Category: Korean

  • Five YAM Magazine Posts for 2014!

    Happy new year, everyone!

    Sorry for the lack of posts last month. To make up for it, here are five posts so you can catch up to my 2013 and to get you going this 2014.

    amys-top50-songs-2013


  • Is It Yuuuuuuu?

    I noticed a few people popping by searching for Yu Aoi, so I went looking for news on her tonight and I ran into this photo tagged with her name on Pinterest.

    is-it-yu

    If it is, in fact, Yu Aoi. This is the first time I haven’t recognized her in a photo. Not like I’m like an expert or anything (though I do daydream someone calls me for a documentary on her life LOL).

    First- the hair throws me off. So it may be one of those rare instances. The themes and styles seem to fit, and the whole shoot gives you strong Dandelion vibes for some reason. But one of the reasons, I don’t think it is Yu-chan is because I don’t see her freckles. She has three particular spots that always show up on her photos: the two marks on the right side of her right eye (the ones that looked like Shiro), and the mark on her left cheek near her nose.

    Top suspect? One of them Korean look-alikes [see also and this]. At first, I thought it could be Hwang Seung Un [1][CM], but after a quick read, I decided it’s more likely Son Soo Hyun [1]. Seriously, some of their similarities [check the Busker Busker MV] are uncanny.

    I wouldn’t mind one of those crazy comedy projects in which the two of them play sisters but speak completely different languages when speaking to each other. Specially directed by Satoshi Miki.


  • The Piggy Doll Debacle

    piggy-dolls-lee-ji-yeon

    Korean girl idol group Piggy Dolls was making a comeback — after the quite catchy and makeover-ish The Girl that I Know (아는여자) [MV], which gave a terrific hair style to singer Lee Ji Yeon — only to run into the video for Ordinary Girl (보통여자) [MV] and see that I didn’t freaking RECOGNIZE ANYONE! At first I chugged it to maybe having actors not on the MV, but apparently- yes, they’ve changed all members.

    I don’t even know why bother keeping the name of the group. It’s just lazy management and creates an even bigger image problem. And here I was looking forward to Ji Yeon’s latest makeover. Though I must admit, her hair color and shape was perfect the last time.


  • Missy Elliott is back with the Dragon

    Not exactly a strong dream collab of mine, but I’m sure GD was psyched to do this. I’m just glad to see Missy back after launching a couple of video-less singles [1] last year. She’s looking great and they both seem to be having a blast here.

    The question now is… when do I get to download this track?


  • Top Flicks About Chicks

    I really can’t remember exactly when I started out the Top Flicks About Chicks list on MUBI, but it must have been around the same time I wrote how Chick Flicks was a doomed genre in regards of critics. So it might be almost 4 years… and I’ve finally reached 300 titles in the list!!!

    A Chick Flick should center on little girls, girls, young women and women… as students, as neighbors, as friends, as daughters, as granddaughters, as sisters, as mothers, as lovers. They are simply women. With that alone, we can tell all sort of other stories that have little to do with romantic comedies.

    The purpose of the list, of course, was to encompass an array of female character — not only in the binary sense, since the list also includes men/boys who identify as women/girls… and viceversa — of various cultural, ethnic, social backgrounds. Not favoring one genre over the other, not valuing dramas over comedies… just simple stories about different women.

    Though I’m sure the list could be longer, that’s 300 feature length films out of the 2896 (counting shorts) currently rated on the site- that’s roughly 10% so I suppose the list could expand to up to 500 or maybe 1000 once I reach 5000 or 10000 rated films on the site.

    top-flicks-about-chicks
    1. Treeless Mountain 2. Welcome to the Dollhouse 3. Juliana 4. Labyrinth 5. Fuckin’ Amal 6. Mirrormask 7. Gun Hill Road 8. Pariah 9. Bend it like Beckham 10. Swing Girls 11. The Land of the Deaf 12. Sunny 13. Whip It 14. Stoker 15. Maria Full of Grace 16. Breaking the Waves 17. My Marlon and Brando 18. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days 19. Dil Bole Hadippa! 20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 21. Kotoko 22. Violeta Went to Heaven 23. Skin 24. Raise the Red Lantern 25. Incendies

    I picked 25 of the 300 films to illustrate some of the variety (I hope it’s AS varied as I intend the list to be), though I ran out of picks and couldn’t include any of the ‘older’ female characters. If I could pick 5 more, they’d be: Lemon Tree, Frozen River, Late Bloomers, Mother, For 80 Days.


  • BEG is like Good Ole’ Kimchi

    I was a little disappointed with a mention of an unmentionable during the Soompi interview with the girls — I think IT was mentioned by Narsha. But they totally made up with this interview with Ask in a Box.

    Also makes me love JeA even more. LOL And she won the Kill Bill battle! But really, what got me laughing like an idiot was the response to describing BEG as a flavor, to which Narsha quickly responds “Oriental medicine” xD ‘coz it’s boiled for too long. LOL


  • Current Flavors and Getting Your Type

    Has people ever ask you what’s your type? In terms of the people that you like, and you really have no idea because you’ve never really talked about.  I wondered if I could see a pattern in the people I like on-screen, so I made a list of women and men — 25 picks each — and placed generally okay photos of them to see if I could see any characteristics they shared.

    A few rules- it has to be people that you follow — not randoms that you just find hot. Sofia Vergara is hot but I haven’t seen her outside Modern Family or Chasing Papi. And it also isn’t about talent… completely. It’s people that you would somehow, if given the chance, do / be with / however you want to call it or do is.

    Also, photos should generally be color and looking to the front-ish. Natural looks favored, but since it’s a type thing, I suppose you can use any photos you find your subject attractive in.

    (more…)


  • BEG Kills Bill

    When Brown Eyed Girls released the name of the songs, I was immediately drawn to Kill Bill, because DUH! It’s Kill Bill, dude. Now I’m so psyched that THAT song is going to be their comeback single.

    I really don’t know and haven’t looked into who is directing this, but it could be either Hwang Soo Ah or Zany Bros, haven’t decided yet. It could be either of those two due to the style of the MV.

    Now, the question is… should I buy the CD or wait for the repackage?

    Though, I must admit that both versions of Sixth Sense were SO pretty.


  • JeA, How’s Junior High?

    I look young. My older cousins, who are just a bit older than JeA is, still see me and still tap me on the head. I still get carded. When traveling or meeting new people in general they always ask me about school… and I don’t mean it like asking about university. They ask me about high school or wonder what I’m choosing to study at university.

    I graduated from high school ten years ago (gosh!).

    I usually look at people on movies or tv shows, watch their music videos, [1] and I think people… look like contemporaries of mine. When I google them, however, I’m surprised some of them are five or ten years younger than me. It’s crazy. So because I tend to look at myself and think of my age, my expectation of how young people look is skewed.

    Strangely enough, JeA still surprises me.

    Starting out, I thought she was older than she is. Mid-thirties instead of early. As the years go by, she seems to be getting younger and younger, though. In this promo photo for the Brown Eyed Girls comeback (YAY! Comeback!), JeA looks like she’s 16. It’s nuts. 14 if you consider the giant teddy ages her down. And the pout makes her maybe a year younger than that.

    It’s crazy that with my skewed view on how ‘old’ people should look, JeA manages to look half my age. And what’s funny~ if we ever meet in person, she’ll probably be able to boss me around. Coz that’s her presence. xD

    brown-eyed-girls-jea-black-box-beg-teddy

    Also, I’m psyched about the new album. I’m lukewarm on the Recipe single, though.


  • Your President Speaks Mandarin, but my Ex is Funny~

    Okay, I gotta admit South Korea- I’m jealous.

    Some of you may complain about the political implications of choosing Park Geun-hye’s party, but you’re getting the cake. This is coming from someone less privileged than you in terms of political options. I don’t want to talk about my current president, but since President Park Geun-hye just made a splash on my TV speaking Mandarin at a speech she delivered just this week at Tsinghua University during her visit to Beijing [1], which apparently is self-taught [1][2] (that’s even way more accomplished!), I want to give a good mention to my Ex-Pres.

    A couple of years back, when (now Ex-) President Hu Jintao was visiting the country when Alan Garcia was still president — and he gave us THIS SUPER AWKWARD photo of himself trying to hug/kiss Hu — Alan had the BRILLIANT idea of giving HIS own speech in Mandarin, even though he knows a lick of any Asian language (I doubt he knows anything about Asian culture outside what to eat at a Chifa [1], explaining why he tried to hug/kiss Hu, LOL).

    The end result is, of course, madly hilarious if you speak Spanish.

    Besides trying to sound out Mandarin, which you know it’s nearly impossible, he sounded out some “words” that sounded similar to other words in Spanish, included the now political-satire-classic “Soy chanchin,” which is a cute modification to the word “chancho,” meaning “pig.” So basically it sounded like he said “I’m a little fat.” Hilarious history in the making right there.

    Surprisingly, Hu had the biggest poker face EVER. He didn’t blink, snorted, NOTHING. He’s either the best politician in the whole wide world, or his team warned him about this Garcia Mandarin stunt and he turned off any of his hearing aid, if he used any.