Portrait of a Beauty 2-Disc First Press Limited Edition DVD

Portrait of a Beauty is a 2008 South Korean film directed by Jeon Yoon-soo. Adapted from the novel Painter of the Wind by Lee Jeong-myeong, the film portrays Joseon-era painter Shin Yoon-bok (better known by his pen name, Hyewon) as a being a woman disguised as a man. Sin Yoon-bok is a painter from the 18th century who is famous for his erotic and satirical paintings. In particular, ‘Beauty Island’ or ‘Miindo’ is a representative Korean belle painting similar in its mystery to Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’ and Vermeer’s ‘Girl with the Pearl Earring.’ However, except for a family pedigree, no documents relating to the painter's life exists in the present day. “Portrait of a Beauty” aka “Miindo,” is a film that was based on a fictional story about Shin Yoon-bok’s prohibited love affair with the model of the miindo, and the price he had to pay with the vindictive punishment he received and the destruction of his documents.

Born to a family of established court painters, seven-year-old Yun-jeong is a young girl gifted at painting. However, the pressure is on her brother to carry on the proud family tradition, as women aren’t allowed to become professional painters. While her brother trains to take his place in the court, Yun-jeong helps him out by secretly painting for him. The little girl’s life is turned upside down when her brother kills himself.

In order to preserve the family honor, she is forced to take her brother’s name and lives as a man. Yun-bok’s genius and talent captures the heart of another great master of the time, Kim Hong-do. But her daring depictions of women are condemned by the royal institute as obscene. Yun-bok meets Kang-mu and falls deeply in love. For the first time, she feels the strong desire to abandon everything she has built and simply be a woman in front of the man she loves. Kang-mu sacrifices all for his love as well. Kim Hong-do, who loved the genius of his best student, ends up loving everything about her, and Seol-hwa, a Gisaeng at the courtesan house, possesses a love for Hong-do that turns into fatal jealousy. The secret behind Shin Yun-bok’s masterpiece, Portrait of a Beauty, is finally revealed after 250 years of silence.

A major television network has also followed suit by launching a drama series of the same title based on the novel. Both the novel and the drama are based on a wild supposition that Hyewon was a woman disguised as a man. This film also will paint him as a woman who trying to hide as a man, as a way to overcome the discrimination in heavily Neo-Confucian Joseon. This recent trend that depicted this painter as a woman, might be the result of his girlish penname “Hyewon” which meaning “a garden full with orchids” and his frequent portrayals of women. “The Portrait of a Beauty" itself seems to be a latecomer in the Hyewon frenzy, but the director Jeon who well known with his blockbuster "Le Grand Chef" (2007) which sold about 3 million tickets, set about the project several months earlier than the television adaptation.

Some Special Features included in the disc:

- Making of
- Production Design Featurette
- Costume Design Featurette
- Deleted Scenes with Director Commentary
- Poster Shoot
- Music Video
- Trailer

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The Good, The Bad, The Weird Special Edition DVD

Set in the 1930s where guns and knives were rampant on a train, a miniature version of the kaleidoscopic and lawless Manchurian desert with various different ethnic groups entangled, three Korean men struggling through the turbulent times encounter each other by fate.

Do-won (JUNG Woo-sung) is a hunter who hunts anything for money including criminals with rewards on their heads. Chang-yi (LEE Byung-hun) is the leader of a group of bandits. He cannot stand to be second best. Tae-goo (SONG Kang-ho) is a self-commando train robber with nine lives. The three strangers start off on a chase across the continent to take possession of the strange map Tae-goo discovers while robbing the train. With different speculations on a mysterious map, the Japanese army and bandits also end up joining in the chase. In the midst of a great, unpredictable, mixed-up battle, who will stand in the end as the winner?

This Korea's biggest film of 2008, acclaimed kimchi western "The Good, The Bad, The Weird" now comes to DVD with sky-high anticipation and buzz, almost nine months after the Kim Ji-Woon directed film conquered the Korean cinemas.
Kim Jee-woon, who has an impressive track record of having successfully tackled a wide range of genres, from sports comedy (The Foul King) to horror (A Tale of Two Sisters) and European-style film noir (A Bittersweet Life), now turns his sight on the western. As one can surmise from the title, the movie is intended as a conscious homage to Sergio Leone's Eastwood triptych.

There is a lot of action in this film and it is very stylish and well choreographed but it is incredibly over the top, it goes from believable to completely ludicrous without pausing but as long as you go with the flow it is immensely enjoyable to watch. That said some of the the action scenes are too long and well done as they are they get a bit boring with the film perhaps being over-long for what it contains. The humour is brilliant, mostly coming from the antics of The Weird, as you'd expect, and that character is what makes this a good film, when he isn't involved it starts to take itself seriously and becomes a little dead, too much style not enough substance. It isn't a comedy though, the humour is spaced out between the action and violence with the plot being developed in a few interesting ways along the way.

Special Features:
Special Edition of The Good, The Bad, The Weird DVD comes with both the Korean Theatrical Cut and International Cut of the film, plus 181 minutes of special features:
Disc 1
- The Good, The Bad, The Weird Korean Theatrical Cut (136min)
- Audio Commentary by Director, Cinematographer, Art Director
Disc 2
- The Good, The Bad, The Weird International Cut (129min)
- Audio Commentary by Director, Song Kang Ho, Lee Byung Hun, Jung Woo Sung
Disc 3
- Making Of
- Interview with Director & Cast
- Cinematography, Lighting, Action, and Sound Featurette
- Production Design, Costume, and Set Featurette
- Deleted Scenes with Audio Commentary
- Character Featurette
- Trailer

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