Grace Lynn Kung (from Ottawa) plays agent Jo Jo Kwan on the CBC spy comedy InSecurity. I have not watched the show but have noticed commercials for it while watching CBC from time to time last year and this year. The show is currently in its second season and you can watch episodes of it on CBC’s InSecurity webpage (if you’re in Canada).

Excerpt from the youtube page.

“(Boston Globe) Bus 19: Life on the Line – George and Johnny Huynh want a better life – and they believe they can get it through school. They have to. It’s the only thing in their control. Video and editing by Lauren Frohne/Globe Staff; Additional video by Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff.”

The Japanese Canadian beauty Mariko Izumi [facebook] (who is the niece of Bob Izumi) is in her 3rd season of the popular fishing show “Hookin’ Up with Mariko Izumi” and will be revisiting BC in her next episode.  Below is taken directly from WFN’s website.

Ep 8 – Langara Island, British Columbia

Mariko returns to one of her favourite places in the world to do what she always does there – eat delicious food and catch lots of Salmon!

Debuts Monday, Jan. 17th – 7:30 p.m. EST

I only just randomly discovered this food-related TV show on Sunday on Global TV from 7:30pm-8pm and it was pretty darn entertaining.  The Quons are a Chinese family involved in the restaurant business and are based in Edmonton, Alberta.

Here’s the description from the Family Restaurant webpage on the Food Network.

“Meet the Quons: Mom Amy, the doting control freak, her long-suffering husband Kinman, number one son Miles, and his two ne’er-do-well siblings Mandy and Marty. Together they run their two wildly popular Chinese eateries—one an elegant, old-world Mandarin dining room [The Lingnan], the other a Chinese chicken-themed fast food lunch counter [Chicken for Lunch]. Between serving up egg foo young and spicy chicken, the Quons serve up a heaping helping of laughs – and love.”

Season 3 premiered at the beginning of Jan 2009 so this will be old news to many but hey, I’m glad they’re re-running old episodes.

This past April, the show was nominated in the Reality / Docusoap category for a Realscreen Factual Entertainment Award but unfortunately did not win.

This reminds me I’ve been meaning to watch and review a documentary series about Chinese restaurants all over the world.  I better get cracking on it.

Check out stand up comedian, Eliot Chang’s official site.

Also check out his upcoming Comedy Central special on Friday April 23, 11pm EST

Congratulations to Montreal’s Blueprint Cru on making it into the top 2 on season 5 of America’s Best Dance Crew!  They unfortunately didn’t win the big prize but their accomplishment is still impressive.  Personally I preferred their final routine over Poreotix’s gimmicky tetris one.  You can watch some of the episodes online on MuchMusic in Canada or MTV in the US.

Some of the members of Blueprint Cru including Thien-Linh Truong also competed on So You Think You Can Dance Canada.  Take a look at their official site and the video below.  Peeps got some mad serious moves yo (my lame ass attempt at speaking like the cool kids).

You can also buy the official BluePrint Cru t-shirt.

Kekkon Dekinai Otoko aka The Man Who Can’t Get Married aka He Who Can’t Marry (2006)
[12 episodes, approx. 45 mins each]
Directed by Miyake Yoshishige, Komatsu Takashi, Ueda Hisashi
Written by Ozaki Masaya
Starring Abe Hiroshi, Natsukawa Yui, Kuninaka Ryoko, Tsukamoto Takashi, Takashima Reikko
Japanese w/ English subtitles

I’ve never watched a Japanese drama (or dorama as it’s called in Japanese) and I wasn’t sure what to watch since it seems to be hard to find a decent website that reviews them (whereas I can find a fair number of blogs that have an extensive list of well written reviews for K-dramas).  Brief research yielded some popular dramas like 1 Litre of Tears, Hana Yori Dango or Nodame Cantabile.  I’m not really sure how I found out about Kekkon Dekinai Otoko but I did decide to watch it based on the premise and I am absolutely glad I did.

To briefly summarize it focuses on the main character Shinsuke Kuwano (Abe Hiroshi) whose a 40 year old male and single but isn’t concerned about it.  In fact he relishes being alone and doesn’t get along well with others.  Think of him as a Japanese Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) except that he’s an architect.  He ends up meeting a young, perky neighbour named Michiru (Kuninaka Ryoko) as well as Dr. Hayasaka (Natsukawa Yui) an unmarried physician in her 30s. Kuwano isn’t particularly friendly to them at first but he gradually begins to grow on them.

Happy Together (1999) [16 episodes, approx 1 hour each]
directed by Oh Jong Rok, written by Bae Yoo Mi
starring Lee Byung Hun, Song Seung Hun, Kim Ha Neul, Jun Ji Hyun, Cha Tae Hyun
Korean w/ English subtitles

This is one of the earlier K-dramas having been broadcast in 1999 around the time that K-dramas began to spread across Asia and gain popularity.  The show follows five siblings whom as children were separated after their parents died.  Now years later, they are all adults and one of them is determined to reunite them all again.  However due to the circumstances that split them up in the first place not all the siblings necessarily want to see each other.

What made me curious about this series was the fact that it starred many Korean actors early on in their careers who would become very popular today.  I was particularly interested in three of the actors whom I had seen previously when I first started watching Korean cinema.  I’d only seen Lee Byung Hun in more serious films like A Bittersweet life so it was interesting seeing him play a goofball type of character here.  He overacts at times but the cheerfulness he exudes is hard to dislike.  I had contrasting reactions to My Sassy Girl co-stars Jun Ji Hyun and Cha Tae Hyun.  I liked Jun Ji Hyun’s character but Cha Tae Hyun who interestingly enough also plays her love interest here quickly became annoying with his overacting both in the dramatic and comedic scenes.