The Treasure Hunter

Kevin Chu

The story: A legendary treasure hidden deep in a desert attracts the attention of relic protector Qiao Fei (Jay Chou), author Lan Ting (Chiling Lin), opportunist Chop (Eric Tsang) and an archaeologist with a past, Hua Dingbang (Chen Daoming).

How does this annoy me? Let me count the ways. There is the lazy characterisation, the hammy acting and a garbled plot which has little interest in making sense.

Perhaps this is the result of having five scriptwriters attached to the project. The producers are obviously not familiar with the notion of quality, not quantity. The several strands of plot have only one thing in common – they are all half-baked.

Qiao Fei and Lan Ting were childhood sweethearts but she felt betrayed after he disappeared from her life to apparently return to the desert where he came from. The reason was possibly the fact that he is part of a tribe who are responsible for protecting the ancient tombs.

If this seems like a rather murky and convoluted explanation, it is because much is left unexplained and unaccounted for.

There is also the rivalry between Qiao Fei and the Desert Eagle, head of the guardians, as well as a rote romance between Qiao Fei and Lan Ting to further muddy the waters.

The sparks never fly as model-turned-actress Lin is stiff before the cameras and seems to be still coming to grips with the notion of acting.

Admittedly, risible lines such as “Tears can’t roll down your face when you’re looking up at the sky” would challenge the most dedicated thespian.

The best thing you could say about director Kevin Chu is that he did not play favourites in this film – he managed to bring out the worst in everyone. Tsang, spewing lines in Mandarin, Cantonese and English, is at his most irritating. And veteran China actor Chen turns in an embarrassingly amateurish performance.

Meanwhile, Chou looks vaguely ridiculous dressed in a studded leather jacket with slicked-back long hair .

Maybe this will mark the end of Chou’s collaboration with Chu. They last worked together on the basketball flick Kung Fu Dunk (2008), which at least had some idea of what to do with its star’s boyish charms.

Do not feel too sorry for Chou, though. Even without releasing a new album this year, he has once again emerged as the top money-spinner in the Taiwanese music industry. He earned NT$554 million (S$24 million) from starring in films, as well as from endorsements and royalties.

If you must contribute to his overflowing treasure chest, wait for his 10th studio album and pass on this piffle.

(ST)

Best Live Chinese Music

In::Music – Crowd Lu

Esplanade Recital Studio, Feb 7

It was a small show that took place at the beginning of the year but the indie singer- songwriter simply delivered the most moving gig in 2009 by performing with his entire being.

Crowd Lu sang with his eyes closed, feet tapping and body crouched over his guitar. He was enraptured by the songs and we were enraptured by him.

Aaron Kwok De Show Reel Live In Concert 09

Singapore Indoor Stadium, May 30

At the opposite end of the spectrum is this slick, well-oiled machine of a show whose centrepiece was a slick, well-oiled machine.

And it is not Hong Kong Heavenly King Aaron Kwok we are talking about, even though he danced, sang and flaunted his well-toned body tirelessly.

It was instead the giant revolving stage that has raised the bar for those seeking to dazzle audiences with hardware wizardry.

Mayday DNA World Tour, Singapore 2009

Singapore Indoor Stadium, Aug 28-29

The hardest-working band out there delivered two sizzling shows which busted the midnight mark. If their exhilarating concert in Taipei was any indication, the five lads once again proved that they can always be counted on for a rousing good time.

Let’s not forget their promo gig here on Jan 4, a free event which became a 21/2-hour concert. Mayday’s willingness to go that extra mile for their fans is why they have some of the most fervent supporters around.

(ST)

Keep Going

Jeanie Zhang

The debut album from China’s Jeanie Zhang begins with an in-flight announcement to secure your safety belt. Thankfully though, this ride is free of turbulence or vocal histrionics as the 23-year-old takes a more restrained approach.

Her clean, clear voice has a hint of sadness which gives the defiant title track an added layer of emotion when she sings: “Let the wind blow harder/Let the storm lash out/Feel how terrifying the world is/Actually my courage is not lonely/It has company wherever it goes.” She also gets bonus points for composing it.

Equally comfortable with ballads such as I Don’t Understand and uptempo numbers such as I’m OK, the promising newcomer wants you to know that she is in it for the long haul.

Wonfu Loves You

Won Fu

The band emits such a sunshiney, summery vibe it feels a little out of sync to listen to them during this cool, rainy season.

Still, try sitting through such goofy, cheery numbers as Summer Dusk Summer Scenery (“The sun broke the bottle of ketchup escaping/The stars and moon came out and did the cleaning”) and Motorbike (“Sitting on my motorbike/I’ll never exceed the riding capacity/Will the one I like please hurry up and tell me”) without breaking into a grin.

However, two-thirds of the way through, from way out of left field, comes a bizarre Hare Krishna chorus and the mood grows increasingly frenzied and manic. Maybe all that summer sun got to them.

D.N.A Live!

Mayday

It is easy to take Mayday for granted because they are so consistently good. Mayday deliver concert after concert and September’s 2009 Taipei Arena gig was no exception.

The recording captures the excitement of the event as well as the energy and charisma of the band with lead vocalist Ashin in fine form in all 29 tracks here.

For those who were there, this is the perfect keepsake. For those who were not, the accompanying DVD gives you a condensed, tantalising version of what went down.

The Classic

Eric Moo

Harlem Yu, Jam Hsiao, Abin Fang and now Eric Moo. Men doing cover albums of women’s songs? It’s getting old.

They are even starting to record the same songs such as Mavis Hee’s Regrets, which Fang also took on. I prefer Fang’s sparer, more emotionally naked version as Moo’s tendency to belt a song into submission is on full display here. There is nothing delicate about his forceful blasting of lines such as “Rather than let you wither in my embrace” and “Rather than let you grow haggard in my love”.

The disc ends with Too Foolish, a megahit for Moo back in the day but it may surprise you to learn that it was Mindy Quah who first sang the Moo-composed ballad in 1993. He shows some unexpected restraint here but it’s a classic case of too little too late.

(ST)

Dancing Queen

Landy Wen

There is no chance that you will forget who you are listening to. That is because Wen keeps spelling out her name L.A.N.D.Y.

In a nutshell, that spells out her problem. She is a versatile singer with a lightly husky voice but she needs more distinctive material in order to step out of the shadows of dancing divas such as Jolin Tsai, Elva Hsiao and Coco Lee.

Over nine years, Wen has moved from R&B and hip-hop to dance and is now a self-styled Dancing Queen. She dishes out attitude on Wide-Angle Beauty and D.I.S.C.O is a retro-sounding call to get your groove on.

But she can also take it slow on mid-tempo numbers such as Adia’s slinky Love Has No Right Or Wrong and Kenji Wu’s ballad I Believe It All.

Perhaps the constant shift in styles from album to album explains why it is hard to get a fix on her as a singer. The ever-changing hair and eye colours do not help either. It closes with Don’t Fall In Love With Me but somehow you get the feeling that it is the exact opposite of what Wen wants.

Love Has Always Been

Rachel Liang

Another week and yet another release by a One Million Star alum.

As they jostle for short attention spans and album sales, the ex-contestants have all had to decide how to differentiate themselves from one another.

Rachel Liang has chosen the safe-if-boring sweetie-pie route.

The second season’s runner-up titled her debut album Love Poem and her follow-up is Love Has Always Been. No prizes for guessing what she sings about.

Among the TV reality show’s female cohort, it is Lala Hsu who stands out for her willingness to try different approaches and keep things interesting.

The highlight of Liang’s romance-heavy disc is the title track for which local singer-songwriter Hagen Tan composed the memorable tune and contributed to the lyrics: “I know/My love/Has always been/Without you the tears can’t stop.”

To her credit, she mixes things up with the breezy Sixth Sense and the intriguingly titled Man-Biting Cat. And even that is about love: “My love is so troublesome/Like a man-biting cat that cannot be shaken off.”

One wonders if she would be a more interesting proposition if she shakes off that syrupy image.

review asian pop

All About Rynn

Rynn Lim

On first glance at the cover, one could be forgiven for thinking that MediaCorp rising star Dai Yangtian has branched out into singing.

It is hard to decide if this is a good or bad thing for Rynn Lim. On the one hand, the CD could turn more heads as a result of the physical resemblance.

On the other hand, is this really the way for the Malaysian singer-songwriter to get more attention after releasing three albums?

He is, after all, the winner of the Best New Artiste at the Golden Melody Awards in 2006.

All About Rynn is a retrospective of his past work including Kong Qiu Qian (Abandoned), Re-married and the novelty Malay/Mandarin duet Melodi with Sheila Majid. In the lyric sheet, Lim adds little anecdotes about the songs closest to his heart. Oddly enough, he chose to omit Working Girl, the lead single off his last album Homely Life (2008).

The collection also includes five new songs. From the lightly jaunty Within 7 Days to the ballad Gently, they are all pleasant but maybe not enough for people to start comparing Dai to him instead.

(ST)

Love Moments

Jam Hsiao

Regrets

Abin Fang

Record of Emotion

Cui Xia and Hong Shaoxuan

Forward

Jade Liu

When will these young upstarts learn to leave the inimitable Faye Wong alone?

First it was soulboy Khalil Fong remaking Red Bean and now Jam Hsiao is covering The Last Blossom.

Abin Fang, of the defunct Malaysian duo Island, takes on not one but two tracks – Chess and the Cantonese number Ambiguous.

At least Fong gives the song an R&B makeover, while Fang takes a decidedly stripped-down acoustic approach. Hsiao’s choice of song may be more adventurous but he does not do much with it arrangement-wise.

None of them, though, makes you forget for a second that Wong did it first and better. Please, just come out of your retirement already, and show these whipper-snappers how it’s done.

Actually she already did so on Decadent Sounds Of Faye (1995) in which she covered the songs of Teresa Teng with attitude and imagination.

The problem with both Hsiao and Fang’s offerings is that there is hardly any sense of surprise or discovery in the material even if the delivery is competent.

Hsiao is so confident of his vocal prowess that he chooses to cover chart hits of the recent past without bothering to tweak the songs much.

This is the third version of Rewind after Jolin Tsai and Jay Chou.

At least Tsai and Chou’s versions had the added dimension of how much one should read into the lyrics about a break-up.

Only the unexpected inclusion of the touching Minnan track Wordless Flower stands out.

The mildly interesting thing about Love Moments and Regrets is that they are packed with women’s songs.

For Sandy Lam’s It Doesn’t Matter Who I Am, the gender has been switched so Fang sings “How tragic it is if men have no one to love/Even if someone cries when they hear my song”. This is as audacious as it gets.

Compared to the commercially minded discs above, Record Of Emotion is a more curious proposition. It features home-grown xinyao singer Hong Shaoxuan and 1983 Talentime second runner-up Cui Xia as well as a mixed bag of selections.

Once you get past the opening Huangmei opera track Country Road, there is much to savour here in the beautifully pristine voices showcased in classics such as Qiu Shi Pian Pian (Deep Fall) and Sui Hua (Broken Blossoms).

The songs on Jade Liu’s EP are also an eclectic lot. In her case, it is because three of them are from TV serials, including Lonely Light Years from MediaCorp’s The Ultimatum. Because she liked the melody so much, she penned a new set of lyrics and re-recorded the song as Gift.

What is more impressive is the trick Liu pulls off on Adore You in which she channels the composer – her laid-back crooning sounds exactly like Tanya Chua.

This is the first part of a planned Growth Trilogy and this EP whets the appetite for her next disc which is exactly what a good offering should do.

But when it comes to reworking songs, here is some parting advice – just because it’s nice doesn’t mean you have to sing it twice.

(ST)

The Storm Warriors

The Pang Brothers

The story: Powerful warriors Whispering Wind (Ekin Cheng) and Striding Cloud (Aaron Kwok) have to prevent the evil Lord Godless (Simon Yam) from taking over China in this adaptation of a story from Ma Wing Shing’s comic series Fung Wan. The reclusive Lord Wicked (Kenny Wong) agrees to instruct Wind in the path of evil to boost the latter’s skills, while master pugilist Nameless (Kenny Ho) helps Cloud create a new style of sword-fighting.

It is comforting to know that in this fickle and ever-changing world, there are some things people can still count on – such as lovingly art-directed hairstyles in a Fung Wan movie.

In 1998’s The Storm Riders, Aaron Kwok sported electric blue curls while Ekin Cheng had luscious flowing locks. This time round, Kwok has ditched the dye and gone for a perm that adroitly frames his face while Cheng is still keeping to his battle- tried-and-tested coiffure.

But all that hirsute detail is not just for show – it is also an important signifier. After all, only highly- skilled martial artists can afford to devote that much time and effort to maintaining their hairdos.

Even Kenny Ho as the legendary Nameless gets to strut his stuff in front of a wind machine, tresses billowing heroically.

While the hair motif is familiar, what has improved from 11 years ago are the special effects. The Pang brothers, taking over from Andrew Lau (Infernal Affairs, 2002) at the helm, seem to have benefited from their Hollywood sojourn and their exposure to top-level computer-generated imagery (CGI).

The special effects in The Storm Riders were sometimes cheesy, particularly when seen in retrospect. Here, in addition to punching up the fight scenes and translating the look and feel of a comic book onto film, the CGI has been used to create spectacular vistas, as epic as the tale that is unfolding.

Given the fairly straightforward story, the directors do a good job with pacing and keeping the film flowing, right up to the protracted climactic battle with Cloud and Wind in which every trick from stylised freeze frames to extreme close-ups to blurred motion sequences a la Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes Of Time (1994) is thrown onscreen.

With all that technical wizardry going on, Kwok and Cheng do not have to do too much heavy- lifting in the acting department. Cheng, at least, has more to do as Wind has to pay a high price for venturing down the path of evil while the laconic Cloud lets his sword do most of the talking.

Chu Chu (Tang Yan), who is devoted to Cloud, is another character who reappears from The Storm Riders (then played by Shu Qi). But her presence here is token, like that of Second Dream’s (Charlene Choi). The women are merely foils for the grander drama played out by the men.

Some have criticised this film for being too similar stylistically to 300 (2007), Zack Snyder’s hit movie adaptation of a graphic novel about a key battle between the Spartans and the Persians.

While the two share a visual resemblance, The Storm Warriors trumps 300 in one respect: In contrast to the uber machismo and humourlessness of the Spartan flick, Warriors does not take itself too seriously.

Just check out those hairstyles.

(ST)

Adrian Mole The Prostrate Years

By Sue Townsend

Dear Diary,

Remember when we first met Adrian? The year was 1982 and we had inadvertently stumbled upon the secret diary of his 13¾-year-old self. How we laughed when we read about his futile attempts to paint his bedroom black as the Noddy wallpaper kept showing through.

We continued to faithfully follow his exploits as he went through his Growing Pains (1984), which charted the ups and downs of his relationship with one Pandora Braithwaite.

Alas, we drifted apart after that and all through the Wilderness Years (1993) and the Cappuccino Years (1999), our paths never crossed.

Running into him again after all these years brings both a deep sense of joy and a small jolt of shock to realise that he is now on the cusp of 40.

Some things have not changed. He still has literary aspirations and is now writing Plague!, a play set in the medieval countryside, for the local theatre group. But while illusions of grandeur were touching in a young boy, they seem a bit sad and pretentious in a grown man living in a converted pigsty.

Adrian may have his faults, including an inability to see the glaringly obvious, but he is also loyal, generous and kind-hearted. He continues to make friends with lonely pensioners and is unfailingly decent to those he knows, including the unapologetically rascally Bernard Hopkins, “the bookseller from hell”.

Meanwhile, he has to deal with his stubborn five-year-old daughter Gracie, unhappy wife Daisy and other assorted family drama, all the while still carrying a torch for Pandora, now an abrasive politician.

When he is diagnosed with prostate cancer, he faces the prospect of death with a poignantly turbulent mix of bravado, stoicism, fear, panic and petulance. Adrian Mole might be down, but we can never count him out.

P.S: If you like this, read: The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend and revisit the agony and the ecstasy of Moley’s teenage years.

(ST)

Dreamer

Peter Pan

Set Meal For Three

Mi Lu Bing

Manic Pixie Dream Girl

1976

Play n Fun [1+1]

Genie Chuo

There is an understated homespun vibe to Peter Pan’s full-length debut that is really quite endearing. It could be due to the fact that the lyrics for all 10 songs are by veteran lyricist Daryl Yao, lending the album a cohesive feel.

The first plug, The Thing I Want To Do Most, is already a chart-topper here. Pan tugs gently at the heartstrings when he croons, “If thunderstorms rage in your heart, then I’ll turn into an umbrella”. Admittedly, that sounds better in Mandarin.

The One Million Star alumnus has smartly made use of his connection to the reality competition TV show as the song was composed and produced by resident judge Kay Huang.

There is no escape from the de rigueur duet but the harmonica-backed Mandarin/Minnan Happy Times with Ring Xu shows the tired format still has life in it when done with a little imagination.

Mi Lu Bing’s third album is a very different proposition but is happily also a cohesive effort, one that centres on the theme of food.

The trio wrote most of the music and kick things off with the youthful optimism of Swallow The Universe. From lines such as “Put your dreams in your left hand/Shout out loud if you’re unhappy/Use my voice to stun the planet”, it is clear that the boys are still hungry for success.

The rock stylings suit lead vocalist Nic Lee’s slightly gruff voice but a slow-burn recipe of Swallow The Universe paired with a different set of lyrics work as well.

On their sixth album, indie Taiwanese band 1976 serve up a melancholic helping of synth-pop that references the seminal British group The Smiths.

While the attempt to try something different is appreciated, the record needs greater variety in sound for tracks to stand out more. But their gutsy attitude – summed up by “There’s a youth with a defiant look/He once was me, he still is me” – is to be cheered.

Better gutsy than cutesy as Genie Chuo tries to look younger with each release. This best-of collection includes past hits Vanilla Lover and Castle Of Love along with six new songs.

There is a place for bubbly throwaway pop such as By Your Side but Chuo shows herself up on the English duet Especially For You with Leon Williams with cringeworthy enunciation.

Maybe this Genie needs to go back into the bottle.

(ST)

Couples Retreat

Peter Billingsley

A sure sign that the movie you are watching is less than engrossing is when idle thoughts begin to flit through your head.

In this case, these thoughts went along the lines of: “Wow, the resort looks great. Where did they film this? Is there actually a resort there? I wonder what the rates are.”

For the record, Couples Retreat was filmed on location on Bora Bora, a French Polynesian island in the South Pacific.

And yes, there is a five-star establishment there, the St Regis Bora Bora Resort.

In the movie, this stands in for Eden Resort, where four couples try to work out their relationship issues. Really, though, three couples would have worked just as well, maybe even two. At least the running time would have been shaved.

The sprawling cast, which includes familiar names such as Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau, Kristen Bell and Kristin Davis, is not particularly well-served by the script co-written by Vaughn and Favreau.

Despite some funny moments, including a touchy-feely yoga session, the saggy middle and oh-so-neat ending will have you mentally whisking yourself off to the resort instead.

(ST)