All posts by PPBongi

“I Promise I Will Come Back” Series Review (Ep.1 to 8)

Every once in a while, something comes along that touches your soul in a way that you were not expecting. I am quite old, and I have buried many experiences in my life, but this small gem helped me to recall lost memories that were uncannily close to the content of this story. Perhaps I am alone here, but I simply loved this story for its romance. It portrays romance in its purest form – carefree, youthful, deciduous. In a way that only happens once, if ever, in one’s lifetime. If you are fortuitous enough, it is serendipitous, intense, fervid, and fills your life with a burst of joy that you will never ever experience again. It is your first love. But your first love is with a person who is everything you dreamt that paragon would be, wanted to be. He was your knight in shining armor, your Prince Charming. Your Romeo. Your Adonis. Everything you imagined a fairytale love experience would be. I remembered mine and my experience was such ecstasy and therefore, I understood this BL series at its core. While my ending was certainly not as dramatic, my fervor was. Despite the diegesis’s many flaws, I only saw its beauty and the passion for the underlying message of its storybook love. I wish others would see it in this light as well.

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“Moon and Dust” Series Review (Ep.1 to 6)

Just plain weird. Honestly, there are not many instances that give me the ‘willies’, but watching this series frankly did. Everything about this story left me disquiet. And the way the narrative was fashioned felt like what the two protagonists were somehow involved in, between the two of them, was ‘dirty’. Therefore, the whole drama felt – unclean. Sadly, it did not need to go down that road.

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“Loy Kaew First Love” Series Review (Ep.1 to 6)

This series can best be described by a quote from Charles Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cities” – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It had an exceptional storyline only to slip into banality and nonsensical story arcs. Here is yet again another Thai series that simply had no idea what a great diegesis it actually had. If only they had followed through with their main title.

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“Jian Hun” Series Review (Ep.1 to 25)

I downright fall under the spell of certain themes in either movies or series. This series had two of my favorites. Time travel and swashbuckling epic times full of exotic and romantic lore, legends, and traditions. And especially given my naïve Western upbringing, I am heart and soul smitten by Chinese fable and mythology. This series transported me back into time, like with the character, where I too could imagine myself beside them. Perhaps I have always secretly harbored a desire to be a valiant hero from another culture in the past.

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Aichaku The Movie: An Affinity Towards Dreams And Love

Recently, a connection was made quite surreptitiously between The BL Xpress and Cowboys Tokyo, the producer of the recent gay independent film called AICHAKU. Aichaku, in Japanese means, literally ‘attachment’. Specifically, an attachment to an object that is more like a feeling of affinity – what the object means. It takes on an emotional attachment.

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“Infidelity: It’s A Disease” Series Review (Ep.1 to 4)

Colorful, creative, and comical. This is the best way to describe this short BL series from China. It most assuredly will make you smile. This is a series that feels ordinary in the sense that I can see this happening in real life as the story does have an air of plausibility about it.

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“Aichaku” Movie Review

The title of this movie is aptly named. Aichaku literally means in Japanese ‘attachment’. But an attachment to an object that is more like a feeling of affinity- what the object means. It takes on an emotional attachment. And this movie is certainly that. It is a movie filled with a lot of emotional bonds.

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“Sashes & Hearts” Series Review (Ep.1 to 13)

I had hoped to enjoy this series. I really did. But the plain truth is, it is awful. It had so much going for it but it ended up being a semi-hot mess. It had its moments to be sure but there were not enough of them to save it from itself. Too bad because the subject matter was one that was unique and interesting. It was about the world of male pageantry. If it had only focused on that, this could have been a really great series. Instead, it went into the sensationalism and sleaziness of the industry. While I do not doubt that some of that does exist, the world of male pageantry would have been quite entertaining in and of itself to see. The world around the pageant became secondary to individual stories of some of the contestants, which for the most part was either dull and boring or titillating. The plots to these sub-stories were insipid and vapid and/or the surrounding characters became caricatures rather than examples of real people.

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“If Memory Has Sound/The Sound of Nostalgia” Movie Review

Wow! This is an astonishing and brilliant film that will leave you breathless and undoubtedly lachrymose. Without doubt, this is also a short film (about 30 minutes), perhaps like no other you have ever seen before. I am not sure how to describe it. To be sure, it is open to all sorts of impressions. Mine of course would be no more correct than anyone else and therefore it would be unfair to superimpose my conclusions on how I saw this rich cinematic tapestry. However, you will get a hint by the words I use throughout this article as to how I saw this apotheosis. Undeniably, this story has been crafted to be open to interpretation.

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