10 variations

Movies

More than usual, and one even at an actual movie theater!


Blue Gate Crossing
A 2003 Taiwanese coming-of-age movie about a girl who struggles with her sexuality. It was shown here for Pride month, and it was very... harmless? I enjoyed the vibe, and the characters felt very real. But that was pretty much all it was: vibes. The male lead was very pushy compared to her relative quiet (and occasional unexpected outbursts of courage or random teenage decisions), and it's a dynamic I'm not too fond of. But they were both charming enough that I didn't mind too much. A plus was that it didn't make me nauseous, even though there was a lot of riding around on bikes. I also enjoyed sitting in a movie theatre full of Chinese speakers (although I understood depressingly little of their conversations). The movie itself had engsubs, but the dialogue was relatively easy to understand either way. I found a copy on dailymotion, if you're interested. It wasn't a bad movie, but ... compared to Upcoming Summer, which is nominally the same genre, I prefer Upcoming Summer.



The Sound of Silence
Tan Jianci's latest movie, available on viki. He plays a lawyer and son of two deaf parents, who is caught up in a police case involving the community of deaf people where he grew up. I really liked this movie! It felt like an American movie, from the drama beats to the moral of the story. It played with fake-outs and flashbacks, there were neat scenes with drowned out audio, and I thought the sign language was well used (although I don't know any myself, and of course Chinese sign language for sure is its own beast, so I wouldn't know how realistic it was and how good Tan Jianci was at it or not.)

spoilery opinion

The moral is "trust the justice system". Ha. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have questioned the moral if it had been a US movie, but these days I just can't trust their justice system either - let alone the Chinese one. Especially because the movie was all about con artists and people pulling strings behind the scenes, manipulating and bribing people. This would just as well work with the judges, and poof gone is their case. But apart from my mistrust in the system, the movie itself was really well done.

To my own surprise, I really liked Tan Jianci's look and acting in this movie. I've seen several shows with him, and this was by far the best imho.


The disney+ trawl continued with Moana 2. It wasn't bad, although I thought the songs felt forced. The story itself is fine, although I still don't understand why they took the gardener along. But apart from those minor weird parts, I liked it. The coconut monkeys were the best thing about the movie.

TV finished

The Long Ballad and two Wu Lei appearances and the new 2PM concert

I finished The Long Ballad
While the ending is not perfectly perfect, it's good enough for me. I will likely rewatch parts of it, I really like how smitten Ashile Sun is with Changge throughout, and I realized how much I missed the show while I was dragging it out because I didn't want it to end. I'm planning on writing up a review for it, because I liked it so much. It's also on viki.



Wu Lei did a Subway endorsement event in Beijing on June 6.
He had to ride an exercise bike and make a sandwich, among other things. It's about 45 minutes of non-stop praise for him plus of course lots of product placement, but I learned some new vocab, and he talked about his ride around Hainan, which was interesting. You can still see his sunburnt arm. And the video is an official one from the live stream, so the audio is good, and the Chinese subs are accurate. Bilibili link (unsubbed).



I had expected there to be more Wu Lei at the Weibo and Douyin movie nights, but he was barely there. The Shanghai International Film Festival featured an actors Q&A for The Decisive Moment, which stars Wu Lei, and which was both very much fun and embarrassing because a) he was extremely (uncharacteristically) nervous, and b) they told more than one story about him doubting his acting choices and crying on set. Oof. Could have gone easier on him. Anyway, the movie looks like a terrible propaganda vehicle for the Chinese aerospace industry, but they kept toting it as the next Wandering Earth. It will be released in August. I am looking forward to it. The 45-minute Q&A is on Bilibili (unsubbed).


I watched parts of the KPop group 2PM's reunion show "Return" at Tokyo dome. I really enjoy watching them dance, they are still great! The whole show (4 hours) is on youtube here or here. I'll surely return to it because new 2pm content is hard to come by.

TV new (ongoing)

Love Beyond the Grave
After one false start (most of ep one bored me), it gripped me after all. Dilraba Dilmurat plays the ruler of ghosts who falls in love with a mortal general (Chen Feiyu / Arthur Chen). The first eight eps lured me in with how completely unusual her attitude towards people is. She's very inhuman and uninterested in the short lives of humans, not caring whether they live or die. I adore it for the novelty factor! Then it introduced a mystery around his character, and I want to know where it'll go, so that also keeps me watching. I'm not a fan of the child character or the military tactics stuff, but so far they don't take up too much time so the show holds my attention. Overall, the show is strangely magical and the FL and ML are just very cute with each other. The main plot point is that she can borrow his senses, one at a time, to learn what it feels like to touch/smell/see colors/etc. which she usually can't do. In return, she gives him demonic powers. It doesn't make a lot of sense, it's all played for laughs. I kind of agree with AvenueX's verdict that it could all have been done much deeper, and looked for more meaning there - but it never does. Still, people learning new things is always interesting, even if it's an evil spirit learning what things smell like. But I did think that having her gain sense of touch only for him to lose it at the same time was very sad - a lot of wasted porn potential. ;)) Since I knew that more sense swaps were going to happen, it seemed a little predictable and I dropped it for a week or so. But when I picked it back up, it wasn't quite as predictable as I expected. Also, much much more interesting than the Fireworks show, so I will definitely keep watching.



Love Has Fireworks tropey mc tropeface!
It's on viki. I'm watching this mostly because elenothar is such a huge a Tan Jianci fan, and I like talking to her about things. He plays an investment banker, and so does Wang Churan. Both of them have relationship and money troubles, so they have to share an apartment. The acting from both leads is fine, and their comedic timing is pretty good. The first episodes bored me to death, unfortunately. I was warned about the ai-face-replacement of her ex-boyfriend ahead of time, so I wasn't actually put off that much by it. Now I'm on ep 6/25 and the main couple is starting to get a bit more interesting. I'm not 100% convinced by their dynamic, but they're both fundamentally nice people and I'm less bored now. Everything else is pretty terrible, though, and the humor is ott and not my thing.

ranting

I cannot imagine anything more boring for a modern drama than investment banking. Then there's is every trope imaginable: she gets drunk and he has to save her from thugs. Her workplace nemesis tries to splash her with coffee and he has to grab and twirl her to save her from coffee. They're sitting on a couch, looking at a clip on a phone, and manage to fall over each other into an almost-kiss. His mother destroys his brother's video game character by giving away all his loot and weapons. And all those supposedly humorous scenes are accompanied by screeching trumpet music. I have never heard background music this bad. Sigh.

TV continued

nothing, oops

TV (dropped)

I started How Dare You, because lots of people seemed to like it, but it's 80% palace drama and 20% romance+transmigration shenanigans, and that ratio does not work for me. I dipped into some of the later episodes to see how the romance develops, and thought that maybe I'd watch the ending, but I didn't even do that. On the whole, it's not for me.

Rewatches/Watchalongs

My two Nothing But You watchalongs are ongoing. One on episode 36/38, almost done, we're slowing down because now we both don't want it to end. /o\ But when we're watching, we're both sighing along happily because the romantic payoff at the end is just *so good*. The other is on 13/38, we've passed the worst hump, and now it's going great again!