It's All About Love
Jam Hsiao
With each new album, Taiwan’s Jam Hsiao has steadily moved away from commercial pop to a rock sound he clearly has an affinity for.
Opening number Holmes sets the tone as Hsiao’s vocals swagger. There is even a swelling of voices chorusing: “We are all lonely, so rely ever more, want to love even more.” He composed the music while Mayday’s Ashin wrote the lyrics about detective Sherlock Holmes “investigating who murdered his privacy”.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the sound of prog rock in Mandarin.
The rest of the album explores more directly the theme of love: from familial love in Father to romantic love in Story to the fundamental nature of love in the title track penned by sodagreen’s prolific Wu Ching-feng.
The album might not be to everyone’s taste, though. In Taiwan, the album tumbled out of the top 10 after debuting at No. 2 on the G-music album chart.
But Hsiao is living up to the Mr Rock moniker that he adopted for his concert tour from 2009 to last year. So props to him for staying true to himself and his music.

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Canace Yi Fan
Taiwanese singer Canace Yi Fan released her first album, My Music – Bravely Roaming The World, in 2003. It has taken more than nine years for her follow-up to materialise.
No doubt, winning the inaugural season of the singing contest Golden Melody Superstar in 2010 helped. Hence, the name of this disc.
The title track is a manifesto to be her own person. The lyrics are full of attitude and even pack in sarcasm for the music business: “Not afraid of gossip, only afraid reporters won’t write it, music is at most the icing on the cake.”
The promising rock-tinged beginning, though, leads into an album of mostly ballads – from the radio-friendly Collapsed From Tears to the dated-sounding Forbidden To Turn Around.
Merry X’mas 2025 is a cutesy oddity cashing in on the festive season, which has nothing to do with the rest of the album. Yi Fan’s restart could have done without it.
(ST)

Red Vacance Black Wedding
Kim Tai Sik, Park Chul Soo
Actor Jo Seon Mook gets to have lots of sex in this Korean doublebill. In Red Vacance, he is a philandering husband who ends up with his wife (Lee Jin Joo) and mistress (Ahn Ji Hye) in the same vacation cottage. A scene of the wife chomping on a cucumber foreshadows what is to come.
In Black Wedding, he is a professor who officiates at the wedding of the student (Oh In Hye) he has been having a torrid affair with. It details an obsessive sexual relationship and makes a mockery of marriage.
The humour is dark and intermittently funny in Vacance, while Wedding is indulgent sexual farce without the laughs.
The doublebill set-up feels like an arch exercise in movie- making for directors Kim Tai Sik (Red Vacance and Driving With My Wife’s Lover, 2006) and Park Chul Soo (Black Wedding and Green Chair, 2005).
It is an in-joke whose punchline is known only to Kim and Park.
(ST)

The Guillotines
Andrew Lau
The story: The Guillotines are a secret assassination team first assembled by Qing-dynasty emperor Yongzheng. Their weapon of choice is a flying guillotine capable of decapitating its victim. Led by Leng (Ethan Juan), they chase after the messianic rebel leader Wolf (Huang Xiaoming).

How many ways can Taiwanese actor Ethan Juan cry? He is bawling his eyes out in what is meant to be an emotional scene but all I can think is: Was that how he cried in the gangster drama Monga (2010) as well?
Then, as if to demonstrate his versatility, he gets to work his tear ducts in another emo scene soon after. Except that this time, he is more restrained. Or maybe because there is a ballad playing and the whole thing feels like an overwrought music video. This is what goes through one’s mind when one is not invested in the fates of the characters unfolding on the screen.
A key plot strand here is whether the Guillotines will survive as a group. After all, they are seen as a dirty little secret and with firearms coming into the picture under Yongzheng’s son Qianlong, the emperor no longer has a need for them.
But given that the members of the team are barely differentiated from one another, it is hard to care. The most fleshed-out are Leng and lone female member, Musen (Li Yuchun).
Leng and Haidu (Shawn Yue) had played alongside Qianlong as kids but led different lives when they grew up. Increasingly, Leng finds his loyalties torn between his allegiance to the king and his ties to his team. Eventually, tears will flow.
The arc for Musen is potentially interesting as she, captured by Wolf, begins to see things from a different perspective.
Too bad she is played by the blah Li, who keeps getting cast in films because of her popularity as a singer in China.
For a while, Chinese actor Huang intrigues as the beatific rebel leader with flowy locks. In the end, he turns out, confusingly, to be a soft- hearted messianic figure who has an oddly intense relationship with Leng.
And for a 3-D movie about a killer weapon, the visuals were disappointing. The sequences detailing the workings of it and some close-up shots were too obviously computer-generated.
This is not a movie to lose your head over.
(ST)

Arbitrage
Nicholas Jarecki
The story: Billionaire Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is juggling family life, his French artist mistress and a merger deal that would ensure the survival of his hedge fund. It also means that his ill-advised gamble on a Russian copper mine would remain unexposed. Then a car accident happens and his world threatens to spin out of control.

Despite the title, this is not a financial drama in the vein of Margin Call (2011). Nor is it as compelling.
Besides, while the term arbitrage refers to the exploitation of a price difference between different markets, that does not describe the financial transactions in the movie.
Simply put, what Robert Miller does in order to push through the merger is fraud or lying or cheating, as another character points out witheringly.
The set-up for the film by first-time director Nicholas Jarecki is also a little too obvious in this post Occupy Wall Street-protest movement age.
Robert is just too rich to be the good guy. And when he is first shown as the loving husband and father at his 60th birthday party, you know that the facade is going to crumble soon enough.
And it does. He leaves his own birthday celebration to cavort about with his mistress Julie (Laetitia Casta) after fobbing off his wife Ellen (an underused Susan Sarandon) with some excuse.
The car crash flings the movie in another direction.
Suddenly, Robert is trying to orchestrate a cover-up in order not to jeopardise the merger. A detective (Tim Roth) starts sniffing around and the son of Robert’s former driver gets pulled into the investigation.
The crime thriller part of Arbitrage is unfortunately not very satisfying as it hinges on connections that feel arbitrary and a police manoeuvre that is laughably amateurish. And it takes up a huge chunk of the plot.
It is left to the silver-haired Gere to shoulder the movie.
The one-time sex symbol with turns in films such as American Gigolo (1980) and Pretty Woman (1990) is ageing gracefully and does a decent job of conveying Robert’s arrogance and self-absorption. But at the same time, it also feels like a performance that glides along the surface.
You wish there was a meatier script with sharper dialogue for Gere to really grapple with. As it is, Robert is not that fascinating a character to build an entire movie around.
(ST)

Sodagreen Walk Together Tour - Singapore
Max Pavilion @ Singapore Expo, Oct 19
It has been three years since all six members of the
Taiwanese band performed together and what a glorious get-together this was.
Frontman Wu Ching-feng shone with his crystal-clear, high-pitched voice. He is such an evocative singer that he can take on familiar hits by others and make you feel like you are hearing them for the first time.
The concert’s theme of heading back to the warmth of family was also nicely sustained. The evening ended with the gospel-tinged What Is Troubling You and, as everyone sang along, it was a
moment as cosy and comfortable as home.

Yoga Lin Fugue Concert Tour
The Star Theatre, Nov 24
There were no dazzling effects or outrageous costumes, but none of that mattered when the songs and the singing were of such a calibre.
Taiwan’s Yoga Lin has built a rich body of work with both depth of feeling and breadth of genre, from the brash and jazzy You Are What You Eat to the upbeat The Wonderful Life to devastating love song Heartbreak.
And with the 25-year-old in great form vocally, it was simply a delight to soak up the songs live.
(ST)

Ideal Life
Lala Hsu, AsiaMuse Entertainment
On her third album, Taiwanese singer-songwriter Lala Hsu sounds more mature and assured than ever. And the disc makes a strong case for her being the best singer-songwriter to emerge from the talent competition Chinese Million Star.
She tackles the big topics of love and life, but the songs themselves are intimate affairs that draw you in. They include a clutch of ballads throbbing with a spectrum of emotions, the wistful title track, as well as the charming opener Cuckoo. A beautifully honest and moving record.

Someone Is Waiting
William Wei, Linfair Records
The follow-up to the Taiwanese singer-songwriter’s lovely eponymous debut in 2010 is well worth the wait.
He wants to do popular
music without being hackneyed or trite, and he succeeds on tracks such as the spare Heart Drunk Heart Broken, the poignant We’ll Never Know and with the arresting imagery on Moon.
His consistency is also a virtue. Add evocative singing to thoughtful songs and it is a two-for-two record of winning works from Wei.

Have A Holiday
Soft Lipa and Dadado Huang,
A Good Day Records
Is there anything that Taiwan hip-hop artist Soft Lipa cannot do? In previous genre-blurring collaborations, he gleefully ventured into jazz and pop.
This EP compellingly bridges hip-hop and folk in just two songs – the joyful-sounding but emotionally conflicted Have A Holiday and the gently elegiac The Worries Of A Youngster.
Bonus points for the visual wit of the elegant cover as Dan Bao (Soft Lipa’s Mandarin pinyin name) plus Dadado Huang equals dan huang, or egg yolk.

Mandopop singers covering English songs
Taiwanese rock singer Roger Yang’s unimaginative take on classic rock tunes in Those Years such as Metallica’s Enter Sandman was pointless.
And trying to out-Bono Bono on U2’s With Or Without You is an exercise in futility.
Jam Hsiao was another offender with Mr. Jazz – A Song For You.
He was guilty of less-than-perfect diction, stiff and overly mannered phrasing, and snooze-
inducing song choices. Asian singers can do jazz, but you would not know it from this album.
(ST)

A Simple Life
Simple is good. Hong Kong director Ann Hui’s tale of the relationship between a live-in maid and her movie producer employer is heartfelt and moving, and a reminder that films do not need to be flashy to work their magic.
Deannie Yip’s vanity-free performance as Ah Tao gives meaning and dignity to a simple life and has been justly rewarded at film festivals and award ceremonies. Superstar Andy Lau is as unaffected as he has ever been in the role of the producer.
Together, they have an utterly believable rapport honed from working with each other in the legal tearjerkers The Unwritten Law (1985) and The Truth (1988).

Nightfall
Hong Kong actor Nick Cheung remains compelling even when he plays a mute ex-con and can communicate only through his eyes and body language. He also demonstrates his commitment to his craft by buffing up considerably. And director Roy Chow doles out details at a pace that keeps one riveted as the film toggles between the present and flashbacks to an earlier crime.
Eventually, you realise that the film is a tragic melodrama in the guise of a satisfying murder thriller.

Vulgaria
Not only does Hong Kong writer-director-producer Pang Ho Cheung’s raunchy comedy starring Dada Chen and Chapman To deliver the laughs, it also delivers a vocabulary lesson or two.
Terms such as Cow’s Bliss and Popping Candy will forever be defined by their usage in the movie. And you will never look at a mule the same way again.
Pang’s salacious saltiness, though, is balanced by a genuine affection for his characters and the story here – the plight of film-makers who plough away to make ends meet while waiting for the chance to do what they love.
That is not the dire situation faced by Pang as he made two worthy flicks this year alone: Vulgaria and the romantic comedy sequel Love In The Buff.

Timeless Love
This local movie co-directed by television host Dasmond Koh and MediaCorp veteran Lim Koong Hwee is desperately trying to masquerade as a fluffy Taiwanese idol drama but it simply falls flat.
It manages the feat of having a lazy script, leaden acting and lacklustre direction – all in one preposterous package.
When a baddie turns up at the end threatening to take over the fantasy resort island where the film is set, he has his flunkey pick open a safe with a piece of wire in broad daylight.
It is enough to make one snort out loud.
(ST)

Desert Island Without A Friday
Waa Wei

A Good Day To A Perfect Life
Various artists

Feeling trapped and being obsessive have rarely sounded so entrancing.
Taiwanese singer-songwriter Waa Wei draws on the story of Robinson Crusoe for the title ballad, mixing elements of that desert-island tale into a beguiling fable of her own.
She tenderly whispers savage lines: “Hopelessness actually satisfies me deeply” – and beautifully imagined ones – “Having become your desert island/No ocean currents and sea birds/Perhaps we don’t even have Friday”.
The tempo goes up a notch for Broken Song as she observes: “This mouldy relationship has a whiff of fishiness/The complicated game has accidentally upended the entire forest”.
Final track Je T’Aime, Moi Non Plus (I Love You, Me Neither) lets loose the emotions in a satisfying outburst. With Desert Island and Where (2011), Wei proves to have a knack for delivering cohesive EPs that bewitch and seduce.
Meanwhile, Taiwanese indie label A Good Day’s compilation album of previously released material is an almost cohesive collection.
From Ciacia Ho’s alternative electronica of We Go Forward Happily to Ze Hwang’s spare acoustic ballad December Night to collaborative new track Open Your Eyes, there is much here to enjoy and engage with.
The cute drawings by famed illustrator Jimmy Liao further add to the charm of the record.
Folkster Dadado Huang asks on Flower Butterfly: “Do you like listening to music as much as I do, do you wish to know the world better as well?” If the answer is yes, look no further.
(ST)

CZ12
Jackie Chan
The story: The title refers to the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. Specifically, there are 12 bronze busts which were looted from the Old Summer Palace when it was sacked in 1860 and some are now being auctioned off, head by head, for astronomical prices. JC (Jackie Chan) is tasked by Max Profit Corporation to track down the six remaining pieces by any means necessary.

Hong Kong action superstar Jackie Chan is 58 this year.
Think about that when you watch him careening headlong at high speed, with nothing between him and the road but wheels and protective body armour. Or entangled in an aerial fight with three baddies while freefalling above a volcano.
Okay, so the volcano scene is probably the result of some digital manipulation.
But he is definitely airborne from the outtakes seen at the end of the film. His absolute disregard for what the human body can take is why his stunts are such a thrill to watch. You marvel at what he does and then grimace when the falls, stumbles and burns are ultimately revealed.
So long as we are watching Chan in an action scene, all is good, especially when there is a touch of that trademark comic underdog element that has served him so well in early films such as Drunken Master (1978) and Police Story (1985).
In one set-up, he fights off the bad guys with a camera on a tripod that keeps flashing and taking pictures.
And after that fight is over, we get to see some of the hilarious moments captured, with faces all bent out of shape.
His grace and agility are also apparent as he fights in narrow walkways and at close quarters as he lands blows and dodges weapons.
A showcase let’s-have-a-fight-without-leaving- the-couch sequence is also nicely executed.
More unusually, CZ12 also reveals Chan’s sweet side. He is shown placating his unseen wife over the telephone several times and trying desperately to get into her good books. Look out for a surprise cameo at the end when her identity is finally revealed.
Unfortunately, the story that strings the action sequences along is a weak one.
It seems like a basic treasure hunt premise that cannot go wrong. But there is a long detour to a wrecked ship in which bit actors who failed to get a part in the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies seem to have been exiled.
Worse, though, is the preachiness about the dubious objects – some stolen, some fake – found in auction markets and some blatant pandering to China audiences.
There is a discourse on the rights and wrongs of the European invasion of China and ends with a French character ultimately admitting her forebears were in the wrong.
The cast here is an international one including South Korean hunk Kwon Sang Woo and Chinese taekwondo champion Zhang Lanxin as part of JC’s crackerjack team and Laura Weissbecker as a French heiress who is roped into the adventure willy-nilly. But the focus is pretty much on director-producer- co-writer-star Chan.
There are even none-too-subtle references to him worked into the film.
The most valuable of the busts is the dragon head and dragon just happens to be Chan’s Chinese name.
And the name of the wrecked ship is none other than Indestructible. Who else does that describe but Jackie Chan?
(ST)

Alien Huang G.Host Singapore Concert 2012
The Coliseum, Hard Rock Hotel Singapore
Last Saturday

Alien and ghost were both present at Taiwanese singer Huang Hung-sheng’s gig.
Taking inspiration from his Mandarin nickname Xiao Gui, literally Little Ghost, the first part of the show had a gothic vibe to it with visuals of a moonlit night and a brick fortress shown on the screen.
The 29-year-old dressed the part with an all-black outfit topped with a dark turquoise cape and ash-grey hair.
The songs fit the theme too from Ghost Hits The Wall to a cover of Mayday’s Night Visit From A Vampire.
And then during the encore, he appeared on stage with a headband with his English name Alien lit up in red over it.
Ghost or alien, the 1,300-strong crowd loved it all. And thanks to the intimate venue, the 21/2-hour-long concert felt more like a cosy fan meet.
From the first song, the fans were up on their feet, screaming over Huang’s every move and energetically waving their light sticks to the music. They even responded in one voice when he bantered with the crowd and threw out questions.
Luckily for Huang, his fans are also a very forgiving lot.
He is not the strongest singer live and had some problems with pitch at a few points. This was most noticeable on For Myself when the entire first stanza was off. But he could do no wrong in the eyes of his adoring fans.
While his vocals could do with some improvement, what he has going for him is an affable personality that is easy to like. You also want to root for him given his early struggles in showbusiness. He had to tough it out before finding success as a host of the popular variety show 100% Entertainment in 2006 and later as a solo singer with the albums Love Hero (2009) and Break Heart, Black Heart (2011).
The hardworking entertainer has also ventured into acting, and clips from his works – comedy Already Famous (2011), drama Din Tao: Leader Of The Parade (2012) and MediaCorp nostalgia series Joys Of Life (2012) – played when he sang tracks associated with them.
As a surprise treat for his Singaporean fans, he also sang the theme song from the popular MediaCorp drama Good Morning, Sir! (1989), adding a dash of rock to the ditty.
He had also put effort into learning the guitar so that he could strum along as he sang Forgot How To Be Happy. Although he seemed quite relieved to set it aside after half a song so that he could concentrate on just singing.
A late costume change had him appearing from head-to-toe in a suit of colourful floral patterns. Somehow, he managed to not appear like a, um, blooming idiot.
It was, admittedly, an appropriate get-up for the song Toy Gun And Roses. The track was one of the highlights of his debut disc Love Hero which offered rock flavoured with youthfulness and a sprinkling of attitude.
The final song of the night was Disdain. Huang urged his fans to sing along and added: “It’s my biggest hit. If you don’t know how to sing it, at least try and match the mouth movements.”
He need not have worried. His fervent fans almost drowned him out with their singing.
(ST)

Blossomy
S.H.E
Can’t Wait is the opening track on Taiwanese girl group S.H.E’s latest album.
It is also an apt description of how fans, who have been hankering for a new offering since Shero was released in March 2010, must be feeling.
It might also sum up how the trio felt about coming together again, after a filming accident in October 2010 left member Selina Jen with terrible burns and a long road to recovery.
The title track is an upbeat number that takes listeners through the years with the group, with lines such as “That year we moved into the girls’ dormitory, since then you’ve been there through the laughter and tears”.
Their first album was titled Girl’s Dorm (2001).
It is also very much about Jen’s journey: from “walking through the most hopeless ruggedness” to having the flowers bloom again.
That theme is also echoed on Our Hearts Are Still Warm.
They sing: “Old scars peel off, new life is throbbing/Love is a never ending bloom”.
It is a touching reminder of how the three have held fast over the years through thick and thin.
Elsewhere, they offer easy-on-the- ears tuneful pop, from the ballad Give Me Back to the forward-looking Tomorrow’s Me to the paean to friendship Later Later.
They have been more adventurous and playful in their music before but, for now, it is enough that Selina, Hebe and Ella are flowering as S.H.E once more.
(ST)

The Intouchables
Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano
The story: They are two men with nothing in common. Philippe (Francois Cluzet) is rich and lives in a sprawling Parisian mansion while Driss (Omar Sy) is an immigrant from Senegal who wants to live off welfare benefits. But when the quadriplegic Philippe interviews candidates for the job of live-in caregiver, he decides to take a chance on Driss.

There have been movies about odd couple pairings even before The Odd Couple (1968).
The story goes something like this: Two people of the chalk-and-cheese variety find themselves thrown together when normally, they might not have much to do with each other. They clash, they bicker – and eventually realise that each has been changed a little by the other person.
Even though The Intouchables is based on a true story, writer-directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano have given it that familiar shape and structure.
They have also, presumably, accentuated the differences between the two men.
So Philippe is not just rich but also cultured. He has expensive tastes, collects art and uses literary language when he writes to Eleonore, a woman he is
interested in but has never met. In contrast, Driss has had a run-in with the law, flirts shamelessly with women and is aghast at the sums of money that Philippe nonchalantly splurges on art.
Some of the ways in which they bond feel lazily familiar. For example, a scene of Philippe and Driss attending the opera brought on flashbacks of Julia Roberts getting introduced to opera by Richard Gere in Pretty Woman (1990).
But since high culture is not necessarily superior to low, the film-makers also balance that out with Driss livening a classical music soiree by throwing in some dance music by Earth, Wind & Fire.
And so, little by little, Philippe gets back his zest for life.
The movie does veer a little too close to cliche at times, though, to its credit, it does pull back before things get too sappy.
It is also a good thing that it has Francois Cluzet and Omar Sy in the lead roles.
Cluzet, from French thriller Tell No One (2006), brings a quiet dignity to the role of the quadriplegic Philippe and his reason for picking Driss to be his caregiver is because Driss does not mollycoddle him.
Sy, seen in 2009 French comedy Micmacs, meanwhile, has an irrepressible joy and confidence about him that is thoroughly infectious (he won the Cesar Award for Best Actor for his portrayal). If anything though, he is almost a little too sunny for someone who is from the wrong side of the tracks.
The Intouchables has been a roaring success in its native France and it was the most-watched film there last year.
While it is fairly entertaining, it has made me curious about the 2003 documentary A La Vie, A La Mort (In Life, Death) which chronicled the relationship between the real-life Philippe and his caregiver Abdel.
Would real life or reel life be more touching?
(ST)

Tanya Chua Just Say So Concert
Esplanade Concert Hall
Last Friday
Local singer-songwriter Tanya Chua returned to her roots at her Friday gig. Her English music roots, that is.
She may be a three-time Golden Melody Award winner for Best Mandarin Female Singer but she started out writing and recording in English, and her first album was the English-language Bored (1997).
Just Say So, the title of her show, is also the title of her fourth and latest English release (2011).
On disc, the songs such as Let’s Get Together, Just Say So, Carousel, Key To Happiness and Friends chart a trajectory of a relationship.
However, that arc was lost in a live show setting. And too many songs fell into a similar mid- tempo groove that did not exactly propel the show along.
It was a good thing that her lightly husky pipes were in pretty good shape and her take on these very personal songs seemed to be more deeply felt than when she delves into Mandopop.
She also sang quite a few covers, including a take on Rihanna’s Umbrella and Lady Gaga’s Poker Face, which was welcomed by the crowd. It had also been a high point in her (mostly) Mandarin concert at the Singapore Indoor Stadium last year.
There was also a memorable version of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, which started off slow and haunting before the guitars kicked in and Chua rocked out briefly.
It would have been nice to have had more movement on stage though. Chua, wearing a red hat and a white and black vest-shirt over black slacks and often with guitar in hand, remained in one spot throughout the night.
The technical glitches did not help either, and problems with her sound equipment meant a few false starts over the course of the show.
At one point, she said: “I did not mean for this to be a rehearsal.”
The organisers later released a statement saying that, for some unknown reason, the pre-calibrated settings went haywire during the gig.
It cannot have been easy performing under such circumstances but Chua held on.
Clearly, it meant a lot for the Taiwan-based singer to perform in English on home territory, in front of her family and friends. She said: “It’s like coming home to my parents with a report card kind of feeling.”
She also told the story of how she started writing music and also got the audience to sing Happy Birthday to her nine-year-old niece Eden.
As a special treat, she also included some songs she did not sing on the Taiwan and Hong Kong legs of this all-English tour. Perfect Daughter was a raw and honest look at the complicated relationship between mother and child.
It was also a welcome surprise to hear It’s Your Chance, the English version of the track she had composed and which was sung by Mandopop queen Faye Wong as Wrong Number.
While an English cover of her own song made sense, the large number of covers she sang meant that she did not get to dig deep enough into her own roots.
This had seemed like the perfect opportunity to perform early English material such as You Sorry Ass!! as well as Luck and Drive! off Luck (1999).
But it was not till late in the two-hour-long set that she busted out her harmonica and sang My Colour TV Set. It was her first single and had made it to No. 2 on local radio. At the end of that lively number, she exclaimed: “It feels so good to sing that song again.”
It was good to hear it again as well, judging from the response of the 1,300-strong audience.
The show could have had more of such moments.
(ST)

Eman Lam
Eman Lam
To mark her 30th birthday, which falls on Oct 25, Hong Kong’s Eman Lam released her long-awaited debut solo album.
After all, fellow musician Ellen Loo has already made a successful solo splash with the Mandarin language The Ripples (2011). Together, Lam and Loo make up Cantopop folktronica duo at17.
Happily, Lam proves that the wait has not been in vain with her self-titled Cantonese disc. There is a beguiling quality to the songs which keep one listening.
Opener Wanna Be has Lam crooning suggestively: “Wanna kiss a girl, wanna dance with a boy”. It’s Snowing On Beijing’s Streets paints a dramatic picture as she sings on the bluesy electronica number: “I betrayed the equator, dancing towards the sand, want to touch Beijing’s sky”. Like Water, meanwhile, is a lovely spare ballad caressed with the utmost tenderness by Lam.
She works with a number of well-regarded musicians including singer- songwriter Pong Nan, lyricist Chow Yiu Fai and her elder brother Chet Lam.
But there is no mistaking that it is anyone’s voice on the album but hers.
So, how did you mark your 30th birthday?(ST)

When Wolf Falls In Love With Sheep
Hou Chi-jan
The story: Tung (Kai Ko) has been unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend via a post-it note which reads: “I’m off to cram school.” So he ends up working in a photocopying shop in cram school central, Nanyang Street, while searching for her. The denizens of that hermetic world include the shy and dreamy teaching assistant Yang (Chien Man-shu), who draws pictures of sheep on the exam papers. One day, Tung doodles a sketch of a big bad wolf in response.

The danger of associating a movie with a past hit is that you might be saddling the new work with unrealistic expectations to live up to.
So it did the crime thriller Cold War no favours to be linked to the superior drama Infernal Affairs (2002). And it does not help Wolf to be compared to the raucous yet warm-hearted youth drama You Are The Apple Of My Eye (2011).
The obvious reason for doing so is that rising star Kai Ko is in both flicks. And the easy-on-the-eye actor’s charms is indeed a selling point. There is a sunniness to Ko which is adorable and you are soon rooting for him to find happiness.
His burgeoning romance with Yang, which is the Mandarin homonym for sheep, is handled in an admirably low- key manner. Still, it would have been nice to have a little more fireworks between Ko and the gamine Chien Man-shu.
One cannot help though but think back to the chemistry that Ko had with Michelle Chen in Apple.
And director Hou Chi-jan’s sensibility is more arthouse compared to Apple’s Giddens Ko’s crowd-pleasing one. After all, Hou’s debut feature was the magic realist One Day (2010). With Wolf, he makes an attempt to straddle both arthouse offering and mainstream romantic comedy.
He injects a gentle kookiness to the proceedings, such as using live-action stop-motion for some sequences. He also introduces a cast of quirky supporting characters ranging from ultra-driven salesgirl Tsui Pao-pao (Kou Shu-yau) to a popular masked food-seller to a wise and mysterious noodle-seller.
While this adds colour to the film, it also drags the film out and Hou could have done a better job with the pacing. The dialogue is not quite sparkling as well though it does not descend into overly precious territory.
The finale gets it right with a grand romantic gesture and ends on a note of bright optimism tinged with some humour. If only Wolf was a film to cuddle up to from start to finish.

Back To 1942
Feng Xiaogang
The story: In 1942, Henan province was devastated by a famine which exacted a toll of three million lives. The different aspects of the tragedy are revealed through the stories of various characters. Landlord Fan (Zhang Guoli) and his family are part of the mass human exodus making the painful journey to Shaanxi province on foot. The Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek (Chen Daoming) would rather keep the issue under wraps but American journalist Theodore White (Adrien Brody) writes an expose for Time magazine. Meanwhile, the Japanese aggressors go from dropping bombs on the refugees to feeding the famished multitudes. Based on the 1993 memoir Back To 1942 by China author Liu Zhenyun.

Back To 1942 is an epic movie about a disaster.
But it is a totally different animal from bombastic Hollywood fare such as 2012 (2009) or The Day After Tomorrow (2004), where the spectacle of the safely fictional disaster – towering waves, massive destruction – is presented for entertainment.
Director Feng Xiaogang’s latest work is more about bearing witness to a tragic episode of utter human misery.
His previous film Aftershock (2010), about the Tangshan earthquake of 1976, seems at first to be something of a template for 1942.
In both dramas, he offers up scenes which give a sense of the scale of disaster. Here, for example, you get wide shots of the heartbreakingly long line of refugees who are driven by hunger and desperation to take to the road.
At the same time, he finds the human heart of the story by delving into the lives of various characters.
In this regard, Aftershock is more successful as it follows one family’s travails and after an outpouring of emotions and tears, audiences get a sense of catharsis.
Back To 1942 does not have as strong a narrative arc and as such, one does not feel for the characters as much even with strong actors such as Zhang Guoli (The Founding Of A Republic, 2009) and Xu Fan (so good as a mother in Aftershock) playing some of the key refugees.
Also, the unremitting bleakness of what is unfolding on screen begins to numb the viewer after a while.
Landlord Fan (Zhang) pretends at first that he and his family are not refugees but are merely avoiding a temporary rough patch. Gradually, and relentlessly, he starts to lose his material possessions and then the people around him.
What hunger does not claim, the bitter cold does. Human life is like so much chaff.
In the midst of all this suffering, there are unscrupulous people who seek to profit from tumultuous times: Women are bought and sold for a measly few pounds of millet grain and officials squabble when relief supplies are, at long last, offered.
But Feng is too ambitious in trying to offer a comprehensive sweep of the famine.
He adds in a menacingly mercurial Chiang Kai-shek (an authoritative Chen Daoming) and an earnest American journalist (Adrien Brody) and even a late, brief shift in point-of-view to that of the Japanese.
The end result is a film that feels too sprawling and scattered when it is not being unwaveringly grim.
Back To 1942 might be a well-meaning drama but it is not one that is easy to watch.
(ST)

Sundown Festival 2012
Marina Promenade
Last Saturday

The idea of a music festival celebrating popular music from across Asia is a promising one. But in its execution, the Sundown Festival was not quite satisfying.
In the first place, the line-up of acts was too disparate with its inclusion of newcomer K-pop boyband BTOB (say “B to B”), Japanese visual kei rock band Alice Nine and Hong Kong singer-actor Raymond Lam. There was also singer-songwriter Anthony Neely from Taiwan and popster Jeno Liu from China thrown in the mix.
Perhaps a line-up with a stronger link among the acts – say, singer-songwriters from across the region – might have worked better. As it stood, the list of offerings was best described as eclectic.
The sense of an anything-goes approach to programming was further strengthened by warm-up items such as a traditional face-changing performance, a snatch of Chinese opera and a lion dance performed to a modern dance track.
It also did not help the music performances that the artists were mostly performing to minus-one tracks. It is no coincidence that the best performance of the night was by the full-fledged band Alice Nine.
While the five members were dressed rather tamely in black and white, their segment was anything but. Lead vocalist Shou announced at the beginning of their set “Here we go!” and off they went. They cranked up the volume and excitement level, and delivered a blistering blast of rock with electric guitars racing away.
One wondered how Lam, who is better known for his television dramas than for his songs, was going to top that as the act following them. Well, he did not.
While everyone else performed for about half an hour, his was a mercifully short 15-minute set. He sang three Cantonese numbers and one of them was spent serenading a lucky fan who got to go on stage. Lucky for the fan, cheesily painful for the rest of the audience.
Neely fared better with a mix of Mandopop and English songs. He seemed to hold nothing back as he belted out songs such as Dear Death and Wake Up in his husky vocals.
Best of all, he trotted out his guitar, Audrey, and performed an acoustic version of the achingly beautiful ballad Hallelujah written by Leonard Cohen. It was an unexpected song that turned into a welcome highlight.
Liu shimmered in a gold top during her turn on stage but seemed to have a little problem getting the crowd to sing along. So she offered a bribe of supper and then joked that she would go bankrupt, given the size of the crowd. About 6,000 music fans attended the festival.
BTOB might be new, but they had no lack of screaming fans as the seven members sang and danced through their set in matching blazers.
Still, while K-pop might be trumping J-pop in the popularity stakes at the moment, on Saturday night though, it was J-pop which brought the house down.
(ST)

You're Nobody To Me
Ellen Loo

2/2
Yoyo Sham

Both Ellen Loo and Yoyo Sham are singer- songwriters from Hong Kong.
And both are linked to one man – feted singer Eason Chan.
Loo is the guitarist at Chan’s concerts, while Sham is his back-up vocalist.
One wonders if the two chat about their music during rehearsal breaks.
Of the two, Loo is better known, given that she is one-half of Cantopop duo at17 and also a successful solo artist who released her Mandarin debut The Ripples last year.
The electronica ballad You’re Nobody To Me shimmers delicately at first and then builds up to a refrain that has Loo proclaiming: “You never had any tears, it’s a waste being good to you/What kind of human being are you, you make me feel ashamed of loving you”.
Also included here is the demo track Bees, which was recorded by singer Denise Ho as Festival Of Youth. The emotive ballad stands on its own and is no mere filler track.
Good as this is, Sham’s second EP 2/2 is even better.
There are two versions of two songs collected here: the wonderfully atmospheric 1/2 Cup and 2/2 Cup, as well as Moving On Pedals and Moving On.
And she manages to make every single version sound thoroughly valid.
Take Moving On, which is about one’s journey through life: “On the flow of life, we’re not as active as we think/It’s as if we got pushed, then take one step and yet another”.
It works beautifully on its own, with a simple arrangement that allows Sham’s lightly husky voice to shine.
The Pedals version builds upon that, and works in bicycle bells and a rhythmic beat that strengthen the idea of a journey.
It won’t be too long before Sham breaks out and Chan will have to look for a new back-up singer.
(ST)

The Mad Chinaman (1989)
Dick Lee

What is Singaporean pop?
Known for composing pop hits for Hong Kong singers such as Jacky Cheung, Leslie Cheung and Sandy Lam, as well as Home, that gold standard of National Day songs, singer-songwriter Dick Lee has grappled with that question in his albums – beginning with Life Story in 1974.
But it was The Mad Chinaman, released in 1989 on Warner Music, that really made people sit up and take notice of his brand of Singa-pop.
The album’s cover photo teased: Lee, now 56, was almost unrecognisable in full Chinese opera get-up complete with thick stylised make-up. What did Chinese opera have to do with English pop and what did the term Mad Chinaman mean?
Part of the answer was in the liner notes. In them, he wrote that “trying to identify the Asian in my Western make-up is enough to drive me crazy!”.
At its heart, the record was an attempt to map and probe his identity as a man caught between two cultures.
At the same time, it sought to answer the question of whether there was, or could be, such a thing as Singaporean pop.
These were big, possibly serious, issues but Lee’s musical inventiveness and sense of playfulness and adventure made the resulting album a sheer joy to listen to.
Take the giddily gleeful Mustapha. It was Lee’s tribute to Tamil movies and it even included dialogue from a mock chase scene.
The track featured singer Jacintha Abisheganaden, whom he would go on to marry in 1992 and divorce five years later, and delicious lines such as: “Honey, honey, sugar’s not as sweet/Oh, my papadam, you’re good enough to eat”.
This was pop, but done in a fresh way.
The lyrics were filled with familiar references to all things Singaporean; the songs were mainly in English but also had Mandarin, Malay and Tamil thrown into the merry mix; and the instrumentation was augmented by the use of ethnic instruments such as the erhu, the sitar and the tabla.
Many of the songs were built around familiar folk ditties and old favourites.
Rasa Sayang is a rap that built on the folk song of the same name. It is a feel-good homage to Singapore and it was thrilling to have prata, mee pok and chye tow kway name-checked in a song.
Lee also proved to have a knack for jazzing up old standards. An old Chinese number The Ding Dong Song, was given a new lease of life with a remix and the repetition of the spoken line “What is this thing called love?”.
Yet, for such a local record, The Mad Chinaman also turned out to be Lee’s breakthrough in the region, including the hard-to- crack Japanese market where it sold 12,000 copies within two months of its release.
What was originally planned to be his final album paved the way for him to move to Japan in 1990 to further his music career.
He continues to make albums which wrestle with the question of culture and identity for a self-professed banana who is yellow on the outside and white on the inside.
They include Orientalism (1991) and Singapop (1996).
Nothing has caught fire the way The Mad Chinaman did, and the album has become synonymous with Dick Lee.
He even named his 2004 autobiography The Adventures Of The Mad Chinaman.
He may have struggled with the question of what Singaporean pop is, but that poser is a no-brainer to anyone listening to The Mad Chinaman today.
(ST)

Yoga Lin “Fugue” Concert Tour
The Star Theatre, The Star Performing Arts Centre
Last Saturday

With just four albums, Taiwan’s Yoga Lin has built a rich body of work with both depth of feeling and breadth of genre. And with the 25-year-old in great form vocally, it was simply a delight to listen to the songs live.
There were no dazzling effects or outrageous costumes but none of that mattered when the songs and the singing were of such a calibre.
He was first seen on stage in a cone of light as he strummed the guitar to the strains of I Always Practise Alone. With an immaculate coif and dressed in a blazer over a white and pink shirt with glittery pants, Lin oozed preppy glamour.
From a quiet ballad about urban loneliness, he jumped to the brash and jazzy You Are What You Eat, demonstrating his versatility in one quick leap.
On rock tracks such as Runaway Mama and Wake Up, he turned up the energy level effortlessly. So what if there was no slick choreography? He simply moved as the music moved him.
One thread that runs through some of his faster-paced songs is an optimistic celebration of life.
The Wonderful Life enthuses: “Such a perfect life/How can you bear not to live it well/How can you bear not to be happy.” Si Fan (Captain S.V) takes an unusual point of view of aliens visiting earth and Lin declares: “I must quickly find out the charms of this backward planet.”
At the same time, he is the master of the devastating love song. Heartbreak is about foolish, glorious young love and it is a song that gives me goosebumps every time I hear it. Other prime examples include Fool, Unrequited and Fairy Tale, all exquisitely delivered in his evocative and emotive voice.
For his rendition of Please Speak, a simple prop of a single swinging light bulb was used to great effect as light bulbs exploded on the screen.
His last concert here was in 2009 and Lin was definitely happy to be back with a large-scale show. He ran off the stage and into the audience several times and even jokingly contemplated scaling the wall to reach those on the upper tiers.
When the fans seated in circle two cheered at one point, it was clear that the venue had pretty good acoustics. The sound mix for the show, though, had a tad too much reverb and the music was also a little too loud at times vis-a-vis the vocals.
But it was nothing that really threatened to mar the enjoyment of the 5,000 fans over the three-hour-long gig; certainly not by the time everyone was loudly chorusing “wo oh oh oh oh oh” for A Souvenir.
For his encore, Lin went back to some of his earliest material. The One I Love, You Are My Eyes and That Very Song were recorded for compilation albums for the singing competition show One Million Star. He was the winner of the inaugural season in 2007.
The final song of the night was Bo Le (Admirer) but first, Lin had a little surprise up his sleeve. In order to create a special memory for the Singapore stop of his tour, he changed into a simple period scholar get-up. It was an adorable look which had Lin bursting into laughter when he saw himself up on the screen.
He remarked at one point that he seldom comes to Singapore and so faced the quandary of whether he had enough friends to invite to the home that was his concert. He added: “I will work hard to be friends with you.”
As long as he continues putting out ambitious and stellar records, there will be no lack of friends, and fans, at a Yoga Lin concert.
(ST)

9th:) Time Falling In Love
A-do

The lead single for the lacklustre last album, Fear No More (2010), was Crying Ox with its headscratching chorus about buying and selling an ox. After that mis-step, homegrown singer A-do is back on more familiar ground on his seventh album.
The opening tracks are romantic ballads which play to the forte of his husky voice. The more relaxed numbers such as R&B-flavoured Valentine’s Day work better, though that song’s “Ay-ah ay-ah” chorus sounds rather dated.
The title track gets too angsty, however, and the concept of falling in love as if for the first time for the ninth time is too overwrought. The cutesy emoticon does not help.
A clutch of maudlin ballads in the middle bogs the album down and raises the unpleasant question of whether this really is the extent of A-do’s range as a singer.
Thank goodness Don’t Mention picks up the pace and shows some spirit: “I won’t mention sadness, I won’t mention, won’t reminisce/I won’t mention fate, those who persevere have super abilities”.
On Valentine’s Day, he sings: “I will appear in front of you in my perfection/I want to become your most beautiful memory”.
If only he were talking about his seventh album here.

(ST)

Dawn
Dawn Wong

Tong's Music
Lin Si Tong

A singer’s first release is a calling card to the world and, happily, both Dawn Wong and Lin Si Tong’s debut efforts show promise.
Wong’s eponymous EP has a clearer identity as she offers hopeful and positive songs that draw on genres from pop to jazz.
The perky whimsy of The Perfect Two (Stuck Like Glue) makes it the perfect wedding song for that retro-cool couple you know. And it kicks off the record on a bright note. Play it a few times and it will soon stick like, well, you know. It has a sweetness tempered by humour and I prefer that to the more conventionally sugary Ring Finger.
She goes on to demonstrate some range in her choice of material which highlights her distinctively clear and high-pitched voice.
Just Because is an upbeat and uplifting track with inspirational lyrics: “Because I have dreams, all my decisions are worth it.”
And final number Revision is a tender ballad about having that special someone in one’s life.
Lin, too, shows some versatility on her EP.
Childhood Memories strikes a note of pleasant nostalgia, though for some reason, it reminds me of Taiwanese singer Claire Kuo’s Singing In The Trees.
With the following number, Contrast, she shows a more rebellious side: “So I’m not as ignorant or quiet as they say/Actually I want to break free of that life and head to some corner.”
Lyrically, Lin needs to take note of her choice of words as, on occasion, her diction and phrasing can feel a little stiff.
On the whole, she has a good grasp of the pop idiom in her compositions such as ballad Uncoordinated Love and mid-tempo number Best Demonstration with their catchy hooks and relatable sentiments.
Most importantly, both Lin and Wong interest one enough to want to hear more.
(ST)

Rise Of The Guardians
Peter Ramsey
The story: North (Alec Baldwin voicing Santa Claus), Tooth (Isla Fisher as the Tooth Fairy), Bunnymund (Hugh Jackman as the Easter Bunny) and Sandy the Sandman (who communicates through visuals of sand which appear over his head) are the Guardians of children all over the world. When Pitch the Boogeyman (Jude Law) attempts to plunge the world into fear and darkness, the Man in the Moon anoints one more Guardian to help in the battle – the carefree Jack Frost (Chris Pine). The fantasy adventure is based on William Joyce’s The Guardians Of Childhood book series (2011-2012).

Think you know Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny? Think again because one of the pleasures of Rise Of The Guardians is how it takes familiar traditions and folklore and has a little whimsical fun with them.
So Santa Claus is not exactly a jolly grandfather but an imposing figure who speaks with a European accent and has “Nice” tattooed on one forearm and “Naughty” on the other.
And the Easter Bunny is no fluffy ball of cuteness but a 6-foot-tall rabbit with a mean Australian accent and meaner boomerang-throwing skills.
But not to worry, there are still adorable characters around to gush over, from the hummingbird-like baby tooth fairies to the earnestly industrious yetis and elves who populate Santa’s headquarters at the North Pole.
Keep an eye out for the running joke about the yeti who just cannot get the colour right regardless of what he is painting.
There is even wit to the villainy as Pitch unleashes his nightmares to gallop into the dreams of sleeping children and wreak havoc with the work of the Guardians.
If children stop believing in the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny, then the very existence of the Guardians themselves are threatened and the things they seek to protect – wonder, hope, memories and dreams – will be destroyed.
Standing between Pitch and his dark plan is Jack Frost, a fun-loving spirit who brings a touch of winter with him.
The irresponsible prankster seems to be an unlikely choice for a Guardian but gradually, he embraces the role thrust upon him and discovers his true self along the way.
Bringing the characters to life is a roster of voices which includes name actors such as Baldwin, Jackman, Pine and Law.
My initial concern that this was going to be a case of celebrity stunt-casting turned out to be unfounded as they inhabited the roles they played instead of being intrusively recognisable as, say, Jennifer Lopez was in Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (2012).
There is also a vibrancy and liveliness to the animation, particularly in the action sequences. For example, a little boy has the ride of his life as Jack zips in and out of traffic and other obstacles and lays down a path of slippery ice along his way.
This little boy, Jamie (Dakota Goyo from sci-fi sports drama Real Steel, 2011), ends up playing a pivotal role in the battle against Pitch.
There is an empowering moment for children when Pitch mockingly asks who will protect the Guardians and Jamie steps forth and says that he will.
With a positive message for the little ones and wit and humour for the adults, Rise Of The Guardians is an animated treat the whole family can enjoy together.
(ST)

Earthwalk
Cosmos People
On their second full-length album, kooky Taiwanese band Cosmos People continue to exude fun and humour.
Lead vocalist Xiao Yu sings on the electropop opening track Let’s Go Running Together: “Let’s go running together, don’t say no/Our rhythm is two breaths in, puke it out”.
The trio happily play around with diverse musical genres. Just take Xiang Jian Xiao Lu, Xiang Jian Xiao Lu (Country Roads, Shoulder Peekaboo – a title that puns on how both things sound alike in Mandarin), which melds country music with violins.
Want To Turn You Into A Movie, on the other hand, is more mainstream guitar pop with lyrics that reference film: “You dance a Chaplin, so quietly black-and-white/The city’s lights are extinguished because of you”.
While it is good that they are keenly exploring the musical universe, this trip of an album also means it is hard to get a fix on their identity.
Sticking closer to earth for their next outing might not be a bad idea.
(ST)

Mystery
Lou Ye
The story: Lu Jie (Hao Lei) and Yongzhao (Qin Hao) seem at first to be a version of the China dream made real. They are happily married with a young daughter and live a comfortably middle-class life.
Lu Jie befriends Sang Qi (Qi Xi), the mother of her daughter’s schoolmate who suspects that her husband is having an affair. Slowly, the life Lu Jie thought she had begins to unravel.

In his last few films, China’s auteur-provocateur Lou Ye has pushed buttons with his choice of material.
Love And Bruises (2011) depicted a sexually intense affair, Spring Fever (2009) took on homosexuality and Summer Palace (2006) featured the politically sensitive Tiananmen protests of 1989.
The last landed him with a five-year ban on film-making in China.
Mystery marks his return to “official” film-making and it has been showered with seven Golden Horse Award nominations, including for Best Feature Film, Best Director and Best Leading Actress.
His dedication and persistence to his craft is laudable, less so his latest effort.
The noirish mystery-thriller set in a rainy and dreary city harks back to his early breakthrough work, Suzhou River (2000), which featured Zhou Xun in dual roles.
While there was a surreal feel to Suzhou River, Mystery, for the most part, is anchored in the reality of here and now and the performances of Hao Lei, nominated for Best Leading Actress, and Qi Xi, nominated for Best New Performer.
As in Summer Palace, Hao is once again put through the emotional wringer by Lou.
After Lu Jie discovers her husband’s infidelity through a meeting with Sang Qi, her sense of pain and betrayal is acute and it is all played across Hao’s face.
In contrast, Qin Hao’s philandering Yongzhao is largely a cipher beyond the fact that he has trouble keeping his pants on. Later in the film, after a few more devastating revelations, Lu begins to exact her revenge, testing the audience’s sympathy for her.
Just when things seem like they might get interesting and nasty, the film changes tack to go back to the investigation of a car accident which claimed a young woman’s life.
The few twists and turns in the narrative here do not work – events unfold in a manner that is plainly improbable, particularly so towards the end when there seems to be a rush to wrap things up. For example, a key pouch is conveniently dropped, and found, and leads the police right to, well, the right person.
To be fair, some of what seems preposterous makes sense in the light of revelations doled out in the film.
Mystery works neither as a murder mystery nor as a dark domestic drama, stranded somewhere in the murky middle.
(ST)

Cold War
Longman Leung, Sunny Luk
The story: An explosion goes off in a bustling part of Hong Kong. A fully equipped police van disappears. Rattled, the law enforcers launch operation Cold War and rival deputy commissioners Sean Lau (Aaron Kwok) and Waise Lee (Tony Leung Ka Fai) fight to take charge. At stake are the lives of the cop hostages, the force’s reputation and the powerful post of police commissioner.

Cold war refers to the operation to recover the hostages and the van as well as to the battle for power between rival deputy police commissioners.
From the get-go, first-time writer-directors Longman Leung and Sunny Luk ratchet up the tension with choice pacing and plenty of questions.
Who is behind the disappearance of the van? Why is it timed to coincide with the absence of the police commissioner? Why are Sean Lau (Aaron Kwok) and Waise Lee (Tony Leung Ka Fai) such bitter enemies?
Beyond the deputies’ jockeying for power, there seems to be a long-standing rivalry fuelling their animosity. Actually, rather than a cold war, it is more like an open battle between the two.
At first, Waise seems to gain the upper hand by quickly usurping command. Then Sean makes his move in a showdown that makes the two men look like rival gang leaders rather than fellow cops.
Leung sinks his teeth into the showier role of the brash Waise, keeping one guessing as to whether he is an insufferable good guy or a devious bad cop.
Despite his two Golden Horse trophies for Best Actor, Kwok does not quite have the chops to go against Leung mano-a-mano.
Also, Sean feels like a more passive, put-upon character. The viewer’s sympathy is more clearly steered towards him which also means there is no intriguing question mark hanging over him.
The film-makers also hold your attention with competently staged action sequences including a drawn-out scene of Sean following instructions to hand over the ransom money and a final showdown complete with firepower and fireworks.
Apart from the veterans, including Charlie Young as a feisty public relations officer for the police, a newer generation of actors add to the star power.
Aarif Rahman (Bruce Lee, My Brother, 2010) is Billy Cheung, a dogged investigator looking into operation Cold War after its conclusion. And the busy Eddie Peng (Love, Taichi 0 and Taichi Hero, 2012) has a small but pivotal role as Waise’s son, who is also one of the police officers in the van.
The investigation part feels less satisfying, like a tacked-on extended postscript to the main event, its chief purpose being to pave the way for an ending which screams “To be continued”.
Watch out for the scene in which Waise is interrogated. The wily old fox schools the wet-behind- the-ears Billy in the rules of the game and it is Leung’s masterclass in acting.
It seems that Cold War fancies itself this year’s Infernal Affairs (2002), what with conspiracy theories and talk of there being a police mole. It certainly opens the door to that connection with Infernal Affairs star Andy Lau having a guest turn here as the territory’s Secretary for Security.
Cold War does not quite reach those heights but it does generate quite a bit of heat, thanks to a riveting Tony Leung.
(ST)

Super Yo
Evan Yo

It has been three years since Taiwanese singer-songwriter Evan Yo’s enjoyable last album, Loneliness (2009), and quite a few things have happened in the interim.
He did his military service, buffed up, and switched to a new label from Sony Music. In general, he seems to have done some growing up.
And it shows on his fourth album.
The easy-on-the-ears love ballads are still here and include tracks such as Can’t Love You Enough and Who Knows. Thinking leaves an impression with its lyrics about being inarticulate in love: “Oh baby, I’m so... love you/The feeling I can’t put into words, can you hear it”.
More unexpected are the dance tracks which mark a change of direction for him. And thankfully, they steer clear of the K-pop template of marrying insanely catchy beats with sometimes nonsensical lyrics.
On the opening title track, he signals this new turn: “We depend, on the right brain, let rationality have a good sleep, Now/Walk with me to the right/Watch me break the flow.”
Kudos to him for not simply going with the flow.

The Scent Of Night
Crowd Lu

Have A Holiday
Soft Lipa, Dadado Huang

Some of my favourite singer-songwriters have come up with EPs, whetting my appetite for their new albums.
Crowd Lu’s The Scent Of Night is an acoustic guitar ballad in the vein of his best folk-pop offerings.
There is a sense of mystery and joy to it that is beguiling as he croons: “I pass through the tree tops, fly over walls, the fables of the city/I’m chasing after, mysteriously able to fly, wanting to find out who is singing in my dream.”
As for hip-hop artist Soft Lipa, his genre-blurring collaborations have seen him venturing into jazz and pop, each time with great success in albums such as Moonlight (2010) and Riding A Bicycle (2011). His tie-up with folkster Dadado Huang is equally rewarding.
The EP cover is already appealing in its visual wit as Dan Bao (Soft Lipa’s Mandarin pinyin name) plus Dadado Huang equals dan huang, or egg yolk.
The breezy Have A Holiday sounds joyful but is emotionally more conflicted. The song seamlessly ties together Soft Lipa’s hypnotic rhymes with Huang’s delicate vocals in this tale of a man who just needs a break. And the gently elegiac The Worries Of A Youngster sensitively sketches out that no man’s land between childhood and adulthood.
This is an egg yolk that nourishes and satisfies.
(ST)

Ah Boys To Men Part 1
Jack Neo
The story: Spoilt rich kid Ken (Joshua Tan) wants to wriggle out of national service enlistment to study overseas with his girlfriend. He is encouraged by his mother (Irene Ang) while his father (Richard Low) wants him to aim for Officer Cadet School. When Ken is eventually sent to Pulau Tekong, he tries ways and means to weasel out of training.

Writer-director Jack Neo starts his latest movie with a bang. Several, in fact. Singapore is under attack by an unknown enemy and planes are bombing iconic structures from the Merlion to Marina Bay Sands to HDB flats.
The visual effects are a step up from those seen in his previous works and the idea of modern-day Singapore at war is an intriguing one.
Yet the opening has the air of a national education message by the Ministry of Defence.
When the long gimmicky opening sequence is finally over, Neo puts on local comedienne Irene Ang in full-on auntie mode as a loud, pushy and unreasonable mother who is determined to get her son out of national service.
It is almost an hour before bratty rich kid Ken (Joshua Tan) gets enlisted anyway and we are introduced to a bunch of stereotypes who are his section mates.
There is clearly camaraderie among the group of fresh young actors, whose onscreen friendships and group dynamics could have been interesting to explore against the backdrop of military training.
But once again, Neo undermines himself.
Few of the recruits – from streetsmart Lobang (a naturalistic Wang Wei Liang) to eager beaver Aloysius Jin (Maxi Lim) – pass for actual characters.
Most problematic of all, the key character of Ken is a sulky boy with a bad temper and a worse attitude. Little wonder that he has problems with his girlfriend, their relationship is a hysterical sideshow that irritates instead of engages.
With the trials and triumphs of national service a familiar ground covered previously in Mandarin TV drama Army Series (1983), stage play Army Daze (1987) and documentary Every Singaporean Son (2010), to name a few examples, compelling characters would have made Ah Boys feel fresher.
What the film gets right is the portrayal of the tough and intimidating sergeants who dominate the lives of recruits.
There are even flashbacks to the old- school training of the past where sergeants had the power to order a stand-by bed in the parade square (yes, recruits would have to physically carry the bed and cupboard there).
As entertaining as they are, these glimpses into the past add to the bloated running time.
Perhaps one could play spot-the- film-sponsor to while away some of the time but then, the game would be too easy to be much of a challenge.
The oddest product placement was for an auditor. Stranded on a highway in the middle of a storm after a dramatic break-up, Ken bumps into a few cyclists wearing raincoats with a prominent company logo. They hand him a raincoat. Thank goodness they were there to save the day – and disrupt the rhythm of the film.
The change in Ken’s attitude is predictable and regrettably melodramatic, with Neo resorting to a last-minute incident as in many of his other films.
From the snippets glimpsed at the end of part 1, it seems that much of the drama among the recruits will be kept for part 2, along with more relationship troubles, though for someone else and not Ken.
Too bad part 1 does not make a convincing argument for splitting the movie into two parts in the first place.
(ST)

Monsieur Lazhar
Philippe Falardeau
The story: A teacher commits suicide in the classroom of an elementary school in Montreal. The replacement Bashir Lazhar (Mohamed Fellag), who is from Algeria, tries to help the children cope with this terrible event. His students include the grave and wise Alice (Sophie Nelisse) and the mercurial Simon (Emilien Neron). Eventually, the painful reason for Bashir’s departure from his homeland is revealed.

What seems at first to be a story about 11-year-olds dealing with the grief and shock of a teacher’s suicide transmutes into a richer film about society and humanity.
In the aftermath of the death, the adults at school and at home treat the subject with kid gloves. They mean well but they seem to have little idea of the emotional lives of the children.
Bashir Lazhar, on the other hand, is prepared to engage with his students on the taboo subject of death. Chastised by the school for his pains, he slowly gains the trust and liking of his young charges.
Viewers receive little clues that there is more to him than he lets on. He claims to have been a teacher in Algeria but his knowledge of the classroom and teaching methods seem totally outdated. There is no doubt that his concern for the children is genuine but what secret is he keeping?
Writer-director Philippe Falardeau unfolds the film at a leisurely pace, with an assured control of tone so it never drags. Little moments of humour also lift what could have been a grim story.
The performances are excellent. Algerian Mohamed Fellag’s turn as Bashir is subtle and understated and, one imagines, far removed from the stand-up comedy he is apparently known for.
He is matched by the child performers, particularly Sophie Nelisse, whose character Alice is childlike and yet mature beyond her years.
As the story develops, Falardeau uses it to comment on various issues. For example, the relationship between teachers and their students is now so fraught that it is regulated to the point of being ridiculous. A teacher even remarks that working with kids is like working with radioactive waste – if you touch them, you get burnt.
Jibes at Bashir for not being Canadian reflect the uneasy relationship the society has with its immigrants. While Bashir makes a connection with the children, there is no grand “Oh captain, my captain” gesture like in Dead Poets Society (1989). Instead, there is a hug between a teacher and a student at the end that is both moving and bittersweet.
Monsieur Lazhar is not a neat and tidy movie with all its themes tied prettily with a bow. It is a compelling character study and a portrait of life that does not sugarcoat sometimes ugly truths. Along with a clear-eyed dose of honesty, it also offers hope and the healing balm of human connection.
(ST)

The 12th Global Chinese Music Awards is organised by seven radio stations from around the region. Appropriately enough, watching the awards show is like listening to the radio which has a little bit of everything thrown into the mix.
There were performances by artists from Hong Kong’s Eason Chan to local singer Kit Chan, chatter by the deejay-hosts and interview segments with the stars.
The main difference is the addition of the visual element to the ceremony. Apart from the awards show, there was also a Walk of Fame event held before the show at Marina Bay Sands.
And stealing the limelight in the fashion department was Hong Kong’s Joey Yung. She looked like a giant shocking pink shower scrub and when she sat down, her voluminous get-up swallowed up her neighbours.
When her interview segment with the hosts ran on and on about her concert in Singapore next year, she jokingly thanked them for the long advertising segment.
The diva had a sizable contingent of fans but the loudest screams from the 4,000-strong crowd at the Singapore Indoor Stadium last Friday night were for Taiwan’s Show Lo.
He added fun to the proceedings whether clowning around with Taiwanese singer-actress Rainie Yang or delivering a high-octane dance performance on stage. Picked by one of the deejay-hosts to ask Lo a question, a starstruck Vietnamese fan asked why he was so good-looking, to which he coolly replied: “Because I’m the best of my mom and dad.”
Lo was crowned Most Popular Male Artiste and Yung was Most Popular Female Artiste.
With so many performances of ballads lined up, the faster-paced songs stood out. Hong Kong band Mr. delivered a blast of rock with If I Were Eason Chan while Taiwanese group Da Mouth’s dance track Baboo was a welcome jolt of energetic fun.
Taiwan’s Aska Yang gave a soulful rendition of That Man and then caused a stir when he came off the stage and began serenading the female singers sitting in the front row. China’s Qu Wanting was almost beside herself with excitement.
Local singer Kit Chan sang three songs with her signature flourish and was given the Outstanding Achievement Award.
Of the 29 prizes handed out, the most puzzling one was Most Talented Artiste Award.
It went to Singapore’s JJ Lin and Taiwan’s Rainie Yang, who seemed to be justifying her win when she said: “Besides being a singer, I’m also an actor and have been a host before so I guess I really am quite talented all round.”
The obligatory thank-yous went out to fans, record labels and the media.
JJ Lin’s parents, who were in the audience, unexpectedly reaped a bumper crop of thanks from other stars. Lin thanked them after winning a prize and Lo jokingly did so soon after. And then China songwriter-turned-singer Shane Cao and Joey Yung added to the chorus of thank-yous.
Lin himself did them proud with wins for Top 5 Most Popular Male Artiste, Most Talented Artiste and Best Album for Lost N Found. Its title ballad was among the Top 20 Hits Of The Year.
Apart from the Lin clan, the big winners of the evening included Tanya Chua, who won for Best Female Artiste, Most Popular Composing Artiste and Best Music Composition for Sing It Out Of Love. Her song Don’t Bother Me was on the Top 20 list.
Eason Chan was named Best Male Artiste, Top 5 Most Popular Male Artiste and his album ? clinched the award for Best Album. His ballad Loneliness Sufferers made it to the Top 20 honour roll as well.
This is the second time the ceremony has been held in Singapore and MediaCorp’s Y.E.S. 93.3FM was the hosting station. The awards were last held here in 2006.
(ST)

Gaia
Sandy Lam

Hong Kong diva Sandy Lam has had enough.
In the liner notes to her latest album, she says she does not want to create “safe blandness”. That would be far too harsh an indictment of her previous work but it does prepare the listener for a very different experience from that of her last Mandarin album, Breathe Me (2006).
In line with the album title, Gaia, the primal Greek goddess of the Earth, Lam works the earth-mother vibe in the music videos and the photos of her with tousled locks and flowing gowns.
The opening electro-pop of Speechless Song, for which she composed and co-wrote the lyrics, takes her into spiritual world music territory of China singer Sa Dingding. It is Lam as you have never heard her before as she chants: “Save our nerves, save the sins in our thoughts.”
Cantonese track Impermanence provides a smoother transition to the new Lam, being a moody slice of electronica with an alt-rock attitude.
A show-stopping highlight is Persimmon, whose shot-in-Iceland music video has been available online for the past year.
Her voice swoops and swirls during this Gothic ballad’s chorus, which comprises the word wu ya (Chinese for raven) drawn out and repeated.
This is Lam at her most experimental and compelling.
She has not turned her back on more mainstream ballads altogether though. Ash seems to be written for her 14-year-old daughter as she croons: “You will always be my little precious.”
Even better is the breathtakingly lovely Maybe, which she performs with such delicacy and tenderness. I am not usually a fan of Mandarin remakes of Cantonese tracks – the dialect versions are more richly nuanced. But I will happily make an exception for Maybe.
While these classy and classic ballads pull the album in a different direction from the more experimental works, props to Lam for trying something new instead of merely coasting along.
Gaia may not be perfect but it is a worthy, heartening effort.
(ST)

Simple Love
Yen-j

How To Deal With Loneliness?
Kenji Wu

I Remember
Shin

A trio of male Taiwanese singer- songwriters have new releases but only one has decided not to pull double duty and to focus on his vocals.
The jazz-influenced pop of singer- songwriter Yen-j’s third album harks back to his debut Thanks Your Greatness (2010). The piano and drums-propelled The World’s Not Too Bad opens with this optimistic observation: “The world’s not too bad when someone is willing to do something for you, not to return a favour, nor for money, but because of love.”
There is also a gentle sense of humour and self-deprecation in his songs. Temporary Boyfriend casts him in the role of rebound guy over a breezy tune: “I’m willing to be your rebound ball, be a temporary boyfriend.”
Sneeze brings on a smile with its chorus of hachoos. It strikes me that it could also be a drawled reading of “heart you”.
Simple Love thoughtfully strikes a better balance between pop and jazz than his sophomore effort Not Alone (2011), and that is something to be thankful for.
Meanwhile, singer-songwriter Kenji Wu gets contemplative on his dusk-to- dawn concept album. It kicks off with an instrumental dance number and then charts the course of the lonely night that follows after a night of partying.
He is down in the dumps on Messing: “So I party wildly, so I mess about, because I don’t dare to face, face the dark, face heartbreak.”
The tempo picks up on Chase as he resolves to go after the love he once had. Wu tends to be stronger on faster tracks than ballads, especially when the ballad is a schmaltzy one such as Because You’re A Woman. The gently rousing Morning ends the album on a hopeful note and is a nice contrast to the frenzied opener.
Shin, former frontman of the rock band that bore his name, is showing more restraint on his new disc. Unlike the angsty rock anthems he delivered in the past, he sounds more tender on the ballad Secret Regrets.
Maybe the photo shoot in dreamy Paris helped to get him in the mood: There are plenty of shots of Shin looking pensive and mellow in the lyric booklet.
He has left the songwriting duties here to others, such as indie band sodagreen’s Wu Ching-feng, lyricist Lin Xi and Singaporean singer-songwriter Hanjin Tan.
Old rocker habits die hard, though, and there is a sop to fans of his more intense style on the duet Hugging In The Wild Wind with power belter A-lin.
Still, it is good that Shin is trying something different, vocally, to shake things up. We will be even more intrigued if he ventures into socially conscious rock – something he said he might do in a recent Life! interview. Now, that would be something to remember.
(ST)

A Wild Man’s Dreams (1990)
Wong Hong Mok
With his raw husky pipes, Wong Hong Mok stood out immediately. The singer-songwriter, better known as Huang Hongmo, sounded distinctly different from most of the clear and genteel voices on the xinyao Singapore folk scene in the 1980s and early 1990s.
And the self-penned title track of his debut album, A Wild Man’s Dreams, proved to be the perfect song for him.
Although he sings it with xinyao group Tiao Dong Lv Xiao Zu, it was his unvarnished, low-pitched vocals which immediately evoked the image of the titular wild man.
The song opens with a dramatic howl and then throbs with a sense of yearning: “I once had this dream/I was lying quietly among flowers and grass/Through the wild glade and over the hill/I ran freely through the wide grass plain.”
His lush images were startling, given Singapore’s highly urbanised environment. The picture he painted of this idyll was irresistible. It seemed to tap into a yearning that city folk did not even know they had, for the freedom of vast, open spaces.
The album sold more than 69,000 copies in Singapore and Malaysia.
Wong, 53, was ahead of the curve in going green before being environmentally conscious was hip.
The titles alone – Lakeview At Sunset, Flower Date – contain several references to nature. And his subsequent album, Confessions Of A Stupid Bird (1991), contained tracks such as Mountain Passion and A Tree’s Conviction.
The lyrics for Zui Hou De Dian Ji (The Last Thing I Think About), for example, are also filled with nature imagery. The ballad opens with: “Walked through the melancholia of fallen leaves/Passed by the beauty of red flowers/Who was my earliest spring/And will also be my final season.”
While he has embraced nature all along, he had little desire to embrace the limelight, especially when he first started writing songs. In the mid-1980s, songs written by him under a pen-name were played on the radio and performed by others at the annual Xinyao Festival held in Singapore.
It was not until the 1989 Xinyao Festival that he performed live for the first time and using his own name, Huang Hongmo.
The performance caught the attention of an executive at music label BMG and eventually led to the release of A Wild Man’s Dreams.
Reflecting both the collaborative spirit of xinyao and perhaps his own reticence, Wong sang only four of his 11 compositions on the album.
Apart from the title track and Zui Hou De Dian Ji, he also lent his vocals to nostalgia-laden Wan Zhong Feng Qing (Ten Thousand Sensations) and Na Ban Qing Huai (That Kind Of Feeling).
He had said then: “I knew I had to record at least a few tracks. But I would be happier if I didn’t have to sing at all.”
Happily for us, he did.
(ST)

Eason Chan Singapore Concert 2012
Event Plaza at Marina Bay Sands
Last Saturday

When an event is labelled as rain or shine, you better be prepared for the eventuality that it does rain.
And rain it did on Saturday evening, starting with a torrential downpour which eased into a steady drizzle for much of the night.
Ponchos were provided but they were placed at the seats. Fans had to stand in the rain for over an hour just to get into the open-air venue.
The messy situation was not helped by the lack of signage for the different entrances in the mall area next to the event plaza and announcements were so muffled, one could barely make out what was being said.
Most unforgivable of all, the show started at 9.05pm with 200 people still waiting to get in. The fans deserved better. And so did top Hong Kong singer Eason Chan.
As it was, people were still streaming in and trying to get to their seats for quite a few songs.
The rain also seemed to dampen the crowd’s enthusiasm and Chan wondered at one point if people were feeling hemmed in by the yellow ponchos.
Still, the professional singer gave it a good go over the two-hour show.
It is not for nothing that he is dubbed God of Songs. With his rich and resonant voice, Chan can pretty much sing about anything convincingly, be it ruminating on the essence of time on Tourbillon to professing lust and desire on Servant Under The Dress.
The gig was part two to his 2010 Duo concert series and the costumes reflected the theme of duality. He first appeared in a white-in-front yellow- behind outfit with his hair sculpted to look like game character Sonic the Hedgehog’s (left). For the most part though, this felt like a scaled-down version of his previous show and some dancers’ costumes were definitely recycled.
At least there were differences in the song line-up. With 36 studio albums under his belt, there was plenty of material to choose from and Chan dug deep into his catalogue.
There was Love Is Suspicion, Why Not This Way and The Whole World Can’t Sleep from his breakthrough Mandarin album It’s Me (2001) all the way to dance numbers Heavy Flavour and Swipe Card from his latest Cantonese album ...3mm (2012).
When fans clamoured for Ten Years, he said that he disagreed with the view that his old songs were better. He added that his newer songs needed time to mature before launching into the wisely observant See Through, a highlight from his last Mandarin album ? (2011). He did eventually get round to Ten Years though.
Quite a few of his songs appear in two versions and, unfortunately, he tended to go for the less satisfying Mandarin take over the Cantonese one on Saturday. Hence, concertgoers got the merely moving Long Time No See instead of the devastating Might As Well Not Meet. At least we got both versions when he alternated between the thrillingly gorgeous Cantonese ballad Under Mount Fuji and the Mandarin knock-off Love Shifts.
The set ended with Chan bending his knees and pretending he was being lowered below the stage. Then he stood up, announced “Let’s not waste time” and launched into the encore of Heavy Flavour and a reworked version of his hit ballad Backpack.
It was not the most ideal circumstances to watch Chan perform. But it was still worthwhile just to hear him sing live.
(ST)

sodagreen “Walk Together” Tour – Singapore
Max Pavilion @ Singapore Expo
Last Friday

The albums of Taiwanese indie band sodagreen are always a treat to listen to. But there is nothing quite like experiencing them live to get the full impact of their peerless musicality.
It has been three years since the six members performed together as guitarist Ho Jing-yang and keyboardist-violinist Kung Yu-chi were serving out their military service stints. It sounds like they were never away from the way the music flowed.
Frontman Wu Ching-feng shone with his crystal-clear high-pitched voice and he was tireless over the almost 31/2- hour-long concert. He is such an evocative singer that he can take on a familiar hit such as Stefanie Sun’s Cloudy Sky and make you feel like you are hearing it for the first time.
On the delicate Stopping At Each Station, he flits between his higher and lower registers like the butterfly of the song.
It was also impressive the way the band could pull off almost any song request, though Wu would also blithely ignore cries for a number he did not feel like singing.
In the case of early hit Little Universe, he finally relented – by singing the lalala chorus.
The theme for this concert was Walk Together, the title of a song found on their latest album What Is Troubling You (2011). More specifically, it was about heading home to the warmth of family.
There was a video clip of the band members talking about their parents and Wu shared a moving song he had written for his late father, When I Was Young.
And when he sang Come Home Soon from Daylight Of Spring (2009), he asked if the audience wanted to go home soon and the response was a resounding “No!” from the 4,500-strong crowd.
There was a segment when sodagreen performed songs Wu had written for other singers. He quipped that it was like having children put up for adoption brought back home for a short while.
Indeed, Eason Chan’s A Trouble Like This and Rainie Yang’s Youthful Troubles sounded perfectly at home at a sodagreen show.
There were other surprises as well. Wu flirted with a stanza of Coldplay’s Yellow before segueing into A-mei’s My Dearest. There was also an uproarious mash-up of The Lonely Goatherd from the musical The Sound Of Music (1959) and Harlem Yu’s Minnan number Black Dog Man On The Mountaintop. It was a strange-sounding pairing that worked and it was worth it just to hear Wu yodelling away.
While the band might be better known for their ballads, they could also step it up and get the crowd pumping with rockers such as Fever.
They even devised some simple dance moves on Control Freak for the crowd to dance along to and then amped up the genteel Daylight to end the set on a rousing note.
Adding to the entertainment value was Wu’s welcome sense of theatricality. He sported a dramatic smear of red and blue eyeshadow over his left brow and could always be counted on to say something funny, cutting or outrageous.
When the band members came off the stage and did their walkabouts, Wu kept order with both the stick and carrot. He jokingly threatened to cancel the concert if people did not return to their seats and then announced he would head to whichever section was the most orderly.
He even made the usually dry thank-you segment fun by keeping up a patter of commentary as photographs of the behind-the-scenes personnel in wigs flashed onto the screen.
More of the Wu Ching-feng variety show was seen during the encore when he challenged guitarist Liu Jia-kai to shoot for the ending high notes in the duet I Wrote Of You In My Song – and then moving up the register as Liu nailed each attempt.
The encore ended with the gospel- tinged What Is Troubling You as some fans, mostly togged out in sodagreen T-shirts, streamed onstage and everyone sang along. It was a moment that felt as cosy and comfortable as home.
(ST)

J Moment
Jay Chou

Mandopop king Jay Chou’s (right) last two albums were not among his strongest. And this is a fact that a collection of music videos for Exclamation Mark (2011) and The Era (2010) will not change.
They work best when they have a sense of fun about them, such as on Free Tutorial Video, a country- and-western tinged number staged with group choreography in a school setting that rolls along with rollicking energy.
For catchy dance track Enchanting Melody, Chou turns to an unlikely source for inspiration – cerebral Hollywood thriller Inception (2010).
While the animated video for Exclamation Mark unfolds like a violent video game and reminds one of how the record seems to aim at younger listeners, the live-action-cartoon vibe of Hydrophobic Sailor was more successful.
Some songs are let down by the videos. The mid-tempo Long Time No See flits easily between Mandarin and Minnan and is a highlight on The Era but is given an overly cutesy treatment complete with a dancing robot.
The making-of bonus snippets feature Chou acting directorial on set or speaking directly to the viewer. Check out the making of Free Tutorial Video for a glimpse of his mother.

The Story Of Billy
Wilber Pan

Free Now
Equator 2

It is always a sign of desperation when soap operas turn to multiple personality disorder as a plot device.
But even though the title track of Wilber Pan’s new album is inspired by The Minds Of Billy Milligan (1981), a book about a real-life criminal with the disorder, there is nothing desperate about the resulting electronic stomper.
The 32-year-old singer-songwriter has even designated different personalities for different parts of the song.
He warns at one point: “Ignorant you, please be careful, because I might not be able to endure/Too much, too much.”
The lively fast-paced tracks are the stronger ones here, so pay attention to Live Broadcast and Get It.
Given his thin voice, Pan should stay away from ballads as they tend to show up his limitations.
And the tune for English ballad Baby Tonight is not so great that we need to hear it again with Mandarin lyrics on Don’t Wanna Wake Up. The album may not always work but at least no one can accuse Pan of playing it safe.
Neither are the guys of the collective called Equator 2 afraid of taking risks.
Out of the 10 tracks, only two are credited to the quartet. They include the opening title track which has a laidback summery vibe to it: “La la la la oh oh oh, shorts, singlet and slippers/La la la la oh oh oh, talked the night away without realising it.”
The others are credited to the individual members – Jeff Wu, Sega Lu, Strong and Johney – and it is quite a mixed bag of material from folksy love ballad (Actually She Knows) to rap-rock (Li Bai’s Voice) to slice-of-life number (Watching Movies) to pop oddity (John’s Magic Medicine).
This is a record with multiple personalities no doubt.
(ST)

David The Best 2.0 Kucing Kuraps FTW
Drama Box, The Joyden Hall @ Bugis+/Thursday
Overheard near the three-hour mark at this production: “Oh my God, it’s not over yet.” A wildly ambitious piece of community theatre, David The Best tries to explore identity and how its different layers – national, racial and personal – overlap.
Sadly, its execution falls short. What we get is a sprawling, scattered talk show that is crying out to be edited. It is as unwieldy as its title, which references the underdog (David vs Goliath), Internet slang (FTW) and throws in the Malay phrase for “small fry” for good measure. This is the second edition of a well-received play radio DJ Huang Wenhong did in 2008 called David The Best!.
David 2.0 has a loose talk-show format. Guests, from MediaCorp actor Chew Chor Meng to regular folks who responded to an audition call on Huang’s radio show, share their stories on stage. Huang serves as host and also slips in and out of different voices and characters in observational pieces which pad out the show. He co-created the show with Drama Box’s Kok Heng Leun, who directed and wrote the script.
One theme that crops up in the show is this: We all have our stories, and by sharing our stories, we become a stronger and more tolerant community. Alfian Sa’at’s 2011 play, Cooling Off Day, about how people voted in the General Election, had conveyed the same message in far more compelling fashion – and without spelling it out.
The idea is a worthy one, but while I admire the courage of the regular folks who came forward to share their tales, it is theatre’s job to give some shape and form to the stories rather than letting them run on. For example, a mother’s convoluted story about a disciplinary incident involving her son at school did not have enough of a pay-off.
In addition to Chew, the production also featured guest appearances by Taiwanese getai performer Hao Hao and theatre actress Aidli Mosbit. A slightly different roster of guests will appear at each performance. The show’s run is till Oct 20.
On opening night on Thursday, Chew talked about his abusive father and his journey as an actor and his struggle with spinal muscular atrophy, while Hao Hao shared the hurdles he has faced as a cross-dressing performer. Some of it was amusing. Some, touching and moving. But one wonders if this was the right venue for these confessionals.
Sure, Hao Hao makes a point about multiple identities and how they shift, depending on context. But it takes him some time to get to it. Meanwhile, he hijacked the evening to flaunt his flirty, sassy getai persona (above).
Huang bantered quite a bit with Aidli, asking the audience to freely ask her about Malays and Muslims. Mostly, he offered up broad stereotypesfor her to swat away easily. The exchange was done in the spirit of fostering greater understanding and it helped that Aidli had some zinging comebacks.
When Huang riffs on about aspects of Singapore life, the delivery is genial, but the writing is not tight or sharp enough. It is a charge that could be levelled against the production as a whole. Adding FTW – Net lingo for “for the win” – to a title does not automatically make a show awesome.
(ST)

Too Foolish (1994)
Eric Moo


Along with musicians such as Liang Wern Fook and Billy Koh, Malaysia-born Singapore-bred singer-songwriter Eric Moo was a key figure in xinyao, or the Singapore folk movement of the 1980s.
Some of the 49-year-old’s best-known songs were slice-of-life ditties about the man in the street, including the rousing Kopi-O from the popular drama series The Coffee Shop (1986).
But his love ballads were what cemented his reputation as an angst-ridden, leather jacket-clad star. And Too Foolish was a prime example of the macho, heartbroken laments favoured by the melodramatic.
It was the essence of bombastic love songs distilled into a single song, and amateur singers struggled to master the monster hit in karaoke lounges all over.
Composed by Moo, with lyrics by Chen Jiaming, the tune boasted a chorus that daringly went for the high notes. Its claim to fame, however, were 30-word-long phrases that tested the singer’s breath control. For instance: “It’s only, why did you ignore all those swirling rumours in the beginning, and choose me in the midst of wind and rain?/It’s only, why, after we have ignored it all, chased after true love and tasted the sweet after the bitter, did you give up on me?”
With the inclusion of a plaintive erhu in its arrangement, the song also prefigured the so-called “China-style” tunes popularised by later artists such as Jay Chou.
The EMI-released album that bears the same name – a collection of nine of Moo’s previous ballads, a live track which sampled songs from his 1993 Malaysian concert, plus the new title number – reportedly sold a whopping 1.8 million copies across Asia.
It was arguably an early example of the now-common marketing tactic of packaging together some greatest hits with a sprinkling of new tracks.
The collection includes earlier examples of Moo’s ballads: from the more radio-friendly Sad People Get Sadder (1991), to the more quietly affecting For You (1989), which was written for his then-girlfriend, model-actress Jazreel Low.
Moo was also successful as a songwriter for others.
The big Cantonese hit for Hong Kong singer Jacky Cheung, Just Want To Spend My Life With You (1993), came from his pen and it appears here in its original Mandarin version, Shouldn’t Let You Wait Too Long.
Among my favourite tracks are those taken from the 1988 album You Are My Only One: Those Days and the stirring title number.
Moo broke into the Taiwan and Hong Kong markets with You Are My Only One and the power ballad became a template of sorts for his future lung-busters – a gentle, contemplative stanza, building up to an explosive chorus as emotions boil over.
In contrast, Those Days was a very different type of ballad. In it, Moo reminisced about friendships of yesteryear. Inspired by a phone call from a friend’s mother, he wrote the song in half an hour.
Over the course of his long career, he has sometimes come across as cocky and even controversial. He has also been guilty of over-singing at times and his forceful blasting of songs by female singers on The Classic (2009) was an exercise in excess.
But Too Foolish reminds you of Moo at his best. To dismiss the veteran all together, because of transgressions real or imagined, would be plain silly.
(ST)