This year’s 12th Director’s Cut Awards were given out on December 21, and the top winners this year were Thirst, Park Chan-wook‘s stylish vampire-horror film starring Song Kang-ho as a vampire priest, as well as Bong Joon-ho‘s Mother, whose Kim Hye-ja is earning a number of accolades as the titular mother who goes all-out to protect her dimwitted son (Won Bin) from a false charge.

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Read the rest of Mother, Thirst take home Director’s Cut Awards (126 words)

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Post tags: awards, Jang Jin-young, Jeon Do-yeon, Kim Dong-wook, Kim Hye-ja, Park Bo-young, Park Chan-wook, Song Kang-ho

Remember the “music drama” Soul Special, featuring Han Hyo-joo (Brilliant Legacy) and Kim Dong-wook (Partner)? Kim Dong-wook has participated on the soundtrack, which also features artists like Rumble Fish and K.Will, and Kim’s track (“나에게 그대는”) was released online this week to such great response that within the first day of the release, the website went down. (Listen below.)

Soul Special is a twelve-part web series of five-minute videos that are released every Tuesday and Thursday. Parts 7 & 8 were released this week. (Watch Parts 1 & 2 in this previous post; see 3 through 6 below.)

SONG OF THE DAY

Kim Dong-wook – “나에게 그대는” (To me you are), from the OST of Soul Special. [ Download ]

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Read the rest of Kim Dong-wook shows off his singing skills (154 words)

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Post tags: Han Hyo-joo, Kim Dong-wook, web drama

Han Hyo-joo, who has just come off her SBS hit drama Brilliant Legacy at a career high, has a new project which takes the rather unique format of an “Internet drama.” Called Soul Special [쏘울 스페셜], it co-stars actor Kim Dong-wook (Partner) as her love interest.

(Hm, another web series. And this comes so soon after the other one, SETI, was announced starring Seo Hyo-rim and Kim Kyu-jong.)

Parts 1 and 2 were released this past week, which you can watch below.

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Read the rest of Han Hyo-joo’s internet drama Soul Special (175 words)

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Post tags: Han Hyo-joo, K.Will, Kim Dong-wook, Lee Chae-young, web drama

Joining the club of 2009 blockbusters is the currently screening film Take Off, also called Ski Jump or National Athlete [국가대표]. The sports comedy starring Ha Jung-woo, Sung Dong-il, and Kim Ji-suk has been buoyed by favorable word-of-mouth buzz and has pulled in over 7 million viewers since its July 29 release. It also picked up six awards at Saturday’s Chunsa Film Festival, including Best Picture. This is director Kim Yong-hwa‘s follow-up to the romantic comedy 200 Pound Beauty, a sleeper hit that brought in 6.6 million viewers.

Such is its success that it has also announced a re-edited version (akin to a director’s cut), also to be released in theaters, with material that promises additional fun and laughs that been cut out of the original. (That’s not surprising, since the original run clocks in at 137 minutes.) These added parts feature 15 more minutes of Ha Jung-woo’s storyline involving his search for his biological mother and his memorable first encounter with the eccentric Lee Jae-eung, as well as a new-and-improved version of the film’s opening Olympic sequence with enhanced graphics (7 minutes longer than the first version). The new version is called Take Off: The Complete Version and opens on September 10. (This creates the somewhat unusual scenario of an original and its re-edited version screening in theaters concurrently.)

Meanwhile, the Ha Ji-won and Sol Kyung-gu disaster film Haeundae, which opened the week before Take Off, has now brought in more than 11.1 million viewers, beating Silmido (11.08 million) on the list of biggest box-office Korean films of all time. Its performance to date puts it into fourth place behind The Host (13 million), The King and the Clown (12.3 million), and Taegukgi (11.74 million).

Via Star News, Yonhap News

RELATED POSTS

• 17th Chunsa Film Festival
• Haeundae eyes the 10-million ticket threshold
• Big openings for Haeundae, Chaw
• Ha Ji-won’s big-budget summer blockbuster

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Post tags: box office, Ha Ji-won, Ha Jung-woo, Kim Dong-wook, Kim Ji-suk, Sol Kyung-gu

Partner got off to its start this week, and it was kind of like I expected: flawed but fairly entertaining. Not a fabulous story, and there are some pretty big plot holes, but the acting keeps it afloat. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed Lee Dong-wook — but he is SO enjoyable.

SONG OF THE DAY

FT Island – “Troublemaker” [ Download ]

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Read the rest of Partner: Episode 1 (2,534 words)

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Post tags: Choi Chul-ho, first episodes, Honey Lee, Kim Dong-wook, Kim Hyun-joo, Lee Dong-wook, Lee Won-jong, Park Min-chul, Partner, Shin-yi

With less than a week left till the premiere of new legal drama Partner [파트너], the cast was on hand at the series production press conference on June 19. The drama is KBS’s new Wednesday-Thursday offering and stars Kim Hyun-joo (Insoon is Pretty) and Lee Dong-wook (La Dolce Vita).

Partner is described as showing a realistic look at the Korean legal system, although the preview stills make it seem as though there’s a strong comic bent. (I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what the tone ends up being, but with the first episode ready to go on June 24, we won’t have long to wait.

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Read the rest of Partner production press conference (403 words)

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Post tags: Choi Chul-ho, Honey Lee, Kim Dong-wook, Kim Hyun-joo, Lee Dong-wook, Partner, press conferences, Shin-yi

Kim Dong-wook‘s claim to fame was his role as scene-stealing, impish Ha-rim in PD Lee Yoon-jung‘s Coffee Prince, but now he’ll be starring in PD Lee’s competition, law drama Partner. How’s that for gratitude? (I kid, I kid!)

He and actress Shin-yi have been added to the cast, which already stars Kim Hyun-joo (Insoon is Pretty), Lee Dong-wook (La Dolce Vita), Choi Chul-ho (Queen of Housewives), and former Miss Korea and classical musician Honey Lee.

Kim Dong-wook will play the youngest lawyer at the law firm who comes from a wealthy family but also has a quirky and “fourth-dimensional” personality. I can totally see it already! Meanwhile, Shin-yi is back on television five years after her last drama, What Happened in Bali, and plays a comic role here.

Competing timeslots don’t affect how I watch a drama, but I wonder if Partner and Triple will cut into each other’s audiences. Swallow the Sun starts a month later but will likely draw a different crowd.

Partner airs on KBS on Wednesdays and Thursdays, premiering June 24.

Via OSEN

RELATED POSTS

• Honey Lee added to Partner
• Choi Chul-ho joins Partner
• Lee Dong-wook returns in Parnter
• Partner casts Kim Hyun-joo as a lawyer

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Post tags: Kim Dong-wook, Partner, Shin-yi

There’s another Korean-Japanese co-production coming out, and this one has rather flown under the radar. News came out about the movie Café Seoul [카페 서울] after it had already wrapped filming. In fact, one of its actors, Goong‘s Kim Jung-hoon, just enlisted for his army duty a few days ago (April 28) and won’t be around to see the film come out this summer.

Along with Kim Jung-hoon, the film also stars Coffee Prince‘s Kim Dong-wook, as well as Choi Sung-min (Big Sister, Saving My Wife); together, the three play brothers.

The movie is filmed by Japanese director Take Masaharu of the 2007 film Boy Meets Pusan and also stars Saito Takumi. It sounds like a simple indie drama, but something about the description strikes me as lovely: the movie tracks “the process of youths coming to realize the warmth and meaning of old things in the midst of the fast-changing streets of Seoul.”

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Read the rest of Cafe Seoul’s three brothers (150 words)

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Post tags: Choi Sung-min, Kim Dong-wook, Kim Jung-hoon

The upcoming omnibus film Ogamdo [오감도] has a provocative new poster out, and the first question — given its star-studded cast — is which of its leading ladies is featured in the nude photo. The answer: none. The production explained that the poster — which conveys the movie’s primary motif of “eros” — used a body model, not one of its high-profile actresses (like Kim Min-sun or Uhm Jung-hwa).

The tagline reads: “See, pass by, feel…” and is followed by the subtitle “A story about more than eros.” Each of the film’s various vignettes falls under the love/eros theme, but will be filmed by a different director, of whom there are five signed on to the project:

Heo Jin-ho (Happiness)
Byun Hyuk (Interview)
Yoo Young-shik (Shim’s Family)
Oh Ki-hwan (The Art of Seduction)
Min Kyu-dong (Antique Bakery)

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Read the rest of Ogamdo features love five ways (149 words)

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Post tags: Bae Jong-ok, Cha Soo-yeon, Hwang Jung-min, Jang Hyuk, Jung Eui-chul, Kim Dong-wook, Kim Kang-woo, Kim Min-sun, Kim Su-ro, Lee Shi-young, Lee Sung-min, Shin Se-kyung, Song Joong-ki, Uhm Jung-hwa

There’s a new omnibus film coming out, Ogamdo (not sure yet if it’ll get an English title), which is the next project for Happiness director Heo Jin-ho.

While it stars some marquee names (Jang Hyuk, Kim Min-sun), the announcement of its lesser-knowns is also drawing attention, particularly as the younger cast members are gaining popularity in the latest “kkot-minam” (pretty boy) trend.

Case in point: Jung Eui-chul and Lee Shi-young, whose names shot to the top of online searches after appearances on star-making drama Boys Before Flowers. Jung (top left) was the devious model Haje of recent episodes, while Lee (bottom left) played plastic beauty Min-ji.

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Read the rest of Ogamdo’s hot new faces (229 words)

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Post tags: Bae Jong-ok, Cha Soo-yeon, Jang Hyuk, Jung Eui-chul, Kim Dong-wook, Kim Kang-woo, Kim Min-sun, Kim Su-ro, Lee Shi-young, Lee Sung-min, Shin Se-kyung, Song Joong-ki