Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
The early episodes of “Payback” held promise for a truly compelling thriller with the always great Lee Sun-kyung in the lead role. Lee plays Eung Yong, an ambitious man with a photographic memory when it comes to numbers. But the storylines get progressively more convoluted as the show progresses.
“Physical: 100” is riding high on the assumption that this athletic reality series is the real-life version of “Squid Game.” But as everyone knows by now, reality is a concept used to sell unscripted shows that are at least partially scripted to tell a certain story. Is this series fun to watch? At times. Is it novel? Not really. Anyone who remembers “American Gladiators” will recognize the cheese factor that drives these programs.
“j-hope IN THE BOX” is told in a non linear way, starting in Seoul 52 days before j-hope’s performance at Lollapalooza, where he made history as the festival’s first Korean headliner — a feat that even he found surprising. The lead up to the concert — which fans dubbed Hobipalooza — depicts the pain the rapper took to ensure that his debut as BTS’ first solo artist would be nothing short of perfection.
In an unusual cinematic coincidence, two critically acclaimed films about South Korean adoption were released in December depicting different sides of the adoption story. Broker focuses on a teenage girl who leaves her infant at a church’s safe haven baby box, while Return to Seoul tells the story of a French woman who reunites with her birth family just days after arriving in Korea. To better understand how these films speak to real-life adoptees, I talked to Korean academics, human rights experts, and adoptees. My reported piece for MASHABLE.
In Korean folk-lore, 구미호 — which literally translates into nine-tailed foxes — are cunning creatures who live to be about 100. As they age, they grow an extra tail. 구미호 are usually young women who seduce men to eat their livers or hearts. But in the K-drama “Tale of the Nine Tailed,” the alpha fox is Lee Yeon. Once the mountain God of Baekdudaegan, he was kicked out for a variety of reasons that revolved around his love for a human woman named Ah-eum.
At just 19, Jacob Buster’s resume includes playing a vampire on Showtime’s “Let the Right One In” and portraying the high school protagonist searching for his family in “Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out,” which had its premiere recently at the Sundance Film Festival.
답답해. That’s the first feeling that comes to mind when I think of the K-drama “The Interest of Love.” The entire series is about a group of broken people who can’t articulate how they feel and are in a constant state of unhappiness because of this.
The conceit of “May I Help You?” revolves around a young woman who is working as a funeral director. Dong-ju is smart with a sunny disposition, but no one believes that handling dead people is a suitable career for her. But she has been gifted with a special power to talk to the deceased and grant them their final wish.
There’s a lot going on in this second season of “Alchemy of Souls.” The spineless King from the first season returns with a greed for power; the real Queen battles her soul-shifting nemesis; the Crown Prince — who had previously been smitten with Mu-deok — is attracted to Bu-yeon (and rescues a turtle to please her); and Jin Mu — the half brother of Jinyowon’s leader, Jin Ho-gyeong, enforces a reign of terror on everyone, including his sister.
At just 21 years old, actor, singer and content creator La’Ron Hines has won a NAACP Image Award, released a music video for his latest single “Web of Lies,” and has gone viral on TikTok for his “Are You Smarter Than a Preschooler?” videos filmed at his family’s Mississippi daycare center. His latest project is a Snapchat series called “La’Ron In a Million.”