barelyconcealed
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The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty
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Unfortunately, like Sherlock it also falls apart a bit. I generally think the performers (specifically Fu Mengbo & Liu Yaoyuan) are doing such a good job with the script, but I think the problem is mostly the script and with the late stage production. You can see the expense on screen in sets, martial arts, & costuming, but especially after about halfway through the series the editing gets really, really bad. At least one episode effectively ends mid sentence, like they hit their word count and had to shunt over the next episode.
The script starts off strong, but it feels like they stopped caring around episode 30 or so. The finale episode involves a climatic battle between two characters who did not exist in the series until maybe episode 40. They have a hard time handling the story beats, and at certain points the characters (some of whom are basically the smartest men in the Dynasty) have to suddenly become idiots for the plot to work .
It's such a pity overall because I really love the characters and the actors, but I can't, in good conscious recommend a series that it felt like I had to be pushed to finish just so I could reach a conclusion.
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The Demonic Lord and the Virtuous Cultivator
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would have loved more
trigger warnings: imprisonment, strangulationThis was kind of odd, both in the sense that it is 4 minutes long and that it feels like a trailer. So much so that I had to like, triple check that I wasn't watching the trailer for this very thing.
Short films like this often make me hungrier for a larger work (looking at you 2019's Kiss of the Rabbit God). The game attempt by the director and team here to just like, try to fit an entire web novels plot into 4 minutes is pretty solid but there is just too much plot for that little amount of time (this is also why it feels like a trailer).
A comment on the video I watched said something about how if BL can do the toxic master/disciple relationship so can GL and honestly, go for it girl. I just hope that there are more longer form works down the pipeline.
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Kind of Fun Trash
I really do appreciate this drama but it's definitely not for the story, which at its most polite could be called meandering. Every head canon you can create for this story is better than what they actually put into this.But what makes this show engaging and honestly fairly rewatchable is the cast - there's two pretty solid pairings in Milo/Apo and Bible/Build - I'm not sold on Jeff and Barcode, who could maybe play brothers but who I do not buy as romantic partners.
There is almost no fully formed idea in this script, which allows it to go off the rails when it needs to (a sex scene around bread? Tankhun? the healthiest sex scene happening between a couple half-kidnapped?) but also makes it less engaging at times. Generally speaking, I only really recommend this if you know what you're getting into.
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Red Devil and Heroine Su
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short and a bit undercooked
This doesn't really feel like a short film at all, more like a well-produced music video. It has a certain quality to it that makes it seem like a film that was shot in a day - probably mostly in terms of little things in production value like the costuming, the sets, and the lack of additional performers.It is gorgeously shot and the costumes are lovely, but the reliance on the soundtrack to tell the story and the limited dialogue made the entire thing just feel very, very simple.
I was surprised to find out that the two women who star in this were dating (they seem to have had a cycle since where they broke up and then are back together). It was a pleasant surprise.
Honestly even though I cam down kind of cool on this, I would love to see more wlw wuxia. There doesn't seem to be a lot of it out there - I've been compiling a list - and I would love to see more.
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A+ Set Design
I'm not wild about the story - it's a relatively straightforward "murder game" take, though I think for me one of the most interesting elements plot wise is the pseudo informed consent of the participants. A lot of murder game takes - from Most Dangerous Game to Battle Royale - have unwilling participants. But these participants (barring the ones in the first game who did not entirely know the stakes) continued to play willingly. In fact, that seemed to be part of the point.There's no particular reason to stress the anti-capitalist messaging in this. If you have read anything about Squid Game it's probably about that. It's interesting, but also to an extent deeply nihilistic in a way that I find a bit unengaging. while accurate, hopelessness in the face of death like experiences just feels....pointless. I know that I'm likely to go bankrupt if I suddenly get cancer, and I know that there are people who have so much money that they could easily wipe my debts but instead build a (probably fictional) massive murder island so they can sit on human furniture and take bets on whether I'll off myself after she dies. Bleak af.
For me, the thing that stands out the most about Squid Game is the set design. There's a real story in the way that each of the sets is designed from the bright yellow piggy bank floating like a light in a casino above the room to the childrens's school yard at the end. The performances - specifically newcomer Jung Ho-yeon - were also really solid.
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Street Dance of China: Season 3
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Found Through YouTube Algorithm, Now I've Gotten Everyone Else Into It
I found this show, and this specific season, through YouTube's algorithm putting together that I am both deeply interested in dance videos and also the idol Wang Yibo.Good news, they were right on the money.
At this juncture, having finally finished the show, I have successfully convinced about 10 people to watch this show and having finished it, I have no regrets. This show is fantastic. I love competition reality shows, and this manages to combine things I love - competition! dancing! - with things I didn't know I needed - a fierce camaraderie, friendship, and a certain kindness that I find lacking in a lot of competition reality shows.
I love the captains - from Wallace's kind uncle energy to Lay's commitment to Chinoiserie - and this show gave me a greater appreciation for the judges I was previously unaware of. To be honest, the only person I knew on this show before I started was Yibo and by the end I'm now a fan of the other captains and am honestly really excited for Season 4.
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The visuals are definitely where this film shines, specifically in the scene and set design. The character work still has some of that plasticine feel of CG, but the worlds feel really exceptional, particularly the Demon Realm, Qing Ming's Courtyard, and the Yin Yang Bureau. Fight sequences fought in these sets feel otherworldly, displaced outside of reality in the way of good fantasy.
The story drags a bit in the later acts. It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, it just feels like a much longer movie than it actually ends up being.
TL;DR: Visually, the spectacle is 100% -- and I really love the characterization of Qing Ming here.
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I feel like it's important to reference the show is in heavy needs of trigger warnings for things like sexual violence, murder, miscarriage, abortion, and basically any terrible thing that has happened and can happen to young women in bad situations. I don't think the show necessarily suffers because of these inclusions, but since this show is highly recommended on a lot of different channels, it seems important to reference these trigger warnings somewhere since they're usually not included.
I love this. Max and Tul have, once again, phenomenal chemistry together. This is the second drama of theirs I've seen, and I'm definitely interested in following more from them. They have a natural charisma together that works really well and sells their relationship and comfort with each other.
The actual plot is also fairly interesting, focusing on a mysterious set of murders and death and a medical examiner. The first few episodes lean hard into some educational elements surrounding true crime, a thing that the show later mostly discards. The secondary couple is also very cute together.
Generally, if you can handle crime dramas and the massive trigger warnings, I would recommend seeking out this drama.
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Girl from Nowhere: The Series
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Nanno is a horror movie villain for hypocrites
It's difficult to recommend The Girl From Nowhere, not because it's bad but because roughly ever episode needs its own cavalcade of trigger warnings from violence against women to miscarriage to bullying. If you have a trigger, this show is likely to gleefully feature it.I've seen more reviews saying "This isn't like Gossip Girl or other teen dramas" than anything indicating that it was supposed to be or looked like that. It's not a teen drama, at least not in the conventional soapy sense. Instead, Nanno is an agent of chaos, a kind of horror movie villain for hypocrites. She just happens to also be a teenager.
The acting is pretty consistent overall, for me the biggest problem with the show is that it's kind of inconsistent in terms of quality and in terms of episodes. It has some of my favorite episodes of television I've seen in years, specifically Episode 8 "Lost & Found," though I still think you need to be familiar with the series in order to watch that one. But it also has some very inconsistent episodes that don't really seem to be following the pseudo-formula that the series has overall, like Episode 4 & Episode 10.
This feels like a show that someone would call "Black Mirror-esque" when what they mean is it's a show where every episode is different and has a similar moral (Black Mirror's moral is that technology is evil, The Girl From Nowhere is all about calling you on your own hypocrisy.)
Overall, I found it terribly entertaining (emphasis on terrible) but it's a difficult show to recommend. I will be seeking out Season 2.
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solid production design, largely forgettable
tw: extreme poverty, post-apocalyptic class stratification, suicide bombing, violence, medicalI picked this to watch because I'm hanging out with my dad this week, it was short and the trailer looked really interesting. In practice though, this was ultimately a high production flop for me.
The performances were quite solid all around (I do not recommend the dub, which I had to watch because my father is hard of hearing and has trouble with subtitles), the set design and general world building was interesting and there are definitely parts of this that feel really cool and interesting to watch, but they do not coalesce into a whole that is worth even the 6 episodes we have.
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Beautiful Production Design
For some reason, this took almost two years for me to finish.There's nothing inherently wrong with Hotel Del Luna - it's certainly a solidly constructed K-Drama. IU is a phenomenal casting decision, and is absolutely the star of every scene she is in. The additional casting is also good. This has some of the best production design, especially costuming, I've ever seen in a show.
Where this series loses me is both in the overall plot and the principal romance. I do not buy the main romance of the series, in any shape or form, and it does not drive the plot forward which is unfortunate since the final episode is about 3/4ths just that. On their own, each of these performances is fantastic - together they build towards a pile of nothing. I wish I was more engaged than I was.
The secondary plots were by far the strongest parts of this, and I honestly wish there was a sign that the Hotel del Luna sequel was coming, because I would love to see it.
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all horror movie villains should be waylaid by hot boys on guitars
I am not entirely sure how I ended up here.This has some college production vibes going on here - I chuckled when they both somehow managed to put all their electronics on a table next to a pool, clearly one or both of them was going to go in.
It's short and I honestly found the acting to be pretty solid - specifically from Jeff and Gameplay. I can see why they both have had more work since then, they honestly sold this pretty well for me. The lines they were given to deliver were pretty bad to be honest - also telling a dead person that your romance is a comedy is kind of funny but only in the fact that it's inherently untrue.
It's a solid 45 minutes, if a little melodramatic and it made me want to watch more from the two leads at the very least.
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Cat in the Eastern Palace
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Catgirl
I'm currently going through and watching as many baihe or wlw Chinese shorts. This one came up a lot in my research, probably because it stars Wang Laoji - who features in several other shows in this specific variety. She is obviously quite beautiful, but she's also really good at giving a solid performance in not a lot of time.These shorts seem to be largely heavy on longing glances and gorgeous shots of the location or just hanfu, so there isn't a lot of time for plot to be delivered. There's a great deal of plot here for 7 minutes, but it doesn't really overstay it's welcome or try to cram too much into too short a time.
Videos like this are honestly one of the reasons that I don't love MDL's requirement for 500 words in order to submit a review.
Writing a full review for something that is 7 minutes long is honestly quite funny since the review would be basically as long as the video is.
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cute, short
tw: suicide, violence, and implied sexual assaultDespite those trigger warnings, this was actually pretty cute. The relationship between the two main characters was fun to watch even though this felt like the first episode of a much longer drama. As opposed to some other shorts I've seen they didn't really cram too much into the time frame. The acting (specifically on the sterner female lead) was honestly pretty solid, the writing wasn't too bad.
The format was honestly the worst part - I think this was originally made for Douyin and so it's split into 2 minute episodes that include a lot of recapping. If someone made a cut of this that was just the actual story without end credits or recapping, it would probably only be about 10-15 minutes.
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