Hello, welcome to another video from AvenueX
looking at chinese dramaland in the past week
and
nothing happened.
I believe that's the first time I said this during a weekly video
ever since I started this which is close to 3 years now,
not that nothing happened in chinese entertainment,
things are always happening,
but in terms of dramaland
it's been very quiet because it's national day,
holiday week, it's a 7 day break from October 1st to 7th.
Everybody is I mean supposedly off,
I have close to nothing to talk about for this week.
But we're gonna force something to happen.
Number one is we've had the worst national day slot
film box office performanc e in years in china,
in 2022 ever since 2019.
I think the number has been going down
because 2019 is a good number,
and then 2020 you already have Covid and 21 and 22.
So the number continues dropping compared to the heyday,
the best time of chinese cinemas in the last couple of years.
This is the worst year yet
and my light just went out
What the heck?
Okay, i'm back, let's see how long it's gonna last this time.
Mercury retrograde
i'm just gonna blame it on that.
One reason being in a couple of locations in china,
there's still all kinds of limited lockdown
or people just limit themselves because in
case they get caught traveling somewhere and then their
code turns red and they get locked down for 2 weeks.
The thing with chinese cinema is its value
all the money that's in it.
If you look at it as an industry,
how much it's worth
It's only 1/6 of the market of spicy crayfish in china.
So if you like to eat that in china,
it's worth 6 times more than the entire film industry.
So that's the first piece of things I wanna to talk about
related to entertainment.
Then let's just randomly talk about a couple of things that are
not really news items more like what i'm watching
and what i'm not watching and stuff going on
trying to fill the time.
There's a drama on iqiyi that has already come out fully.
It's a comedy and not not many people know about it
and not many people are promoting it.
It's very hard to promote it because it doesn't even have
official english title and dramalist doesn't even know.
It exists.
It's that level of low key
but I just recently came across it.
It's pretty funny
depending on where you are you may be able to see it or not
called Dong Bei Cha Ban Sheng
Northeastern cha ban sheng
is the type of students say you you have a class of whatever.
And suddenly one day a new student comes in,
and they weren't your school's kids.
They came from other schools.
Somehow they just got air dropped into your school.
So that's type of student.
It's about a northeastern dongbei.
Chinese high school like the last year of high school student
somehow ended up in the very south southern city high school,
because the family moved and the drama had a fictional city set up for it,
but realistically it's a high school in Macau
because it's called lotus city
Get the idea of the symbol represents Macau
all kinds of weird comedies happen.
Most of that happens around different living habits,
but also language, accent, dialects
very interesting and also there's something that's
shippable between two male actors
depending on how you look at it. Okay?
I've watched a little bit of it,
not particularly my cup of tea,
but I totally see why it made some people very happy.
Then there are a couple of dramas I'm watching, just
Briefly telling you what I think about it.
The little forest I haven't followed passing middle point
cause I got too tired.
It's really not a little forest of two person,
it's a little forest of four persons.
Two of them are little grapes.
If you watch the drama you know what i'm talking about,
then i'm watching Falling into You on Youku,
Jin Chen and Wang An Yu, and then Wo de Fan Pai Nan You, Mr. Bad
on iqiyi, Shen Yue and Chen Zheyuan, both are pretty watchable
and then there is a drama,
I think recently also has finished airing on Mango,
which is another short drama that's literally just a film length.
Broke down into 18 episodes similar to A killer is also Romantic.
This roman is called A familiar stranger.
And Xu Yan
made by the same director who made A killer is also Romantic.
And this time it's two females swapping their faces.
and overall, it's very short.
You can watch it in one afternoon.
It's on mango television, if you're interested,
it's worth watching too.
Also the Kunlun Palace Candle into Tomb third drama
that has just finished airing on Tencent.
If you pay extra money on the 5th
during this national holiday break,
they did the last six episodes airing on one day
you pay 18 rmb to watch
tencent is desperate for money,
it's getting a lot of good reviews at least everywhere I
can see people have very positive response to this drama.
Pan yuanming did lose a bit weight for this series
compared to previous ones.
I am still arguing with myself about whether I should watch it,
because I tried it and I couldn't get into it,
because I haven't really watched the second series.
So now the third one really just hook onto the second one immediately.
I don't know what happened in the second one.
So now when I watch the third one,
i'm not quite sure where I am.
One reason is i'm not very interested in the genre itself.
So that's one thing.
The second is, if I watch just one,
I probably would have to go and watch the second series
to understand what's going on.
But then I would have to face CG spiders
gia- nimous once mountain size spiders,
I don't think it's worth risking my mental health for a drama,
but Lucas is cute somehow.
Then I just remembered on iqiyi there's a comedy show.
This is the second season they did it last year for first season.
Yi Nian Yi Du XI Ju Da Sai, literally means annual
Comedy competition,
their official title is the (Super) Sketch Show, whatever.
This is the second season during this week.
There's one program of the second episode
of this series blown up on china's internet,
which is called Shao Ye (he) Wo, it's so about right now
In terms of web novel culture,
the type of archetypical tropey drama writing about
Ba Zong 霸总 character,
the overbearing ceo the the versions of Daoming si basically
in literature in drama
that stage performance about 5-10 minutes is really
very satirical comment on that whole thing
and somehow it blew up on china's internet.
You have to actually know all the memes that's
in chinese pop culture about the genre of writing and drama
to know what is funny about it.
If you don't, you wouldn't get it at all
everywhere on internet, I can see it.
people start to do like fan art for this couple,
which is absolutely ridiculous, Young Master And Me,
if you're curious,
you can go and check it out.
You just search for it, iqiyi
but comedy is hard for people who do not
speak that comedy's language to understand, right?
So may not be that interesting to international audiences.
What else is going on in this week?
oh Finally,
I got time to watch now already on internet. the stream version
of the film which is led by Zhu Yilong
And a kid.
Anyway it's that funeral business film
I finally got time to actually watch it.
I don't do film reviews on my channel,
so I just briefly say if you haven't watched that film, it's okay,
but it's not very good in my opinion and mostly
actually it has nothing to do with the acting
The thing with it is the script tries to cram in so much stuff.
I particularly don't like that,
really weird choice of camera language
that they went for handheld,
like 80%.
It's not like an action or thriller or suspense or fake documentary.
Why do you have to do that?
It's a really dramatic storytelling film.
It's such a pain when they're shaking all the time
and you can't even see clearly for like a quiet 5
seconds of a shot of the actor's face,
cause it's doing that
and your eyes cannot really focus on them.
It also likes to do very tight shot
on smaller screen.
It's already very tight.
I can't imagine when, when you're in theater and watching it on
huge screen where the faces like that big all the time,
how painful it is.
Also the editing, oh my god the editing,
just cuts and cuts and cuts and cuts.
Basically, how long average like each shot
is too short for this type of story telling
It's not a bad story, it's it's not bad performance.
Everything is pretty nicely done.
Even the set design,
production design is pretty good of that film,
but oh my god the pacing,
the editing the camera and then what they try to do
cram it all in in this film,
all the things they want to touch on,
just wanna sit down, quietly,
watch a story, a simple story,
but beautifully opened up and then articulated
things like you know like
The power of the dog.
It really just talks about one very simple story of
like 2, 3 main characters,
but that pacing that pacing of that film.
some people just know how to tell a story
with pictures and just time it to perfection, surgical,
accurate, and clean.
And certain films just don't even know what they want
they're everywhere scattered
Just by saying that on weibo account
I already get haters again like coming in
who are fans of certain actors which is just absolutely ridiculous
because I never said anything bad about any actors in that film
I just don't like the technical aspects and
also the storytelling quality of the film,
but apparently a lot of humans just cannot understand
their brain cannot even tell the difference between this and that.
It's internet, it's fine.
I'm used to it.
These are the things related drama film that i've been looking at.
Or I noticed during this week
kind of explains why most of the September was crazy.
For every project,
every platform to put out so much stuff
\that would be the end of this video from AvenueX.
that has little organization and just randomly talking about stuff
so that I still have a video coming out this week.
Since i've already been doing it,
for the 149th week
don't wanna break that.
This is the forced weekly video from me.
Thank you for watching.
I'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.