Maggi64

Oh, I am 100% in Woody's camp. A pedophile is someone who compulsively and repeatedly molests children. They do not do it only once in their entire lives, and in the middle of a RAGING divorce, at their ex's house, while it's full of kids and nanny's. Even the CT cops said the toddler was coached. And every other investigation turned up zilch as well. They even let Woody and Soon Yi adopt 2 kids a couple years after this, and adoption agencies investigate with a fine tooth comb. Frankly, it's Mia who should not be allowed to keep collecting kids (er, adopting kids). Her estranged son Moses said she only paid attention to her biological ones anyway. Two of the Asian adoptees killed themselves. One died impoverished, and alone of AIDS. There was clearly something unhealthy going on in Mia's house back then.

At any rate, only idiot Me Too robots say they believe Mia (privately, of course, they also know she was lying). I suspect that this is the reason so many older, more established stars continued to work with him even after this.

Cate Blanchett won the Oscar for Best Actress for Blue Jasmine. She plays a billionaire Wall St crook's spoiled Park Ave wife whose life falls apart when he's arrested. That is not a spoiler, since the movie begins at this point. In the very 1st scene, she has already lost everything to the Feds who are recouping what her husband stole, and now she's so broke she has to move in with her working class sister. She also happens to hate her working class sister's oafish boyfriend. See the parallels between this and Streetcar Named Desire? It has echoes of that, but in Streetcar, we sympathize more with Blanche. In Blue Jasmine, Woody said he wanted the audience to see how the heroine continually made self-destructive decisions. Blanchett is brilliant in it.

And yes, she guzzles vodka in one scene to make the xanux kick in faster. I also laughed at that!

Yo, so glad to see you here. I have been at a friend's house and not really doing the Asian films on my laptop thing, cuz she, I and her girlfriend watched movies together on a proper tv screen. We watched some Woody Allen's which I'd already seen, but can never see enough of, such as Blue Jasmine.

As for this movie, I don't think I actually did hang around till the end. I think I watched enough to get a grip on what it was trying to do, as well as watching with car-wreck fascination, then dropped it. I do recall thinking, yikes, no way would a Western director get away with this plot about an old cop diddling a 15 year old as if it were "true love."

OMG, you are so right about even kids knowing to pucker and smack their lips! When a little kid kisses me on the cheek to say goodbye or goodnight, I can feel their little mouths smacking against my skin. Yet we are so accustomed to uptightness in Asian BL's that we even make excuses for full grown males not knowing how to do what 4 year olds know how to do. Note that I said, "Asian BL's" because we no longer see fake gay kisses in Western films. Actors who tried to pass that off would be eviscerated by the critics!

I used to make excuses for bad kissing by saying, "Oh, it's their first kiss." But I no longer do so. Why? Well, for the precise reason you stated -- ie, we never see such dead fish kisses in a hetero romance. We only see dead fish kisses if the director wants to depict that the leads dislike each other or have no attraction toward each other. But if it's a hetero romance, then the kiss will be true. I mean, everyone in the audience would be complaining about how bizarre it was if a hetero couple in a romance merely touched lips, then retreated. And yes, that means it would be bizarre even for a first kiss.

Otherwise, as you also said, the show is quite good and the boys have nice chemistry. And the bad boy is hot-as-hell.

The movie they're watching in Ep 5 when Qi Lu tries to cop a kiss from Qin Xiao is called, "East Palace, West Palace," from 1996. It's an excellent movie and I highly recommend it. I also found the following tidbit on its MDL page:

"This movie was forbidden by Chinese authorities for its open depiction of homosexuality in Mainland China when it first came out, and director Yuan Zhang was arrested for a short time and his passport taken away from him temporarily. Yet he managed to get a copy of the movie out of the country, and "East Palace, West Palace" has been aired at prestigious film festivals all over the world."

Excellent point about the allure of villains. A perfect example is the villain "Hannibal the Cannibal" from the 1990's film "Silence of the Lambs." He was a suave, charming serial killer whom viewers flocked to see, and openly regarded as their favorite character. This character was so popular that the actor who played him, Anthony Hopkins, was paid ten times as much to come back and do a sequel.

I actually do get embarrassed for myself when I realize how young the people are on this site. I used to get into heated arguments 3 years ago when I joined, but once I realized that the majority of participants were as young as my students, I tried to keep a calmer tone.

Speaking of students, I will confess to getting upset when I see people aged 15-25 make accusations of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, rape apologia, etc, because I have seen lives destroyed by such accusations, even with no proof or merit. This is something new which began about 15 years ago, and has currently peaked.

My colleagues and I won't even see a student in a room alone anymore. There must be others present or the door must be open so the secretaries in the outer office can witness what happens. We are actually afraid of this generation because of how quickly they make accusations of horrible things. This is why I reacted heatedly to how the girl here replied to etoks.

Trust me, I now regret replying at all. But I appreciate your calm tone and respectful reply, so thank you.

I concede that it's also not cool to accuse people of being stupid purely based on youth. In fact, people's I.Q's are established at a very early age, which means that a person can be classified as a genius as early as 10 yrs old. As the high IQ young person ages, they add information, ideas, experience and ways of processing all that stuff in more advanced ways. Even a genius needs to age to have time to add all this stuff to their minds. This is one of the benefits of ageing.

Either way, there's no question that ageism is a form of bigotry that is most used against older people, not against younger people. It's also a bigger problem in the West, whereas the Eastern cultures value the wisdom that comes with aging.

First you said, "lmaoo you must be old as hell," as if aging were a crime. Then you called him "Gramps," which is a clear pejorative for older people.

I find it fascinating that you want to defend groups from assault and bigotry, but think that Ageism is somehow not bigotry too. Look up the term "Ageism," because you'll find that your words fit the definition.

Incidentally, the only way to cease aging is to die young. Do you want that for yourself? If so, then I'm sure you can kill yourself by 25 so as to never become middle-aged like me. Or maybe you can get cancer. Otherwise, be prepared to age. I assure you, it's not so bad. Most of my friends even enjoy being middle-aged and having hindsight and wisdom. The only problem is that we occasionally encounter ageist young people. You really need to think about this.

Thanks, and I agree that this director has done enough good work to deserve the benefit of the doubt. I adored Blueming (especially the backstory with Si Won's childhood and lasting insecurities). Where Your Eyes Linger was one of the first BL's I'd ever seen and it turned me onto the genre.

This director got great work out of those 2 leads that other directors failed to reproduce with the same actors in subsequent BL's. I liked WYEL so much that I even overlooked that the leads kept saying the Bodyguard worked with him for 15 years, when that would've meant he was only 3 -4 years old when he became a bodyguard. I can overlook small mistakes in a script if the chemistry is already there, and if we see all the subtle, but growing, indications that the leads are falling in love. I'll even forgive a time lapse.

But the time lapse in Taekwando feels more forced, and the reasons for it inexplicable. Well, I won't restate all this because Jpny already described why that time lapse did not work for people like us.

BTW, is it certain that there will be a sequel for Blueming? It's one of my Top 5 fave BL's, so I'm looking forward to it!

Fujii keeps having kisses until the 1st kiss that doesn't make the person puke proves it's true love. Sure, it's girl-on-girl kissing, but nobody puked, so it's gotta be true love!

Well said, thank you. I loathed To My Star 2, and got a lot of flak for a scathing review I wrote about it. I determined that some simply make excuses for a BL that seems, as you said, "dramatic" rather than "fluffy." But I prefer fluff that doesn't take it itself seriously and feels fun, to "drama" that uses cheap, lazy plot points to create undo angst.

Why? One, because I know the original poster. Two, because etoks was obviously being tongue-in-cheek, and I'm troubled by girls like you who go out of their way to accuse people of horrible things like being a rape apologist. Of course, you didn't really believe that he was a rape apologist, you just enjoy acting offended. You anticipate getting lots of "likes" for your ability to be offended, as if your attitude in this regard were some sort of concrete achievement. The result is a generation who accuses other people of horrifying, things because they've found a benefit in pretending to be offended.

But I shan't explain etok's comment for him anymore. He's pretty good at defending himself against this sort of thing on his own.

I'm not sure what to expect at this point either. But speculation that its reappearance on Gaga bodes well for it, had made sense. After all, Gaga, unlike IQIYI, is not controlled by China in any way. And I doubt they'd have paid to run a show that was only going to be 4 eps, and then cut to pieces, but who knows. Besides, the firs 4 eps have made it so clear that this is a BL, that it won't matter even if they do censor a kissing scene. The rich artist boy is not only gay, but understands himself to be gay from the get-go (my impression is that the dramatic arc will involve poor artist boy coming around to his boy-on-boy attraction). At any rate, I hope it continues on this track because it's currently my fave of all the BL's out there.

I think it's clear that etoks didn't mean he likes rapists, but that he likes over-the-top acting, and the guy playing the the teacher put in a massively over-the-top performance. For the spanking scene, he popped his eyes like a comic book villain and just about emitted a demonic cackling. I was puzzled by the actor's choice to play it that way, but it seems to be the director's choice for the show's overall aesthetic.

I mean, so many other elements of this show, are over-the-top (the adult women's zany, rhinestone outfits when they meet at Mishima's mom's house), the constant shrieking (I want to give the whole cast a box of throat lozenges), and the way the 3 female town gossips all howl and scream in orgasmic joy whenever a new piece of gossip arrives.

So when etoks said he loved how the show has gone all "weirdo, pervy, zany" and that the teacher was his fave, he was alluding to these over-the-top elements.

As for tropes, I only noticed the one where the older guy put on Deaf Boy's seatbelt and got his face close enough to kiss him. What others did I miss?

That really was the worst bleach job I've ever seen in an Asian production. And take this from someone who likes when Asian boys go blonde (it's kind of punk rock). But this is what they call a "dishwater blonde" because it looks like he did it with a bottle of bleach at his kitchen sink.

Yes, there's an interview with him where he said so. If you google I'm sure you'll find it :)

It's intriguing to ask, as you did, whether or not the lead "was even meant to be likeable," because the author based the lead on himself. A lot of autobiographical novelists will intentionally include negative things about themselves for the sake of honesty and a good story. But at the same time they'll subconsciously make excuses for an autobiographical character's flaws.

Yes, it makes sense for him to not tell every other character in the story. However, I maintain that the screenplay should've revealed this fact to the audience (not to other characters), much earlier. Nothing was gained by delaying the revelation.

I think it would have been more dramatic if the audience knew he had HIV earlier so we could observe the fear that every new relationship would bring to him. That would've created compelling dramatic tension. It's like you said, one understands why people don't go around revealing they've got an illness, while at the same time, one understands that honesty is crucial. It's a tricky dilemma to balance in modern sexual relationships, and keying the audience into this dilemma earlier would've been interesting.

Again, if you were able to enjoy the show without this bothering you, then that's cool. But it drove me bonkers and I'd wondered if I was the only one.