My Favorite Things: May

My Favorite Things” is a monthly segment where I share my personal and current favorites in seasonal products, health & beauty, food, decor, movies, TV, and more. Hope you enjoy these personal picks!

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TV

Touch Your Heart

Synopsis: Oh Yoon-Seo is a popular actress. She is famous for her beautiful appearance, but her acting is bad. She gets involved in a scandal with the son from a chaebol family. Her acting career declines precipitously.

Oh Yoon-Seo hears that a famous screenwriter wants her to play the lead female role for a drama series. The character works as a secretary for a lawyer. To gain experience for the role, Oh Yoon-Seo is required to work as a lawyer’s secretary for a few months. Meanwhile, Kwon Jung-Rok is an attorney for a law firm. He is arrogant and cold-hearted. One day, his boss asks Kwon Jung-Rok to let actress Oh Yoon-Seo work as his secretary for 3 months. He is not happy about the situation, but he has to accept.

Usually, I’m so busy that I haven’t been able to watch as much TV as I would like, but I learned to fix my schedule so that I can have more reading and screen time. This is a drama I’ve had on my watchlist since it came out a couple of years ago. I love the two leads in this drama and when I heard they were starring in a drama I was intrigued. This drama is a lot of fun to watch! Though it has a law office setting, it’s more of a romantic comedy between a lawyer and an actress. For the most part, this drama is lighthearted and very comedic. The banter of the employees at the Always Law Office made it feel like a family and the cast has great on-screen chemistry. I will say to be wary of trigger warnings for stalking, due to the past the actress is trying to heal from which takes place for the latter part of the story. But I’ll be sad when I complete this show. I’m hoping Lee Dong Wook and Yoo In-na will work together on future shows.

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So I Married an Anti-Fan

Synopsis: Who-Joon is a top star. Geun-Young is a magazine reporter. For potential news material, Geun-Young decides to attend an opening ceremony for a club. There, she witnesses top star Who-Joon’s violent behavior and she also vomits on him by accident. This leads to Geun-Young losing her job. Geun-Young believes Who-Joon was behind her firing and she decides to do something about it. Every day, Geun-Young demonstrates in front of Who-Joon’s management office. She begins to receive media coverage on her demonstration and soon Geun-Young becomes famous as an anti-fan. A PD approaches Geun-Young about participating in a reality TV show. The concept for the show revolves around a top star and their anti-fan living together. Geun-Young is in financial difficulties and accepts the offer. Meanwhile, Who-Joon is offered the same reality TV show and he accepts to improve his image.

Who-Joon and Geun-Young try to give each other a hard time on the TV program, but they become attracted to each other.

I watched the movie based on the webcomic of the same title about a year ago and I honestly think the TV adaptation is a bit better. The film felt a bit rushed even for being two hours long. The TV show takes more time with the characters, their pasts, and exploring the relationship between idols/celebrities and fans. With an enemies-to-lovers trope, it makes the show interesting to watch. I also like how they touch on how the lines between a person’s private and public life can blur. This show is currently still airing so I’ll keep watching. I just hope that they won’t drag the story out too long and tie it up nicely at the end.

Hodo Buzz

Synopsis: Tired of sexism and objectification in Japan’s TV industry, a Japanese female reporter quits her job as a game show host in Tokyo to pursue her long-time dream of becoming a news anchor.

Hodobuzz is a short Japanese web drama I found on Amazon Prime. It’s fast-paced, the episodes are short in length, and I think the blend of comedy and suspense was done well. I think if given the chance and the budget for the episodes to be much longer the series would be even stronger storywise. I liked the aspect of getting the behind-the-scenes look at the newsroom and seeing the team work together to create informative stories. The journalist in me was intrigued!

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Movies

Onward

Synopsis: Teenage elf brothers Ian and Barley embark on a magical quest to spend one more day with their late father. Like any good adventure, their journey is filled with cryptic maps, impossible obstacles and unimaginable discoveries. But when dear Mom finds out her sons are missing, she teams up with the legendary manticore to bring her beloved boys back home.

As always, Pixar never fails in having a movie that will make me bawl my eyes out. I loved Onward so much and how it’s not only a journey film but a story about healing from grief and siblings that bond together. The magical elements were really exciting to see and I loved the unique spin on a world with many mythical creatures. It was packed with many action sequences which were balanced out with quieter moments of Ian and Barley opening up to each other. It was one emotional rollercoaster, but a film with a lot of heart.

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More Than Family

Synopsis: When To-Il was 5 years old, her mother remarried. Due to that, they left Daegu and began to live in Seoul. To-Il is now 21-years-old and a university student. She dates 19-year-old Ho-Hoon, who is her student for private tutoring. She gets pregnant by him and hides her pregnancy for five months. When she passes the stage for getting an abortion, To-Il tells her mother and her stepfather that she is pregnant. She tells them that is she having her baby and she will marry Ho-Hoon. Her mother and stepfather are not pleased with the situation. To-Il decides to find her birth father.

I saw that Krystal, a former member of K-pop girl group f(x), was starring in a new movie I was interested in. She’s a solid actress and I had been hearing about this movie a lot. The movie is a family melodrama with some fun wacky antics and comedy to balance out the movie as a whole. This was a great movie! The film originally premiered at the Busan International Film Festival and is a winner of my eyes. I was engrossed Krystal plays an expectant mother grappling with feelings of being estranged from her father as a child. The film discusses what the definition of “family” is and I like how they tackled heavier issues that are brought up in the plot. I highly recommend watching this film.

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Youtube

At the beginning of May, I did a post about snail mail with my pen pal/friend Savindi and I thought of this video which I watched a couple of months ago. It was such a touching documentary and it made me cry watching a woman’s journey to connect with her friend she met so many years ago.

Cinema Therapy

I love watching YouTube videos that analyze films and Cinema Therapy is a good one. They have one filmmaker and a therapist dissect popular films and pick out some of the themes and mental health issues they address. It’s really interesting and gives a new view on movies that I hadn’t really considered before.

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Music

Telepatía by Kali Uchis

I’ve heard Kali featured on many artists’ tracks and this is the first solo work I’ve listened to. I like the summer vibes that I get from this song and she has smooth vocals that mesh well with the melody. I’d like to check out more of her music!

Party Forever by Simon Dominic

AOMG has some fantastic artists at their label and one of my newer favorites is Simon Dominic. I love how chill this song is and the overall vibe it has. It’s catchy and one of the many songs I’ve been listening to while I’m cruising in my car.

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What are some of your favorite things from May? Share your thoughts in the comment section below. 

*This post is in no way sponsored