Category: Korea

Train to Busan Remake

August 29, 2021

The reviews are in! First of all, before mentioning the personnel involved in the Train to Busan remake — I hate this, and it broke wide yesterday. Now, I understand the sentiment, because Hollywood has had a bad track record remaking Korean movies, from The Lake House to Oldboy, but I have to emphasize that this example is different. The director is Timo Tjahjanto, a horror filmmaker in the clique with Ti West and Gareth Evans (in that they’ve all contributed shorts to the V/H/S series) who also happened to direct The Night Comes for Us. This is an Indonesian guy, and he was hired by James Wan — neither are Korean, fine, but it’s not the usual Wonderbread cash grab. … More Train to Busan Remake

Happy Birthday!

August 12, 2021

know I mentioned this last year, but I can’t get over the coincidence. Today is my birthday — thank you, thank you — but it’s also Yoon Bomi’s, with the time zones. Still, I don’t know what to do with this information, that my favorite K-pop idol was born hours after myself, on August 1993. … More Happy Birthday!

Summer Red Velvet Maybe

July 19, 2021

I realize I hadn’t done even a brief write-up on Joy’s solo debut as I had Wendy’s, but that’s partly because it dropped at a busy time. See, I’d been preparing to move from Los Angeles back home, as the dream is over or what have you. The video for Joy’s “Hello” is a sweet and surprisingly emotional piece, trading the CG dreamscapes of Red Velvet past for an indie-movie feel — the earthy color palette and road trip narrative. Joy, overcoming a Wendy-approved breakup, packs up for vacation and encounters a little girl trying to get home. Here we have very human moments like the dad squeezing his daughter in the end, which is a different kind of special effect, to be terrible. “Hello” is a really big song and Joy bursts with soaring energy. However, it’s an interesting approach to a Joy debut, not only being an album of cover songs, but I thought her whole thing was “sexy dynamite.” I expected it to be closer to something like Namjoo’s “Bird,” at least in terms of visuals. So it’s a nice surprise, and very Red Velvet — refreshing, like a summer breeze. … More Summer Red Velvet Maybe

My Favorite Shots from “Wind Flower”

July 11, 2021

Mamamoo’s 2018 single “Wind Flower” is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, and its corresponding video is a nice surprise, a Hong Kong-set mood piece with echoes of Wong Kar-wai. Although, my second thought watching the video was, “Is that true, or is it just the blue fluorescent in the noodle shop?” Maybe for Hong Kongers, Wong doesn’t solely define the city, but nevertheless, the four members of this group do their part in staring sadly across wide spaces and dancing in private. As this is the first real mention of Mamamoo on this site, I’ll introduce each member as they come and try to give you a sense of the group. … More My Favorite Shots from “Wind Flower”

Battle of the Sexes | My Wife is a Gangster 3 (2006) Review

June 20, 2021

There’s a tropey thing in movies where the badass hero guy goes big-league, demonstrating killer skills outside his usual environment. Maybe it’s Ray Liotta pistol-whipping the guy in Goodfellas, or Jason Statham beating up the basketball court in The Expendables. We know they deal with bigger threats, so this one’s just for fun — applied badass. I went looking through the Goodfellas listing on TV Tropes and didn’t find anything, though the scene is considered, among others, an example of their trope “All Girls Want Bad Boys.” True enough, in both cases, the badass application makes audience of a woman (“I gotta admit, It turned me on,” says Karen Hill). … More Battle of the Sexes | My Wife is a Gangster 3 (2006) Review

Search: WWW | Recommended Korean Drama

June 12, 2021

“Give me Cha Hyeon,” Ga-kyeong says, and as the scene whips between reaction shots and the music swells, I’m bouncing the iPad on my knees, making a positively indescribable noise. Search: WWW often shocked me like this, inducing so much excitement and even dread, then clocking me square in the stupid grin. It was urgent somehow, to even process my experience with it — but I couldn’t. Perhaps it left me feeling so much that my thoughts were annihilated. I’d like to recommend it, but where do I even start? … More Search: WWW | Recommended Korean Drama

Lee Da-hee: Dichotomy

June 4, 2021

I promise not to make this a regular feature, especially since it’s rare anyway. It’s something I’ve always liked about actors, when an already compelling turn is underscored by just how opposite the performer seems to be in reality. It’s a strange thing to write about, but the actress Lee Da-hee represents an extraordinary case. … More Lee Da-hee: Dichotomy

K-Drama Report: The Beauty Inside (2018)

May 30, 2021

Yes, I cried. Happy? I am, because it’s been a while. The story as old as this website is my search for another K-drama as affecting to me as the first I saw, Cheer Up! (Sassy Go Go). Last year, I thought it might be Something in the Rain, with superstar Son Ye-jin, a relatively straightforward romance where the twist is that the woman is older than the man by maybe six years. Scandalous! Granted, it was further complicated by the man being a family friend, so to Son’s mother, it was like her two children were hooking up and she did not take that well. Also, it is kind of scandalous, damn it, and would be even in the States. Also, if the woman is taller, but I do go on. Could go on. I’ve seen ten episodes, but a few episodes back, my view rate slipped from days to weeks to months. It was so disheartening because I loved the show from premise on, and I really liked the central couple, as well as Son’s long-suffering friend. The problem was a fatal, repetitive subplot involving sexual harassment, which felt so tertiary to the main plot and certainly prickled me with sensitive subject matter. … More K-Drama Report: The Beauty Inside (2018)

Seulgi: Dichotomy

May 19, 2021

There’s just something about Seulgi. She is, to me, the first K-pop idol — the one who first fascinated, with her bonkers off-stage persona and friendly, appealing demeanor. These, of course, are surface details, so what struck me with time was not only her deeper talents, but how much those talents clashed with the surface details. This is a bubbly idol girl and a woman who communicated to me that dance is an artform. You watch any given Red Velvet music video or see her on stage touring the world, and she’s so fierce and confident, and the second she steps off that stage she becomes clumsy, bubbly “Ddeulgi,” as the fans have called her. It’s something that still fascinates me, and I’d like to attempt to replicate it here, in images. … More Seulgi: Dichotomy

Wonderful Days

May 16, 2021

The last few posts here have been fluff, and that feels especially callous as so much tragedy is happening in the Asian world — Palestine, Myanmar, India, so many more. I’ll hopefully get back to more important business soon, but for now, I just want to record some recent thoughts. First up, I rewatched the original A Better Tomorrow on Friday in anticipation of a future QNA episode about the sequel. I hadn’t remembered much of the first, just that it isn’t as actiony as Woo’s other big movies, and that Chow Yun-Fat surprisingly dies at the end. Watching it this time, I was blown away. … More Wonderful Days