Birth of a Beauty - KDrama

Birth of A Beauty - Poster

When I first came across this drama I was excited for the concept, but I couldn’t help being slightly worried with how they would execute it. Obviously this kind of topic is always a touchy one when it comes to the general media, never mind the Korean culture and despite my reservations on the details I still opted to give it a shot despite knowing how irritated I would be at some point during my viewing experience.

The drama started out pretty good, the idea of a random house wife living happily to serve her in-laws and travelling husband while no one really appreciated her was a bit much for me to handle I’ll admit but that was more a cultural itch to scratch than anything else. 

I liked that she had a solid story to push her drastic change into the ‘beauty’ that we would be seeing for the majority the show. Her story gave her brilliant character development and made it easy to build for future plot development that, for me, created quite a nice story to bite into.

The romance was also interesting as the two leads moved along together and discovered they were connected by more than a desperate housewife’s plea as they learn the dark truths of those closest to them and embark on a mission to expose the truth.

The story was simple enough but it worked and the plot had enough momentum to create a beautiful work of art…But here is where things get troublesome as the story becomes overly, and unnecessarily, complicated with the male lead’s storyline that overlaps with our housewife-turned-beauty.

Though I understand the need for his story, I wish they had condensed it to something more bite sized instead of blowing it up to the extent that they did.

It is clear near the end of the drama that even the creators of this show were at a loss at how to beautifully fix the tangle of plot they had twisted and they just resorted to mixing it into one bowl and hoping it would come out like something acceptable. It was truly frustrating to watch all this unravel near the end as they rushed to close off their loose ends instead of strategically sending off the show.

While it was a good drama to watch and it is a concept I wish to see re-used in a different manner in another drama at some point, I feel is could have been better.

50 Shades of Grey - Movie

I went into this cinema with mild to low expectations, thus my viewing of it might have been slightly skewed in some aspects. But never the less, it was a movie I don’t think I regret watching, mostly because I aspire to be an author who writes books that may one day turn into film. Though not of this content one can still dream such things are possible, I mean if Fifty Shades can do it, why not another random story by an author in a far off land called South Africa?

Anyway, I should probably mention I did read the book, though I barely remember the experience as it was quite a while ago and I never did make it through the first one, let alone the second one and though I own all three I’ve yet to finish reading the series. But thankfully the movie didn’t stray too off course as it delivered what was generally expected.

The reason I mention the books isn’t because the movie is based off of them, but because one would need to have read them in order to follow most of what was happening in the movie. Otherwise you would be watching nothing but something of a sweet romance turned strange porno that ended abruptly. But that of course is just my opinion.

The start of the movie is surprisingly good. The anticipation that is built up is decent as our main couple roll out the tension with good-ish acting as they play out the sweet moments but it becomes quite obvious that not much attention is given to the side characters as the focus stays on the main couple barely showing anything more than two to three minutes of any other actors at a time.

Is it because the producers couldn’t afford the actors show time, or didn’t care for them? Who knows… but it was kind of a let-down not to have more faces to focus on.

One thing I noticed though, once the ‘big reveal’ came and things became all steamy between our protagonists, I felt like there was something missing. Granted I kept thinking ‘wow...they must be really comfortable with each other to be doing these scenes together...’ I also couldn’t help feeling like a lot of the shots felt forced but I guess that was inevitable given the content we’re speaking about here…

And then the rest of the movie happened and it felt like an anti-climax. It was as if all the tension was spent and given out at the steamy scenes and the producers didn’t care anymore. They just wanted to end the movie.

Honestly, I don’t know if I was the only one but near the end there I was struggling to keep my eyes open as I slowly tried to keep myself awake. It was as if the plot stagnated and meaning was suddenly trying to be forced into the situation whereas it could have been slowly introduced along with all the kinky stuff.

But that end though… I can honestly say I didn’t see it coming. I liked it and yet I think they could have done it better, but again tis only my opinion. Will I see any more movies they will milk this franchise for, probably. I’m an unfortunate perfectionist, or maybe, just maybe I’m a masochist… either way I’m too curious for my own good and I recommend those open minded enough to be just as curious because the release of a movie like this in our time says a lot about our society and culture and if anything it deserves a speckle of ponder.