Category: Film and TV shows (Page 6 of 8)

Korean movies and dramas

Saturday Night Live Korea

2013/03/25 / Nic / 19 Comments

Okay to put this in context, South Korean TV is quite conservative so he likes Saturday Night Live Korea because it’s less conservative…. not because he likes lots of dirty jokes.

My husband is pretty used to Western humour and comedy that is a bit more risqué so he can find Korean TV shows a bit stifling sometimes.

Although Korean TV is conservative, Korean movies seems to be a different story though. The movie Sex is Zero seriously shocked me! Have you seen it? Many Korean movies are just in a whole different category…

As for TV, perhaps it’s changing now. I don’t think my husband wants really sexual or offensive things all over the TV, but I think he likes that comedians are given a bit more freedom on Saturday Night Live.

What Movie?

2013/02/11 / Nic / 15 Comments

Now I really wish that movie was Gangster Squid. How cool would that be?

Cinema on the Park and Review

2013/02/11 / Nic / 9 Comments

The other day I was invited as a guest blogger to the Sydney Korean Cultural Office’s Korean film night ‘Cinema on the Park’. The movie shown was Petty Romance (2010), which is a romantic comedy. I hadn’t attended a film night there before, though I had visited the Korean Cultural Office a few times.

Before the film started there was an introduction by film critic Russell Edwards which I really enjoyed and appreciated. The film Petty Romance is about cartoonist Jeong Bae (Lee Sun-Kyun), who is a great cartoonist but is not so good at storytelling and has had his comics constantly rejected by publishing companies. He needs a lot of money quickly in order to save an important family portrait so he decides to enter a competition to design an adult comic. He hires sex columnist Han Da-rim (Choi Gang-Hee) to help him with the story. However, Da-rim is secretly still a virgin. Of course at first they don’t like each other very much but as they continue to work together… and fight each other, feelings start to change.

I really enjoyed this film and it was really fun to watch. Some aspects of the film were quite graphic but it dealt with it really well, switching to animation to show the violence and explicit sexual scenes. This was not a film where the sexuality was used just to titillate, instead sexual talk in the film was humorous, particularly because Da-rim is a virgin who thinks she knows everything about sex. Her first attempts at having a sexual relationship are very funny.

The character of Jeong Bae seemed to be a stereotypical comic artist. He draws so well but loses sight of the overall storyline. Although I do make comics now, I didn’t identify with his character that much, because I’m not really that type of artist. I’ve approached making comics from a completely different way which is of course through blogging and making comics about my own life, rather than fictional characters. For me it was interesting to see a different way of making comics and the struggles artists like that have.

I appreciated watching this film with other people at the film night and laughing alongside others. I know that a lot of people who enjoy Korean movies and dramas often end up watching them by themselves, but watching with lots of other people is much more enjoyable. I really recommend that those who live in Sydney attend a Film Night at the Cultural Office. There are different themes every month and February is love month and named ‘Be My Valentine’. Film nights are on Thursday nights in the Arirang Hall at the Korean Cultural Office (255 Elizabeth Street). It is free entry but you have to book beforehand. Of course there are English subtitles. I always appreciate good English subtitles because I’ve had too many bad experiences with terrible English subtitles when buying DVDs or trying to watch online, so attending a proper film night like this has that benefit.

The other films that will be shown this month are Love Fiction (2012), Planet of Snail (2011), Late Autumn (2010).

Russell Edwards

Audience

Korean Cultural Office and Cinema on the Park.

Les Misérables

2013/02/01 / Nic / 15 Comments

I cried too but I knew I was going to cry! I’m not exaggerating either, he was still sitting there sobbing as everyone else left the cinema. His emotional reaction to things is one of the things I love about him though.

He also understood a bit about the time period of Les Miserables because he knows about Australian history and all the convicts sent here for doing something as little as stealing some bread. So that made it even sadder for him because he knew the unfair punishment for such minor crimes and that so many people had a terrible life simply because they were unlucky enough to be born into poverty.

He is not ashamed of bawling his eyes out either and I’m glad he doesn’t hide his emotions. Being able to talk about how the film moved him led to conversations about history, which I always love to talk about.

In a Drama

2013/01/09 / Nic / 22 Comments

This is the music he was listening to:

He has been listening to this music a lot lately. Yesterday he told me about how when he listens to it with earphones in he feels like he is the main character in a Korean drama. He then showed me different dramas poses like in a Korean drama scene haha (which is why I drew it like that).

I told him that he is the main character in his own life at least haha. Listening to this type of piano music does make him feel better while he is working hard as it makes him think of the hard times that characters have to go through in dramas but then everything gets better in the end. It’s his motivation.

I love the emotional responses he has to things and that he is not ashamed to share it. Good communication is vital for a good relationship and even though we don’t have the same native language, he can express himself better than most native English speaking guys I’ve known.

One Born Every Minute

2013/01/08 / Nic / 18 Comments

Haha ‘V’ is difficult to say! I don’t want it to seem like I’m constantly making fun of his English, but there is something so cute about substituting ‘B’ for ‘V’ and also when he uses the more scientific names for certain body parts very sincerely.

Since there aren’t a lot of words starting with V, that pronunciation issue doesn’t come up that often but he can only say the V sound if he really thinks about it an emphasizes it. Of course he is not thinking about it in that moment when he turns to look at the TV and sees a quite graphic scene of a baby being born. What is shown on Australian TV can be a lot more graphic and controversial than what is shown on Korean TV, so it surprises him sometimes.

I really like the TV show ‘One Born Every Minute’, both the U.K. and the U.S. versions. It makes giving birth seem a bit less scary.

City Hunter

2013/01/05 / Nic / 35 Comments

We usually have different tastes in Korean dramas. A Gentleman’s Dignity was one that we both agreed on and now we are watching City Hunter. While we are both enjoying it so far, he gets frustrated on those slower scenes with…. feelings and all that haha.

There’s a lot of dramas I’d like to watch but our internet has been terrible so it’s too frustrating (out of our control and hopefully we’ll move soon). My husband borrows some DVDs from a friend at work but most had such terrible English subtitles that I’d yell at the screen. Finally we got the City Hunter one and the subtitles are good, so slowly working our way through it.

What are you watching now?

(Also, I had to draw a very simple comic for this post because we are both sick with horrendous colds! It’s the middle of summer and it’s terrible being inside and sick like this).