Of Swords and Parasols

 20x Handsome Siblings
7x Seven Swords
10x Shadowless Sword
23x Full Metal Alchemist*

*#60 contains a manga spoiler for a chapter that hasn't been released yet in the US, which is why it's on the very last row of icons.

Teasers:

   

Ah bliss, I am back to loving Little Fish to death again.  Amazing the difference in character appreciation when the series is being approached the right way from when it's being approached the wrong way.  Course, now we have palace intrigue...and...urm...generally I like palace intrigue, but as I really only care about Little Fish's part in the intrigue(which is a blast)...yeah.  You know, cut this show back to 30 eps, cut out a lot of the palace intrigue and solo Little Fish stuff, and this show would be borderline perfect.

Hmm...what else before the main part?

Princess Moon:  If you weren't such a psychotically evil, jealous, over-possessive control freak, mean MIGHT stop leaving you for, you know, NICE girls...  And Yuyan?  Seriously, you're such a manipulative  wretch of a user that I'd hate you even if you weren't trying(and failing) to be the third person in a love triangle.  Honey, Flower wasn't interested when he was brainwashed into thinking he didn't love Orchid and tricked into thinking she cheated on him...dressing up like her and going "isn't this enough" REALLY isn't going to get you anywhere...



I have also made a few more icons.

Just finished(a week after I planned to watch) the Donnie Yen HK movie Seven Swords.  Normally, I'd post a picspam, but dangermousiedid back when she watched it, and as almost all the pics I'd use are in her picspam, just click here.

(incidentally, to avoid confusion, I'm only using movie names, as many are different.  Most are close enough to be understood, but...)

As for the movie itself...on it's own, it's actually pretty good.  Even without having seen the series, you could pretty much tell that it was "part one" as opposed to the entire story(incidentally, poking around, I read that they're making a second movie...there are 3 major storyarcs in the series, and the movie pretty thoroughly covers the first, aside from changes to keep all 7 involved in the Fire-Wind plot, which was almost exclusive to Chu in the series) Most of the changes didn't bother me(oddly, it barely registered that Jinyuan went from a not-overly-bright male sweetheart to a fairly clever and witty female)

Short version of the plot is that it's about a former executioner who becomes entangled in the affairs of the martial village, who oppose an imperial edixt that outlaws all use of martial arts-and is also really mean and oppressive-and along with two youths from the village-Han and Jinyuan-he sets out for Mount Tian to ask a former enemy-who helped him to see the error of his ways-to help them.  He's rejected, but the former enemy does send his four disciples to help and then seven become the chief warriors in the rebellion.

All the things I read saying this was the visuals and special effects version and the series the story version weren't kidding, but that's ok.  I mean, they had 2 1/2 hours to tell what the series had 13(IIRC-may be off a coupla eps) episodes to tell, and it had to add bits from later.  I liked it and only two changes stood out for me...one good, the other not so much.