Skip to main content

WHAT TO WATCH ON TV

 First, noteworthy topics of the day that will become newsworthy:

  • The Supreme Court announced a unanimous ruling that, while very narrow in application, opened the floodgates for college student-athletes getting paid like professionals.  Essentially, the NCAA was admonished.  States like Alabama, Florida and Texas are close to allowing students to sign endorsements, etc.
  • Medicaid membership is now up to 80 million, a record high.
  • The Democrats won over Senator Joe Manchin, but need to also convince ten Republicans to pass the voting rights legislation.  It will, of course, fail, but that was expected anyway, and will only further plague Republicans when they re-run for election in 2022.
  • The Tokyo Summer Olympics begin in about a month, and will close on 8 August 2021.  More than 11,000 athletes will perform from 205 nations in 33 sports and 50 disciplines.
    • Tokyo beat Istanbul to host.
    • It's still officially called the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.
  • The new national stadium was built on the site of the old national stadium of the 1964 Summer Olympics, and has been named the Tokyo Olympic Stadium.
    • There is a mascot...Miraitowa.
    • The original theme of Discover Tomorrow has been changed to United by Emotion.
    • No foreign spectators and limited local entry.
    • First competitions will occur on July 21, two days before the Opening Ceremonies, which will be:
      • 8PM Tokyo time on July 23.
      • 7 AM EDT, 4 AM PDT and 1AM Hawaii time, on July 23, and re-broadcast from 7:30 PM to midnight on the east coast, etc.  To be more accurate, it will be 6:55AM EDT, etc.
      • Then keep watching for the Olympic edition of TODAY beginning at 11AM, followed by three hours of Olympic coverage.
      • Of course, everything will be re-broadcast in prime time, so you will need to avoid the news all day if you wish to watch the events "live."
    • The weather in Tokyo will be hot and humid...so the marathon and race-walking events were moved to Sapporo.
    • Did you know that Kevin Durant, James Harken, Jayson Tatum, Chris Paul, Devin Booker, Bam Adebayo, Bradley Beal, Draymond Green and Damian Lillard are on the U.S. basketball team?  Others to be officially announced.  There will be 12 players.  Coach is 62-year old Gregg Popovich.  No way for the U.S. to lose.
  • To be covered by NBC in the USA, which also means, USA, CNBC and NBC Sports Network.  Mike Tirico will anchor.  If you have the time, the total free hours will amount to more than 7000 hours. 
  • You can also pay to stream on Sling TV, FuboTV, Youtube TV, Peacock, AT&T TV and Hulu Plus.
  • All the above keeps changing, so start with THIS.
  • Closing Ceremony will be on Sunday, August 8

I usually review films and series after watching them.  Today, I will provide opinions for three which I have yet to finish.  To begin, here are the top 20 highest-rated Korean dramas of all time.

I'll start with two Netflix series from South Korea, for they both monopolized my time.  The closed-caption helps me to better understand the dialogue.  Now I can understand why those Korean soap operas on television became so popular in Hawaii.  There are tours based on them.  I never watched any, but am almost embarrassed to say that I was hooked by these two series, and one before, Crash Landing on You, which got a 98% rating from Rotten Tomatoes.  Rated #3 all-time Korean best.

Something in the Rain caught my attention because the actress from CLonY, Son Ye-jin, is, well, beautiful.  While the series only received a 75% rating from Rotten Tomatoes audiences, the production was wonderful.  They did something I've never seen in any series from any country.  Instead of original background music, they mostly used Tammy Wynette's Stand By Your Man.  Several times in each of the 16 episodes, and sometimes the whole song more than once.  It worked, for the song evoked emotions.  This was a rather simple love story which attempted to overcome various taboos endemic to current Korean culture, like sexual harassment from male managers, an older female dating a younger male and the role of parents in determining who to marry.   I will this week watch episode 16. And yes, there is something in the rain.

Vincenzo has a 97% score from Rotten Tomatoes audiences.  There are 20 episodes, each lasting 80 minutes, or pretty much a full movie.  Each episode of SitR also went on for 80 minutes.   I guess this means that the television audience in the country must wade through 40 minutes of commercials in the two-hour time slot originally used.  I am on episode 19, where the ending of each is some crisis to maximize the chances of your return.  To summarize, mother gives up son in South Korea, who ends up as a young child in Italy, becomes a consigliere of a Mafia family and returns home to Seoul to pick up a fortune he had arranged to be stashed.  His intent was to leave the Mafia and settle in peace.  I watch episode 20 this week to see what happens.

SitR deals with personal frustrations, but no one is significantly harmed in any scene.  V shows vicious killings, and regularly.  Vincenzo himself has a winning personality and looks like the ideal man any girl would want to marry.  The reality is that he is a ruthless murderer, but with good intentions.  You can only root for him.  Food and drinks appear in most scenes.  You see the lifestyle of Seoul today.  What both series also do is expose the corruption and social practices ailing South Korea today.  Themes like suicide come up often.  You wonder if anyone can truly be happy in that environment.

South Korea has had a miracle recovery from the Korean War.  There is a different kind of drive in this country compared to Singapore.  Both have been fabulously successful.  I've been to South Korea at least 25 times and count as friends many professors, government leaders and some super-rich.  They live a life unlike anything in the U.S.  Electronic products, BTS, Parasite and Gangnam Style are evidence of success.  The pervading culture, though, shows fragility and even disintegration.  Witness how many of their presidents have been jailed.  The leaders of the prime chaebols are regularly arrested for some act of corruption.  At the top levels competition is so fierce that the worst in human emotions are stimulated.

Red Box today sent me a notification of a new low budget Bob Odenkirk film, Nobody.  Went to Rotten Tomatoes, and saw scores of 84/94.  It's rated R and labeled black comedy/mystery/thriller.  One reviewer said, It's a blast.  Odenkirk plays a meek nobody who is provoked into rage.  Sure, I might be giving away an important secret, but he actually previously was an "auditor," or legal government assassin.  Not sure what it costs, but will take a look some time this week to see if it's cheap enough.  The team producing Nobody also did the John Wick series.

-

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases.  Very few are aware that a new one,   BA.4.6,  is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples .  However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6.  Here is a  reference  as to what this means.  A series of two injections is involved.  Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab  co-packaged with  cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on  subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome.  This strain has also been spreading in
Post a Comment
Read more

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics.  Thursday was my pandemic day for years.  Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments.  All these  subvariants  derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms.  One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell.  From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant,  BA.2.86,  also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to  lose hair  for several months.  This is caused by stress more than anythi
Post a Comment
Read more

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota.  Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north.  Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge.  If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic.  Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing.  The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University.  Caught a bus. Was called the  Century 21 Exposition .  Also the Seattle World's Fair.  10 million joined me on a six-month run.  My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been
Post a Comment
Read more