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Someday

Directed by Kim Kyung-Yong

Written by Kim Hee Jae

Originally aired in Korea on OCN (Orion Cinema Network)

November 11 to December 29, 2006

 

 

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Studio:

Production: Yellow Film/OCN, Korea

Video: YA Entertainment (USA)

 

Video:

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 [anamorphic]

Region 1: NTSC

Feature: 480i

16 episodes, approx 60 minutes each

Supplements: 480i

 

Audio:

Korean DD2.0

 

Subtitles:

Feature: English

Extras: English

 

Extras

• Behind the Scenes Featurette

• Music Video

• Promo, Teaser & Trailer

 

Presentation

16 episodes, approx 1 hour/episode

Extra features: 23 minutes

1 box set, complete on 6 discs

Gatefold, single slipcase

Release Date: April 24, 2007

 

Someday

~ Comment

(see Introduction to Korean Drama

HERE)

 

Eight years after his enormously successful music video,

Un Homme et une femme (A
Man and a Woman), Claude Lelouche expanded on
his fanciful investigations about romantic love in 1974 with
Toute une vie (And Now My Love). 
His idea was to set up the inevitability of fated lovers by
following preceding generations.  Sarah’s and Simon’s past
and present lives intertwine, as it were, but they do not
meet until the final frame.  And when they do, we are
convinced they will fall in love.  An intriguing idea.

 

 

 

Fictional and historical lovers from Anthony & Cleopatra, Tristan &
Isolde, Romeo & Juliet, Lord Nelson & Lady Hamilton, and
Manhattan‘s Isaac & Tracy have had their moment
on this most seductive and compelling of stages.  So why
shouldn’t South Korea have their say.  And they do, on a
regular basis in one angst-filled drama after another on
network and cable television.  The latest, and perhaps most
inventive of these was one of the most popular TV series of
2006: Someday, made by Yellow Film, the same
production company that gave us Alone in Love
[reviewed

HERE].  Adult in tone (by which I mean: mature, than
laced with graphic sex and violence), Someday
explores four perspectives on romantic love and how the
characters that represent those perspectives affect one
another as they play out their various destinies.

 

 

 

What I found particularly remarkable about the story was how the
characters reacted to the romantic love catalyst.  Two of
the more likable characters turn into monsters: one of them
knows it – in fact overstates his own culpability.  Another
fails to realize it, and continues almost to the bitter end
to appear to be a gentleman, while simultaneously
manipulating others for his own ends.  And the one I least
expected to be a sage, was so, and insightfully. 

 

 

As is usual with Korean TV dramas the acting is of very high
caliber.  Special marks go to Lee Jin-Wook as Seok Man and
Bae Doo-Na as Hana.  We saw Lee Jin-Wook previously in a
smaller role in Alone in Love.  There was a
certain quirky quality to that character as well, but Seok
Man is infinitely more complex and troubled. Lee Jin-Wook
started off in films in Once Upon a Time in High
School before settling into television.  He has
already done six series in four years. Someday
is his fourth and most ambitious role to date.  He manages
the light and painful moments with equal conviction and
integrates them into a seamless and unforgettable
character.  No less can be said of the chameleon-faced Bae
Doo-Na, now 28, who has had considerable experience in both
film and television since 1998.  She was the archer sister
in The Host [reviewed

HERE]., the more solid of the small group of friends
in Take Care of My Cat, and the dying sister
in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.  She also had
important roles in Linda Linda Linda
and Barking Dogs Never Bite.  She has had a
simultaneous career in television, but nothing as important
as Someday.  Doo-Na is quite good at looking
blank – so coming to life slowly is like watching a flower
bloom in time lapse.

 

 

By the bye, you may see some editorials that say things like ” The
first Korean drama to integrate animation and live action. .
. ”  Well, that strikes me as a bit ambitious.  “Integrate”
is an ambitious word for what Someday actually
does. There is a smidgen of animated drawings, which only
makes sense since the Someday project involves not
only a book, but also an animation, so to show what the
project might look like is useful, but it isn’t integrated
in the same way as in Anchors Aweigh where
Gene Kelly and Mickey Mouse occupy the same frame.  Compared
to the usual Korean TV drama, there are some creative, but
hardly innovative, ways that drawings and animations turn
up, including as comic book panels and speech bubbles but,
as nice as these touches are, they are few and far between. 
I only mention this because I don’t want to get your hopes
up waiting.  Some of the best art direction in the series
involves Hana’s drawings, and each episode ends with a
freeze frame that evolves into a drawing.  It’s very
beautifully done, especially accompanied by the Someday
theme and the accompanying voiceover.

 

 

Someday

The Score Card

 

The Series : 8.5

Hana Yamaguchi is a Korean, living in Japan, brought up by her
maternal grandmother after her own mother deserted her at a
young age.  Hana has been, for the previous three years, an
accomplished and very popular comic book artist – both in
Japan and Korea. But, despite what her readers might imagine
(because of her characters and stories), Hana has rarely
ventured out of her own inner life.   Even more than your
garden-variety only child, she is closed off, detached,
narrow of focus.  Understandably, given her family history,
she has never known romantic love – and this is the kicker –
and neither does she believe in its existence.  “Cynical” is
hardly adequate enough to describe here aversion to the
idea.  As Episode 1 starts off, Hana is told her work is no
longer in fashion and she decides to stop drawing
altogether.

 

 

Elsewhere, in Seoul, Go Jin Pyo, a young psychiatrist working at an
upscale convalescent hospital, indulges his passion for
graphic novels, especially Hana’s.  While he is creative,
caring and insightful with his patients, Jin Pyo hasn’t a
clue about his own romantic fantasies – which, as it
happens, center around Hana.  When she passes through his
life during her search for her neighbor, he takes this as a
gift from the Fates.  He feels entitled to her simply
because of his passion.

 

 

 

Kim Seok Man is a sort of a missing persons detective, working out
of his motorcycle (he is very nearly homeless).  Dr. Go
calls on him when his patients fly the coop.  A few years
earlier, when Seok Man was a teen, his family was wiped out
in an auto accident that put another boy in a coma.  Seok
Man feels responsible for the accident and has since been
helping to pay the boy’s hospital bills.  Funnily enough,
though Seok Man and Hana share a similar loss, their
apparent attitudes about life and love are polar opposites. 
He goes out to meet life instead of waiting for it to come
to him.  He engages complete strangers in a way that, to
Hana, as we shall soon learn, appears worrisome, for he does
not accept conventional boundaries.  On the other hand, Seok
Man refuses to appreciate danger when it is right in front
of his eyes.

 

 

Yoon Hye Young is a 30 year old entrepreneur whose animation
production company is always on the lookout for new
projects.  Hye Young has carried a torch for Jin Pyo for the
past ten years.  They are evidently intimate and come and go
into each another’s lives like close friends.  Neither is
willing to make the final commitment – though, despite their
equivocal comments to each other, it is clearly Jin Pyo who
is holding things up.

 

Early in the series, an elderly street sweeper suddenly dies, and
neighbors are commissioned by the authorities to go through
the old man’s personal effects since he had no living
relatives.  After the memorial service held in Hana’s back
yard, another neighbor makes off with his ashes and vanishes
with hardly a trace.  Life begins to intrude on Hana’s
otherwise constrained existence and she decides to take a
few days off from her otherwise humdrum and passive life to
follow what she thinks is the trail to Korea, thus leading
her into the lives of our other three characters.

 

 

Image : 7 (6/8)

The score of 7 indicates a relative level of excellence
compared to other standard definition DVDs on a 10-point
scale for SD DVDs.  The score in parentheses represents:
first, a value for the image on a 10-point scale that
accommodates both standard and high-definition DVDs  – where
any score above 7 for an SD is outstanding, since the large
majority of high definition DVDs are 8-9.5.  The second
number in parentheses indicates how that image compares to
what I believe is the current best we can expect in the
theatre or, in the case of made-for-TV fare, as first shown
on television.

 

I understand from YAE that Someday was originally
filmed and broadcast in high definition.  Copies of each
episode were shipped as “high definition digital beta tapes”
which were then converted by YAE to 480i for authoring in
standard definition.  There is a flat look to the image,
almost as it the director went out of his way not to add
lighting.  The contrast is often low and the color seems a
little desaturated (or perhaps it’s just the result of low
contrast.)

 

 

Audio & Music : 8/9

Being a Yellow Film production like Alone in Love,
the sound mix is up to the task, blending music, foley
(though much of the sound is live) and dialogue with
intelligence and clarity.  And like other outstanding Korean
dramas, this one has a smart soundtrack.  More varied than
most, Someday includes a theme with a definite
bossa-nova flavor – why I cannot say, but somehow it works.
The OST is worthy of a separate purchase.

 

 

Subtitles & Translation : 8.5

The translation is very good in terms of its being in good
idiomatic English and representative of each different
character.  On the other hand, I continue to wonder if YAE
doesn’t G-rate some of what I would expect would be
expletives.  Otherwise the subtitles are white, outlined in
black, readable, and not too large, even for a projected
image.

 

Operations & Box Design : 8

I like the magnetic snap case design, permitting the easiest access
to the contents of any previous YAE K-drama.  However, once
opened, it is necessary to expand and lay flat one or the
other of two inner boxes in order to get to any one of
them.  I consider this a fault, though it beats hell out of
having to lay out the entire six disc set (remember the
Alien Quadrilogy?)  In the case of TV series the most
sensible solution is slim cases for each disc.  I gather
that YAE has market-tested this question, and my preference
is not in favor.  Oh, well.

 

 

The menu design continues the thinking demonstrated for Alone
in Love: When you click on “Episodes” a window comes
up showing thumbnail scenes in motion, long enough to get
the idea and short enough to move onto yet a second scene in
the same chapter.  Capping it off, there is no attempt to
show those thumbnails in proper aspect ratio, which would
have taken up too much room across the frame and instead are
artfully arranged in different shapes across a row. 
Brilliant!

 

I should point out that the introductory montage that starts off
each episode does not contain footage used in the drama. 
Think of it instead something like a Mozart opera overture
that sets the mood, even though it uses no themes that occur
later.

 

Extras : 4

Disc six contains the final episode plus about 23 minutes
worth of extra features that include several promo pieces of
various lengths, sources and descriptions.  These are
generally light-hearted looks at the series, its characters
and principal actors. There is a peculiarly Korean
self-effacing and self-conscious humility about the actors
who seem to be having a genuinely fun time making this
drama, despite its often serious tone. In fact, from
watching these bits of fluff you would have no inkling of
how dark this drama gets.  One thing that bothered me about
the promo pieces and music video was the persistent,
non-removable and distracting logos and identifying titles
that appeared on, above or below the image.  I took off an
extra two points for this.

 

 

Edition:

There is a Korean Region 3 edition, without subtitles, that I did
not preview.

 

Recommendation: 9

Despite the relatively few interesting extra features, this is series is
warmly recommended.

 

Leonard Norwitz

LensViews

November

25th

, 2007

 

 

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CONTEST ANSWERS and WINNERS:

The shortest distance between Soon Tek-Oh and Liza
Minnelli was found to be:
1. Soon-Tek Oh – to – Stephen Sondheim (Oh appeared in Sondheim’s
“Pacific Overtures” and met him there)
2- Stephen Sondheim – to – Liza Minnelli (Minnelli has performed
numerous Sondheim numbers, and participated in the Sondheim Celebration
at Carnegie Hall, with Sondheim present; undoubtedly they met several
times)

Other routes were found by these runners-up, who will each receive a DVD
with Episodes 1-3 of the drama series.

• Bill B
Fairfax Station VA

• Paul K
Lindenwold NJ

• Nick S
Baldwinsville NY

• David C.
Millersburg OH

• Philip McM
Norwalk CT

• David R
San Francisco CA

 

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