"Sudden Marriage" follows plain office worker Mao Koshiba. After being cheated on and drinking herself numb, she wakes in a handsome stranger's bed: Hajime Ando, her new boss.
There are so many questionable things in this Japanese romance dramedy. The male lead, Shirota Yuu is 190 cm (6'3") tall and the lead female, Saito Kyoko is 155 cm (5"). Yuu is 40 years old and Kyoko is 28. 12 year difference in age and she looks very young. But I don't mind and I like the mystery-ish vibe. What's funny and strange is Shirota is shown as pure Japanese and that's how all the characters also see him. I think it is deliberate.
Shirota Yuu is half Japanese, half Spanish (mother). I first saw him in Hana Kimi when he was just 22 years old. I'm not sure if this his first lead role in a Japanese romance series. He has several supporting roles in many Japanese movies and TV shows.
Roger Brown has it all: clever and wealthy, he's at the very top of his game. And if his job as a headhunter ever gets dull, he has his sideline as an art thief to keep him busy. At a gallery opening, his wife introduces him to Clas Greve. Not only is Greve the perfect candidate for a position that Brown is recruiting for; he is also in possession of one of the most sought-after paintings in modern art history. Roger sees his chance to become rich beyond his wildest dreams, and starts planning his biggest theft ever. But soon, he runs into trouble - and it's not long before the hunter becomes the hunted...I read this book in December 2012 after watching the movie based on this book. I never heard of Jo Nesbø before that. I really liked the movie and I had to read the book. I became a fan and I have read almost all of his books since, except the children's books.
Sarah Kim, a woman who has created a false identity based on wealth and social status, whose life is thrown into confusion when a body believed to be hers is found in a sewer beneath Seoul's upscale district. Detective Park Mu-Gyeong investigates the case and discovers that Sarah has no clear personal records, leading him to uncover inconsistencies in her background and evidence that she has lived under multiple identities. As the investigation progresses, Sarah's constructed life begins to collapse, revealing the consequences of long-term deception and raising questions about identity, truth, and self-invention.
Wow. This new psychological thriller from Korea is mesmerizing. Sarah is a true fictional con artist like no other. She is played by one of the best actresses in Kdramaland, Shin Hae-sun., who is perfect for this role.
The series is a mash-up of murder mystery, police procedural, and a social commentary on people's obsession in having luxury name brand imported items that they are willing to line up for early in the morning or even the night before if a new item goes up for sale in an exclusive store.
The wait is over! The teaser for Jo Nesbo’s Detective Hole - the first-ever series based on Nesbø’s bestselling novels - is here! Get ready to meet one of crime fiction’s most iconic detectives like never before. The series premieres worldwide on March 26.
Coming to Netflix on March 26. Actor playing Harry Hole looks accurate in height, although he has green eyes instead of blue. And he is American of Swedish descent. Aren't there Norwegian actors who will fit Harry's description and stats? I hope he will be better than the actor in The Snowman. I have read all 13 Harry Hole books and I expect an actor that will look like him. Is that too much to ask?
Two half-brothers, a loose cannon cop and a disciplined Navy SEAL, must work together to unravel a conspiracy behind their father's murder in Hawaii.The new movie streaming on Amazon Prime is an old fashioned revenge action thriller. I liked it and it is worthy of a second viewing. It is bloody violent and fights are over the top as expected. Momoa and Bautista are great in their roles. Morena Bacarrin has a very short but spectacular screen time.
What is the devastating effect on your life when, through no fault of your own, you lose everything - home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, money, credit cards, mobile phone - and you can never get them back? This is what happens to a young man called Adam Kindred, one May evening in Chelsea, London, when a freakish series of malign accidents and a split-second decision turns his life upside down for ever. The police are searching for him. There is a reward for his capture. A hired killer is stalking him. He is alone and anonymous in the huge, pitiless modern city. Adam has nowhere to go but down - underground. He decides to join that vast army of the disappeared and the missing that throng the lowest level of London's population as he tries to figure out what to do with his life and struggles to understand the forces that have made it unravel so spectacularly. His quest will take him all along the River Thames, from affluent Chelsea to the sink estates of the East End, and on the way he encounters all manner of London's denizens - aristocrats, prostitutes, priests and policewomen amongst them - and version after new version of himself.
William Boyd's electric follow-up to Costa Novel of the Year Restless is a heart-in-mouth conspiracy novel about the fragility of social identity, the scandal of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the filthy underbelly of every city.
This book was first published in 2009. Adam Kindred got himself in a lot of trouble when he tried to be a good person for bringing a bunch of papers to a man he had a bit of conversation with at an Italian restaurant. He found the guy in his hotel room stabbed on the chest and mysteriously, the guy asked him to remove the knife (probably to hasten his death so as not to suffer). It's like in the movies, when a stupid character holds the murder weapon. You keep shouting, "No don't touch it!", and he proceeds to touch it. 😅
Adam was both unlucky and lucky as the story progressed. I thought the story is about being hunted by the police which is partially true. The bulk of the story is Adam's transformation from being a man trying to redeem himself from a previous mistake and hoping to get a new job, to a fugitive with 2 different aliases and stolen identities. He had no choice but the second one landed on his lap without any effort. Along the way, Adam and the story meandered into Big Pharma corruption (the source of his misfortune BTW).
I liked the humorous situations but had to suspend disbelief in the anti-hero's mis"adventures".
Recommended only for William Boyd fans.
Miss Sophie – Same Procedure as Every Year is a German television series. The crime comedy is a prequel to the sketch comedy show Dinner for One.
At the beginning of the 20th century, on a country estate near Eastbourne in England , the young, emancipated Miss Sophie is impoverished after the death of her parents, and the castle is threatened with foreclosure. To alleviate her financial distress, she decides to marry rich. To this end, she invites five wealthy bachelors to her castle. Her suitors are the French champagne heir Mr. Pomeroy, property magnate Mr. Winterbottom, the self-proclaimed American billionaire Sir Toby, the German Admiral von Schneider, and the Hungarian Count Szabos.Amazon Studio produced a very funny TV series, a period romcom farce making fun of several genres - murder mystery, romance and dating, nobles and servants, starving nobility, rich foreigners as husband material, hippie commune...
Set in the late 1990s, Hong Keum-Bo (Park Shin-Hye) is in her 30's and is an elite supervisor for the Financial Supervisory Service. She is a cool-headed, working woman who only thinks about her job. She goes undercover as a 20 year old high school graduate, Hong Jang-Mi, and begins to work for a securities company where suspicious flows of funds are detected. There, she meets Shin Jung-Woo (Ko Kyoung-Pyo). He is the new CEO of Hanmin Securities Company. Shin Jung-Woo is a natural-born management consultant and a corporate raider, who believes that only numbers are honest. He uses any means necessary to reach his goal. He meets Hong Jang-Mi, whose face is the same as Hong Keum-Bo, whom he once loved. They become complicatedly entangled.Yay! Park Shin-hye is back and playing a 20 year old High School graduate who was accepted to work in a business establishment under a program for people who never went to college. Park Shin-hye is 35 years old both in real life and in the series.
Agatha Christie's Seven Dials is a British miniseries based on the 1929 novel The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie. Created and written by Chris Chibnall, and directed by Chris Sweeney, the miniseries stars Mia McKenna-Bruce, Edward Bluemel, Iain Glen, Martin Freeman, and Helena Bonham Carter.
Oops, British TV did it again! Bastardizing a perfectly good mystery novel by Agatha Christie is their modus operandi. It's getting tiresome. It is an adaptation but must they butcher the characters beyond recognition? I could tolerate just one episode out of 3. I don't know how the series ended.
Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?
It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favourite criminal. But when Elizabeth meets a wedding guest who’s in trouble, kidnap and death are hot on their heels once more. A villain wants access to an uncrackable code, and will stop at nothing to get it.
Plunged back into action once more, can the gang solve the puzzle and a murder in time?
I think it's time to put the four octogenarians out to pasture. This fifth installment is lacking in humor and the usual solving of a murder. All four except Ron are hardly in it. My first beef is with the side character I don't care for the most, Joyce's daughter Joanna. She, her wedding, and her husband's 2 friends are at the center of the story. Ron and his family problems are also front and center. Joyce, Ibrahim, and even Elizabeth are like the side characters. Sheesh, Mr. Osman, what happened? Why a gazillion characters and red herrings that fell flat at the end?
I have a suspicious feeling that the author is hoping for another Netflix movie featuring Ron played by Pierce Brosnan because all members of his family are featured prominently in this book. The grandson, who talks like an adult, solves the second code together with an ex con teenager. 🙄 The first code is solved by Elizabeth but the second baffled her, an ex MI6 agent. Huh??!! IMHO, the book reads like an AI generated garbage.
Not recommended.
1920's. Promising a generous dowry, a father finds a husband for his daughter through a want ad. Can the arranged marriage turn into true love?
Predictable funny sweet movie. All the possible clichés checked out but I enjoyed it very much, regardless. Watch it in its original Magyar language with English subtitles.
Born out of a brutal childhood, Raven is an assassin for hire whose latest hit—a government minister—is one calculated to ignite a war. When the most wanted man in England is paid off in marked bills, he also becomes the easiest to track—and police detective Jimmy Mather has the lead. But Raven’s got an advantage. Crossing paths with a sympathetic dancer named Anne Crowder, the emotionally scarred Raven has found someone in the wreckage of his life he can trust, maybe his only hope for salvation. Or at least, escape—because Anne is also Mather’s fiancée. Now the fate of two men will depend on her. And either way, it’s betrayal.
Simon's perfect life is shattered when daughter Paige runs away, later found strung out in a park. Simon's search leads into a dangerous underworld where an act of violence rocks his life.
A notorious all-male section is shaken up by the arrival of a female transfer student, causing chaos as the grumpy class section president tries to drive her away.
A small-town rabbi becomes an unlikely detective and gunfighter after his community is violently attacked in this sharp, high-stakes thriller packed with action, wit, and heart
When a raging flood traps a researcher and her young son, a call to a crucial mission puts their escape — and the future of humanity — on the line.
What begins as a ploy to claim an inheritance ends with the impostor's life hanging in the balance. In this tale of mystery and suspense, a stranger enters the inner sanctum of the Ashby family posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family's sizable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached on Patrick's mannerisms, appearance, and every significant detail of Patrick's early life, up to his thirteenth year when he disappeared and was thought to have drowned himself. It seems as if Brat is going to pull off this most incredible deception until old secrets emerge that jeopardize the impostor's plan and his life. Culminating in a final terrible moment when all is revealed, Brat Farrar is a precarious adventure that grips the reader early and firmly and then holds on until the explosive conclusion.
A detective with a nose for jealousy is on the trail of a man suspected of murdering his twin. [adapted into a movie, Killer Heat.]A bereaved father must decide whether vengeance has a place in the new world order after a pandemic brings about the collapse of society.A garbage man fresh off a bender tries to piece together what happened the night before.A hired assassin matches wits against his greatest adversary in a dangerous game for survival.An instantly electric connection between passengers on a flight to London may spell romance, or something more sinister.
Five stories set in the near future.
Welcome to Rat Island and a post-pandemic America, where the upper-class elite is waiting atop a skyscraper to be evacuated while the masses fight for survival down in the streets.In Shredder, a scientist researching eternal life has finally found a memory shredder that will help him forget everything, before it’s too late.Cicadas tells the story of two best friends on their way to the bull races in Pamplona when they fall in love with the same girl.The Antidote follows an estranged son with an agenda as he goes to visit his father at a snake farm in Africa.Lastly, in the epic and vicious Black Knight, we meet a psychologist who also happens to be an assassin contracted by big business.