Awards, awards, awards! And tons of pretty people.

As with yesterday’s MBC Drama Awards, note that winners are decided in part due to popularity, in part due to ratings and politics. That said, I don’t think anyone will argue with their Daesang winner, Shin Ha-kyun (below), who has been tearing it up on Monday and Tuesday nights with medical drama Brain.

Also no surprise was the awarding of runner-up acting prizes to The Princess’s Man‘s pair, Park Shi-hoo and Moon Chae-won (above), which bagged a number of awards.
As did weekend hit Ojakkyo Brothers.

(...)
Read the rest of 2011 KBS Drama Awards (2,271 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2011. | Permalink | 98 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: awards, Chun Jung-myung, Daniel Choi, Eugene, Han Eun-jung, Han Hye-jin, Hong Soo-hyun, Hwang Woo-seul-hye, Jang Nara, Joo-won, Jung Jin-young, Jung Woong-in, JYP, Kim Min-seo, Kim Soo-hyun, Lee Jang-woo, Lee Jong-hyuk, Lee Shi-young, Lee Yoon-ji, Moon Chae-won, Moon Jung-hee, Park Jung-ah, Park Min-young, Park Shi-hoo, Shin Ha-kyun, Suzy, UEE

Baby-Faced Beauty has been performing well in its Monday-Tuesday hour, and now KBS has granted it a 2-episode extension, taking its episode total from a planned 18 to 20.

The Monday-Tuesday timeslot has been relatively close between the three shows, with Miss Ripley settling into second place and Lie To Me in third place, but Baby-Faced Beauty’s lead has been solid enough to merit the added episodes. (For the most recent episode, Baby held the lead with 15.5%, Ripley had a 13.7%, and Lie To Me a 10.1%.)

An executive at KBS stated, “The response to the drama is good, and there are places where the story can be woven together solidly, so we decided to extend it by two episodes. At the start, we’d planned for 18 but left the door open to bring it up to 20 if the reaction was good, so there won’t be any excessive dragging of the story.”

(...)
Read the rest of Baby-Faced Beauty extended (484 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2011. | Permalink | 125 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baby-Faced Beauty, Daniel Choi, Jang Nara, Kim Min-seo, Ryu Jin

I know, I’m way behind on weighing in on Baby-Faced Beauty, with it almost halfway done with its 18-episode run. Most of the time if I fall behind on a drama, I’ll just let it go, but I’ve been finding this one sweet and charming — and incredibly pretty to look at — that I wanted to give it a proper introduction, at least.

The drama, like many others past and present, is based on one lie that snowballs out of control, which in this case is about age/identity. The show therefore plays a lot with the concept of age, seniority, and rank in the workplace, which is an interesting motif upon which to hang a story since age is one of those things that plays a huge part in the social fabric of modern Korea. It’s a part of every introduction between people, and built into every interaction big or small, since the very language used between people is determined by one’s age/rank relation to the other. The drama manages to work in the topic without being too heavy-handed about it, which I appreciate, and Jang Nara does a good job being cute, conflicted, and compelling as the 34-going-on-25 heroine.

SONG OF THE DAY

Trans Fixion – “Cover Girl” [ Download | Alternate DL ]

(...)
Read the rest of Baby-Faced Beauty: Episodes 1-4 (3,786 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2011. | Permalink | 171 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baby-Faced Beauty, Daniel Choi, featured, first episodes, Hyun Young, Jang Nara, Kim Min-seo, Oh Yeon-seo, Ryu Jin

I hope you guys all stocked up on your sleep, because with the premiere of Baby-Faced Beauty coming on Monday, you might find yourself having to make some important decisions about how to use your time.

And while this drama wasn’t initially on my radar as much as some other higher-profile ones, the more I see of it, the more I’m warming to its frothy cuteness. If the drama has anywhere near the bright, fluffy fun promised by the stills, I’ll be a happy camper. Except for the part where I feel conflicted about how to watch everything I want to watch without turning into a zombie, of course.

So here we go, a little refresher on the story, with a few speculations thrown in the mix:

(...)
Read the rest of Posters, previews, and predictions for Baby-Faced Beauty (436 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2011. | Permalink | 84 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baby-Faced Beauty, Daniel Choi, Jang Nara, Kim Min-seo, Ryu Jin

The trailer for KBS’s upcoming Baby-Faced Beauty is out, and it’s really pretty adorable. Not that I was expecting it to be bad, but I just expected more of the usual trendy type stuff, not something quite so quirky and refreshing.

In case you need a refresher: Baby-Faced Beauty is about a 34-year-old woman who looks a decade younger, gets fired from her old job because of her true age, and gets hired at a new, better job where she meets her love interests (one is a CEO boss, the other a younger guy with the opposite issue, as he looks older than his relatively young years) and pursues her dream of being a fashion designer. But wouldn’tcha know, her rival in business AND in love happens to be a beautiful young woman who’s already a designer. Funny how Fate likes to mess with us.

(...)
Read the rest of Baby-Faced Beauty’s super cute trailer (179 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2011. | Permalink | 190 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baby-Faced Beauty, Daniel Choi, Jang Nara, Kim Min-seo, Ryu Jin

The Baby-Faced Beauty has gone from looking fresh-faced and youthful to made up like a circus clown on prom night with her makeup gun set to whore. The new KBS rom-com starring Jang Nara has released a few more stills; in them, Jang’s character is subject to the whims of her boss’s daughter and becomes her makeup doll.

The scene unfolds after Jang accidentally blurts some careless words in front of Ahn Sun-hyun, who plays daughter to her boss, Ryu Jin. The girl’s shrewd enough to manipulate Jang in exchange for her silence, so Jang finds herself stuck agreeing to everything she demands. As a result, the daughter decides she likes this lady who does everything she says, and wants to hook her up with her father. Aw. Too bad Jang’s other love interest is our hero, Daniel Choi, which means the girl won’t get her way.

(...)
Read the rest of The Baby-Faced Beauty gets made over (129 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2011. | Permalink | 20 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baby-Faced Beauty, Jang Nara

Every time I see recent photos of Jang Nara, I think of how her new drama, Baby-Faced Beauty, couldn’t have cast a more appropriate actress for the role. There are a number of actresses noted for their youthful looks (Choi Kang-hee, Im Soo-jung, Bae Doo-na), but Jang in particular makes it easy to believe that her 34-year-old character could be mistaken for a 25-year-old recent university graduate.

Here are a few more stills from the KBS drama, which is now busily filming in the several weeks it has before its premiere. As you can probably deduce from the props, the drama’s set in the world of clothing and fashion, with Jang playing an aspiring designer.

(...)
Read the rest of Jang Nara stills from Baby-Faced Beauty (236 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2011. | Permalink | 39 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baby-Faced Beauty, Jang Nara

Daniel Choi puts up his dukes in these stills for his upcoming drama Baby-Faced Beauty, which show tussling with another guy. In the drama, he stars as the leading man to Jang Nara’s youthful-looking heroine, who gets a job thanks to her ability to pass for 25 years old rather than her actual 34.

(...)
Read the rest of Daniel Choi to the rescue in Baby-Faced Beauty (270 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2011. | Permalink | 26 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baby-Faced Beauty, Daniel Choi, Jang Nara

With the upcoming KBS drama Baby-Faced Beauty, actress-singer Jang Nara has her first Korean drama in, oh, EVER — she’s been busy in China for the bulk of the last seven or eight years, and has consequently been pretty absent from the Korean entertainment scene. So already this is more than we’ve seen of her in ages, starting with the poster shoots (directly above and below) and the behind-the-scenes shots from the drama’s set.

The crazy thing is, if you compare Jang from her prior dramas back in the early 2000s, she actually looks exactly the same now. She just turned 30 this month, but she may as well have stepped right out of My Love Patzzi or Wedding. Minus the awful orange hair that was so popular back in the day, that is.

So she fits right in playing the 34-year-old lead, a woman whose baby face is her one advantage to offset her lackluster educational background (a mere high school degree) and her bad credit history. Her appearance allows her to pretend to be nine years younger in order to get a job working for a fashion design company.

(...)
Read the rest of Photos from Jang Nara’s Baby-Faced Beauty (439 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2011. | Permalink | 58 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baby-Faced Beauty, Daniel Choi, Hyun Young, Jang Nara, Kim Min-seo, Oh Yeon-seo, Ryu Jin

Jang Nara (Sky and Ocean, My Love Patzzi) has just signed on for her return to the k-drama scene, a much-anticipated comeback to the small screen since she’s been conspicuously absent for six years. She’ll be headlining a new KBS2 Monday-Tuesday romantic comedy called Youthful Beauty [동안미녀] (which could be translated a number of ways, like “Baby-faced Beautiful Girl” or the likes thereof). Well, if there was ever a perfect person to cast as an eternally baby-faced girl, Jang Nara is IT.

She’ll be playing a thirtysomething single woman with an eternally youthful appearance. So…herself? The character will be a Candy-type, someone who’s saddled with family debt, who has only a high school degree and a plucky spirit to get her toward her dreams. She starts out in the drama getting hired for a dream job because of her assumed youth, and then promptly fired when they find out her real age. Aw. Life is cruel sometimes.

(...)
Read the rest of Jang Nara to make her drama comeback (238 words)

© girlfriday for Dramabeans, 2011. | Permalink | 91 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Jang Nara