Shugo Tokumaru

Mosaic Music Festival, Esplanade Recital Studio, March 19

This was hands-down the most joyous gig of the year.

The Japanese musician creates shimmering tapestries of sound that used dozens of instruments for his records and yet he found a way to make that work in a live setting.

His dextrous fingerwork on the guitar was exhilarating to behold on tracks such as the devilishly fast-paced Parachute. From the exuberance of Exit (2007) to the contemplative quiet of Night Piece (2004), the emotional directness of his compositions came through even though he was singing in Japanese.

The shy, soft-spoken and bare-footed Tokumaru conjured up a performance that was simply, charmingly magical.

Amit Live First World Tour

Singapore Indoor Stadium, Jan 29

It was a Mandorock concert that threatened to blow the roof off the stadium. The Amit tour fully embraced the brash drama of rock songs such as Black Eat Black, Straightforward and the brazen Minnan number Come On If You Dare as guitar players flailed away on stage. It culminated in the spectacle of A-mei in a billowing leopard print cape belting out the Turandot aria Nessun Dorma in a stained-glass cathedral setting. Over the top? Sure. Thrilling? Absolutely.

The A-mei everyone knew and loved was not totally absent, though, and she dipped into her bag of hits to deliver power ballads such as Can I Hold You? and While It’s Still Early.

She proved that she could rock your world even when the volume was lowered.

Crowd Lu 2010 Singapore Live

Dragonfly, St James Power Station, Jan 16

The geeky-cool singer-songwriter’s gig felt more like a cosy gathering of several hundred friends as he shared his optimistic tales of school life, friendship and overcoming adversity from his two albums, Seven Days (2009) and 100 Ways Of Living (2008).

Everyone knew the words even without the aid of video projections and sang along with heartfelt gusto.

It was clear that what you see is what you get with Lu. That unvarnished honesty is a beautiful and precious thing, and we had the opportunity to appreciate it up close and personal.

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Snowman

Peggy Hsu

Now this is a winter wonderland – swirling strings, icy beats, vocals as clean as freshly fallen snow, and that is just on the opening song Punk.

It sets the tone nicely for the fall/winter counterpart to the Taiwanese singer-songwriter’s spring/summer-themed release Fine (2009). She offers a great variety of style and subject while maintaining coherence and cohesion: the tinkling ivories and coolly witty lyrics of Fly, the chill-out electronica of Downfallen Aristocrat and the stripped-down acoustic number You Love Me.

Apart from the embarrassment of riches here, the overachieving Hsu also gave us a winningly wintry gig at the Esplanade Recital Studio in February and then released the whimsical EP Le Cirque I in September. What they all had in common was the ability to warm the heart of any music lover.

Weibird Debut Album

Weibird Wei

Among a clutch of strong releases by male singer- songwriters such as Yen-J and Jaycee Chan, Weibird Wei’s soars just a little higher. There is the immediate appeal of the radio-friendly Keep Waiting, with its distinctive refrain and opener Did You Or Did You Not with its plaintive cry to “turn off the radio”.

And there is much else to savour besides. On the lilting Cloudy Day’s Sunflower, Wei’s falsetto evokes a sense of delicate beauty while A Little More Perfect captures the joys and insecurities of being in love.

He has more on his mind than affairs of the heart, though, and we also get a glimpse of a young man engaging with the world around him. He sings on Stories that “Every story has a name” and “Every name has a story”.

I look forward to the next chapter in this Taiwanese troubadour’s tale.

Aftertaste

Karen Mok

Finally, an album of covers that gets it right. After an uninspiring string of releases which saw male singers take on women’s songs, it was left to the Hong Kong singer-actress to show them how it should be done.

The choice of songs was a smart mix of obscure folk ditties such as Playing The Hand Drum, Singing A Song and more familiar oldies such as Shanghai songbird Zhou Xuan’s Blooming Flowers And The Full Moon.

Rather than simply delivering them in her distinctive vocals, Mok worked with producer Zhang Yadong and lyricist Francis Lee to breathe new life into old favourites. It was a risky venture but it worked, beautifully. One only wishes Mok had taken more of a gamble on her subsequent album of original material, Precious.

Despite the latter’s title, Aftertaste is an album to relish and cherish.

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The film title A Better To- morrow turned out to be prophetic.

Before the release of the gangster drama in 1986, director John Woo had been struggling in the scene for more than 10 years without a hit, actor Chow Yun Fat had been box office poison whose goggle-box popularity had not translated to the big screen and Ti Lung was best known for his wuxia roles at Shaw Brothers in the 1970s.

What a difference a day – or a movie – makes. A Better Tomorrow set a new record in Hong Kong with a gross of more than HK$34 million, made Chow a star and revitalised Ti Lung’s flagging career.

Not bad for a movie made on a tight budget that was a remake of a 1967 Cantonese flick, The Story Of A Discharged Prisoner. (The Chinese title, though, literally True Colours Of A Hero, remained the same.)

Woo’s version was critically acclaimed and earned the distinction of winning Best Film honours at both the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards, arguably the two most prestigious accolades in the Chinese movie industry.

The stature of A Better Tomorrow has grown over time: In 2005, it was No. 2 on the Best 100 Chinese Motion Pictures list selected for the Hong Kong Film Awards, after Spring In A Small Town (1948).

More than two decades after its release, it has inspired a Korean remake of the same name. It opens in cinemas here on Friday.

The success of the film resulted in the creation of a subgenre that was termed “heroic bloodshed” by the editor of Eastern Heroes magazine, Rick Baker, in the late 1980s. He succinctly defined it as “a Hong Kong action film that features a lot of gun play and gangsters rather than kung fu. Lots of blood. Lots of action”.

Woo transplanted the themes of brotherhood, loyalty and righteousness from the wuxia genre into a mobster setting. Then he pumped up the volume on the violence with exuberantly explosive gun battles.

Often, the drama was found in brothers, in arms and in blood, torn between conflicting loyalties as they found themselves on opposite sides of the law.

A typical John Woo-esque entry in the “gun-fu” genre is Johnnie To’s A Hero Never Dies (1998), where Leon Lai and Lau Ching Wan are on opposite sides of a gang war until they are both betrayed by their bosses.

In the streets, A Better Tomorrow inadvertently sold countless pairs of sunglasses of the kind Chow wore in the film.

Woo used the shades from French actor Alain Delon’s eponymous lifestyle brand in homage to the star’s iconic turn as a perfectionist hitman in Jean-Pierre Melville’s stylish thriller Le Samourai (1967).

When the sunglasses promptly flew off the shelves in Hong Kong after the movie came out, Delon sent Chow a personal thank-you note.

Of course, teenage boys who wanted to look cool not only put on shades, they also wore the trenchcoats worn by the swaggering gangsters. They even came to be known colloquially in Cantonese as Mark Gau lau, literally Brother Mark’s coat.

Woo’s leap from sword fights in a little-known wuxia movie such as Last Hurrah For Chivalry (1979) to gun fights was not such an unlikely one given that his mentor was Chang Cheh, the so-called godfather of Hong Kong cinema who was behind martial arts hits such as The One-Armed Swordsman (1967).

The impact of these films went beyond Hong Kong.

Hollywood film-makers such as Quentin Tarantino, who made the violent crime caper Reservoir Dogs (1992), have openly acknowledged the debt they owe to the works of Woo, To and Ringo Lam.

The cultural impact of the film has extended far and wide into the unlikeliest of places, including hip-hop and Japanese anime.

The New York City collective Wu- Tang Clan name-checked the film in their album Wu Tang-Forever (1997) and the hit TV series Cowboy Bebop (1998-1999) referenced it heavily.

There were also, inevitably, the two sequels spawned by Woo’s film, A Better Tomorrow 2 (1987) and A Better Tomorrow 3 (1989), both of which starred Chow.

In fact, no actor came to be more strongly associated with this genre than him, as A Better Tomorrow was the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between Woo and Chow.

The two teamed up on action-crime classics such as The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992) in which a rakish Chow honed his gun-toting and toothpick-chewing skills to a fine art.

Woo continued to explore similar thematic ground after he headed to the United States in 1993 in action thrillers such as Face/Off (1997), his biggest American hit with a worldwide gross of US$245 million then.

But his stylistic touches were starting to turn into cliches and the flying doves, the Mexican stand-offs and the use of slow-motion and freeze frames were threatening to descend into self-parody.

One can even argue over how well A Better Tomorrow itself has held up, but what seems clear is that it continues to excite and inspire and this, perhaps, is its most enduring legacy.

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A Better Tomorrow

Song Hae Sung

The story: Hyuk (Joo Jin Mo) makes good in the South Korean port city of Busan as a mobster after escaping from the North. But he is haunted by the fact that his younger brother Chul (Kim Kang Woo) was left behind. Hyuk eventually tracks him down but their reunion is bittersweet as Chul blames him for the death of their mother.

After a deal goes sour in Thailand, Hyuk is sentenced to three years in prison. When he gets out, he finds that his best friend and fellow gang member Young Chun (Song Seung Heon) has fallen on hard times and Chul is now a police officer.

Real men shed tears and are not afraid of showing their emotions.

At its core, A Better Tomorrow (1986) was a bromantic triangle involving triad member Ho (Ti Lung), his best buddy Mark (Chow Yun Fat) and Ho’s younger brother Kit (Leslie Cheung).

Ho was torn between his brother in arms and his brother in blood; that meant plenty of scope for drama, complete with wailing and anguished emoting.

In this Korean remake, executive produced by the original’s director John Woo, the triangle remains intact. So fully does director Song Hae Sung embrace the bromance, in fact, that he even eschews the token female presence of the Hong Kong version.

But the plot varies between the original and the update. This is unlike Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) which hewed so closely to Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s cop thriller Infernal Affairs (2002) that scenes were recreated shot for shot.

The North-South Korea context grounds the remake in a distinctively charged political context and adds another layer of friction to the relationship between the brothers Hyuk and Chul.

Joo Jin Mo, the suave leading man of films such as the comedy 200 Pounds Beauty (2006), adds stoic nobility to the role of the guilt-stricken and torn Hyuk – and cries beautifully – though Ti Lung gave a more restrained performance in the same role and won the Golden Horse Best Actor award for it.

Kim Kang Woo is more believable as the hurt and angry Chul, improving on the late Leslie Cheung’s eager-beaver cop, which came across exaggerated.

Heart-throb Song Seung Heon is best known for playing the sensitive artist in the weepie TV drama Autumn In My Heart (2000) and he has perhaps the biggest shoes to fill as Young Chun. While he swaggers coolly in shades and a trenchcoat, also the fashion statement of choice in A Better Tomorrow (1986), he does not have quite the same playful insouciance that a toothpick-chewing Chow Yun Fat brought to the role of Mark and won the Best Actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards for it.

Some decent performances notwithstanding, the Korean version is let down by slack pacing – it clocks in at two hours compared to the original’s sleeker 95 minutes – and a gaping plot hole in the final showdown.

Woo’s stylistic trademarks – the trenchcoat flapping in slow motion, the all-out gun battles, the macabre dance of death of flailing limbs amid bullet shower – are all here.

In the end, though, this Tomorrow is not better.

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She Says

JJ Lin

Next

Lizz

Return To Base

Various artists

In the poster for homeboy JJ Lin’s upcoming concert here, he is all rippling, glistening muscle. On his new album, however, the singer-songwriter shows us his softer side by covering the works of female singers.

If there is one trend I want to see come to an end, it is male singers covering women’s songs.

But in this case, there is some justification for the project as Lin had composed all of the music.

So we get Cyndi Wang’s Whenever and A-mei’s Remember sensitively handled by Lin.

It would have been nice, though, to see a greater degree of reinterpretation and rearrangement especially since he had written these numbers.

The selection here is also overwhelmingly tilted towards ballads and the absence of Lin’s catchy, urban tracks is felt.

Perhaps the inspiration for this album was sparked by a medley of women’s songs, including Tanya Chua’s Projectile and Cheer Chen’s Sun, which he did at the Golden Melody Awards in June. Somehow, sadly, the album does not quite capture the electrifying feel of that live performance.

Also included are three new songs, including the title track She Says, which has wistful lyrics by Stefanie Sun about a love that was not meant to be: “Couldn’t wait till night, the petals don’t dare to drop/Green leaves are following, releasing the taste of pain”.

Apart from Lin keeping the flag flying in a low-key year for the local music scene, there are also newer artists putting material out there.

There is Lizz, or Liang Liyi, sporting an Afro hairdo on her new EP Next and indie groups Redpoll, Elyzia and ah5ive banding together on the compilation album Return To Base.

Next has one Mandarin number and three English tracks, of which Insanity Mind and Maybe are original songs penned by her.

Insanity Mind is a pop-rock number about an abusive relationship while Maybe slows things down to contemplate a love that has ended.

The sultry I Want Your Love and the jazzy Like A Virgin – yes, originally by Madonna – are fun but the resulting EP is pulled in too many directions to make a coherent impression.

While Return To Base features three different bands, there is the same lo-fi indie aesthetic that colours the sound throughout.

Redpoll does music reminiscent of playful American lo-fi indie bands such as, say, a less twee All Girl Summer Fun Band, while the number Female Drummer was clearly inspired by Cheer Chen’s Groupies.

Elyzia’s harder-edged rock sound are paired with lyrics with some dramatic flair but the result feels familiar rather than fresh.

The musical identity of ah5ive is probably the murkiest of the lot. It goes from featuring churning guitars on Help Me to the more mainstream pop of Who Can Reach The Final Moment.

The idea of a platform to showcase local indie pop is laudable but in this instance, the raw vocals take a little getting used to and generally need more work. It would also be in the bands’ interest to develop a more distinctive sound.

Maybe they could return to base and regroup before setting off on their next musical venture.

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Gulliver's Travels

Rob Letterman

The story: Slacker mailroom clerk Lemuel Gulliver (Jack Black) blunders into an assignment which takes him to the mysterious Bermuda Triangle when he tries to ask travel editor Darcy (Amanda Peet) out on a date. He winds up in the kingdom of Lilliput and ends up being the champion of its tiny people, along the way antagonising General Edward (Chris O’Dowd), dispensing advice to Princess Mary (Emily Blunt) and finding a best friend in Horatio (Jason Segel).

Jonathan Swift’s 18th-century satirical novel about human nature gets the dumbed-down, glossed-over Hollywood treatment and the results are hardly out of this world.

There is an overlong exposition which establishes how Gulliver is so undriven that he nurses a crush for five years without doing anything about it. It is supposed to give us a better sense of the man but director Rob Letterman could have just skipped the preliminaries and shipped us off to Lilliput pronto.

Instead, what the opening firmly establishes is that this is a Jack Black film. The roly-poly actor was unexpectedly sweet and funny in School Of Rock (2003), in which he was the quirkily unorthodox teacher to a class of straight-laced kids.

Since then, he seems to be reprising the same persona – lovable loser who eventually wins the day – in film after film, including the animated feature Kung Fu Panda (2008).

It is threatening to turn into schtick.

Things improve a little once Gulliver actually travels. After all, if there is anything crying out for 3-D treatment, it would be the scenes contrasting him with the teeny-weeny Lilliputians.

There are some mildly amusing moments showing how they go about building a house, making coffee for Gulliver and even playing live foosball.

But beyond the oh-isn’t-this-cute visuals, scriptwriters Joe Stillman and Nicholas Stoller have little idea what to do with Gulliver. In fact, he comes across as something of an egotistical megalomaniac as he recreates Times Square with his likeness on all the posters and billboards.

You actually start to feel sorry for the intended villain of the piece, General Edward, played with pompous bluster by Chris O’Dowd.

There are also pop culture references galore from Star Wars (1977) to Titanic (1997) as Gulliver concocts tall tales about his life back in Manhattan but there is nothing particularly fresh or funny in the writing.

The whiff of desperation grows stronger as the film proceeds to rip off Transformers (2007) for the showdown and willy-nilly ends with a big song-and- dance number a la Slumdog Millionaire (2008) minus the charm.

It is as if Gulliver is travelling through parodies of other movies rather than having his own adventures.

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Back To The Stars

Chet Lam

On the Mandarin release My Lonely Planet (2009), Hong Kong singer-songwriter Chet Lam went around the world with tracks such as Last Exit To Brooklyn and Dublin.

And in two months’ time, he will perform at the Esplanade as part of its Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts.

But before that, he is headed for the stars and singing in English on this disc. The concept album is inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s fable of innocence and experience, The Little Prince, and the songs are written from the perspectives of different characters.

But even if you are not familiar with the classic French story, there is much to enjoy – from the gentle, guitar-driven musing on Chasing Sunsets and Thanks For Setting Me Free, to the wry wordplay on Trust: “There’s a hole in my heart, drains me from inside/As I keep wandering from love to lust.”

Just when you think the album is a fully acoustic affair, he throws you a curveball on After The Pain, with its gently throbbing beat and synth sounds. The instrumental track From Turkey, With Love serves up an unexpected duet of drums and flute.

Lam’s clear, pure voice suggests that innocence can remain even after we have acquired knowledge and experience, and have loved and lusted. To steal a line from the lyrics of his track, When He Sings: “... when he sings he can break my heart in two.”

LaMusique (CD/DVD)

George Lam

Cantopop veteran George Lam gives classic tunes such as Who Is The Most Loved easy-listening makeovers on his latest release.

As if to dispel the persistent rumours of marital trouble, he also teams up with his wife, singer-actress Sally Yeh, on duets such as 00:10 and Love Remains After Separation. Come to think of it, however, the latter title is not very auspicious.

Love ballads overwhelm this selection. Nevertheless, tracks such as With Love stands out for its different arrangement, giving Lam a chance to belt it out with gusto.

I have never been a fan of his thin upper register, though. Is it my imagination or does he sound more frail now and the notes more pinched?

On the accompanying DVD of his Made In Love gig in Hong Kong in September, one can see the physical effort it took Yeh, who is 49 to Lam’s 63 years, to squeeze out the high notes.

Strictly for fans.

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Time Traveller – The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Masaaki Taniguchi

The story: Scientist Kazuko Yoshiyama falls into a coma after she meets with an accident. She awakes briefly to tell her daughter Akari (Riisa Naka) to travel back in time to send a message to a boy named Kazuo. Akari goes back to 1974 using a potion her mother invented, only to find that no one seems to know who Kazuo is – not even the teenage Kazuko. Meanwhile, a romance begins to blossom between Akari and Ryota (Akiyoshi Nakao), a young man making a low-budget sci-fi film.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was originally serialised in Japanese magazines in 1965 and 1966. It has since been adapted many times, including into a TV series in 1994 and an award-winning anime film in 2006.

While Kazuko Yoshiyama was the protagonist in the novel, the focus shifted to her niece in the anime film, and to her daughter in this third live-action film adaptation.

For all that pedigree, the latest version is not very satisfying. Riisa Naka, who voiced the heroine in the 2006 anime, and Akiyoshi Nakao, from the 2004 TV series Waterboys 2, are modestly engaging and their burgeoning relationship is rather sweet. But they cannot escape from the clutches of time-travel movie cliches and contradictions.

Anyone who has seen films such as Back To The Future (1985) would know that the No. 1 cardinal rule of time travel is: Thou shalt not change the past. But that rule is constantly being flouted by interactions between time travellers and people of that era because otherwise, there would be no movie.

Also, perhaps because this is director Masaaki Taniguchi’s feature film debut, he cannot quite decide on the tone he wants.

The time-travelling sequence is cheesy fun and even prompts a “What the heck?” from Akari. Then it turns into a mystery flick as she tries to track down the elusive Kazuo. Then it becomes a doomed romance. And in the final half-hour, it goes back to sci-fi territory.

The pacing makes this feel more like The Girl Who Leisurely Strolled Through Time.

Still, given the popularity of time travel and this story, there will certainly be another adaptation of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time somewhere down the road. And you don’t need to leap into the future to know that.

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sodagreen "Stations" Tour

Max Pavilion @ Singapore Expo

Last Saturday

There was no sign of coloured hair and the band members were dressed in black and grey. But if Taiwanese indie band sodagreen’s look was relatively subdued, their performance was anything but that.

The evening opened with three numbers from their Summer/Fever (2009) rock album: The Sound That Remains, Summer Summer and King’s Garden.

Lead vocalist Wu Ching-feng’s high-pitched voice, by turns piercingly clear and nasal, was once startling and now familiarly distinctive. He was in fine form throughout and delivered on both the moving ballads such as Incomparable Beauty as well as the energetic boppers including Fever.

As with most Mandopop concerts, the lyrics of the songs were shown on a screen to make it easy for fans to sing along. But in this case, it also made it easier to appreciate Wu’s often dazzling and thoughtful lyrics.

For example, Stopping At Each Station, from the brilliant Daylight Of Spring (2009) record, was inspired by Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi’s musings on whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man.

Despite the absence of regular guitarist He Jing-yang and keyboardist Kung Yu-chi due to national service commitments, the six-member band sounded tight.

They also served up some surprises by rocking out the folksy Daylight and adding little musical flourishes to the retro-sounding The Girl With Red Shoes.

What was rather unusual was the large number of covers that they did, from the late songbird Teresa Teng’s I Only Care About You to local singer Mavis Hee’s Moonlight In The City to the late singer-songwriter Chang Yu-sheng’s My Future Is Not A Dream.

While the band definitely left their stamp on the material, the only quibble would be that it took time away from them performing their own songs.

During the second encore, Wu asked for requests from the enthusiastic fans and then gamely sang snatches of Take Me Away and the Minnan number Chasing Chasing Chasing.

He also held court when it came to the interaction segments, entertaining one and all, including himself, with his teasing and needling of guitarist Liu Jia-kai, bassist Hsieh Hsin-yi and drummer Shi Jun-wei. The two stand-in musicians were not spared either.

The 21/2-hour-long gig ended all too soon with a rousing rendition of one of their earlier hits, Little Universe.

Liu had revealed at one point that he usually drinks beer before going on stage but the fans have no need for alcohol when they have sodagreen to get high on.

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Lesson One

Anthony Neely

This is turning out to be a pretty good year for Taiwanese male newcomers. On the heels of well-received debuts by Weibird Wei and Yen-J comes Anthony Neely’s anticipated Lesson One.

Taiwanese-American Neely, 24, had his break, like so many others these days, on the singing competition show One Million Star. His version of Damien Rice’s ballad The Blower’s Daughter wowed the judges and got a record- breaking high score. It is included here as a bonus track but, thankfully, Lesson One is not a grab bag of covers.

Neely sounds earthier than his boy-next-door looks suggest, and that dose of grittiness is perfect on rock tracks such as Happy Armageddon and Brawl. It also adds an interesting grain to more conventional love ballads such as The Last Embrace.

He also shows his versatility by contributing lyrics to the English track Sorry That I Loved You, a radio-friendly emo number that would not sound out of place on, say, a One Republic album.

While Neely’s sound comes across as being less distinctive than Wei or Yen-J’s, the overall verdict would be: Lesson One, nicely done.

Back In Control

Gary Chaw

On the nostalgia-laden opener Grandpa, Malaysian singer-songwriter Gary Chaw shows us a kinder, gentler side.

He croons: “You led me through winding alleys/Where the wind blows and leaves fall/You said child, venture forth bravely/See what the world is like.”

It is all rather sweet and heartwarming. Or it could just be damage control.

This is Chaw’s first album after a highly publicised drunken brawl with Hong Kong singer-songwriter Justin Lo last year and he wants to show that he is, well, back in control. Apparently, showing vulnerability doesn’t hurt either.

You wonder, though, if he is singing a reminder to himself on the jazzy Champagne Times: “This is just nice, no need for another glass/Don’t go beyond this slightly buzzed feeling.”

Perhaps, he could consider being the designated driver next time.

Da First Episode

Da Mouth

Taiwanese hip-hop quartet Da Mouth have sweetened their best-of compilation with an additional disc of new material that makes this release a savoury deal.

They cheekily mouth off on Impolite – “Don’t forget to put on cologne when going out/Watch your spittle when talking” – and on Big Composer: “Where can I find inspiration, please, please/I don’t want to steal it from anywhere.”

Less successful is the English track Secret Life. To clear up any confusion, “I’m addicted like an addict” does not qualify as a simile or as a good lyric.

But past hits from their last three albums, including tracks such as Rock It and The Outcome?, make it clear that they can be counted on to provide the good-time, party vibe.

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The Fourth Portrait

Chung Mong-hong

The story: After his father dies, 10-year-old Hsiao Hsiang (Pi Hsiao-hai) is left to fend for himself. His estranged mother (Hao Lei) turns up and takes him to live with her and her husband (Leon Dai). Hsiang finds his new home oppressive and also has strange dreams of the older brother he has not seen in more than six years. But life is not all grim and forbidding and he finds some joy in his friendship with a somewhat simple-minded deadbeat called “Big Gun”.

Lights, camera, act cute. It is easy to add a tyke to a film and then simply milk that adorableness for laughs. Think Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone (1990), Taiwanese child star Bin Bin in a number of 1980s comedies and the upcoming Little Fockers.

Films which genuinely look at the world from a child’s point of view are few and far between. Ponette (1996), about a little girl dealing with her mother’s death and Nobody Knows (2004), a heartbreaking and chilling story of abandoned children, come to mind.

Add to that select group writer-director Chung Mong-hong’s The Fourth Portrait. Despite his background in advertising, there is nothing slick or glib in how he paints this boy’s life.

In the early scenes when Hsiao Hsiang is left alone after his father’s death, Chung steers away from melodrama and just quietly observes the boy going about the business of living – playing alone, pilfering food and then picking up discarded goods with a surly janitor who keeps an eye out for him. A big reason why it all hangs together is Pi Hsiao-hai, 11, who was named the Best Actor at the Taipei Film Festival in July this year.

Chung draws out an unaffected and

affecting performance from the first- time actor. Hsiao Hsiang is a precocious boy who understands more than he lets on. But at the same time, he is also very much a child for whom a lot of things do not make sense. All that comes through in Pi’s portrayal.

The supporting cast is also top-notch. China actress Hao Lei won the Best Supporting Actress Golden Horse Award for her turn as the mother reconnecting with her child, though the part feels a little underwritten. Better yet, is the brooding menace actor-director Leon Dai brings to his role as the stepfather hiding a terrible secret.

The Fourth Portrait unfolds in unexpected ways and somehow manages to work in disparate elements of domestic

violence, a comic crime spree, family ties and even a ghost story. Chung ties the film together with four portraits drawn by Hsiang illustrating the different relationships in his life.

At the end of the film, Hsiang prepares to sketch his own face. It is an enigmatic moment that holds out promise and yet fraught with uncertainty as he stands on the cusp of knowledge and self-awareness. And the future remains tantalisingly undrawn.

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Started Early, Took My Dog

Kate Atkinson

Crime can pay. It certainly has for Atkinson.

The British writer’s first book, Behind The Scenes At The Museum, which delved into the family history of a middle-class Englishwoman, won her the 1995 Whitbread Book Of The Year. But it seems that she has found her true calling with detective novels, beginning with Case Histories in 2004.

Her speciality is in charmingly flawed characters who are all too real in their foibles and yet retain a deep sense of morality.

There is ex-detective Tracy Waterhouse who indulges in food to fill the emptiness. Over the years, she has attended more funerals than weddings: “Murder victims mostly. Never been to a christening. Said something about your life, didn’t it?”

Then there is Jackson Brodie, cop-turned-private detective: “It used to be that his bark was worse than his bite, now it was the other way round.”

He is snooping around on behalf of a client trying to find her birth parents.

For Tracy and Jackson, their central core of goodness sees them taking on unexpected responsibilities one fateful day.

A third key character is Tilly, an elderly actress beginning to lose her grip on reality.

Add to the mix an old murder case which continues to cast a sinister pall over events unfolding in the present.

Atkinson has framed the novel thus: The paths of all three criss-cross at the beginning of the book and again at the end. Even though they seem set on a collision course after the first momentous meetings, it is safe to say that you would not be able to see the turns the story would need to take in order for that to happen.

In contrast to the late Stieg Larsson’s exhaustively detailed plot-boilers, Atkinson’s novels use plot as a device to get under the skin of superbly drawn characters who are at once tough and vulnerable.

The ending is a teaser which indicates that Atkinson is not quite done with Jackson or Tracy just yet. Which is great news for readers since they will not be either by the time they finish the book.

If you like this, read: Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (2005, $15.27, Bookdepository.co.uk). In his first outing, investigator Jackson Brodie joins the dots among three apparently unrelated tragedies.

(ST)

The 2nd Home

Kay Tse

Long album gestation periods seem to be in vogue these days.

The 2nd Home, Hong Kong singer Kay Tse’s first full-length Mandarin album, has arrived five years after her last effort, Kay One (2005).

This is positively speedy, compared to fellow singer Denise Ho, who took nine years to release her maiden Mandarin album.

Like Ho’s recent Unnamed.Poem, Tse’s release is a considered affair, with top singer-songwriters such as Khalil Fong and LaLa Hsu contributing compositions.

The tender warmth of her voice comes across well in Mandarin, though Home seems to be a tad less adventurous compared to her last Cantonese record Slowness (2009).

On ballads such as Fong’s Frailty, Tse draws you in emotionally with lyrics such as: “What are we living for, what is love worth/So many fake moves, we are all lonely”.

Farewell, by sodagreen’s Wu Ching- feng, is another stand-out.

Wedged between the rock-flavoured I Think and the closer Ten Years, the track Orchid Fingers, which features Beijing opera artist Li Yugang, sits a little uneasily in the line-up.

But it is an overall noteworthy effort. The album title is heartening: Tse is staying in - not merely straying onto – Mandopop territory.

Wild Rose 2009 LIVE CONCERT (2CDs/DVD)

Penny Tai

To mark her decade-long stint in the music business, Malaysian singer-songwriter Penny Tai held a concert at the Taipei International Convention Centre in November last year.

Naturally, her best-known hits are all here, on this live recording, including Blessing On The Street Corner, How, The Love You Want and Crazy Love, for which she won the Golden Melody Award for Best Composer in 2006.

The accompanying DVD completes the audio-visual experience.

You get to see, for example, Tai using her body as a human drum for the concert’s opening number Blowing Beep.

She has written some lovely ballads over the years, but it seems like she has been overshadowed by the popularity of her songs. Listening to and watching her on stage, one starts to wonder “What now?” of Tai’s career.

Bii Story

Bii

If Bii did not exist, some marketing exec would have dreamed him up.

The singer-songwriter’s father is Taiwanese and his mother is Korean. Such a bicultural background allows him to perfectly straddle Mandopop and K-pop.

Accordingly, there are Mandarin and Korean versions of key tracks, such as After Turning Around and Bye Bye Bye, crooned in Bii’s smooth, clean voice. To ensure maximum exposure for this newcomer, several of the songs have been pegged to a Taiwanese idol drama.

This, together with the collection of postcards featuring Bii, packaged with the CD, suggests a plausible trajectory of TV series roles and theme songs, enroute to popularity and adulation.

But, perhaps, we are getting ahead of ourselves in this story.

(ST)

An old friend turned 30 recently and marked the occasion with a bang. The festivities took place over two nights at the Taipei Arena and more than 60 artists, from rock band Mayday to Mandopop balladeer Wakin Chau, turned up to celebrate this milestone.

Happy birthday, Rock Records.

At the second concert on Sunday, the performers’ affection for the iconic Taiwanese record label was palpable over the course of five hours. The celebrations will continue in Singapore on Jan 22 and also travel to Hong Kong, Malaysia and China.

As one familiar hit followed another and one familiar face followed another, it was a reminder of how much good music Rock Records has put out over the years.

One of the biggest pleasures was seeing stars from the past grace the stage once more.

Here were Wa Wa belting out hits in her trademark husky vocals from Heavy Rain (1991) and Alex To dancing up a storm to Saving The Earth and then stripping to a pair of shorts that advertised the word “Rock” for the rousing Take It Off.

There was Tarcy Su, as big a Mandopop star as they come in the 1990s, belting out her monster hit Lemon Tree and then unexpectedly tearing into a Minnan number, Chase Chase Chase.

When Malaysian duo Wuyin Liangpin emerged, a collective gasp went up in the stadium. Michael Wong and Victor Wong (no relation) went their solo ways in 2000 and it has been a long time since they shared a stage as a team. Too bad they performed only a single song, Palm, which was one of their earliest successes.

Then again, given the turnout, the performers had time only for a few numbers each, leaving you wanting more. And if some singer or song was not your cup of tea, you did not have to wait long for someone else to take the spotlight.

What was surprising was how little was actually new or unknown to me. Some were songs that have lain dormant and half-remembered all this time, while others boasted familiar refrains nestled in less familiar songs by less-known singers.

Even the segment which showcased Rock Records’ earliest material in the early 1980s – from the folk pop of Autumn Cicada to pop ballad Forget Who I Am – triggered a few moments of recognition.

While some singers have come and gone, others have remained closely associated with Rock Records for much of their careers.

Michelle Pan, the first singer to sign on to the label, still has a honeyed alto that is a treat to listen to. She declared: “The blood of Rock Records flows in me.”

Other stalwarts such as rocker Wu Bai and singer-songwriter Bobby Chen Sheng also rallied round for the bash. Chen teamed up with host Cao Qitai for some humorous banter as Cao milked his forgotten sole song, Show Must Be Going On, for every last bit of drama.

Still, others were conspicuous by their absence, including singer-songwriters Lo Ta-yu and Jonathan Lee, as well as Sarah Chen and Sandy Lam, who had some of Rock’s biggest albums.

Some could not make it due to conflicting schedules and even the roster of artists who performed on the two nights in Taipei differed slightly. There was some speculation on the reasons for certain no-shows but, really, it did not dampen the highlights-filled festivities one whit.

Mayday singer Ashin, whose band rocked out the Minnan number Fool, unleashed a riposte to those who say that Rock’s voice has grown softer in recent years: “Have you grown deaf?”

When the electricity was cut off at midnight halfway through Wu Bai’s Love You For 10,000 Years, due to the city’s regulations, the fervour of the fans remained undiminished. Everyone sang along with gusto and lingered on when it was over, reluctant to let the evening end.

One final song had been planned – a mass singalong of Happy Paradise, a track first recorded by Rock’s stars in 1986. Even though the stage was now off-limits and the microphones silent, the contingent of performers began singing it and slowly, people began to join in.

It was a lovely end to an unforgettable celebration of music and friendship, and a beautiful beginning for whatever is coming next.

(ST)