for D

it's not a course you take at penn
there were weightier matters there at hand
economics and finance and whatnot
spring breaks and cool gigs and foxtrot
ok fine, so there was no dance
i'm breaking away from the tyranny of the stan-za

in those halcyon days
romance teased but didn't linger
in the intervening years
there was a dim sum dalliance
still, true love took its time
and the heart yearned and hungered

but here it is
under the light
sure and certain and right
this might sound premeditated
but "the hardest to learn was the least complicated"

(from the indigo girls' least complicated)

K was well enough to head out. First stop talat sao (morning market), s sprawling ramshackle local market with rubbish strewn everywhere and vendors selling meat, vegetables, cooked food, provisions, vcds/dvds, electronics, fabric, everything but tamarind paste sweets.
Found the LP-type pouches here but the designs were not as nice and it was more expensive.
K headed off to the national museum and I took off for wat si muang to check out the city phallus (lak meuang). Still in active use, there were people presenting offerings, using divination sticks and still others sought protective strings tied around the wrist by a monk.
Then on to haw phakaew, former royal temple, 5K kip. There’s 2-tier pricing here, locals pay 2K kip. Not much in the sim beyond a collection of buddha statues with no explanatory notes.
Hide-from-heat stop at scandinavian bakery. Chocolate donut (7K kip) and mixed fruit shake (8K kip).
Went to samsenthai fried noodles for lunch. Had the special yellow fried noodles (14K kip) and ice coffee (6K kip). The noodles came with beef and veggies, tasty but oily. The coffee was ridiculously sweet. 15K kip tuk-tuk ride back to hotel.
US$5 for airport transfer and US$10 for international departure airport tax.

cause for K’s lack of appetite became apparent – food poisoning. Somehow I slept through it all and only woke up at 9 the next morning. Slept so much I even dreamt about work and landing a last-minute assignment. Ha!
Couldn’t figure out what it was that caused the upset stomach given that we’d been eating the same food. He thinks it was probably food that was not thoroughly cooked at malee lao.
The breakfast spread here is more limited. K couldn’t eat.
Set off for pha that luang, laos’ national symbol. 20K kip for the tuk-tuk, 5K kip for the entrance. K went back to the hotel after a while.
Decided to walk to patuxai, the lao version of the arc de triomphe. Passed by wat phonxai. No lonely planet entry but I liked the circle of buddha statues seated under the banyan tree.
Also came across newly-built brightly-painted ornate pavilions.
Cursing lack of shades and cap when I remembered that I was lugging around an umbrella. Ah, blessed shade!
It might be the dry cool season but the heat was scorching enough to burn one’s scalp. No wonder all the monks carry parasols.
Tickled by disdainful honesty of sign at patuxai, something about it being a monstrosity up close. Paid 3K kip to climb the structure.
The inside of the patuxai housed… souvenir shops. View from the top only showed how flat the skyline was. But I like the broad boulevards, lined mostly by 2-storey shophouses, and traffic has yet to reach the stage of a tangled snarl.
Walked to that dam (black stupa). It’s next to the US embassy so you can’t take pictures from certain angles.
Lunched at soukvimarn (http://www.laofoods.com/). Had lao-style dried wonton noodles (12K kip), complete with raw bean sprouts and lime wedges, and fish soup (20K kip), which was light and tangy and appetising. Had another mixed fruit shake (8K kip) as I hid from the fiercest of the heat.
Went to the lao national museum (10K kip). Unexpectedly informative, especially with the meeting of 2 cultures exhibit on the travels of dutch east india company trader gerard wusthof.
Timeline of the museum’s exhibits actually started with dinosaur fossils. Got interesting with prehistoric culture with helpful english translations. Section on laos under siamese rule left untranslated. Section on savage and barbaric french colonialists was.
Lost interest with the modern history and communism section.
Walked past wat mixai, bangkok-style sim with 2 nyak (guardian giants) flanking the gate.
Then wat ong teu mahawihan, I think. Namesake is a large 16th century bronze buddha at the back of the sim. A lao woman sought her fortune suing the divination sticks.
Ice coffee and éclair stop at café croissant d’or (17K kip). Pastry could be softer but the filling was quite generous.
Went back to hotel. K feeling better but still no appetite.
Went by T’s around 6.30. dropped by monument books and bought a copy of the dutch trader’s account of his visits published by white lotus (US$13) and a bracelet trinket (US$2).
After some to-ing and fro-ing between T and her friends, ended up at nang khambang for dinner. There was american Tr, taking photos of UXO victims and working with a prosthetics aid organization; american Sh, who’s been there the longest and is with UNICEF; aussie J, who’s headed back home after a year here; M and So, who works at the vientiane times covering education.
Dinner was good. Fish tom yum (less spicy compared to the thai version), chicken laap and fish laap, deep fried pork chop, deep fried quail (?), beef, sticky rice and raw veggies. Ate rice with right hand. Most excellent when dipped into condiment of freshly cut chillies and lime. Beer lao all round. Came to 40K kip a person.
Drinks after that at rooftop bar and restaurant. The dodgy one with hookers, T had previously proclaimed, and they were there all right.
Décor was cheesy, a rattan/bamboo weave covered the walls and ceiling. There were 2 pool tables and tables on which sat a 2-litre(?) container of beer.
The vodka lime came with actual lime juice, though the whole thing was watered down.
Conversation meandered into lao porn, which apparently exists.

leisurely breakfast at resort. The fried noodle with egg and peanuts was good.
Free transfer to airport at 9am. 40 min flight on lao airlines with its neon blue patterned seats. Served a bun with preserve and yummy tamarind paste sweets.
35K kip a person for taxi transfer to green park boutique hotel. Layout a little reminiscent of santi but bathroom much nicer. Free internet access a plus.
K decided to lounge by pool first so took off in search of lunch. Kua lao was closed so ended up at one of the fruit shake places across from asian pavilion hotel. Shake (6K kip) and satisfying toasted bread pockets filled with cheese, ham and pineapple (15K kip).
Oddly enough, prices here in the capital seem to be lower than in LP. Entrance to wat sisaket was merely 5K kip. Murals in the sim definitely in need of restoration though.
Bumped into K here and we went for a stroll along the river. he had a pancake with apple and honey but couldn’t eat much. Fruit shake no. 2 for me.
Met T, as arranged, at inter hotel and passed her her books and clothes.
Had drinks next to the river. The river bed was quite a sight as kids played soccer under the evening sun.
Fruit shake no. 3 and then on to dinner at french restaurant la terrasse. Shared carafe of red wine (65K kip) and had the onion soup (28K kip) which was not robust enough. The duck in cherry sauce (70K kip) was quite tasty but the meat was a little overdone.
T’s enjoying herself in laos and certainly taking the less travelled path by doing research on the mekong river commission.
She’s staying in a studio with a kitchenette (US$180/month) across from wat ong teu and is wary of novice monks and their amorous ways. Recounted her american friend’s experience with them, concluding that normal rules of behaviour with regard to monks (for women to keep a distance away etc) did not apply in that instance.

So we got up at 5am to catch the daily ritual of monks collecting alms. And you think, this is a place where rituals and traditions are still deeply rooted. It’s humbling to think you have to get up at 4 every morning just to get your sustenance for the day. And it’s a commitment on the part of the giver as well.
Is there a system of who gets to go where? Do the monks like the tourist stretch? Do they get more food now that it’s become a tourist attraction?
The procession of monks moves along at a surprisingly fast clip. Are they tired of the cameras popping flashes or are they just immune? After all, it’s the lot of a monk’s life in laos to be photographed.
Should I offer sticky rice even though I’m not a buddhist or do I intrude by taking pictures? Will go buy more souvenirs to expiate this nagging sense of guilt.
Had breakfast at santi hotel, a benefit of having the hotel and resort owned by the same person. Would be even nicer to get a day room.
It was cool enough at 6am for a zip-up and the mist lingered.
Walked down to the river front and took up deal to get to pak ou caves for 50K kip. All the way to there in a long shallow boat, clouds hung low on the landscape. Longest 1.5 hr journey cause bladder was bursting. Mercifully, a rest stop at ban xang hei (?) for local moonshine and hand-woven cloth.
Entrance to the caves cost 20K kip. The upper cave, tham phum, was dark, could hardly see anything even with a rented torch (5K kip). The lower caves tham ting were more promising but the undisputed highlight was the presence of a group of touring monks.
Lunch at saffron café – lao peanut chicken wrap (15K kip), cappuccino (17K kip) and banana bread to go (10K kip).
Went on trip to kuang si waterfalls (40K kip transport). Spent about half an hour on the minivan as it made more stops to pick up people until there were 10 in total. K had decided to go back to the resort to chill.
Reminiscent of hongxi waterfalls in guangxi. The surprise here was the colour of the water – a pale aquamarine, a lot more inviting than the mekong’s murky brown.
It may be the land of ten thousand elephants (万象) but have yet to spot any. Have glimpsed water buffalo, and at kuang si, moon bears and a tiger.
How do you improve a picture? Just add monk.
Took a pic for a group of monks, actually the same bunch from the caves in the morning, and started talking to one of them, phon. He’s becoming a monk for 7 days on the 1-year anniversary of his father’s death. He’s on holiday , showing the sights to a monk visiting from thailand(?). born in LP, he now lives and works in vientiane for the telco tigo. (the glossy hip young lifestyle telco ads seem miles away from the reality of people’s lives here.)
All men go through monkhood before marriage for at least 3-7 days.
See from the houses that quite a lot of folks still live very simply – wooden structures on stilts. Thatched with zinc roofs or dried leaves, the walls a cross hatch weave of dried leaves, with the occasional sighting of brick and concrete. As well as a rather incongruous huge-ass satellite dish outside one of these humble homes.
Between the high end option of l’elephant (french) and the low end option of street food (saw this alley offering skewers, roasted meats etc near the post office), we picked malee lao food on thanon phu vao.
Serves only bbq/steamboat combination and it made for a most satisfying meal. One order each of beef, chicken and fish. 30K kip a plate, includes egg, veg, vermicelli, black fungus, tomato. 1 bottle each of beer and water, total came to 106K kip. Most delicious broth, perhaps courtesy of msg. good whatever it was and the place was packed with locals and falang.
Took the tuk-tuk (20K kip) to the restaurant. Driver came back an hour later to take us back to the resort. Bargained to 40K kip but gave 50K kip because of the horribly bumpy last stretch of road to the resort.

K's alarm went off at 7.30 but no one stirred till past 9. quick breakfast at hotel in order to catch the 10am shuttle. santi's quote for 5.30 transport to observe monks collecting alms was US$3 a head.
went to LP or royal palace museum, 30K kip. thinking that the king and queen's bedrooms were awfully austere. more of the mosaics of japanese glass against the rich red background of the wall. including a depiction of what looked like a soldier capturing a horse spiderman-style by ejecting a net to nab the creature.
also took in wat souvanhnaphoumanom, notable for the gilded gold relief on the exteriors.
lunch at joma bakery cafe, a pleasant joint with unfinished concrete walls, green window frames and a red awning. melted sandwich on croissant (22K kip), cappuccino (13K kip), mango crumble (15K kip) with a scoop of chocolate ice-cream (6K kip). food's ok, perhaps a tad above average but a welcome change from local fare.
headed west of museum and away from mekong to the south, the so-called trading district. came across stretch of guest houses but lower end. almost walked past wat visoun with its watermelon stupa and wat aham with the 2 banyan trees.
K went off to get a red cross massage. went up phu si hill for views of LP and for that chomsi (stupa) on the summit.
had a crepe of pandan custard and banana (5K kip) and bottle of green tea with honey (5K kip). made on the spot, warm and lightly crisp.
crepe stand is at the front of a provision store which leads to the living/tv room of a home, with the kitchen and toilet beyond it.
met up with K at santi hotel. decided on pak huay mixai on ban choum khong pedestrian street for dinner. night market in the lane next to the restaurant proved to be most fruitful for souvenir shopping - richly-patterned brightly-coloured cloth, bags, pouches, cushion covers, paper umbrellas, lamp shades, coffee, tea, ethnic clothing, drawings. only 1 or 2 stalls selling fake watches and the like.
the lao people are not very confrontational so bargaining was not a pain. bought 6 pouches (the lady even threw in 2 coin pouches for free) and 2 bags of coffee powder (for the lovely bags they came in).
quite a few of the spots were manned by kids. also noticed that they would all sweep the money received from a sale around the other items still on display, for trading luck.
bumped into J and his friend R who had come up from Vientiane and Vang Vieng.
had dinner together. beer lao (light and easy to drink), LP salad (pleasant sweetish sauce), beef stew, deep fried fish with sweet sour peanut sauce (quite thai-like) and LP sausage (no big shakes). about 50K kip a person.

from the plane clouds in a lightly hazy sky hang over gridded fields of undulating green.
first time taking a budget flight and leaving from the budget terminal, which feels like a giant hangar. despite transiting through bangkok, had to go through the hassle of clearing inbound and outbound customs.
managed to get seats on the 0950 flight to luang prabang instead of the 1150 one we were on.
just enough time to wolf down pork porridge before rushing for the flight - which was delayed for an hour due to low visibility in LP.
US$5 a person to get to Villa Santi Resort, which was 5km away south of the town centre and serviced by a final stretch of unpaved bumpy road.
greeted with a refreshing lemon grass drink and happy with the traditionally, cleanly furnished room.
being away from town meant having to rely on the resort's shuttle service schedule.
lunch at goongkhum restaurant. 88K kip for two. (US$1 abt 10K kip.) tried the rice noodle soup with coconut milk with chicken. like a very mild laksa.
headed to national museum after that but it closed at 4 so will have to return. gold, gold, an abundance of gold glinting in the strong light.
definitely a laidback town. more bustling than siem reap circa 2003 with quite a few new hotels and guest houses, but bustling is probably the wrong word to associate with it.
walked along mekong river, an uninviting muddy brown. not one of more picturesque waterways around but a lifeline for landlocked laos.
came across what looked like a mobile disco with young and old grooving to the musical offerings of a young chap.
loo break at a hostel offering internet access at 100kip/min. made 2 moves on scrabulous.
made it to wat xieng thong with some gorgeous mosaic work and a rare reclining buddha that took some effort to locate.
lots of young monks around and at evening time, heard them chanting rather musically in the temples.
dinner at 3 nagas, top end for lao cuisine. 120K kip each. tried the khao kham, a local sweet red wine made from sticky rice.
had the river weed, freshly toasted and warm, jaew bawng (paste of chilli and dried buffalo skin). definitely has a kick while the skin tastes tendon-y.
stew of venison and vegetables (forgettable) and fish and pork wrapped in banana leaf and grilled. like satay, proclaims K. a more refined, tasty version i guess. and sticky rice, which was harder and less sticky than glutinous rice. still can't quite get a grip on lao cuisine.
took 9pm shuttle back to resort from villa santi hotel, which was located in the town centre itself. so ready to crash. lack of sleep and the constant travelling has led to sniffing and blocked airways.

Le Bal
By Irene Nemirovsky
The two novellas here, Le Bal and Snow In Autumn, were first published in French in 1930 and 1931 respectively, and they bear testament to the versatility and elegance of Nemirovsky’s craft.
She was a Russian-born Jew and a best-selling author in her time. When the Germans occupied France in 1940, she was prevented from publishing.
Nemirovsky was only 39 when she died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1942.
There has been renewed interest in her works after the posthumous publication, more than 60 years after it was written, of Suite Francaise in 2005 to widespread acclaim.
Le Bal is a keenly observed tale of teenage frustration and vengeance, thrown into sharp relief by the prickly relations between a woman and her daughter.
It is both a chronicle of social manners in 1930s Parisian high society and a clear-eyed look at the point at which a child begins to supersede the parent.
Snow In Autumn, on the other hand, has the feel of an epic novel condensed into 50 pages.
It richly evokes Moscow in revolutionary turmoil circa the late 1910s and Paris as seen through the eyes of a well-to-do Russian family forced to flee the comforts of home.
Taken together, the two stories serve as a most promising introduction to Nemirovsky’s writing.

If you like this, read: The Essential Tales Of Chekhov
Snow In Autumn has been described as an homage to the Russian master of the short story form.
(ST)

Hot Fuzz (M18)
Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Jim Broadbent/120 minutes
This flick reunites the team behind Shaun Of The Dead (2004), the cheekily entertaining zom-romcom, or zombie romantic comedy.
Edgar Wright directs and splits writing duties with Pegg, who stars as top cop Nicholas Angel. Frost plays Danny Butterman, the bumbling sidekick.
Angel is reassigned to the quiet town of Sandford after showing up the rest of his city colleagues with his ridiculously superior police work.
But there’s more to Sandford than meets the eye and townsfolk are dropping like flies in what everyone else insists are mere accidents.
Hot Fuzz is both a loving send-up of, and homage to, macho cop flicks such as Bad Boys II (2003) and Point Break (1991).
It starts promisingly enough, but the overlong and wildly uneven film inexplicably veers into video-game shoot-’em-up territory in its final 30 minutes.
The disc comes with a number of bonus features, though most are short throwaways. There is also a commentary by Pegg and Wright, which helpfully points out Cate Blanchett in an uncredited cameo.
Someone once asked why was it that English villages in the movies were always full of quaint and quirky charm while American small towns were always seething with intrigue and conspiracies.
Well, Hot Fuzz should even the score a bit.
(ST)

Bug (M18)
Ashley Judd/Michael Shannon/Harry Connick Jr/101 minutes
The award-winning play makes the leap to feature film under the direction of William Friedkin, best known for helming the seminal horror flick, The Exorcist (1973).
So it’s worth noting that he calls this the “most profound and disturbing film” he has made.
Friedkin explores here the “mask of sanity” which he proceeds to rip right off in a terrifying descent into the heart of madness.
Judd plays Agnes, a waitress living in a rundown motel, and Shannon is Peter, a shy drifter whom she hooks up with.
But there’s more to Peter than meets the eye and things begin to unravel, innocuously enough, with him discovering a bug in bed.
It’s nice to see Judd going for a meatier role after the string of rote thrillers she had been churning out.
And Shannon, who reprises his stage role, so fully inhabits the character that he seems to be Peter even in the making-of interviews.
As the film builds towards its climax, the two actors tap into an ecstatic hysteria that is both magnetic and disturbing.
The extras include a discussion with Friedkin on his film-making career as well as an audio commentary by him.
While some of the comments are a literal description of what’s unfolding onscreen, you also get the director expounding on the themes of Bug and “the thin line between good and evil”.
(ST)

Sunshine
Danny Boyle
Cillian Murphy/Chris Evans/Michelle Yeoh/Hiroyuki Sanada/107 minutes
After the enchanting fable Millions (2004), director Danny Boyle takes to outer space with this sci-fi horror film.
In the year 2057, the sun is dying and a team of astronauts is sent on a mission to re-ignite it and save humankind. We pretty much saw what Hollywood would have done with such a script in Michael Bay’s special-effects extravaganza Armageddon (1998).
But Sunshine can be thought of as the anti-Armageddon. Boyle uses the silence in space to great effect and has also assembled a cast which actually acts instead of merely posing.
The generous extras include deleted scenes and interviews with the cast and crew, including a playfully bantering Yeoh.
There are also two commentaries.
Boyle’s is enthusiastic and engaging and he reveals the touchstones that influenced Sunshine – Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979).
The other commentary track is by The University of Manchester’s Dr Brian Cox, the scientific consultant for the film.
The most comforting fact gleaned is that the sun has enough fuel to burn for five billion years, not 50.
And also, it’s a misconception that one would explode unprotected in space; one can in fact survive up to 30 seconds in such a case. That’s good to know.
(ST)

Pleasure Factory
Film-maker Ekachai Uekrongtham has more than sex on his mind in this exploration of the Geylang red-light district.
He is interested in the connections forged between the pleasure seekers and the pleasure providers but it would have helped to have stronger characters anchoring the story in the first place.
We are presented with three interwoven stories dealing with different facets of the world’s oldest profession – prostitution.
The first sees a national serviceman (Loo Zihan) seeking to lose his virginity. He gets his more experienced buddy along to help him navigate the back alleys of Geylang but finds the girl (Xu Er) he wants on his own.
The second story has Taiwanese actress Yang Kuei-mei playing a jaded prostitute who initiates her daughter into the trade.
The third is about an encounter between a young flesh peddler and a tattooed busker.
The problem with having multiple stories is that they often feel underdeveloped. The last is the weakest and barely leaves an impression. There seems to be a danger of this story-telling device being overused with Eric Khoo’s Be With Me (2005) and Wee Li Lin’s Gone Shopping (2007) both taking a similar approach.
It’s difficult to empathise or care for Factory’s characters when you know little about them and the problem is compounded when you have so many different characters.
The second story at least has a sense of intrigue about it – who exactly is the character played by Thai-born heart-throb Ananda Everingham, and why is he following the daughter around?
It also has Yang, whose emotionally wrought performance would have benefited from some context of the mother-daughter relationship.
As it is, her grief feels abstract and distant.
The first story arc is the strongest, and Ekachai imbues what could have been a bawdy ritual with an unexpected sweetness.
Much hinges upon the performances of Loo and Xu as they communicate and connect prior to, and through, sex.
While the performances are a little raw, both actors handle the bedroom scene admirably and convey the awkwardness and touching tenderness of a sexual encounter.
Unfortunately though, the film as a whole just doesn’t quite measure up.
(ST)

The Black Eyed Peas - Black, Blue & You Tour
Singapore Indoor Stadium
How does a band dispel those pesky break-up rumours? Simple. Just deliver a stomping good show.
That was exactly what The Black Eyed Peas did at their gig on Monday night.
The concert started with the well-known opening theme for 20th Century Fox movies as searchlights swept dramatically across the excited capacity crowd of 8,000.
And then the guys pranced onstage, strutting, rapping, singing and playing off one another on hits such as My Humps and Shut Up.
Boasting an easy, infectious energy, they struck up a quick rapport with the crowd. Shout-outs of “Singapore” were met with thunderous response.
They also had fun filching some classic guitar riffs, including Guns N’ Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine and The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army.
This goofy playfulness lies at the heart of their appeal. And it extends to newly minted pop star Fergie’s sexiness – which is PG rather than R21-rated, and explains the throngs of children and teenage fans at the show.
She did her solo numbers, such as Glamorous and Big Girls Don’t Cry, wearing a tiara and a cheeky cheerleader costume. “I put on my little girlie outfit for you,” she teased.
It’s precisely her solo-career success that has fuelled rumours that the hip-hop collective is headed for a break-up, though all the members have embarked on their separate projects.
will.i.am turned the endless speculation into a joke, attempting the question “Are the Black Eyed Peas splitting up?” in a variety of mock accents.
The answer was a definite “The Black Eyed Peas is never gonna break up”.
To prove that individual successes were no threat to the group, will.i.am performed I Got It From My Mama from his new album, Songs About Girls.
Taboo and apl.de.ap had their solo turns as well, and everyone had a chance to shine.
The satisfying encore featured three classic Peas anthems – Pump It, their breakthrough hit Where Is The Love? and Let’s Get It Started.
As the crowd danced away and sang along enthusiastically, it was clear that the Peas had ignited a party in the stadium.
(ST)

Sammi 2007 Show Mi World Tour
Singapore Indoor Stadium

Sammi Cheng is ready for her close-up again.
The Hong Kong entertainer had taken a two-year hiatus from showbiz and in that time rumours raged that she was ill. In front of a capacity crowd of 7,500 last Saturday, the 35-year-old proved that she was more than well. She showed her mettle with an energetic concert that lasted a little over two hours, including two fast-paced medleys that saw her dancing her heart out.
She declared to her adoring fans who were mostly in their 20s and 30s: “I’ve crossed the road, and from tonight, I’m going to make a fresh comeback.”
She was clearly in her element.
The flair for the dramatic was there, particularly in the opening Cantonese number Only You Cannot Be Replaced, her version of on-again-off-again beau Andy Hui’s hit.
She crooned it blindfolded and clad in an elaborate concoction of black and silver, and whipped off the short bob wig and the blindfold at the end of the number.
In between songs, she shared the importance of her family to her and revealed that they have a habit of writing letters to one another. It was her father she wrote to when she came to a crossroads in her life and who first learnt of her decision to take a break when she “didn’t know what to do”.
It was her way of connecting with the audience though it sometimes came across as choreographed patter, complete with accompanying music.
Unscripted, she was playful and funny and had the crowd eating out of her hand. She invited two fans to go up on stage to sing along to her songs and joked that she would pick only the plump girls so as to make herself look thinner.
Her special guest, Singaporean singer Stefanie Sun, was also teased for being “bamboo- stick” thin. Cheng had made a rare appearance at Sun’s concert in Hong Kong last year.
Apart from singing two duets with Sun on Mandarin songs Meeting and Green Light, Cheng kept largely to a repertoire of Cantonese songs, with crowd-pleasing hits such as Can’t Let Go, Beware Of Women and Beautiful For Life.
She also went through several hair and costume changes, including blonde-streaked red long hair and a cropped metallic harlequin jacket.
But it was the simple elegant numbers, a black dress and an all-white pantsuit, which made the greatest impression.
While her voice was a little ragged on some of the faster numbers, her smooth alto shone on the ballads.
She fed off the crowd’s energy and owned the stage as if she had never been away. No wonder the audience was impressed and cheered her on with their screams and enthusiastic waving of light sticks.
This was one worthy comeback.
(ST)

The Post-birthday World
Lionel Shriver
This is a literary equivalent of Sliding Doors, Peter Howitt’s 1998 film starring Gwyneth Paltrow as a character whose fate hinges on whether she catches or misses a train.
In Shriver’s book, the pivotal event is a birthday celebration.
Illustrator Irina McGovern, who is in a long-term relationship with research analyst Lawrence Trainer, goes down one of two paths. In one, she kisses Ramsey Acton, snooker star and ex-husband of a former friend at the party.
In the other, she resists the impulse.
So is this a moralistic tale of how she ought to have stuck by her man or a tale of female empowerment and emancipation from a stifling relationship?
Both actually. In the last third of the book, the writer spells out what she’s gunning for. “The idea is that you don’t have only one destiny. ... But whichever direction you go, there are going to be upsides and downsides.”
What you get is an exhaustive and sometimes exhausting excavation of the emotional minutiae of Irina’s relationships with the two men.
The novel’s structure sets up lots of interesting parallel situations where the same event is viewed differently by Irina because it is coloured by her different actions in the two worlds.
Still, the idea that all destinies are equal rings false. After all, the writer has chosen two very specific scenarios to present to readers but there can be only one ending.


If you like this, read: Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis
Amis uses the concept of time travelling backwards to evoke the horrors of the Holocaust anew.
(ST)

The Eric Moo Singapore Concert 2007
Max Pavilion, Singapore Expo
In his third concert here in five years, Malaysia-born, Singapore-bred singer Eric Moo came up with a nifty way to sum up his performances here.
Speaking to the crowd of about 6,000, the 44-year-old singer said: “I don’t hold a personal concert. Rather, it’s an unspoken pact of meeting every two years and you are the true masters of this concert.”
Indeed, the audience, made up of people in their 30s and older, had grown up listening to Moo since his debut in 1983. Some of the nostalgia-seekers even had their kids in tow.
The straight-talking singer, who is now based in Beijing, added: “Every time I come back to hold a concert, I’m asked if it’s the same as last time. Is there dancing? A moving platform? Fireworks? No, because you are not here to see that. I know you are here for me.”
The crowd responded with cheers and he made good on his promise of delivering “good music, good songs and good memories”.
Dressed in a black suit over a white shirt and sporting a shock of blond hair, he delivered the goods.
His powerful voice could still thrill and he seemed less prone to oversinging now. Age and maturity have taken the place of youthful brashness, and this made hits such as Too Foolish and the Hokkien track, Call My Name, more moving.
He also had an acoustic segment featuring his xinyao (Chinese folk-pop songs) pieces.When his fans sang along, he quipped: “The fact that everyone can sing these songs means that you’re not young either.”
Still, he did a great job in turning back the clock. He was aided by the multi-coloured lighting, so reminiscent of variety shows of the 1980s, and retro stage effects including the use of a bubble machine.
His guest stars were Fang Wen-lin and Chiu Hai-cheng, his 1980s label-mates who sang in the group Fei Ying. The three shared an easy rapport as they reminisced about their salad days.
But the night belonged to Moo. He raised his arm in triumph at the end of the show and made a pact with the audience to see them again in two years, declaring: “It’s a great thing for friends to meet up.”
The crowd couldn’t agree with him more.
(ST)

Cheer Chen A Piece of Summer Concert 2007
Singapore Expo’s Max Pavilion
It took a while for last Saturday to transform into a hot summer night – entertainment-wise.
Two years after her last concert here, Taiwanese indie darling Cheer Chen, 32, was back to kick off proceedings alone with her guitar to perform Coffeeshop In Chiufen.
The decision to fill the first half of the set with slower numbers meant that it took some time for the near-capacity crowd of over 3,500 – mainly students and people in their 20s and 30s – to warm up.
Even her hit track Lonely Without You was delivered in a low-key manner, albeit with a touch of whimsy provided by visuals of the Slow sign painted on roads.
Still, it was difficult not to surrender to her soft-spoken, tentative banter and vulnerability of her vocals and lyrics.It helped too that Chen, in a white dress over jeans and sporting a floral head garland at the start, gave new twists to the songs.
Enemy, which was originally guitar-backed, was now accompanied by a steady drumbeat.But Chen upped the tempo with the English-language track Sentimental Kills, ironically one of the weaker songs in her oeuvre.
The crowd got to their feet during a muscular performance of In My Closet and stood on their seats when Chen mingled with the audience during the playful Female Star.
When the wistful Travel Is Meaningful came on, true-blue fans donned their array of helmets as did Chen and her band. She had previously said that she was often inspired while riding on a motorbike.
Chen let her songs do most of the talking over the three-hour show though she briefly explained the title of the concert. “It’s not just about one summer but it’s the best part of life and I hope it’ll always be summer for you.”
Which was why her fans chorused for encore after encore.“It’s so rare to come here, I don’t want to leave either,” said Chen, basking in their adoration.
The sixth and final encore came unexpectedly after the main lights were turned on and people were filing out of the hall. As Chen crooned Breezy You, you, too, wished that this one glorious summer night would never end.
(ST)

Notes On A Scandal
Judi Dench/Cate Blanchett/Bill Nighy/92 minutes
The plot could have been lifted straight from the tabloids – an attractive art teacher has an affair with her 15-year-old student. But this is only one of two obsessions that the film, based on Zoe Heller’s novel of the same name, draws you into.
When Sheba Hart’s (Blanchett) secret is inadvertently discovered by her colleague Barbara Covett (Dench), she is at first relieved that the latter won’t squeal on her.
But that’s because Barbara is weaving her own web of deceit and treachery. Dench is all purse-lipped and steely-eyed as a repressed lesbian, but she also conveys the desperate loneliness of the character.
Blanchett’s role is more nuanced. She is excellent as a woman drowning in insecurities, grasping at affection and floundering in indecision.
The featurettes offered some morsels of interesting information, such as Dench’s ability to quickly get into and snap out of character.
Director Richard Eyre’s commentary was disappointing though. The admiration for his actors and the scriptwriter was clear but hardly makes for riveting dish.
(ST)

My Name Is Earl
Jason Lee/Ethan Suplee/Eddie Steeples/Jaime Pressly/624 minutes
Who would have thought that Jason Lee would find mainstream success playing a redneck low-life?
The former professional skateboarder’s first starring role was in Kevin Smith’s comedy Mallrats (1995) and he continued to act in several of the director’s films.
It seemed though that his appeal would remain cult, if fervent. All Girl Summer Fun Band even wrote a song called Jason Lee.
It took an unlikely TV series about ne’er-do-well and petty criminal Earl J. Hickey to turn Lee into a star.
After concluding that losing his winning lottery ticket was the result of bad karma, Hickey resolves to right his long list of past wrongs.
The path of true repentance never did run smooth but nobody expected it to be this hilarious.
Lee is deadpan funny and surrounded by an excellent supporting cast – Ethan Suplee as slow but sweet Randy Hickey and Jaime Pressly as Earl’s shrew of an ex-wife.
The audio commentaries were disappointingly blah, though you learn that creator Greg Garcia appears in the pilot episode.
Much better was the commentary done by the mothers of several cast and crew members for the Mother’s Day episode Dad’s Car.
There’s also a behind-the-scenes feature and an alternate-reality pilot in which Hickey’s epiphany is to screw those who have previously screwed him over.
The best measure of how strong the series is though, is the fact that even the deleted scenes are funny. Now that’s gold.
(ST)

Mercury Rev
Baybeats 2007
Esplanade Theatre

For a while, it seemed like an art installation show. A series of images – a happy dog enjoying the breeze in a car ride, two women whispering excitedly into each other’s ears – flickered on stage, accompanied by musical snippets.
Then it became a succession of album covers from artistes including David Bowie, Talking Heads and The Chemical Brothers, as if in contemplation of Mercury Rev’s place in the musical universe.
All this before the American indie band finally took the stage. Frontman Jonathan Donahue, 41, proved to be a charismatic presence as his lanky,clad-in-black frame pranced about the stage.
Deeply absorbed in the music, he was an energetic conductor, rousing the rest of the band with dramatic flourishes in numbers like The Dark Is Rising from All Is Dream (2001) and a cover of legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan’s You Gotta Serve Somebody.
And that raggedy voice of his was a poignant contrast to the lush wall of sound his fellow band members constructed.
Even though the introduction to the show pointed to the band’s roots in composing for experimental films, the songs performed were mostly from their last three albums.
Deserter’s Songs (1998), their critically acclaimed breakthrough, received the greatest airing over the 100-minute, 14-song set.Donahue and company saved the best for last as they offered their biggest hit Goddess On A Hiway for the encore after the rapturous 600-plus audience gave them a standing ovation.
The singer was clearly in a happy place even though he revealed that he had to forfeit his customary glass of wine here before going on stage.
More significantly, he surrendered himself to the soundscapes with quotes like“Your mind is not yours alone” flashing across the screen and hinting at the enigmas of life and the universe.
Occasionally, the audience was stunned by glaring stage lights (not to mention the deafening volume) – which could conceivably be interpreted as our collective blindness in the face of such immense existential questions.
In any case, the lights framed the band members in visually arresting silhouettes.
One particular image sticks in the mind – Donahue standing precariously on one leg, attempting to find balance and resolution before plunging fearlessly into a new song and a vista of wonder and majesty.
(ST)

first day of volunteer work. had to report by 9am. was assigned to cleaning crew - basically went around the private accomms (swedish homes) and cleaned floors and bathrooms. went out under cat and cleaned with H, T and M.
lunch was pitiful affair from kugen (neighbourhood supermart) - cling-wrapped bread with sorry-looking piece of lettuce and thinnest slice of ham (7 SEK).
dinner at volunteer's kitchen, only 40 SEK and better than yum yum - pork with cous cous and mashed potatoes and apple crumble for dessert. cook is E, from spain. had earlier met his sis I, from barcelona.
found to dismay that our 2-week housing was this place i'd delivered mattresses and pillows and comforters to. bare bones extension with unfinished chipboard floors and walls. kinda like a human trafficker's halfway house. with a large monitor lizard as a pet.
general accomms with its hostel style bunk beds looked more appealing.
reluctantly spent a night there on assurance they would look into it the next day.
did not sleep a wink. heard knocking at one point, thought it was from upstairs until J answered 'yes?' turned out another lodger had been locked out. then J's phone went off and i thought it was 7am but it was only 4.

bangkok airport
a shrine in the middle of the tarpaulinned terminal. the ramp down to the waiting area was just clogged.
happiness was getting bumped up to premium economy where meals were served in courses and seats reclined more. actually needed to stretch to reach seat pocket in front of me.
unusual that no visa form was required for sweden. passport control room was badly designed - too tiny and the lines were just a mess.
the foreign exchange guy in the baggage claim had migrated from singapore when he was 8.
received P's sms and bought a round-trip ticket to stockholm central bus station to meet her and J.
happily dumped the backpack in the locker and went for breakfast. coffee and raspberry muffin (40 SEK each) in a pleasant square with the nobel museum.
walked past royal palace enroute to vasmuseet - 1600s ship which sank on maiden voyage and salvaged in the 1950s, also peek into social life in the 17th century.
met up with D and Q around 2 after very good lunch of meatballs and iced tea (118 SEK).
had to take subway to bus stop to catch bus to hallstavik and then from there to herrang.
dinner at yum yum (95 SEK) of sausage with rice. only time we ate there.
first night accomms in a quaint little cottage ('for our daughters 19 and 17') with horses in the field next to us.

Midnight Cowboy (M18)
Dustin Hoffman/Jon Voight/113 minutes
This 1969 movie is the only X-rated film to have won the Oscar for best picture.
By today’s standards though, the film is almost sweet and naive, like the character of Joe Buck (Voight), who comes to Manhattan to hustle. Though he is quickly outfoxed by the denizens of the city, he never loses his aura of innocence.
At heart, the film is about the relationship between Buck and Ratso Rizzo(Hoffman), a small-time conman – the friendship and love between two desperate and lonely people.
Hoffman’s transformation from the clean-cut Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate(1967) is impressive and Voight turns on the aw-shucks charm as Buck.
There is also a tender and believable chemistry between the two leads.
Still, there’s no denying that the film has aged. What was technically groundbreaking and thematically provocative is no longer so.
Which is where the DVD extras come in useful by setting the historical context of the picture and giving a sketch of director John Schlesinger, who died in 2003.
But, for a two-disc special edition, the extra garnishings are simply too paltry.
(ST)

Dreamgirls (PG)
Jamie Foxx/Beyonce Knowles/Eddie Murphy/Jennifer Hudson/130 minutes
This adaptation of the Tony award-winning Broadway musical by Bill Condon features meticulously-reproduced song and dance routines from the 1960s and1970s, spanning the gamut from doo-wop to disco.
But in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, the movie feels sluggish. The musical numbers put a brake on the narrative instead of moving it along.
Loosely based on music superstars The Supremes, the movie features a bravura performance from Hudson as Effie White, a talented but prickly singer who gets dropped from the group.
Beyonce, on the other hand, doesn’t even get a chance to bust a lung until late in the movie with the song Listen.
The DVD extras include extended and alternate versions of the musical numbers as well as a music video of Listen.
In the unlikely event that you’re not sated by the movie itself, these should do the trick.
The most interesting of the lot is an alternate version of Steppin’ To The Bad Side sung by three male characters, a welcome change from the numbers sung by a trio of women.
There’s also a snappy account of how ambitious record executive Curtis Taylor,Jr (Foxx) will do whatever it takes to get his music onto the airwaves.
(ST)

Petropolis
Anya Ulinich
Is the Russian emigre novel shaping up to be the latest literary trend?
On the heels of Marina Lewycka’s well-received A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian and the recent Two Caravans, comes Petropolis.
The protagonist of this highly readable debut novel is the biracial, Jewish and prickly Sasha Goldberg and we witness her coming of age as she makes multiple escapes over the years.
The first from her dead-end Russian hometown, the second from the life of a mail-order bride in Arizona, and the third from de facto house arrest by her wealthy benefactress.
At the same time, Anya Ulinich, herself a Russian emigre, has more on her mind than the adventures of her spunky heroine.
The title of the book refers to the poem of the same name by Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, which was about “the death of a great city”, Petrograd, during the Russian Revolution.
The city in question in the novel is the tragic Siberian town of Asbestos 2, its disintegration an icy accusatory finger directed at the ills of the Soviet system.
Given that Ulinich immigrated to the United States when she was 17, the book is no doubt an impressive achievement. Still, there are moments of studiedness in the phrasing which hint at the fact that English is actually her second language.
It also has to be said that Ulinich is not one for loose ends. You are even given an update on Sasha’s boyfriend when she was 14 through an encounter several years later.
But despite the penchant for resolutions, Sasha herself remains oddly elusive and you never fully get a grasp on her.
A pity really since you know she’s led a fascinating life and it would have been nice to know her better.
If you like this, read: The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2000, $23.10 without GST at zakoola.com)
Among the shimmering strands that make up this gorgeous tapestry of a book are marvellous escapes, epic love, comic books and questions about identity and self-worth.
(ST)

New Season
Kym Jin Sha
First thought on seeing the Singapore edition bonus best-of disc: Does she have that much material? The answer: Not really, as it comprises tracks from her previous two albums Unbelievable (2006) and Air (2005), neither of which left much of an impression.
Alas, there’s nothing very distinctive about album number three either, filled as it is with lightweight, lacklustre fare. Besides, isn’t the 23-year-old lass too old to be singing A Girl Blooms At 18?
This is not the kind of consistency an artiste wants and there's nothing here for her to stand out in the sweet stakes.
(ST)

Five In The Black
Tohoshinki
Their moniker, Rising Gods Of The East, is a good indication of this boyband’s ambitions.
Not content to ride the Korean wave sweeping the Asian region, the five lads are releasing their second Japanese album in an effort to conquer this large market.
What is on offer here is consistently enjoyable K-filtered-through-J pop,with the requisite repertoire of dance tracks and ballads. The unrelenting slickness can be too much to take in one sitting though.
The DVD of the de rigueur tightly choreographed music videos includes the hit Rising Sun from their previous Japanese album Heart, Mind And Soul.
(ST)

Best ~ Bounce & Lovers
Koda Kumi
You can’t help but admire the efficiency of the Japanese pop machine.
Koda Kumi was named by Japan’s Oricon charts as last year’s best-selling artiste, a feat she accomplished with a steady stream of singles and albums.
She’s constantly in the public eye and ear with something new. Her second single for the year is due out at the end of this month.
This compilation takes the straightforward approach of collecting her ballads on disc one with the dance track music videos on the DVD disc.
Her slightly husky voice holds up well on the songs, with Towards Tomorrow a standout. This only bolsters the theory that any Japanese song with the word“sakura” in it can do no wrong.
Disc two sees her flaunting her moves on her dance hits in a succession of bra tops and hot pants. Female sexual empowerment or exploitation as usual? Your call.
(ST)

Hollywoodland
Allen Coulter
Adrien Brody/Diane Lane/Ben Affleck/Bob Hoskins/126minutes
Hollywood in the 1950s was a town filled with glamour and glitter. Not surprisingly, there was a dark side lurking just beneath.
The deeper private detective Louis Simo (Brody) digs into the death of TV’s Superman George Reeves (Affleck), the more dirt he uncovers and more questions are raised over whether it was suicide or murder.
The movie also tracks Simo’s journey of redemption, which is played out in contrast to the downward slide of Reeves.
Affleck picked up the best actor award unexpectedly at last year’s Venice Film Festival. In fact, he was so sure he did not stand a chance that he left the festival before the awards were announced.
He took a gamble, portraying a charming, handsome actor who has to come to terms with the fact that he would never make it in the movies. But it was Brody and the always reliable Lane, as Reeves’ sugar mummy, who left deeper impressions.
The DVD extras include deleted scenes which are, for a change, complete scenes instead of snippets or out-takes.The featurettes were refreshingly non-gushy, though there was potential for greater depth in the coverage of old Hollywood. It would also have been nice to have a clip or two from Reeves’ Superman series.
(ST)

Stranger Than Fiction
Marc Forster
Will Ferrell/Maggie Gyllenhaal/Dustin Hoffman/Emma Thompson/113 minutes
Maybe it’s not your fault that your life sucks – it’s just written that way.
When Harold Crick (Ferrell) starts hearing a voice (Thompson) narrating his life, he has to figure out who’s writing his story and then, more importantly,how to prevent himself from being killed off.
This was a premise with much potential, though it did remind one of the Charlie Kaufman-scripted Adaptation (2002), which gleefully blurred the lines between the written word and real life as a screen-writer struggled to adapt a book.
Here, director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) aims for low-key and droll, but the movie ends up flat and lacking in energy.
Lines like “You don’t like cookies? What’s wrong with you? Everybody likes cookies” did not help.
Thank goodness for Tony Hale (Arrested Development) in the tiny role of Harold’s co-worker, who cannot stop being funny even if he wanted to.
The DVD comes with a number of featurettes, mostly gushy pieces about the actors, the director, the writer and even about Chicago, where the movie was set.
The extended mock TV interview with the author Karen Eiffel (Thompson) by a clueless book channel show host (Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth) fared better.
(ST)

Magic Cyndi
Cyndi Wang
Cyndi Wang is back with a new album after 15 months and she’s feeling a little insecure. Does she continue with her cutie pie image or is it time to shed that look for something more grown-up?
The album cover and lyric booklet helpfully offer two covers. One for those who prefer their Cyndi sweet, the other for those who like her a little more spicy.
It takes more than packaging which covers all tastes for an album to work though.
Her bland voice does not leave much of an impression on hackneyed tracks like Butterfly, with lyrics about spreading one’s wings and venturing forth bravely.
The folk-tinged ballad The Calm Sea That Summer has some potential, but is marred by its rather mundane arrangement.
Wang will have to step up if she’s serious about gunning for Jolin Tsai’s princess tiara.
(ST)

Mayday Jump Concert Singapore 2007
Singapore Expo’s Max Pavilion
Can you feel the L.O.V.E.? Taiwanese rock band Mayday certainly did from the capacity crowd of 7,500 fans at its gig here last Saturday night.
Before the show started, highlights from the group’s past concerts played on the large screens flanking the main stage, stoking the crowd’s anticipation of the night ahead.
The moment the lights dimmed, fans got to their feet and never warmed their seats again for the next three hours.
A rather incongruous big-budget video set in an epidemic-hit future formed the background as guitarists Monster and Stone appeared on different ends of the stage.
With a flourish, a giant cloth screen fell away to reveal the other three members in a thrilling burst of light and pyrotechnics. From then on, the crowd was enthralled.
Mayday’s trademark earnestness translated well onto the stage, with the emotional pull of their songs creating a strong rapport with the audience.
The dancing was largely of the pogo-stick variety, but the sheer energy the band radiated was irresistible.
The chemistry among the members was also fun to watch. When drummer Guan You took the microphone on Rubbish Truck, for example, lead singer Ashin cheekily presented him with a bunch of flowers.
The band packed the first half of the show with heavier rock tracks including Armour and Girl And Boy As One. These were not their best-known tracks, but the sea of cyalume sticks never stopped swaying.
Ashin was in fine form throughout the night. He shone in the acoustic numbers,particularly on the Hokkien track I Love You – Hopeless, thrilling the audience with his heartfelt vocals.
This marked a transition to a new segment and the five lads changed into all-white costumes for the song Angel, off their latest album Born To Love.
On disc, the song borders on being cliched, but with a 7,500-strong back-up chorus, the words suddenly took on a simple ring of truth.
The other band members had their turns in the spotlight as well. Monster and Stone performed guitar solos and bassist Masa surprised with a rendition of Coldplay’s Yellow.
The band saved the best for last, though. They used the rollicking In Love-ing to get the audience to shout and sign L.O.V.E.
The concert ended on a high note with some of their best-loved hits including Peter & Mary, Tenderness and People Life, Ocean Wild, as well as a cover of Beyond’s Paradise.
True to the encore Stubborn, fans lingered on even after the lights went up,singing along to Angel which was being played over the broadcast system.
Their affection was clearly appreciated. Stone told the crowd: “Every time we come here and see so many familiar faces,it’s like coming home.”
They should definitely come home more often.
(ST)

This Love
Khalil Fong
Making a concept album about love is a tricky proposition, but soul boy Khalil Fong delivers with a smooth and assured set of Chinese R&B, best exemplified by the title track.
In addition to romantic love, he also explores notions of platonic and familial love.
While there can be shades of familiarity in some of his compositions, he has enough flair to carry off the material. His versatility is also apparent from his ability to take on genres as diverse as rock and roll and jazz.
He even pulls off a cover of the MOR standard If You Leave Me Now.
Fong is also smart enough to work with top lyricists such as Lin Xi and Zhou Yaohui, who infuse the songs with their lyrical poetry.
The 23-year-old is definitely someone to watch.
(ST)

Play
S.H.E
The lead single Chinese Language has been generating controversy, for allegedly pandering to China, and blitzing the charts. In other words, a marketing executive’s dream.
Guess it is only a matter of time before this gets picked up for our own Speak Mandarin campaign.
Elsewhere, the album takes a playful approach to music-making, even sampling London Bridge Is Falling Down. This has yielded both hits and misses.
The duet with boyband and fellow label mates Fahrenheit on Thank You For The Tenderness will have you scrambling for Mayday’s original version of Tenderness.
On the other hand, Listening To Yuan Weiren Play The Guitar fares better with its unusual point of view of a neighbour being inspired by the composer working on his tunes.
Play also features, for the first time, music and lyrics from the three girls.
There is enough going on here for the trio to still keep things fresh and exciting on their tenth(!) album.
(ST)

the legend of the sea
benjamin toh
i went in with low expectations, which the film pretty much lived down to. and then some. the opening shot of dead fish was already all wrong, as they looked more like stone fish.
forget the idea of a rich and teeming underwater ocean, the animation wasn't even sophisticated enough to convey texture and interaction between surfaces.
DT quipped it was more like legend of the swimming pool.
and if the animation's not up to scratch, a good story would still hold my attention. nothing to be found here but lazy exposition and blunt plot devices to propel the story, such as it is, forward. something tedious about the dragon prince and his pals having to save the underwater kingdom from the evil octopus ocho.
the bottom of my expectations, and my jaw, fell out though when the ocho started singing. what the hell is this tuneless caterwauling? was this a cinema hall? or some hitherto unknown circle of hell for movie-goers?
then draco starts belting out the pop song unchanging freedom, singer jj lin's tie-in single, and i couldn't decide which was worse.

apropos of a discussion on backpacks or suitcases. definitely backpack. had to lug my bloody suitcase from paddington station to K's flat and it was painful.
and heathrow airport sucks. on arrival, it took forever for the bags to arrive at the stuffy baggage claims hall. on departure, the badly signposted gate was the furthest one possible, with no travellator in sight after a while.

K's 2 bedroom apartment is conveniently located near paddington. went out in search of food after dumping luggage and managed to get some fish and chips (about 5 pounds) to go after walking for a bit. most shops were closed by 11pm.
actually had one day of dry, somewhat sunny weather which i spent at the british museum (finally got to see the acropolis metopes and sculptures; fascinating assyrian collection as well) and then happily shopping at h&m (shirts at 10 pounds), uniqlo (limited edition t-shirts at 2 for 20) and fopp, an excellent indie cd store where much of the back catalog goes for 5 quid an album. picked up bright eyes' fevers and mirrors and sufjan stevens' christmas box set.
lunched at canela, 33 earlham street. chorizo tart proved to be too rich and monotonous. sangria was good though.
quick dinner with JW, J and K at cous cous house. surprisingly tasty and the chicken, lamb and vegetable cous cous dishes actually had the distinct taste of each.
caught equus in which daniel radcliffe (aka harry potter) runs around the stage nude. have to say he acquitted himself pretty well in the role. my quibble is that he sounds too cultured to be an uneducated lower working class fellow.
cake and coffee at konditor & cook after.
weather next day was more like classic london, overcast and then finally raining when it came time to lug the bloody suitcase back to paddington. ate at the borough market (excellent raclette for 4,50), took in tate modern (art in a chic, cavernous space; great views of the city across the river) and the south bank (Shakespeare's globe etc). too late for lunch by the time we hit anchor & hope.
ended up at harrod's. had dessert at the parisian patisserie laduree - a marble-topped, chandeliered shrine to pastries. the chocolate eclair was ok, but the ispahan was lovely, a rose-coloured vision in raspberries and lychees.
oh, and cannes. walked down the red carpet... for an 8.30am screening of gus van sant's paranoid park (felt like elephant redux at first, once again plumbing into the blank-faced heart of darkness of disengaged youth; then he starts revealing what actually happened and the movie loses some steam). which means the stars weren't there. didn't manage to make the late night red carpet screenings, usually some official event on. anyway, unlikely to have gotten tix.
tried to get into a screening of my blueberry nights, but alas. caught import/export instead, a grim look at life in the desolate wintry wasteland that is ukraine, and the unforgiving cold-hearted soul-sucking urban centre in austria. cheery stuff.
also caught pleasure factory, disappointing flesh fest which needed more fleshed-out characters, and 2 programs of shorts.
saw kimura takuya strolling on the water front, but it was a tightly-controlled event and his entourage made sure no photos were taken.

Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights was one of the most eagerly awaited films at Cannes this year. He is, after all, a favoured son of the film festival, and this was his English-language debut starring Jude Law and singer-turned-actress Norah Jones.
It was one of the many films that I did not manage to catch. I stood in line for a screening at a cinema but I suspect they were out of tickets even before the line started moving.
The red carpet screening, had I been in time for that, was probably out of my league.
If you're hankering for a hierarchical and strictly-structured society, you can certainly get a good dose of it here at Cannes. You need an official pass for access and there are colour codes for the different classes of participants. So you knew your place according to the colour of your press pass - pink for power, blue for blah, and yellow for yikes. How civilized!
One of the sweetest moments came when I was standing in line for the press screening of Ulrich Seidl’s Import Export (a cheery little number about life in the wintry wasteland that is Ukraine and the soul-sucking wasteland that is urban Austria) and was helpfully informed by this poor schlub with a yellow pass that the line for blue passes was up ahead. Nothing like having someone ranked below you to make you feel better about your own low place in society.
Actually, I did walk the red carpet. At an 8.30am press screening of Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park (felt like Elephant redux at first, another look into the heart of teenaged blank-faced darkness). This was the best time to catch a screening because the well-connected folks were still recovering from the previous night’s fabulous parties. It also meant beating the surprisingly ferocious heat along the French Riviera.
The celebrity encounters were mostly through interviews. Korean director Kim Ki Duk and his star Chang Chen were there for Breath, which was in competition, while Yang Kuei-mei was in Cannes for Ekachai Uekrongtham’s Pleasure Factory (three red-light district stories in search of characters).
There was definitely a frisson of je ne sais quois conducting an interview with Kim while a middle-aged woman sunbathed topless in the background.
Random sightings included Amitabh Bachchan - oh my god! he’s walking around the film market! no one comes to the film market! - which was exciting enough even though I’m not a fan.
Then there was Kimura Takuya and the other guy from SMAP, Shingo whatshisname, strolling along the beach promenade. There was an entourage trailing along, from which this one guy detached himself when I fished out my camera. His grasp of English seemed limited but effective - “no photographs”.
And Penelope Cruz, on a large tv screen on the wall of the Palais des Festivals, helpfully positioned for those who didn’t have a direct view of the red carpet. At least, that’s what my neighbour said.

Death Of A Salaryman
Fiona Campbell
This is a quirky, engaging tale of a Japanese worker’s midlife crisis and redemption set in modern-day Tokyo.
Yamada Kenji has been a salaryman at a television corporation for 22 years, “longer than he had been married”. When he is unceremoniously fired on his 40th birthday, he has to figure out what to do with his life.
It’s a good thing there’s a ready assortment of colourful characters to guide him along, including Izumi Izo, the enthusiastic and optimistic itinerant salesman, and Doppo, the pachinko pro who shows Kenji the tricks of the trade.
But Kenji also has to deal with a condescending mother- in-law, a distant wife and a two-faced TV producer when he finally gets a chance to turn his idea for a game show into reality.
British author Fiona Campbell takes a risk by setting her debut novel in a foreign land, one which she has lived in for only a few months.
Impressively, she pulls it off with a sharp eye for detail and empathy for her characters. While Kenji’s passiveness can be maddening, you can’t help but root for him as he undergoes travail after travail.
Campbell also balances the offbeat elements well, such that the novel does not veer into surreal territory but teeters deliciously on the edge.
The ending leaves us with a Kenji who has found contentment – but it sits a little oddly with the rest of the novel.
If you like this, read: Nice Work by David Lodge (1990, $26.78 with GST, Books Kinokuniya)Sparks fly when the worlds of Victor Wilcox, a managing director having a midlife crisis, and Robyn Penrose, a fiercely feminist English lecturer, collide. The final chapter and most satisfying of Lodge’s Rummidge trilogy about academic life.
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Blood Diamond
Leonardo DiCaprio/Jennifer Connelly/Djimon Hounsou/143 minutes
Sierra Leone has the misfortune to be blessed with diamonds. Mismanagement of this precious resource was one of the key factors which led to the outbreak of a devastating civil war in 1991 annd that ended only in 2002.
Against this seething backdrop, director Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai) tells the tale of a diamond smuggler (DiCaprio), a father trying to get his family back together again (Hounsou), and the stone that promises to be their ticket out.
Though heavy-handed at times, this drama with a conscience is anchored by strong performances by the roguishly charismatic DiCaprio and the magnetic Hounsou.
The two-disc special edition dvd includes behind-the-scenes featurettes. The director’s commentary track dishes out tidbits such as the fact that DiCaprio added colour to his lines by throwing in local slang.
The real gem, though, is the documentary Blood On The Stone, which takes stock of the Kimberly Process, set up to prevent the trade in conflict diamonds.
Tracing the journey of illegal stones all the way to New York, it reveals rampant corruption in Sierra Leon and the chilling recollections of a former Revolutionary United Front child soldier.
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Liza Wang and the Singapore Chinese Orchestra - A Mother's Day celebration
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Liza Wang knew who her fans were.They had watched her in TV series dating back to the late 1960s so the savvy Hong Kong-based singer-actress began the evening with classic theme songs.
Dressed in an elaborately ruffled confection of aquamarine and yellow, the58-year-old turned back the clock with songs such as Love And Passion and Yesterday’s Glitter.
Her first set ended with a rousing duet of A Boat Tracker’s Love with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s (SCO) principal dizi (Chinese flute) player Yin Zhiyang, an impressively robust baritone.
This was Wang’s first collaboration with the 75-member SCO, led by assistant conductor Ku Pao-wen.Which might explain why the chemistry was not quite there as she would sometimes linger over the notes while the SCO kept to a more straightforward pacing.
Still, the crowd of 6,000 seemed to enjoy themselves and even clapped along spontaneously at points. Wang bantered intermittently in Cantonese and said she was happy to see many young people with their mothers.
The almost stark stage featured a white backdrop and was flanked by two large screens. The size of the orchestra on the platform meant that Wang’s movements were limited to swaying gently along to the music.
But the veteran kept the spotlight firmly on herself with a series of costume changes. For the Chinese folk songs, she emerged in full ethnic get-up reminiscent of the tribes in Yunnan.
In the Chinese classics segment, clad in a white cheongsam and styled with a wavy hairdo, she morphed into a 1920s Shanghainese chanteuse.
The final group of songs were written by Hong Kong heavyweights Joseph Koo and James Wong and included Shanghai Beach and Brave Chinese Citizens, which Wang delivered in an elegant white gown with matching headpiece.
Calls for an encore were obliged by a spirited snatch of Cantonese opera from Women Warriors Of The Yang Family, a nice contrast to the sometimes sedate evening.
Her voice throughout was in pretty good form though it was clear that she connected better with the Cantonese material and you wish there had been more of that.
Judging from the crowd’s response, it would seem that her fans felt the same as well.
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Night At The Museum
Ben Stiller/Carla Gugino/Dick Van Dyke/108 minutes
The title and tagline – everything comes to life – pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the movie.
Oh, there’s a cursory story of a father fighting to earn his son’s respect and affection, but it’s merely tacked on as an excuse for the real star of the film – the special effects.
Stiller stars as the museum night guard who has to make sure nothing gets into, or out of, the building. Easier said than done when he has to deal with tyrannosaurus rex (or Rexy), marauding huns, and Lilliputian armies.
The DVD includes a director’s commentary in which Shawn Levy actually tells you where he pilfered the opening credits (Panic Room) and various shots from (Kramer Vs Kramer among others). At least he’s honest.
He also admitted that Stiller’s “unwavering perfectionism... can sometimes be hard”.
The blooper reel captures comedian Ricky Gervais’ (Britain’s The Office) notorious inability to get through a scene without cracking up.
There is also a simple game which involves the assembly of Rexy’s bones. Which confirms the suspicion that the movie is really pitched at little kids.
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Dirty Dozen Brass Band
Timbre Music Restaurant and Bar
A capacity crowd of over 260 people turned up to watch the American band chase away the Tuesday night blues.
It didn’t matter that the Dirty Dozen Brass Band was lacking one member – baritone and soprano saxophonist Roger Lewis had fallen ill just before they came here.
The remaining six members, in comfy get-ups of short-sleeved shirts, T-shirts and jeans, got going from the word go, with an infectious energy that didn’t let up for a second throughout the two 50-minute sets.
They had the audience singing along during a spirited rendition of When The Saints Go Marching In, a familiar gospel hymn closely associated with New Orleans. Trumpeter-flugelhorn player Efrem Towns improvised with the playful line “Oh when the Saints win the Superbowl”, a reference to the city’s football team, the New Orleans Saints.
Each band member also showcased his winning ways during the solos. In the steamy serving of blues that closed the first set, guitarist Kipori Woods demonstrated how one could use the tongue to play the instrument, too.
Not to be outdone, the big-lunged Towns blew two instruments at the same time. Now that’s something to toot your horn about.
The music-making was certainly tiring work which may admirers thoughtfully left offerings of beer on the stage.
When the band returned for the second set, they kicked things up a notch and Towns urged the crowd to loosen up. The call was answered at first by one lone chap in a suit and a vivid pink shirt.
Danny Loong, co-founder of Singapore’s premier blues band Ublues, also won applause, jamming along on his guitar and duelling with Woods in a dazzling exchange of riffs.
By the time the band got to their classic My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now, half the crowd was up and grooving to the irresistible music.
As Lewis had promised in an earlier phone interview, this was music for the mind, the soul and certainly the body.
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Village People Radio Show
Amir Muhammad
Banned in Malaysia, the film features interviews with some aged, surviving members of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) now living in an idyllic south Thailand village.
In the production notes for the film, writer-director Amir Muhammad declares that the “history of Malaysia, like any other nation, is not served by shutting out voices that do not conform to a hegemonic telling. Otherwise, we would end up with a history of amnesia.”
Which also happens to be the title of local writer Alfian Sa’at’s 2001 poetry collection – his salvo against the encroachment of forgetfulness and silence in Singapore.
While Amir’s sentiment is noble, his idiosyncratic film can be hard to follow as much of the context is not given and the interviewees are not clearly identified.
Still, kudos to him for getting around the problem of too much talking-heads footage by having the interviews unfold over scenes of tranquil village life, juxtaposing memories of the turbulent past with the sleepy present.
Meanwhile, the constant presence of children – the film opens with a little boy giving a short self-introduction in Thai – is at once hopeful and a reminder of the permanence of exile.
And the constant interruption of a fictional Thai radio drama about a wronged queen enforces the point that history cannot be neatly contained or easily told in a straightforward manner.
Perhaps it’s best to think of this as an (even more) experimental companion piece to his similarly banned The Last Communist, about CPM leader Chin Peng.
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Summer Palace
Lou Ye
It is worth noting that the title of the film is Summer Palace, and not Tiananmen Square. Even though director Lou Ye conflates the personal with the political, it is the former that has his attention here.
The story begins with Yu Hong (Hao Lei) leaving her border hometown of Tumen for Beijing, where she has been accepted at university. Lou paints in a few broad strokes the heady and intoxicating brew that is college life.
When Yu meets fellow student Zhou Wei (Guo Xiaodong), they share an intimate bonding moment on the grounds of the Summer Palace. This is something which Yu subsequently tries to recapture in the course of her life, but to no avail.
At the same time, the young lovers’ intensely emotional and physical relationship is being played out against the background of intellectual foment.Willy-nilly, Yu, Zhou and their classmates are drawn into the student protests of mid-1989.
Perhaps the most moving scene in the film is when Zhou Wei’s room-mate lashes out in anger and frustration after a long, terrible night in which students are fired upon. Suddenly, personal relationships are dwarfed into insignificance.
But despite the most momentous of upheavals, life goes on and the characters have to struggle with the quotidian business of living and loving.
Hao gives a fearless performance as the vulnerable and temperamental Yu for whom sex is a means of revealing herself to the man she loves. She and Guo also share a chemistry that comes through on screen.
Guo has less to work with given the somewhat enigmatic character of Zhou. It is also disconcerting to find in him a strong resemblance to Adrian Pang in certain scenes.
You wish, though, that the acting is in service to a stronger story.
While there is a point to the anti-climactic feel of the latter half of the movie, it seems a little repetitive as Yu moves from one man to another, even as she knows that she will not find what she is looking for.
By the time the denouement finally rolls around, the idealism and hope of summer has long passed and it seems that only a chilly and desolate winter lies ahead.
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Born Into Brothels
Zana Briski, Ross Kauffman
When co-director Zana Briski first ventured into the brothels of Sonagachi, Kolkata, as a photographer, she found herself surrounded by curious children. She decided to teach them photography and soon found herself deeply involved in their lives.
The film documents her attempts to get eight of these kids into schools and away from the world of prostitution.
It wisely keeps the focus on the children including spirited and fearless Puja,talented and sensitive Avijit, wise and gentle Gour, their stories and the joy and sense of empowerment that photography gives them.
It has been three years since the film was completed. Updates on the children can be found on www.kids-with-cameras.org, the website of the non-profit organisation set up by Briski to help marginalised children around the world through photography.
The powerful message that emerges from this film is that one can, as individuals, make a difference.
It also demonstrates that when hope is introduced into the most wretched of situations, there is a shot that it will take root, grow and eventually blossom.
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Tara Rum Pum
Siddharth Anand
The movie’s single biggest gimmick is the fact that it was largely shot in New York City.
Indeed, it is quite a treat to see the two Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan and Rani Mukerji boogeying against the backdrop of familiar landmarks like Times Square, Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.
Pity then that the rest of the movie does not measure up. The story of a race-car driver RV (Khan) who faces a string of setbacks in his life is uninspiring and holds no surprises.
There's also the unexpected sour note when RV is urged to finish off his opponent during the climactic race.
What seems to be a promising vehicle turns out to be something of a lemon.
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Protege
(Andy Lau/Daniel Wu/Louis Koo/Zhang Jingchu/109 minutes)
This is a serious movie with an anti-drug message. The problem is that it never lets you forget that.
The characters all fulfil a specific role and they are clearly labelled as such on the DVD cover - pusher, wife, banker, protege, victim.
While Lau chews some scenery as the drug kingpin, Koo is a disaster in a buffoonish drug addict role and Anita Yuen is hardly given anything to do as Lau’s wife.
The pacing is as uneven as the performances. The most interesting sequences are those on the cooking and packing of the drugs. On the other hand, the scenes set in the Golden Triangle feel too much like a National Geographic special on drugs.
It could have ended on a truthful, albeit sombre and chilling, note but the film-makers opt for false optimism instead.
The DVD comes with an additional Cantonese audio track and a making-of that reveals one more sobering fact - of the world’s 60 billion people, 2 billion take drugs.
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Idiocracy
(Luke Wilson/Maya Rudolph/Dax Shepard/84 minutes)
A mildly amusing film from Mike Judge which presents the scenario: What happens if animated lunkheads Beavis and Butt-Head grew up and everyone else was just like them? Possibly the scariest vision of the future committed to film thus far.
After a present-day US Army experiment gone awry - is there any other kind? - test subjects Joe Bowers (the affably low-key Wilson) and Rita (Rudolph) awaken, instead of one year later, in 2505.
The all-too-average Joe is now the smartest man on earth and he has to overcome mind-numbing stupidity, prejudices and plain bad taste in order to save the world from itself.
There’s a serious point or two about the dumbing-down of popular culture and the dangers of crass commercialism. But it’s a bit rich coming from the creator of Beavis and Butt-Head.
The DVD includes deleted scenes, including an amusing-if-you’re-in-the-mood Museum Of Fart scene.
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200 Pounds Beauty
Kim Yong Hwa
This movie is a lightweight despite being a massive box-office hit in its native South Korea. With over six million tickets sold, it is the country’s top-grossing romantic comedy.
Director and co-writer Kim Yong Hwa helmed this film, which is based on a Japanese manga by Suzuki Yumiko: “Does beauty tell your fate or what?”
In this romcom, the topic of plastic surgery is placed front and centre.The plus-sized Hanna (Kim A Joong) is kept hidden as the ghost singer for pop idol Ammy. She doesn’t mind being out of the limelight as she’s nursing a secret crush on producer Sang Jun (Joo Jin Mo of 2001’s Musa The Warrior).
After being humiliated by Ammy at Sang Jun’s birthday party, Hanna decides to take a drastic step – plastic surgery from head to toe. This is no mere nip and tuck but a full-on rip-it-apart and suck-all-the-fat-up undertaking.
Following the operations, Hanna adopts a new name, Jenny, and is soon singing in front of an audience. She even starts getting attention from her dream guy, but the past begins to catch up with her.
According to one (supposedly conservative) estimate, 50 per cent of South Korean women in their 20s have had some form of cosmetic surgery and in another poll, 70 per cent of men said they would also consider surgical improvements. Still, there are decidedly conflicting attitudes towards the procedure despite its prevalence.
Sang Jun dismisses it as a choice for those without self-confidence. Yet he says he is fine with it – as long as it is not his girlfriend going under the knife.
At the movie's conclusion, Jenny stops living a lie, wins some fans, loses others and even gets her man. The troubling message here seems to be beauty really is skin deep.
What holds the movie together is Kim’s performance. She endears herself as the sweet-natured Hanna, and emanates a giddy infectious joy as the newly minted Jenny.
Best of all, she manages to convey the gaucheness and vulnerability that Hanna feels even after turning into Jenny.
But Kim’s performance alone is not enough to give this overlong and uneven movie the lift it needs.
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Super Fans
Eric Kot
The title already tells you who the target audience is. So if you’re not a super fan of Hong Kong stars Charlene Choi, Leo Ku and Kevin Cheng, don’t bother. And if you are, approach with caution.
The plot revolves around devoted fan Susie (Choi) and the lengths she would go to for her idol Sam Lee. She ropes in her childhood friend Kim (Ku) in her efforts until a close encounter reveals Lee’s ugly side.
Susie then switches allegiance and begins to support Lee’s rival David Cheng (Cheng). Meanwhile, Kim pines for her in the background.
Given that Susie is such an unlikeable character – selfish, manipulative and immature – you never see the point of the attraction. The romance sub-plot is contrived, cliched and utterly without a clue.
The topic of obsessive fan culture is a potentially rich one, but the lack of laughs, a point of view or actual characters, makes it hard to tell what the point of this entire exercise is.
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Smokin' Aces
Joe Carnahan
The very long and clunky exposition essentially sets up the fact that everyone, from cops to paid assassins, is after Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven), a Las Vegas showman turned crime boss turned snitch.
Stylistically, the movie fancies itself as an Ocean’s Eleven, with the paths of those after Israel criss-crossing at his hotel hangout. But Aces lacks the lightness of touch and spirit of the former.
Joe Carnahan, who co-produced, wrote and directed the film, rounded up an eclectic and diverse ensemble cast – including Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Matthew Fox, Alicia Keys – but to no avail. The lucky ones are those killed off first.
Carnahan throws everything onto the screen, hoping that something, anything, sticks. For a brief moment or two, the toxic slime stays up there – and then slithers right off.
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To Sir With Love
Lim Dae-wung
After 16 years, a reunion takes place between the now wheelchair-bound Mrs Park and her students. It seems, though, that everyone has an axe to grind with their former teacher.
The set-up holds some promise but it becomes a little repetitive going through the back-stories of all the students.
The murder scenes are gruesome affairs, and in keeping with the school theme, feature a pocket pen-knife, a stapler and other stationery of torture. It is the scatological fetish, however, that tips the movie into overkill.
The lesson here? Do right by your students and fellow classmates – you never know who’s going to turn out to be a psycho.
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Jolin: Dancing Diva Singapore Concert 2007
Singapore Indoor Stadium
The lights dimmed and the fans went wild as light sticks danced and screams rang out.
It didn’t take much to get the crowd going. And that was a good thing for Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai.
The concert began dramatically as she was lifted up and then let back down gently, all the while striking nimble poses astride two rings.Dressed in a sparkling blue costume with a matching headpiece perched jauntily askew, she teased the crowd with slow, sensuous movements.
Then she launched into Pulchritude, the opening track of her latest album Dancing Diva, followed by Signature Pose and Mr Q. The three fast-paced songs gave her a chance to show off some slick moves and the enthusiastic crowd lapped them up.
In keeping with her sexy dancing queen image, her costumes were figure-hugging affairs which flaunted her curves. Twice, she removed an outer robe to reveal a skimpier ensemble underneath.
Tsai, 26, has also built an impressive body of hits over the past four years,and the two-hour concert was packed with memorable songs from her last four albums.
It quickly became clear, however, that she was not quite up to the mark in the vocals department. She was drowned out at points when it came to the lower registers and strained at others which called for high notes.
She did herself no favours by covering pop diva Faye Wong’s Reminiscence, her sometimes shaky rendition paling in comparison to the latter’s pristine crooning.
Even the dance moves failed to impress after a while. Mostly, they saw her twirling her hands about and shaking her hips. Often, she seemed too busy going through the motions to really cut loose.
You wonder what The Dance Floor judges would have made of her performance.
She admitted to the capacity crowd of about 9,000 that she was a little nervous as her previous stop on her current world tour was some time ago. But the four-month break since her concert in Malaysia was no excuse for the amateurish cartwheels that she attempted or the graceless fumbling with a rubber ball during the encore number, Dancing Diva.
None of this mattered to her fans, however, who responded to her every gesture with shrieks of approval. Lyrics were flashed on the two screens flanking the stage and the audience was happy to sing along, karaoke-style.
The crowd also took to her coy banter.“I was here 21/2 years ago. Have I changed? Have I become prettier?” she asked,and was rewarded with a resounding “yes”.
As the show drew to an end, Tsai told her adoring fans that their “performance here has left a deep impression on me”. The feeling was clearly mutual.
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I Don't Want To Sleep Alone
Tsai Ming-liang
So this is what a love story by director Tsai Ming-liang is like.In his eighth full-length feature film, the vagrant Hsiao Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) is nursed by Bangladeshi worker Rawang (Norman Atun) after getting beaten up on the streets of Kuala Lumpur.As he slowly recovers, he finds himself caught between the attentions of Rawang and the attraction he feels for Chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi), a coffee shop worker.Meanwhile, Chyi’s boss (Pearlly Chua) is also drawn to Hsiao Kang as he looks like her comatose son.
The movie is filled with inarticulate desire and impulses, and is set in a polyglot city filled with snatches of German opera, Malay folk song, Bollywood music, Cantonese opera and Chinese pop. The repressive silences of the characters are rendered all the more poignant by the contrast.
And who says that films are only for the eyes and ears? Tsai has conjured up a strong sense of smell in this film – emanating from a soiled and sullied mattress, the pool of dead water in the middle of an abandoned construction site, and the haze that hangs over the city. All these smells ground the movie in an earthy reality, even as the story takes stranger and darker turns.
While he still doesn’t like to move the camera much, preferring to let events simply unfold, the pacing here is less challenging than in films such as Vive L’Amour, which inched along slowly.
It helps that there’s plenty of his particular brand of absurdist humour in this film, including the surreal spectacle of a bulky mattress being lugged around KL.
And when the ominous haze envelops the city, there’s a priceless scene of Hsiao Kang and Chyi determinedly pressing on with their love-making in an orgy of coughing and desperate desire. You have to admire Lee and Chen, regulars in Tsai’s movies, for pulling it off with aplomb. First-time actor Norman delivers a truthful and touching performance, while stage veteran Chua plunges into the role fearlessly.
Tsai’s movies might not contain much dialogue, but there is always visual poetry to be found. The final scene is a sublimely tender and moving image that will stay with you for a long while.
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Exit A
Anthony Swofford
This book is a decidedly mixed proposition, and that’s assuming you make it past the halfway mark.
The first half of this debut fiction novel is concerned with 17-year-olds Severin Boxx and Virginia Sachiko Kindwall. They live in Yokota, an American air base on the outskirts of Tokyo, circa 1989. He’s a star football player and son of a colonel. She’s the half-American and half-Japanese daughter of the base’s general. Sparks of attraction inevitably flare up between the two.
But the course of young love never runs smooth. Virginia, who is going through a rebellious phase, acts out in a desperate and reckless fashion that changes everyone’s lives.
Unfortunately, Swofford’s pedestrian style of writing never really draws the reader in. He fails to fully convey the passion and excitement of youth gone astray. Instead, his oddly flat prose and stilted dialogue detract from the story.
After getting past the very long exposition, the latter half of the book jumps forward in time and deals with consequences and redemption. This is where it starts to get interesting as Severin goes into a downward spiral while Virginia picks up the pieces of her life.
Still, the same irritants remain, though mitigated by the twists and turns of the plot. And the ending, shot through with optimism and naivete, is just too neat and tidy.
Exit A? Felt more like No Way Out at some points.
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Conversation(s) With Other Women
Hans Canosa
A man and a woman meet at a wedding reception in New York City. They seem to be strangers flirting with each other, but as the evening, and their conversation, progresses, you learn that the two of them have a history together.
Director Hans Canosa and and his regular collaborator, writer Gabrielle Zevin, have chosen very unusual treatments for this simple story. Crucial information is withheld from the audience and is only released in tantalising dribs and drabs. However, it doesn't come across as a flashy gimmick but rather, reflects the narrowing distance between the couple over the course of the night.
What took some getting used to was the split-screen technique. It was jarring at first but it achieved an extremely intimate portrayal of these two people. This would not be possible without the utterly natural and fearless performances of Helena Bonham Carter (Charlie And The Chocolate Factory) and Aaron Eckhart (Thank You For Smoking).
The gorgeously evocative soundtrack with its generous helping of Carla Bruni, clearly a labour of love, didn't hurt either.
At the end of the film, we are left with an intriguing image - a split-screen scene of the two of them in two separate cabs. Then the two halves join up and they are sitting in the same cab, but the distance between them is greater than ever.
It was the rarest of big screen moments - a special effect shot with emotional resonance.
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After This Our Exile (M18)
(Aaron Kwok/Charlie Young/ Gouw Ian Iskandar/117 minutes)
Auteur Patrick Tam’s first film in 17 years beautifully and lovingly evokes small-town Malaysia.
The idyllic backdrop, though, is the setting for a darker tale about the relationship between a ne’er-do-well father (Kwok) and his young son (Iskandar)after his wife (Young) leaves home.
It is hard to care when a father with no redeeming qualities loses everything.But this is a movie about the son as well and Tam ends the movie on a powerful note of redemption and hope, loss and love.
The movie won the Golden Horse award for Best Picture, while Kwok and nine-year-old Iskandar took home the acting awards.Kwok has certainly come a long way from his teeny-bopper music videos, doomed to eternal rotation in karaoke joints.
This bare-bones DVD gets an extra star for the Cantonese audio track.
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Confession of Pain (NC16)
(Tony Leung/Takeshi Kaneshiro/Shu Qi/Xu Jinglei/106 minutes)
The great thing about watching Hong Kong movies on DVD is listening to the original Cantonese audio track instead of the dubbed-over Mandarin in cinemas.
Unfortunately, in this case, the much-awaited follow-up to the excellent Infernal Affairs from directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak falls short of the mark.
The central mystery of a gruesome murder merely serves as a device for Leung and Kaneshiro’s characters to play off against each other. However, the elements of urgency and ambiguity – so crucial to Affairs’ success – are less satisfyingly handled here.
Still, there is some joy to be had in watching the two male leads act their way out of the overwrought story.
Meanwhile, China actress-director Xu is stuck in a thankless part as Leung’s wife. Shu is the much-needed jolt of sunshine in this movie, even though her girlfriend role borders on the extraneous.
The DVD includes a 15-minute self-congratulatory making-of.
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Teenage Mutant Ninija Turtles
Kevin Munroe
Really? Another TMNT movie 14 years after the last one? Should you bother after all this while?
Well, the ending points to a sequel so care was taken to make sure this does not suck.
After the defeat of their arch nemesis The Shredder, the Turtles have fallen into disarray.It takes a crisis, of the save-the-world variety, to bring them back together as a team once more.
While the franchise has been updated with computer animation – the slimmer Turtles took a little getting used to – the feel of the movie was decidedly old-school. Still, it’s nice to see that the Turtles’ irreverent sense of humour is intact.
The film zipped along with lively energy and even the message about the importance of family was handled deftly and did not grate. Bonus points for echoing the theme, and subverting it, in the bad guys' camp.
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Breaking and Entering
Anthony Minghella
After swoonsome period dramas The English Patient and Cold Mountain, director Anthony Minghella turns his eye on human relationships in modern-day London.
A central idea in the film is that sometimes things need to be broken before they can be fixed. Mouthed by Will Francis (Jude Law), a landscape architect who has no idea what he wants, it merely sounds like a platitude.
The problem was that Law was convincing when he told his estranged partner Liv(Robin Wright Penn) that the distance between them was very great.
It was less believable when he had a change of heart after a dalliance-turned-sour with a Bosnian immigrant (Juliet Binoche), and decided that Liv was the love of his life after all.
For a movie about breaking and entering of the criminal and emotional varieties, the ending was just too neat and tidy. It seemed that just about everyone got what they wanted. But the idea of a victimless crime simply doesn't wash.
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Tristan Prettyman
Mosaic Music Festival concert
In keeping with the laid-back casual vibe of her gig, it was entirely appropriate that Tristan Prettyman performed in her bare feet.
You could almost imagine the surfer singer-songwriter strumming the guitar on a quiet darkened beach while the waves crashed rhythmically in the background.
The mellow crowd at the sold-out 220-seater recital studio was content to sit back and lap it all up.
It was after the set opener, Breathe, that Prettyman told the audience that her luggage and guitar got lost in transit. Still, it gave the 24-year-old a compelling reason to shop.“Good thing there’s a mall on every corner,” she said.
She then went on to preface most of her songs with tidbits about her life.Before launching into Guest Check, she revealed that she used to work at a pizza place in her native San Diego. Then she deadpanned that the song had nothing to do with pizzas.
The genial singer, performing here as part of the Esplanade’s Mosaic festival,also took requests.There were calls for Shy That Way, a duet with her ex-boyfriend, American singer-songwriter Jason Mraz, but she pointed out that “Jason’s not here”.
She obliged the crowd with Lindsay Goes To Rehab instead, a song about out-of-control Hollywood starlet Lindsay Lohan, written “after a drunken evening”.
Live, Prettyman’s acoustic folk-pop ditties sounded more muscular, thanks to her back-up bassist and drummer.But it wasn’t until Just In Case that the band cut loose. “This is where we go crazy and rock out. Like Metallica,” she added helpfully.
The wildest thing that happened though was when a besotted female fan yelled out, “Tristan, you’re beautiful”. To which the unruffled Prettyman said right back “You’re beautiful too”.
The amiable singer even invited the audience to hang out with her if they were ever in San Diego.
Just as they hung out with her on Saturday night.
(ST)