Hey, KIM JAE!

HI!

Please meet Kim Jae Wook (김재욱), actor, model, singer and guitarist extraordinaire.
D.o.B: April 2, 1983. I can proudly say that he is my oppa!
He was born in Seoul but moved to Japan when he was young, and lived there until he was 7 or 8. As the story goes, he began his road to fame in a high school band, but took to modeling at the age of 17, the profession which made his career take off. Not surprising when he's 183cm.

This is a recent one of him modeling glasses, out of a whole bunch of pictures of him modeling all kinds of lovely lovely spectacles on his wonderful wonderful face.

Oh yeah, and he's friends with Lee Soo Hyuk, Y I K E S. Double date, Bunny?

He also likes children, and is supportive of homosexuality, or at least it would seem so if you've ever watched Antique Bakery... A filmic adaptation of the Japanese manga written by Fumi Yoshinaga, really no words can describe this immense viewing pleasure.

It is honestly one of THE BEST films ever, with Kim Jae playing a French trained Western style patisserie chef.

Oh yes, and his most important character trait:

So, not surprisingly...

Please watch it diligently.

As for other acting accolades, he has made an iPhone movie and a Japanese internet movie, Heart of Gold. Plus he's been in lots of dramas, the most recent being Mary Stayed Out All Night, where he co-stars with Jang Geun Suk.


And now, on to the music. I present to you, Walrus:


Well, Kim Jae in Walrus.


And again.

And once more.

The rest of the band are kind of great too though!

Second dibs on the rhythm guitarist or second guitarist...whoever he is.

So this is the first MV, for the song To Be, which basically is all of these images come to life:

You can never have too much rock and roll smashing of the guitar, and I just love the stylistic cigarette smoking at the neck of the guitar, so indie.

This single actually came out a while ago now and just for reference, before this even happened, the first music I heard of theirs was a Beatles cover. Bless. I can't get enough of him and his tambourine, and then the Japanese too, flawless.
But really, what compelled me to write this was the release of the second MV from the newest song Seoul Witch. Here are some of my favourite bits:

To be honest, it is certainly not the most exciting video that I have ever seen, and I realised this upon making the GIF, but it doesn't need to be, it really doesn't. Why? Because if it were, I probably wouldn't even be breathing, not with Kim Jae in there. Just him walking and talking is enough. And lounging around playing guitar, and swimming and getting mad. I do feel a little sorry for the rest of the band - surely they could have given blondie a supporting actor part or something?

In all honestly, I don't love the music as much as my beloved autotune club bangers (I lost all of my musical morals a long while ago), but it's certainly not bad. To hear the whole self titled album for yourself, go here. And this is his official website (of which Walrus seems to be a subset).

Really I just needed the tiniest push to actually get back to blogging, and to talk about him. And if by now you are into Kim Jae even half as much as me, or think you will be, then this is an amazing fuck yeah tumblr, which will literally bring you an endlessly joyful stream of GIFs, videos and photographs, all of him!

♥♥♥PLEASE LOVE KIM JAE A LOT♥♥♥

p.s. According to AsianMediaWiki: outside of music & acting, Kim Jae-Wook's hobbies include reading, baseball and soccer. He also enjoys cleaning in his spare time. It usually takes Kim Jae-Wook about 4-5 hours to finish cleaning. Afterwards, when he looks over his clean home he feels a sense of pride. While cleaning, Kim Jae-Wook finds he can contemplate on matters running through his mind. Stylistically, Kim Jae-Wook prefers an easy style and he keeps a personal rule that he never washes his jeans. That's fine with me.

TRICK OR TREAT. HARROWEEN part 2.

I'm sorry i'm a day late but at least we can drag out the festivities before our pumkins begin to rot. I'm also thankful that my planned content is different to Jessica's spooktacular Halloween Party (which was quite a concern considering our seemingly conjoined consciousness).

Originally I was intended to cover the lighthearted fancy dress attempts of our idols, and avoid the more familiar dark fashion side (Princes of Darkness) but after Se7en's casual vampire look I really didn't see too much costume play going around so instead here's some patchy loosely Halloween related bits and pieces.

Firstly I would like to begin with a more serious tone as we take a moment to consider MC Mong.

MC Mong is currently embroiled in such a messy and public scandal for allegedly having unnecessary teeth removed in order to evade his madatory military service, last I heard he was found guilty, was going to be charged and his future is either "straight to the army" or "jail then army" which when you add in the national public shame and anger means that his career as a musician and entertainer is looking like it will "rest in peace" for the next few years at least :( I have no idea if he is guilty or not (he maintains his innocence) I only know that I really don't agree with mandatory military enlistment but I also don't agree with criminal offense... so all I can say is its a damn shame and a great loss to Korean variety and entertainment.

In memory of his career and all he has done for us (i'm largely referring to showing us the waking hours and candid dorms of 2AM and 2PM) lets take 3mins48secs to enjoy this Halloween gem :

I miss you Dr Mongenstein.

I'm going to give a special mention to T-ara for some excellent costume efforts although I only know a few of their names and they are not one of our generally loved and accepted girl groups here at Nunas so i'll just give you the link to their great Halloween costumes from a filming something or other in August (?!) 2009. I was happy to see one of them is Chucky which made me remember Shin Min Ah is dresses as Chucky in one of the Gumiho fantasy sequences (although i cant find a screen cap or video clip anywhere) and then I thought how it would be great one year if Shin Min Ah and MinHo went as each other for Halloween, or they could do a really great "twins from the Shining" costume.

I think my post needs more pictures and less words, so here's another fashion spread in the Prince of Darkness theme, 2PM as your dark knights, its old but I think its worth digging up, gothic chic and Junho in some subtle fringing, plus the use of fake crow is really phenomenal:

Taecyeon looks so youthful! and his yellow blonde tipped spikes are hauntingly similar to the current terror hair, but somehow the crow, barechest with a cape and the foreground candelabra softens it.

Whilst looking for those pictures I also unearthed hot ajusshi, star of Iris (aside from the dazzling star of T.O.P) and Hollywood movie dabbler Lee Byung Hun had tried his best with the crow and some skulls for another magazine, not "Another Magazine", it was for Vogue, but anyway...

Finally here is my Pièce de résistance, which I have stored away patiently for Halloween. Jessica Jane, we knew this day would come, we knew that somewhere out there in the world of K there had to be an instance of corpsepaint (and whilst this might not completely fill the dictionary definition, i'm going to take it as the closest we might get), I though HongKi would be the one to lead the way, how close I was.... You're Beautiful co-star ... i'm not sure YongHwa could pull it off ... so you know it has to be....

the one and only

JANG GEUN SUK

Thank you Dazed & Confused Korea for you failed attempt at what was apparently a Heath Ledger "Joker" homage, because you gave us so much more. A glimpse of death metal kpop and I love you for it. And who better than Jang Geun Suk?! of course it would be him, after all this is the man that opened an awards ceremony with a Hedwig and the Angry Itch performance . He's the blonde in the pink, the other hottie in white with the pink 'do is GD's BFF and eternally beautiful spooky babe Lee HyukSoo, whilst i'm talking about Lee Hyuk Soo, it gives me an excuse to post this Corpse Bride one:

and now I think i'm done.

Oh and Jess, the only thing more terrifying than the real K horror of "Triangle MV" ( and lets not forget who that freakish platinum blonde on drums becomes...) is the sheer horror and disgust I feel at the Ayyyy Girl MV. Triangle 2? SO SCARED RIGHT NOW.

- BUNNY

The hard sell: Magic drag and Toucholic

There are a few reasons why I like these songs featuring Jang Geun Suk, and this is what I will be sharing today.

I always knew that Jang has a little bit of a musical past intertwined with his acting history, not least of all from his spectacular role in You're Beautiful. But I never really thought any more of it, not until an audio track of a song with his name on it popped into my eyeline a couple of weeks ago. What a surpise I thought, what could this be about? Sadly it got thrown to the back of a pile amid a K-pop seige that insued that week, and I pretty much forgot all about it. And then I remembered it, listened to it, and discovered the MV in the related videos alongside it. Bless youtube.

The song itself is nothing really to write home about, though it has a catchy tune, a bit of a pumping beat and a brilliant "Yepp, baby, baby, Yepp" chant which proves very difficult to shake off, trust me. I may even say that it verges on club banger. In fact, it would be I'm sure (though not quite of the Big Bang grade) if it didn't have the terrible interlude, quite so much SISTAR or overly proper accent/pronunciation coming from our Jang Geun Suk.

The video is something, however, which propelled me to repeat viewing, a number of times. The opening scene for one. His waggling finger. Fingers seem to be pretty symbollic in K-pop as far as I have seen (T.O.P is one of the founding reasons for this theory - more on this another time) and this video fits this mode of thinking pretty well. And yes I know it is for a touch screen phone but still, it does.

So yes, the first few scenes, from finger waggles to thread passing through the eye of a needle? Yes. It's not some type of biological reproductive animation as I had at first thought it to be - I think I blinked at missed the close up of wool the first time around and saw a sperm entering egg... Anyways, a few forceful finger points later Jang reclines in his chair with coffee and a smile, how nice. And then we see that, oh, he is a designer, as he raises up the delightful garment he has made whilst in his studio using the power of his finger alone.

Next up, motorbike - or should i say moped - scene. As he cruises the quiet roads of Seoul I couldn't help but notice the full array of facial expressions he shows. It's like a shoot for his first actors' portfolio or something - by no means a one trick pony with a single smile. This is also the point when I started to think that the title of the song should be "Magic drug" rather than "Magic Drag". He looks high as a kite - a theme that runs thoroughout pretty much.

And back to the finger, after some jokey non-contact collision with two cars. You show them Jang.
--Cue lame interlude--- I'm not too sure what he's saying, but frankly I'm not too bothered. I'm not a fan of breaks in songs really, not unless it's necessary. And this is not. The best bit about the secne is probably the baby chick that gets a frame or two.

Then the lame girl band. As a general rule, if it's not 2NE1 I'm not interested. I would love to be swayed, but the appearance of SISTAR just reinforces my reasoning. No fear though, the finger is back with the reinstatement of the banging beats. And I think he's as fond of the finger thing as I am, drawing it up to his heart.

Now, ready, here is the rap, just what you've been waiting for. Atop a balcony in white cropped jacket and arabian scarf combo. You show them Jang, show them how it's done. And if they are still not sure, point them in the right direction with that finger of yours.

To end, a bag thieving incident and a worthy hero. In the chase I was interested to see the near on tailed(?) t-shirt flapping about. It's not challenge to the You're Beautiful costumes, but still. This thief, little tyke, gets shown both the hand and finger by Jang, my how he must have been afraid.
Finally, however, looking though a girls bag and phone though after you've just saved the day, really Jang. We are left with an ambiguity - does she really like him, or is it the power of the finger?? Maybe you should decide:

So, I'd say that though this lacks that sexyness of many ad music videos, such as the wonderful Carribean Bay, it's probably one of the most entertaining I've seen of late.


What also deserves brief mention too, not only for the name alone, is a previous song Jang did for Samsung Yepp, Toucholic.

Some of the lyrics are pretty fab and again we get more of him rapping, and an even better tune I dare say.

Please keep it in mind that Jang raps these lines.

To be honest, I'd say the whole thing is worth a watch and a listen.

"Do, do, do, do, don't you want it"

"I'm a t, t, toucholiiiiic"

It may not be quite in the same league, but there is certainly a strong feeling of the 2PM's about this. A pretty pleasant surprise from someone that I hadn't counted on as having any real musical tastes or abilities. I must say, I kind of like him as a rapper. Go Jang.