Daylight Entertainment released a new set of posters for three of its upcoming dramas – Wang Kai’s Held in the Lonely Castle 孤城闭 , Guo Jingfei’s If There Is No Tomorrow 我是余欢水 , and Wan Qian and Qin Hao’s We Are Young 我们正年轻 as a part of the Beijing Film Festival. Which one are you looking forward to the most?
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Exciting news for all Nirvana in Fire fans: the sequel is coming!
Casting director Wei Wei – whom many may remember as the messenger Tong Lu -recently confirmed on Weibo that The Wind Blows in Changlin 琅琊榜之凤起长林, the sequel to acclaimed drama Nirvana in Fire has finally entered pre-production, and is slated to start filming in November. It is unknown whether the script is still in the works, though with this announcement I am assuming the team already has a final draft.
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Congratulations to the big winners of the night!
The Magnolia Awards is held in conjunction with the Shanghai Television Festival, home to one of East Asia’s biggest television markets. Magnolia Awards is recognised as one of the most prestigious television awards alongside the Golden Eagle and Flying Apsaras, though it cannot seem to make up its mind on the number of categories (the current format began last year).
Full list of nominees, winners and red carpet pictures are below the cut.
If there was an award for best line delivery, this gets my vote.
First up – the script for the film has been completed. I was super excited for it, then super against it, and now just conflicted. (In the “drama version of the book” that advertised itself as “how the scriptwriter wants to present the story” , Ming Cheng was repeated kicked by the Ming’s and at one point felt ashamed that as a servant, he would dare to make fun of the young master. Yes, the USSR-trained and French-educated communist felt like he was acting above his class, and a family of righteous protagonists made a habit of abusing an abused child. I’m counting on my suspicions that these parts were written by a ghost writer, otherwise I take back every nice thing I’ve ever said about Zhang Yong.)
Now to the Disguiser series. I’ve done a painting, a dialogue, a line, and now – an expression.
A lesser actor would’ve found it hard to express one emotion at a time, but Wang Kai told Ming Cheng’s entire life story in 2 seconds in this scene here as he finds out the true identity of Ming Tai’s father.
Somehow Wang Kai is able to show that Ming Cheng feels genuinely happy for Ming Tai and his father while expressing emotions that are clearly not all joy. While the first half of the sentence was intended to comfort Ming Tai’s father, as he shifts to the final phrase, his expression and tone of voice changes. The concerned, comforting voice of “this is a good thing” becomes distant in “A wonderful thing” as he is lost in his own thought. At the same time, his eyes also look away from Ming Tai’s father to the distance, perhaps to the father he had never met.
Complex yet never out of character, Yue Yao’s Liang Zhongchun is one of the best characters of the year.
This is a series of posts of me over-analyzing The Disguiser. This one’s really short since I had originally planned to talk about it with the next post, but that scene deserved its own post so I kicked this one out. I’ve looked at a painting, a conversation, next time it’ll be what I consider the best acted scene of the entire series. Can you guess which one it is?
Aristotle once said the key to good dialogue is to “Speak as common people do, but think as wise men do.” See how in this example here, Ming Cheng took exactly one line to hint to Liang Zhongchun of his ambitions upon their first meeting.
Liang Zhongchun, somewhat synchophantly: “I’ve long heard the fame of Mr.Ming.”
Ming Cheng, with a slight raised tone and eyebrow: “Which Mr.Ming?”
Posing as a simple question, the subtext is Ming Cheng’s hint to Liang Zhongchun of his own (faked) ambitions and wish to be distinct from Ming Lou, luring Liang to eventually join Ming Cheng’s camp. And if you read too much into it, it defines Ming Cheng’s ambiguous status and relationship in the Ming family that became essential to his multiple disguises.
This line would’ve been perfect if it was somehow tied in with the recorder at the ending when the question of which Mr. Ming is on the tape becomes one of life-and-death.
Rule #76 of drama-verse: Although check your surroundings for paparazzis, because this hug could incriminate you for life.
This is a series of posts of me over-analyzing The Disguiser. Last time I looked at a painting, this time it’ll be a conversation, next time it will be exactly one line. Can you guess which one?
When a sample of Nirvana in Fire 2’s script was put up by producer Hou Hongliang last week, he got so many complaints about the awkward dialogue and requests to have a co-writer to work with author Hai Yan that he deleted the post. With so many book adaptations, one of the worst aspect of many recent dramas is their inability to translate descriptive writing into scripts. Luckily, The Disguiser did not fall into that trap.
Here is a closer look into one of my favorite dialogues in The Disguiser, the reunion of Ming Lou (Jin Dong) and Wang Manchun (Wang Ou) here in episode 1. See how natural the dialogue flows while setting up the story and revealing character at the same time, and how much better it is than the lazy method of using a random bystander conversation to introduce the characters.
Warning: this entire post is about a painting.
This is part of a series of posts that still overly obsessed yours truly is going to write on the Disguiser, aka my favorite Chinese drama in the past five years.
In Chinese, a common word for country is literally translated as nation-home. It’s only fitting then that the painting by Ming Cheng and Ming Lou is named Home, for it captures the two major themes of The Disguiser – family and country. It’s one of many examples of how the series by scriptwriter Zhang Yong and director Li Xue is a rare Asian drama that actually tries to uses dramatic principles like symbolism and foreshadowing and Chekhov’s gun.
The scene of the painting of Home seemed like just another day of Lou-Cheng cuteness at the time, but it actually set the stage for two major plot points and became a reoccurring symbol.
“If Mr. Ming knew, he would skin me.” Oh, he knows.
《Ming Lou’s gun pointed at Ah-Cheng’s head, yelling: “Speak! Once wrong word, and you’re dead.” 》 – Paris, Winter of 1935
Producer Hou Hongliang confirmed there are talks of a movie version of The Disguiser and a second series loosely related to Nirvana in Fire, but with a different set of characters. Hou said he had originally planned to do a series for NIF, where each series is focused on a different person on the List of Langya.
In addition, author/scriptwriter Zhang Yong has written a mini-story of The Disguiser set when Ming Lou (Jin Dong), Ming Cheng (Wang Kai), and Wang Tianfeng (Liu Yijun) were in Paris. This story is connected to her next book in the series, which focuses on the family of Ming Cheng’s team leader “Ashtray”. Below the cut is the translated opening.
I want the movie to be this prequel so much. Just thinking of Ming Lou reading Dante in a Parisian café while Ming Cheng paints the Seine makes my heart melt. There they lit the flames of revolution and the future, and hid away that light underneath layers of disguises.
Someone has an enjoyment of watching Wang Kai being shot.
It turns out that while in Paris, Ming Lou and Ming Cheng actually became secret agents without telling each other. They only discovered each other’s identity when Ming Lou was assigned with Wang Tianfeng to wipe out Ming Cheng’s team while undercover in the Blue Shirts.
Someone on Ming Cheng’s team betrayed them and his entire team got wiped out, leaving only Ming Cheng because he was studying in Leningrad at the time. It was only then when he went under Ming Lou’s wings. Ming Cheng’s code name is jade porcelain.
If you have seen this show and did not fall in love with Jin Dong’s character, I will offer myself to let him shoot me. Actually, I’ll gladly have him shoot me anytime.
In the cutest family of double and triple agents, the Ming family must guard against each other while trying to protect each other at the same time. Even in their own home, each of the Ming family members must put on multiple disguises to hide their true identities.
Remaining funny and heart-warming while being fast-paced and intense, The Disguiser 伪装者 is the best drama of the year for me so far. This show is definitely a must even for those who avoids Republican-era shows at all costs (i.e. me) for their darkness and political overtones. With amazing acting (from some) and great character profiles, even the antagonists are clever, multi-dimensional, and worth-loving.
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Call me maybe? cr: Weibo
Added to that is one of the most perfect character duos in a drama ever, Ming Lou (Jin Dong) and Ming Cheng (Wang Kai) . The pair of triple agents got the looks, the style, the wisdom, the humor, and hearts of gold. Despite my fondness for Hu Ge, who heads the other plotline of the drama, Jin Dong and Wang Kai’s plot provides so much contrast in the level of writing and acting. Not a word of dialogue is wasted in their plotline, and a lot of their scenes consists of them just looking at each other, but so many layers of emotion that comes through the screen that they really hit you. Their voice acting is so good that even the Peking Opera part in the show are voiced by the two themselves.
Publishing this post that jjss08 drafted in June but never got around to translating the plot since I still can’t find the words to express how awesome it is. (Seriously, I have almost 2000 words written on this show that will probably never be published) -idarklight