Celebrating fried chicken with those Kray-gee Koreans.

Wish he wasn't sidewise.

SHINee is back!

Favorite Tracks in no particular order:

Dynamite
Justice-style super compressed dance pop with Onew's infectious screaming chorus - rocking out more operatically than the group has ever been. I guess those musicals have been paying off.

Beautiful
This song has been growing on me. Shinee is in a familiar territory here but a bit more tranced out than usual. Those minor verses blossoming into a major key chorus, transforming all those good vibes into lift-off velocity and then laying the groove back into a space party cruise control that is undeniable.

Dream Girl
On par with the best singles with lots of filtered wormholes and plenty of funk that opens up into a classically shiny, glistening chorus. Also, Minho's background drumset, dirtying up the clean in doubletime, is a welcome surprising touch to all that sweetness and sass. Plus, all the boys get some air.

Nice.

Lincoln
Thick of It meets American sincerity and moral(less - depending on what angle you're pointing from) ingenuity. Daniel Day Lewis is understated as a character if not the vibrancy of his performance.


Looper
Sci-fi, light on the "Sci", so easy going down, paired with art house "real cinema" values, also, so easy going down. A spattered curtain dripping blood against white clapboard siding in lieu of actual seen violence is what makes this movie not quite an action film either, despite all the bang. What is it then? Well, mostly, Joseph Gorden Levitt hamming it up in Bruce Willis drag harkening to 12 Monkeys is what!

Moonrise Kingdom
Twee and Whimsical and Nostalgic and Precious, all bad bad words. But in this case, chemically altered into a fairly straight forward good time movie that feels and looks like a storybook of an idealized past that never was. Unless it was for you.
Holy Motors
A series of short story vignettes that vaguely coalesce into an allegory of life and movie making and artifice and what not.

Plus, That (from Tokyo series) grotesque leprechaun drags Eva Mendez into a sewer cave lair and clothes her in a silken burqa while he eats rose petals.
Wreck it Ralph
Fun! Are you opposed to it?
The Raid
Tower defense as a movie premise appears to be hot right now. Wreck... Dredd... But this one does the action suspense deal best, letting the choreography do the work and filming it right. Cause let's face it, watching violent obsessives do the Muay Thai cross stitch is pretty boggling.
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Man, I'm so hungry. And I want to go to Japan.









Honorable Mention


Lockout
Because this movie is ridiculous. And because Guy Pearce, he of the ratty appearance and disposition, taking up the mantle of the Big Action Hero - against type and in the strangest way possible with atypically physical swagger as well as really unusual line readings - is a fun conundrum.

Contenders still to be watched...

Les Miserables
The Master
Silver Linings
Life of Pi
Anna Karenina
Django
Hobbit

As the landscape of Kpop over these past years has been notably crowded, I realized I should have been doing some documenting about which ones were coming up cream for me. So, with little ado, here are the picks for 2012, working backwords towards the first Korean song I ever heard with my friend Juna in her Acura Integra. And yes, these tracks are in order of affinity.

2012

U-Kiss "Stop Girl"

Wonder Girls "Nobody"
Shinee "Sanso Gateun Neo (Love Like Oxygen)"
2am "This Song"

2007
Super Junior "Don't Don"
Big Bang "Lies"

2006
DBSK "O"

2005
Tei "Love is One"
Super Junior "Twinz"

Vintage Kpop TO BE CONTINUED...