Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)
This is a loving tribute to locked room mysteries (I might give John Dickinson Carr another go) while not really much of a mystery movie itself, which I didn't mind because... I don't actually watch Knives Out for the mysteries. XD And I think it's great that every succeeding movie has been different, it makes the weaknesses less stark because you take them as part of a series. I love how this was more character-centric—at least, for the characters it was focusing on. I also felt it had more heart. I've been told that this is a very "current" movie but I think me not being American has made the entire experience more fascinating—in particular the depiction of Catholicism in the US—and less affecting.
Liann Zhang, "Julie Chan Is Dead"
Read this because of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
superborb's post here.
The first half of the book is about a down-on-her-luck woman impersonating her rich dead twin and taking over her influencer lifestyle. The second half is a psychological thriller.
The main character is so stressful omg haha but as much as I really struggled with the influencer + impersonation storyline, I must admit that it is the more compelling component! Technically I "enjoyed" the very vibes-driven second half more, but the stressfulness of the main character was what gave it flavor. When it was not stressful, it was very funny. The scenes about the pressures of being the only minority (or at least not having the privilege of living with blind spots) in the group were suitably incisive but not too heavy-handed. Honestly, the kind of book I'd recommend to IRLs.
F3 Concert Tour
I previously wrote that Ken Chu had allegedly been dropped from the F4 reunion tour due to multiple instances of publicly disclosing unfinalized tour info. This is now official news (the dropping of Ken Chu, not the reasoning behind it) and Ken Chu has been making a lot of noise about it. In the MV of the new song Forever Forever, Jay Chou and Mayday Ashin have been added to the group while Ken Chu has been uncannily removed from the Meteor Garden group shots which feels like historical erasure (speaking as someone who never even watched Taiwanese Meteor Garden lol).
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PS. Now watching Mobius which hopefully we'll finish by the end of the year! Interesting setting; Loving the use of Canto and the code-switching + feeling of nostalgia when they do action scenes, but I'm unfortunately not really vibing with it. It hasn't been a very well-directed/-edited series. The storytelling is sloppy, the humor is awkwardly timed and shot, the BGMs are very distracting, and the main characters don't have a sense of personality. Vastly preferring Reset which is ALSO a time loop drama starring the same actor.
+ Inexplicably Aokbab (most known for her role in the Thai movie Bad Genius) is in this. Even more inexplicably her character is Chinese-American (technically, 美籍華人 which I guess doesn't conclusively communicate her cultural identity). But her English is (though not her fault) worse than the non-American character's, and her Mandarin lines are dubbed over, so...??????? Feeling like they could have rewritten the character to fit the actress or cast someone else. It's such a disservice to cast her only to make her character speak two foreign languages.
This is a loving tribute to locked room mysteries (I might give John Dickinson Carr another go) while not really much of a mystery movie itself, which I didn't mind because... I don't actually watch Knives Out for the mysteries. XD And I think it's great that every succeeding movie has been different, it makes the weaknesses less stark because you take them as part of a series. I love how this was more character-centric—at least, for the characters it was focusing on. I also felt it had more heart. I've been told that this is a very "current" movie but I think me not being American has made the entire experience more fascinating—in particular the depiction of Catholicism in the US—and less affecting.
Liann Zhang, "Julie Chan Is Dead"
Read this because of
superborb's post here.The first half of the book is about a down-on-her-luck woman impersonating her rich dead twin and taking over her influencer lifestyle. The second half is a psychological thriller.
The main character is so stressful omg haha but as much as I really struggled with the influencer + impersonation storyline, I must admit that it is the more compelling component! Technically I "enjoyed" the very vibes-driven second half more, but the stressfulness of the main character was what gave it flavor. When it was not stressful, it was very funny. The scenes about the pressures of being the only minority (or at least not having the privilege of living with blind spots) in the group were suitably incisive but not too heavy-handed. Honestly, the kind of book I'd recommend to IRLs.
F3 Concert Tour
I previously wrote that Ken Chu had allegedly been dropped from the F4 reunion tour due to multiple instances of publicly disclosing unfinalized tour info. This is now official news (the dropping of Ken Chu, not the reasoning behind it) and Ken Chu has been making a lot of noise about it. In the MV of the new song Forever Forever, Jay Chou and Mayday Ashin have been added to the group while Ken Chu has been uncannily removed from the Meteor Garden group shots which feels like historical erasure (speaking as someone who never even watched Taiwanese Meteor Garden lol).
-
PS. Now watching Mobius which hopefully we'll finish by the end of the year! Interesting setting; Loving the use of Canto and the code-switching + feeling of nostalgia when they do action scenes, but I'm unfortunately not really vibing with it. It hasn't been a very well-directed/-edited series. The storytelling is sloppy, the humor is awkwardly timed and shot, the BGMs are very distracting, and the main characters don't have a sense of personality. Vastly preferring Reset which is ALSO a time loop drama starring the same actor.
+ Inexplicably Aokbab (most known for her role in the Thai movie Bad Genius) is in this. Even more inexplicably her character is Chinese-American (technically, 美籍華人 which I guess doesn't conclusively communicate her cultural identity). But her English is (though not her fault) worse than the non-American character's, and her Mandarin lines are dubbed over, so...??????? Feeling like they could have rewritten the character to fit the actress or cast someone else. It's such a disservice to cast her only to make her character speak two foreign languages.
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