overdue media thoughts
Dec. 26th, 2022 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halfcactusSome media I consumed some months ago and never wrote about:
Tick, Tick... Boom! (2021)
Jonathan Larson's autobiographical-ish musical adapted for Netflix, starring Andrew Garfield and Alexandra Shipp. I actually watched this without knowing anything about it and spent the first chunk of the movie thinking it was a Rent homage, before I finally realized why the main character's name sounded so familiar haha. Rent made so much sense to me after watching this, from the immediacy of the AIDS crisis to the privilege of its main characters.
I thought this was a good movie with a metanarrative that really worked. The visuals for Sunday (with cameos from other musical actors, including Pippa Soo and Renee Elise Goldsberry) and the build-up to ~The Song~ were great, as was the very heavy tension throughout the entire movie. It really hurt from a creative perspective too, seeing art pay such a price :(
Casey Blair, "A Coup of Tea" (Tea Princess Chronicles #1)
Miyara is a sheltered princess who wants to do something more meaningful for her people, so she decides to run away, permanently throwing away her birthright. She takes temporary shelter in a teashop, sees firsthand the gentrification and systematized oppression of the immigrant community, and tries to overhaul society from the ground. Somewhere along the way she realizes that she wants to be a Tea Master, which is a prized, influential, and extremely respected title in society. To become a Tea Master, she has to take a once-in-a-lifetime tea ceremony exam, and for plot reasons she has to take it as soon as possible, while managing a teashop and, idk, solving racism.
I've seen this described as a "feel-good book" and personally—and probably uncharitably—I think it's feel-good if you enjoy the privileged perspective or want to feel better about having one. At the very least what it offers is a comfortable, privileged, outsider perspective to discrimination and oppression.
The cultural elements are an aesthetic mix-and-match which I found disorienting at best and infuriating at worst. In spite of the tea ceremony being a crucial plot point and skill that Miyara is trying to perfect, I have no idea what it entails, other than vaguely Asian vibes.
The romance was bland, obligatory het with no chemistry. I found it insulting that the ML (a self-made craftsman) could have been a good character is his own right, but mostly he felt like a prop for Miyara's social justice causes.
Other than... all of that... the book itself is very readable—Miyara's character arc is of that of a woman who has to to learn to take up space, and I think that would have been nice if 1) it was less ambitious about the social justice messaging; 2) if Miyara got to pay a real price to sustain her choices; 3) the PoV had been of that of any of the other characters. I enjoy wish-fulfillment fantasies about changing society, but it's hard for me to root for someone who's not really an underdog.
A Dream of Splendor
A widely praised drama about three Jiangnan women who, due to the men of their lives, leave their small, idyllic town, and move to the city and pursue their dreams as changed women. The characters are:
Zhao Pan'er (Liu Yifei): a calm and hypercompetent teashop owner whose former status as a female entertainer marks her as a low-level outcast. Her fiance, Ouyang Xu, broke up with her when he passed the civil examination. She wants justice.
Sun Sanniang (Liu Yan): a crass and uneducated butcher, divorced by her husband, disowned by her son. She likes caring for people and aches for her son.
Song Yinzhang (Lin Yun): a proud and ambitious pipa player, who has sufficient skills to make a name for herself but insufficient connections. She wants status.
This is based on an opera and some of the scenes are staged as such, which I found very visually arresting! It's divided into roughly three parts: 1) the journey from Pan'er's original teashop in Qiantang and into the capital; 2) the struggles of settling in and setting up Half Hidden Teashop (with the allure of the half hidden pipa player, Song Yinzhang); 3) and finally, finding Yong'an (Eternal Peace, I think?) House as a complete set of characters.
A Dream of Splendor is definitely one of the more high-quality cdramas in its category. The scenery and cinematography are lush—prime vidding material. The costumes are beautiful and change with the passage of time, with very intricate accessories. However, in terms of storytelling, it shoots itself in the foot by making it bigger than the three women. Owing to the main romance and how entangled Pan'er is with the (ultimately meaningless) politics that she has to overcome to move forward, Pan'er becomes merely a vehicle, with no agency and little personality beyond her competence. The narrative momentum is stalled time and time again by cyclical external conflicts and A VERY EXTENDED miscommunication storyline, so the movement of the story loses the honeyed, scenic sweetness it has in the beginning, and instead becomes just unnecessarily long and contrived. I'd really have enjoyed this more if the ML's personal storyline and the court intrigue have been kept largely offscreen. All they did was distract from the women and there wasn't even any resolution for the politicking, which was abruptly dropped in the end.
Verdict: Great production quality with very strong beginnings but questionable storytelling in the middle, but worth it for Song Yinzhang's character arc. I was very skeptical of her at first, especially since it felt like she was boxed into the "naive girl" stereotype that her actress seems known for (or at least I know her for), and her pipa playing was so fake haha. She’s so much more interesting when she shows her true personality and manifests her pride—she has a very complex dynamic with Pan’er. And a girlfriend. We were just so worried about her romance storyline, but it works out very satisfyingly. I also enjoyed the jokes about the ML killing people—he was a torturer by occupation, and had a pretty interesting relationship with Pan'er, if only Pan'er got the time to just be herself instead of a heroine.
-
Recently read/watched: Mula sa Buwan, Rock It Mom, and a couple of Jennifer Crusie books
Currently consuming: Disco Elysium—I've decided to play this only on Sundays, which turns out to be the best way to play it since it curtails my game addiction impulses and allows me to recover from the stress. It's a very sad and stressful game, though with moments of hilarity. My latest progress is Day 5 at the boardwalk, which was a very upsetting development, and also has me missing my necktie. :(
Tick, Tick... Boom! (2021)
Jonathan Larson's autobiographical-ish musical adapted for Netflix, starring Andrew Garfield and Alexandra Shipp. I actually watched this without knowing anything about it and spent the first chunk of the movie thinking it was a Rent homage, before I finally realized why the main character's name sounded so familiar haha. Rent made so much sense to me after watching this, from the immediacy of the AIDS crisis to the privilege of its main characters.
I thought this was a good movie with a metanarrative that really worked. The visuals for Sunday (with cameos from other musical actors, including Pippa Soo and Renee Elise Goldsberry) and the build-up to ~The Song~ were great, as was the very heavy tension throughout the entire movie. It really hurt from a creative perspective too, seeing art pay such a price :(
Casey Blair, "A Coup of Tea" (Tea Princess Chronicles #1)
Miyara is a sheltered princess who wants to do something more meaningful for her people, so she decides to run away, permanently throwing away her birthright. She takes temporary shelter in a teashop, sees firsthand the gentrification and systematized oppression of the immigrant community, and tries to overhaul society from the ground. Somewhere along the way she realizes that she wants to be a Tea Master, which is a prized, influential, and extremely respected title in society. To become a Tea Master, she has to take a once-in-a-lifetime tea ceremony exam, and for plot reasons she has to take it as soon as possible, while managing a teashop and, idk, solving racism.
I've seen this described as a "feel-good book" and personally—and probably uncharitably—I think it's feel-good if you enjoy the privileged perspective or want to feel better about having one. At the very least what it offers is a comfortable, privileged, outsider perspective to discrimination and oppression.
The cultural elements are an aesthetic mix-and-match which I found disorienting at best and infuriating at worst. In spite of the tea ceremony being a crucial plot point and skill that Miyara is trying to perfect, I have no idea what it entails, other than vaguely Asian vibes.
The romance was bland, obligatory het with no chemistry. I found it insulting that the ML (a self-made craftsman) could have been a good character is his own right, but mostly he felt like a prop for Miyara's social justice causes.
Other than... all of that... the book itself is very readable—Miyara's character arc is of that of a woman who has to to learn to take up space, and I think that would have been nice if 1) it was less ambitious about the social justice messaging; 2) if Miyara got to pay a real price to sustain her choices; 3) the PoV had been of that of any of the other characters. I enjoy wish-fulfillment fantasies about changing society, but it's hard for me to root for someone who's not really an underdog.
A Dream of Splendor
A widely praised drama about three Jiangnan women who, due to the men of their lives, leave their small, idyllic town, and move to the city and pursue their dreams as changed women. The characters are:
This is based on an opera and some of the scenes are staged as such, which I found very visually arresting! It's divided into roughly three parts: 1) the journey from Pan'er's original teashop in Qiantang and into the capital; 2) the struggles of settling in and setting up Half Hidden Teashop (with the allure of the half hidden pipa player, Song Yinzhang); 3) and finally, finding Yong'an (Eternal Peace, I think?) House as a complete set of characters.
A Dream of Splendor is definitely one of the more high-quality cdramas in its category. The scenery and cinematography are lush—prime vidding material. The costumes are beautiful and change with the passage of time, with very intricate accessories. However, in terms of storytelling, it shoots itself in the foot by making it bigger than the three women. Owing to the main romance and how entangled Pan'er is with the (ultimately meaningless) politics that she has to overcome to move forward, Pan'er becomes merely a vehicle, with no agency and little personality beyond her competence. The narrative momentum is stalled time and time again by cyclical external conflicts and A VERY EXTENDED miscommunication storyline, so the movement of the story loses the honeyed, scenic sweetness it has in the beginning, and instead becomes just unnecessarily long and contrived. I'd really have enjoyed this more if the ML's personal storyline and the court intrigue have been kept largely offscreen. All they did was distract from the women and there wasn't even any resolution for the politicking, which was abruptly dropped in the end.
Verdict: Great production quality with very strong beginnings but questionable storytelling in the middle, but worth it for Song Yinzhang's character arc. I was very skeptical of her at first, especially since it felt like she was boxed into the "naive girl" stereotype that her actress seems known for (or at least I know her for), and her pipa playing was so fake haha. She’s so much more interesting when she shows her true personality and manifests her pride—she has a very complex dynamic with Pan’er. And a girlfriend. We were just so worried about her romance storyline, but it works out very satisfyingly. I also enjoyed the jokes about the ML killing people—he was a torturer by occupation, and had a pretty interesting relationship with Pan'er, if only Pan'er got the time to just be herself instead of a heroine.
-
Recently read/watched: Mula sa Buwan, Rock It Mom, and a couple of Jennifer Crusie books
Currently consuming: Disco Elysium—I've decided to play this only on Sundays, which turns out to be the best way to play it since it curtails my game addiction impulses and allows me to recover from the stress. It's a very sad and stressful game, though with moments of hilarity. My latest progress is Day 5 at the boardwalk, which was a very upsetting development, and also has me missing my necktie. :(
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no subject
Date: 2022-12-26 04:35 pm (UTC)(STILL mad they completely dropped the politics plot???)
no subject
Date: 2022-12-27 12:14 am (UTC)