s characters’. Their speaking voices also sound similar to me, and what a coincidence, they always play Kyuhyun’s part in SuJu’s song for the Partner OST when the scene requires it.

Okay. The rest of this post is mainly a “let me show you how attractive Lee Dong Wook is” post.

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