"I had the style, I had the ambition"
My alphabetical list continues. Let's see if I can remember what I watched...
Nightmare Alley - OMG, this was terrible and such a waste of time. It's everything I feel is bad about "well-made" movies/TV these days. The acting is good. The cinematography is excellent. But the characters themselves? They're unlikable assholes and I don't know why I should care about their struggles and plights, especially not over 2 hours 30 minutes of their struggles and plights.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - Even more terrible and even longer than Nightmare Alley (almost 3 terrible, self-indulgent hours)!!! At the end, I was rooting for the Manson Family to kill everyone. Certainly I wanted to kill someone after watching these two movies consecutively (at least it wasn't on the same day).
Rosaline - A short, charming story after the terribleness of the above. It's a teen comedy fan fic telling of what happened to Rosaline (the girlfriend Romeo dumped in favor of Juliet) and how she saved Romeo and Juliet. It makes me think of those cutesy 90's teen romances/comedies like Every After or Ten Things I Have About You.
And not part of the alphabetical watching, we watched No Exit. It was actually surprisingly good for a thriller (and also short).
***
We finished watching Mysterious Lotus Casebook yesterday. I didn't go in expecting a whole lot, but I ended up enjoying it somewhat.
Plot
A traveling doctor meets up with a wannabe detective and they solve crime together. Sometimes, they're joined by a determined stalker. All the crimes they solve have to do with stuff that happened 10 years ago. There's also a failed nation in there somewhere.
Cast and Characters
Traveling doctor Li Lianhua fka Li Xiangyi is played by Cheng Yi, whose eyes are honestly too close together.
Despite his close-set eyes, he does a decent job of playing both the snot-nosed, annoying Li Xiangyi and the sickly Li Lianhua.
Wannabe detective Fang Duobing aka Fang Xiaobao is played by Joseph Zeng (Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber 2018, Heroes), whose wonky eyes are less distracting here, maybe because they gave him a lot of bangs to hide his deficiencies.
Good job, wig department, hide that weird wonky eye.
Wonky-eyed Joseph Zeng does just an okay job. He plays pretty much the same character as that guy in Heroes and that wishy-washy ass in HSDS. That's just his acting range.
Determined talker Di Feisheng is played by Xiao Shunyao (Till the End of the Moon), the only person with regular-looking eyes in this trio of main actors.
Although his butt chin, man...
I generally enjoy this character and this guy acts better than he did in that terrible TTEOTM. But probably anything else is better than anything in TTEOTM.
At least two other people from TTEOTM is in this drama, but I'm going to stop at the main leads.
Pros and Cons
Pro: The three main leads aren't dubbed!
It's so major it needs to be mentioned first. Screw people's excuses about how different accents in China are soooo different and distracting. Joseph Zeng is slurrier when he speaks Mandarin than the other two leads. It's noticeable, but not at all distracting and all three are perfectly understandable. It was really, really nice to be able to know exactly which character is doing the talking even when I'm not looking at the screen. And screw people's excuses about how loud wuxia sets are with their wind machines and crap. This is a wuxia drama. They were able to capture dialogue from the set. So shut up.
Con: The know-it-all detective
This is not so much a complaint against this particular drama, but crime-solving dramas/movies/stories in general. I think maybe it's just not the genre for me. In these stories, there's typically the main "detective" and nothing gets past him. Then there's the "sidekick" that probably stands in for the audience so that they can ask all the questions and give lay person explanations when needed. In this case, Li Lianhua is the detective and Fang Duobing is the sidekick.
They go through each case methodically and formulaically. There's some mystery that no one else can solve. In comes Li Lianhua and he sees/deduces what other people cannot. Fang Duobing helps him out with grunt work. In the end, no one else could have solved the case if not for having Li Lianhua around.
Pro: Pretty decent wuxia story
Without the detective part, the background story is actually pretty decent wuxia. There are disputes between sects, martial arts competitions, and grudges. I particularly like how the background story is how Li Lianhua used to be awesome and decided to leave the martial arts world behind for reasons. And it's not because he regrets killing people and mope around the world like that mopey boring guy in Word of Honor. The story establishes the reasons well enough for me to understand his motivations.
Con: Because it's convenient to the plot
Li Xiangyi has this awesome inner qi technique called Yangzhouman. Only he knows it. It can do everything, from curing poison to curing major injuries to making flowers blossom (really). Every time someone (including himself) is super injured/poisoned, it can be resolved with Yangzhouman. Okay...
After being poisoned and becoming less awesome, Li Xiangyi wanders the world as Li Lianhua. Li Lianhua only has 10% of the martial arts power Li Xiangyi used to have. But he still consistently beats up on very powerful people.
Since he was poisoned, using his remaining 10% martial arts and Yangzhouman severely taxes him. At various points, people tell him he only has less than one month to live. But during that time, he travels all over solving crime. The drama doesn't cover how much time passes, but during that less than one month period, he:
* Traveled from one city to another
* Solved at least one mystery
* Traveled to the capital to solve a mystery inside the palace
* Was imprisoned by a crazy lady
* Broke out of that imprisonment
* Traveled to the capital to rescue the royal family
* Traveled back to wherever he lives when he's not in the capital
* Traveled back to the capital to resolve plot between Fang Duobing and the emperor
* Traveled around with Fang Duobing
* Traveled back to his old sect to resolve plot
* Traveled around with Fang Duobing long enough to ditch him
That math only works out if it takes an average of less than 3 days to do each of the above tasks. Who knew olden time traveling takes almost no time at all!
And despite always being on the verge of dropping dead at any moment, Li Lianhua always gathers up enough Yangzhouman to kick ass/save someone anyways.
From this:
To that in a few moments:
Pro: Main character relationships
I do like the relationship between the Li Lianhua and Fang Duobing. To a lessor extent (and mainly because he's in the drama less), I also like Li Lianhua and Di Feisheng. It's not contrived like I feel Word of Honor was very contrived.
I also like how the drama doesn't try to excuse or explain away killing people. This is the martial arts world. People kill people all the time. They talk about Di Feisheng as someone that killed a lot of people and that's a fact versus trying to make him out to be misunderstood in some way.
Neutral: Fight choreography and general action
It probably trends in the right direction. People ride their own horses and there are more fights than fight staredowns.
However, the wirework is still terrible with people moving about like physics doesn't exist, like in the above gif. They should have dropped the wire immediately after Li Lianhua kicks Shan Guodao so that he can land more naturally. Instead, he lingers up in the air a second too long and it looks stupid. When it's very powerful people fighting, their fights are just OP'ed and boring to look at (ie. Di Feisheng v. Li Xiangyi or most Di Feisheng fight choreography).
The End
I would say this was fairly decent wuxia. I could have done without the case solving portion of the drama or at least have it shortened. But that's probably just not the genre I like. The genre I do like is wuxia and this has a very good basic story for it. There are plot execution bits that aren't good. But in general, I would say this is a solid drama.
Nightmare Alley - OMG, this was terrible and such a waste of time. It's everything I feel is bad about "well-made" movies/TV these days. The acting is good. The cinematography is excellent. But the characters themselves? They're unlikable assholes and I don't know why I should care about their struggles and plights, especially not over 2 hours 30 minutes of their struggles and plights.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - Even more terrible and even longer than Nightmare Alley (almost 3 terrible, self-indulgent hours)!!! At the end, I was rooting for the Manson Family to kill everyone. Certainly I wanted to kill someone after watching these two movies consecutively (at least it wasn't on the same day).
Rosaline - A short, charming story after the terribleness of the above. It's a teen comedy fan fic telling of what happened to Rosaline (the girlfriend Romeo dumped in favor of Juliet) and how she saved Romeo and Juliet. It makes me think of those cutesy 90's teen romances/comedies like Every After or Ten Things I Have About You.
And not part of the alphabetical watching, we watched No Exit. It was actually surprisingly good for a thriller (and also short).
***
We finished watching Mysterious Lotus Casebook yesterday. I didn't go in expecting a whole lot, but I ended up enjoying it somewhat.
Plot
A traveling doctor meets up with a wannabe detective and they solve crime together. Sometimes, they're joined by a determined stalker. All the crimes they solve have to do with stuff that happened 10 years ago. There's also a failed nation in there somewhere.
Cast and Characters
Traveling doctor Li Lianhua fka Li Xiangyi is played by Cheng Yi, whose eyes are honestly too close together.
Despite his close-set eyes, he does a decent job of playing both the snot-nosed, annoying Li Xiangyi and the sickly Li Lianhua.
Wannabe detective Fang Duobing aka Fang Xiaobao is played by Joseph Zeng (Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber 2018, Heroes), whose wonky eyes are less distracting here, maybe because they gave him a lot of bangs to hide his deficiencies.
Good job, wig department, hide that weird wonky eye.
Wonky-eyed Joseph Zeng does just an okay job. He plays pretty much the same character as that guy in Heroes and that wishy-washy ass in HSDS. That's just his acting range.
Determined talker Di Feisheng is played by Xiao Shunyao (Till the End of the Moon), the only person with regular-looking eyes in this trio of main actors.
Although his butt chin, man...
I generally enjoy this character and this guy acts better than he did in that terrible TTEOTM. But probably anything else is better than anything in TTEOTM.
At least two other people from TTEOTM is in this drama, but I'm going to stop at the main leads.
Pros and Cons
Pro: The three main leads aren't dubbed!
It's so major it needs to be mentioned first. Screw people's excuses about how different accents in China are soooo different and distracting. Joseph Zeng is slurrier when he speaks Mandarin than the other two leads. It's noticeable, but not at all distracting and all three are perfectly understandable. It was really, really nice to be able to know exactly which character is doing the talking even when I'm not looking at the screen. And screw people's excuses about how loud wuxia sets are with their wind machines and crap. This is a wuxia drama. They were able to capture dialogue from the set. So shut up.
Con: The know-it-all detective
This is not so much a complaint against this particular drama, but crime-solving dramas/movies/stories in general. I think maybe it's just not the genre for me. In these stories, there's typically the main "detective" and nothing gets past him. Then there's the "sidekick" that probably stands in for the audience so that they can ask all the questions and give lay person explanations when needed. In this case, Li Lianhua is the detective and Fang Duobing is the sidekick.
They go through each case methodically and formulaically. There's some mystery that no one else can solve. In comes Li Lianhua and he sees/deduces what other people cannot. Fang Duobing helps him out with grunt work. In the end, no one else could have solved the case if not for having Li Lianhua around.
Pro: Pretty decent wuxia story
Without the detective part, the background story is actually pretty decent wuxia. There are disputes between sects, martial arts competitions, and grudges. I particularly like how the background story is how Li Lianhua used to be awesome and decided to leave the martial arts world behind for reasons. And it's not because he regrets killing people and mope around the world like that mopey boring guy in Word of Honor. The story establishes the reasons well enough for me to understand his motivations.
Con: Because it's convenient to the plot
Li Xiangyi has this awesome inner qi technique called Yangzhouman. Only he knows it. It can do everything, from curing poison to curing major injuries to making flowers blossom (really). Every time someone (including himself) is super injured/poisoned, it can be resolved with Yangzhouman. Okay...
After being poisoned and becoming less awesome, Li Xiangyi wanders the world as Li Lianhua. Li Lianhua only has 10% of the martial arts power Li Xiangyi used to have. But he still consistently beats up on very powerful people.
Since he was poisoned, using his remaining 10% martial arts and Yangzhouman severely taxes him. At various points, people tell him he only has less than one month to live. But during that time, he travels all over solving crime. The drama doesn't cover how much time passes, but during that less than one month period, he:
* Traveled from one city to another
* Solved at least one mystery
* Traveled to the capital to solve a mystery inside the palace
* Was imprisoned by a crazy lady
* Broke out of that imprisonment
* Traveled to the capital to rescue the royal family
* Traveled back to wherever he lives when he's not in the capital
* Traveled back to the capital to resolve plot between Fang Duobing and the emperor
* Traveled around with Fang Duobing
* Traveled back to his old sect to resolve plot
* Traveled around with Fang Duobing long enough to ditch him
That math only works out if it takes an average of less than 3 days to do each of the above tasks. Who knew olden time traveling takes almost no time at all!
And despite always being on the verge of dropping dead at any moment, Li Lianhua always gathers up enough Yangzhouman to kick ass/save someone anyways.
From this:
To that in a few moments:
Pro: Main character relationships
I do like the relationship between the Li Lianhua and Fang Duobing. To a lessor extent (and mainly because he's in the drama less), I also like Li Lianhua and Di Feisheng. It's not contrived like I feel Word of Honor was very contrived.
I also like how the drama doesn't try to excuse or explain away killing people. This is the martial arts world. People kill people all the time. They talk about Di Feisheng as someone that killed a lot of people and that's a fact versus trying to make him out to be misunderstood in some way.
Neutral: Fight choreography and general action
It probably trends in the right direction. People ride their own horses and there are more fights than fight staredowns.
However, the wirework is still terrible with people moving about like physics doesn't exist, like in the above gif. They should have dropped the wire immediately after Li Lianhua kicks Shan Guodao so that he can land more naturally. Instead, he lingers up in the air a second too long and it looks stupid. When it's very powerful people fighting, their fights are just OP'ed and boring to look at (ie. Di Feisheng v. Li Xiangyi or most Di Feisheng fight choreography).
The End
I would say this was fairly decent wuxia. I could have done without the case solving portion of the drama or at least have it shortened. But that's probably just not the genre I like. The genre I do like is wuxia and this has a very good basic story for it. There are plot execution bits that aren't good. But in general, I would say this is a solid drama.