K-Drama Report: Undercover Miss Hong, Part II

February 9, 2026

In a surprisingly literal way, Undercover Miss Hong is like candy. Its 1990s Seoul is made up of brightly-lit night exteriors and pastel office sets which look positively set-like. I mean, utterly unconvincing, as if all the harshness or potential frictions of “reality” were duly sanded away. The entire cast is gorgeous – the computer nerd Lee Yong-gi has his hair frizzed up to obscure actor Jang Do-ha’s boyish good looks (shucks, apparently, he was in The Judge from Hell, but I don’t remember) – and every expository punchline is delivered loudly, underscored by upbeat, triumphant music or upbeat, suspenseful music. This is the manner of a cartoon. Facial expressions are big and made bigger by crash zooms, body language is gesticulation and flailing. Cliffhangers are earth-shattering until their immediate, pat resolution next episode, like an old Republic serial. There’s an ease to the viewing, and most certainly a comfort. None of this description should be taken as negative criticism. It’s candy, after all. I don’t believe that the fireworks nature of the show comes at the expense of anything, like complexity, for example. The financial technobabble is persuasive, even set against the unpersuasive backdrops (which I privately enjoy because I love sets, when environments feel fully designed), and the unraveling mystery is a weave of character and plot and social commentary, with aha moments only raising the stakes. … More K-Drama Report: Undercover Miss Hong, Part II

9294* Saga: Return of the Hur Sisters

February 1, 2026

Man, I’d been missing Youngji’s sister Song-yeon, as the Hur Sisters YouTube Channel seemed to be supplanted by Youngji’s own solo channel – which itself ceased updating after that fateful, never-subtitled video with Hyojung and Seulgi, from October 2024. That’s crazy. If I had a YouTube channel, I’d never stop uploading content. NEVER! That video was back when I was desperate for any ‘94 Line content. How things have changed. Anyway, it turns out that Hur Song-yeon was probably just busy, having gotten married in late 2025. It was apparently a star-studded ceremony, though I only saw it through Youngji’s eyes – Jiyoung was there, say. And despite sharing a name with one of the Kara members, Song-yeon is not an idol, but a TV announcer and MC. Ironically, I encountered her again via Oh My Girl, for her appearance with Youngji on Hyojung & Binnie’s Sweet Home. Very funny. And now she’s back, with the most recent upload being a surprisingly melancholy hangout in what I assume is their old apartment? Like, maybe Song-yeon is moving in with her husband, so they’re sending it off? Again, no subtitles. … More 9294* Saga: Return of the Hur Sisters

Envision Turbulence | The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) Review

January 29, 2026

A King Hu wuxia film is a precious thing, there being so few. I’d taken a circular route from the canonical works at the start of his career – Come Drink with Me, Dragon Inn, A Touch of Zen – straight to the Mountain duology of 1979, skipping over The Fate of Lee Khan and The Valiant Ones. Either way, I’m running out, though I was mightily defeated by Legend of the Mountain and left it unfinished. And so, there was something bittersweet about finally sitting down and watching The Fate of Lee Khan, or “The Turbulence at Yingchun Pavilion,” here at the beginning of the year, when the kung fu mood usually strikes. And ironically or not, the film is a pastiche, taking little bits from across the catalogue. It’s the tavern setting of Dragon Inn, the caper premise of Raining in the Mountain, and the cast of A Touch of Zen. Here, Hsu Feng plays a villainous Mongolian princess, sister to the titular antagonist, while the villain of A Touch of Zen, Han Ying-chieh, is a resistance member disguised as a drunk, and Roy Chiao, the Buddhist monk, is undercover as the henchman at Lee Khan’s right hand. By the way, is it technically yellowface for these Chinese actors to play Mongolians? You’re not fooling me, man, no matter how much additional facial hair. … More Envision Turbulence | The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) Review

K-Drama Report: Undercover Miss Hong (2026)

January 17, 2026

I’m going to do something potentially dangerous here, which is to begin coverage of a K-drama after its first episode. Hold my hand as we embark – ew, clammy. My policy generally is to only write when I have something to say, because you only get one life and you can’t spend it writing hundreds or thousands of words on “meh.” The white-collar jury is still out on Undercover Miss Hong, so with this post, I wanted to talk about the first episode and how it functions as a first episode. In American television, we have “pilots,” a term that might’ve lately been broadened to simply mean “premiere,” but which used to be an internal document for a studio ahead of a full season order. The result, aside from hundreds or thousands of television shows never seeing the green light, was that TV shows from their second episode on might look and feel radically different. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a good example, because its pilot was initially made for Showtime before being picked up by The CW, so edits were made for adult content. Of course, you have legendary stories like Game of Thrones and all its tinkering, and the pilot might even be redone if it’s raggedy enough, like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. These days, I feel like quality control is more important (A-list actors probably don’t tolerate the dreaded “pilot season”). So, you wouldn’t have, like, a pilot for FX’s Shogun in quite the same way. That was meant to be a limited series regardless. Moral of the story: first episodes kind of suck. … More K-Drama Report: Undercover Miss Hong (2026)

Everybody Loves Apink

January 11, 2026

Eunji goes big with that “Oh, baby” and I experience something novel in my six years of K-pop fandom: nostalgia? Is that even possible? Their 2026 single “Love Me More” technically falls on the year of their 15th anniversary, but unlike with 2nd-gen contemporaries Girls’ Generation and Kara, Apink never really went away. I will admit that my interest lapsed around the time of Naeun’s departure in 2022, and I later assumed that they were simply nearing their end alongside 3rd-gen contemporaries Mamamoo, Red Velvet, and Oh My Girl. “Love Me More” and its EP Re: Love feels like a grand comeback, then, maybe because it’s so classical? Not only like it could’ve come from the middle of the catalog but because it’s got that throwback feel of the second generation, like ’90s American R&B. To clarify, people who were around and listening to K-pop in the 2010s would’ve known Apink as 2nd gen, but from my perspective, I can’t square Bomi and the gang as colleagues of Taeyeon and Tiffany. We’ve got a couple of liners here, with Chorong and Solar, and then Hayoung, Joy, and Yerin. … More Everybody Loves Apink

She’s Walking, She’s Talking | Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (2013) Review

January 9, 2026

Tempted as I might be to slide into this review with no proper contextualization, no declarations, I must admit that Nobody’s Daughter Haewon is outside my wheelhouse. In fact, it’s pretty much what I imagine when I close my eyes and think “arthouse film” and then make a face. So far, my recent aspirations toward true cinephile-hood have manifested as a rejection of the biggest, crassest blockbuster movies rather than an earnest exploration of the unplumbed, leaving me hardly indistinguishable from the stereotypical Nolan-Tarantino-PTA crowd – as if the bros don’t also like Park Chan-wook. It’s just, with this movie in particular, there’s some déjà vu. Every now and again, I’d watch a movie from the back catalog of an actor or actress I liked – off the top of my head, Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Smashed and Adam Scott’s The Vicious Kind – and come away with basically no reaction, and here I am again with Jung Eun-chae. Although she’d been working for a few years, Nobody’s Daughter Haewon was a breakout role, earning her awards and nominations at the Baeksang and Blue Dragon and so on. However, as is becoming a pattern with my Jung Eun-chae experience, she isn’t the main character of this story. That’d be the film’s director, Hong Sang-soo. … More She’s Walking, She’s Talking | Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (2013) Review

K-Drama Report: Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born, Part III

January 4, 2026

I guess I’ve been on autopilot for the past few days. I’ve had time off because of the holidays, and there’s a family matter to attend to next week, so I haven’t been in a regular state of mind. I’d decided to dedicate this sort of limbo space to watching and writing about Jeongnyeon: The Star is Born, which might’ve felt indulgent but not wildly divergent from other experiences with K-dramas here. I basically binge-watched both Anna and Genie, Make a Wish, though not in such a concentrated period of time. To clarify, I generally don’t watch TV shows like that; I don’t even watch movies in one sitting. And although it didn’t match my exact expectations, Jeongnyeon turned out to be great in a more traditional way, as covered in the first report, before darkening, as noted in the second. Still, even at that point, I imagined I’d watch the rest of the show and type up this very blog post, easy peasy like always. Sitting here in the immediate aftermath of the finale, I can tell you that I don’t want to write this prophesied third report. I feel really, really weird. Bad, I suppose, but in an unfamiliar way. It might seem silly to be so affected by a work of entertainment, and I can’t address that without an entirely separate conversation about the social utility of art and what have you, so in the meantime, you’ll just have to excuse me. I think Jeongnyeon: The Star is Born is a really great K-drama. Easily one of the best I’ve seen. I also – at least at this moment – don’t believe I’ve been more harmed by a TV show. I’ve been disturbed, harrowed, and moved countless times, but this is different. … More K-Drama Report: Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born, Part III

K-Drama Report: Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born, Part II – A Perfect Episode

January 3, 2026

I was perfectly satisfied with the prospect of doing Jeongnyeon in two reports, so consider this an emergency situation. And I just hope to God there aren’t further incidents from here to the finale. In two episodes, Jeongnyeon: The Star is Born gave me a lot to process and absolutely no slack to do so. It’s hard to think… when you’re crying. Episode eight, specifically, is one of those “perfect episodes” I used to get so hung up on, but before we get there, I did leave myself on something of a cliffhanger. Previously, Jeongnyeon upstaged the performance of Jamyunggo, winning over the audience to the point where even the audience was like, “Wait, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go!” I was bracing myself for the scene where Ok-gyeong returns to the stage and the crowd starts chanting for Soldier #1, but thankfully, we don’t see that. And as we may find, it likely didn’t happen. Still, I assumed that Ok-gyeong’s patience with Jeongnyeon would finally run out, and there’d be hell to pay. I just want that so badly. Jung Eun-chae is so compelling as Moon Ok-gyeong as Prince Hodong, but as Moon Ok-gyeong off the stage, it’s harder for me to assess the performance because she’s so similar to Jung Eun-chae herself. In Anna, the menace of Hyun-ju reverberated through her entire body; it was a transformation. Ok-gyeong rarely even gets upset with anyone – rarely. For now, I understand that Ok-gyeong isn’t offended by Jeongnyeon’s antics because she sees her almost as an experiment. The disillusioned star is simply playing a different game than everybody else. … More K-Drama Report: Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born, Part II – A Perfect Episode

K-Drama Report: Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born (2024)

January 2, 2026

Kim Tae-ri is probably the best actor to come out of Korea since Choi Min-sik, and while such hyperbolic language may indicate a simple mind structured, Sith-like, by absolutes, I’m comfortable with the assessment because she’s so quintessentially Korean. Seamlessly toggling between physical comedy and genuine heartbreak, it’s like she was crafted by the gods to inhabit the whiplash tones and extreme scenarios of popular Korean film and television. Specifically, the way she can make me cry and laugh simultaneously is exactly how critics describe Bong Joon-ho’s The Host, and of course, her acting debut was in Park Chan-wook’s celebrated film The Handmaiden. She’d go on to win industry awards with roles in major titles like Mr. Sunshine and Twenty-Five Twenty-One, and managed to close out the first ten years of her career with another canonical entry: Jeongnyeon: The Star is Born – confound that double colon – which netted her the Grand Prize at the APAN Star Awards and Best Actress at the Baeksang Awards (her second), as well as the label “Television Actor of the Year” by Gallup Korea. Where Kim Tae-ri goes, quality is sure to follow, if her taste for sci-fi blockbusters is the only thing suspect about such a jeweled filmography. And so, taking up the titular role in Jeongnyeon, she’s flanked by a murderers row of veterans like Ra Mi-ran and Moon So-ri as well as young, fierce talent like Shin Ye-eun – and of course, the scene-stealing ladykiller, Jung Eun-chae. … More K-Drama Report: Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born (2024)

Top Ten Movies of 2025

December 31, 2025

Oh, believe you me, I was tempted to compile one of those “Top 25 of 2025” lists, but I was having a hard time striking a balance between personal favorites and movies I thought were the best regardless of my own opinion, and alas, it was turning into a collection of the movies I’m always talking about here and on other blogs (does anyone need to hear me discuss Ghost in the Shell 2 ever again?). I would’ve liked to have crowned Lady Vengeance number one (spoilers!), but I’ve never known where to start with that one. So, this is my top ten movies of 2025, and as far as the year goes, it was pretty solid, with a lot of interesting developments at the box office. A certain geeky strain of blockbuster would appear to be dying out (given the collapsing profits of superhero movies and the malaise around the most recent Jurassic Park) as another, even more cynical product continues its upward inferno-spiral (live-action Disney remakes). Meanwhile, we had headline after headline about the mid-budget blockbuster, from Sinners and Weapons to even Final Destination: Bloodlines. Specialty fare like KPop Demon Hunters and the rerelease of Revenge of the Sith – as well as the incursion of anime and high-profile foreign films – continue to blur the lines at the multiplex as we head toward the (next) end of cinema. … More Top Ten Movies of 2025