Happy New Year + Kiong Hee Huat Tsai!

What I consumed in the last two months:

TV

Rock It, Mom!

12-episode unconventional cdrama about a terrible mother's terrible relationship with her daughter. Peng Lai is the former frontwoman of an iconic rock band. At 40, she has unresolved childhood trauma, drinking problems, and a history of violence. After her ex-husband's death, she travels back from the US, meets her estranged teenage daughter (an aspiring rock musician herself), and tries to restart her band, with several destructive results. The level of destruction and unapologetic messiness are certainly refreshing to see in a cdrama, but repetitive situations that don't particularly advance the story make the show flag in the middle. Tonal changes are also awkward (it's hard to find the over-the-top comedy funny when abuse was a formative part of Peng Lai's childhood), but the show does SO well with character-specific humor and realistic banter.

The interactions with the ex-bandmates are wonderfully rich and complex, and the emotional repercussions of the mother-daughter-stepmom conflict culminate BEAUTIFULLY in an unflinching twist. The climactic moment was earned, satisfying, and logical; the show values Bai Tian's (the daughter) feelings and allows you to slowly see the different facets of her personality, the different ways that the adults in her life have uplifted her and failed her.

Overall: Worth watching to the end!!! It is helpful to know that Peng Lai (the mother) gets no romance storyline outside of her failed marriage, and that the auxiliary characters (Bai Tian's bandmates and the doctor) are unimportant. The story is mainly about Peng Lai, her daughter Bai Tian, and her former band. You can fast-forward the rest. HOWEVER!!! Bai Tian's romantic storyline is very cute, and takes off at around ep 10 or 11. Both leads (mother and daughter) are also strong actors with great chemistry and are close IRL. (I'm currently watching a variety show that Yao Chen (Peng Lai) brought Zhuang Dafei (Bai Tian) into. :D)


The Heart of Genius

(GIF source; Credit: guoman)

Great actors (Zhang Zifeng, Zhang Xincheng, Lei Jiayin + child actors), but IMO it gives the ML and the romance too much focus to feel like a cohesive story. (The novel, as far as I know, is meant to be FL-centric. The show doesn't feel FL-centric.)

Plot: Philosophy major Lin Zhaoxi accidentally transmigrates into the body of her childhood self in an alternate universe where she lives in a foster home. In order to get back to her real body and her real father, she has to join Math survival camp (lol). As she leads a ragtag group of kids to survive math camp, she rediscovers her own love for math and and leaves behind the shadow of a math genius for her other self to live up to.

I love the separate themes of "possessed by a genius" (reminds me of Hikaru no Go) and a morally gray ML (the most attractive ZXC has been to me recently haha).


The problem is that the ML is also the love interest. He had an interesting storyline (minus the questionable mental illness storyline at the first half), but it didn't really feel like it fit. I think it would have worked better if they'd just removed the romance. (Tall order, I know.) Lin Family feelings (including the adopted Huajuan) are great though!!! I cried SEVERAL times.


Recommendation: Watch ep 1-8, and if you wish to continue, maybe 17-18 (which lets you see how her alternate universe self grow up), and then 33-34 which recaps the whole show. The first 8 eps were drama of the year for me——beautiful cinematography and intelligent execution, with all actors playing multiple characters at the same time because of the alternate universe element. The switches between child and adult actors were MAGNIFICENT.



Wednesday
If you get past how exhaustingly quirky the first ep is, it’s a good show for multitasking! But completely terrible and even tonedeaf when it tries to make real-life parallels. 😬 Also the murder subplot was unnecessarily dragged out & OoC for the Addams (IMO). The boys are both terrible romantic interests but thankfully Wednesday doesn’t actually really care about them. Her central Nevermore relationship appears to be her friendship with her werewolf roommate, and it's very sweet and cute.

Salt, Fat, Heat, Acid
Samin Nosrat's book in Netflix documentary format, 4 eps total. I think the book (which I haven't read) is the ideal format, but the show is nice and soothing (I put it on the background) and has Samin traveling to different countries and cooking different types of cuisine.


两不疑 / No Doubt in Us
First 12 eps (out of 24) of S1 free on Youtube, S2 appears to be currently airing

Emperor/Empress bodywap donghua (involving, of course, the main characters falling into an improbably deep lake). I haven't gotten to the paywalled eps yet, but at 10 mins per ep, this is a reasonable fast-paced and easy to watch show. The Emperor is a pragmatic, delicate scholar, while the Empress is rough, poorly educated, but nonetheless extremely well trained combatant from a military family, raised by men. The show deals with court politics, war, and harem dynamics that open the eyes of both the Emperor and the Empress who have privileged blind spots.

The English translation has an interesting approach to honorifics and focuses on what relationships they imply, which is crucial in a genderswap/roleswap story. I thought they did a great job with that!

The Emperor self-addressing as 兒臣 = addressing the dowager empress as “Mother” (this is the most subtle one)

The Empress calling her brother “大哥” = her calling him “my brother”

“我們徐家” = “My father”

Movies

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
I am too late to the party and have no notes other than that I have Marvel/superhero fatigue. The fanfic-y interactions were very fun, though. As was the Filipino rep!!!

Glass Onion (2022)
I don't really have strong feelings about the Knives Out franchise, but I thought that this one has better tension than the first. And Janelle Monae was a lot of fun, had an incredibly engrossing character and an equally engrossing performance, and the most sublime looks. Mostly I’m annoyed the movie kind of lies to you in one of the scenes. it felt like cheating. >:(


Cherry Magic movie (2022)
Sequel to the jdrama, but with some retconning about exactly when Adachi's magic disappeared. This is mostly established relationship pains, external circumstances rearranging themselves to create the best path for internal (mostly Adachi's) and relationship growth. Parts of it were unnecessary stressful to me LOL but ultimately it is very warm and tender and conflict-free, and, like the drama, wonderfully styled until the, uh, end. This was also great as a groupwatch, since none of us fully remember the jdrama and had to reconstruct our memories together. XD

Misc

Mula sa Buwan (From the Moon):

Localized Filipino musical adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac. I'm not familiar with the original play, and because the setting was adapted to the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in WW2 (which is still pretty recent), I was too stressed to truly enjoy this. /o\ Still, it was beautifully staged, and I was really surprised and delighted to discover that the play was entirely in verse (which is, IME, unusual)! This was a limited two-weekend run where they didn't have any understudies, so there was also a lot of pandemic tension going on backstage; you could FEEL the palpable joy when the play opens with characters rejoicing about how the theater was theirs tonight, and the gratitude of the actors during the curtain call.

Kotaro Lives Alone: recced by aartichapati; dropped because my Netflix subscription expired, but it's a quiet slice-of-life anime that was perfect as a background watch because I could look away without missing anything.

Disco Elysium: The game’s overall feel (like the lack of warmth in the city—Martinaise just felt so cold all the time) was v depressing and anxiety-inducing for me, but I think my anxiety has also been pretty rough on me lately. I do think it was written beautifully, for me to get so emotionally invested in the characters that I met, and for Harry’s personal storylines to hit me so hard. It handles a lot of dark and sensitive themes really well too, neither shying away nor reveling in them. (And I am absolutely pleased with the storylines I decided to put my energy to——the cryptids and perception boost, as well as the entire Church storyline, and the tie.) Overall, 10/10 experience and storytelling, but in many ways, this game is not for me.

On literary translation: "Hosts and Guests" by Robin Myers: Interesting read. NGL, I'm not sure if there will ever be a language that truly feels like home to me. I wander through the houses I grew up in like a ghost lol