October Media Log
Nov. 1st, 2023 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halfcactusTV/Movies
Fake It Till You Make It (DNF)
Lighting Up the Stars
Mysterious Lotus Casebook (33/40)
Ripe Town (2/12)
Time Concert S3 (4/?)
Books/Comics Martha Wells, "Rogue Protocol" (Murderbot #3)
Shortbox Comics: At A Distance (Bernice Sioson); It All Ends With Me (Vivien Nguyen); The Hawk and The Rabbit (Hwei); Parasocial Activity (Pearl Law); SOMEONE DIED HERE (Azam Raharjo); The Things We Carve (Chan Chau)
Music/Musicals Zhang Xincheng: 2022 a space odyssey
The Last Five Years (Barefoot Theatre)
Fake It Till You Make It (2023)
This show made me realize that I may never like a Li Mo work as much as I liked Remembrance of Things Past. Cast chemistry and ensemble dynamics really made all the difference. I was buddy-watching this with![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
aartichapati and we both DNF'd (though she got much farther!). XD
Fake It Till You Make It is about the artifices we put on to project an image, and it's initially promising. The way it uses pop culture references is very informed—I really likeddramateaque's thread about it!
But I had huge problems with the pacing and editing in the first eps—ep3 was just so weird and unnecessary long! And in ep4 they reference an incident that should have been shown in ep2 but was mystifyingly absent. I ended up dropping it after ep5 because the writing was wildly inconsistent and the lead characters felt like vehicles for quotable one-liners and visions of a world-weary romance but were not quite people themselves. The show has the trappings of a serious and mature drama, and does very well with its portrayal of the pressure that even the most competent and conscientious people face everyday, but the tropes and conflicts are still similar to the average romance drama. I wish it had been more self-aware about its own pretentiousness, and that its wit hadn't felt so far removed from the characters, basically.
Lighting Up the Stars (2022)
This was much more enjoyable than Zhu Yilong's other movie, Lost in the Stars. It's about an ill-tempered mortician and his two good friends adopting an angry little girl who just lost her grandmother and runs around in a little Nezha outfit. On paper: potentially my thing! In practice: while I know she ends up fine, I get way too stressed with the type of situations that the child (whose actress did really well) is put in.
The movie criticizes biological families and bad parenting in favor of loving, adoptive homes in very tropey ways, and while I don't mind all the drama, I couldn't connect to this emotionally. Zhu Yilong's character was particularly hard to root for on his own because they didn't thread together the details of his life very well.
The film is mostly in dialect (I assume Wuhan, which is where Zhu Yilong and Wu Qian are from), which I liked. The found family storyline was nice, but I wish we had more scenes of that, especially when integrating the final character into the story.
Content notes: A brief sexual assault scene (an adult character to another adult character), grief/loss
Mysterious Lotus Casebook
As the show is trying to wrap up its many storylines, the eps are now a huge mess lol. Mysteries that usually take 4 eps are now compressed to 1-2 eps, and the whodunnit atmosphere has faded. Character relationships are still compelling, but I have personal reservations about the overarching storyline (though I'm trying to withhold any judgement until I see how it ends).
Ripe Town
Unsure if I'll finish because the eps are so long, but this has been very promising so far and based ongixininja's reactions, it seems to stick the landing. I'm not invested yet but I'm deeply curious about where this police corruption storyline is going and am really enjoying a lot of the cinematic and directorial choices. The visuals aren’t pretty or flashy, but they’re shot with intent, making this come across as more artistic than I’m used to. I like that Bai Yufan was cast as Sangeng; he doesn't really exude the energy of a righteous hero and that works really well for this show, where he is more of a POV character rather than a protagonist—or at least that's the vibe so far. (He also appears to pick interesting projects.)
Time Concert S3
Nothing of note, just that this show has been such a good background watch because I don't have to pay attention to anything (especially since Ella and Tank, the reason why I started watching this, were only in the first two eps), let alone understand them, and I get musical interludes. XD
Fairytale horror set in a castle occupied by a mother, her daughter, and a mysterious maid. Gorgeous, atmospheric art and framing, with interesting shapes, patterns, and character designs. The way it uses space is astounding. Could have used some proofreading (a lot of typos/errors) and an editor to smooth out the writing.
As a standalone this felt slightly lacking to me—I think it might be because it felt like the ending was being overexplained or dragged on for longer than what was to me a natural end point, though this might just be a personal preference. I like that it opens up to a possibility of being part of a series.
Content notes: Light gore and themes of abuse
At A Distance
Another mother-daughter comic, this time about the changes that come with distance + very Asian sensibilities. Short but sweet!
Books/Comics
Music/Musicals
TV/Movies:
Fake It Till You Make It (2023)
This show made me realize that I may never like a Li Mo work as much as I liked Remembrance of Things Past. Cast chemistry and ensemble dynamics really made all the difference. I was buddy-watching this with
Fake It Till You Make It is about the artifices we put on to project an image, and it's initially promising. The way it uses pop culture references is very informed—I really liked
#FakeItTillYouMakeIt is abt the pretences we put on to fit into certain social circles & I love the fun way it shows that in the details.
— lala. | 🍃 (@dramateaque) August 27, 2023
Trendy but acclaimed authors, French or Ghibli studio films – I feel these are rly THE things ppl oft rely on to seem cooler than they are 😂 pic.twitter.com/t6aaFtdbvd
But I had huge problems with the pacing and editing in the first eps—ep3 was just so weird and unnecessary long! And in ep4 they reference an incident that should have been shown in ep2 but was mystifyingly absent. I ended up dropping it after ep5 because the writing was wildly inconsistent and the lead characters felt like vehicles for quotable one-liners and visions of a world-weary romance but were not quite people themselves. The show has the trappings of a serious and mature drama, and does very well with its portrayal of the pressure that even the most competent and conscientious people face everyday, but the tropes and conflicts are still similar to the average romance drama. I wish it had been more self-aware about its own pretentiousness, and that its wit hadn't felt so far removed from the characters, basically.
Lighting Up the Stars (2022)
This was much more enjoyable than Zhu Yilong's other movie, Lost in the Stars. It's about an ill-tempered mortician and his two good friends adopting an angry little girl who just lost her grandmother and runs around in a little Nezha outfit. On paper: potentially my thing! In practice: while I know she ends up fine, I get way too stressed with the type of situations that the child (whose actress did really well) is put in.
The movie criticizes biological families and bad parenting in favor of loving, adoptive homes in very tropey ways, and while I don't mind all the drama, I couldn't connect to this emotionally. Zhu Yilong's character was particularly hard to root for on his own because they didn't thread together the details of his life very well.
The film is mostly in dialect (I assume Wuhan, which is where Zhu Yilong and Wu Qian are from), which I liked. The found family storyline was nice, but I wish we had more scenes of that, especially when integrating the final character into the story.
Content notes: A brief sexual assault scene (an adult character to another adult character), grief/loss
Mysterious Lotus Casebook
As the show is trying to wrap up its many storylines, the eps are now a huge mess lol. Mysteries that usually take 4 eps are now compressed to 1-2 eps, and the whodunnit atmosphere has faded. Character relationships are still compelling, but I have personal reservations about the overarching storyline (though I'm trying to withhold any judgement until I see how it ends).
Ripe Town
Unsure if I'll finish because the eps are so long, but this has been very promising so far and based on
Time Concert S3
Nothing of note, just that this show has been such a good background watch because I don't have to pay attention to anything (especially since Ella and Tank, the reason why I started watching this, were only in the first two eps), let alone understand them, and I get musical interludes. XD
Books/Comics:
It All Ends With MeFairytale horror set in a castle occupied by a mother, her daughter, and a mysterious maid. Gorgeous, atmospheric art and framing, with interesting shapes, patterns, and character designs. The way it uses space is astounding. Could have used some proofreading (a lot of typos/errors) and an editor to smooth out the writing.
As a standalone this felt slightly lacking to me—I think it might be because it felt like the ending was being overexplained or dragged on for longer than what was to me a natural end point, though this might just be a personal preference. I like that it opens up to a possibility of being part of a series.
Content notes: Light gore and themes of abuse
At A Distance
Another mother-daughter comic, this time about the changes that come with distance + very Asian sensibilities. Short but sweet!
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Date: 2023-11-06 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-06 02:26 am (UTC)During the DayBai Tian back (though I still think that Go Ahead was great for comfort and found family in spite of its flaws). And I feel that in mainstream media it's okay for biodads to be total scumbags, but biomoms still have to be redeemed and shown to have wanted and "loved" their child...Lighting Up the Stars still walks it back a bit by having the biomom be a sympathetic character. She abandoned the child at birth, suddenly wanted her back ten years later, and is easily reintegrated into the child's life in the end once she's shown enough remorse and understanding that the child has found another family. Go Ahead was like this too but was much more contrived and melodramatic about the mom's backstory, though it did allow the abandoned son to confront her about it and feel complicated about restarting their relationship.
The "worst" character in Lighting Up the Stars is the auntie who isn't biologically related to the child but also appears to be a bad mother to her own son, which I guess counts as crit? (The bio-uncle is a doormat who keeps fobbing off the child to strangers which technically is not any better but he's seen as someone who "tries".)