Hello, welcome to another video from AvenueX looking at chinese dramaland in the past week.
Finally, a weekly video that's shot in china. I'm filming this on china time Friday morning.
More things may happen after I film this video,
but at least this week we've got more stuff to talk about that's actually about chinese dramaland than just me.
So as usual, let's for talk about dramas that have gone live
on July 29th, we have a drama going live on Mango television and and that is the long waited,
everybody is anticipating and we kind of all know it's gonna air soon.
Second season of Da Song Shao Nian Zhi, Young Blood 2
Still written by the same scriptwriter, pretty much still the same cast, apart from one character.
I've watched ten episodes at this point.
This season so far is not so satisfying as the first one, visually,
they really changed color.
Even some lens choices are very questionable.
They are very distorted shots that clearly has some tapes technical problems going on
in the first couple of episodes that I notice, and most people do notice.
And then overall, the color palette is very,very foggy,
low contrast, desaturated, don't quite understand why they have to do that change
and story wise, not feeling it that much as the first one,
very underwhelming honestly speaking,
then moving on today which is August the 4th as i'm filming
morning time china time 7:30,
Youku jumped out and say we're gonna air drop a drama half an hour later.
So 8 o'clock in the morning on a working day they dropped a drama.
So what drama is that? Yi Ren Zhi Xia, English title I Am Nobody.
And when it released this first trailer, people were very divided.
Some people think it's interesting, We're gonna go and look at how they do the live action version
and some people get really offended just by the way it looks.
Since right now, there are already 4 episodes online.
I will do my diligence and try to check it out as soon as possible,
this one is led by Peng Yuchang, Hou Minghao, Wang Yinglu and it's directed by Xu Hongyu
who was the director of Crossfire, Chuan Yue Huo Xian,
which I still think think is in recent couple of years, one of the better contemporary dramas
then tomorrow 5th Saturday in china,
there should be a drama going live on multiple satellite television.
It is a biography drama of the very famous singer from taiwan,
Teresa Deng, Deng Lijun
I just don't feel there's any living actress who really can take on this role,
but I would be curious to see how Chen Yanxi does it.
And that drama is called Wo Zhi Zai Hu Ni
which is the title of one of her very famous song, I only care about you.
I pretty much keep my expectation of this drama at the lowest
so that if it just doesn't~~~ I wouldn't get disappointed.
Then a couple of days later around the mid next week,
it hasn't been hundred% confirmed, but either on the 9th or the 10th,
a drama should go live on cctv, this is the big beginning of
probably quite a few things we're gonna see in drama land and also film land,
because this year is the 70th anniversary of the Korean war.
Films, televisions related to that period of history will be more frequent
from now on probably to end of the year.
And this is another television series that is the serious, proper military drama
about last centuries, 1950s, not so different from the previous couple of weeks,
I talked about the Scout Hero that's led by Luo Jin and Ma Sichun
This one is called Dong Yu Shi, Winter and Lion.
And it's led by Du Chun, Wang Ziqi, Zhang Bo
because of Wang Ziqi and Zhang Bo, I'll definitely check out this drama.
Then let's talk about a couple of other dramas at different stages of production.
During this week, we have a drama that has started shooting
a very typical period, idol fantasy drama called Nian Wu Shuang
not quite sure about english title because it really is not on my dramalist yet
And it's led by Tang Yan and Liu Xueyi and it's an iqiyi production.
So Tang Yan is coming back to fantasy idol drama land again at the age of 40
among the other group of actresses who kind of got famous and popular along with her
in the early 2000s, seemingly in recent years,
they are all coming back to idol drama land one after another,
including Liu Shishi, including Liu Yifei, I mean Yang Mi has been around in this genre forever.
It just shows like hardly any progress has happened in dramaland in the last two decades.
And if we have to be you know honest, it kind of goes backward,
then we've got two dramas during this week that have got the license to air.
They can go live anytime. One is the short drama on iqiyi Tian Qi Yi Wen Lu, The Mutations
That's a period drama set in Ming Dynasty or led by Huang Xuan
If you still remember that drama only 12 episodes literally can go live any time
and probably just finish airing in one week.
The other drama is a contemporary drama and it will go on both satellite television cctv and Tencent
38 episodes medical drama they've recently just changed the title.
Previously it was a different title. I am sure about that.
Now it's called Wen Xin, literally means asking the heart,
but the English official title is The Heart
and that's the medical drama led by Zhao Youting, Jin Shijia, Mao Xiaotong
Do you still remember that one?
Now this drama is fully done, it's ready,
it's past censorship and I can't wait to watch it.
My mother is a cardiologist, so I can ask her for everything
whether this drama is doing justice to her profession,
but also because it includes these three actors,
fingers crossed this drama is gonna go live sooner than later.
Then we have a quick piece of news about a film that has just announced
that they're gonna go into cinema around china's national day slot
at the very end of September 28th.
National day is from October the 1st to the 7th.
And that is the film that was filmed back in 2019 and hasn't been able to get scheduled and go through censorship.
And there was so many rounds of re editing and whatever.
Until now twenty, 2003,it's finally gonna go in cinema,
and it is a Zhang Yimou, yeah, that big guy directed film called Jian Ru Pan Shi
English title Under the Light.
It's a police crime, film, local gangsters,corruption, murder
a lot of blood and gore and look at the trailer
You can see the color and the texture, the type of movie already, you can sense the vibes
and zhang yi mou really hasn't done a movie like this previously
and then looking at the cast, you have Lei Jiayin and Zhou Dongyu
also including other veteran people such as Zhang Guoli, Yu Hewei, Chen Daoming
So I kind of have to go to the cinema to see this film and let's hope it's a good movie.
Then we have a couple of other things regarding dramaland that are sad, complicated, weird and whatever
so the first thing is during this week,the producer of the drama that is right now still ongoing on iqiyi
the mystery lotus casebook producer of it,
Deng Xibin passed away due to a heart attack
This year we've already seen two producers of dramas passed away,
both are middle age, one is the Word of Honor producer lady and now this guy
impermanence in life, but also this industry is actually very grueling.
If you've ever worked in it, you know you don't have time off.
Your schedule is all over the place you don't eat regularly.
It's hard to get good exercise and people are under high pressure,
not the best working environment for maintaining good health.
You have to be super disciplined to be able to do that while still producing stuff in china.
The next thing drama that happened yesterday and the day before in china on internet
regarding the second season of Lie Zui Tu Jian, Under the Skin my baby,
I love that drama and just by thinking the shit may happen to season two makes me very very very sad.
So basically the story creator of the first season and I think two script writers working under him,
they all exited this project
This project is still ongoing with the production company.
I believe the actors are still signed to the project, so they can't necessarily quit
but basically the original writing team of this project left,
judging by what these script writers have said on social media,
it's just a disagreement between the writers and the investor,
the money giving people who have different ideas about how they wanna play with this already successful IP
then a lot of rumors started to happen about people who have money behind
wanna add a romantic line female lead and people start to gossip about who that person person would be.
It's not confirmed, there are a lot of rumors online.
So i'm not gonna you know talk about them because I don't think any of that is confirmed,
but we do know that for real is the original writers
who I believe if you really followed under the skin very closely last year when it was airing,
you probably have seen some special feature video of interview,
long interview of those writers, those ladies,
I think these people are no longer on the team.
Honestly speaking, if they lose the good writers and then they get some really bad writers in
then the second season is already a failure.
They can get back Tan Jianci and Jin Shijia, no problem,
they can get everybody back, but the essence of a drama is the writing.
If the writing craps out, then no people can, you know, actors can't actually save it.
This is a detective story, this is case breaking detective story.
So it's a harder to write type of story to write well,
think about the Zheng Ye Cheng and Xin Yunlai drama.
That is also two guys police and in many ways,
it's almost like Mango's attempt to do their own version of under the skin that failed,
because the writing is not good enough,
like no matter what you do on the outside, however,you wanna set up the cp or whatever,
it's just not gonna work if the story itself is not strong enough.
And now you don't have the writers who made it possible in the first series, well good luck,
I'd rather those two characters live in their storage space forever as we remember them by by the end of season one,
it's one of my favorite CPs i've gotten in the last 2 years.
This is when you feel so helpless and you wish that you have more power and money.
And somehow you can come in and say i'll drown you people with money,
and just get it my way.
Last thing about dramaland before I go this week,
which is during this week, I think there is an official document that comes out
a policy from nrta about dramas.
They are really really going very detailed about drama length now.
So for dramas each episode 45 minutes,
you shouldn't be given more time to that and then cap it at episode 40.
So total is about 1,800 minutes of a drama.
If you wanna make dramas longer than that,
you have to file it for special permit, certain topics, certain dramas,
for example adaptation of a big classic.
You cannot finish that in 40 episodes, for those very special projects,
they will grant you the license to have a longer drama made.
But if it's nothing special, you cannot go over 40 episodes.
If you are wanting to making it longer like multiple parts and season,
yes you can do it, but you have to air these two parts more than 12 months apart
so more than a year, not 3 months.
I don't know when it's gonna be effective because for Chang Xiang Si, Lost You Forever, they aired before this policy came out,
maybe like for them, they can still air by the end of this year.
But for future dramas, if you shoot 80 episodes drama and you don't have special permit to air it in one go
well good luck, you have to air one part and then wait for a year to air the next part
by then even if your first sealing is super popular,
you know 黄花菜都凉了
the food is completely cold,
let's see how many dramas will tightly adhere to that
and whether we're gonna see because of this policy
dramas that gets cut in half and aired more than a year apart,
that would be fun to see how the production companies justify this type of doing.
Anyway that should conclude this week's weekly video from AvenueX, thank you for watching.
I'll see you in my next video, meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.