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xiaosean · 3 years

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why you should watch douluo continent

the drama adaptation is such a good rendition of “soul land” and stayed true to the plot line and character development. it was fast-paced (perfect for me) but may be confusing for those who don’t know the story. i personally love the donghua, and i think the drama did an adequate job of portraying everything in their own way 😁 (read at your own discretion; this contains spoilers)

things i liked:

initially, i didn’t like the dreamscape bc wtf is it doing there? why is he hearing his mom’s voice in episode 1 (it just kills the entire momentum of the plot); and then after i got to episode 39... fucking ep. 39, i knew the dreamscape needed to be there in order to save tang san’s life; mr. wang who wrote the script, props to you.

the cgi 🥰✨ i had really low expectations bc if there’s shitty cgi like cql... i wouldn’t be able to handle it. but it’s so good ??? please, i know the ape soul beast was small and funny looking (bc they had to spend money on the water dragon lmao), but other than that, it was so good and how each and every character’s powers were able to shine

le outfits + makeup - they’re not super pale 😭😭😭 finally !!! and the outfits are so nice, SO SO NICE, each and every character holy hell

how they changed hu liena’s (aka. qian renxue) role in the drama --- she’s my fav female antagonist; she’s so good here, her character was annoying at first, but she’s so dynamic and independent, and just wants to impress her mom. you see her helping tang san + his squad during the last 5 eps because SHE CARES about her mom despite her strict upbringing 🥺 her and tang san have a ship name called 糖葫芦 (candied hawthorns) and i think that’s so cute hehe

the seven devils 😂 i loved the seven devils in this adaptation almost as much as i loved them in the donghua; each and every character got their own storyline, they’re not boring nor do they draw attention away from the tang san’s main plot, and you see so much development (esp. in ou sike and dai mubai)

headmaster, da shi, and er long trio! 黄金铁三角 iconic and they captured it so well 😭 they chose the actor for the headmaster so freaking well i’m screaming! he loves money so much and his little facial expressions as a third wheel is everything, the comedic relief! and da shi... i see y’all thirsting over calvin chen okay 😌 he’s so much better in the drama tbh & er long is majestic and amazingly powerful and cunning, i love her !!! and props to luo san pao, the best doggo ever!

the seniors! they basically perfected tang san’s relationship with dugu bo... it was antagonistic at first, but then they became besties over poison 😭❤️ i loved dugu bo’s character in here bc he was so funny & didn’t get social cues LMAO // the ape soul master was brief but he honestly made my day with how much he respected the tang family & how he took care of his father back in the day // 七宝琉璃 squad was also 🥰 (less hot than in the donghua lol) but they also somehow made jian yeye the comedic relief? i love how they’re so accepting of ou sike despite him being a support soul master

tang san’s mom - i can only hear her voice, but she made me cry & i love her for that

tang san ❤️❤️❤️ xiao zhan’s voice over just blended in with his character & it was just so wonderful; tang san in the donghua was smart, so fucking smart, cunning, but the kindest at heart; xiao zhan truly portrayed that and my most memorable part was when da shi said “your only flaw is that you let your emotions get the best of you” (this is so important), and you see him later try to control his emotions and not act rashly, especially when confronted with 时年 & 比比东 --- also crying scenes 11/10

bibi dong powerful, POWERFUL WOMAN, props to her voice actress, i got chills when she said, “你根本没有资格知道” // tang hao, wow he’s just like i imagined, but i wish he was a little more emotional in ep. 1 bc the blue silver plant in tang san is essentially his lover’s martial soul

how the concept of family was generated within the shi lan ke academy squad 🥺 it’s such a feel good drama, istg, makes you so happy when you’re having a bad day ✨

things i didn’t like:

xiao wu’s character portrayal (the scriptwriter’s fault, not xuanyi) // i honestly let it slide for the first 10 episodes bc i usually start falling for a character later on, it’s normal; but drama xiao wu didn’t fulfill the 小舞姐 in my heart 😔 i get that many people like her, but it’s not the same! xiao wu in donghua is beautiful, independent, and outspoken, BUT MOST OF ALL HER LOVE FOR TANG SAN IS OBVIOUS, you don’t need to say “一起去” every other line in the drama; i think this could have been remedied if they stayed true to the storyline and let tang san enter the secret dimension alone, bring the mythical herbs back, and have xiao wu prick herself to activate 相思断肠红 (they completely butchered the significance of the flower i’m so angry; fyi: the flower can only belong to you if your heart loves one person --- there’s the most beautiful backstory to the flower but drama douluo said nah). also, drama xiao wu is so clingy and she started exposing herself from the beginning... no momentum build-up whatsoever 😔 it’s 斗罗大陆, not 斗罗大陆: 小舞传 and sometimes it felt like she was being so insistent on following tang san around, i’m just 😓

the whole canghui academy scheme --- it was confusing for 10 eps straight until they got to the end of it, but I guess the drama wanted to add that part in because they wanted to focus less on the competition and more on 变异武魂 (the mutated martial souls) in order to defeat bibi dong

how the beginning was so confusing 😫 i wish they just stuck with child tang san remembering his past life as a disciple in tang clan & then learning 玄天宝录 on his own bc that was such a great part of his character development + understanding of soul masters/their weaknesses; and the fact that he would rely less on his parents

the kiss + confession at ep. 40 // could have done w/o it or even a simple forehead kiss; the confession from tang san was way too quick considering there’s little to no emotional build-up towards that moment (other than bibi dong doing all the work like the queen she is) and there’s no surprise element either? like we’ve been knew she’s a soul beast since ep. 5 🥲 and the kiss was awkward & like i said, sanwu’s love doesn’t need words or actions to confirm... it’s this innate thing that the audience should be able to see (if the scriptwriters focused a little more on BIG plot points that boost the sanwu relationship, then it would have been perfect) ^^ i wish they spent more time on the romantic aspect of the relationship bc even after 30 eps, they seem like siblings when OP said They’re Not.

overall thoughts:

this is purely my opinion, so please take it with a grain of salt! the cons imo were minor except for the development of the sanwu relationship; it doesn’t seem like romance to me 😔 but hopefully it’ll get better in the (maybe) second season when they take some time apart to grow? i’m surprised how much they referenced the original story (characters and such), and i am thoroughly impressed with WHERE THEY ENDED IT, and how they rounded all the new/old plot points together in a way that makes sense. i also don’t hate any of the antagonists, which is why this drama is so lighthearted and easy to watch. it’s not emotionally taxing (sans tang san crying bc xz breaks me heart 😭💕), and safe + enjoyable to watch with family! you’re gonna miss it once it ends, and i think that makes a drama successful 😁 also i’m not gonna go into depth about the mysterious ending bc i might spoil it for those who want to watch the donghua LMAO (but if you want to know my theories, shoot me an ask)

#douluo continent spoilers #SPOILERS TAG RIGHT THERE.#don't say i didn't warn you!#douluo continent #douluo dalu #ruby talks

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alwaysalreadyangry · 3 years

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most of the UK reviews i’ve read of martin eden have been a disappointment, tbh. i don’t know if this is because critics have been busy with cannes or because outlets here just don’t have the space, or because it’s kind of seen as old news. i have seen no real engagement with the politics or form beyond a couple of cursory lines, and it’s a shame because... i think it’s really rich wrt those elements?

so i am looking again at the (wonderful) review from film comment last year and it’s such a shame that it’s not available freely online. so i thought i’d post it here behind a cut. it’s long but worth it imo (and also engages really interestingly with marcello’s other films). it’s by phoebe chen.

COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS Jan 3, 2020 BY PHOEBE CHEN

EARLY IN JACK LONDON’S 1909 NOVEL MARTIN EDEN, there is a scattering of references to technical ephemera that the 20th century will promptly leave behind: “chromos and lithographs,” those early attempts at large-scale reproduction; “a vast camera obscura,” by then a centuries-old relic; a bullfight so fervid it’s like “gazing into a kinetoscope,” that proto-cinematic spectacle of cloistered motion. These objects now seem like archaic curios, not much more than the flotsam of culture from the moment it shifted gears to mass production. It’s a change in scale that also ensnares the novel’s title character, a hardy young sailor and autodidact-turned-writer-célèbre, famously an avatar of London’s own hollowing transmutation into a figure for mass consumption. But, lucky him—he remains eminent now on the other side of a century; chance still leaves a world of names and faces to gather dust. Easily the most arresting aspect of Pietro Marcello’s new adaptation is its spotlight on the peripheral: from start to end, London’s linear Künstlerroman is intercut with a dizzying range of archival footage, from a decaying nitrate strip of anarchist Errico Malatesta at a workers’ rally to home video–style super 16mm of kids jiving by an arcade game. In these ghostly interludes, Marcello reanimates the visual detritus of industrial production as a kind of archival unconscious.

This temporal remixing is central to Marcello’s work, mostly experimental documentaries that skew auto-ethnographic and use elusive, essayistic editing to constellate place and memory, but always with a clear eye to the present. Marcello’s first feature, Crossing the Line (2007), gathers footage of domestic migrant workers and the nocturnal trains that barrel them to jobs across the country, laying down a recurring fascination with infrastructure. By his second feature, The Mouth of the Wolf (2009), there is already the sense of an artist in riveting negotiation with the scope of his story and setting. Commissioned by a Jesuit foundation during Marcello’s yearlong residency in the port city of Genoa, the film ebbs between a city-symphonic array and a singular focus on the story of a trans sex worker and her formerly incarcerated lover, still together after 20-odd years and spells of separation. Their lives are bound up with a poetic figuration of the city’s making, from the mythic horizon of ancient travails, recalled in bluer-than-blue shots of the Ligurian Sea at dawn, to new-millennium enterprise in the docklands, filled with shipping crates and bulldozers busy with destruction.

Marcello brings a similar approach to Martin Eden, though its emphasis is inverted: it’s the individual narrative that telescopes a broader history of 20th-century Italy. In this pivotal move, Marcello and co-writer Maurizio Braucci shift London’s Oakland-set story to Naples, switching the cold expanse of the North Pacific for the Mediterranean and its well-traversed waters. The young century, too, is switched out for an indeterminate period with jumbled signifiers: initial clues point to a time just shy of World War II, though a television set in a working-class household soon suggests the late ’50s, and then a plastic helicopter figurine loosely yokes us to the ’70s. Even the score delights in anachronism, marked by a heavy synth bass that perforates the sacral reverb of a cappella and organ song, like a discotheque in a cathedral. And—why not?—’70s and ’80s Europop throwbacks lend archival sequences a further sense of epochal collapse. While Marcello worked with researcher Alessia Petitto for the film’s analog trove, much of its vintage stock is feigned by hand-tinting and distressing original 16mm footage. Sometimes a medium-change jolts with sudden incongruity, as in a cut to dockworkers filmed in black and white, their faces and hands painted in uncanny approximations of living complexions. Other transitions are so precisely matched to color and texture that they seem extensions of a dream.

Martin’s writer’s optimism is built on a faith in language as the site of communication and mutual recognition. So follows his tragedy.

Patchworked from the scraps of a long century, this composite view seems to bristle against a story of individual formation. It feels like a strange time for an artist’s coming-of-age tale adapted with such sincerity, especially when that central emphasis on becoming—and becoming a writer, no less—is upended by geopolitical and ecological hostility. At first, our young Martin strides on screen with all the endearing curiosity of an archetypal naïf, played by Luca Marinelli with a cannonballing force that still makes room for the gentler affects of embarrassment and first love. Like the novel, the film begins with a dockside rescue: early one morning, Martin saves a young aristocrat from a beating, for which he is rewarded with lunch at the family estate. On its storied grounds, Martin meets the stranger’s luminous sister, Elena Orsini (Jessica Cressy), a blonde-haloed and silk-bloused conduit for his twinned desires of knowledge and class transgression. In rooms of ornate stucco and gilded everything, the Orsinis parade their enthusiasm for education in a contrived show of open-mindedness, a familiar posture of well-meaning liberals who love to trumpet a certain model of education as global panacea. University-educated Elena can recite Baudelaire in French; Martin trips over simple conjugations in his mother tongue. “You need money to study,” he protests, after Elena prescribes him a back-to-school stint. “I’m sure that your family would not ignore such an important objective,” she insists (to an orphan, who first set sail at age 11).

Anyone who has ever been thrilled into critical pursuit by a single moment of understanding knows the first beat of this story. Bolting through book after book, Martin is fired by the ever-shifting measure of his knowledge. In these limitless stretches of facts to come, there’s the promised glow of sheer comprehension, the way it clarifies the world as it intoxicates: “All hidden things were laying their secrets bare. He was drunk with comprehension,” writes London. Marcello is just as attentive to how Martin understands, a process anchored to the past experiences of his working body. From his years of manual labor, he comes to knowledge in a distinctly embodied way, charming by being so literal. At lunch with the Orsinis, he offers a bread roll as a metaphor for education and gestures at the sauce on his plate as “poverty,” tearing off a piece of education and mopping up the remnants with relish. Later, in a letter to Elena, he recounts his adventures in literacy: “I note down new words, I turn them into my friends.” In these early moments, his expressions are as playful as they are trenchant, enlivened by newfound ways of articulating experience. His writer’s optimism is built on a faith in language as the site of communication and mutual recognition. So follows his tragedy.

One of Marcello’s major structural decisions admittedly makes for some final-act whiplash, when a cut elides the loaded years of Martin’s incremental success, stratospheric fame, and present fall into jaded torpor. By now, he is a bottle-blonde chain-smoker with his own palazzo and entourage, set to leave on a U.S. press tour even though he hasn’t written a thing in years. His ideas have been amplified to unprecedented reach by mass media, and his words circulate as abstract commodities for a vulturine audience. For all its emphasis on formation, Martin Eden is less a story of ebullient self-discovery than one of inhibiting self-consciousness. There is no real sense that Martin’s baseline character has changed, because it hasn’t. Even his now best-selling writing is the stuff of countless prior rejected manuscripts. From that first day at the Orsini estate, when his roughness sticks out to him as a fact, he learns about the gulf between a hardier self-image and the surface self that’s eyed by others.

WITH SUCH A DEEPLY INHABITED PERFORMANCE by Marinelli, it’s intuitive to read the film as a character study, but the lyrical interiority of London’s novel never feels like the point of Marcello’s adaptation. Archival clips—aged by time, or a colorist’s hand—often seem to illustrate episodes from Martin’s past, punctuating the visual specificity of individual memory: a tense encounter with his sister cuts to two children dancing with joyous frenzy; his failed grammar-school entrance exam finds its way to sepia-stained shots of a crippled, shoeless boy. These insertions are more affective echoes than literal ones, the store of a single life drawn from a pool of collective happening.

But, that catch: writing in the hopes of being read, as Martin does (as most do), means feeding some construct of a distinctive self. While the spotlight of celebrity singles out the destructive irony of Martin’s aggressive individualism, Marcello draws from Italy’s roiling history of anarchist and workerist movements to complicate the film’s political critique, taking an itinerant path through factions and waves from anarcho-communism in the early 1900s to the pro-strike years of autonomist Marxism in the late ’70s. In place of crystalline messaging is a structure that parallels Martin’s own desultory politics, traced in both film and novel through his commitment to liberal theorist Herbert Spencer. Early on, Martin has an epiphanic encounter with Spencer’s First Principles (a detail informed by London’s own discovery of the text as a teen), which lays out a systematic philosophy of natural laws, and offers evolution as a structuring principle for the universe—a “master-key,” London offers. Soon, Martin bellows diatribes shaped by Spencer’s more divisive, social Darwinist ideas of evolutionary justice, as though progress is only possible through cruel ambivalence. Late in the film, an image of a drunk and passed-out Martin cuts to yellowed footage of a young boy penciling his name—“Martin Eden”—over and over in an exercise book, a dream of becoming turned memory.

In Marcello’s previous feature, Lost and Beautiful (2015), memory is more explicitly staged as an attachment to landscape. Like Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro, Lost and Beautiful plays as a pastoral elegy but lays out the bureaucratic inefficiency that hastens heritage loss through neglect. Rolling fields make occasional appearances in Martin Eden, but its Neapolitan surroundings evoke a different history. Far from the two oceans that inspired a North American tradition of maritime literature, the Mediterranean guards its own idiosyncrasies of promise and catastrophe. Of the Sea’s fraught function as a regional crossroads, Marcello has noted, in The Mouth of the Wolf, a braiding of fate and agency: “They are men who transmigrate,” the opening voiceover intones. “We don’t know their stories. We know they chose, found this place, not others.” Mare Nostrum—“Our Sea”—is the Roman epithet for the Mediterranean, a possessive projection that abides in current vernacular. Like so many cities that cup the sea, Naples is a site of immigrant crossing, a fact slyly addressed in Martin Eden with a fleeting long shot of black workers barreling hay in a field of slanted sun, and, at the end, a group of immigrants sitting on a beach at dusk. Brief, but enough to mark the changing conditions of a new century.

Not much is really new, however: not the perils of migration, nor the proselytizing individualists, nor the media circus, nor the classist distortions of taste, nor, blessedly, the kind of learning for learning’s sake that stokes and sustains an interest in the world. Toward the end of the film, there is a shot of our tired once-hero, slumped in the back seat of a car, that cuts to sepia stock of children laughing and running to reach the camera-as-car-window, as if peering through glass and time. It recalls a scene from Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire, which leaps backward through a similar gaze, when the weary angel Cassiel looks out of a car window at the vista of ’80s Berlin and sees, instead, grainy footage of postwar streets strewn with rubble in fresh ruin. Where human perception is shackled to linearity, these wool-coated and scarfed seraphs—a materialization of Walter Benjamin’s “angel of history”—see all of time in a simultaneous sweep, as they wander Berlin with their palliative touch. Marcello’s Martin Eden mosaics a view less pointedly omniscient, but just as filled with a humanist commitment to the turning world, even as Martin slides into disillusion. All its faces plucked from history remind me of a line from a Pasolini poem: “Everything on that street / was human, and the people all clung / to it tightly.”

Phoebe Chen is a writer and graduate student living in New York.

#martin eden #film

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love-geeky-fangirl · 3 years

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Ranking every Teen Drama I have ever watched

(Updated)

The Secret Life of the American Teenager

+ young Shailene Woodley and Molly Ringwald I guess

- everything else. Even Shailene Woodley's and Molly Ringwald's performances weren't that great because the writing is just oh so bad. The background music is bland and repetative and it sounds like out of some teenager's YouTube chanel. The plotlines are ridiculous and convoluted, which isn't neccessarily such a bad thing, because it is a teen drama show after all, the problem is the show seems to take itself too seriously. Other entries on this list also have ridiculously convoluted plotlines, but I'm ranking them highed because they don't take themselves too seriously and don't claim to be realistic like this show does. Seriously, from the title it suggests like this was going to be a real, uncensored look into high school but it's the furthest thing from it. Not to mention how problematic it is- God forbid someone suggests that a 14-year-old pregnant girl gets an abortion or gives the baby up for adoption without being seen as a terrible and despicable person.

Otp: Marc Molina x a job somewhere far, far away from these kids

Notps: every single pairing on this show

Best moment: literally none

Weirdest moment: "I'm such a whore!" "Well, you're my whore." What were the writers thinking??? Was this supposed to be romantic??

We Children From Zoo Station

+the aesthetic, the casting of Christiane, Detlef and Axel

-this was such a letdown. Honestly I was so hyped for it after seeing the trailer since I've read the book and didn't particularly like the movie- I feel like it's hard to fit all of Christiane's story into 90 minutes. That's why I was so excited about this show. Christiane's story covers so much, so it's easier to make it into a TV show when you don't want to ommit anything and butcher the story. But they somehow managed to do it anyway. They changed so much for no reason and completely erased Christiane's childhood trauma, which was important in the book. Now, I know you can say that it's just a loose adaptation, so it doesn't have to follow the book word for word. But I feel like if you already decided to tell her- a real person's story- you should at least do it authentically. Imo they shouldn't have tried to make the setting vague. It worked with Sex Education because the story of Sex Education is timeless. However, Christiane's story is not timeless. It's a true story set in the 1970s. If they were making a new show from scratch, I would have liked it. But this is an already existing story and they’re supposed to be just retelling it. My last issue is a nit pick but I wish the actresses playing Stella and Babsi were reversed. It just would've fit better.

Otps: all those kids x sobriety

Notp: Christiane x Detlef

Best moment: Christiane's first time in Sound was pretty true to the book

Weirdest moment: when Detlef became a gigolo because he needed money for his dog. Who tf thought of that?

Pretty Little Liars

+ makeup, style, the theme song, the drama and mystery that always kept me guessing, the cliffhangers at the end of each episode that made it so addictive, Emily's coming out story, Hanna and Spencer had some good lines

- the mishandling of some serious issues (namely eating disorders), romantization of student-teacher relationship, the timeline not making much sense, these writers seem to put more thought into the characters' outfits than the storylines

Otps: Emily x Maya, Hanna x Caleb

Notp: Ezria

Best moment: Hanna and Caleb in the shower (the sexual tension was cuttable with a knife)

Weirdest moments: Aria asking Ezra out in the middle of a make-up test (it was supposed to be cute but it was just cringy), Spencer trying to block A's text messages on a laptop, in the middle of a park (what? Spencer, you were supposed to be the smart one!)

One Tree Hill

+ Brooke, the theme song, Chad Michael Murray

- the casual drinking and driving (I mean seriously these kids play a drinking game at a party and then casually hop into a car and drive home??), too much basketball and cheerleading (that's not a bad thing per se but I just don't really care about neither of these things), it just seems too stereotypical and kinda bland?? I couldn't really get into it

Otp: Naley

Notp: Peyton x Nathan

Best moment: Naley by the dock

Weirdest moment: "I guess I'm just a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside a bitch." It's not really a bad moment but a cringy line. I guess the writers though they were being clever but it just sounded bad.

Dawson's Creek

+ the clothes, the 90s aesthetic, the 90s soundtrack, many movie references, Pacey is a sweetheart, Jen is a feminist icon, dealing with mental health issues through Andie (it's rare to see in shows as old as this)

- the slutshaming of Jen really hasn't aged well, the storyline of Pacey being statury raped by his much older teacher was mishandled (it was either treated as scandalous, cool or in Andie’s case somehow shameful), same goes for Jen’s backstory- it was mentioned she was raped at 12 by an older man and then never brought up again, Dawson is the most unlikable protagonist ever and his friendship/relationship with Joey is codependent and possessive, the dialogue is sometimes pretentious and unrealistic, the timeline doesn't really add up- I can never tell what time of the year it's supposed to be, because it looks like it's always fall for some reason. And how did they sophomore year have two homecomings?

Otps: Pacey x Andie, Pacey x Joey (yes, both at the same time)

Notp: Dawson x Joey

Best moments: Jen helping Joey when that jerk was spreading rumours about her and then Jen and Joey locking Abby in the closet together (I love it when they stick together instead of tearing each other down), Pacey and Joey bickering

Weirdest moments: when Joey was upset because Dawson didn’t want to tell her how often he “walks his dog”, when Jen was about to have a treesome at a party and Dawson walked into the room and carried her out despite her kicking and screaming

Glee

+ funny, Sue Sylvester's iconic, great covers and a way to find new songs, the performances are aesthetically pleasing, lgbtq+ representation, tackling of serious issues, coming out story, a father who’s accepting of his son’s sexuality right away despite not really understanding it (it’s so rare to see, that’s why it’s so refreshing), the plotlines are ridiculous but at least the show doesn't take itself too seriously

-as I already said the 1st season was great but after that it just seemed like the writers made up a checklist of hard issues they should tackle and tried to tackle every single one of them while covering every single song and it just fell flat. Prime example- Quinn ending up in a wheelchair getting into a car crash to warn us from drinking and driving, singing I’m Still Standing and then suddenly being able to walk normally after. a few episodes Rachel and Finn got almost all songs, while other characters were criminally underrated and underused (Tina, Quinn, Mercedes). The teachers are questionable to put it mildly. Cringy moments- Finn singing You're Having My Baby to Quinn in front of her parents when it wasn't even his baby! Also no one except of Kurt looks like they could be in high school. And why are these cheerleaders wearing their uniforms 24/7??

Otps: Brittana, Sam x Quinn, Tina x Artie (unpopular opinion, I know), Mr Schue x unemployment

Notp: Quinn x Finn

Best moments: Quinn giving birth to Bohemian Rhapsody

Weirdest moment: Rachel's gross and painfully awkward crush on Mr Schue, Mr Schue joining the Glee club on the stage for a performance of Toxic and girls in the audience cat calling him (Ewww)

Euphoria

+ Zendaya's and Jacob Elordi's performances, tackling of serious issues such as drug addiction and overdose, anxiety and depression, abusive relationships and abortion in a better manner than most (if not all) teen dramas, the aesthetics, makeup and wardrobe, the musical number in the finale, the special episodes giving us insight into the characters' psychology, toxic relationships not being romanticized (which is sadly rare), teenagers sounding like actual real life teens (no "I reject reality" crap)

- lack of comic relief (why so serious all the time), sexualization of teen characters (I know this is something many teen dramas are guilty of but it's the most evident here), too much nudity (I know some of you are going to come at me with: "But it's realistic!" So what? It is realitic that teenagers get naked when they go into shower but does it mean we have to see it?? It seems to me like this show is trying too hard to be "boundary pushing" at times and ends up being scandalous just for the sake of being scandalous), these characters just aren't believable as high school juniors to me (they sound like high schoolers but they certainly don’t act, look or dress that way). There's no reason this show couldn't have been set in college.

Otps: Rue x sobriety, Nate x prison

Notps: Nate x Maddy, Cassie x McKay

Best moments: "You did this to me!" and the musical number in the season 1 finale

Weirdest moment: the fact that Maddy lost her virginity at 14 to a 40-year-old man being mentioned so casually because apparently she was "totally in control". Excuse me what??

Skins

+ style and makeup- each character has a signature trademark (Sid and his beanie, Effy's eyeliner, Cassie's soft eyeshadow), their British accents, I'm pretty sure this is the only teen drama that follows multiple classes, teenage characters being played by actual teen actors, the characters looking like average people you meet in high school and not as if they just walked off the runway, dealing with serious issues such as drug abuse, eating disorder, parental abandonment etc (yes, some people claim the show romanticized it, but I disagree. It's not the show that romanticized it- it's the fans. The show tried to portray the dangers of drugs as well as possible. Think about it- every time characters used drugs it ended in a disaster. In the pilot they thought that Cassie overdosed and ended up crashing a car while rushing into the hospital. In later season Effy hit her friend in the head with a rock because she was having a bad trip. That's not romanticizing drugs.), Effy is iconic and honestly the first episode was enough to get me hooked

- every single teacher being a creep and having a thing for a student at some point, the show can get too dark and unncessarily dramatic at times. Did that many people have to die? Did Chris's death really have to be this graphic? Timeline doesn't really add up- are 8 episodes supposed to cover the whole year? It would've made more sense if there were more episodes in a season.

Otps: Chris x Jal, Emily x Naomi

Notps: Sid x Michelle

Best moment: ooh baby it's a wild world

Weirdest moment: Chris's graphic death

The OC

+ more grounded in reality than many others on this list, the theme song, the love stories, Seth and Summer are funny, the friendships are believable and the whole group has great chemistry

- too many unneccessary fights, Luke is the worst, everyone is way too casual about drunk driving, these parents are WAAAY too chill (I know this can be said about many teen dramas but it's the most obvious here. How did the Roberts and the Coopers let two 16-year-old girls go to Mexico alone?? With no supervision?? What?)

Otps: Seth x Summer, Ryan x Marissa

Notp: Luke x Marissa

Best moments: the “oh no, there’s only one bed” in the Mexico episode, Seth and Summer's first kiss and that kiss at the yacht, Ryan and Marissa's first date by the pool

Weirdest moment: these parents letting their teenage kids go to Mexico alone. It's irresponsible when they're 16 but apparently they let them go there and party every year. What?

Gossip Girl

+ every episode having a clever title, the style, the makeup, the 00s soundtrack, the glamour of it all (it feels like reading a very gossipy magazine!), all the scandals, this show never pretends to portray the realitic teenage experience so it can pretty much be as far-fetched as it wants to and you can’t question it, it gives you a chance to live the fantasy of being super rich, living with a penthouse, riding a limo to school and going to parties in New York City every night

- the final reveal doesn't make any sense, just like with PLL these writers seemed to have put more thought into the outfits and makeup than into the plotlines, romantization of a toxic relationship, having every two straight characters date or hook up at some point, which just felt forced, mishandling of serious issues (Blair's eating disorder, Eric's suicide attempt and Serena and Jenny's sexual assault from the pilot being brought up when it's convenient but not really dealt with and brushed off at other times), sexualization of teen characters

Otps: Dan x Blair, Serena x Nate

Notps: Chuck x Blair

Best moments: the Thanksgiving flashbacks, Blair and Serena running around New York and taking selfies in stolen dresses, Nate and Serena’s first time (although it was better in the books) and then their kiss at the white party, the sheer scandal of "I killed someone", Dan giving Blair a plastic tiara to make her feel like a princess

Weirdest moments: Chuck's father returning from the death and then dying again, by yeeting himself off the roof

Freaks and Geeks

+ probably the most realistic teen drama there is, the characters dress the way I can see actual teens dressing, funny, but also heatbreaking at times, probably the only teen show that included an intersex character, the characters being a little stereotypical but self-aware at least, young James Franco and Jason Segel

- the bullying being a bit too much at times and it's a bit unrealistic that the teachers would do literally nothing about it, too short- I will never understand why this got cancelled

Otps: Daniel x Kim, Lindsay x Nick, Amy x Ken

Notps: Sam x Cindy

Best moments: Sam breaking down at the end of Garage Door, Daniel and Kim getting back together in the rain

Weirdest moment: Cindy doing a 180 and becoming super mean when she started dating Sam.

Gilmore Girls

+ so many movie, literary and music references, the quotable lines (what a great way to learn about new movies, books and bands! It’s so unique for a TV show to make you smarter), the witty banter, the comfort of the first few seasons (it really feels like wrapping a warm blanket around yourself while holding a hot cup of coffee, I can’t explain why, but it’s such a comfort show), the quirky small town with many unique festivals, many entertaining and snappy fights where everyone has a point, characters dealing with real world problems (seriously, how often do you see a storyline about termites? Or a teenager with zit cream on a teen drama show?), this is also one of the few shows where teenagers are shown to have rules and restrictions and curfews (finally some kids growing up with strict parents representation) and doing homework and studying and not just partying and drinking and having sex all the time and that’s so refreshing

- but while it is refreshing to see teenagers waiting to have sex and not doing it behind every corner, the show is kind of sex negative. Every single time a (female) character loses her virginity it ends in a disaster. Even when she loses it after she’s married! It doesn’t make any sense, unless the writers just really hated women. Also slutshaming (”I got the good kid!”) ewww. The money and budget doesn’t make much sense on the show either and the girls seem immune to calories. I know some people might come at me for this with: “But it’s just a show!” but I think it’s harmful to show beautiful, thin women eat nothing but tons of junkfood all the time and never excersize and then fatshame people who do excersize but aren’t fortunate enough to be blessed with amazing Gilmore genes, and then throw around tactless references to eating disorders.

Otps: Lane x Dave, Jess x Rory

Notps: Lane x Zach, Rory x Dean, Lorelai x Christopher

Best moments: Then She Appeared, Rory’s valedictorian speech, Lorelai’s graduation

Weirdest moment: Lorelai and Christopher getting married in Paris at 4am. That’s not how it works in Europe. Do Americans think every single Europian country works like Las Vegas, where you can just get married whenever you decide??

#teen dramas #these are just my opinions #so don't take it personally #u might disagree #but idrc

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jewelridersarchive · 5 years

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Why do we love seeing new versions of the same thing? Is it simple nostalgia? Is it the desire to engage with some sort of content that once moved us in a new and different way? Is it new creators wanting to stamp something they loved from their own childhood with their mark? Or is it all of the above?

I’m not immune to loving reboots. I devoured the new DuckTales on Disney XD, I’m reading the new Rainbow Brite comics from Dynamite, I’m watching the new iteration of Will & Grace, and continue to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Reboots are fun; they not only allow fans who loved something to have a nostalgia party, but also allow potential new fans entry points into what sometimes appears to be never-ending streams of content (I’m looking at you, Transformers). But things seem out of hand when even ReBoot, the mid-90s CGI cartoon, has a reboot on Netflix (ReBoot: The Guardian Code). Have reboots become the “safe,” risk-averse way companies can cash in on portfolio properties that already have known fanbases? It’s the equivalent of an artist only drawing fanart because they know it will get thousands of likes versus hundreds on original content.

And I fully admit some level of fatigue with franchises that just keep chugging along, seemingly forever. Every movie that comes out seems to want to be a tentpole franchise builder. Or a reboot of an existing franchise, or a soft reboot that only takes some elements going forward, or an alternate universe or…well, you get the idea.

I love original content. One of the best shows I watched this year was Alex Hirsch’s Gravity Falls (yes, I know I’m rather late to the game). It was a bright spot of originality, something new and not tied to any other content or previous iteration. Many of the anime I watch and enjoy are either original or straight adaptations of an existing manga. I think original content and ideas are important in entertainment. They allow a generation to experience a piece of entertainment in its prime, and have something uniquely “theirs.” Kids of the 60s had Star Trek, kids of the 70s had Star Wars, kids of 80s will always be the original audience for Jem & the Holograms and He-Man/She-Ra, kids of the 90s will always have X-Men TAS and Sailor Moon. (And PGJR, of course haha). No matter if they are rebooted down the road or not, that original experience belongs to the original viewers.

Which is why it’s always hilarious to me when people who hate on the new version of something say “It’s ruining my childhood!” Your childhood is whatever it was, frozen in time. Those original cartoons obviously still exist, and if you have the desire you can watch most of them. A reboot doesn’t destroy the original, no matter how many changes it makes to the original idea. The best reboots can often give us (as adults) what we thought we were watching as children. And often, the reboot can drive traffic back to seek out the original, as adults want to share with children the version they loved at that age.

Which brings us to She-Ra. I didn’t watch any He-Man or She-Ra as a child, for whatever reason. I found He-Man & the Masters of the Universe through the 2002 anime-influenced incarnation (also a great reboot IMO), then went back and watched the 1983 cartoon, followed by the 1985 She-Ra: Princess of Power. I loved it all. Sure, sometimes it was goofy, and there was lots of animation reuse in the older versions, but the core concepts were really strong. They are classic good vs evil, freedom vs tyranny stories, told with engaging casts and crazy creative worlds.

I powered through all 93 episodes of She-Ra during the summer of 2010 while I studied for my board exams. It holds the special place of being the series I turned to to relieve the stress of studying. I love the 80s fantasy girl designs, the color schemes, the powers, the sheer kookiness of the side characters. She-Ra was the OG American magical girl, and I finally understood what all the fuss over this franchise was about. She-Ra feels iconic in the way that characters like Wonder Woman and Sailor Moon do. Yes, she starts out as a spin-off of the successful He-Man franchise, but he makes very few appearances in She-Ra’s cartoon.

But after her initial run, She-Ra remained a virtually dormant property for the next 30 years. He-Man had two different reboots in 1991 and 2002, but She-Ra was stuck in limbo. Only once the Masters of the Universe Classics collectible figure from Mattel released in 2010 did She-Ra finally see the light of day again. Story-wise, the bios on the back of the toy packages gave us a little info about She-Ra’s further adventures, but it wasn’t until the 2012/2013 Masters of the Universe comic from DC that She-Ra comes back, this time in the guise of the villainous Despara. It’s a dark but interesting take on the characters; an exploration of what being raised by the Evil Horde would really do to a person.

Interestingly, this seems to be the jumping-off point for the new “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power” animated series from Dreamworks and Netflix. This show takes as its central theme the relationship between Adora and Catra. When Adora finds the sword that lets her turn into She-Ra, she leaves the Horde – an organization to which she has devoted her life. Almost more importantly, she leaves behind Catra, her best friend. It’s this broken relationship that informs the emotional tone of the rest of the show.

Unlike the 80s version, this time around the Rebellion knows Adora’s identity as She-Ra. It’s an interesting change – shows of the 80s were obsessed with secret identities, and sometimes it could get ridiculous making up excuses for what happened to the other identity of the character every time. Thankfully, that is avoided here, and instead of angst over whether or not you can let people know the real you, we are treated to relationships that ask whether we can accept someone who we know has wronged us before.

Much has been made over this update’s reworking of the body types and ethnicities of the main princesses. While I confess not loving all the updated designs and missing the 80s fairytale warrior goddesses of the original, I understand and fully support the change. Reboots are about viewing something old through the lens of today, and audiences of today want to see themselves in the media they watch or read. We can’t (and shouldn’t) go back to mostly-white casts. The world is a rainbow of colors, and the show feels richer for including them.

Speaking of rainbows, I have to mention the new show’s decidedly queer bent. The relationship between Adora and Catra is somewhere between ex-best-friends and ex-girlfriends in tone. Netossa and Spinerella, long shipped by the fandom, are finally outed in a true relationship this time around. Other characters like Scorpia, Bow, and Entrapta all tap into queer mannerisms and norms as well. The end result is unlike anything else I’ve ever seen in children’s entertainment, and I couldn’t be happier. I wish I’d had something similar as a child, but I’m grateful today’s queer kids have their own heroes.

When we talk about a successful reboot, what are we looking for? Here’s what I think a good reboot need to accomplish.

Bring the characters and concepts of the original property up to date for current audiences.

Explore the characters or world in new and different ways.

Add depth to the original concept.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power does all of these in spades. I think it’s the nicest treatment an 80s female-driven property has gotten in a reboot. The show is full of strong characters with interesting dynamics, great writing, and interesting world building. Yes, some of the episodes can be a bit predictable and the designs are not always my favorite, but everything works together toward a greater whole. I won’t spoil the story for you, because seriously if you haven’t watched this, get thee to Netflix and enjoy!

For the Honor of Grayskull!

Chris

P.S. Can you imagine getting a ✨Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders✨ reboot that brought all this to the table? I’d die!

Read the complete blog at The Jewel Riders Archive! http://www.jewelridersarchive.com/posts/she-ra-the-princesses-of-power-and-reboot-culture/

#jewel riders #princess gwenevere and the jewel riders #princess gwenevere #unicorn #unicorns #animation #mattel #She-ra #she ra #princess of power #heman #he man #he-man #masters of the universe

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dorkshadows · 7 years

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The Demons Strike Back

Objectively, the professional reviews give this film 2-3 stars out of 5 and I think that’s fair. 2 or 3 depending on how much enjoyment you got. It’s an alright movie in total and there are fun things for JTTW fans (provided you’re not a purist who can’t stand any deviation from the book).

Subjectively, I’m giving this a 10/5 for shipping bias lmao but that won’t have anything to do with the pseudo-review below the cut. Just look at that picture.

It’s important to note that this is first and foremost a Tsui Hark film: his style, his direction, his tone. There are elements of Stephen Chow, but as far as Chow comedies go, this really isn’t and shouldn’t count as an example.

Things that this movie deserves kudos for:

The soundtrack; it’s better than the prequel and more emotional overall

Sanzang outright puts his disciples on display and charges admission LOL

Fight scenes are great and special effects are pretty good for a non-Hollywood production

Then things get more subjective from here on out. Reviews ragged on the storyline for “lacking coherency/ having no story”- I disagree. It was streamlined enough, it just didn’t have that 3-act all-connection structure you’d expect from a popcorn movie. And I do fault the filmmakers for that because I doubt they set out to make an arthouse film- this was a blockbuster and it does need that high-and-low plotline most audiences want.

Characterization-wise, I think we got a pretty good sense of Wukong’s persona. His actor was the best one in Sanzang’s group. Different than the prequel’s Wukong but not exactly like any other adaptations either- Hark/Chow at least succeeded in creating a new Wukong. The trailers made him look hilariously angsty, but he’s not as emo as I thought he’d be- just has anger issues and a #resting bitch face. His desire to murder/hurt Sanzang, but also be liked/forgiven by Sanzang, combined with the inability to articulate that desire, was a checkmark. And that would’ve been a highlight if it wasn’t for what happens later (more on that below). I was also surprised by how downright... sexy his performance was, I’d tap him.

I don’t see the point in giving Wukong 3 monkey forms, with none of them looking like the monkey from Conquering the Demons. I know the whole cast changed, but still, that tiny yet freaky CGI monkey didn’t have to change (I missed it!).

Kris Wu was, er, not great, better than his other acting roles, but not as good as the prequel’s lead. But I could tell he was trying his best haha. That aside, the character- a lot of what he does really depends on what you think of him- a genuinely smart person, manipulative, kind? All of the above? I liked that aspect of the writing. Ultimately, he’s supposed to be a good person (carrying on from the prequel) and there’s one plot twist that I both love and hate because it does wonders for his character but also undermines something (more below- it’s the same thing with Wukong fyi).

The film didn’t forget Duan and she’s integral to the plot/Sanzang’s character so that was a plus. Her memory really connected Sanzang, Wukong, and the new love interest TM. And it’s a good choice to have the film “honor” her by not giving the new love interest TM half the love it gave Duan in the prequel.

Bajie and Wujing didn’t get as much screentime as I expected. That was disappointing because Wujing looks awesome in the movie. They had great designs and aside from some funny lines, didn’t get to do much.

I liked the final villain- it was a logical twist and the actress wasn’t bad . She was funny and unrepentant to the end (not gonna spoil who she is). The spider demons were really cool too- they just didn’t have much to do with the plot. Red Boy’s design was unexpected, but I thought it was creative and the best fight scene was his and Wukong’s. I don’t have much thoughts on the final, final fight because it was WILD lol, but the transition to Sanzang’s trump card could have been clearer.

As for the love interest TM (Eng. subs called her “Felicity” for some reason lol), I honestly did not care. She came into the plot when there were like, 30 minutes left (!?), knew Sanzang for 1 day, and suddenly is in love with him. Her death was alright and SPOILER she’s actually the white bone demon. I appreciated Sanzang not loving her back though- he saw a bit of Duan in her but that was it. He was actually “using” her.

But she was the worst written character and it just felt repetitive for the love interest TM to die, especially when she’s this inconsequential. I would have preferred her 1) getting introduced earlier, 2) getting a redemption arc and leaving alive, 3) providing a better explanation for why she was helping the big bad. She was so unimportant that her death wasn’t even there for #ManPain. Her role needed a lot of work.

Humor-wise, some moments made me laugh (Chow’s writing there), but this is more of a dramedy than a comedy. The tone’s more “serious” than Chow’s movies, but the humor and drama do balance out- some jokes (or I think they’re supposed to be jokes) just fall flat. Chow fans will be disappointed though. I know I was.

Now for that twist I love/hate:

Basically, Sanzang and Wukong have a dramatic fall-out, where Sanzang admits he hates Wukong for killing Duan, and it snowballs from there. But it was all an act Sanzang organized to trick the big bad into showing herself. This shows that he’s smart, makes the love interest TM things 10x less cliched, and shows he does have chemistry with his disciples, but it also leaves you going “huh?” in retrospect.

Because this twist makes you backtrack through the whole movie until you realize every conflict Sanzang had with his squad in the film was an act. Then where’s the actual character development? How did he and Wukong move past the Duan thing? At what point did Sanzang really win over his team? It’s a very good twist, but awkward in retrospect, like they cheated us out of character development.

Misc (subjective) thoughts:

The script wouldn’t have been so awkward if some events were switched around (ie. swap the order of the Biqu Kingdom scenes with the spider demon scenes)

Bajie is into BDSM- this isn’t even a joke. He really does have a kink for it. Also, it’s implied he has a thing for Wukong in addition to women lol

Thanks to that plot twist above, it’s implied that Sanzang walked up to Wukong and said, “Beat me up and eat me”- I’m not sure how to feel about this, this is the kinkiest group of pilgrims I’ve ever seen

Wukong/Sanzang is borderline canon by the end, and I don’t mean in the queerbaiting way (maybe I’m biased but I hope to have better sense than that! Plus, Tsui Hark doesn’t have to resort to that), but in a “this is as much as we can get through the censors in a high profile Chinese jttw adaptation- we did it because we wanted to lmao” way. Not spoiling this one fantastic bit at the very end, but let’s just say Steve/Bucky shippers only wish they had this much canon support.

(Lastly, Kenny Lin said Wukong suffers from “unrequited love” in this movie. Make of that what you will, but this Great Sage was not straight imo.)

Overall:

It’s not a deep film, but I don’t think it’s completely meaningless. The story’s all over the place and you probably won’t care for any of the characters unless you’re like me already attached to the JTTW team regardless of their incarnation. It’s not a good comedy, but certainly not a total drama, and it does make you want to see what happens next.

I’d rec it if you A) like mindless but well-choreographed action B) are crazy about JTTW like me C) are a fan of the leads, and/or D) ship Wukong/Sanzang

Chow has a sequel in mind and regardless of what bored people on the internet reviews say, this movie made money. So here’s to hoping he gets to make a trilogy!

#journey to the west demon chapter #journey to the west the demons strike back #journey to the west #I talked a lot in this WHOA #next time I'll ramble about how the script could be improved (tbh it's not hard let's be honest)#I wanna see it again \o/

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jewelridersarchive · 5 years

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She-ra & Reboot Culture

When we talk about a successful reboot, what are we looking for? Here’s what I think a good reboot need to accomplish.

Bring the characters and concepts of the original property up to date for current audiences.

Explore the characters or world in new and different ways.

Add depth to the original concept.

For the Honor of Grayskull!

Chris

P.S. Can you imagine getting a ✨Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders✨ reboot that brought all this to the table? I’d die!

Read the complete blog at The Jewel Riders Archive! http://www.jewelridersarchive.com/posts/she-ra-the-princesses-of-power-and-reboot-culture/

#jewel riders #princess gwenevere and the jewel riders #princess gwenevere #unicorn #unicorns #animation #kenner #doll #dolls #mattel #She-ra #she ra #princess of power #motu #masters of the universe

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