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demon x angel yanshen for yanshen week 2022

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flower metaphors

I have to admit I'm a sucker for good flower metaphors.

Dracula said

"I enjoy company, and I like people."

"Then why do you kill them?"

"Why do you pick flowers?"

In this case it's meant to show the hypocrisy and cruelty of humanity, suggesting that even seemingly innocent actions can be a source of harm. He is saying that humans with this simple for them harmless act, are engaging in destructive or oppressive acts as well. For him it's the same unnatural cruel act. /Dracula, 2020/

Yan Wushi /Thousand Autumns/ did exactly that in action that in order to preserve their beauty we must destroy them, Compares flowers to people, but in a completely different sense, for Yan Wushi people are insects something insignificant, like sheep chasing after profit. For him, flowers and people were of equal value, and once their beauty was past its peak, he sent them on their journey.

He was guided by the motto that he must live fully.

In both cases I read it like human desire to destroy beautiful, pure things, for fear of transience.

Just because we can or want to preserve their beauty forever for us. We often do cruel things only because we cannot let things and people exist and not interfere in their lives.

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I enjoy company, and I like people. Then why do you kill them? Why do you pick flowers?

Claes Bang as Count Dracula in BBC’s Dracula (2020)

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🦌

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Today I remembered I have the power to draw chibis

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Recent visually beautiful and generally watchable Russian fantasy movies

(because I start forgetting they exist at all) Ironically, all of them are adaptations of books/comics.

I Am Dragon / Он — дракон (2015) This movie is a very free adaptation of the novel "The Rite" / "Ритуал" by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko (Марина и Сергей Дяченко). It's a reinterpreting of an ancient tale about a maiden, a hero and a dragon. I don`t like the novel because it's very postmodern, wracks the typical fairytale plot and hurts my escapist feelings by ugly reality, but the movie is pretty fairytale-ish and nice. Firstly, it is visually beautiful and represent Slavic pseudo-medieval lore the way it should have always been in Slavic fantasy.

Secondly, as a love story between a monster and a maiden, it has got A PLENTY of tropes I'm usually looking for in Chinese dramas, so I understand very well why it was pretty popular in Asia.

Thirdly, when I said it's visually beautiful I wasn't joking. The main hero is played not by an actor, but by a male model, who is shirtless all the time (and sometimes pantless) and has a very fit and good-looking body. It's something unbelievable that someone in Russia made a movie to please women's eyes! Really, it's insane!

The folk-rock band Мельница wrote an insanely beautiful song "Обряд" (The Rite) for this movie (more matched to the book plot, though), but it was never used as OST, which is a shame. The song is about a black sheep girl, who is denied by society and asks a dragon to come for her and to take her away, because the dragon is denied by this world just like her. You can listen to it here. The band also has a song "Змей" (The Wyrm) (based on Lev Gumilev's poem), which is more accurate to the plot of the movie: the wyrm kidnaps maidens to make them its wives, but they are all dying during the flight; at the end of the song a hero-knight is ready to shoot it in order to stop it. Listen to it here.

It ends with HE, which is better than the book's obscure ending, so it is pleasure for me to rewatch it till these days.

Major Grom: Plague Doctor / Майор Гром: Чумной Доктор (2021)

It is an adaptation of Russian comic series "Major Grom" by Bubble comics. I am traditionally not very happy with the source material, but it is very good reworked to be the screen play of this movie.

It's very beautifully made in terms of director's, cameraman's and screenwriter's work, which is a rare thing for Russian movies. Also, the actors are young and handsome, especially the villain, which is a rare thing not only for Russian movies, but for the current Western movies, too. It has got a lot of allusions to Russian reality and a lot of beautiful views of Saint Petersburg, the second capital of Russia and one of the most beautiful Russian cities. And it has got some unusual visual solutions that turn it into a comic it should be.

The plot revolves around a mysterious serial killer (kinda bad Batman), a black sheep police officer and Russian Mark Zuckerberg (kind of). Mark Zuckerberg is the best guy of this movie and I like him a lot! Серёёёёжа! 🧡🧡🧡

This movie wasn't popular in Russia because of political situation in the country by the moment of its release (the both sides found out in there something insulting for them and banned it), but even if it has something like that, I honestly didn't pay attention to it. It's just a nice blockbuster with a tragic and handsome villain. The villain also has got his own BL-drama (in the comics they are really lovers, it`s as obvious as it could be shown in a Russian comic).

By the way, the villain is hot, insane, ruthless, sensitive and suffering. How does he contain all of this character treats in one personality? you may ask. He doesn`t. He has dissociative identity disorder, I would answer.

I don`t know if it works by now, but some time ago you could watch this lovely movie on Netflix.

The Master and Margarita / Мастер и Маргарита (2024) This is a loose adaptation of Russian classical novel "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov. I genuinely hate this book, but the adaptation reinterprets it, divides it into very interesting layers and makes it understandable and beautiful.

It`s layered, so it will probably be hard to understand what layer are we currently on if you are not familiar with the original story. The first layer is an ugly Soviet reality, the second layer is a plot of the novel that the main hero is writing, a story within a story. The third layer is the insane intertwining of the first two layers. On the reality layer the Master loses his job and freedom because of friend's denunciation and becomes star-crossed lovers with a married woman. On the novel level he meets devil, who visits Moscow by chance, and the devil gives him and his woman opportunity to live their lives being free from everything that usually tortures people IRL. Somewhere among those layers is a little plot about Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

The movie is visually beautiful. Although it feels pretty anti-Soviet, Soviet visuals of the movie are gorgeous. There were used the Stalin-times concepts of Moscow of the Future, the CGI buildings in frame came from the real architecture projects of those times. The Stalin Empire architecture style and views are typical for Moscow (but as I know, ironically, this all was shot in Saint Petersburg). It seems to me that this movie is heavily stuffed with visual allusions to the Western works: devil's escort looks like bunch of Pennywises, Margarita is Enchantress from Suicide Squad I, the scene of blood dripping is from Blade I etc. Usually, when I see it in Russian movies, it feels like plagiarism because I can recognize the reference but there is nothing except for these references . But here we have got the plot, so the allusions work as allusions and don`t irritate me.

The movie is dark, disturbing, uncomfortable. It really makes you feel as if you watch devil and his escort marching around you; they ravage, kill and destroy everything and you can only breathlessly, helplessly and in fear watch them. The German actor playing devil is insanely good. He stole the movie and I understand why it should have been named Woland (the devil's name) instead of the current movie's name. You may want to watch it, because it's very unusual in terms of plot and visuals experience, especially when you are not familiar with the book.

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Он – дракон (2015)

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Testről és lélekről [On Body and Soul]

Ildikó Enyedi, 2017

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On Body and Soul

directed by Ildikó Enyedi, 2017

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Testről és lélekről (On Body and Soul | Ildikó Enyedi | 2017)

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I thought about all those scenes where A-Qiao let his guard down for one reason or another and just slept next to Yan Wushi. And then the idea to draw sleeping Yan Wushi was born

So, yeah, here we have probably the most dangerous man in the jianghu just peacefully resting next to his sweetheart 😳

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Pls tell me someone has already made this joke

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What I should be doing is continue my Peerless reading I dropped last autumn for certain reasons. What I am doing instead is rereading Qian Qiu.

And my god isn't this paragraph a good metaphor for the whole book itself? The English synopsis: "A thousand autumns toiling on the blood-soaked earth will break any man". Thi river is ruthless and will get to the traveller one way or another, i.e. leave its mark. And Yan Wushi is essentially trying to prove that even Shen Qiao will break and life will stain him.

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HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022-) STOKER (2011)

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Stoker (2013) | dir. Park Chan-wook