[Current & Culture]Sisa Culture Movie Awards: Best Actor of the Year Is...

One great way to wrap up the year is to go through the list of the best movies of the year and catch up on the ones you missed. Various lists are released here and there, and for the final column of 2023 Sisa Culture, I thought I’d create my own movie awards.

First, the Best Actress of the Year goes to actress Kim Seo-hyung. She has built her career by choosing works she likes regardless of genre or scale, and she has become a more remarkable actress in her 40s than in her 30s, and more so in her 30s than in her 20s. The power of her acting shown in the Netflix series Jongi Dal explodes in the film Vinyl House. This film is the best thriller of the year and, along with Next Sohee, one of the best socially conscious films, with Kim Seo-hyung’s contribution accounting for more than half. I remember interviewing her for over an hour on a film podcast I hosted before. Looking back, it was a great honor.

The Director of the Year is Kim Sung-soo for Spring in Seoul. He enjoyed his heyday in the 1990s but hadn’t received much praise in the 21st century until he staged a comeback with a blockbuster film surpassing 10 million viewers at an age past sixty. His previous work Asura became a late topic of discussion due to its political issues, but who would have expected Kim Sung-soo to make a comeback as a 10-million-viewer director? Especially with a film full of grim soldiers? He must have been surprised himself. Like the movie line, “If you fail, it’s rebellion; if you succeed, it’s revolution,” Director Kim Sung-soo completed a risky cinematic coup as a revolution.

The Movie of the Year is Concrete Utopia. It shares the award with the previously mentioned Vinyl House. These two films deal with “home” in completely different ways. They comprehensively cover the types of housing in South Korea?apartments, broken apartments, rental apartments, detached houses, unauthorized vinyl houses, and more?which is very intriguing. Although the title includes “Utopia,” Concrete Utopia actually depicts a dystopia and presents a kind of fable in the fantasy disaster genre, while Vinyl House portrays our society’s reality with documentary-level realism. For those who have seen only one or none of these films, I highly recommend watching both. Please watch them while thinking about the home I live in, the homes of our neighbors, and those wandering the city without a home.

The Platform of the Year award goes to Coupang Play. Who would have expected an OTT service created by an online shopping company to take first place in the domestic OTT competition and second place in market share after Netflix? But the real jackpot is set to hit early next year. For the first time in Major League Baseball history, the opening game will be held in Korea, and Coupang Play has exclusive broadcasting rights. At Gocheok Dome, the LA Dodgers will face the San Diego Padres, and after Coupang secured the exclusive broadcasting contract, Otani joined the Dodgers. So, the $700 million man Otani’s Dodgers debut game will be held in Korea and exclusively broadcast by Coupang. It’s no wonder people say that when you’re in a winning position, everything works out.

If you felt something was missing while reading this far, you have read the article properly. I forgot to mention the Best Actor of the Year. I place the trophy in front of the memorial photo of actor Lee Sun-kyun and pray for his peace.

How has your life been this year? If your life were a movie, who would be the winners in the major categories? I will greet you again next year. Happy New Year!

Lee Jae-ik, Novelist

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.