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Khalil Fong

Hong Kong-based singer-songwriter Khalil Fong is singing the blues on his fifth studio album of original

material. The title refers to the age he first learnt to play the guitar, under the influence of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King.

In a spoken interlude at the beginning of Because Of You, the question is posed whether the new songs are different from his previous offerings. It is probably rhetorical since he has always plied his trade in soul and R&B, from his debut album Soul Boy (2005) to 2008’s Orange Moon. The difference is perhaps most apparent on the English-language opener Gotta Make A Change.

It is a call to social activism and is infused with the spirit of the blues: “It’s your world, don’t forget your world/Don’t you turn your back on the things that you do.”

It is apparent from his songs that Fong’s concerns go beyond the narrow and personal.

He rocks out on Tan Hua (the Dutchman’s Pipe Cactus) and Zhang Yongcheng (the name of skilled martial artist Ip Man’s wife), while Love- winning Strategy, Two Person Journey and Not So Easy explore modern-day relationships.

The quirkily titled No Mushroom Friends was

inspired by a news article about a murder committed by a man after he took some hallucinogenic mushrooms. The folksy ballad serves as a counterpoint to the dark topic and he puns “no mushroom friends” with “innocent friends” in Mandarin.

There are lots of singers on the R&B wagon, but Fong is one of the rare few taking the reins and heading off in a different direction.

My Girl

Kim Hyung Jun

The, Park Jung Min

Park Jung Min

SS501 bandmates Kim Hyung Jun and Park Jung Min square off with the release of their solo EPs.

It is all friendly competition as the group insist they are still intact.

Which probably means that they will stick together until a solo career or two takes off.

Kim’s dance-pop offering is more predictable, though still easy on the ears. The standout track here is oH! aH!.

He had me at: “Bomb-Bomb-B Bomb-Bomb-B Bomb-Bomb-B Bomb-B-Bomb Yo”.

Park mixes it up slightly. The mawkish Tears Of Happiness is thankfully followed by the more uptempo tracks Walk Away Walk Away and Not Alone.

The seasonal-sounding Every Day With You Is Christmas, complete with sleighbells, is the more successful ballad.

In the battle of heart-throb pictures that come with the musical offerings, Kim looks a tad chubby in some poses, while Park boasts sharper cheekbones and more liberal use of lipstick and eyeliner.

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The Adventures Of The Mad Chinaman

Esplanade Recital Studio/Tuesday

The title of home-grown singer-songwriter Dick Lee’s solo revue is taken from his 2004 autobiography. The show, as he jokingly told the full- house crowd, is for those who cannot read. Tickets for all three performances have been snapped up.

But even those who can read will enjoy this intimate evening of music and reminiscing which takes the audience from Lee’s childhood right up to 1989, the year in which the seminal album The Mad Chinaman was released and which made his reputation. The record, which gleefully fused Eastern and Western musical influences and featured a polyglot of languages, was a breakthrough effort and won him fans in the region as far afield as Japan.

The 54-year-old looked dapper in a pale pink suit in the transformed Esplanade Recital Studio. The usually bare staging area looked like a cosy living room, complete with a piano. Lee proved to be an engaging story-teller and often a self-deprecating and humorous one.

There was a running gag over his age and his announcement that he was born in “nineteen fifty-...” trailed off into a volley of coughs as he explained that he was allergic to his year of birth. He delved into family history and shared anecdotes about his father Lee Kip Lee, 90, and mother Elizabeth Lee, 77, who were in the audience on Tuesday night.

In between stories of his rascally shenanigans, Lee would take to the piano. He sang the nostalgia-laden Return To Beauty World from the 1985 album of the same name, the jaunty Wo Wo Ni Ni (literally, Me Me You You) from The Mad Chinaman and also paid tribute to his key influences – Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Elton John.

A highlight of the revue was when he performed a medley of stinkers, “a bunch of songs I can’t stand and I hope you hate them too”. They included “horrible song” Ballade Pour Adeline, the well-known piano piece popularised by Richard Clayderman, and an exaggeratedly twangy performance of the John Denver song Country Roads.

To the audience’s delight, Lee went on to parody the recent General Election to the tune of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance and Rihanna’s Umbrella. Sample lyric: “Vivian B, tell us, was it all an error error?”

Another crowd-pleaser was a segment on hilarious television clips from the 1980s, complete with Lee’s running commentary as he gamely made fun of his hairstyles and fashion faux pas. There were poignant moments in the show as well. Some might still remember the controversial Pope outfit he wore for his 50th birthday bash, but there is a sad story about a family tragedy that explains his fabulous themed birthday parties.

There was also a glimpse of the entertainer’s serious side when he explained why his album was called The Mad Chinaman. It came about because he was confused about his cultural identity and also because of his anger, as a Chinese, over the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4, 1989.

The final song of the evening was Home, the first National Day song written by a Singaporean, as Lee proudly pointed out. His mellifluous singing might not be as polished as, say, Kit Chan’s, but there was real emotion in his delivery and the crowd responded with a standing ovation.

Listening to Lee’s distinctively Singaporean songs, particularly those from his lesser-known albums in the 1980s, one cannot help but think that he was ahead of his time. The records might have bombed then but there is clearly an appreciative audience for them today.

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Dylan Dog: Dead Of Night

Kevin Munroe

The story: When her father is killed by a mysterious creature, Elizabeth (Anita Briem) seeks down-and-out paranormal investigator Dylan Dog (Brandon Routh) to look into the case. He does so with the help of his undead assistant Marcus (Sam Huntington). Based on the Italian comic book Dylan Dog by Tiziano Sclavi.

When American actor Brandon Routh was announced as the new Superman in October 2004, he flew from obscurity to celebrity overnight.

But Superman Returns (2006) failed to take off and his career was stuck in Clark Kent-like mundanity.

With a recurring role as a secret agent in season three of the TV series Chuck and now a lead film role, it seems that Routh might be making a return of his own.

Unfortunately, he is miscast as Dylan Dog. The strapping frame that made him the natural choice for donning a superhero cape feels somewhat out of place in this noirish crime thriller.

He is not quite persuasive as the wary investigator who has paid a price for dealing with werewolves and vampires. For one thing, his deadpan delivery could have been drier.

Still, his performance is not so bad that it sinks the film, which is buoyed by wry dialogue and a quirky sense of humour.

Providing some laughs is the newly undead Marcus (Huntington, incidentally, was also Routh’s sidekick in Superman Returns as photographer Jimmy Olsen) who reluctantly comes to terms with his unusual status and his now less-than-savoury dietary requirements.

The film also has fun melding the paranormal aspect of the story with more familiar concepts. There is a zombie support group and a shop supplying unusual spare parts.

Satisfyingly, good and evil are presented in shades of grey rather than a simple dichotomy of good humans versus evil monsters.

Despite its Italian inspiration, Dylan Dog actually calls to mind the American TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), with its mix of supernatural elements, action and comedy.

Even without new tricks, this Dog still entertains.

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Perfect Life

Yoga Lin

Taiwanese singer Yoga Lin’s last album Senses Around (2009) was an impressive concept album that pointed to his growth and ambition as a musician.

Perfect Life, the third record from the champ of the singing contest One Million Star in 2007, is yet another winner.

The 23-year-old works with a wide range of composers and lyricists. Yet, Perfect Life feels cohesive, even as it offers something to pique one’s interest and hold one’s attention throughout.

The opening title track teams American songwriter Roger Joseph Manning Jr with Hong Kong lyricist Lin Xi and the result is a joyful jolt of pop: “Such a perfect life/How can you bear not to live it well/How can you bear not to be happy.”

Wake Up, composed by Li Shih-i, has lyrics by Wyman Wong which slip in a reference to the hit sci-fi film Inception (2010): “Don’t care how bad these crazy times are/Just want to stay at level six of my subconscious.”

While Senses Around had the beautifully aching ballad that was Heartbreak, it is Freedom that will move you here: “Only you understand that I’m like a caged wild animal/Yearning for freedom among skyscrapers.”

While I used to think that Lin had a rather mannered way of singing, it seems less and less an affectation than his way of emotionally connecting with a song. Take his reading of the Chen Hsiao-hsia-penned Good Night, which comes on like an oasis of calm every time it is played on the radio. It is a soothing balm which ends the album on a lilting note of hope.

The tacked-on Fly My Way is rightly termed a bonus track as the theme song for an online game does not fit into the overall scheme.

I am not a fan of lazy covers albums, but an accompanying disc of added material is generous and welcome. After displaying impeccable taste in collaborators on the album, Lin also gets to show his eclectic taste in music on the bonus disc by taking on tracks from Blur’s Song 2 to Buddy Holly’s Everyday to Mavis Fan’s Darling.

Life might not be perfect, but music can sometimes make it seem so.

Break Time

U-Kiss

Attention, K-pop fans: This is the fourth EP and last on which we have the original seven members of Korean boyband U-Kiss. Alexander and Ki Bum have left but, already, their shoes have been filled on the group’s new EP after this disc, Bran New Kiss.

The change in line-up is unlikely to make any difference to their dance-

floor-friendly sound, in any case. Here, they tell you to Shut Up, Light It Up and to Rock Ya Body.

Surrender to the beat and move your feet, and marvel at how apt the album title turned out to be.

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In A Better World

Susanne Bier

The story: Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is a Swedish doctor who divides his time between working in a Sudanese refugee camp and living in Denmark. His 12-year-old son Elias (Markus Rygaard) is bullied at school and new boy Christian (William Johnk Nielsen) comes to his rescue. When Anton is later slapped by a stranger at a playground, Christian comes up with a terrible way to exact revenge.

The Best Foreign Language Film award is no more than a sideshow at the Oscars. But the category has often highlighted cinematic gems from around the world, including the devastating police state drama The Lives Of Others (2006) and the bleak humour of war in No Man’s Land (2001).

The Danish film In A Better World (2010), while not exactly in the same league, is still a worthy winner. It is a well-meaning film which asks moral questions about the way we live our lives.

Violence is everywhere in the film, from the barbaric acts perpetrated by a sadistic war lord in Sudan to bullying at school to a small incident at a playground, which quickly escalates to a random stranger slapping Anton around. The original Danish title is, in fact, The Revenge.

Anton, though, turns the other cheek at the playground and later tells his two sons and Christian: “You just can’t go around beating people up. That doesn’t help anything. What kind of world would we get? He’s a jerk. If I hit him, I’m a jerk too.”

The problem is, meekness is seen as weakness, particularly when the children have just learnt a different lesson: Elias stops getting bullied when Christian pulls a knife on the ring leader.

The film could easily have been didactic and preachy but Persbrandt’s Anton is not just a saintly do-gooder. Faced with the dilemma of whether or not to treat the war lord who storms into the medical compound with men and guns, Anton ultimately proves to be fallibly human.

Rygaard turns in a strong performance as the persecuted and easily influenced Elias, while Nielsen delivers the goods as the grieving and angry Christian.

There is plenty to mull over here and if anything, there is perhaps too much plot packed in, what with Anton’s crumbling marriage and Christian’s strained relationship with his father after his mother’s death.

But in the face of vigilante thrillers which barely bat an eyelid over the consequences of vengeance, In A Better World looks at the ugliness of violence squarely in the eye and asks how we should respond to it.

The lesson here is not an easy one to teach. It is an even harder one to learn.

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Opus VI – Atlantis

F.I.R.

Six albums in, F.I.R. are exploring and tinkering with their sound, pushing the boundaries of their musical map. The Taiwanese trio made their name with a distinctive pop-rock groove. Then, for a while, producer Ian Chen, guitarist/vocalist Real Huang and singer Faye Chan threatened to become predictable and boring.

On their latest album, however, they do not sound like their usual selves – and that is a good thing. There is a tinge of Irish folk to opener Atlantis while Chinese orchestral instruments can be heard on Flowers Aren’t Flowers.

These touches do provide some musical interest, even if one is not sure what point they are making with regard to the national or ethnic identity of Atlantis.

Meanwhile, the breezy and optimistic Say Hello and Screw (as in the metal fastener) show us another side of F.I.R., even if they are not exactly sailing into uncharted waters.

BLAQ Style 3D Edition (CD & DVD)

MBLAQ

Before K-pop fans get too excited, the 3-D effects here apply to a photo booklet and not the DVD. The album comes with a pair of low-tech blue- and-red-lens cardboard spectacles and squinting at the images is more likely to give you a headache than a rush of blood to the head.

Music-wise, the quintet are pretty much interchangeable with the other Korean boybands out there; even the track titles – Stay, Cry, You, Tonight, Darling – are as generic as they come.

Still, the songs from Music Boys Live in Absolute Quality (MBLAQ, above right) are consistently listenable with their R&B-influenced dance grooves.

The DVD includes two music videos and a making-of clip in which you get to see superstar Rain giving his proteges pointers. Unfortunately, it seems to come with only Korean subtitles.

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The Detective 2

Oxide Pang

The story: The near-sighted private detective Tam (Aaron Kwok) looks into a series of seemingly unrelated grisly murders upon the request of his police inspector friend Fung Chak (Liu Kai Chi). Their ongoing investigation alternates with the story of a young boy who grows up to be disturbed and violent when he finds out the truth about his parentage.

Late in this sequel to his 2007 hit The Detective, writer-director Oxide Pang slips in a homage to Roman Polanski’s noir classic Chinatown (1974).

It is an unexpected moment of quirk which does not feel out of place given that the film is set in Thailand, with Thai extras milling about and Thai pop playing in the background, and yet the key protagonists are Hong Kong actors speaking in (dubbed-over) Mandarin.

There is a fascinatingly gritty sense of time and place evoked with nary a tourist attraction in sight. It probably helped that Hong Kong-born Pang had started his film career in Bangkok as a colourist.

A film, though, has to get more than the mood and setting right. And where The Detective 2 comes up short is in the story. The set-up of a seemingly unrelated series of grisly murders is promising, but the way that Tam has his eureka moments is far too convenient.

It is also not quite clear how the police narrowed down their list of suspects to a bunch of psycho cuckoos, including TV veteran Cheung Siu Fai’s broad turn as a volatile and mentally unstable man.

Still, the story is less preposterous than star Aaron Kwok’s previous crime thriller outing Murderer (2009), in which the villain is revealed to be an adult in the body of a child. In fact, Pang seems to be taking a dig at it when Tam asks incredulously at one point: “Is it possible for a kid to be a killer?”

It also helps that Kwok slips easily into the role of the smarter-than-he-looks scrappy investigator with severe myopia and there is a genial vibe to the friendship between Tam and Liu Kai Chi’s inspector Fung Chak.

The Detective 2 is a little more rooted in reality, minus the supernatural elements of the first instalment. However, Pang seems to be stuck in horror-film mode and the overly obvious music score can be rather distracting at times.

The ending leaves the way open for another sequel, one which would likely focus on Tam’s past and the mystery of his parents’ murders. The premise alone makes it seem like it would be worth investigating.

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Beastly

Daniel Barnz

The story: High-school kid Kyle (Alex Pettyfer) is rich, good-looking and arrogant. When he humiliates fellow student Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen), she casts a spell that makes him look as ugly on the outside as he is inside. His only hope for the curse to be lifted is for Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens) to see beyond the surface and fall in love with him. A modern-day retelling of the fairy tale Beauty And The Beast based on Alex Flinn’s 2007 novel.

Just because it is a teen-flick makeover does not mean it has to suck. Clueless (1995) was a clued-in update of Jane Austen’s Emma, while 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) was a smart and sassy take on Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew.

Beastly, however, is a heavy-handed and clunky affair weighed down by leaden lines and a lame story.

The film has one central message of looking beyond appearances – and it hammers that home repeatedly. Because it does not have very much to say, it relies heavily on a soundtrack packed with indie bands such as The Vines and Death Cab For Cutie to pad up scenes.

Writer-director Daniel Barnz seems to have no idea how teenagers actually speak and gives us howlers along the lines of “I guess this cage set me free”.

The plot mechanics are laboured as well. The way Lindy ends up in the same apartment as Kyle because of an accidental shooting simply makes no sense.

Playing the underwritten role of Lindy, Hudgens, from the High School Musical series, is sweet but bland.

The touted Next Big Thing Pettyfer comes off worse. This is strike No.2 for him after the critical lambasting and mediocre box-office performance of sci-fi drama I Am Number Four (2011).

Stuck in the sidekick roles are Lisa Gay Hamilton (from TV’s Men Of A Certain Age) as the kindly and wise housekeeper Zola from Jamaica and Neil Patrick Harris (TV’s How I Met Your Mother) as the blind wisecracking tutor Will. They deserve better.

Early on in the film, Kyle thunders: “Embrace the suck.” Erm, no thanks, I’ll pass.

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Lee Chien Na

Gina Lee

With so many singing competition winners jostling to release albums, no wonder the wait for those who did not win can be rather long.

Taiwan’s Gina Lee made it to the top 10 of the popular One Million Star show in 2007 but is releasing her Mandarin debut album only now.

Her Golden Horse win for Best New Performer in the romantic drama omnibus Juliets (2010) probably didn’t hurt.

A pity then that her promise in acting is not repeated in her music. The most interesting tracks here are the two Minnan songs which bookend the record.

Last Train puts an R&B spin on a rather conventional scenario – “The train slowly pulls out of the station/Leaving your love” – and even samples George Michael’s Careless Whisper.

Meanwhile, Ardently Thinking Of Him is retro-licious sounding, complete with lyrics about pining for an old love.

The rest of the album is, alas, largely mired in maudlin ballad territory.

Still, if things don’t work out for her musically, at least she has a back-up career option.

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Red Dragonflies

Liao Jiekai

The story: Junior college students Rachel (Oon Yee Jeng), Tien (Yeo Shang Xuan) and Jun (Ong Kuan Loong) explore disused railway tracks and then an accident happens. Years later, Rachel (played by Ng Xuan Ming as an adult) and Tien (played by Jason Hui as an adult) cross paths again.

The title references the 1990 Mandopop hit of the same name by the now-defunct boyband Little Tigers. The song is a light-hearted affair about youthful idyll and chasing after one’s dreams.

While the film takes on some of the same themes, the mood here is different. It unfolds at a leisurely and ruminative pace and works best when it focuses on the friends as they follow the abandoned railway tracks. It is an exploration for the audience as well as they wend through tunnels and lush foliage, and past homes with backyards and walls with graffiti.

What also helps to draw one in is the unforced banter and naturalistic interaction among the non-professional actors.

But since this is not enough to fill out a full-length feature, writer-director Liao Jiekai adds another dimension to the story. A 26-year-old Rachel returns to Singapore from abroad to hold an art exhibition and she reconnects with Tien.

The fact that they never mention Jun is intriguing at first but it soon becomes frustrating. Also, the ending of the film introduces some unexpected elements and throws up questions which remain unresolved.

Subtlety and a low-key approach are too often under-rated qualities in local productions but in this case, they are taken to the extreme and the movie ends up feeling murky rather than illuminating, on themes such as nostalgia, growing up and how the past shapes people.

The spirit of exploration is alive and well in Red Dragonflies but, unfortunately, this feature debut feels like it may have wandered off the tracks.

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