#i feel kind of conflicted putting both journey and circle on here bc they are very similar in a lot of ways

[sanstropfremir]

best choreos of 2023!

not gonna lie, this year was a rough one for choreos. like with the actual music itself, this year was profoundly complacent and very few choreographies were truly inspired and willing to do something original. i was actually afraid for a bit that i was not even gonna be able to fill out a top ten list, much less having any runners' up. so here's a list of runners' up:

new dayz - trendz

spotlight - yunho

wormhole - n.ssign

neverland - nine.i

baggy jeans - nct u

koong - xikers

vuja de - yunho

bouncy - ateez

journey - woodz

and my favourites:

circle - onew

i have a bit of a love hate relationship with the circle choreo bc on one hand i LOVE it, the imagery and idea is beautiful i think it's one of the few choreos this year that actually embodies what the song and the cb were trying to say. but on the other hand, as a contemporary dance enjoyer it is.........let down by the fact that kpop is a predominantly hiphop based genre and the backup dancers are not up to snuff for this type of choreo. kaspar did a pretty good job choreographing it but hiphop and contemp/modern are notoriously hard styles to slide between for dancers, and i really think they should have actually got a modern choreographer and a modern troupe. it would have significantly upped the quality and given the stages that extra gut punch.

grl gvng - xg

honestly you really could sub in any xg choreo from this year here bc they were all stellar, but the commitment of grl gvng clinched it for me. the costuming, the makeup, the style of movement all tell such a clear story that i would have included it on my list regardless of what the album was, but the transition from hesonoo to xgene to grl gvng is fucking UNREAL. it's so refreshing to see a gg actually commit to a concept that isn't pretty bubbly straightness and to not compromise on it regardless of how much people bitch, right down to the choreo. there's something immensely satisfying about seeing a choreo about how these girls are alien cyborgs and have it actually LOOK like they are alien cyborgs, the intentional clunkiness and 'offputting' movements and all. i've been begging for an actual real concept like this for years and finally. finally it has been delivered.

chrome arts - onlyoneof

its not a choreo list by me if there isn't an ooo one, and once again they came right out of the gate at the beginning of the year with something batshit insane. the knee walk move is crazy. i love it 10/10.

killer - key

unlike a lot of the other entries on this list, i don't think killer has as concise of a concept other than "the 80s", but the great thing about it is that you absolutely can successfully pull off a more abstract concept if you do it well. this is such a strong choreo with good images and composition, plus a lot of 80s references in the moves themselves, and sometimes that's all you need if you put the right care into it. this is actually one of the few choreos that i've seen that correctly capture the feel of an mj choreo from the 80s, which seems to be a real challenge for a lot of idols. i will say that i think it would have made more sense to me if this had been a repack to bad love, bc it has the same vein of nostalgia vibes and a very similar feel in the shapes of the choreo, but really they're all part of his retro series so it's not a substantive complaint.

the rizzness - taemin

don't speak to me don't look at me i'm literally never recovering from this in my entire life. i cannot fucking believe he made me say with full conviction that ""the rizzness"" is one of the best taemin bsides but also of fucking course he did. this is black rose but eviler (complimentary). it's so interesting to see how versatile taemin's style is and where his true strengths lie. obviously his title track choreos are perfectly tailored to his body and his abilities and they are all unreal choreos on their own. but there's something about the way that he carries himself when he does more hiphop based choreo that has such a natural power to it. it's so clear that this is the style that he started learning dance in and especially now that he's become much more settled in his body since he got back from the military, it's so obvious how much love he has for this song and this way of movement that i don't think any of his title tracks will stack up in the same to it in my eyes.

don't call me - dkz nine to six

insane. insane insane insane. i love everything about this. it's weird its creative it had very clear imagery that supports the song, it says fuck capitalism, what more could you possibly want. honestly one of the best choreos of the last couple years. i'm also gonna include nod here too bc it was the bside they promoted and it has crazy choreo also, and highly recommend ppl listen to digital love, the other bside. very strong release from dkz this year despite all the shit they went through.

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here's hoping 2024 is better!

[kuronekonerochan]

Very messy thoughts about a very messy kdrama: Melting Me Softly

Overall:

I loved the premise...it looked like the kind of ridiculous over the top kdrama that could make for an interesting entertaining watch...unfortunately it is just badly executed. It doesn't know what it wants to be. The action syfy part is confusing, there is no emotional weigh over the tragedy of losing 20 years of life on the part of the Male Lead, although we feel it with the FL(who, by the way, is the only good part of the drama as far as acting goes, despite having little to work with), and even the jokes don't land because the supposed funny side characters are either too annoying and terrible people or they are too pathetic and I pity them instead of finding any of it funny (like the scenes with his family).

Melting me softly is a mess. Honestly with only just how all over the place the pilot was most ppl would have drop it then, but ji chang wook is soooo pretty and it's his comeback after military, still.... lord, is the drama bad. 

The syfy element is a mess, the characters are all shallow and unlikable in the few scenes we had with them so far (except the FL who seems nice enough but hasn't had that much to do yet).

The Characters:

 JCW is surprisingly unlikable for me and it's not even that he's the cliche jerk. Surprisingly it’s even worse because he’s just boring as a character. He’s not nice, but he doesn’t go out of his way to be cruel so that he can be redeemable later.

Nope, he’s just arrogant and entitled and he interacts with everyone mostly by casting judgmental side eye and being kind of uninterested in anyone else. Not in a charming megalo centric  way (like the Lead from What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim, who was a good person despite his ego), but in a dismissive everyday style that makes him all the more unlikable. What’s worse is that it’s even more evident with his family, who are problematic and a bit clingly and “golddigging/leaching” but still they seem to like each other enough in their own weird way. The lead though, treats his family coldly, like a disgusted spectator and it’s hard to watch. There is no chemistry between him and the rest of the cast because the character treats everyone like they’re not worthy of his respect.

That scene where the leads meet and she’s upset over losing 20 years of her life? -  I automatically went: *eyeroll Ugh, Men... It's not all about you everytime. You convinced her, effed up her life, own it and stop making excuses! The right thing to do is apologize and shut the f up!

The side characters, as I said are all either pathetic or terrible people, with the exception of the female lead’s family, who seem to be in a different, better acted drama. The shift in tone is jarring.

The Plot:

The plot is a complete mess and the main conflict so far is stupid. His producing team (that ended up convincing his gf) decided to hush things up in the past because outrage, audience ratings, yada yada and that's it! Yet it’s super confusing bc it seems like they are hiding what they did from him and scheming behind his back, while at the same time it's obvious he knows they threw him under the bus back them, so where’s the conflict? Also it's petty and the real villains involved with the cryoproject and the attack on the scientist are still just a vague concept that the drama clearly wont go into anytime soon, so it all seems like filler. 

To top it all, last episode's cliffhanger is about their previous romantic interests (who are now in their 40s) reconnecting when one of them is married and the other cover up the ML's disappearance, so it's all just more annoying filler I have no interest in watching...

The production design/ technical aspects:

The technical aspects are also bad, especially the editing...scenes are chopped off and put together and seem cut short or pointless. Time is also weird, they mix office scenes with home scenes from ML and random FL scenes without parallels and it's impossible to make out when the days start and end. It's been a while since I saw such messy execution from the production. Usually it's stuff like plot or characters or acting that bothers me, at most camera work, but here it really is the production as a whole. 

What I meant by parallels is that when you are starting to tell a narrative with two leads from their separate povs before they are onscreen together, there's usually an editing order:

Both leads wake up, both leads wander away. Ok so far. Both leads reconnect with family. Scene of FL at home with family followed by scene with ML with family. New day starts. Day 1: looking for answers: contacting the police, talking to the last ppl involved in the experience, etc. Sequencial scenes showing how each go about finding answers in their own way (the method helps to start establishing character and  personality differences between the leads). ML does that, but for some reason the FL doesn't?  (Maybe here a nightime scene each with the family to further develop feelings/angst and exposition of changes in family dinamics and events that happened while they were gone.) Next is trying to get back the life they left behind. Again, sequencial scenes of his workplace and in this case her university.

And with that we get the feeling a few days have passed and they went around on their parallel journeys. But here it's all jumbled and mashed together. He keeps talking to the people from his network in random chopped talks where it feels like he doesn't ask everything logically just so the drama can have another different scene with them later, he is home, his family is a mess but that isn't even edited in contrast to the scenes of her family for juxtaposition...and he seems to have more scenes than her and hers fall randomly out of nowhere and without logic. After being discharged from the hospital and talking to her family, why wouldn't her first reaction be trying to find him and ask what the hell happened? Instead she goes around, even returns to college before going to him?  The drama and the leads seem to walk around in circles without purpose. The transitions are also lowsy...usually all the driving in kdramas is too much but here it is lacking. The ML jumping around from the hospital, to the network, to the (most baffling) secret patient room where the scientist is without us knowing how he got there is distracting. Besides, those small driving scenes are important for character interaction and development: either with phone calls that allow us to see a more intimate side of the characters, how he takes things when nobody is watching, or with another person in the car communicating, or even just silent rides with body language and expression giving us a glimpse of their state of mind....  without any of this, by just appearing in places and doing things, the characters seem shallow and incomplete.

Minor complaints: 

They made the choice to make the 2nd Female lead kind of bitchy, greedy and backstabbing by having her agree to the cover up and her decision of not telling him immediately  what she had done now and apologize (when her younger self seemed much sweeter than that). I feel like the drama has barely begun and they already did her dirty by choosing to go that way with her character after her introduction on the pilot. Also, typecast of the actress playing her older self... she always plays a bitch (she's very good at it but I wanted to see her on a softer role). I wouldn’t mind  if this were a noona romance, since so far the leads have zero chemistry together. To be fair, there wasn’t any with the 2nd female lead, or JCW and any other character in a non romatic way either, in fact, except for the kid niece who actually seems to get a genuine reaction out of him.

 Plus we know from K2 that JCW and noonas have better chemistry ;)

At least I wish they had given her a better arc, for example, the girlfriend who was left behind, because of how it went down, never got over her love for him. They could have a romantic interest for her who she met after the lead was frozen, and the two had become very close over the years but she couldn't move on... they could give her closure so she'd finally realize in her heart how she felt about her own romantic interest without it being clouded with guilt and unresolved feelings for the lead. 

@kdramaxoxo