Hello, welcome to another video from AvenueX looking at chinese dramaland in the past week,
and let's get right into it. Luckily, we don't have that much going on this week.
First, there is a drama that didn't air according to schedule
this time is the Xiao Zhan, Li Qin drama Meng Zhong Na Pian Hai, Where the dreams begin.
It was supposed to go live on 21st on cctv, didn't happen.
It says it's postpone, kind of happens a little bit too frequently recently
then let's talk about dramas usually how I talk about them
the ones have gone live first, chronologically on May the 22nd
we have a drama that went live on Tencent, contemporary romantic drama called
San Fen Ye, English title Here We Meet Again
Clearly, that's a story of two people who know each other before and meet again
and it's led by Wu Qian and Zhang Binbin
I did watch 3 episodes of this drama and this is a really weird one
to the point where I constantly zone out.
After 3 episodes, I have a vague impression of what's going on,
but I really cannot concentrate at all while I was watching.
So this drama has that weird hypnotizing effect of you're kind of looking at it, but you're not,
I don't know why,but that's how it worked on me for the first 3 episodes.
The other one that went live on the same day is an iqiyi drama called Shu Nian, English title In later Years
And it's a family drama that depicts multiple generation within one big family.
It is led by Hao Lei, Wang Ou, Liu Yijun, Song Dandan, Tang Yixin, Wang yanlin
All of them are quite familiar faces in dramaland.
I've watched 3 episodes, this drama has aired I think today to 4 or 5 episodes,
I still need a bit more time to make up my mind about it.
It's a pretty standard domestic contemporary drama
right from the beginning it has a little bit blood pressure raising potential.
so I'll need to watch a couple of more episodes to decide whether I wanna keep watching.
Then there's also a drama that went live on the 24th on Tencent
Qi Zi de Xin Shi Jie, literally meaning wife's new world.
English official title is My Wife. So again, a contemporary marriage focused story
led by Yuan Shanshan, Du Chun, Ren Hao
Somehow just by looking at the cast, I feel like dog blood is .... ahead,
maybe because their previous works and their internet reputation,
all three of them have been in centers of quite a lot of internet dramatic episodes
moving on, we have a drama that's scheduled for the coming monday If nothing weird happens,
I do hope this one happens, which is a drama that will air on
satellite television two of them plus iqiyi plus tencent,
the Gong Su Jing Ying, Prosecution Elite.
This in pretty much everybody's opinion is Dilraba's first official Zhuan Xing (转型) drama
from the idol fantasy period dramaland to the proper serious dramaland.
Let's see if she can stick this landing
one day after that on the 30th end of this month,
we have a drama that will go live on Youku.
I haven't even heard about this project before and it's definitely not led by super famous people.
Kong Xue'r and Wu Yuheng
and It's just a title that caught my attention.
It's a typical idol romantic contemporary drama.
The title is Xiang Jiao Xian Sheng Bu Shui Jiao, literally means Mr Banana doesn't go to sleep or doesn't sleep.
English title is Sleepless Night.
Both characters our lead female and lead male. Both of them cannot sleep
one day they meet and they realize by touching each other,
they can fall asleep
How many times have we seen that kind of you are my antidote
You are the only cure in this world for me.
I have a weird condition that nobody can deal with apart from you
and somehow like it's mutual,
that means like you're destined to marry.
If you want to sleep for the rest of your life,
you kind of have to end up in the same bed every night.
If it's a good comedy, I mean it may be watchable,
otherwise it would just fade away in the sea of dramaland.
And then we have a couple of other dramas at different stages of production.
I'm just gonna talk about them one by one, first,
there's a drama that has started official promotion releasing official posters
not sure when that's gonna come it.
It's a Tencent contemporary drama.
Another potentially blood pressure raising drama because it's called
Wo He Hun Yin de Zhan Dou, literally means the battle I have with marriage.
It's like worse than our marriage of my wife.
You're not only battling against your spouse,
but you're actually battling against the marriage itself. Good luck.
And it's led by Cai Wenjing and Feng Shaofeng
We have another drama that has started promoting
another contemporary drama. Why am I like this?
i'm so sarcastic, sorry.
It's called Yi Wu Zhi Cheng
And the one I just said doesn't have an english title, this one,
I don't think it has one either.
They're very new release and this drama has something to do with dancing
because our female league character is a dancer.
You can tell that and it's played by Qin Lan, who was a dancer,
I think when she was younger and she did play multiple dancers in her acting career,
this is another one and she's this time paired up with Zhong Hanliang
Zhong han liang was one of those "我的初心“ actor.
When I was really, really young,
I have moved on and hopefully have become wiser as I age.
He just like, is still playing roles or of the age range that he definitely is physically out of
way too many things he's done to his face that I ~~~~
you are so good looking and already very young appearance wise compared to your real age,
you don't have to try to do that much stuff.
I miss the olden days when people just don't have those options.
And they can just have very natural expressions and muscles on their face
that look like real people, these days, once you start to move the muscles,
you just look terrible, on camera, nothing comes across naturally.
It actually destroys your acting, destroys the communication with the audiences.
It's not the drama itself. It hasn't come out yet.
It's just like even if you look at the posters and how badly people get photoshopped.
The next one is a piece of news on a drama that has wrapped and it gets
a little bit confusing, because it has a title that confuses me.
It's called Hei Bao Sen Lin, literally means black and white forest.
And and the reason it confuses me is there is a drama called Hei Bai Mi Ma, which
is black and white code or password that type of meaning
that drama was led by Wang Ziqi and Su Xiaotong
Their contemporary drama re-collaboration after Imperial Coroner.
That's a police and crime drama.
This one is is also a thriller mystery kind of crime drama and it's also led by Su Xiaotong
but the male lead is Ding Yuxi
So it's Ding Yuxi and Su Xiaotong drama that has wrapped.
and I haven't even heard about this project starting,
Hei Bai Mi Ma may come out sooner than you think, and Hei Bai Sen Lin probably won't see it till next year.
And then the other two actors in this drama is also quite interesting,
Ning Li and Han Xue, okay so you have Ning Li, Han Xue, DIng Yuxi, Su Xiaotong in a misery thriller contemporary drama.
Sorry, I haven't heard about this project before
last 2 weeks were too crazy
moving on to the next piece of news.
We have a drama that is set to start shooting very, very soon
and it's kind of 80% 90% confirmed because of the cast,
it's definitely gonna be stared at from day one till when it goes live
it is based on a quite well known I think novel called Mei Gui de Gu Shi or Mei Gui Gu Shi,
and english title officially is The Rose's Tale and it's a contemporary romantic drama,
led by Liu Yifei, yeah, Huo Jianhua,
why am I like that? Lin Gengxin, Peng Guanying
Interesting, Tong Dawei, what? How many men do you have in this drama?
So basically it's one female lead and many men in her life type of story
Tong Dawei I believe so far in the rumors plays her brother
so that's not like romantic relationship
Huo Jianhua supposedly is playing like the true love of her life,
but didn't end up together.
And I think Lin Gengxin plays her husband who she had a kid with,
but then she divorced and then Peng Guanying i'm not sure where to place him.
But in that contemporary drama, basically,
you have the leading female role played by Liu Yifei
whose name literally means rose, rose's story, pretty straightforward.
It's gonna start shooting very soon.
I have to say i'm excited for the fact that Huo Jianhua is coming back in a drama.
How long haven't we seen him? I think ever since.
Ru Yi Zhuan, he's like quiet,he's not really working in drama and acting anymore.
Honestly I am excited to see LYF and HJH pairing up.
I have never imagined this would happen, but if it happens oh for sure.
Let me see what it looks like.
We also have a piece of news on the drama Chang Feng Du, Destined,
which was in last last week iqiyi package.
They've got the license. I think for iqiyi
they are aiming at for June or July
They wanna air this drama,
although right now,
it is in a little bit trouble for certain costume in this drama.
In this case, I think official costume.
So for the male lead, he has an official position in the court.
And when it's very ceremonial and very serious occasions,
this dramas genius costume designer effed it up with making it looking like japanese ancient costume.
And it's a huge land mind zone that you can not step into right now in chinese dramaland.
there was a drama that literally got pulled off because of all the japanese elements that are overtly done.
And this drama has unfortunately that thing.
And I don't know how you can edit it out.
I mean last year, the Galaxy drama when it has that ribbon thing,
which is not a chinese costume thing. It's only a decorative part.
And when you are changing the shot,
if you move in tighter and digitally removing some parts of an ornament
You can do that, and Galaxy did it before it went live so that it was saved.
But for Chang Feng Du the problem is not one part or decorative element on the costume
that you can hide with post production.
It's the actual shape and cutting around the shoulder.
I don't see how you can digitally change that.
Honestly, unless you reshoot that whole scene
So although it gets the license,
because it's already been noticed and then posted online in china,
if this thing gets any bigger, they're gonna spend a shit ton of money re-editing, cutting things out,
changing things to save this drama, And honestly,
how many ignorant people do we have in this business?
Who don't know what the heck they're doing?
If you have any basic idea about ancient costume research of like the asian part of the world,
if you're from china, korea, ancient japan,
like all those regions, eastern asia.
If you've read into any of the history, it's not hard at all.
It's really obvious to identify the difference between different time periods and different styles.
And what clearly is not what,
i'd understand. If you're a European person, you've never come across this culture,
or you know you're from other countries that are far away from this land.
And it all appears to be the same to you. That's fine.
But for professional people who work in costume designs I don't get it, I don't get it.
It's so stupid. I really do hope that doesn't affect this dramas airing.
I wanna see the real lovers play playing real lovers in the drama.
One last thing I wanna quickly mention before I finish today's video
one day or two before I release my video on Hu Xin
Back from the Brink, it kind of already crashed the drama.
So I pinned a comment on the top of that video saying the drama kind of crashed right after I made the video
and yesterday or the day before there have been 2 days
wow, on weibo and China's internet social media. It was funny.
One of the writers came out of this drama and sending very long announcements on their account,
also like having an argument actually with the official drama account,
basically saying the first 15 episodes and the rough outline of this drama was done by this person.
But then when they submitted the thing to the drama,
the drama invited another script director into the whole game,
and then the platform and that person they worked together and decided
the first 15 episodes are not written to their satisfaction.
So they've kind of fired this script writer or the script writer had
too much of an argument with them about how the story should be going.
So this person quit, only leaving the 15 episodes and the structure outline of the drama.
And the rest of the drama is written by the newly hired person plus youku perform.
So when this drama literally crashed from episode 16 onwards and people didn't understand what's going on,
there's a lot of complaining about people who really like this drama
in the early stage, on internet, start to fire bullets at script writers.
And the script writer came out and saying it's not my responsibility.
I didn't create all those things that you think are land mines.
I didn't even create the character Bai Xiaosheng
It was added later by the later commers
They wrote a huge article about exactly what they put in first 15 episodes
and what is not their writing, and then there's this back and forth argument online
between the drama and this particular script writer.
And it was wow I haven't seen that being like so openly fought on internet.
I definitely sat aside drank my tea, ate my melon and just laughed at the whole situation.
It's not a masterpiece even if you just look at the let's say take out that crashing element,
if you just look at the 15 episodes, if it's purely this person's work,
it's not masterpiece either, but it's just like making logical sense to a point and not being too tropey
Whereas later it just starts to get really confusingly not making sense.
And it also shows just how messy dramaland is and how not worked out and random
the process of making a drama for the platforms are like in China,
you have the money and technique to hire the greatest cgi companies in the world now
if you really want to do it with chinese dramaland
I mean look at Chinese filmland, you can see, the potential, if you have money,
any type of camera you wanna use, really, if you have money again, these days in dramaland,
basically hardware stuff, you can have the best thing.
But in terms of how a crew gets made up
the process of hiring people, the professionalism in script writing, everything,
how it gets worked out, it's so under regulated, not worked out, not streamlined,
not properly managed, and all over the place, random.
And it's been like that. I mean from day one always, I know,
but I haven't been in the industry for years now.
And I'm like it's over a decade and you still haven't worked out these things at all?
Really just liked so little improvement!
I mean no wonder 95% of dramas come out of Chinese dramaland are pure crap,
honest opinion because we do have too many dramas that come out every year.
So 95% is actually not so ridiculous if you think about how many dramas
today, I'm in a very weird mood. I don't know why,
but then it is what it is, end of May.
Thank you for watching AvenueX I'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.