August media log
Sep. 1st, 2024 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halfcactusLink Click
Season 1 was pretty great and well-paced. It had a case-of-the-day format for the first half, with filler cases between the heavy ones... The noodle girlfriends were sweet... And the entire basketball arc was so well done! But I wouldn't have finished this on my own because it's just too stressful for me.
Season 2 is almost purely plot-driven, but the plot wasn't that great... Without the time to breathe or the thread of emotional logic it had in season 1, the gendered violence and weaknesses in writing women were much more prominent. To be fair I don't think any of the characters are written well here (the main villain was cartoonishly bad), but the women definitely got the shorter end of the stick for me. It had a lot of missed opportunities with the lesser villains' motivations and character arcs, and one of the episodes had an extremely extended domestic violence scene.
AND episode 9 is a total waste of time. It was meant to be a "three stories" episode playing with different art styles, something that is normally my favorite kind of episode, but it ends up only showing us 1) nothing we didn't already know 2) information about the main villain that would have been better off revealed much earlier... The entire episode was like 26 minutes, and I was so annoyed by it I almost left the groupwatch ajskdl;ja;fdja;fa
I checked out the manhua and live action afterwards to 緩一緩, and I'm really enjoying the manhua! Volume 1 has an opera troupe case set in the aftermath of the basketball arc, where you can see the emotional fallout and Lu Guang's attempt to give Cheng Xiaoshi some time travel therapy... Will definitely continue.
As for the live action adaptation... the Slam Dunk props are inconspicuous reminders that I'm watching a Sugarman Media production. :P The setup is also quite different, as Cheng Xiaoshi is superhuman in more than the specific time travel way... and he and Lu Guang meet as adults, with Lu Guang purposefully seeking him out to presumably set things right. (I haven't watched past episode 1, so it's still unclear what Lu Guang wants.)
热辣滚烫 YOLO (2024)
Chinese movie adaptation of 100 Yen Love.
The most interesting part about this movie for me is how it carefully avoids bodyshaming the main character, who for most of the movie is thirty years old, depressed, and fat. She ends up losing weight when she decides to get serious about boxing, but the focus is on how much better she feels when she pursues a goal and learns to do things for herself. The movie acknowledges her as not being conventionally attractive, but it also portrays her as being desirable, in a way that I found pretty natural and realistic.
That said, I don't think this was a very good movie... it uses that one cinematic gimmick that I've come to HATE in cmedia, in which scenes are omitted and then shown as "reveals" in the end, to purposes I don't understand... The main character's emotional arc would have been far more compelling from the get-go if it had been told in a regular, linear fashion!!!!!!!!!! The little 小紅花 montage would still have worked, I promise!!!!!!!
Anyway, I enjoyed the last 30-ish minutes (which had the training montage + ending), but I watched most of the middle bits in the fastest speed Netflix would allow me to watch it in.
The Double eps 1-20
DNF, but sometimes I go back to rewatch the music battle scenes (ep 11).
PS. Netflix appears to do this weird censored words thing where it avoids offensive language? Sometimes to ludricous effect. "Xiao jianren" got translated as "you cow" and "hellcat", which... okay...
Also saw other movies I saw when I was rooming with my parents (due to ant problems)! I think they were Oppenheimer and a recent Matt Damon heist movie (it wasn't great). Did another Kung Fu Hustle rewatch too, since it's apparently on Netflix, and yeah... still a classic. :) Curiously, I get more stressed watching this as an adult, in anticipation of the "painful" scenes (mostly in the first half, a.k.a. the best parts) which is funny because this movie is also now "comfort movie" status to me... Landlady with hair rollers you will always be a legend. ♥
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Other recents:
Finallyyyyyyyyy completed all my dentist appointments, which I've spread out over the course of two years. (Last year I had to get two wisdom teeth out and I never returned for my other procedures lol.) I had to get so many fillings this year it wasn't funny. Had to beg my dentist for a discount in my final session and all. (Also at some point my ant problem followed me to the dentist; I had an ant literally in my pants biting me while I was completely defenseless and already uncomfortable and in some amount of pain.) But now I'm free!!! And I can eat anything without worry. :) Which is great, because my -ber months involve a lot of eating and drinking (mooncake season, Christmas/New Year's Eve, night market, etc).
I have a credit card again! My bank branch applied on my behalf when I visited to get my bank certificate for a visa application (another thing I got done in August)... It has been so nerve-wracking pencil-booking accommodations with a debit card and generally just trying to remember how much money I have left on my cards whenever I pay for stuff haha.
I tried deactivating my Carousell account, but when I try to go through the process the prompt seems to be for deletion? I had been selling off old books, but now I don't have the spoons to talk to people and either meet up with them or book a courier to deliver the item so I want to be invisible. :( Why do apps make deactivating so confusing? :(
Latest tech mishap: I was having problems with my Switch, which I just bought off a friend this year... Fortunately, it seems like I just had a faulty microSD card... or a counterfeit one (ordered it off Lazada hahahaha oops!). Bought a 128GB one this morning from a "proper" physical store and so far, so good...
Picked up Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective again since my Eiyuden is in limbo (due to aforementioned tech/data issues). While it's not the most bingeable game and I'm quite bad at it (I had to Google how to get past the murder machine stage) and I don't feel especially motivated to continue, it does give me something to focus on when I'm anxious. AND the character animations are absolutely delightful. I live for Inspector Cabanela's appearances! I also love the quick-travel interface, where you can access areas by dialing a rotary phone. :')
Overall thoughts about the donghua
Season 1 was pretty great and well-paced. It had a case-of-the-day format for the first half, with filler cases between the heavy ones... The noodle girlfriends were sweet... And the entire basketball arc was so well done! But I wouldn't have finished this on my own because it's just too stressful for me.
Season 2 is almost purely plot-driven, but the plot wasn't that great... Without the time to breathe or the thread of emotional logic it had in season 1, the gendered violence and weaknesses in writing women were much more prominent. To be fair I don't think any of the characters are written well here (the main villain was cartoonishly bad), but the women definitely got the shorter end of the stick for me. It had a lot of missed opportunities with the lesser villains' motivations and character arcs, and one of the episodes had an extremely extended domestic violence scene.
AND episode 9 is a total waste of time. It was meant to be a "three stories" episode playing with different art styles, something that is normally my favorite kind of episode, but it ends up only showing us 1) nothing we didn't already know 2) information about the main villain that would have been better off revealed much earlier... The entire episode was like 26 minutes, and I was so annoyed by it I almost left the groupwatch ajskdl;ja;fdja;fa
First impression on manhua + live action adaptation
I checked out the manhua and live action afterwards to 緩一緩, and I'm really enjoying the manhua! Volume 1 has an opera troupe case set in the aftermath of the basketball arc, where you can see the emotional fallout and Lu Guang's attempt to give Cheng Xiaoshi some time travel therapy... Will definitely continue.
As for the live action adaptation... the Slam Dunk props are inconspicuous reminders that I'm watching a Sugarman Media production. :P The setup is also quite different, as Cheng Xiaoshi is superhuman in more than the specific time travel way... and he and Lu Guang meet as adults, with Lu Guang purposefully seeking him out to presumably set things right. (I haven't watched past episode 1, so it's still unclear what Lu Guang wants.)
热辣滚烫 YOLO (2024)
Chinese movie adaptation of 100 Yen Love.
Thoughts
I never saw the original, so I went into this assuming it was a sports movie, only to find out it wasn't as sports- and FL-centric as I initially thought.The most interesting part about this movie for me is how it carefully avoids bodyshaming the main character, who for most of the movie is thirty years old, depressed, and fat. She ends up losing weight when she decides to get serious about boxing, but the focus is on how much better she feels when she pursues a goal and learns to do things for herself. The movie acknowledges her as not being conventionally attractive, but it also portrays her as being desirable, in a way that I found pretty natural and realistic.
That said, I don't think this was a very good movie... it uses that one cinematic gimmick that I've come to HATE in cmedia, in which scenes are omitted and then shown as "reveals" in the end, to purposes I don't understand... The main character's emotional arc would have been far more compelling from the get-go if it had been told in a regular, linear fashion!!!!!!!!!! The little 小紅花 montage would still have worked, I promise!!!!!!!
Anyway, I enjoyed the last 30-ish minutes (which had the training montage + ending), but I watched most of the middle bits in the fastest speed Netflix would allow me to watch it in.
The Double eps 1-20
DNF, but sometimes I go back to rewatch the music battle scenes (ep 11).
PS. Netflix appears to do this weird censored words thing where it avoids offensive language? Sometimes to ludricous effect. "Xiao jianren" got translated as "you cow" and "hellcat", which... okay...
Also saw other movies I saw when I was rooming with my parents (due to ant problems)! I think they were Oppenheimer and a recent Matt Damon heist movie (it wasn't great). Did another Kung Fu Hustle rewatch too, since it's apparently on Netflix, and yeah... still a classic. :) Curiously, I get more stressed watching this as an adult, in anticipation of the "painful" scenes (mostly in the first half, a.k.a. the best parts) which is funny because this movie is also now "comfort movie" status to me... Landlady with hair rollers you will always be a legend. ♥
-
Other recents:
Picked up Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective again since my Eiyuden is in limbo (due to aforementioned tech/data issues). While it's not the most bingeable game and I'm quite bad at it (I had to Google how to get past the murder machine stage) and I don't feel especially motivated to continue, it does give me something to focus on when I'm anxious. AND the character animations are absolutely delightful. I live for Inspector Cabanela's appearances! I also love the quick-travel interface, where you can access areas by dialing a rotary phone. :')
Tags:
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no subject
Date: 2024-09-02 04:43 am (UTC)Yay for being done with dental!
Ghost Trick is another game I have on my game backlog but haven't touched. someday someday!
no subject
Date: 2024-09-02 12:35 pm (UTC)Ghost Trick is one of the few ones I can play and might actually finish because it's super linear and has a chaptered format that makes it easy to pick up and put down without getting lost... I'm going to cherish it while it lasts. XD
no subject
Date: 2024-09-03 04:48 am (UTC)In the meantime, plenty of other anime/donghua to catch up on!
no subject
Date: 2024-09-02 11:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-02 12:50 pm (UTC)Not sure I can continue at all since I've been busy and my Bilibili subscription is probably going to expire soon, but there are several places you can watch the live action (to my amusement):
1) Youtube (official playlist): Free and legal! But subs are atrocious (MTL).
2) Dramacool - The not-so-legal option. Last time I checked the subs were MTL and idk if they ever reuploaded with better subs.
3) Bilibili TV (official international platform) - Passable subs, the best of all the streamable options so far! Ep 1 was entirely watchable for me. It's a paid subscription, though, and I'm not sure how accessible the site/app is overseas - the commenters seem to be mostly from SEA, but I had a friend in the US who was able to watch the Link Click donghua on the website, so... maybe?
4) Fansubs - I believe at least one group has picked this up as a fansub project. When I was checking in a couple weeks ago, the fansub progress was still at around episode 10 (out of 24)... And the eps are 50 mins each so it might take some time for them to finish...
no subject
Date: 2024-09-02 01:42 pm (UTC)and thank you for the watching info! Good to know. It looks like the paid bilibili option is the only likely one for me (not sure how the paid part works but I usually have no problem watching stuff there), since the YouTube playlist isn't available where I am, and I'd rather not watch with English subs if I can help it. Will keep an eye on it and see if it pops up anywhere else.
no subject
Date: 2024-09-02 02:49 pm (UTC)I wish I had the spoons to watch the drama right now because I think this production company usually does interesting adaptations + great gen relationships, but 50 mins is SO long and I am so easily stressed... It looks like they're trying to avoid gendered violence scenes, at least!
Re: watching - are you specifically looking for raws? Because that might be easier to find online, there are multiple mirror sites that reupload TV series/movie/variety eps hours after they air, which is handy if shows don't air overseas and/or we are too impatient to wait for eps or too broke to subscribe. 😂 My friend defaults to Duboku TV for these things!
no subject
Date: 2024-09-03 10:24 am (UTC)It must have been really confusing on set ;)
I will look up the mirror sites, thank you! Not for a while, probably, I'm still neck deep in the farmboy reality show, God help me, and like you I'm easily stressed by dramas, but this one is fairly high on my list. Will keep you posted.
(I got used to watching cdramas etc. with only the Chinese hardsubs before I actually knew much Chinese, don't even ask, and now I just like it better that way, plus I can tell myself that I'm actually using my time virtuously for study ;) )