This weekend in Beijing was the 7th Annual TV Drama Awards, showcasing the splashiest and buzziest Mainland Chinese dramas of 2015. I would say best of the bunch but so many award categories seem to be based on popularity even in the description alone. There wasn’t a Best Drama category but ten C-dramas from 2015 was honored for being the … Continue reading →
Money was clearly no limitation for the lavish and star-studded wedding ceremony of top Chinese stars Huang Xiaoming and Angelababy. It was as luxurious and over-the-top as Jay Chou‘s nuptials to Hannah Quinlivan last year, minus only the English castle backdrop but plus dozens more celebrity guests since it wasn’t a destination wedding. The newlyweds actually got married officially a … Continue reading →
Sometimes a delay ends up yielding unexpectedly good results, and that looks to be the case with the arrival of the drama adaptation of Yun Zhong Ge (Song of the Clouds). The novel from writer Tong Hua is one of my favorites even if it’s also the hardest to read in terms of the angst. It’s probably second only to … Continue reading →
This is definitely one of the most bizarre bibimbap casting mashups I’ve ever come across. I can’t definitively say whether the end product will be good or bad, but my prediction is hot mess with tons of eye candy. Yoona of SNSD will be following in the footsteps of many of her Korean acting brethren and heading over to Mainland … Continue reading →
Yun Zhong Ge the drama looks so beautiful I have no words. Gah, what is this magic happening? If the drama adaptation of writer Tong Hua‘s Da Mo Yao (Ballad of the Desert) felt like a balloon gradually deflating as my excitement and interest went from one hundred to zero in the court of the casting shenanigans, filming chintzy feel, and … Continue reading →
When one’s beloved novel is getting a live-action adaptation, there is always the fervent hope that it doesn’t get butchered tempered by the dream of seeing it finally come to life outside of the words on the page and the images in one’s own imagination. I’ve been through the process so many times whether its English novels, Japanese manga, or … Continue reading →
In light of the fact that the drama adaptation of Da Mo Yao (Ballad of the Desert) might never see the light of day, plus I’m still not ready to accept Eddie Peng as General Huo Qu Bing despite all my love for Liu Shi Shi and Hu Ge, the drama adaptation of Yun Zhong Ge (Song in the Clouds) … Continue reading →
Okay, this is much better than I expected. Or maybe since my expectation was somewhere below rock bottom (yes, that is possible when dealing with the maestro toad of crazy that is producer Yu Zheng’s oeuvre), something that looks simple and lovely actually has the ability to instill hope back in me for the upcoming drama adaptation of Tong Hua’s … Continue reading →
After the collective freak out and hernia two weeks ago at the Yun Zhong Ge Baidu bar over the casting shuffles and the possibility of Yuan Shan Shan taking on the leading role in Yu Zheng‘s drama adaptation of Yun Zhong Ge called Love Story of the Great Han Period, the drama quietly started filming yesterday with a confirmed cast that … Continue reading →
Yu Zheng‘s The Swordsman, a complete massacre of the classic wuxia novel Smiling Proud Wanderer, is so so SO bad I cannot even write about it. Talking about that atrocity is like pouring boiling water over a fresh burn. Much as I would like him to retire from producing dramas immediately, the man isn’t going anywhere and he has in … Continue reading →
