Little Black Dress

마이 블랙 미니드레스 (My Black Mini Dress; Little Black Dress) is a South Korean Movie that was directed by Heo In-moo and released in 2011. It has a running time of 107 minutes.


Story: The movie deals with the friendship, hopes, wishes and failures of four 24 year-olds who just graduated from university.
Yoo-min still doesn't know what she wants to do but ends up working as a supporting writer. Going to the interview in a sports suit because she was told to her new boss sends her off to buy clothes with the credit card given to her and she ends up buying a black mini dress at a luxury department store and accepts the job. However, her job mainly consists of organizing papers or taking care of the main writer's twin sons. She runs into Young-mi one day, a girl she knew from highschool, who also works as a supporting writer.
Hye-ji is a party girl and busy enjoying life to its fullest. One day she is scouted by a talent agency because the manager saw her dancing in a club. Shooting to stardom quickly she experiences her friends' jealousy as well as the problems of sudding stardom.
Soo-jin tried to become an actress but failed and is most jealous of Hye-ji. After failing in many auditions she faked her degree and started to work as a tutor.
Min-hee has rich parents who are going to get divorced. In order to avoid the drama she wants to study abroad but her language skills are not good enough so she wants to get Hye-ji to attend an academy with her.


Cast: Yoon Eun-hye portrays the kinda clueless character of Yoo-min good but it wasn't really an outstanding performance. In certain parts her acting seems a little bit bland.
Park Han-byul as Hye-ji did a good job portraying her character and the problems of the sudden rise to fame as well as the regular fights with Soo-jin. An actress playing in actress - it sounds a bit ironic but the role was played fairly well.
Cha Ye-ryun was best in her role as the jealous and unsuccessful tutor who just wants to become an actress instead of teaching. As mentioned just above the fights with Soo-jin are portrayed well.
Yoo In-na as Min-hee is of course incredibly beautiful but just seems to be the typical, dumb kid born to rich parents. I won't say the acting was bland but it was just ridiculous and unrealistic.

My rating for this movie is a 3.5/10 and it is not only a little bit disappointing.
While it does remind me of Sex and the City in certain ways it is just a pointless movie - what are they trying to say with this? In the very first place, why are the girls still friends? If they are jealous of each other and don't get along what is the reason? Is there a special bond? Why did they even bring in a male character? This movie was somehow funny just because it did not make sense and didn't really have a point or a plot at all.

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Second-Female-Lead-Syndrome

After following the Second-Male-Lead-Syndrome - we cannot forget about their female counterparts. We could actually summarize it as the Second-Lead-Syndrome but both have different effects.

Let's be honest, in most dramas the second female leads belong to a not-so-positive category. It's not only that they're trying to manipulate everything and anyone for their personal benefits - most of them are pretty annoying as well and sometimes I just reach the point when I want to beat them up because they are seriously pissing me off. But I admit that they usually are really beautiful women - that's why they're not used to being rejected.
Sure there are some good second female leads, sometimes this manipulative type of character is represented by the mother of the male lead, or maybe someone else who's related to the male lead or female lead in any way.

Who were the most annoying Second-Female-Lead-Syndrome characters then?

The first one that appears in my list is Ok Joo-hyun in The Musical". Yes, at some point her character was pitiful but still one of the most annoying female characters I've ever seen in a Korean drama.

Now we have Kim Yoo-ri in The Master's Sun. In the end she's not that bad though she is annoying throughout the story, yes, but she's not one of the typical characters falling into the category of this syndrome.

However, NOW we have the personification of this syndrome! I think I've never, never, never hated a female character as much as I did hate Jung Yoo-mi in Rooftop Prince. There wasn't even one time when I was freaking out because of a second female lead this much. But what should I say.. People always get what they deserve. So does Hong Se-na. Yes, karma is a bitch.

Another female character that seriously made me freak out.. I don't even know what to say about such a malicious person. Park Soo-jin was seriously getting on my nerves in Flower Boy Next Door. She wasn't trying to get involved with the male lead, that's the only thing she did right, but her character was still one of the most annoying ones I remember.

The next one is Yoo In-na in You Who Came From The Stars. I somehow couldn't dislike her that much though because in fact I do understand her frustration after years of hard work. However, back-stabbing someone who thought of you as their best friend for years definitely isn't the right thing to do.

Of course there are more female characters that fit into this category. But compared to the male leads these manipulative characters are sometimes taken by others as well. We still have to mention Choi Ji-woo in Winter Sonata and Han Chae-ah in All About My Romance.

Sure I know that those actresses might be completely different in real life but somehow they tend to get on my nerves just when I see them in a drama again. However, when they're characters are okay in the next drama, I'm usually able to forgive them.

You Who Came From The Stars

별에서 온 그대 (You Who Came From The Stars/ My Love From Another Star) is a Korean drama series that aired on SBS from December 18th 2013 to February 27th 2014. The drama consists of 21 episodes, a special episode was aired on February 7th 2014 as well.

Story: Do Min-joon is an alien who came to Earth 400 years ago. In the past he experienced that his extraordinary abilities can cause him a lot of trouble so he's trying to stay on his own without getting involved with humans too much.
Actress Cheon Song-yi ends up in his class in university and by chance also moves into the apartment next to his so the two of them get to meet often. Since Cheon Song-yi is the reincarnation of a girl Do Min-joon used to know he tries to protect her as good as possible and therefore has trouble hiding his true identity..

Cast: Kim Soo-hyun accepted the role of the cold-hearted alien Do Min-joon. What can I say? He's good and he knows that.. now I really want an alien invasion because come on, those abilities are like super cool, plus, his body isn't getting older. At least in the drama. Jeon Ji-hyun can be seen as Cheon Song-yi. She's pretty, and the role of an arrogant top star is definitely made for her, it was indeed realistic. Her acting therefore is great! Park Hae-jin as Lee Hee-kyung is the heir of a company and has been in love with Song-yi for ages. He actually does a really nice job as well seeming like a lovesick fool from time to time but he's cute the way he is. Yoo Se-mi played by Yoo In-na has been Song-Yi's best friend for a long time and she has been in love with Hee-kyung for a long time as well. So in this drama we have a love triangle that's more complicated than the usual triangles are.
But every drama with more than 10 episodes needs a crime story in the background, right? What makes it more complicated in this drama is, that the people involved are siblings of some of the main characters - or close friends.
Lee Jae-kyung, Lee Hee-young's older brother, played be Shin Sung-rok is involved in the whole thing as well and finds himself in a conflict with Do Min-joon because of it (a war he obviously can't win if you ask me). On the other side is Oh Sang-jin as prosecutor Yoo Seok, Yoo Se-mi's older brother.
As you might see by reading this cast/character part the relations between the characters are way more complicated than they seem to be. All of the actors were amazing though so the cast is a huge plus for this drama, I just feel like a correlation chart would take about half of my wall because there are so many characters and they all are somewhere connected to almost everyone else..

Soundtrack: The soundtrack is love, okay?
It's just the typical effect for me - the most played song in the drama which happens to be "My Destiny" by Lyn happened to get on my nerves like nothing else after some time. Personally, I'm in love with the two songs performed by Kim Soo-hyun himself, "너의 집 앞 (In Front of Your House)" and "약속 (Promise)". But sure with vocalists like Huh Gak, K.Will and Hyorin singing songs for the soundtrack it can't be that bad.

So at the end of the day the drama is good. Yes, it's a basic and romance-comedy drama and it's definitely worth watching it. But my personal rating is 8.5/10 though. Yes, I like it but I don't get the hype about this. Someone please tell me why like everyone said it was soooo amazing and definitely the most amazing drama ever and so on and so forth. I can only guess that it's like this because of Kim Soo-hyun and Park Hae-jin (they both make fangirl hearts flutter) and Jeon Ji-hyun and Yoo In-na for the fanboys (they ARE pretty, omg..)

What made this drama as successful as it was? I'm really curious but we'll probably never know.