Of Swords and Parasols

 I think I'm about to embark on a wuxia binge(sure, I only have 3 series waiting, but I could probably make that last a month)  As several people have friended me since I last watched wuxia(not that it's been that long) and some probably didn't know what I was talking about when I was posting, I have slapped together a wuxia guide-type post.

It ended up rather longer than planned, but is still much shorter than it could be. 

Here is wikipedia's entry on wuxia.



meganbmoore's much less informative but more succinct description:  Wuxia are coming of age adventure stories set in ancient and medieval China.  The heroes are (in my experience) usually young men raised in near or total seclusion, or who led simpler lives before starting on their adventures.  Most are motivated either by a need to fulfill a promise to a parent or master, or by revenge(or both.)  Though they don't always start out that way, they usually end up being one of the greatest fighter's of their time.  Romance always plays some role, but with varying importance to the plot.  Sometimes it will be a main focus, others, a more background thing.  Most heroes, though, have several girls in love with them throughout the series.  Some will love more than one girl(usually in succession, not simultaneously) and others (the good ones) will only love one girl throughout.  If a series has 2 major heroes, there will usually be at least one of each kind. Some wuxia are straight up fantasy, and others historical dramas.  Most, however, still have a touch of the fantastic, and all, even the most strictly historical, involve fantastical acrobatics, including impressive aerial feats(called "wire-fu.")

I'm not going to get into wuxia movies(except to say that Hero seems to be the most popular but, IMO, none come close to matching up to Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon) but most that have been released in the US in recent years-Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower, etc.-are of the straight historical drama with amazing acrobatics variety.

1.  This must be done.  The cruelty must be shared.  Exhinits in order of increasing angst.


2.  I think Sun Fei Fei's fans have it in for her.  She's very pretty, but they keep saying she's "as beautiful as" or "Just like" Crystal Liu.  I think part of this is because Crystal's untranslated name is Liu Li Fei.  The problem is that when you start saying someone looks like Crystal, people start expecting borderline inhuman beauty, making "very pretty" a touch of a let down...


3.  Not drama, but movies.  I really wish HK would go back to the Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon style of cinematography.  All the wuxia movies the last few years(from about House of Flying Daggers on, I think) have been rather blindingly beautiful, but I prefer the simpler look of CT/HD.

4.  Back to dramas...it seems all mainland cdramas are wuxia or other ancient series.  Anyone know of any good modern ones?  (Preferably where the leads live)

5.  I think someone in costuming for The Legend and The Hero had it in for Fan Bing Bing.  Otherwise, they never would have put this on her head:



As you can see from her expression, she agrees with me.  Thankfully, she doesn't wear it the whole time(or so other pictures I've gathered tell me)

*wanders off to bed*

I'm somewhere in ep 5 of The Little Fairy now.  It's very cute and fun, but a little slow so far(plus, Ariel Lin's character is kinda annoying me right now, but then, she's pretending to be a boy and convince everyone-many who briefly met her as a girl-that she's a boy, so I'm forgiving, esp. as I really liked her when she was being herself)  Mostly though, it's reminding me of Chinese Paladin and making me think of that.  Which makes sense, really..Hu Ge is the hero in both, and the same actors are playing his mentor and the villain as did in CP, though all 3 characters couldn't be more different from how there were in CP, and only Hu Ge looks remotely the same.  Incidentally, dangermousie, the guy who plays Little Fish's sidekick in Handsome Siblings is the villain in both TLF and CP(of the 3, I think HS is the weakest role for him, though)  Also, the two series are shot and colored almost exactly the same and have many similar effects, and both focus a lot on friendship alongside the romance, and the friendships have a similar vibe.

I must say, though, that I adore the secondary OTP...she's a very shy but very pretty waitress who has a crush on one of Hu Ge's friends, who's impossibly serious and focused but has some pretty good martial arts skills.  Which, naturally, have only been used to save her from kidnappers so far.

And, on a completely shallow note, Tae is very pretty(even if he is mostly just ARiel Lin's ounching bag so far in the series)

Anyway, mostly, I come bringing pics of much cute and pretty. Click on them and they get bigger.

I found out yesterday that when they made Chinese Paladin, Hu Ge was 20 and Crystal Liu was 16, and because she was 16 Hu Ge felt uncormortable in some of their romantic scenes because she was so young(even though, of course, her character was 16 and his was, I think 18-19, and it's not a huge age difference to start with-especially for the time it was set in-just the actual age)  This...makes me like him more, somehow(guess it gives "decent guy" factor, I guess, though of course, I already liked him) and also explains why he seemed so much more comfortable in his scenes with An Yi Xuan, who's 2 years older than him. Just a little bit that I found interesting.

I'm also 3 episodes into the kdrama Next/Rebirth(I've seen it by both titles)  Decided I needed a break from swordplay shows for a bit and...chose a drama about reincarnation where the hero was a warrior in at least 2 of his past lives.  *whistles* (in my defense, there has been no sign of a sword yet and I don't think there will be, if there is, I dount there'll be much fighting)  The setup is that two brothers, Ki-bum(an overly serious neuro-surgeon whose life is too controlled for his own good) and Ki-Soo(a stage actor who doesn't seem to have any real path or direction planned out) are involved with women they seem to be very compatible with. Ki-bum is engaged to Soo-hyun, a psychiatrist who specializes in sleep disorders, who he's been seeing since college, and Ki-Soo is dating Jung-Hwa, an actor in his troupe who believes in things like fate and destiny.  Unknown to the four, they've been destined lovers in previous lives.  The problem?  They're dating the wrong people, of course(what else do you expect from a kdrama about reincarnation)

Ok, since every time I fix one vid it eats another, I'm making a second post for the 3 that aren't there now.  1 is for Eddie Peng, one of the actors, who played my second favorite character and who I think is adorable, there other 2 are for the secondary romance, because it's impossible to think of them and be sad, even in the angsty parts.  Incidentally, he and Hu Ge(main guy in Chinese Paladin) have a wuxia series called The Young Warriors of the Yang Clan, and he and Esther Liu(they're Tang Yu and Ah Nu) are starring together in the same story in Strange Tales of Liao Zhai 2.  Want both?  Me?  Why do you ask?

 



OK, first: those who were on the 10 minutes it was up know I tried to do a Nicholas Tse picspam earlier, but weirdness happened.  Basically, if I'm trolling for pics, the only ones I'll save to my computer are ones I might make icons of later, the rest I just dump in my main photobucket folder.  As I never really make icons of actors as themselves, just characters, I dumped them in photobucket, but for some reason, a lot showed up as being hotlinked(photobucket fluke?  Website weirdness?).  Has anyone ever had that happen before?  I mean, it's so weird and unlikely that I probably wouldn't believe it if I didn't know better, but...yeah, weird.  (I'm sure I shall redo the picspam, but for now, I'm too busy maniacally saving pics I SHALL likely make icons of eventually to bother making a folder for stuff I won't)

Incidentally, does anyone else DESPISE LJ's new way of posting vids as much as I do?

And now...the Chinese Paladin MVs.


PS-there are supposed to be 11 vids altogether...LJ vid posting is being contrary.

Parents' keyboard=EVIL.  I have to literally pound on the keys to get anything out of them(yet, I'm still updating)

Does anyone find it weird to visit their parents and sleep in a different bed in what used to be their room?  Maybe it's because the bed there(mine went to the apt. with me) used to be my grandparent's guest bed(and used to be covered in inhuman amounts of lace)  Granted, I've been told I can sleep in my parents' bed, but...it's my parents' bed.

Also, why is it that I can spend 22 years out in the country and insect night sounds don't even register, but thjen I live in town for a year and they're the loudest things ever?(OTOH, cars at any time of night no longer bother me)

Another thing of import:  some of my manga has FINALLY shown up at Waldenbooks(the ones people on my flist would care about are Vampire Knight, Death Note and possibly Skip-Beat)

Also, after  dangermousie's post earlier, I saw the HK movie Legend of Speed at Hastings for $7 and got it on a whim...they also had the first(of 4) volumes of the cdrama Laughing in the Wind.  Sounds promising, we'll see.  i've also decided that Nicholas Tse fighting blindfolded in the rain after angsting at a grave is likely one of the top 5 hottest things in a dorama *says possibly because there vould be hotter things she's hasn't seen yet*  Not that I've all but memorized the opening credits or anything(angsty guy w/ swords winning against what should be absolutely impossible odds=major kink)  I don't like the grave part though, mostly because I rather like the 2 people who are the prime options for being in the grave...

My Handsome Siblings DVDs also have a trailer for Return of the Conder Hero and...uhm...yeah, glad it was in the order I placed this week.

Also, since Seven Swordsmen and Chinese Paladin have both come up in several places lately(I guess all my dorama loving friends view me as their main resource...not that I mind, though I really have seen comparatively fewer than people seem to think) I've been poking around youtube for vids.  Now, Seven Swordsmen...well, the only thing I love with fewer vids there is Musashi(which has none, which depresses me to no end) even Trick has(slightly) more.  Chinese Paladin, however, has TONS.  I watched one video that was almost 6 minutes long and completely avoided angst until the last minute, yet I was blubbering 10 seconds into it when I recognized the scene it was, even though there were no subs.  The scene is the 6 leads making a friendship promise that no matter what, they'll all return to that spot in 10 years, even if their lives take them on wildly different paths.  The rest, up until the last minute, is bits of their friendship and almost completely angstless, and then the last minute is the events that kept them from keeping the promise(with one exception, it's non-explicit enough that you won't be spoiled as to their various fates...there'll likely be a Chinese Paladin vid spam soon) and it made me realize that, while Seven Swordsmen is my favorite cdrama, I'm actually more emotionally invested in the characters in Chinese Paladin(and really, my preference for one over the over is marginal...make Xiao Yao less bratty the first half and Ling'er less whiny and self-centered in the middle chunk, and they'd likely be reversed)  The same is true of my two favorite doramas, Musashi and Damo, where I'm more invested in Chae-Ohk, Hwangbo Yoon and Jang Sung-Baek than I am in Takezo, Otsu and Kojiro.  In both cases, I think the difference is that I'm more invested in the story as a whole in Musashi and Seven Swordsmen than in Damo and Chinese Paladin(though all investment for Damo outweighs Seven Swordsmen) and in the end, the overall investment(plot, setting-in these cases, historical context-etc.) outweighs the character investment for me.

Ok I THINK I started out with more to say on the matter when I sat down to do this, but I left midway through to do something and it's after 3 am and I'm too tired to be bothered to try to remember.  Maybe tomorrow, maybe it's gone forever.  NIGHT!

12 X Witch Hunter Robin
16 X Blade of the Immortal
25 X Chinese Paladin
7 X Liar Game


Teasers:

   

Most of it I've already talked about.b  Spent a whole lot of time in my comfy zone, watching Poirot, and have now watched(as far as I know) every ep and movie of David Suchet's Poirot that's been released in the US.

I've babbled about Poirot a fair bit here before and don't have a whole lot to add.  Love it, adore the characers(most of what I watched was the episodes, which feature Miss Lemon, which made me happy as she's not in the movies and I adore her) and even the rare simpler mystery makes you think at least a bit.