series: Pitnol discussion

BELOW DISCUSSIONS TRANSFER RED FROM ASIANFANATICS

AF# 860  - Posted 10 February 2009 - 11:49 AM

Akazukin: Actually after WAB, my dislike against Charmaine has lessen since I think she has improved after so many years. After watching WAB, I was thinking of giving a chance to PITNOL but I hesitate since that series is filmed before WAB so I'm not assured of her acting skill (Well, I was forced to turn off the TV during 'Cuckoo' because of her). What is Steven's character like in PITNOL? Is he a romantic as well?

Tamaya: I thought Charmaine was rather cute and fresh in Cuckoo, though she was a most annoying character. Don't know why the guys go gaga over her. And her acting in WAB was much better than Gigi's. PITNOL is definitely not as good as WTLB. It's abundant use of flashbacks annoyed the heck out of me. Quite a bit of fast forwarding for me. But there are plentiful of sweet and romantic scenes between Steven & Charmaine, not that they would do anything for you, given your biasness. lol! In some scenes, Charmaine looks pretty & sweet, in some, surprisingly, rather plain and average looking. She displays none of the innate poise and elegance expected of an imperial princess, her humble childhood upbringing notwithstanding, inborn good breeding should naturally emanate  from deep within. Overall, I wasn't impressed by either Charmaine's or Sonija's performance - (but then I never like Sonija's acting, eta-especially dislike her mincing way of talking.) The male cast did much better. Wasn't Steven's best performance but he did all right. Got him the most favorite male character. And also many Steven's fans became fans because of pitnol. So each to her own. The ending was terrible for me -- tvb had the gall to change a classic tragedy into a happy ending. Urg! Between pitnol & wtlb, pick the latter, you might change your mind on Ada. And Steven was absolutely gorgeous! And the series (WTLB), although, a tragedy, has a good story to tell and enthrall.

Akazukin: [..] Eh, I think romantic scenes between Steven and Charmaine won't do me any good. But what is his character like? Is he serious and loyal type? Or is he playful and loyal? Smart? Etc?
I never like Sonija's acting either, although I have a feeling she would do better in villainous role than kind-hearted roles. Didn't she also have a rumour with Steven?

Tamaya: [..]Steven's Sai Hin is a hero; a romantic, gorgeous, brave, righteous hero. I've enjoyed watching his performance,  Moses' and Michael Tong's performances too. plus the storyline is interesting, and romantic too, so overall I did enjoy the whole series. But you might not. Watch WTLB instead.


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AF1752 Posted 09 September 2009 - 02:54 AM
Tamaya: As for pitnol, find the childhood story boring but the story picks up from there. Steven's Sai Hin cut such a romantic and dashing figure. Undoubtedly Pitnol has a very romantic storyline played against the crumbling Ming dynasty background which made the series very interesting to watch. Overall, besides the childhood story in the beginning, the altered corny, happy ending and the endless flashbacks to childhood scenes and their prayers, it was an enjoyable series to watch. But I personally prefer WTLB over PITNOL.

One of the most romantic scenes “ Sai Hin recognizes Fai Ni as Cheung Pin "
- epi 6 -  ending scene

-epi 7 Watch the whole clip, if not then forward to these specific scenes.
- the episode starts with Sai Hin wanting to confront Fai Ni as Cheung Pin but is interrupted by the arrival of his fiance played by Annie Man

- after sending Annie home, Sai Hin rushes over to the factory to seek out Fai Ni, whom he is now ascertain is Princess Cheung Pin, but the latter pretends otherwise. Such a romantic scene.

- When Fai Ni finally admits to be Cheung Pin.

related screencaps - Dancing with Annie Man

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Agree, pitnol is a must see series for Steven fans. Enjoyed Steven's performance in both series. But Steven's performance and screen presence in Sits were so much more mature and poignant, making every scene counts. Moreover, Stevia's chemistry can't be beat. (except for Steven/Maggie's)

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Out of all the 4 fadans in Steven's mainland STAR interview (Maggie Cheung, Jessica Hsuan, Ada Choi and Charmain Sheh), Charmaine is my least favorite. I can't stand her voice, and her acting as the perfect princess (Cheung Ping)  is not to my liking. In some scenes, she even looked haggard. She was so much better and prettier and fresher in Return Of The Cuckoo. Pitnol dragged too, esp. with all the flashbacks. But Steven looked marvelous as usual, he can't be beat in ancient costumes. 

WAB=War and Beauty
WTLB = Where the legend begins
PITNOL= Perish in the name of Love

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related material: a blogger's episodic review  

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ETA nov 10 2015
Verdict by blogger Funn Lim on pitnol reviews:

VERDICT
Too much emphasis on the love story, pushing everything else aside, and when the story goes back to everything else, it was much too late. The ending was God awful, no explanation whatsoever, it was like "Nah! You want happy ending? Here's your happy ending!". [.]. This series tried to give a new twist to a timeless tale of love, betrayals, falling kingdom and eternal devotion. I see plenty of devotion between two main characters when I wanted to see devotion in a bigger scale; the relationships between the characters and more. What I had was a glimpse of the surface of what could have been. Believe me, this series if given more care in scripting, more capable actors in certain key characters and a better director with an appreciation for classical dialogue, perhaps there may be a remake worthy of being called better than its predecessors. Now it is just pure messy nonsense.

Steven and Tavia at HK Disneyland for filming

 reposted from steven-ma.org
AF#896
During shooting, Mazai was constantly surrounded by tourists from Australia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and China requesting to have their photos taken with him and for signing of autographs. The moms also constantly arranged to have their BB pictures taken with Mazai as remembrance. Some moms even had Ma zai carried their bb in his arms for snapshots. Ma zai joked: "I was surprised to see that every bb laugh when he/she saw me."

source: takungpao

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Other pixs

Most Matching Zodiac - Tavia Yeung and Steven Ma (The Stars Of Love)

Reposted from Asianfanatics.net/forum post #803

mag scan reposted from: Steven-ma.com
source: www.yeungyi.com
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translation Credits: http://jessie1314.blogspot.com

Most Matching Zodiac - Tavia Yeung and Steven Ma (The Stars Of Love)
PLEASE GIVE CREDIT IF REPOSTED. BEWARE OF SPOILERS. THANK YOU.

After Land Of Wealth and Sweetness In The Salt, Tavia Yeung and Steven Ma collaborated again in new series. They filmed a modern love story which talks about zodiac, The Stars Of Love. Steven's role is a steady Capricorn while Tavia's role is a perfectionist Virgo. Unexpectedly, in real life, Tavia Yeung's zodiac is virgo and Capricorn is a zodiac which will affect Steven Ma's attitude after 30 years old. No matter in series or in real life, their zodiac matches each other and no wonder they can collaborate so many times.

Summary of The Stars Of Love
Gan Ngou Lam (Tavia Yeung), who was interested in zodiac, gained a direction of her life from a zodiac game. It turned out that she will meet the most important person in her life. She knew a friend from the zodiac game who was the designer of the zodiac game, Tsim Shing Hou (Michael Tse). At the same time, she had a friend that she knew since childhood and worked as a fishmonger in the market, Chi Yat Bou (Steven Ma). Three of them became good friends soon after.

Ngou Lam fell in love with kind-hearted, Yat Bou. However, because of misunderstandings, Ngou Lam thought that Yat Bou only treated her as sister and therefore, she gave up the intention to be with Yat Bou. Moreover, Ngou Lam and Shing Hou slowly developed feelings towards each other because of work relations and became lovers soon after. In the same time, actually Yat Bou developed feelings towards Ngou Lam all these while. However, it was too pity that he was late to express his feelings towards her. Therefore, Yat Bou had to keep his feelings in his heart.

Different type of Virgo
This series is 3rd collaboration series of Tavia Yeung and Steven Ma. With matching zodiac and full understandability, Tavia said, "Before this, we collaborated in ancient series. This time we tried out on a modern series and the feeling was a bit more relaxing. I don't know why but before this, both of our collaboration in ancient series could not have a happy ending and it was regretful. Hope that this time we can have a happy ending in this modern series."

Tavia Yeung, who is a Virgo girl in series and also in real life said that she was a different type of Virgo. Virgo is a perfectionist, loves clean, and fussy. I also felt myself perfectionist and hope that can do the best for everything but my stage is not until fussy and troublesome. Before I started this series, I did not have thorough understandings towards zodiac. However, after I filmed this series and asked a lot of peoples about zodiac, then only I know that other than sun zodiac, moon zodiac will also affect a person's attitude.

Note : Only Tavia's parts are translated.

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Steven's section translated by tamaya
Serious Capricorn
Having once lived in Taiwan, Steven was influenced by its locale astrology vibes, so considerably well-versed in horoscopes. Mazai: "My horoscope is Scorpio, but after age thirty, the influence of a different planetary star will be greater on me. So I feel that my present character is closer to that of a Capricorn. The strengths of Capricorn include being responsible, rational; conversely, their weaknesses are that they tend to over analyze and over cautious, just like my character Chi Yat Bo, who is always slow in action, hence is nicknamed Chi Yat Bo. Because my own personality is very much like my character in the series, I understand him very well. So for this character I don’t have to act much, just be myself. Even though horoscopes can be used quite accurately to analyze a personality, I advise against total belief. Like if you like a person, you don't really care much about horoscopes compatibility. You'll compromise in order to stay together.

blurb:
Steven Ma, Tavia Yeung and Shermon Tang are filming Stars of Love. Mazai portrays a fishmonger. TVB especially rented a fish stall and constructed a white houseboat for its set production. The script requires Tavia to cook for Mazai. But in real life, Tavia does not know how to cook. Conversely, Mazai is a good cook. Mazai jokes that whoever becomes his wife will sure to be happy. Lets see who has the luck to marry to this wife lover.

TN: The Stars of Love = Cupid Stupid

Steven Ma gains weight from being Injured

 01 February 2009  During CNY, Steven did a shot whereby he had to jump into the water to pick oysters. The water was so frigid that his whole body became numb. He did not even know that he had cut his foot on an oyster shell until he came out of the water and saw his foot bleeding. Only then did he feel pain. The cut was quite deep, too.

During the CNY hols, Steven stayed home and invited some friends to play 打四方城 (?)(does it mean majong') and won quite a bundle of money. (fatt choi) Steven joked his sudden wealth (fatt choy) must be because earlier when cut his foot he saw 'red' (blood) - a good omen to the start of a new year.


Steven Ma gains weight from being Injured
During the Lunar New Year, Steven Ma did not go out for New Year Greetings, he only invited his close friends and relatives to play Mahjong, couldn't believe that just won big bucks against the other 3 players, what great income, he was very happy about this. He said: "How is the New Year so lucky, it must be because I injured myself earlier during filming, a good start!" Turns out that last year Steven was constantly busy filming in the street markets for new series "The Stars of Love". In one of the scenes, it spoke of Steven in the fish stand working and suddenly thought of Tavia Yeung and him. Michael Tse will be the 3rd party between Tavia and Steven, because of sudden feel of sadness, Steven jumps into the sea to relieve his sadness. Steven said: "The weather has been very cold, when going into the water, my whole body gets cold and has not feeling (numb), even when I accidentally kicked an oyster shell, I couldn't feel it. It was not until I came up from the water that the camera man told me that my foot was bleeding, it was then that I realized I kicked an oyster shell that caused a cut. The cut was quite deep, it was bleeding a lot, when I saw that blood, I began to feel pain. For the scene, Steven got himself a body full of scars, today he even got a cut, but he did not mind at all. He believes that men needs more scars to look HOT.

Although Steven did not mind that he got cut, but filming with Kingdom Yuen who was also part of the scene, was very worried about his cut and how bacteria could go in, causing an infection. As Steven saw that his colleagues showed so much care for him, he felt very happy. Steven happily said: "This time I was at very obedient at home resting my injury, I couldn't believe I gained some weight from the break. Maybe its true that in the new year I see "red", so I was so lucky in playing Mahjong.


Source: Takungpao
Translated by: aZnangel @ asianuniverse.net