Sean Akizuki's East Asian Drama and Movie Blog

It's a good thing I finally found a way on YouTube to watch Teresa Teng: Wish We Last Forever,  starring Michelle Chen as the titular character. Thankfully, any creative liberties here were guided by her brother Deng Chang-Fu, unlike what happened to Mei Yanfang Fei in 2007. What was creepy was that the TV series came out in 2004 — sometime before Barbie Xu died in Japan of pneumonia (while Teresa died of asthma), and both celebrities are buried at Chin Pao San in Taiwan! This triggered me to write a nostalgia post between Thursday and Friday.  It was back in the 2000s when I heard of the tales Teresa committed suicide. I remember starting to like Teresa's music because of one band — F4! Back in 2003, I remember when Jerry Yan sang "The Moon Represents My Heart". The song was already sung by other singers like Poon Sow-Keng. The popularization was done by Teresa's voice — often described as "sweet as honey". The Japanese producer Yukio Sasaki discovered ...

Hype I decided to give Teresa Teng (2024) a shot, and it stars Michelle Chen. I decided to Google "Zhou Taisheng" and realized he was created as a placeholder for several characters. Sure, the real-life boyfriend Paul Quilicier was featured. However, Zhou Taisheng doesn't exist when I Googled him! The real deal of Teresa's rather messy love life had these men involved: Lin Zhengfa, who suddenly died just as they were about to get married, a prominent Chinese Malaysian Jackie Chan, before he met Joan Lin Beau Kuok, a Malaysian tycoon; she broke up with him when the family demanded she stopped singing Paul was the last one, who was a French photographer, featured in the film  It made me think of the challenges of a biopic. Sure, Teresa's third older brother Deng Changfu (or Teng Ch'angfu) was involved. Some events that happened there were real. However, the biopic created Taisheng as a placeholder as Teresa's childhood sweetheart. It made me wonder how the b...

2026 is the 55th birthday of the Kamen Rider franchise overall. It's already known that I'm NOT particularly interested in the Showa-era  Kamen Rider series . It can be helpful to watch some old shows (like watching older Super Sentai seasons, which is now advisable if you haven't), but there are times when newer shows can be better (based on execution). Kamen Rider Zeztz is on the 55th year of The First Kamen Rider,  with Kamen Rider Revice being the 50th year. So yeah, I confess I was already feeling indifferent about Kamen Rider causing me to barely give "updates" or even reactions of updates here, in favor of other passions or watching some older media I haven't watched. Zeztz's premise has Baku Yorozu as the main Kamen Rider recruited by the Confidential Organized Defensive Establishment, or CODE. CODE's supposedly fighting the phenomenon called Nightmares -- monsters born out of nightmares. The Nightmares affect both dreams and the real world. Th...