The Battle of the Brained Titans
‘Melody of Golden Age’ (2024) Mystery RomanceI am excited about the new Chinese Costume Drama Melody of Golden Age. There is much attention to cinematic details in this Chinese drama, like camera angles, film and cinematography quality, and scene composition. All this is to raise the drama suspense level. The drama’s opening minutes are so eye catching.
Strong cold male with high intelligence battles with focused and fearless intelligent female.
Shen Du (Ding Yu Xi) is an illegitimate son whose intelligence and keen observation skills allows him to solve crimes easily. This has gotten him promoted to Great Chief of the Internal Imperial Guard Office. He is an expert archer with a full life and it does not have room for romance. Consequently, when the Queen keeps trying to marry him off, he scares the wits out of the prospective brides and they call off the engagement. Yan Xing is from nobility and daughter of a Concubine, but she is a trailblazer. She is the Sixth Miss of the Yan Clan. Yan Xing is a woman who takes advantage of a program advanced by the Queen. Woman are being selected for a male dominate position of Clerk of the Ministry of Justice, an investigative bureau.
The sister of Yan Xing is selected to be the next victim bride of Shen Du. When the sister runs off, Yan Xing steps in to protect the family name and becomes the bride candidate. Shen Du soon tries his old tricks again, but Yan Xing is intelligent and bold enough to call his bluff. The situation reduces to The Battle of the Brained Titans. These two learn to coexist and become a crime solving team.
Melody of Golden Age is adapted from the Webnovel ‘Chang A Tong Que Ming’, written by Feng Huang Xi. I think that Melody of Golden Age should be added to your Chinese Drama View List.
Actors
Acting since 2017, Ding Yu Xi made a big splash in the 2020 Chinese Drama hit ‘Romance of Tiger and Rose”, my first meeting with him. Ding Yu Xi has a magnetism about him. You don’t easily forget his bravado. Ding Yu Xi has “cold male” down to a science. Since 2020, Ding Yu Xi began to carve his niche in Period Dramas. His bravado works so well with this genre. Ding Yu Xi has appeared in nine Chinese Dramas since 2020, with seven dramas being costume dramas. Ding Yu Xi is shooting up the A-List meter fast.
Chinese actress Ancy Deng is a new comer too. She started acting in 2017 as well. Her status is a slow climb, landing guest, support, and main roles. Flourish in Time (2021) was a hit for Andy Deng. Melody of Golden Age (2024) is a hit for her thus far.
Interesting Note: Ding Yu Xi is a Guy’s Guy who bites his nails. He has football fingers. I find it interesting in the opening scene, a male hand model with delicate hands is used for this pivotal scene for the close up of the fingers strumming a bow. I saw his hands in Romance of Tiger and Rose.
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Is the Korean Drama Newtopia (2025) the new Mr Queen of comedy?
Newtopia (2025) is silly, but it is silly enough to be hilarious, if you get the jokes. I did get the jokes, and like the Korean Drama ‘Frankly Speaking’, I see so much at which to laugh. Newtopia is a farce of a drama. Even down to the miscues of the actors (Like one actor almost falling off of the bed until he caught his balance), Utopia is not intended to be a serious comedy. The story melds together a major break-up of lovers and places the guy trying to win back the girl in the middle of a zombie holocaust. This drama will work for some and not for others. It works for me. I am laughing my rear end off with real tears.Newtopia certainly does not take itself seriously. In the middle of a Military holocaust practice drill, two soldiers drop a missile in front of the loads of Military higher-ups and the Company Commander, but fortunately it does not go off. What to do? Oh this is obvious. They say, “Boom! All of us are dead!” as they take to the ground and pretend that they are dead. Well after all, this is a practice run for realtime action.
In another scene, a car driver hits a pedestrian and the pedestrian crashes through the windshield, losing an eyeball, which lands on the female passenger. The eyeball is put on top of the car, while the female passenger solicits help from a male passerby to get the pedestrian safely removed from the windshield. The male driver is panicking. The passerby places the hot dog he is eating next to the eyeball while he helps the female lift the victim out of the car windshield. The male driver then yells, “Don’t do that! You have to preserve the accident scene”. There are littles scenes like these throughout Newtopia which have me dying on the floor with laughter.
If you get dry humor and dark humor, Newtopia will have you needing a hernia operation after viewing. However, the f-word is dropped, occasionally. There is some cursing in the two episodes I viewed thus far. Some Korean dramas are becoming Americanized.
Let me get a little preachy. Hands down, Newtopia is the funniest drama I have seen since Mr Queen. It could have easily broken into my Top 25 of all time with a 10/10. The humor is gut-busting. However for me, Newtopia suffered from Americanization by using the new accepted adjective burned into the English Lexicon, the F-word. It is used as a noun, adjective and adverb in the American Film and Drama Industry. Now this shortcut to spoken conversation is fully infiltrating the Korean Film and Drama Industry to align itself with so-called American taste. Cursing just is not my taste and it is one reason for my exist from American TV.
When I saw that fan favorite Ji Soo of Black Pink would be in Newtopia, I did not think that I needed to check the ratings. My Bad. Cursing seems to be the new romance (Pun intended). While Newtopia is far from the worse case scenario of late for the use of the new noun, adjective, and adverb, the use of cursing narrows the pool of potential people to whom I am willing to recommend this drama.
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