[PHOTO]Jang Keun Suk in 'HOT CHILI PAPER' Vol.65 July 2011.

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4:05 PM | 0 comments

[Photo & News] Kim Hyun Joong pictorial images for “Break Down” album.

[Photo & News] Kim Hyun Joong pictorial images for “Break Down” album.
Original : http://twssg.blogspot.com/

Kim Hyun Joong news photos from his special pictorial (limited edition) were released on 28th June 2011, displaying a totally different charm from the ones shown in the images of his solo album.

Kim dressed in a variety of outfits of different auras such as a black suit and a vest that expresses his muscular build, he displayed his magical virile beauty, raising female fans’ pulse rates.

Under the soft lighting and with the paints-sprinkled backdrop, his firm, muscular body, accompanied with diverse exquisite poses, resulted in perfectly beautiful images, presenting his different appeals we have hardly seen in most of the music shows and entertainment programs.

The pictorial of limited edition, designed to reciprocate fans’ love, started to be sold advance order, but the 110,000 copies were all sold out just in one hour. The photo album, due to be made public on June 30, is expected to include 48-page unveiled photos, along with the DVD featuring the music videos of “Break down” and “Please,” his mini-album, and its making film.

Netizens commented, “The Terminator of all limited edition albums!” and “There’s no other photo spread that can match this one~ Whatever he does, he just awesome”.

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8:04 AM | 0 comments

[News] Barista Kim Hyun Joong for “Save the Earth” campaign event.

[News] Barista Kim Hyun Joong for “Save the Earth” campaign event.
Original : http://twssg.blogspot.com/

Do you want some coffee made by Kim Hyun Joong? On June 27th, Kim Hyun Joong paired up with clothing brand “Hang Ten Korea” for a special “Save the Earth” environmental awareness campaign at Coffee Chu in Hannam-dong.

Kim Hyun Joong took over the café for a day and worked as a barista for visiting fans. Not only did he make the coffee for everyone, but also thanked the environmentally-friendly fans who brought in their coffee cups to turn them into mini plant pots.

The event, titled Hangten ‘Save The Earth’ Environment -which took place at Hannam-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul- was included an opening of an environmental cafe which uses homemade coffee and recycled coffee cups.

The campaign itself will run for a full year this year in promotion of eco-conscious habits. Its main focus is to remind everyone not to throw away their coffee cups and to reuse them instead.

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8:00 AM | 0 comments

Canadian Dollar Rebounds vs. Greenback on Stocks & Oil

The Canadian dollar gained versus the US dollar today, after reaching yesterday the lowest level in more than three months, as crude oil slowed its decline and stock advanced.
Futures for delivery of crude oil in August slumped as much as 1.7 percent to $89.61 per barrel in New York, before rebounding to $90.81 a barrel, resulting in the 0.4 percent loss. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 0.9 percent, the first advance in four days. The MSCI World Index climbed 0.5 percent.
The US and Canadian policy makers decreased their growth forecasts, reducing bets that the Bank of Canada will raise its interest rates next month. The negative expectations lead the Canadian currency to the potential monthly decline by 1.8 percent, following the drop by 2.4 percent in the previous month.
USD/CAD dropped to 0.9850 from 0.9858 today as of 1:51 GMT after it jumped yesterday to 0.9911, the highest level since March 17. EUR/CAD traded near 1.4093, following the advance on yesterday’s session from 1.4000 to 1.4086. CAD/JPY traded at 81.93 after it climbed yesterday from 81.32 to 81.97.
If you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the Canadian Dollar, feel free to post them using the commentary form below.

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3:00 AM | 0 comments

[Article] Campus romance to pull at 'Heartstrings'.

[Article] Campus romance to pull at 'Heartstrings'.
By meeyoo@koreatimes.co.kr

Director Pyo brings performing arts school to small screen
The life and love of university performing arts students will hit the small screen today through MBC’s new drama “Heartstrings.”

Star director Pyo Min-soo returns with “fresh green” stories set at a performing arts school.

“The word ‘youth’ reminds me of many things. I will portray the sweat and passion of artistic people in this drama,” Pyo said during a press conference last Thursday. “This drama is about people dreaming of art.”

Pyo is known for expressing the delicate world of professionals such as “Full House” (2004) and “The World That They Live in” (2008).



Heartthrob Jung Yong-hwa, CNBLUE’s singer and guitarist, plays Lee Sin, an applied music student and guitarist of a school band “The Stupid.” It’s his second time to star in a television drama, following “You’re Beautiful” (SBS, 2009).

The singer-actor’s eyes lit up when he talked about the role.

“I fell in love with my character and researched him a lot. He might seem curt and cold, but he is dedicated to music, his family and this dance professor,” he said.

“I got the idea from Kaede Rukawa in hit manga ‘Slam Dunk,’ who only knows basketball.”

Snappy actress Park Shin-hye once again performs together with Jung after “You’re Beautiful.”

Park plays Lee Gyu-won, a student of Korean traditional music playing the “gayageum” (traditional 12-string instrument). She falls for Lee Shin after watching his band, but her feelings take an unexpected turn when she is chosen as the heroine of the school’s 100th anniversary show.

She actually practiced the gayageum for about a month to play the instrument in the drama herself.

“I’ve got calluses and blisters on my hand, but at least, I can play the instrument enough for it to appear authentic on screen,” Park said.

The Korean title for the drama is “You’ve Fallen for Me,” but the production came up with a totally different English title “Heartstrings,” which recalls the instruments they play — the guitar and gayageum.

Song Chang-ui plays Kim Seok-hyun, a famed director from Broadway who returns to his alma mater to direct the centennial performance. When he returns to the school, he meets ex-girlfriend Jeong Yun-su, who left him to pursue her dance career but gave up due to injury.



The drama is co-produced by the Seoul Institute of the Arts, which provided its campus for filming. Song is a graduate of this arts-specialized university and returned to the campus to shoot the drama.

“The campus was moved from downtown Seoul to the current Ansan location when I was at the school. The classrooms, library and the atmosphere made me feel nostalgic,” Song said.

Actress Soh Yi-hyun plays a tragic dance professor Jeong, who is loved by both Lee Sin and Kim. CNBLUE band member Kang Min-hyuk also joins the drama playing a timid student.

Pyo thinks the student-professor relationship is a reciprocal one.

“What I think of the relationship between a teacher and a pupil is more like the relationship between Jung and me. I learn from him, while he learns from me. It is not a unilateral relationship, but we both give and receive something from each other.”

In the drama, the characters will grow through the 16 episodes, learning from each other whether they are students or teachers, he said.

The drama has already been sold to some eight countries before airing, including Japan, China and North America.

“Jung and Park’s popularity abroad ignited overseas sales of the drama,” an official of JS Pictures, the production company, said.

The show airs at 9:55 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays on MBC.

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2:39 AM | 0 comments

[Talk of the town] ‘Winter Sonata’ star’s tax suit rejected by court.

[Talk of the town] ‘Winter Sonata’ star’s tax suit rejected by court.
Cr. - Yonhap

A local court dismissed popular entertainer and “Winter Sonata” star Bae Yong-joon’s request to cancel part of his hefty income tax Wednesday, citing his failure to declare his income properly.

The Suwon District Court rejected Bae’s case, filed against a regional tax office head in order to annul about 2.1 billion won ($2 million) out of a total 2.3 billion won in income tax imposed for his 2005 earnings.

Bae declared an annual net income of 6.9 billion won for 2005 after deducting 7.4 billion won as a necessary expenditure out of his total earnings of 23.8 billion won. But the court acknowledged only 240 million won as proven spending, levying a hefty income tax.

“It’s hard to recognize the 7.4 billion won spending deduction as a necessary expenditure given his income and amount of expenditures,” Judge Kim Gyeong-ran of the court said, adding that production firms and advertisers covered most costs declared as commercial and drama production spending.

The court noted Bae failed to prove his spending, in which burden of proof falls on the income declarer.

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11:34 PM | 0 comments

Toon Talk: Mater Days

One could call Pixar’s seemingly unending winning streak an embarrassment of riches. With a string of number one box office hits and Academy Award wins, not to mention all the critical huzzahs and audience love, it’s not entirely unforgivable that the studio would take a chance to rest on their laurels for a bit with their latest animated release Cars 2 (in theaters now).

Ask any Pixar fan to name their favorite Pixar movie and chances are you won’t hear Cars mentioned much. It is also one of only two Pixars to not win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature since the category’s creation in 2001 (ironically, the other is Monsters, Inc., which will also get a sequel next year). So why a second Cars instead of a sequel to one of Pixar’s bigger, more beloved hits like Finding Nemo or The Incredibles...?

Click here to continue reading my Toon Talk review of Cars 2 at LaughingPlace.com.

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11:00 PM | 0 comments