#liu lin

[mykingdomforapen]

I love anime hair color just like anyone else but I was always curious what would have been the watching experience if the twins and their mother had conventional hair colors, ie black. Especially when we see very graphic scenes of their violent abuse. I gave it a shot and I felt that the effect was very sombre. Even more so it felt like not a story in a fantasy setting anymore, with magical kids. This is an every day family you'd see across the street, experiencing a very real and prevalent social issue.

I don't have photoshop and all I have is a mouse (no stylus pen of any kind) and I have no sense of color theory so please excuse my terrible photo editing skills.

[chineseredcarpet]

Liu Lin for 2024 iQIYI Scream Night

[lostinadrama]

𝑾𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝑺𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 (2024)

[pi-ying-xi]

I have The Long Season brainrot. Which means I have thoughts.

But briefly:

The Long Season is The Bad Kids if they all grew up, and their choices were all so bad, they could only choose among those bad choices. Which is why the last five minutes of the drama is bittersweet, with the bitter very subtly wrestling the sweet onto the train tracks.

The actors are all so good - I knew Qin Hao, Liu Lin and Tang Zeng from other dramas - but Chen Minghao and Jiang Qiming were the revelations for me. (Chen Minghao can *dance*!)

Things I loved: apart from the pitch perfect performances, I loved the soundtrack, naturally, given that Xin Shuang is also a musician. I liked how they made a main character deaf, and how the people around him interact with that as a fact rather than as a disability.

There were two things that I really appreciated about the drama: the way it had no fucks to give about episode length - some were a regular 45 - 48 minutes, others (I'm looking at you, ep 11) we're an hour and forty seven minutes. The other is how whatever the music is at the end, and each episode has different music at both ends, it is absolutely important to the director that it has its time, never mind if the titles were all done - have a nice black screen and listen to the music!

Have to say, that chaotic, auteur-ish approach to a drama is only possible with the platform supporting it, so props to tencent.

Taking away props from tencent for the ridiculously bad subs. When I edit this post later, I'll upload some examples of how utterly rubbish the subs are. Have heard that they've resubbed it now, so if you haven't yet watched it, hope you have a better time of it. Because this drama deserves good subs and right now it doesn't have them.

Finally (for now) The Long Season reminded me of a short film we used to watch back when PK Nair did his Film Appreciation workshop in the 80s and 90s: Big City Blues. (Will add a link if I find it on YouTube). It has the same post-industrial anomie; a portrait of youth wasted and those on the margins abandoned so brutally they have no choice but to be brutal in turn.

That's why the last five minutes are not as easy to watch as the censors may have hoped. It's a good thing that Xin Shuang has enough control over the material to allow for what the censors need, while leaving the viewer with whatever complicated feelings they have.

Afterthought: I also watched Thirteen Years of Duat recently, an iqiyi/Light On drama. Equally short, covering the same kind of ground, in that cops investigate murders from more than a decade ago. We see the same changes in society, a similar portrait of ageing and persistence, of what the snatching away of hope does to the young.

But that drama, though also very good, followed a more prescribed path to its conclusion, with a tacky and tacked upon paen to law enforcement and the flag and all that rubbish.

Tencent and iqiyi are about the same in terms of how mainstream or offbeat their dramas are. But the directors of both these dramas made choices, and those choices make one a decent drama that you'd make excuses for, until you watch the other and see what it's possible to do even when you're required by what passes for socialism to provide a thread of hope.

[kdram-chjh]

Cdrama: Stick to the Script! (2021-2022)

Fight for girlfriend! #师兄请按剧本来 # #chinese #shorts

Watch this video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0vhLSViP8pI

[stuff-diary]

The Bionic Life

TV Shows/Dramas watched in 2023

The Bionic Life (2023, China)

Directors: Leste Chen, Ko Zhennian & Hsu Chaojen

Writers: Song Xuan, Mai Jia, Wang Yuxiong, Li Yaixin & Luo Xiaorui

Mini-review:

I love Song Weilong and I was really looking forward to seeing him in a sci-fi drama, but The Bionic Life didn't fully meet my expectations. While the show proposes a lot of interesting questions and themes, it never delves in them as deeply as it should. And it definitely doesn't help that the world-building is so half-assed. I did enjoy some of the episodic cases and the overarching mystery, mainly due to the main characters and the cast, but I wish the writing was stronger. Tbh, if it wasn't so short, I think I wouldn't have finished it.

[shijiujun]

This is the male lead of the novel guys, THE MALE LEAD

When your $200 makeup and $1000 outfit go unappreciated and you get Chinese New Year compliments instead

— Love Game in Eastern Fantasy 永夜星河 (2024) | EP. 04

[herebutnotpresent]

Royal Fire Academy era girls

炎炎炎炎炎炎炎₊·*◟(˶╹̆ꇴ╹̆˵)◜‧*･炎炎炎炎炎炎炎

(individual images under the cut)

˚₊*(ˊॢo̶̶̷̤◡ुo̴̶̷̤ˋॢ)*₊˚⁎

[shubloe-din]

Yes these are all screenshots from the games idk what you’re talking about

Open for better quality

[trendingdrama]

undying.

Kill Me Love Me 春花焰 (2024)

[yuyu-zigui]

INCOMPETENT!!! LMAO

[teethburied]

Murmur of Youth '美麗在唱歌' (1997) dir. Lin Cheng-sheng

[chineseredcarpet]

Liu Lin for Weibo TV & Internet Video Summit 2023

[jvlie77a]

This is how Cyber SubZero will be born

It's true, Dominic told me/j

[edenianleena]

i love them so much. 😭💜💙✨

⚔️❄️

[terapsina]

Reasons to watch Love Game in Eastern Fantasy (永夜星河)

An 'Ordinary Girl from Our World' drop kicked into her least favorite novel with a stupid ending and needing to deal with tasks such as 'Switch the Medicine for Her Favorite Character Without Getting Murdered by Her Favorite Character's Mean Paranoid Brother' (task failed *rewind* task failed *rewind* task failed *rewind* task f-) because of COURSE she's dropped into the villainous side character.

As conveyed by 'Extremely Expressive Physical Comedy Acting'.

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'Badass Demon Hunter' surrounded by a previously 'World's Most Introverted Brother' and 'Her New BFF a.k.a. Brother's New MorTaL EneMy' turning into LITERAL CHILDREN once a day and twice before breakfast.

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'The Complicated Relationship between a Woman Whose Entire Family was massacred by a Demon and her Adoptive Brother Who She Doesn't Know is Half-Demon and Has So Unintentionally Given a Bajillion Self-Image Self-Worth issues to'.

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Miss 'Winner of the Most Adorable' award and Mr. 'Grumpy Angsty Wet Cat' parenting the little 'Sunshine Bamboo Child'.

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The Coolness Factor of the Magical Girl Transformation Scene.

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Slowly building romance between 'Secretly a Demon' and the 'Only Person Who Did Not Fear The Real Him and Instead Saw and Valued and Protected Him'.

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A Little Breaking and Entering, a Little Arson, a Little Prison Break and the Cinematography of BOOM!

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The 'Bi-weekly Shenanigans Interrupted For the Obligatory Rip-Thy-Heart-to-Threads Hurt/Comfort Angst Storyline' as conveyed by 'The Most Expressive Micro-expressions Face Acting Around'.

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'Incredibly Sweet and Soft Secondary Romance' a.k.a. 'Miao Miao's OTP'.

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And finally... 'Eternal OTP Bait Galore'.