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! »

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 .

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! »

Click for bigger image

A sub-unit of Girls’ Generation consisting of Tae-yeon, Tiffany and Seo-hyun has been formed. They will release a mini-album called Twinkle on May 2nd.

I’m pretty psyched about this actually. I think it has the potential to be really good. I’m expecting mostly ballads, seeing as how they’ve selected the main vocalists. It’s funny that when I first heard the rumour about a sub-unit consisting of Tae-yeon, Tiffany and Jessica I thought: “Jessica? Why not include Seo-hyun instead?” . I think Seo-hyun’s voice is a better match for Tae-yeon’s and Tiffany’s.

According to SM Entertainment, there are more sub-units in the works which will consist of different members depending on the concept and music style.

source: facebook.com/smtown

Surely you’ve heard about SNSD’s American network TV debut. Yesterday they made an appearance on Live With Kelly and the night before they were on Letterman to promote the release of the US version of The Boys.

On Letterman they performed a remixed version of The Boys. By the way, I can’t look at Bill Murray any more without thinking of Zombieland .

On Live With Kelly they performed a shortened version of the original mix, followed by an short interview.

I prefer the morning show appearance, since they performed the original version (although, in English, of course) and that there was an interview, which I felt gave off a positive image of the girls.

Tae-yeon uploaded a new selca to her UFO Star Call account the other day. It’s a new picture of her with her peas in a pod plushie. So cute!

She has uploaded a picture with the plushie before too and many airport photos show her carrying it with her. She actually has a whole bunch of them because when fans saw that she liked them, they bought more of them (mostly smaller ones) and threw them up onto the stage, like at SMTown New York:

I have to share these photos of Tae-yeon from SNSD’s concert in Hong Kong last Sunday. Unbelievably adorable! XD

They’re taken by Flying Petals. This is the page where I got them. There are even more pictures there.

Just saw this picture of IU’s “official” pose when taking pictures. So cute! (click for bigger image)

source: allkpop (sports chosun)

PS. Kind of funny that the allkpop post is titled “IU is the V-terminator” and I was actually watching Terminator 2 when it was published

1280×1024 SNSD wallpaper for January 2012 from Goobne. Black Pearl Yu-ri looks unusually dark here.

Source: yurui

Before IU makes her real Japanese debut, she’s releasing a “pre-debut” mini-album in Japan called I□U, which consists of a few of her Korean hits, as well as a new song called Last Fantasy. It also comes with a documentary called “All about IU” on DVD.

Here are some promo pictures:

The first picture is of very high resolution, but all the pictures are heavily compressed, so the files aren’t that large.

Credit: weheartiu

You can pre-order the album here if you, like me, want it for xmas

Update: I made a 1920×1200 wallpaper of the big picture. I converted the colour profile, so the colours look better.