This picture made me laugh. It's okay Yan Kuan. You don't need to bulk up for your role in Water Margin as long as you ditch the facial hair.
Warning: Lots of Fangirling ahead because I couldn’t manage to write this without spazzing.
China’s really hitting the four classics this year. Two Journey to the Wests, two Dream of the Red Chambers, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and now even Water Margin has been pushed into production. But China’s drama industry rose pretty quickly in technique and visuals, so in that regard remakes are almost looked to. And apart from the cheap version of Journey of the West, I love the casts quite a lot so I’m happy. Two pretty Jia Baoyus, a hot Zhu Geliang, a hot Tang Shen, and now a shuai, hot, shuai dai le Yan Qing. Do I sound shallow enough yet? I hope so. The amount of eye-candy’s too great for one girl to handle. Share my enthusiasm!
Water Margin is one that I really hoped they would remake after Dream of the Red Chamber. If you don’t remember Water Margin, perhaps one of the least famous four classics to non-Chinese at this point, revisit the theme of the the previous 1997 CCTV hit series, sung and written by Liu Huan. This man deserved to be allowed on that Olympics Globe simply wearing a T-shirt at the Olympics for this song alone.
And the cast! I know there’s like 108+ characters in the story, but even so, I’m so happy Yan Kuan has a part. Is this finally your big break? He plays Yan Qing, one of the 108 outlaws, who has sort of romantic relationship with Ady An Yixuan‘s Li Shishi, a high-class prostitute and mistress of the Emperor, played by Yang Zi, the hot producer/actor maybe-boyfriend of Eva Huang Shengyi.
Ady An looking fantastic and showing off her legs at the press conference for Water Margin. I think she's going to be this year's breakout actress.
Nie Yuan, who was perhaps the first or third post of this site, for his wedding, plays Tang Shen in the Zhang Jizhong version of Journey to the West. He didn’t workout to prepare for his role (he’s pretty fit already) and instead just meditated a lot. This version promises to be one of the most gorgeous versions of the drama. The director, Zhang Jizhong, better known for his Jing Yong series remakes now, including the one he just finished with An Yixuan (Ady you’re going to be so famous after this year!), actually started out in CCTV, directing versions of the four classics, including the Water Margin one featured in the video.
Jing Yong saw the series, and stated in a newspaper that if CCTV would treat adaptations of his works as seriously as the four classics, he would only charge one yuan for the rights. The next day Zhang Jizhong faxed him, taking up his offer, and after Jin Yong agreed, sent him a wooden frame that he carved with one yuan note inside. And then the most beautiful pairing in Chinese drama history was born. The end.
If this is how they’re going to do remakes, then bring on the remakes. Why is Chinese entertainment being so good to me this year? I don’t have time to do this much fangirling!
Next fangirl post: The hot Chinese badminton team appears on Tian Tian Xiang Shang. If the shuainess doesn’t kill me first, working on this site certainly will.
Oh, and as a bonus: Someone asked if there were larger pictures of the photoshoot of Yan Kuan in this post, and I found four; click for bigger. Yan Kuan NEEDS to be more famous. With that face, it’d be a shame if he didn’t do more photoshoots.
anyone know who’s going to play Sun wukong? i really hope i won’t be disappointing by the actor and i kno that’s going to be the hardest roll to cast for Journey to the West.
re: facial hair
seems to look good on most of these very young and very gorgeous men :)
I loved Qin Dynasty from I think a couple of years ago, loved the guy who played Wei Yang, and the actress playing Melting Snow (what was the name?)
How does this show rate with the in-the-knows :) ? I think it was really low-budget but I loved it nonetheless
Oooh…I love the facial hair! That’s what attracted me to Yan Kuan to begin with! It was the first picture I saw of him, a couple years ago, and he was gorgeous! He’s gorgeous any way he looks! I’m glad to hear that he’s got more flics coming out…too bad I can’t seem to find any of his music anywhere! :-(
LOLOL. Personally speaking, I’m not one up for the buff guys. But if it’s Yan Kuan, I’ll make an exception. LOLOLOL. But yes, the facial hair needs to go, like ASAP. Please. (I hate that 6 o’clock thing that gives off a rugged look but at times is just really irritating.)
Whoo, that is a ton of remakes this year. Jesus.
You make it sound as if these were made already five years ago.
But Last Dream of the red chamber was from the 80s. Last Water Margin was from over a decade ago.
And yes some stories are remade over and over, but you must remember, Chinese entertainment is comprised of mainland, HK, and Taiwan, at the very least. They are not really in sync with each other, but they draw on the same culture. So the same stories get remade, but by different parts of Chinese entertainment, which contributes to the amount of remakes.
will we see yet another remake of water margin, dream of red chamber, etc in another 5 years? There are so many other stories that could use screen time. When will someone make a film about Qu Yuan or Ban Zhao for a change?
Not sure…
Going to cry if it’s not treated as seriously though. Yan Kuan needs love. Ady’s awesome too but she will be mega famous either way after HSDS + her series with Vanness comes out.
But I think for Dream of the Red Chamber and Three Kingdoms, they just kept shooting and the budget went way over and they were like….Oh well. So even if this doesn’t have a really big budget in the beginning it may end up costing a lot anyway, lol.
hehe, sure is. Is the New Water Margin supposed to be a grand big budget remake like Li Shaohongs Dream of Red Chambers or the new Romance of Three Kingdoms? It would be nice to see it get the big budget treatment
Hey Billy…long time no see. Without you I don’t really think anyone else cares about movies as much on this site.
I don’t think the new water margin has an official website yet.
The director is this guy:
http://baike.baidu.com/view/2097195.htm
He directed the recent version of Niu Lang Zhi Nv, which looked decent except for Tian Liang being in it which sort of ruined the whole thing. He also directed a whole bunch of other stuff…I’m really can’t tell if this will be good based on that list though.
@Billy
people who I believe are not super famous…. the other Red Chambers is a Hunan (not Hunan TV) based production team. They’re less grand and more idol-like.
OHHHH,YAY! Finally! Its about time they remade Water Margin. So now, all 4 classics are getting remade. Hey Cfensi, do you know if this remake of Water Margin is going to be a big budget remake rivalling other recent big budget remakes like Li Shaohong’s Dream of the Red Chamber and the new Mega budget Three Kingdoms 2010?
So going through all the remakes we have…
Three Kingdoms 2010
Zhang Jizhong’s Journey to the West
Li Shaohong’s Dream of the Red Chamber
The New Water Margin directed by ??
and who are the 2 other Journey to the West/Dream of the Red Chambers directed by?
Does the New Water Margin have an official site yet? or like a SINA site like Dream of Red Chamber does?
The shoes indeed are.
HZGG…I’m not very clear on exactly what HZGG is tbh and I still can’t bring myself to watch it. For me the remakes serve the purpose of bring fresh faces into China’s entertainment circle, and Dream of the Red Chamber (Li Shaohong version) and Water Margin (w/ Yan Kuan) do that very well.
Yan Kuan in particular was someone I was hoping would get fame, and I’m hoping this is it. His amount of looks + acting talent is really way more than enough to be famous.
If he and Jin Dong can get famous this year then I will be ridiculously happy. Especially Jin Dong…I’m so afraid he won’t be famous even after getting such big roles this year.
ady an’s shoes are gorgeous…= = haha
*hugs Jin Yong*
What a perfect man (minus the multiple wives and the suicidal son)
*cough* HZGG remake…do they really need one? The other, I feel can improve a lot with technology. But HZGG is not-scenery/SFX based but plot-pretty people-wittiness based….
I really, really hope that in consideration of their artists’ images, they’ll move the Dynasty to Han/Tang/Song.
Woo hoo! Bring on the remakes! I haven’t seen the second half of “Red Cliffs” yet, but the first half was gorgeous – casting and otherwise. :)