The ninth gate - 1999

I’m not a fan. It was really slow but for a while it had me interested, but not too much, and there was no character or scene that really got me. 

Johnny Depp plays Corso, a man who deals in rare ancient books, let’s say it he’s a jerk who only cares about money and is happy to trick people buying precious books at a low price. He is hired by Balkan for a special mission. At first he’s not too interested in working for him, but he likes the amount of money that Balkan is willing to pay. 

Balkan shows him a rare book on the devil, and says that there are only three in the world, and tells him that he thinks only one of them is authentic and wants him to take a look at the other two and confirm that his copy is the real one. 

The only funny scene is when Corso attends Balkan’s lesson (or something) and falls asleep and when he wakes him up he only says “did I snore?”.

Balkan apparently acquired the book right before the previous owner (or better, the husband of the owner) killed himself. She seduces him to try and get the book back, but Corso had given it to a friend (the only friend shown in the movie), a bookstore owner. When he goes to take the book back, he finds that the man has been killed and posed like one of the pictures in the book, hanging upside down by a foot. He retrieves the book and goes away.  He starts being scared but keeps at it.

He goes to Spain first. The brothers who sold it to the woman made him notice that some pictures are signed by the author he knew about, but three of them are signed LCF as in Lucifer. 

He saw a blond woman with green eyes at Balkan’s conference, sees her again now on the train. 

Corso finds the man who owns the second copy, and when he studies that book he sees that there are indeed three drawings marked Lcf, but not the same three. He tells everything to Balkan, and next thing you know the old man is killed, his book burned, but only after someone stole the Lcf drawings. He meets again ‘green eyes’ at the hotel. Early in the morning she wakes him up and takes him back to the book owner, where he finds out the man was killed. They travel together to France. He goes to meet the a famous rare book collector, she has the only other copy of the book. She throws him out when she learns that he works for Balkan, but later he gets her interested when he explains to her about the copies differences. While he’s studying the book, finding out that the three drawing signed Lcf, no surprise here, are the three remaining (nine pictures in total, three Lcf ones in three books), he’s knocked out and when he comes to, the woman has been killed.

He is afraid of a man following him, and tries to avoid him, but later that man attacks him (we’ll see that he’s working for the woman that wants the book back). They fight a bit and ‘green eyes’ comes to help him. He’s clearly not good in this kind of things, but she seems to barely make an effort. And we see that she doesn’t ‘go downstairs’ like normal people, she ‘floats’ down to him. Thinking it’s too dangerous to carry the book with him, he hides it in the hotel room. When he comes back after the old lady died, he finds the book gone, stolen. That woman succeeded in getting it back.

Green eyes goes with him to get the book back, following the woman to her house in a small village. She’s part of a cult, when they wear black robes and read from that book, have lots of sex and think that the devil will give them everything. The man who attacked him is supposed to kill them, but he’s not really good at this stuff since someone like Corso can trick him and overpower him so easily. Corso makes him fall down the stairs, takes his gun and keeps hitting him (just badly injured or dead? don’t know.). Green eyes stares at him with a very interested smile. I had thought for a moment she might be some kind of guardian angel, there to protect him, although this didn’t really seem an accurate description for her, but now her look was clearly different, she enjoyed watching him beat the man up in a rage, and says “I didn’t know you had it in you”.

He was looking for a subtle way to get the book back, but Balkan walks boldly in and says that he’s the only one who deserves the book and just takes it, and when she tries to oppose him, he strangles her in front of lots of people. Corso wants to stop him, but green eyes floats in a hurry and stops him, and her excuse is that now lots of people saw Balkan kill a woman, so Corso is freed of all suspicions for the other deaths... a stupid excuse, I’d rather think she didn’t want to save her, point.

(I mean, was he ever suspected for those deaths? the fact that Balkan killed this one, does automatically mean he killed the others? where are the proofs? nobody saw him near them. And even if all that was ok, Balkan killing her frees him of all suspicions... are you telling me that all those grown up people who came naked covered only in a black robe to read from a book on the devil and have an orgy and worship the devil, those people would step up and say, we saw him killing her, we were there?? It’s all nonsense. I think she wanted him to kill her and that’s it.)

He follows Balkan’s trail to a ruined castle, like the one in the drawings, and sees that he has all the nine pictures. Balkan says he understands how it works and will now summon the devil, or something, but it doesn’t work. Balkan dies in the fire he set himself, Corso gets out, green eyes is there waiting, she seduces him, then he drives the two of them away. She explains to him that Balkan failed because one of the pictures he had was fake. Corso asks for it, says he wants it. When they stop for gas she goes away, leaving a message for him. He goes back to the brothers’ shop, now closed, and finds the missing pictures. The last scene shows Corso walking towards the castle, and the door opens by itself upon his arrival.

So what, he was seduced by the devil and went through the ninth gate... and then what? nobody knows. Why so much trouble to get him there, to seduce him, what was so special about him?

He was someone who didn’t believe in anything but money, there’s lots of people like that. 

狄仁杰之四大天王 DiRenjie zhi sidatianwang - 2018

It’s a funny toy, one of those films you know, that are just big toys, if you’re in the mood they can be fun to watch, at least once, but it’s not something you want to keep or are eager to rewatch. 

It has a lot of effects, a lot of action, and some funny moments, sometimes intentionally sometimes maybe not, but still. This is the third of the Detective Dee that I know of. 

Plot: Di Renjie has been given the Dragon Taming Mace and the Empress starts saying that it was a bad move to give it to him because if he were to rebel nobody would be able to stop him... so she hires a bunch of shady figures to take it back. They also try to kill Dee, and Yuchi is not too happy with this: he wants to follow the imperial orders but not to kill his friend.

Actually, she doesn’t know but she’s being manipulated, she’s only a distraction; a rancorous tribe wants to kill the emperor and destroy his dynasty because their people had been almost annihilated and he has a lot of hate.

The bunch of shady figures: a guy whose talent seems to disappear by taking off a layer of clothes, an illusionist (and you can clearly see that there’s someone hidden behind who provides the third and fourth arms :lol: ), a little old sorceress , and a young female assassin, 水 月 ， (the best part of the movie :D )

The mace can dissolve any illusion, (so it’s not clear why he doesn’t use it more often against them, he seems to think that it’s dangerous but it seems more dangerous not to use it sometimes... ). He asks the help of the only disciple of a great master now dead, but he can only arrive for the final battle. The assassin is badly injured by the villainous tribe (why do they want to kill her? It’s not like at this point she’s on the emperor/Dee side, so why? ) but Dee’s second saves her (what’s his name again? I guess someone said it but I don’t remember.. but judging by the pictures on IMDB I’d say Shatuo Zhong, or most probably the other way around, anyway, him), so later on she repays the debt helping them. 

Personally, she’s what I liked the most of this film; she was nice and her scenes were good. I liked the scenes where she cries, once alone after he saved her, and I laughed out loud when she was sort of recruited but they pretended to arrest her first, maybe to test if they could trust her or not, and when she realised the truth, she jumped on Shatuo and started beating him up :lol: funny scene :lol: it was very nice when Dee and the whole department bowed to her, very well done man, and so funny when she got angry :p

Anyway, she travels in search of the Master and brings him to help them. Luckily for all, since it was going rather badly :p The villain was defeating them with his illusions, the master came on his giant white ape and defeated him. After it’s all finished, the ape roars and everyone outside understands the battle is over (how? who told them that was the meaning of it?) and the emperor says to his wife that they can ‘go home’, and it’s the end.

The Dee character is a little plain for my taste. Yuchi was played by Feng Shaofeng, the same one that played KaSuo in Ice Fantasy; he is very handsome, can’t say he isn’t, he is indeed, and at least in this film his face has no less than two expressions, so I’d call that an improvement. 

The assassin ShuiYue was played by Ma Sichun, I don’t know her but I liked her enough. 

The empress’s actress was not bad at all, I think she’s called Lau Carina. 

ITA Detective Dee e i quattro re celesti

Monk season 5

Not the best series, no. It has a few moments, but it's nothing special.

The episodes:

1-Mr Monk and the actor
Monk is looking forward to a vacation and his doctor says that's "tangible progress" and he should cancel the Wednesday's appointments and only come on Mondays and Fridays, because now he's on step 2, and Monk is happy and starts asking how many times Harold comes and what step is he in... :p
Big news, they're making a movie on last year's astronaut case, and a famous actor, Dave Roscon, is to play Monk, and he's excited because he saw him in a movie together with Trudy and she thought he was handsome - Stanley Tucci is handsome :)
The actor wants to follow him around to study him and better 'become' him.. :p Monk is all nervous, shaking his hand and trying to be normal :p and looking very weird :p
A guy was having an affair, but when he realised his lover was taping him he killed her, sort of accidentally, the same way he 'accidentally' killed a shop owner who caught him stealing, while fighting him off.
Natalie is worried because that actor has a history of getting 'too involved', 'too connected', to the people he studies, and sure enough she catches him acting like Monk even when nobody's around to see him. The captain and Randy are rather surprised when they watch the shooting of the show and Randy is played by a girl :p making out with the captain :p The captain said "that never happened", and Randy "not even once" :p Then Dave stops acting because he can't work with the place and crew so mixed up :p too much like Monk. Dave then shows up at Monk's place at night, asking him to help him, asking him why he keeps doing it, what makes him go on, and wants (has to) feel what he's feeling, and asks about Trudy "I didn't deserve her, the world didn't deserve her" and makes him talk of Trudy's death, poor Monk, and says "that's why you do this, you can't find Trudy's killer so you do the next best thing, you track down and you capture other criminals" - Monk:"it's not enough" - Dave: "it'll never be enough" :-( then Monk goes to Natalie in the middle of the night saying that Dave is so selfish and immature barging in his house because he wanted to talk.... :p
Dave kind of loses himself, believing he's really Monk and going to the garage to investigate Trudy's murder, and when they find this case's killer, he goes there with Monk's gun thinking he killed Trudy.
Monk and Dave fight; the guy confesses to killing the girl Michelle and the old man, but of course not Trudy. Dave and Monk cry together talking of the day Trudy died (doesn't look good with Monk's hair - argh - ).
The movie is cancelled and the whole thing was a traumatic experience for him, so he cancels his weekend and wants to see his doctor seven days a week. The doctor tries to tell him that he has a family and wants his weekend free, but it's Monk so I guess he'll be seeing him on weekends too, for a while at least...
2-Mr Monk and the garbage strike
A long garbage-workers-strike is driving Monk crazy; Monk says that he wishes the Union-boss dead, and then he is really found dead. Monk mails his garbage to his doctor.... who is very upset, it is upsetting his wife and children, and he wants Monk to stop mailing him his garbage.
Monk goes to a meeting to tell them to go back to work, and they hire him to look into the boss' death, saying that they'll go back to negotiations if he says that it was suicide... so he's troubled, he wants it to be suicide and he says suicide, but Natalie forces him to "really" look around and so he sees that it's murder, but still says to the press that it was suicide, to get them back to work. Natalie is very disappointed in him - Monk says: "what took you so long?" ... I don't know if I should laugh or cry...
He says it was "for the greater good", and that the truth is buried under mountains of garbage. She forces him to say that it's murder to the captain. Monk goes to the Mayor saying the city is ruined forever but he has a plan: evacuate everybody, burn the city down and then build San Francisco back from scratch...
Monk becomes sure that the mayor is involved, it ends up in the press and it's a big mess. Monk keeps accusing the mayor, but it wasn't him. He was wrong! Monk starts collecting the garbage personally! He's totally lost it, he accuses Alice Cooper next! The captain brings him to a "fabrication room", a place with no smell, 100% germs free, the cleanest room in the world, so he can finally think straight again and accuse the union accountant. Case closed, the strike's over! Monk throws confetti to celebrate but then wants the mean to clean the street :p patience guys...
(and I learned that confetti doesn't mean confetti but coriandoli... how strange, I didn't know that)
3-Mr Monk and the big game
Julie plays basketball but her coach is killed. Along with two friends, Emily C and Emily J, they hire Monk. They only have 57dollars but Julie says "we know it's not what you usually get but it can count for me as my birthday present" and Monk "here's the thing, I wasn't planning to buy you a birthday present" .... I mean, really? but then he accepts of course.
Everybody thought it was an accident; she got electrocuted. All the girls loved coach Hayden.
Monk is envious of all the trophies at school :p  Monk used to report troublemaker kids to the principal.
Meeting the principal: "we met last here at the career day, how have you been?" - Monk "the same" Principal Franking:"I'm sorry to hear that" ...
The team would have to forfeit the next game but Natalie volunteers as their coach for one match, and Monk is her assistant. He's excited to learn they all will have trophies with their name on it :p He even carries around a whistle (and uses it a lot...) during the investigation. Natalie thought she'd put a stop to it by blowing into it, but Monk had a spare one...
Coach Hayden had caused a fire two weeks earlier and she wanted to confess, but if she were arrested they would have her dna, so similar to her brother who killed a girl but was never found.
The captain goes to see the match and a woman asks: "which one is yours?" and he says "the big one with the whistle" :p
Natalie is sent out, expelled,  because she replied to the ref, so Monk's on his own. The girls were winning but then they lost the last two seconds. At the end, they buy a little trophy for every murder he solved so that Monk can put them on his mantle if he wants. :)
4-Mr Monk can't see a thing
Monk has 30 smoke alarms for five rooms and brings them to the firefighters to be checked. The men have to go for a call, and Monk is left alone with one of them. They are attacked by a man. He throws something acid on Monk's face and he can't see anything anymore. Rusty is killed :(
Monk's even lower than usual now but he goes along trying to help find the man who killed him. Randy is even more annoying than usual "Randy speaking, I'm reaching for my pocket..." and that kind of things :-/ Later on, Monk finds the good side of his situation, of this 'out-of-sight' thing: he can't see the dirt, the rats, all the bad things that disgusted him before, so he's not bothered by them now. He can figure it out by touching things.
A man killed a woman and started a fire, when all the firefighters had to leave. The murderer forgot something in the house and needed a firefighter coat to enter the place unnoticed. Monk follows his suspect not realising that he's alone. The guy tries to kill him but he hits him with his stick then wanders around trying to reach the captain! Finally they find Monk and save him, but his suspect falls to his death. Monk realises his boss payed him to kill her and goes with the captain to the morgue to find proof. When the captain's attacked Monk can shoot the guy because he's regaining his eyesight as the doctor said. End: he can again see Trudy's pictures :)
5-Mr Monk, private eye
A woman wants to leave her lover and go back to her husband but the lover kills her.
The captain has a profile on MakeaDate.net and has been chatting with Randy's cousin.
Natalie wants Monk to start his own private business. She rents a place for him. For two days nobody shows up then Monk and Natalie have a client: Linda is in real estate and someone scratched her car, and she wants him to find who did it. The captain meets Linda and they go out together. Monk goes crazy anytime Natalie hands out his business cards :p
The murderer also kill a man who knew something and wants to go after Monk now. Monk and Natalie talk to him, this Dr Bennett, but only know that he damaged Linda's car and are all 'it's no big deal, it was an accident...' and when they clear things up he smiles but still denies it.
Natalie finds the man's body; Monk goes checking a boat when Bennett starts it with him on board. Natalie calls the captain and they go after him with Linda's boat. Monk can't swim, but he took a correspondence course to know what to do in the event of a tsunami :p
Bennett wants to shoot him so Monk jumps in the water :p
the captain moves into a new apartment that Linda found for him, across her own apartment building :p
6-Mr Monk and the class reunion
A man kills a woman pushing her down the stairs , to make it look like an accident, but the captain is not fooled (for once :D)
Monk has a class reunion, class of '81. He tells Natalie to go, that he's fine and excited, but of course he looks lost once he's in there. He says hello to a group of people and they have no idea who he is (although they remember Trudy well - honestly, how could someone not remember someone as peculiar as Monk??) . Natalie hears a man in the parking lot say that they called him captain cool because he cleaned his fridge every weekend, so she goes back to stay with him.
The killer lost a pin like the one Monk has, meaning he's at the reunion too; the victim was a nurse there.
Monk shows her the library where he met Trudy (we see their first encounter, very sweet until another guy came to take her away... still, later she chose him!!). Diane remembers him because Trudy was her roommate, but her husband acts very weirdly, long before we hear him talk about "she'll be dead".
 - Monk keeps cleaning around... -
Twenty-five years ago Diane tried to kill herself and wrote a suicide note, but the nurse found her and read it, so the husband killed the only person who read it and then tried to kill her passing it on as a suicide, using that note. They save her :)
 - We see that back then Monk took Trudy's hand no problem... :crying: -
7-Mr Monk gets a new shrink
Monk and Harold are fighting in Dr Kroger's office, and when he comes in they see the cleaning lady murdered. Monk tries to read Harold's file first and then his own and the captain sends him out :p
Monk reads the words "no hope" on his file. The doctor tells him that he's retiring, and Monk goes through denial and anger and bargaining and depression and acceptance very very quickly, and on a loop. He doesn't know what he's gonna do without doctor Kroger, and on Monday morning he has Natalie sit in the doctor's chair and he talks to her, but doesn't want her to talk back, because "nobody cares about your problems"... I understand the obsessions but this lack of empathy (or basic politeness) is not nice at all.
Monk shows up at the doctor's home but he doesn't let him in. Good.
At night Monk spies on him through his window :-/ Harold too, from the opposite window, and they gestures just like Donna Noble and the Tenth Doctor.
Someone throws a rock with a threatening note into his house. Kroger's son Troi is a punk who hates his parents and calls them by name (Charles and Madeleine). Kroger refers Monk to another doctor. The next day he goes to meet doctor Sorensen, but he's put off by the fact that he's missing his right arm, is not symmetrical, and also the new studio... then he thinks of the case and leaves. That rock comes from outside Kroger's office. He talks to Kroger in his office while he's packing up of his suspects on the neighbour when he comes in with a gun. He takes Monk and Kroger prisoners. The man was dealing drugs. Nobody knows where they are but Harold, who's following them, and he calls the captain. Usual story, he killed the lady right away but brought Monk and the doctor to the warehouse where he and his accomplice keep the drugs... why?...
Harold comes to help but is distracted by all the things out of place. When the bad guy shoots the doctor, Harold takes a bullet for him.
Monk asks doctor Kroger about the "no hope" note, and leans that it was actually N.Hope in Pennsylvania, where his father was born.
So what, the doctor is not retiring anymore??
8-Mr Monk goes to a rock concert
The captain's son has skipped school to go to a rock event: Natalie and Monk go with him to find him, although Monk only goes because he thought they were talking of actual rocks.. :p
Randy is at the concert too, after he called in sick :p
The captain has problems with his son but finds a connection eventually :-)
A dead body is found in a portable john. The case was very quickly solved, and all the time was spent moving around the crowd... rather boring, yes.
9-Mr Monk meets his dad
Monk's father is downtown, in jail!! Adrian hasn't seen him since he was eight years old. Adrian thought he wrote school books, but he's a truck driver, in Texas. (after 39 years... so he's 47 now?)
He asks Adrien to get him out of there, then tells him he can't stop there for Christmas but asks him to go with him: back in three days. Jack has another son, Jack jr, now a 31 year-old surgeon in Baltimore, and Jack left his mother too. After only a few hours Adrian calls Natalie asking her to go pick him up but they can't, still he spoiled the Christmas atmosphere...
Adrian feels there's something wrong, and Jack gets angry, accuses him of sabotaging him, and leaves him again. Hearing that his boss Kenneth has been found dead and that the other boss has been lying to him, Jack goes back to get Adrian. They continue their journey together until Adrian figures it out. The boss sent Jack on a nonsense route to make him drive enough miles to erase from the truck's gps where he had gone with it.
Jack reveals that Jack Jr is not really a successful surgeon but a junkie who lives in his basement.
Adrian has the murderer arrested, then Jack buys him a bicycle and teaches him how to ride it :)
10-Mr Monk and the leper
Monk meets with a mysterious man who wants to hire him: they shake hands then the man tells him that he's a leper. He runs home and cleans his hand for hours then tries to set it on fire! Natalie has a doctor tell Monk how that condition is not contagious, but still has a hard time convincing him to help the guy (for 25.000 dollars).
He said he had one affair, and in a week he'll be declared dead and proof will be found and his wife will suffer. Monk takes the job and he breaks into his house with Natalie to retrieve the letters. Monk keeps referring to him as "the leper". The wife busts them and goes to meet her husband. They want Monk to testify that he's alive so the wife can keep the money that would otherwise go to his family. Only later Monk will realise the truth: the wife Mandy killed her husband Derek Bronson seven years ago; someone has been impersonating him to get her the inheritance and then she shot him. At the confrontation, Monk and Natalie escape on a hot-air balloon, but she manages to shoot at it before Randy arrests her - during the balloon-crashing scene, that man was so obviously not Monk :p the woman was very convincing, but he was so very different :p
At the end, Monk is saved by accepting the hand of the doctor, literally, before he falls to his death. Natalie decides to go out again with him, winning her prejudices against his past condition, but when he picks her up he meets Julie and I guess he didn't know about any daughter, so I guess we won't see more of him...
11-Mr Monk makes a friend
Monk crashes into a guy outside the supermarket (I hate the fact that Monk always throws away food, I understand that he has a 'condition', but food should not be thrown away like that :-p I mean, it can happen to everyone from time to time, but he always does it :/ )
The guy Hal calls him later to ask him to go together at a hockey game and he's all excited, and freaking out too and driving Natalie and Julie crazy too.
"Excuse the mess" Monk says, because he left five crumbs on purpose... Hal seems such a nice guy, Natalie wonders what he might be up to... they keep seeing each other, going to games together...
A woman is killed, her ex boyfriend was played by an actor I know but couldn't really place him...
The captain and Natalie are worried Hal might be a con-artist, but of course he's more than that, he's the murderer. Monk keeps talking about him to everyone, also to doctor Kroger. He always wanted a best friend, and wants to "ask" him to be his best friend...
Monk doesn't even notice that he's always picking up his mail... and after he finds the letter he was waiting for from the now-dead girl, he disappears. Monk is so sad, like a child... eventually he goes to him, acting like a crazy-jealous lover, and gets in trouble. Hal wants to shoot him. "So you never really liked me?" - "Are you kidding? Spending a day with you is like pulling teeth, I'm surprised your own shadow keeps you company". The captain figures it out and arrive in time to save him. Monk now has tickets to give out - the captain takes the tickets for the women-volleyball-game, and Natalie asks him to go with her at the ice-skating event.
12-Mr Monk is at your service
Sean Astin is this episode's murderer Paul. Monk is depressed because there's a "hiring freeze" at the police department.
Monk and Natalie have lunch at her parents'. Paul's parents died, and Natalie has Monk investigate their deaths. Her parents know Paul, but she can't stand him. Paul is very rich and thinks he can get away with anything. As an excuse to be there, Monk is interviewed for the butler position in the house (after Paul shot his old butler). He's hired and he drives the other servants crazy. He starts to like his position and his new career and he's very stubborn, even when the guests drive 'him' crazy (wanting to choose their own dishes instead of just eating what he gives them...) , finally Monk realises what he'd done. Paul's dad died of a heart attack, but Paul killed his stepmother and made it look like he died later to inherit everything and cut off his stepsisters.
The captain threatened to quit and got a deal: Monk is off the "hiring freeze" so when he'll be ready to go back to work they will hire him again..
13-Mr Monk is on the air
Radio star Max kills his wife. Her sister Linda hires Monk. He thinks the same and talks to him while he's like on air with his show with two men, and they make fun of him and verbally harass Natalie. Randy likes the guy :-/
 - There's neighbour Kevin again :lol:
Kevin brings Monk his comedian uncle's professional jokes to give him the courage to go back on air with the jerk... and he brings them in his sleeve :/ with his memory, couldn't he just memorise it? That was stupid, I couldn't watch it... until he talked about Trudy and the jerk made fun of her death and Monk attacked him. Unfortunately a security guy stopped him.
Still, he found a better revenge: he found out how he did it. He trained the neighbour's dog.
The end: he watches the video of his wedding. It's not entirely true that he never laughed, he laughed with Trudy. He was eating the wedding cake from her hand, getting his face dirty, and laughing!!!!
14-Mr Monk visits a farm
Randy's uncle Harvey died, believed suicide, and Randy decides to go and live in his farm and resigns from the police after he busted into the wrong place. Randy starts thinking he was murdered and asks Monk to take a bus and go there. A bus to a farm... a lot of dirt, to him.
He starts investigating, he even goes to the monthly dance, and dances with the sheriff. Randy is so down that he even goes to the suspect's house to get hired to work there, and speaks a few words in Spanish. He kinda understands Spanish, more or less, only what he learned in high school, and is soon found out by the owner.
 - there's the actor who played Gabrielle's husband in Desperate Housewives
Monk figures out who did it and whispers it in Randy's ear at night, so that he would believe that he solved it himself and get confidence again and go back to being a cop. So this time it's Randy doing the "here's what happened" thing. Well, Monk told him the whole story, but Randy found the evidence himself. He's back to work, the captain never files his resignation paper and now Randy is his old idiot-self again, thinking he just needs to go to sleep and he can solve any case * rollingeyes *
15-Mr Monk and the really, really dead guy
A street musician is killed:  1-blow to the head 2-suffocated 3-poison 4-stabbed 5-shot 6-run over ....
The captain and Monk were on another case but are called on this one, lead by the FBI, (and here it's not Monk the weird one, how can he know if the guy is talking to him or to someone on the earphone, if that guy keeps looking straight at him?? Why doesn't he look anywhere else? He seems a jerk already). Natalie: "he's just never seen an earpiece phone before" - guy:"where has he been, in a coma?" - Monk:"in a coma? No, I wish" ...
The to the captain, "let me tell you my definition of (working in) tandem: I say something, you do it" - yep, jerk alright.
The FBI is here because the murderer left a note saying he'll kill again in 36 hours. They're so arrogant, they send away Monk saying he doesn't belong there, that he's not a man, making Monk feel bad and antique (he tried to have Julie teach him computer, the result was that he sent the swat team to her slumber party terrorising her friends). At the end, Monk solves the case, it had been a diversion to keep everyone so busy they wouldn't think of any other case. The whole point was to have them wait at least 36 hours before they came back to the woman who was murdered just before the musician. The stomach contents can't be retrieved after 36 hours (but Natalie could recognise what it was just by looking at it after it was retrieved 35 hours and 50 minutes later (if not more; right as she saw it, it was 36 hours exact..)
16-Mr Monk goes to the hospital
Monk goes to the hospital saying his nose is bleeding. While he wanders around looking for a better doctor, he finds him dead, killed. Another doctor killed because he would have testified against him for malpractice. The murderer tries to kill Monk too. Meanwhile Natalie went on a date but left the restaurant to hurry back to him, knowing he needs her (because he always does). Of course he didn't die, but he's injured and admitted under Doctor Scott's care... :-/ Natalie arrives in time to save him before he was killed.
A boring, annoying episode, with him walking the whole time with his head up complaining of his nosebleed  :-/

许你浮生若梦 Granting you a dreamlike life - 2018

I have by now learned how Chinese dramas work: they drag the story for many episodes, write unbelievably charming characters so that you give your heart to them and then they break it by killing them off in the last episode and wrapping everything up with a 'let's finish and go home that it's late'-kind of spirit, making no sense at all. This is this series in a few words. Totally bad? Well no, the main actors were good. Basically this is something to see only if you are a ZhuYiLong fan or AnYueXi fan, both playing different roles and thus entertaining their fans. Being a girl her character is more limited, but FuSheng is an open character, he laughs, mocks, fights... basically he's the only real reason to watch this show.
The show is supposed to talk about three love stories (all played by them), but actually it focuses on just one in the past: it moves too slow, and involves a love triangle for a long time; two good friends separately meet the same girl and both fall in love with her.
The friendship was good, a close one, a kind of unbreakable one it seemed. At first she goes out with XingCheng , slowly becoming friends with Luo FuSheng, who is in love with her and suffers seeing them together but can't do anything about it because he's his friend;  then they break up and she starts a relationship with FuSheng. It took them a lot to finally get together, but after that other troubles start so that they can't really enjoy a bit of happiness. Then she accepts to become a spy to get from XingCheng (who is now a jerk) a list of traitors, and when she gets into trouble everyone tries to save her and everybody dies but her.
The couple in the present, after she finishes telling the story, gets a few moments together: basically they cook together, playing and laughing, then he goes away saying that she reminds him of the girl he loved and lost, but can't really tell if he loves her or the memory of that girl.
This is understandable, but the movie ends with them meeting some time later (three years maybe?) and they look at each other and he simply proposes to her. Just like that. Is he sure now? Come on, this ending was so plain :-/  there should have been more on the present couple.
There were too many side things: the battles, the troubles with the Japanese, the spy story, the family-feuds...
Also, it has quite an optimistic title, and yet nobody here lived happily ever after. Maybe the 'present couple', who knows, but that's really farfetched; he left without saying goodbye leaving a note behind, and yet when they meet they smile at each other and get engaged without another word :-/