Last week IU released a new single in Korea called Spring of a twenty year old (스무 살의 봄), which consists of three songs. The title track Every end of the day (하루 끝), IU’s own composition Peach (복숭아), which had a digital release before the full single release and finally I really don’t like her (그 애 참 싫다).

IU isn’t promoting these songs on the music shows as she’s focusing on her upcoming solo concert, but Every end of the day still topped the online charts when it came out.

As the title of the single suggests, IU turns 20 this spring. In Korean age, that is. She turned 19 in “western age” on the 16th. Spring of a twenty year old is also the title of a short film which was released instead of a normal music video. It starts out in a documentary style where you get to follow IU during various activities, mixed with a personal interview. The second part is more of a short film of her trip to Venice, Italy. It also doubles as a music video for Every end of the day.

You can watch the film in its entirety here (no subtitles):

I made some clips for the music parts.

IU ~ Peach (composition clip)

15MB 2:42 H.264/AVC 480×272 PSP Ready

(download | thm | preview)

[…] there’s more! »

I watched the Studio Ghibli anime Porco Rosso the other day. It’s one of those movies that I bought ages ago, but never got around to watching. Until now. I was looking for an “easy watching” movie where I didn’t have to invest much. It fit that bill well. It’s a very laid back movie.

The story takes place at the Adriatic Sea in the late 1920’s. It is about a former air force pilot, who has turned into a pig for some reason and now makes a living as a bounty hunter, chasing air pirates. His plane is damaged during a dog fight and he goes to Italy to have it repaired at his old friend’s shop. There he meets the friend’s granddaughter Fio, who is put in charge of making the repairs/improvements.

I liked Porco Rosso. It had some nice moments, but some things weren’t explained or resolved. The ending is one of those where you get a summary of what happened to everyone after the last scene, which was a bit “blah”. Enjoyable none the less.

These are the best performances of Twinkle this far, in my opinion. I picked two of the ones where they have hand-held microphones. The vocals are more important to me than the dancing and the mics aren’t that much in the way of the choreography anyway.

Despite my aversion to anything with leopard print, I really like Seo-hyun’s outfit here:

Girls’ Generation-TTS ~ Twinkle Live@M!Countdown 20120510

27MB 3:28 H.264/AVC 480×272 PSP Ready

(download | thm | preview)

I love Tae-yeon’s outfit in this one:

Girls’ Generation-TTS ~ Twinkle Live@M!Countdown 20120503

38MB 3:28 H.264/AVC 480×272 PSP Ready

(download | thm | preview)

Last night I finally watched Hana no Ato (After the Flowers). It’s a Japanese period film starring Keiko Kitagawa. It’s based on a short story by Shuhei Fujisawa, whose work was the basis for similar movies such as Twilight Samurai.

I was planning on getting it on DVD as soon as a version with English subtitles was released, but it never came out, so after waiting for over a year and a half I got a fan-subbed version.

Keiko plays Ito, who is the daughter of a clan official. Without any sons, he has trained Ito in swordsmanship. One day Ito meets a lower ranking samurai, Magoshiro, who asks for a sparring match. During the match they make a connection. However, Ito’s future husband has already been decided and she tries to quench her feelings.

This might sound like a very romantic story, but it’s not typically romantic as much as a story of respect and quiet admiration. I don’t want to spoil the story more than that.

[…] there’s more! »

In case you’re missing the rest of SNSD while TaeTiSeo are promoting, here’s the music video for Echo (requested by Alex).

Girls’ Generation ~ Echo

25MB 3:30 H.264/AVC 480×272 PSP Ready

(download | thm | preview)

I like this song. It was included in the Run Devil Run repackage of the “Oh” album, but it was never promoted.

The music video was recorded in Thailand at the same time as their All About Girls’ Generation: Paradise in Phuket DVD. It feels so unusual to see Sunny with dark long hair now . I like Seo-hyun’s look with that hair band (Yoon-a and Soo-young also have the same one, but it looks best on Seo-hyun). I should watch this DVD set again.

TaeTiSeo’s first live performance was at M!Countdown the day before yesterday. They performed Twinkle and Baby Steps. I really like Baby Steps and I’m glad they decided to promote it along with Twinkle.

Girls’ Generation-TTS ~ Baby Steps Live@M!Countdown 20120503

31MB 3:55 H.264/AVC 480×272 PSP Ready

(download | thm | preview)

Baby Steps was originally sung by the American boyband Varsity Fanclub. SM acquired the rights for the song and made a Korean version for TaeTiSeo, which (in my completely unbiased opinion) blows the original out of the water.

According to the message included with the digital album, this is Seo-hyun’s favourite song on the album. I realize that the top picks is probably a marketing thing, but I could see this being her favourite (even though Tae-yeon owns the stage).

SNSD’s first sub-unit TaeTiSeo (소녀시대-태티서/Girls’ Generation-TTS) released their mini-album Twinkle digitally last Sunday. The CD is also out now. I’m pleasantly surprised by this album. I was expecting it to have one good song and then just fillers, but it’s pretty solid all the way through. Baby Steps is really nice (contains good vocabulary if you’re beginning to learn Korean ). It’s nice to have all these “vocalist heavy” songs where Tae-yeon, Tiffany and Seo-hyun can show off their skill. Especially Tae-yeon.

SM’s new thing is putting ads in the videos they release online, but this one is ad free (not counting the perfume product placement ).

Girls’ Generation-TTS ~ Twinkle

40MB 4:21 H.264/AVC 480×272 PSP Ready

(download | thm | preview)

Credit: source vid. hotsport@jpopsuki

The girls look so great in the video! The dance moves are really cute too. Tae-yeon is so gorgeous and I love Seo-hyun’s cute faces on the roof wearing the red dress.

TaeTiSeo (apparently Girls’ Generation-TTS is the official English name, but TaeTiSeo sounds better to me) are also going to be promoting on the weekly music shows this week, so expect some lives later on. If you’re interested in the official fan-chant, you can find it here (Korean).

This is my favourite picture from the digital booklet that comes with the album when you buy it on iTunes. I’m using (a cropped version of) it as my phone lock screen wallpaper .

It looks like the physical album comes with a bunch of photo cards. Going to get that too.

Watch the video on SMTown’s YouTube too, to help raise the view count .

Missing you like crazy (미치게 보고 싶은) is the theme song for Ha Ji-won’s character in the drama series The King 2 Hearts, which is currently airing in Korea. The musical director specifically asked for Tae-yeon to sing the song after working with her previously on Beethoven Virus. After having the song topping the charts, Tae-yeon was given the opportunity to perform a special stage at yesterday’s Music Core.

Tae-yeon ~ Missing you like crazy Live@Music Core 20120428

24MB 3:21 H.264/AVC 480×272 PSP Ready

(download | thm | preview)

Credit: source vid. from soshified

One thing I love about Tae-yeon is how her voice conveys emotion. Her stage presence is also great. I love her stage outfit here, btw.

I haven’t seen The King 2 Hearts yet, but it’s on my “to watch” list.

I watched Korean monster action movie Sector 7 last night. The main character, Hae-jun, is played by Ha Ji-won. The reason I watched the movie (apart from the fact that Ji-won is in it) was the reference to this movie in the drama series Secret Garden that I watched recently.

The movie is about a crew on an off shore drilling rig… and then there’s a monster. No need to explain the plot in more detail . It’s Korea’s first 3D movie, but I watched it in 2D.

I wasn’t expecting much from Sector 7, and rightfully so . Ji-won looks great, but that’s about it. There’s a lot of CGI. It seems like there are almost no proper sets, just green screens and a few props. It’s kind of cheap looking CGI which takes a while to get over. I was hoping that the movie would be a little scary, but it wasn’t even close. It’s one of those movies where whenever the monster catches up to the main character it stops and roars instead of just decapitating its victim. The actions scenes at the very end were pretty WTF-inducing .

The movie had the ingredients to turn out OK, but it was kind of bad . I agree with the iMDB rating of 4/10. It’d be great to see Ha Ji-won in a better action movie, though.

Apart from the reference in Secret Garden to this movie, another link is that Hae-jun’s deceased father is played by the same actor who played Ra-im’s deceased father in Secret Garden. Ha Ji-won also did her own stunts in Sector 7.

SM released additional news about the upcoming mini-album Twinkle by SNSD’s new sub-unit TaeTiSeo (Tae-yeon, Tiffany, Seo-hyun). Before the physical release of the album on May 2nd, the album will be released worldwide on iTunes on April 29th (on Sunday). The title track will be a “funky soul medium-tempo dance music with an arrangement reminiscent of Stevie Wonder style music from the 70s and 80s in harmony with modern feel”. I have no idea how to paraphrase that , but it sounds interestingly vague .

They also released the album cover(?). The concept in that picture is a bit different/toned down from the earlier teaser photos.

source: facebook.com/smtown

Update: a Tae-yeon teaser video and another picture were released:

[…] there’s more! »