A little picspam (God of War, ep. 13)

[clairiere]

I've been wanting to do this forever, and ep. 13 seemed like a perfect opportunity to do so, as Kim Joon took a step back for the rest of the cast to shine a little. I LOVE the cast of God of War. I've always had a fondness for ensemble efforts, and this production is not only one of the best in recent memory, it's also one of the most refreshing.

Comments

Re: God of War, Eps. 12 and 13

[luvcostums]

I appreciate your reply, thank you. Spartacus gushed enough blood and broken bones to earn an overly violent rating. It became boring fast and I saw only 2 episodes. The current contender for needless brutality, Game of Thrones, ameliorates the spilled guts with a fantastic setting and almost graphic pornography, not that American soaps have not tried to reach that level.
When Kim Jun visits the temple library, one of the books was connected to the Tang(China today) Empire and the other books were martial arts. This scene, a slave reading, reading Tang history, deeply impressed Park Song-bi. Heroes
require not only Herculean strength but also artful strategy and guile. The triple powerhouse
of strength, intelligence, and ability will propel Kim Jun to the top. The excellent eps so far keep me wanting more.
Most kdramas begin with crackerjack episodes
that quickly fade to ordinary. As a result I have seen many beginnings but few complete kdramas; however, the music and songs are so good I have a collection to sing with.
The Drama Tic rates GoW at the top of saeguks with Shin Don and one of the best dramas this season. I found Shin Don at two sites; it looks good already!

Re: God of War, Eps. 12 and 13

[luvcostums]

I couldn't agree with you more, Luvcostums. Spartacus gushed so much blood that I couldn't even get past the trailer(s). At the outset, Game of Thrones (GoT) certainly had all the making of a great TV show. It has and continues to have extremely high production values. In my experience however, the depiction of so much graphic nudity and sex scenes in GoT have been quite distracting, making the entire show rather pedestrian (no offense to GoT fans reading this).

God of War (GoW) is arguably the best sageuk to have been produced in the last 5-10 years. Shin Don and Queen Seon Deok were both great (the former had a great storyline but suffered from uneven acting. The latter had an excellent cast and good execution, yet it lost steam during the second half of its run). Tree with Deep Roots is in many ways similar to Queen Seon Deok: great cast, original plotline yet an ending that, in many ways, could have been better. So far, the minds behind GoW have avoided all of the aforementioned weaknesses. It's probably still early but I'm curious to see what the ending is going to look like.

I read somewhere that Kim Jun was the one who effectively ended military rule back then. Will GoW's writer/PD be faithful to history? If so, will Kim Jun have to go head to head against Song Yi ( and her husband-to-be Yak Seon) to achieve his goal(s)? What will be the motivating factor(s) for such a situation to occur? One can only hope that whichever route the PD/writer of GoW take, they will continue to grace us with great and unpredictable episodes.

-Faithful reader
East Coast, U.S.

Re: God of War, Eps. 12 and 13

[clairiere]

As far as I'm concerned, Tree With Deep Roots ended at ep. 20. :P Sure, the fates of Milbon, Chae-Yoon, So-Yi, etc. would have been left unanswered, but the grander message (that hangul did spread and Sejong did not give in to the temptation of retaliating against Jung Ki-Joon et al.) would have prevailed and the lasting image would have been that of Sejong's determination over echoes of children singing in hangul. Not the bloodbath that was the promulgation ceremony. If they had wanted a bloodbath, it should have taken place before, not AT the ceremony. What a way to defeat what Sejong had set out to do all through the drama.

Queen Seondeok was way worse (one of the reasons why I was worried about writers Kim Young-Hyun and Park Sang-Yeon re: TwDR, they're talented but when they go off the rails...). Yes, I know Mishil and Bidam were charismatic, but they should have named the drama Mishil or Bidam if they had no intention of writing for QSD or Silla's nation-building. I kept thinking, I hope kids make an effort to remember this is all fiction and maybe look up the history on their own because Queen Seondeok, Kim Yoo-Shin, Kim Chun-Choo were just puppet figures in some horribly disjointed parallel universe. It makes my blood boil every time I'm reminded the final episode was all about Deokman and Bidam.

I read somewhere that Kim Jun was the one who effectively ended military rule back then. Will GoW's writer/PD be faithful to history?

My knowledge of Goryeo is very, very limited and I'm learning from the little I can find online (not in Korea so I don't have access to any books atm), but while they're sticking to the bare bones of the events in this period (eg. Choi Hyang did try to trap Choi Woo using Choi Chung-Heon's declining health, Choi Woo refused to visit their father claiming he was not dying, Choi Chung-Heon held a lavish banquet on his last day, Kim Deok-Myung was the one who ratted on Choi Hyang, allowing Choi Woo to win over his brother and see his father for the last time), their interpretations of some of the key figures are somewhat liberal. Kim Joon was one of the last rulers of the Mooshin era [spoiler](he's the one who put an end to the Choi's, when he killed Choi Woo's grandson), but apparently the real-life Kim Joon wasn't such a heroic figure so however he turns out on screen in this adaptation is pretty much up to the writer.

Ditto with Song-Yi and Kim Yak-Seon. Not much information on them either (we don't even have a name on Choi Woo's only daughter), but what's available tells a different story from the characterizations so far in the drama. Remains to be see whether history will be spoiler or not. :)

Re: God of War, Eps. 12 and 13

[clairiere]

Well, one thing that does suffer as a result of k-dramas' intense, practically live-shoot schedule (a rather recent phenom) is the production quality, and while GoW is in a better position than, say, The Moon That Embraces the Sun (which was often filmed and edited to the last minute), it's a much more epic production and I'm not expecting miracles with the war scenes. Having said that, it's got solid foundations (eg. virtually no weak link in the cast) and if the writer can continue to deliver solid scripts (hopefully Lee Hwan-Kyung's experiences will pay off here), we could be treated to something consistently good on a weekly basis. It's a tall order, even for the talented team at GoW, but it's a drama worth rooting for and I'll be cheering for them all the way through the end. :)

Re: God of War, Eps. 12 and 13

[ext_1143113]

When it comes to battles.... I'd lower my expectations. You get a nice static CG shot of 20,000 soldiers plus barracks, but that's about it. They don't have manpower or money to shoot elaborate battles involving more than 50 to 100 extras, and obviously no time, so the best you can hope for is skirmishes in closed locations (or limited siege warfare). The difference between a good PD and a bad one is that the former doesn't expose himself and make it obvious there's only 40 people in there, but there's only so much one can do. Great PDs like Kim Jin-Min work around those limitations.

If you look at the palace battle in Shin Don's 41st episode... that's what I'm talking about. There's 60 people in there but put together via CG composition they look like 500, and it's complete fury. Perfect editing, music and cinematography. They shot it in two days, spent very little. That's Kim Jin-Min for you.

Cool thing about Kim Heung-Dong handling a few weeks of shoot solo is that he'll go wild with handheld shots, 교차편집 and filters.

P.S: live shoot isn't recent at all. Eyes of Dawn finished editing its last episode a couple of days before airtime. They just never talked about it back then. ㅋㅋ

Re: God of War, Eps. 12 and 13

[clairiere]

Yeah, I'm tempering my expectations, not that I have much of a choice... From the little I could gather, they've been shooting the invasion scenes, but they're dealing with some set problems already (foul weather destroyed parts of the set that was supposed to serve as 귀주성).

Either way, I'm very impressed with what they've accomplished already with all the cards they've been dealt with and will be crossing fingers & toes in the hopes that they'll continue to manage to the best of their abilities for the duration of this production.

re: live shoot: sorry, I meant to say live shoot in the 초생방 sense these days. My memories are admittedly very hazy but I don't recall production quality falling (apart) to the point we could tell they were shooting by the seat of their pants.