Kim Tae-hee (Venus and Mars, Love Story in Harvard) is a current brand model for food company Paris Baguette, and she’s calling in family ties to get little bro Lee Wan (Boys Don’t Cry) involved for the new Christmas CF.

Both siblings expressed minor nervousness that they would come off awkward together, but were able to strike a relaxed atmosphere once filming began. The CF will start airing on television mid-month.

Via Asia Today

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Tags: CFs, Kim Tae-hee, Lee Wan

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• Actor Lee Wan (Insoon is Pretty) revealed on a Yashimmanman episode taped on October 20 that Kim Tae-hee (above) doesn’t look so hot when at home and that she’s prettier onscreen than in person. Spoken like a true kid brother out to annoy big sis.
• East of Eden is killing in the ratings, with its latest episode on the 20th bringing in a hefty 29.7%. We’ll see if it can hold up against The World They Live In’s premiere next week.
• Unfortunately, Eden star Lee Yeon-hee (below) can’t catch a break. She’s been repeatedly criticized for poor acting, and now that extends to her pansori (traditional singing) skills. The 17th episode showed Lee’s character giving a pansori performance to the famous “Arirang” song, after which the drama’s homepage was flooded with scorn for her “embarrassing” and “inadequate” performance.
• Newlywed Kwon Sang-woo has been picked as the second favorite in a Top 10 list of Asia’s young actors as chosen by Japanese female fans (part of Asahi TV program SmaSTATION). He came in behind Taiwan’s F4, stars of the Hana Yori Dango adaptation Meteor Garden. (3rd: Jay Chou, 4th: Song Seung-heon, 5th: Jaycee Chan, 6th: Lee Junki, and Rain in 10th.)
• Moon Geun-young is back in action on the Painter of the Wind set after fracturing her nose during filming.
• Speaking of which, Painter of the Wind is set to pick up more fans throughout Asia to add to its already lavish praise as a “perfect drama.” It has already made contracts exporting the drama to Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and now also Thailand.
• “Kimchi western” film The Good The Bad The Weird won double awards at the Hawaii International Film Festival, taking home the Achievement in Acting award for Jung Woo-sung (who played “the good” to Lee Byeong-heon’s “bad” and Song Kang-ho’s “weird”), as well as the Maverick Award (ugh, that word gives me twitches) for director Kim Ji-woon.

 
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Tags: East of Eden, Jung Woo-sung, Kim Tae-hee, Kwon Sang-woo, Lee Wan, Lee Yeon-hee, Moon Geun-young, news bites, The Painter of Wind

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Lee Wan (Insoon is Pretty) and Song Chang-eui (Golden Bride) promoted their new film, Boys Don’t Cry, on October 14 at a somewhat unusual location for movie press conferences: an indoor pojangmacha (streetside food tents) in Seoul’s Cheongdam-dong neighborhood.

The film takes place in 1953 following the Korean War and two youths who lose everything and grow up quickly to survive in postwar conditions. Director Bae Hyung-joon perhaps didn’t seem the most obvious choice for the harsh realism of a wartime film — his previous film was the romantic comedy Don’t Believe Her — but he explained, “I enjoy coming-of-age films as much as I do the romantic comedy genre. Even if recent films depict adolescents in a dark, brooding way, they don’t compare to those who survived the war.”

However, he doesn’t describe his film as a re-creation of the war, but rather, “I aimed to take a look at people in adversity facing extreme conditions.”

Because of the subject of the film, the director needed his actors’ appearances to correspond to the poverty of the times, and actor Lee Wan thus slimmed down 6 kg for the role, even losing much of his muscle tone. Song Chang-eui likewise dropped 6 kg.

Boys Don’t Cry opens on November 6.

[Read more →]

Tags: Lee Wan, press conferences, Song Chang-eui

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I foresee this may start getting repetitive, but here’s another red carpet from the Pusan International Film Festival (we saw opening night’s red carpet yesterday).

This time, the event was the Asian Pacific Actors Network (APAN) Star Road. It seemed some of the stars who were at opening night were noticeably absent at this event, most likely because they traveled back to Seoul to pay their respects to Choi Jin-shil.

Pics beyond the jump.

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Tags: Choi Jung-yoon, Daniel Henney, fashion, film festivals, Jung Ryeo-won, Kang Hye-jung, Kim Ji-soo, Kim So-yeon, Lee Jung-jin, Lee Min-ki, Lee Wan, Oh Man-seok, Park Jin-hee, Song Chang-eui, Yeh Ji-won

Filed under: Chungmuro/Film by javabeans - 13 Comments →

It’s kind of unnerving how all the news right now is either Choi Jin-shil’s sudden death or the 13th Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF), and sometimes while looking through the news listings, it’s easy to confuse the two based on the thumbnail images. (Given the timing, as far as I can see, there were no overlaps in attendees — or at least, very few — between PIFF and Choi Jin-shil’s funeral viewing.)

October 2 saw the opening night to the nine-day festival; PIFF closes on October 10 and is the largest film festival in Korea, and one of the largest in Asia. Over the course of the week, more than 300 films will be screened from 60-plus countries.

Kim Rae-won and Han Eun-jung, above, came as brand models for PIFF sponsor L’Oreal. Other famous name actors showed up to the red carpet night; the opening film was Kazakhstan’s The Gift to Stalin, as well as the Hyun Bin & Lee Bo-young film I Am Happy.

PIFF’s red carpet >>

Tags: Cha Seung-won, Choi Jung-yoon, Choi Kang-hee, Eom Ji-won, Eugene, fashion, film festivals, Go Ara, Gong Hyo-jin, Han Eun-jung, Hyun Bin, Jang Dong-gun, Joo Ji-hoon, Jung Ryeo-won, JYP, Kang Hye-jung, Kim Ji-soo, Kim Jung-eun, Kim Rae-won, Kim So-yeon, Kim Sun-ah, Lee Bo-young, Lee Dong-wook, Lee Jung-jin, Lee Seon-kyun, Lee Wan, Lee Yeon-hee, Oh Ji-ho, Park Eun-hye, Park Hae-il, Park Jin-hee, Shin Hyun-joon, Shin Mina, Song Chang-eui, Yeh Ji-won

Filed under: Chungmuro/Film by javabeans - 46 Comments →