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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Lie to Me

내게 거짓말을 해봐 (Lie to Me) is a Korean drama series that aired from May 9th to June 28th 2011 on SBS.

Story: Gong Ah-jung is a woman in her late 20's. Her best friend stole her first love, and when she meets her best friend and her first love who got married one day, she tells the lie that she got married before as well. Without mentioning whom she got married to, the small lie develops into a big issue and rumors are spread of a civil service officer being married to World Hotel's president Hyun Ki-joon. In order to avoid the truth being exposed, the two of them come to an agreement. Signing a contract, the two of them are married for a certain time to protect Ah-jung's pride and to help Ki-joon to sign with Chinese investors. As if it'd be as easy as it sounds.. Yoon-joo, Ki-joon's ex-fiancee appears, and also his younger brother comes back and so the chaos evolves.

Cast: The two main characters Gong Ah-jung and Hyun Ki-joon are played by Yoon Eun-hye and Kang Ji-hwan. Those two actors have a great chemistry and I really hope I'll see them once again in a drama that might be a little better to show off their great chemistry and abilities. Sung Joon appears as the second male lead character Hyun Sang-hee, Ki-joon's younger brother. While I totally fell for his character in the first few episodes, it seems as if the writer's simply forgot about him later and his acting seemed a little bit.. forced? The same issue appears when it comes to Oh Yoon-joo played by Jo Yoon-hee. Probably the last two characters I'd count to the main characters are Chun Jae-beom played by Ryu Seung-soo and Hong Soo-hyun as Yoo So-ran. To be completely honest those two seemed to be way more important characters than Sang-hee and Yoon-joo somehow, and I admit that I loved to hate So-ran but I seriously don't get who thought about the sudden change of her character.. what in the actual world happened?! Oh, right, the write changed after episode 10 I think..

Soundtrack: The OST is one of the better parts of this drama for me. I'll tell you more about what I personally think about this drama later but M to M's "안녕 정말 안녕 (Goodbye, Really Goodbye)" is pretty much awesome, beautiful and definitely not overused. Probably one of the best drama OST song's I've ever listened to. Comparing it to other ballad songs used in different dramas I definitely fell for this one. I also really liked Kim Hyung-joon "이 밤이 지나가면 (Midnight Passes)". Except for a few really adorable things about the theme song by Yoon Eun-hye and Kang Ji-hwan themselves called "Lovin' Ice Cream" (who in the world thought about that title? geez) and the OST itself I personally feel like the ballad songs were definitely the better choices in this drama.


Conclusion? If someone dares to mention "Lie to Me" around me it's the best to hide because my only reaction by now is:
YES! I'VE MADE IT! HA! I'VE FINISHED THIS DRAMA AS WELL.

Honestly, I've never dropped a drama I've started - not even You're Beautiful which has a really critical review and the lowest rating I've ever given a series - but I was so close to just stop watching this.
I readily admit that this drama has it's up's and down's - and I admit that the kiss scenes are pretty much awesome (I would've loved to add a gif of one of those scenes but such a spoiler would be unfair). What is sad, is that the down's appear about 100 times more often than the up's.
In fact I feel like I would have to rate two parts of the drama. I remember until episode 8 everything was fine. Episodes 9 and 10 were okay. But following episode 10 I found myself thinking "Why am I even doing this to me?.."
The first part definitely deserves a rating about 7.5 or 8/10 because it's cute and funny, a typical romance-comedy serie, nothing special in the plot but at least entertaining.
The second part therefore would get a rating of 1/10 maximum just because there are some cute things about it - but the characters completely change, the story loses it's natural and adorable flow.
Just look at this.. ew. Ah-jung was so strong before and then suddenly people ask her what's wrong and that's her answer? Ew, ew and ew.

As for the rating, the average of those makes 4.5/10. The last episodes ruined that drama for me, I just didn't want to watch it but I kept telling myself that it might get better. In the end. And well, at least the scenery was beautiful from time to time, so there were actually interesting things to look at.

At least it is not completely bad - it also might appeal to those who are new to K-Drama - but I refuse to even consider watching this again. Yes, some scenes, maybe in youtube compilations. That's all.

Anyway, this is just my opinion. Maybe I've finished too many K-Drama's before and couldn't deal with this because it's so much of a typical K-Drama (look at the entries about 'tropes' I've written earlier - everything is included in this one) but also be reading other reviews I've seen some mixed opinions. People either love it or they hate it. Easy as that. I belong to the latter category.

And this picture is perfect to show me while watching it..