Have you watched The Good, The Bad, The Weird? If you haven’t and the movie is available for rent in a store near you, pick it up and invite a few friends over. It’s truckloads of fun and will fit in perfectly with the fêting and feasting this time of the year. Moreover, you’ll find yourself clutching your sides because he who plays “The Weird” is so funny. Between the figurative good, bad and weird in the movie, I’ll take whoever makes me laugh the hardest.

Likewise, in a year where I watched fewer dramas but finished more of them, my favorites were the ones that made me squeal and giggle. As the months passed and it became apparent that this was going to be another so-so year, I lowered my expectations and decided a good drama need not be perfect in every aspect. All I asked was that the writing was alight (not necessarily crackling in every scene), that it worked my laugh muscles, and that it wouldn’t leave me with hives or a nauseating hangover.

SONG OF THE DAY

You’re Beautiful OST – “Promise” (A.N.JELL version) [ Download ]

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Read the rest of The Good, The Bad, The Middling [Year In Review, Part 2] (8,683 words)

© thunderbolt for Dramabeans, 2009. | Permalink | 147 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Accidental Couple, Again My Love, Assorted Gems, Brilliant Legacy, City Hall, Hometown of Legends 2009, Kyung Sook Kyung Sook's Father, Loving You a Thousand Times, Partner, Queen Seon-deok, Smile, Strike Love, The Man Who Can't Get Married, year in review, You're Beautiful

And to think that I headed into 2009 feeling so hopeful, too.

2008 was an awful year for K-dramas. That year ended with me feeling like I’d just swum through an ocean of excrement, and I figured that I’d need to soak myself in some good dramas for at least another year before I’d manage to wash the stink off of me.

Alas, that was not to be the case.

Thinking back on which dramas I saw in 2009, it occurred to me that, goddammit, I’m a lot more resilient than I’d thought. It awed me that I’d managed to watch crap like Cain and Abel and Everybody Cha Cha Cha all the way through, without even any fastforwarding! A year ago, this would not have been possible. A year ago, my stomach would have protested three seconds in, and I’d have had to be rushed to the doctor’s, only to be told (again) by dear old Dr. C that my condition is a complete mystery to him.

But this year, I discovered the secret to watching bad dramas without ending up gagging over a toilet. That secret has been spread so thick over my digestive organs that no amount of stress or disgust can penetrate it. We’ll get to what that secret is later, but the point of all this rambling is, I’ve discovered other reasons for watching dramas besides their innate quality. Call it a survival instinct. Reasons for drama-watching are a lot more complicated than I’d once thought.

So for this year’s write-up, I’m dividing the categories into the various reasons I watched the dramas in the first place. It’s going to be kinda embarrassing, but honest. I’ve found that honesty is always best in the end, whether people like it or not. As my mom likes to say: “If I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll turn your legs black and blue.”

SONG OF THE DAY

Broccoli, You Too? – “2009년의 우리들” (Us in 2009) [ Download ]

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Read the rest of Duds and Delights of 2009 [Year In Review, Part 1] (6,376 words)

© Dahee_Fanel for Dramabeans, 2009. | Permalink | 240 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Accidental Couple, Boys Before Flowers, Cain and Abel, Everybody Cha Cha Cha, Friend Our Legend, Kyung Sook Kyung Sook's Father, Queen Seon-deok, Smile, Style, The Man Who Can't Get Married, Will It Snow For Christmas, year in review, You're Beautiful

This is an interesting article, in that it looks at the low numbers faced by current Monday-Tuesday drama The Man Who Can’t Get Married and analyzes it from a cultural perspective. Most low-rated dramas (that aren’t disasters of writing/acting) tend to explain their disappointing numbers in terms of being too complicated for the average viewer or lacking in “makjang” (convoluted, unrealistically dramatic) qualities, but The Man Who Can’t Get Married is a bit different in that it’s also adapted from a Japanese series that enjoyed quite a lot of popularity. So why is the Korean version faltering?

The Man Who Can’t Get Married can’t attract popularity

Hidden birth secrets, mother/daughter-in-law conflicts, a handsome chaebol who falls for an ajumma without reason — it has none of those. All it has is the “man who can’t get married” who has reached the age of forty as a bachelor because of his extremely fastidious temperament.

KBS’s Man Who Can’t Get Married, remade from the popular 2006 Japanese drama of the same name, has been unable to shake off its low single-digit ratings. Compared to other dramas that have been remade from Japanese series like White Tower and Boys Before Flowers, it’s a disappointing result.

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Read the rest of The man who can’t get ratings (560 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2009. | Permalink | 114 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: drama ratings, j-doramas, Ji Jin-hee, remakes, The Man Who Can't Get Married, Uhm Jung-hwa

First of all, much thanks to Javabeans for letting me commandeer her site so I could post these recaps and putting up with all my questions. Second, I have to say that I’m really enjoying this show much more than I expected. I am watching the show ahead of where I’m writing my recaps, so I’m a few episode past the first one right now, and I will tell you that this show seems to be getting better with each episode, so even if you found the first episode lackluster, you should definitely continue.

Anyways, on to the Ji Jin Hee eyecandy!

Disclaimer: In the interest of full disclosure, I think I should warn everyone right now that I’m a kpop aficionado, and thus, kpop references and comparisons will almost definitely be popping up in my recaps, though I promise to try and keep it only to the really relevant stuff. I also take no responsibility for any harm caused by any pondering I may engage in on certain men and their relative eyecandy-ness.

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Read the rest of The Man Who Can’t Get Married: Episode 1 (174 words)

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Post tags: first episodes, Ji Jin-hee, Kim So-eun, The Man Who Can't Get Married, Uhm Jung-hwa, Yang Jung-ah, Yoo Ah-in

Ratings battles are always part of the trials and tribulations of television dramas, but is the experience better or worse when one is going up against one’s own sibling? It’s not a common scenario, because while there are several sets of famous siblings in the biz, like Kim Tae-hee and Lee Wan, it’s rare that they’re both in dramas simultaneously, much less in the same timeslot.

But now, we have not one but two sets of siblings in this situation. Older sister Chae Shi-ra is currently heading the KBS weekend sageuk series Iron Empress [천추태후], but will soon face competition from her own little sister, Chae Kook-hee, who has been cast in SBS’s Style [스타일], which premieres August 1.

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Read the rest of Sibling rivalries take to the small screen (300 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chae Kook-hee, Chae Shi-ra, Iron Empress, Queen Seon-deok, Style, The Man Who Can't Get Married, Uhm Jung-hwa, Uhm Tae-woong

Kim So-eun trades her usual long, straight locks for a curly mop and a smoky eye in the July issue of Singles.

Inside the magazine, the interview with Kim talks of the roles she’s taken on as a child actor, as well as her breakout role playing Chae Shi-ra‘s younger character in the historical series Iron Empress and, of course, by her popularity as Ga-eul in Boys Before Flowers. In the few months since the latter wrapped, Kim So-eun has picked up numerous endorsement deals for brands like Clean and Clear, Pocari Sweat, and Anycall.

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Read the rest of Kim So-eun in Singles and a new drama (182 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2009. | Permalink | 47 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ji Jin-hee, Kim So-eun, The Man Who Can't Get Married, Uhm Jung-hwa

Oh, I love Kim Gun-mo. I love that he songwrites his music, starting back in the day before kpop singers wrote their own stuff. Well, most still don’t, but he always wrote his. I love that he has a playful touch to his music. And I love that in his cameo for the new KBS series The Man Who Can’t Get Married [결혼 못하는 남자], he apparently looks like a big ol’ dork as he goes on a blind date with Uhm Jung-hwa‘s character.

The cameo was shot on May 12 at a restaurant in Seoul’s Yoido neighborhood, with Kim Gun-mo playing an (off-putting, nauseating) applied music professor.

SONG OF THE DAY

Kim Gun-mo – “너에게 (마음으로 하는 말),” or “(My Heart Says These Words) To You.”
Aww yeah, it’s old-school Kim Gun-mo. This one’s from his third album (he has twelve), which is probably my favorite. [ Download ]

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Read the rest of Kim Gun-mo cameos as a bad first date (287 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2009. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ji Jin-hee, Kim Gun-mo, The Man Who Can't Get Married, Uhm Jung-hwa

The Man Who Can’t Get Married [결혼 못하는 남자] is a new KBS series that will replace Story of a Man come June. You may already know that it is based on the popular Japanese drama Kekkon Dekinai Otoko (which means “man who can’t get married”), which aired in 2006

The drama held a script reading–cum–press conference on May 6 at the Yongpyong Selra Resort in Kyeonggi province, attended by its main stars Ji Jin-hee (of Spotlight; isn’t he looking adorable?), Uhm Jung-hwa (Insadong Scandal), and Kim So-eun (Boys Before Flowers).

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Read the rest of The Man Who Can’t Get Married script reading and press day (390 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2009. | Permalink | 74 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: j-doramas, Ji Jin-hee, Kim So-eun, press conferences, remakes, The Man Who Can't Get Married, Uhm Jung-hwa, Yoo Ah-in