Populasian: January 2023

Saturday, January 21, 2023

Netflix Flexes 2023 Releases

Netflix has decided to start flexing their upcoming 2023 releases. Check out a few that already have trailers or clips.

Monday, January 16, 2023

風起洛陽 - Luoyang

風起洛陽 (Luoyang) is an 2021 drama out of Zhong Guo. The series stars Huang Xuan, Wang Yibo, Victoria Song, and Song Yi. The series was a short 39 episodes first broadbast on iQIYI.

The story is the convergence of three main characters. Huang Xuan plays Gao Bingzhu, currently working for the marshals. Wang Yibo plays Baili Hongyi, the heir to his father’s architecture empire, but prefers to be the best foodie in the city. Victoria Song plays Wu Siyue, a high ranking palace guard with connections to the royal family. When all three are faced with a mystery presented to them, they all work to solve their cases, but cross paths often. However, as they continue down their rabbit holes, they find that there is an even bigger conspiracy in play. Can they all join together to solve this mystery?

Wow, this was a series I wished I had waited for it to finish so I could binge it. However, I watched from the release and waited patiently as they released 2 a day forever. Like forever! And the acting was superb. Huang Xuan is an established “actor”, whereas Wang Yibo and Victoria Song both entered the entertainment industry as part of “Kpop” groups. Both Wang and Song have transitioned to acting now. And this was a good series to increase their acting chops opposite Huang Xuan.

I really like series from the Tang dynasty. The sets and the costumes are always supreme. The city of Luoyang becomes part of the story as the neighborhoods contribute to the story. Go watch it now. The full series is on Youtube from multiple iQIYI sources. I think it comes in multiple subtitles.

We'll always be on your side 🥰

Catch #Luoyang with #HuangXuan, #WangYiBo, and #VictoriaSong, new episodes every Wednesday to Saturday on the #iQiyi app and https://t.co/bY52bAYe6p!

👉🏻Download app: https://t.co/sCZ1kod1AS #cdrama #iQiyiOriginal #SongYi pic.twitter.com/UqAJ48IOJl
— iQIYI US (@iQiyiUS) December 24, 2021

Thursday, January 12, 2023

Upcoming - 2023 Lunar New Year Releases

2023 has a early start to the Lunar year. The Lunar New Year will start the new year on January 22nd. This means that the movies will start to trickle in next weekend. In most years, the best movies are held and released during this time. With less covid restrictions, the 2023 movies being releases will hopefully help the box office rebound in Zhong Guo. Here’s a few that I might want to watch.

天龍八部之喬峰傳 (Sakra)

流浪地球2 (The Wandering Earth 2)

滿江紅 (Full River Red)

無名 (Hidden Blade)

中国乒乓之绝地反击 (Ping-Pong Of China or Ping Pong: The Triumph)

交换人生 (Five Hundred Miles)

Here's a link to Youtube to find the trailers as all of them are unofficial.

詐團圓 (Scamsgiving)

Monday, January 9, 2023

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Television Series - Seasons 1-3

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan is a television series. The third seeason was recently released via Amazon Prime Video last month. The first and second seasons were released back in 2018 and 2019. All episodes were released so there was no need to wait. Binge watching was encouraged. I took over 2 and half weeks to finish all episodes. The series stars John Krasinski and Wendell Pierce. Season 1 included Abbie Cornish, Ali Suliman, Dina Shihabi, and John Hoogenakker. Michael Kelly joined for season 2 and 3.

Jack Ryan is working out of the CIA's Europe office tracking down something big, called Sokol. Sokol is a old USSR project to detonate a small scale nuclear bomb. Jack Ryan gets wind of this when a scientist from that project is retrieved but killed by the Sokol folks. This leads Jack Ryan to believe that the current Russian government is going to detonate this somewhere. Can Jack Ryan get to the bottom of this and save the world one more time?

I actually watched seasons 1 and 2 in preparation for the release of season 3. I really liked season 1 and this was the third time watching it. I did the same when season 2 was getting released. Season 1 was so good in my opinion that season 2 was so disappointing during my original watch. Season 1 on the third watch was even better than my previous 2 watches. Season 2 did seem less disappointing, but was not comparable to season 1 in my opinion.

How did season 3 stack up? It was good, in my first watch, I liked it better than season 2. I liked the storyline and all the sub plots. I think the beauty of season 3 was all these sub plots coming together sooner than the previous seasons. And it made the climax much more dramatic. One thing that bothered me was that a lot of season 3 was filmed during night time. The reason it bothered me is that I could not watch it during my lunch breaks as my TV is directly in the light for most of the day. Whenever I tried to watch it, I had to stop and find time during the night after my kids went to sleep. That made the binge time short and took longer to finish the series.

Season 4 was green-lit in 2021, but it will be the last for this iteration. Season 4 will introduce Michael Pena in a lead role with a possible spin-off. I hope season 4 is not in Asia. I have found a lot of other of these types of series do a really poor job with Asia. I might be biased too. Going to a Latin America country also seems like a repeat of season 2. I hope season 4 can send Jack Ryan off into the sunset.

I highly recommend Jack Ryan, the television series. All three seasons. Season 4 cannot come soon enough.

Sunday, January 8, 2023

Black Adam - 黑亞當

Black Adam (黑亞當) is an 2022 film. The movie stars Dwayne Johnson. The supporting cast include Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Sarah Shahi, Quintessa Swindell, and Pierce Brosnan. The movie is part of the DCEU. As of this writing, the future of the DCEU is rather up in the air. The movie was released after a long drought of blockbusters. The film was considered a flop because it failed to make enough at the box office, even though it held the #1 spot for many weeks.

In a fictionaly country of Kahndaq 5,000 years ago, a thyrant is taken down by champion. In the present Kahndaq, the country is occupied by Intergang and the people seek freedom. When a group of "freedom fighters" seek to remove the Eternium crown. But the group is ambushed by Intergang goons. In desperation, a spell is casted to release Teth Adam. The champion from Kahndaq 5,000 years ago. However, Teth Adam is not a pacifist and starts to take down intergang goons. The Justice Society arrives to stop Teth Adam. And the crown is set release a powerful demon. Can Teth Adam the Justice Society get along?

As a action movie, Black Adam was a fun watch. I liked the CGI mostly and the introduction of the Justice Society. However, the story suffers from so many plot holes. The DCEU are also introducing a who's who of their library of charaters. I thought it was hard to just digest all these introductions.The DCEU seems to have a lack of defining who's in the universe.

Outside of that, I did enjoy the movie and thought the fiction country served to remove distractions of real life geopolictic leanings. Go watch Black Adam, it was a fun watch. Just leave your thinking hat at home or outside.

Wednesday, January 4, 2023

2023 January Netflix Releases

Netflix has lots of things that come and go every months. And its a bit of a struggle to keep up. Here are some highlights.

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

2023 January Disney+ Releases

Wednesday, January 4

The Boonies (Season 1)
Locked Up Abroad (Season 12)
Lost Treasures of Egypt (Season 4)
Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom (Season 2)
National Treasure: Edge of History (Episode 5: “Bad Romance”)
Primal Survivor: Over the Andes (Season 1)
Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Season 2) (Episode 201: “Spoils of War,” Episode 202: “Ruins of War”) (Premiere)
Underworld, Inc. (Seasons 1–2)
Willow (Episode 7)