On October 8, the 14th Pusan International Film Festival, or PIFF, opened in Busan. (Yes, the city takes a different official spelling than the film festival. Blame inconsistent Romanization.)

As the largest film festival in Korea, it drew a large list of attendees, as you can see from the long list of red-carpet walkers. It was definitely a star-studded opening night, and even included one familiar Hollywood face (Josh Hartnett).

This year’s PIFF features its largest lineup to date, screening 355 films from 70 countries, and closes on the 16th.

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Aw, isn’t little Wang Seok-hyun cute?

September 5 saw the end of the 17th Chunsa Film Festival and its closing-night awards ceremony, which was held in Icheon, Kyunggi-do. The winners list was dominated by the popular, recently released sports film Take Off [국가대표, or National Athlete], although vampire film Thirst did well, as did lush period piece Portrait of a Beauty.

Full winners list below:

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The movie Billion [10억] seems to have adopted the English-language title A Million, which is odd since the title literally means “a billion.” I can only surmise that this is a rough conversion of money, since 1 billion won is a little less than 1 million dollars, which is the prize money in the plot of this reality-game-based thriller.

The plot is basically what you would get if you smooshed Survivor with The Most Dangerous Game: A group of contestants is dropped off on an island and made to compete against each other for a large cash prize. But in the hands of a psycho producer, the game takes a macabre turn.

When the film was first announced, the plot seemed okay, but what caught my attention was its star-studded cast, mixing up-and-comers with established Hallyu names: Shin Mina, Park Hae-il, Lee Min-ki, Park Hee-soon, Jung Yumi, Lee Chun-hee, and Go Eun-ah.

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Kang Hye-jung (Herb), Park Hee-soon (Seven Days), and Big Bang’s Seung-ri are out with a new movie, Why Did You Come To My Home? [우리 집에 왜 왔니], which opens on April 9. (Watch the trailer below.)

At first glance, the movie looks as quirky and wacky as you might expect from the casting (Kang’s got a history of playing oddball characters and is known for being rather offbeat herself): Kang plays a homeless woman, Park’s the hapless man into whose home she barges in, and Seung-ri’s the neighbor she kidnaps.

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You know how at the prom, everyone goes for uber-glitz and black-tie formal, only it’s done through the filter of a 17-year-old fashion sense — or rather, what a 17-year-old would think was formal black-tie fashion sense? So the end result is a really weird mix of over-the-top gaudiness that may have been expensive but looks cheap?

That’s kind of the feel I get from looking at pictures from the 7th Annual Korea Film Awards.

Of course there are some standouts — Han Ye-seul glammed it up with the appropriate touch of class and sexiness — but there were also a lot of beautiful women in ugly dresses that looked more off-the-rack Jessica McClintock (hey, it’s fake prom!) than red-carpet awards ceremony.

So if we’re talking red-carpet wow factor, it was a decided step down from, say, last month’s lovely Blue Dragon Awards.

As for the awards themselves, no surprises if you’ve been watching the accolades accumulate all year long. The Chaser was the overwhelming winner, with The Good, The Bad, The Weird taking up (a distant) second place. A few notable exceptions from the rule were Kang Ji-hwan (A Movie Is a Movie) and Gong Hyo-jin (Crush and Blush), but you can check out the full list (and, of course, the fashions!) below the jump.

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