Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
To many misguided editors, one Asian is enough. Two Asians is overkill. Three Asians will get you called in to the office to be reprimanded. And also… Epik High is not a boy band. But they wouldn’t know that, would they?
In Maurene Goo’s novel “Throwback” (Zando Young Readers, $16.99), teenage protagonist Samantha goes back to the ’90s, where she befriends her 17-year-old mother, Priscilla. Satirical, humorous and thoroughly engaging, Goo’s novel also reflects on how what was once accepted as the norm – casual racism played off as a joke – is problematic when viewed through our modern lens.
“I sailed the Atlantic on an ocean liner in 1964,” said musician Peter Case. “That was pretty exciting for a 10-year-old kid. We went on some incredibly high and rough seas for a few days. Most of the people onboard were sick and upset, but I was just a child. I didn’t know enough to be concerned. The ship was lurching all around. The Beatles had just come out that year. I was listening to their singles on a jukebox in the cafe.”
Last seen in the Apple TV+ series “Dear Edward,” Idris Debrand is at work on the streaming site’s upcoming series “Sinking Spring,” where he plays the younger version of a character played by Brian Tyree Henry. “Ray is a complex character and we see some of the choices he’s made as a teenager and how they affect him in the present day,” said the British actor. “So [without giving] too much away, I play the reason why Ray is the way he is.
Steven Krueger stars opposite Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis in the Showtime series “Yellowjackets.” “I play coach Ben Scott, who’s the assistant soccer coach,” the actor said. “When our plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness on the way to the national championships, I wind up being the only adult and one of only a few males who are stranded with a group of high school girls.”
“Little Women” actress Park Ji-hu consistently brings a sense of gravitas to her performances, embodying the youthful characters she portrays in a nuanced and truthful way. Here’s my cover story on the 19-year-old South Korean actress for Teen Vogue.
Do Koreans swear? You betcha! You’ve probably heard them plenty of times in your favorite K-dramas, but they weren’t subtitled as such.
There are actors who sing and singers who act. Florence Dore is a professor who’s also an author and musician, and she’ll kick off her tour on March 21 to promote her latest album “Highways & Rocketships.” “My tour is a little unusual since in addition to the regular rock shows we are delivering, I am also trying to address the problem of how to bridge the divide between universities and the world beyond the so-called ivory tower,” said Dore, who teaches literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
When Alison Solis was growing up in Los Angeles, the Mexican-Cuban singer said she at times felt the sting of judgment from people who viewed her as too much of a minority, while some minorities said she presented as being too white. “I’ve definitely experienced the ‘go back to where you came from’ type of bullying as a kid,” said Solis, who simply goes by Alisun professionally.
“Crash Course in Romance” is about an elite hagwon math tutor who is so popular that mothers line up at all hours to get their children seats at his lectures. By chance, he encounters a former national handball player who gave up her dreams of competing on an international level to care for her niece, who was abandoned by her mother.
The “Green Mothers’ Club” revolves around a group of moms whose lives are spent pushing their young children to academic excess. They spend money they don’t have on after-school hagwons for extra tutoring. And they clique together and take turns turning on whichever mom has been deemed the weakest for that week. Ultimately, the young lives they’re trying to elevate are the ones who suffer.
“I am obsessed with Greece,” said “My Unorthodox Life” star Robert Brotherton. “The food, the vibe, the people – it is a beautiful place to visit and I always come home feeling refreshed, even after a debaucherous August jaunt to Mykonos!”
The hit reality show “Physical: 100” had a ho-hum ending that highlights what could’ve been if the competition were more fair and strategic.
Currently co-starring as Père Renaud opposite Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren in the Paramount+ series “1923,” Sebastian Roché – whose credits also include – “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Beowulf,” “We Love You, Sally Carmichael!” – talked to us about his unorthodox upbringing, making his theater debut with Al Pacino and filming “1923” in Montana.
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.