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)