Did the Blue Dragon Awards sneak up on us this year or what?
As one of the largest year-end awards shows, the Blue Dragon always tends to draw out a good number of A-listers, and we saw plenty of them out on the red carpet on November 20 and posing pretty for photos.
One big winner of the night was the “kimchi Western” The Good, The Bad, The Weird, as was the thriller The Chaser and even the sports movie Forever the Moment, from way back in January.
But, as with any awards show, sometimes the fun is less about the actual awards and more about parsing all the red carpet looks.
Actors Lee Jung-jae (Typhoon) and Park Shi-yeon (La Dolce Vita) and director Kwak Kyung-taek (Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth) visited the NIS (National Intelligence Service) Security Pavilion in Seoul on the 24th as honorary agents.
Their visit comes before the remodeling of the NIS Pavilion begins on October 1. In the nine years of its operation, nearly 160,000 security agents have been trained there. After touring the grounds, the three made their way to the shooting range to try out their skills with real rounds and real revolvers.
Lee Jung-jae, who played an NIS agent in the action drama Air City, shot five rounds out of a real revolver (all five shots hit the bull’s-eye of his target — guess all that movie training came in handy!), while Park Shi-yeon did almost as well with three of five bull’s-eyes.
Former Miss Korea contestant (2000) and actress Park Shi-yeon shows off her long lines as the new model for Hilfiger Denim’s Wave Jean line.
She strikes her best fashionista pose in these new photos for the ad shoot. Lovely pics, but they look pretty heavily, um, doctored, don’t they? Someone got very excited with the airbrushing, methinks. Still, she does look pretty fantastic.
Park Shi-yeon (recently of dark drama La Dolce Vita) takes on the role of a spy in the new movie Dachimawalee: Bye, Villain! Take the Express Train to Hell [다찌마와 리: 악인이여 지옥행 급행열차를 타라], a comedic action spy film which from all appearances looks like a period Bond flick by way of Mr. Bean.
The movie, directed by Ryu Seung-wan, also stars Im Won-hee (M, Le Grand Chef), Gong Hyo-jin (Thank You), Hwang Bora (Rainbow Romance), and Ryu Seung-beom (Radio Days, Family Ties), with Im as the titular top-secret spy Dachimawalee who takes on a sexy new partner (Park Shi-yeon). Naturally hijinks ensue.
Finally, Lee Dong Wook fans can see him back on television! After rising to stardom in the romantic comedy series My Girl, he’s focused mostly on films and kept a relatively low profile; this will be his first television project in more than two years — and he appears with another My Girl co-star (although probably not the one fans most would like to see him with again), Park Shi Yeon.
The upcoming weekend drama The Sweet Life takes the place of MBC’s just-wrapped Last Scandal of My Life, and held its press conference on the 29th. In the drama, Oh Yeon Soo and Jung Bo Seok are a married couple whose lives become complicated in mystery and drama with the appearance of the Lee Dong Wook–Park Shi Yeon couple. Lee Dong Wook’s character goes to Japan on a trip and chances to meet Oh Yeon Soo’s housewife character; the two “fall in passionate love.”
While filming in the snowy mountains of Hokkaido in February, he’d experienced temporary paralysis of the limbs and had difficulty breathing. “I saw white lights and thought, ‘I’m going to die like this,’” he added. It was the result of filming for eight hours in subzero temperature — 16 degrees below zero, Celsius — at an elevation of above 3,000 meters, and sent Lee Dong Wook to the hospital.
Reuniting with his My Girl onscreen girlfriend after two years, Lee Dong Wook explained that it was comfortable having a familiar face around (ooh, holding back a face joke here), particularly at first because the other two leads were older and new acquaintances.
(A note on the title: I’ve seen this translated as “Bittersweet Life,” which may be because its Korean name shares a title with the Lee Byung Heon movie which was translated as “bittersweet,” probably in an ironic twist on the literal meaning. But it actually means “sweet,” and the promo poster bears the subtitle “La Dolce Vita,” so I think “The Sweet Life” may be more appropriate. Even though they may be using irony here too. In any case, the main website uses “sweet” over “bittersweet.”)
The Sweet Life films under the direction of PD Kim Jin Min of Shin Don and writer Jung Ha Yeon of Shin Don, Wife, Queen Myeongseong. It premieres this weekend on MBC.
