MBC - Personal Taste

MBC's success in getting "hunk of the moment" Lee Min Ho to pair up with veteran Son Ye Jin in Personal Taste must have been a coup. I have been anamored with Son's flawless acting since I first laid eyes on her performance as a alzheimer stricken girl in the 2004 movie - A Moment to Remember.  While I can't say much about Lee, having missed Boys Over Flowers, all I can say is that he's a good looking chap.

Throw any role at Son and she will just slide into character as if the script had been specifically written for her. You know what I mean when you go back to SBS's 2006 drama Alone in Love. where Son played a middled-aged divorcee coming to terms with her divorce. I am still in amazement with her ability to pile on the weight and look the 30-odd year old woman that she was portraying.

In Personal Taste, Son plays the role of an furniture designer who gets dumped by her good for nothing boyfriend the day before he weds one of her best friends, whom I think is such a bitc*! Fate must have thought she needed more challenges in life, as if she's not troubled enough, when her male buddy got her into some loanshark debt which she has to settle.

Lee, on the other hand, plays a suave architect who, despite his apparent talents, gets thwarted in his work but none other than Son's ex-boyfriend. That's pretty much all that I can say for now cos I have only watched a grand total of ONE episode. :)

But the vibes I get from this drama has been great so far. It's weird, but one can really sense whether a drama is a hit, or a 'stinker' just by the vibe, or gut feel, one gets from viewing the first episode. A classic example is My Fair Lady.  Despite my adoration of Yoon Eun Hye, I had this bad feeling that My Fair Lady is a professional mistake after the first 10 or so minutes of watching it. Truth be said, I think My Fair Lady is one of the worst dramas I have seen for a long time.

So, should you watch Personal Taste if you have just that 1 hour to spare for your daily dose of Korean entertainment. HelloHallyu's answer is an equivocal YES! I think Personal Taste is gonna be a fun and campy show with full of laughs and good entertainment. It's hard to go wrong when you have Son anchoring the show while having Lee as her side-kick.

Personal Taste is now showing on Singapore's Channel U every Saturday at 9.30pm to 11pm. Episode 3 will be screened this weekend. Alternatively, you can catch replays of the series on the "Catch-up TV" on the XINMSN website. Click on this link to catch the first 3 episodes. Enjoy!

Wonder Girls - Nobody (MV)

Sigh... it has been another long hiatus from HelloHallyu. Although we have been away, we have still be faithfully following some of the latest Korean dramas, with Queen Seon Deok being the drama we last watched.

There's no better way for us than to 'reconnect' with K-pop through Wonder Girls' "Nobody". While it's a tad dated, but we think this catchy tune captures the essence of why we are still so into K-pop after all these years. Enjoy!

Movie Review: My Girlfriend is an Agent (2009)

Yesterday we finally got to watch My Girlfriend is An Agent. It was great. In fact, I don't remember seeing a more hilarious movie for the longest time. It's probably also one of the more entertaining Asian films I have seen in years. Hong Kong movies have generally been crap and I don't know enough Japanese films to say. So this latest Korean offering gets (at least) a 7.5 out of 10 points from me.

Kim Ha Neul stars as a Ahn Su Ji, a top-notch agent working for the Korean secret service. She used to date Lee Jae Jun (played by the very funny Kang Ji Hwan), but because of the countless lies she told for her work's sake, their relationship could not take the strain. Eventually, Jae Jun broke up with her and left Korea without giving her a chance to explain herself. Broken-hearted, Su Ji tried to forget Jae Jun and subsequently began dating someone new. But as fate would have it (as is usually the case in movies), their paths crossed again 3 years later. The way they met again is really laugh-out-loud funny. A bit slapstick, but nonetheless hilarious. I won't reveal more; no spoilers in this review.

It turns out that Jae Jun is now a rookie agent, and is trying to make the cut for the elite Harimau team (did you know? Harimau is the Malay word for tiger and also the name of the company that produced the movie). IMO, Kang Ji Hwan is perfectly cast as the bumbling agent. Whenever he makes a blunder, his facial expression has just that right mix of serious goofiness, which is totally classic. And of course, making everything even harder, now he has to keep his identity a secret from Su Ji (right when their relationship seems to be picking up again). A series of misadventures soon follow. The nightclub and amusement park scenes with the two of them on field missions had me laughing till my sides ached.

This is a highly enjoyable movie. It's silly but in a good way. Besides the leading man and lady (who have wonderful onscreen chemistry, by the way) the supporting cast is also superb. And although it's supposed to be a sort of goofball comedy, the love story between Su Ji and Jae Jun is very emotionally charged, and has more to offer than your average Hollywood romance comedy. Mostly it came down to the star power and acting chops of Kim Ha Neul and Kang Ji Hwan, who manage to pull everything off convincingly. Even the more ridiculous moments (for me it's the fencing sequences) will just make us audience go, awww. We are ready to forgive these two anything, as long as they end up together.

In the end, we all know true love will prevail. So I don't think that counts as spoiler. :) Don't expect something too deep or too clever. But you can count on having a rollicking fun ride in this movie. This is entertainment at its best. Guaranteed to make you laugh. HelloHallyu recommends it!

[Posted by mydaemon]

Food Review: Kobayashi Hangul

What would cheer up a pair of wet, sodden and cold couple who's into Korean stuff? Well, a nice hot Korean meal would certainly hit the spot. Yesterday, as we trudged along the rain soaked Somerset Road to Cathay Cineleisure, our sole aim being collecting our tickets for the movie "My Girlfriend is An Agent", we decided that a nice hot meal would be a great way to start off the evening.

None of the food places caught our fancy since they are mostly the run of the mill foodcourt stalls, fastfood restaurants and the franchised Japanese restaurants. By this time, we were ready to tuck into anything that will satiate our growling tummies when we chanced upon a resturant by the name of Kobayashi Hangul.

Upon closer inspection of the restaurant's menu, we were happy to realise that it served both Korean and Japanese food. What better way to start off the evening than to have a Korean themed dinner before catching a Korean movie.

Scanning through the menu, I decided to try their barbequed chicken hotplate with kimchi set while Yupgi ordered a seafood kimchi jigae set.

Yupgi's seafood kimchi jigae in the background and my barbequed chicken kimchi hotplate is in the foreground.

Presentation wise is 'ok'. Taste wise is really disappointing.

The food looked not too bad when I collected it from the counter, the restaurant being a self-styled 'fastfood' Korean/Japanese  restuarant. However, we were both sorely disappointed when we started eating.

Having eaten Korean dishes from various places, foodcourt stalls to expensive restaurants, the food at Kobayshi Hangul is really poor. My grilled chicken tasted just liked a plate of chicken that have been stirred fried with kimchi. It doesn't taste anything like the Korean food that I have eaten at other places. If Korean food is simple adding kimchi to the recipe, than this  restaurant would have passed with flying colours. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy the substandard quality of the this dish.

Yupgi shared my disappointment with her jigae. Her 'stew'was simply a mis-mash of kimchi (again), seafood, and fish fillet (those you find in Macdonald's fill-o-fish). Simply put, it doesn't taste like anything that a respectable Korean would serve on their dining table.

On a scale of 10, the food we had is simple a poor rating of 4. The only saving grace for this place, if we can even consider it as such, is its rather reasonable pricing, ranging from S$5+ to around S$8 per item. However, given the poor food quality, this would be the first and the last time I ever eat at this restaurant.

Shin Min Ah in Wedding Gown

Can't help myself from grabbing these photos of Shin Min Ah posing as a bride in this photoshoot. Looking so radiant, one wonders who she's thinking of when posing for the camera. Whoever he is, he's one lucky guy!

IRIS airs tonight

The highly anticipated KBS drama IRIS will air tonight on KBS World (Starhub channel 173) at 9pm, local time Singapore, after the KBS news programme. Having heard about the hype it generated on the web, I am really looking forward to watching a hit drama after the rather disappointing My Fair Lady. Which reminds me that I need to catch the last 2 episodes in my recorder. Limited time, but unlimited K-dramas...