‘Strong Woman Do Bong Soon’.… A sweet punch of much needed female power.

‘Strong Woman Do Bong Soon’ is maybe the sweetest response to all the male centric shows out there. Do Bong Soon (wonderfully played by Park Bo Young), is small or peanut size as often described, but powerful, in the literal sense of terms. She can move cars with a small push, punch gangsters and send them flying into the air and even carry her two drunken friends back home. She hides these powers, but when a serial kidnapping case threatens her the safety of the women in her neighbourhood, she has no choice but to step up and help.

I have complaints, but keeping them aside, I loved the show! The main reason being the chemistry between Min Hyuk (Park Hyung Sik) and Bong Soon (Park Bo Young). I just wished I had gotten more of that, than all the creepy kidnapper angle, and the unnecessary comic side tracks, both of which seemed to be forced into the story line. The show fumbles between all this for a while, unable to decide if it has a to be a romantic comedy or a thriller, or both, because the sudden transitions between scenes don't seem to suggest that either. 

Park Bo Young plays a watered down version of her character from Hot Young Bloods, with more cute and less blood, and she is excellent in scenes of anger and frustration, while Park Hyung Sik is in his full element here as the fun, sarcastic yet lovable CEO of an online gaming company, and was a delight to watch!

Do Bong Soon wouldn’t exactly be the character we needed nor wanted, but will do just fine. Giving extreme strength to a character to define her as strong is not what I am looking for in terms of female character empowerment, but will do. For now. Baby steps, of course.

Bullet Point Review: Hwarang

• One of the strengths of a pre-produced drama is that there is a strong hold over the story throughout the show. There are no sudden changes in character traits and no unnecessary subplots and Hwarang plays exactly to these strengths. The show progresses smoothly from start to finish, introducing it's conflicts in the initial episodes and then the means to solve them throughout the rest of the show.
• It is one of those few shows (which includes Pinocchio, She was Pretty, Reply 1997) that has enough content to milk out for the entire running time. You have the Hwarang's training, Sun Woo's birth mystery, Ban Ryu's family, Jwi Dwi's fight for the throne, Ji So's and An Ji-Gong's history and much much more that keeps the show afloat till the end.
• The setting may be old, but the situations are of this century. There are nightclub like parties, drinking, dating and in one scene Ah Ro begs Sun Yeon to cover up for her, when she ends up spending the night at Okta, and only returns home in the morning.
  
• Every new character introduced brings about a change either in the love stories, or in the main story line. Nothing is done out of reason or seems to be done out of the blue, with a hurried thought. Take the scene where Ah Ro narrates to a few villagers (in the forest) some of her love stories in exchange for some food for the Queen and the soldiers. This particular skill of Ah Ro seems unimportant at the beginning of the show except for being a reason Ji Dwi seeks her out, but later on, it becomes vital, and not something conjured out of the air to further the plot. Even the scene where Ji Dwi and Sun Woo rescue the prisoners in Baekjae (beautifully choreographed), becomes a small insight to a scene later on, when they both have to work together to steal medicines from Master Young Shil's shed.
• Characters like Pa Oh, Soo Yeon, Yeol Woo and Han Sung provide the much needed humour amongst all the tension.
• Kim Ji So was exceptional as the Queen Reagent. A difficult character to portray as it felt right and wrong to hate her. Right on how she was protecting Ji Dwi, but wrong about how many people she used to get her work done, (no matter how cleverly done.) The scene where she reveals to Ji Dwi that she was aware of her tea being poisoned, but continues to consume it, is heartbreaking. For the first (and the last time), we see her breakdown. She regrets not being able to frosee, something as simple as poisoning, but at the same time there is a tinge of relief in her face, as she understands that will be the only way she will give up the throne.
• All that being said, the show isn't without flaws. Many situations are not reacted to and many character's conclusion is either not satisfying or not shown at all. After Master Young Shil's medicines are robbed, we never get a scene where this discovers this crime and plans a counter attack. We never get to know what happens to Kang Sung, how Dan Sae becomes a Hwarang from a disciple and what happens to So Ho after the queens death. Even Ban Ryu sudden act of drunkenness to distract the guards when the Hwarang are stealing the medicines from Young Shil's shed goes by unexplained, just when a scene before, he did his adoptive fathers bidding without any conscious in Baekjae.
• Transitions between scenes are very abrupt, and I would have liked them to linger a bit longer for the effect they were aiming for. Even the background songs are cut in mid, and we are taken to the next scene immediately.
• Killed Taehyung didn't you? Always kill off the cute idol actor. First Baek and now Tae...Why?
• Both Minho and Park Hyung Sik were excellent! They both have improved so much more than their previous outings, and hoping to see more of them. 

A Roman holiday: Part three, Sightseeing

I clicked this at the Colosseum museum, but doesn't this just apply to all of Rome?
I mean where would all of Rome's magic be without its architecture?

Romans were the first ones to develop concrete, superior to what we use now and much more environmental friendly. They solved the problem of distributing heavy loads over long spans by designing arches, supposedly inspired by the small curve in the soles of our feet. It's the centre of Catholic belief, hence abundant churches can be found all over the streets. Some tall, huge with a large cross, or a large dome, or bright colours that you take notice of, immediately, while some small and humble, that you would just walk by them, unnoticed. My brother and I walked into many such churches, unaware of its name and the saint/patron it was dedicated to. Here's a photo of a church we walked right in, and managed to click some photos before its closing time,

I. The Colosseum & Palatine Hill

Then there was the magnificent Colosseum, which we drove around multiple times on the first few days and finally managed to visit on the last day in the city.

Here are a few long exposure shots I experimented while I was there,

Nearby was the picturesque Palatine Hill, which looked right out of my fourth grade history textbook, especially the vegetation, very reminiscent of the paintings and movies made on Roman history.

It was so so large, and it was so hot that day, that I regret not exploring it much. There was so much to see and photograph of this ancient forum, it did become rather tiring.

   II. Parthenon

One my favourite monumental structures, it strikes a perfect chord between minimalism and enormity, using only two simple geometric forms. It was also one of the harder ones to find, located deep within the city lanes onto an opening where all the lanes converge. We walked through lanes and lanes of boutique shops,

found a tall colonnade structure, which wasn't mentioned in any of the tourists brochures, watched artists create quick works of art using just spray cans and a lighter, and passed by a few street side musicians as well.

After the visit inside Pantheon, we sat by the obelisk for a very long time, facing the gigantic structure. It could have been the tiredness, the heat or simply the energy that was buzzing in the area, with throngs of tourists coming and going every minute. But as the sun slowly set, this energy buzzed it's way to the restaurants nearby, livened up with more with the music, the cling and clang of knifes on the plate and the cheerful banter of the diners.

 III. Vatican City

Visiting Vatican city was a dream come true. A place that is so often shown on television, and so often studied in history class, just a mere glimpse of it is, well, a dream come true!

Angels and Demons, anyone? 

The interiors were even more breathtaking. If everything on the exteriors was white, then the interiors only boasted of gold. 

The Vatican city museum was another marvel, glad that I didn't miss out. It was brimmed with marble busts, statues, mosaic, the beautiful and painstakingly detailed embossed ceilings, tapestries and paintings. Here's a look, 

These posts are rather late (and more yet to come!), but while writing, sorting and editing for them, I was truly glad I got to visit such a beautiful place. It was a jam packed four days, each day with its own list of adventures, from the struggle and nervousness of booking tickets on automated machines, to finding directions to the next travel spot, to deciding what to try out for lunch this time! Thank you, Roma for such an amazing time!

Next up, Pisa!