I didn't really like the ending theme at first but then the more i listened, the more i grew to like it, especially when the fast music suddenly stops in the middle and changes into a beautiful slow tune sung by Faye Wong! Sadly though, the rest of the tunes and background music for the series isn't all that great. I was actually hoping to hear some fantastic piece for the "XAJH musical piece"I would say that out of all the ZJZ-JY adaptations, LOCH still has the best music.
I thought the first 10 episodes were alright but things started to really pick up after that, especially after RYY appears proper. Surprisingly, LYP was a pretty good LHC. He looked better and acted alot more natural as opposed to in LOCH, dont know what happened with GJ. Xu Qing was an excellent RYY (so beautiful, lovable and complex) and so was Wei Zi as the hypocritical Yue Buqun. In fact, Im really pleased with almost all the actors; this series had a really strong cast, probably the strongest, as opposed to ZJZ's later JY adaptations.
Trying to hunt for the DVD when i have time since i watched it online and the quality was pretty bad, which is a pity since the sceneries looked wonderful.
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Last edited by sunnysnow; 08-29-07 at 10:39 AM.
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
Wise Fool
You finally got around to watching it
I hope you enjoyed it. This remains my favourite of ZJZ's productions. I'm sure i would have enjoyed ROCH if they had this kind of chemistry.
The only main character i remember not liking was the girl who played Yue Ling Shan. I thought she was a bit stiff.
Ren Ying Ying was the highlight of the series![]()
I love the cast in here, though ultimately, i still find LOCH ZJZ's best JY-series with the exception of a couple of actors in there. Somehow, the editing, story-flow, music, cinematography, fighting, overall styling etc. in LOCH appealed more to me, though i might be biased since LOCH was the first ZJZ JY-adpatation i viewed. And possibly because i viewed LOCH on good quality DVDs while the quality of XAJH i watched online was rather crappy. I have a feeling I'll love XAJH even more if i get a chance to view it proper on DVD.
Nonetheless, XAJH'01 has the best cast ever. I thought everyone did fine jobs, Yue Lingshan was alright to me, never really bothered much about her character anyway (somewhat like Mu Nianci). Yilin was good as well but basically all the female characters, and possibly even the male ones, paled in comparison to Xu Qing's RYY. LYP was a total contrast in here (in a positive way) as opposed to in LOCH. I actually found his LHC likeable, though lacking somewhat in the playful/humourous department. But i thought the scenes in the middle where he disguises as the General Wu really good!
BTW, ROCH is no match for XAJH imo. Overdose of sickening love scenes btw the leads, over-decoration, too much drama, playing and messing about with supposedly "deep" metaphors/imagery, silly music and horrible editing made it one of the worse JY series for me. Didn't help that they did not make use of the strong supporting cast and decided to cut many of their scenes (esp that of LWS's!) so as to fill the series with more love scenes btw YG and XLN.
Last edited by sunnysnow; 08-31-07 at 10:49 AM.
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
Wise Fool
HAH!! Sunnysnow finally watched XAJH. You should get the DVD version as I believe the vcd version had bad editing. I own 2 vcd sets and 1 DVD and I think the DVD is more complete.
This is my fav JY/ZJZ production and the music and songs are all original.
ROCH is, imo, the worse piece of crap ZJZ had ever produced.
The editing is rather bad at certain parts, especially several of the earlier episodes, which makes the story flow awkward at times. BTW, i think i mentioned this before but i've tried searching for XAJH'01 in s'pore stores since ages ago. Too bad none of the video stores i've come across carry the series, not even in VCD!! I've even tried some stores when i was in KL but no luck![]()
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
Wise Fool
I ordered my vcd and DVD sets from YESASIA. Check http://chineseshows.blogspot.com/2007/07/xajh-2001.html for my review of XAJH and links to the DVD set at YESASIA. The DVD is smooth unlike the vcd.
SG only had it when the show was first released but only at pasar malam stalls.
Did you get the H-DVD edition which was just released this year? Am thinking of getting that one.
http://global.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept...id-1004650630/
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Wise Fool
Yeah i was confused by the comments regarding the cutting of scenes at first but i gather tt those comments were not for the HD-DVD edition but for some other edition (Yesasia carries a couple of different versions for this series) because before the list of comments, it's stated that there are no comments for this edition (the HD-DVD one) yet. Plus those comments were dated 2005 whereas this HD-DVD edition is stated to have been released only in Feb this year.
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Wise Fool
It is really cheap, the US edition costs around twice the amt or more. This edition costs ard US$24 in total after shipping etc (just placed my order for the HD-DVD edition) which translates to about S$36 or $37, which is about the price of the usual mainland edition DVDs i get in stores here. Usually an old title like this will cost around S$29.90-S$39.90 in stores here.
Anyway, there are taiwanese editions in NTSC format for roughly the same price as well:
http://global.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept...id-1004482148/
http://global.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept...id-1004515110/
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
Wise Fool
Unfortunately it isn't available thru YesAsia US which is where us folks in North America have to order through.
There was even a great deal on the three volume Romance of the Three Kingdoms which also isn't available for us.The Global YesAsia site lets you get all the way thru the checkout procedure before you get the bad news.
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Last edited by JamesG; 09-05-07 at 05:58 PM.
Have you tried Amazon.com, which you can probably find the releasing version of Knight Mediacom (http://www.knightmedia.com/). There they released the serie under the title "Laughing in the Wind" in four DVDs where there are 10 episodes on each DVD.
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I GO WHERE THE WIND BLOWS.
Haha my version as per my blog contains 6 discs and I do not experience any disjointed editing that I found in my vcd set.
i noticed on some uploaded subtitled videos, there's a caption underneath the title writing "the magic swords of ling"...there are just so many things wrong with that line!![]()
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