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I had a good feeling about Korean drama Pasta before it aired, particularly about the chemistry between main leads Lee Sun Gyun and Gong Hyo Jin, and sure enough I was right. Pasta is everything that is charming; while most Korean “trendy” dramas are light-hearted, Pasta takes it one step further by being downright playful. I was particularly struck by its use of a light jazzy track and visual imagery of tomatoes swirling in a pan during a particularly poignant scene as Gong Hyo Jin’s character stays late in the kitchen rejoicing over her final ascension to chef and looking forward to the next day(sadly I couldn’t cap that scene, the motion was too fast, so have a picture of her glorying over food instead). Gong Hyo Jin, just as I suspected, is definitely one of the highlights of this drama – she has a lovely steady feel which really grounds the drama, which might be otherwise entirely too light and fluffy. Pasta is a drama which is relying on the little things – visuals, acting, music – to lift it above “average” territory, but it’s succeeding exceedingly well, and most importantly there’s an indefinable vibe about it which is very hard to pin down to any one element but which pulls the drama together and gives it that element of fizz and magic so important for a really good viewing experience. Like Triple, it’s surprisingly hard to capture what makes it so appealing – it’s one of those low-key dramas whose charm is lost between screen and words – but so worth watching.

Thinking of her dead mother. I include this shot to show off some of those visuals I was talking about – this is just beautiful colouring in a very indie-flick kind of way.

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Note: most of this was adapted from my post at an ealier blog

First off, there are two options as far as downloading goes: torrent or direct download

Torrent versus direct:

I don’t torrent and only vaguely understand how it works myself, so I’m afraid I can’t help there, but from what I understand it’s illegal, relatively fast, and the more people are downloading a specific file, the faster that download will be for all of them(it’s called “seeding” I think). It’s widely used by tech-savvy people all over the world to download everything from program files to movies and television. I’ve never gotten into it myself partly because many torrent sites are invite-only and closed to new members and partly because I’m not particularly tech-savvy and it all just seemed too much of a bother, especially when I can get virtually everything I want through other channels. BUT. If you do decide to torrent instead, then bittorrent and Clubbox are the way to go (Note-Clubbox is a Korean site so if you want to register check out some of the excellent guides floating around, such as this one or this one)

There are also two options as far as subtitles go: hardsubs or softsubs

Hardsubs and softsubs:

soft subs – soft subs are simply subtitles which come as a separate file and aren’t directly attached to the video file, so you need to download them separately- they’re usually titled/in the form of “.srt”

hard subs – subtitles which come with the video and don’t have to be downloaded separately – ie if  you see “episodes 1-10 hardsubbed” in means that the episodes are already subbed and all you have to is download the videos

Hardsubs are nicer in general as you only have to download one file, but they take much longer to come out and most people end up using softsubs for the most part as episodes get released with softsubs by fansubbing groups much much faster than with hardsubs. The good thing about soft subs, however, is that they’re very small files; they usually download in seconds. Figuring out how to sync them with your video file/make sure they show up on your screen can get a bit trickier, but it’s really not that hard…

Players:

-If you’re on a PC, Media Player Classic is your friend. I still miss it *sniff* as it wasn’t just good for playing subs but also played virtually everything and anything I wanted it too. But anyway, it worked perfectly for me for all my drama needs; it’s very much like Windows Media Player only with more options and capabilities.

-If you’re on a Mac, MPC won’t work, but you can always default to VLC, which is pretty much the universal media player and will work on both Macs and PCs.

-For both these players, as long as you have the right settings all you have to do is put the softsub files and the video files in the same folder on your computer, and then rename them to the same thing. Before you freak out, all that this means is that if you have a video file which is “My Girl_Ental_3.avi” and a softsub file which is “My Girl Minfansubs 3.srt” just rename them to “My Girl 3.avi” and “My Girl 3.srt” – the file extensions avi and srt should automatically stay the same when you rename the file. The video player, with luck, will then automatically sync the subs to the episode when you open the video file. With luck, you already have the right settings in VLC/MPC, so all you have to do is try it.

-If it turns out you don’t, however, you’ll have to do some other things.

MPC: With MPC, you might want to download Vobsubs – I honestly can’t remember if MPC required it or not but I do remember I had it downloaded when I was using MPC on my PC so there’s a chance that it does. I’ll look into more extensive fixes/guides later  but for now this will have to do

VLC: Try this instead-

1. Go to the file menu: select “Open file”
2. Input the media file
3. then check the box that says “load subtitle file”
4. Click on the settings button next to the box you just checked
5. Browse through your files for the .srt (soft subs) you want to load and select them.
6.click “okay”
7. play

credit to dreamtooloud over at Livejournal

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Filed under: Film & Television, Miscellaneous by Claire - No Comments →

Synopsis: Han Min-Gook(Lee Sung Jae), a multi-billionaire, and Lee Ae-Ri(Han Eun Jung), a famous actress, have just attained a headline-making divorce. Now, Ae-Ri wants to sue her ex-husband for billions of dollars in alimony. Enter Woo Yi-Kyung(Lee Soo Kyung of Soulmate), a rookie lawyer who has just started her own practice, having switched to law and passed the bar after having been abandoned six years before by her lawyer boyfriend when he leaves for the U.S. As one of Ae-Ri’s closest friends in the past, when Yi-Kyung hears of the divorce she expects Ae-Ri to call her. Instead, Ae-Ri demands the best lawyer in the business from a major legal company to help her win her suit against her husband, and the company rushes Byun Hyuk, a rising star specializing in divorce cases, back from New York – Byun Hyuk who is none other than Yi-Kyung’s ex-boyfriend. Billionaire Min-Gook, meanwhile, not about to let his ex-wife have it all her way, hatches a plot to hire his wife’s best friend to be his lawyer, and turns up one morning on Yi-Kyung’s doorstep, demanding that she represent him. Soon, the ex-husband-and-wife and ex-lovers find themselves on opposing sides in the country’s most famous court case.

Review:If all dramas were like Lawyers of Korea, I would spend my lifetime staring at a computer screen with a silly smile on my face. It took me a little while to fall completely for it – 2 episodes, but when I did, I fell fast and hard, with a crash that could be heard for a hundred miles. It’s the small moments, the exquisitely-handled romantic scenes that pepper almost every episode, that lift this drama above average, but it’s not just that; Lawyers showcases one of the most stellar writing jobs I’ve ever seen, with each scene, particularly in the latter half of the drama, unfolding with such perfection and character-and-OTP consistency, that it left me in awe, and a plot that, while refreshingly non-angsty, managed to constantly surprise me. There are a beautifully few number of tears and over-the-top twists in Lawyers, but that doesn’t mean the characters and their lives aren’t compelling – on the contrary, the fact that it was all about character development kept me riveted through 16 episodes. Lee Soo Kyung, best known for her performance in experimental drama Soulmate, is spot on as quirky, feisty lawyer Woo, and Lee Sung Jae, who is a popular film star, gives a powerhouse performance as offbeat, neurotic millionaire Min-Gook. Fast, witty dialogue, understated (for a Korean drama) romance, and funny, pitch-perfect writing made this an absolute delight from beginning to end.

To watch : If you live in the US, watch online in high quality on Dramafever, otherwise download the RAWS(videos) here and subs here

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