Turandot: Popera From the East

The Korean movie Turandot has infinitely more to do with Broadway musicals than Puccini operas but it does call to mind those PBS specials (of both realms) in which live productions are recorded then televised for not-quite-mass consumption. As such, choruses stand around idly when the principals sing; lead vocalists hold poses in anticipation of their first lyric when a song begins. As someone who's spent a good amount of time in the theater, I don't mind these static moments but someone expecting a cinematic experience akin to Chicago or Cabaret might easily feel otherwise. But for those game for a Live From Lincoln Center-style experience...

Turandot (Bae Daehee) is a princess who heartlessly reigns in a kingdom of darkness; Prince Calaf (Min Woo-hyuk) is the heir of a neighboring realm brought to this doomed land by the search for his missing father. How Ping (Lim Choon-gil), Pang (Kim Dae-han), and Pong (Park Jung-pyo) came to be there, I've no idea. There are riddles to solve; marriages to propose; and ballads to croon or belt as the situation requires. The singing is universally strong. A little research suggests that South Korea has a deep interest in musical theater and with former K-pop stars Bae (Vanilla Lucy) and Yang Seo-yoon (The Pink Lady) among the cast, writer-director Kim See-woo's production has no shortage of vocal talent. I enjoyed some of the sparkly crowns as well.

Swing Kids: Race to the Finish

One archetype that has been gaining an alarming amount of traction on the world stage lately (and for understandable reasons) is the smug, middle-aged, racist, white American man who mistakes his largely inherited power for intelligence. It's not a pretty look, to put it mildly, but there's nothing about it that doesn't ring true in Kang Hyeong-cheol's Swing Kids, a weepy dance movie set in a Yankee P.O.W. camp on Geoje Island during the Korean War and which has as its villain an insufferable brigadier general played by Santa Barbara soap star Ross Kettle. The good guys are a black American lieutenant (Jared Grimes), a quadrilingual civilian woman (Park Hye-soo), and a captured commie soldier (Do Kyung-soo) who bond over tap dancing lessons which the American officer is giving somewhat begrudingly so he can reunite with his girlfriend in Okinawa.

Because Swing Kids is a musical of sorts, the fights between sides (and even within the troupe) sometimes take place as a battle of dance moves — and hilariously so. Because this is a war movie too, those feel-good fights escalate into gunfights with heartbreaking results. And because this is a Korean movie, the female lead is self-empowered, a woman who strikes back when struck, who's continually surprising us with her resourcefulness, and who never seems defined by her relationship to men. I never tire of this aspect in Korean movies, North and South.

The movie also has quite a cast of secondary characters: a chubby Chinese P.O.W. (Kim Min-ho) who has choreographic aspirations; a subservient lackey (Jong Jae-ryone) who turns one stereotype on its head; a bullying sergeant (A.J. Simmons) who may or may not be gay, a colossal assassin (Kim Dong-geon) who has the brain of a child... Plus, the translator (Park Hyeoung-soo) who gives commentary instead of translations and a band leader who's constantly saving the day. Oh, just see it already!

Mr. Idol: K-Pop K-Good

How you react to Ra Hee-chan's Mr. Idol will be determined entirely by how you feel about K-pop. For those ready to hear the same sweet sounds of a cotton candy ballad ("Summer Dream") sung over and over to the same synchronized dance moves, great pleasure awaits. For those enervated by prefab harmonizing and mushy lyrics, there's torture ahead. Personally, I couldn't have been happier.

The up-and-coming boy band busting moves and breaking hearts is Mr. Children, a strangely-named quartet that's been reunited (and recast) in the aftermath of their lead singer's lovelorn suicide. The new front man (played by Ji Hyun-woo of the band The Nuts) is more indie grunge than girl-inducing screams but Mr. Children's cougar-manager (Park Yeh-jin) sees potential in him, although you'd never guess that from her poker face.

To get her dormant heartthrob and his dancing, rapping band mates where they need to be, the stone-faced overlord puts a demanding training process in place: These boys will need to run, box and master the handstand if they're going to emerge as competitive song stylists in their own right. She's very serious about this last part. Handstands are not an extra, they're a staple! She's also serious about her drinking, which might explain why she's maxed out her credit cards and forgotten to play the electric bill. Whatever the cause, when the lights go out mid-practice one night, she tells her underlings: "Don't just look at the stars. Be one!" Anyone else sense that this woman has a lyric-writing career ahead of her?

And she needn't confine herself to writing songs for Mr. Children either. She could easily craft a solo career for backup dancer Ji-oh (Jay Park) whose Korean-American heritage could make him a trans-Pacific sensation.