Change The World
Bevlyn Khoo
Local singer-songwriter Bevlyn Khoo’s new EP comprises songs for television drama Jump Class, which aired recently on StarHub TV. Based on the comic of the same name by Johnny Lau of
Mr Kiasu fame, the show is about a primary school pupil who discovers he can travel to a less stressful parallel universe.
In keeping with the show’s youthful vibe, the songs here are mostly cheery and chirpy. Over a jaunty guitar and harmonica accompaniment on Haha Song, she sings charmingly: “Come along and sing along with me, don’t let your thoughts run wild/All together now, hahahahahahahaha.”
The title track is a paean to positivity and a call to action: “Change the world, change your space, step across that stubborn and invisible boundary.”
Think of it as a pick-me-up anthem for Monday mornings.
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American Heist
Sarik Andreasyan
The story: After committing a crime with his older brother Frankie, who takes the rap for it, James (Hayden Christensen) tries to stay on the straight and narrow by working in a car repair shop. When Frankie (Adrien Brody) gets released from prison, though, he gets pulled into a bank heist job. James is reluctant, but the fates of his girlfriend Emily (Jordana Brewster) and Frankie are on the line.

This crime thriller is based on the 1959 film The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery. But it also seems to be influenced by the more recent The Town (2010).
In that hold-up flick which Ben Affleck co-wrote, directed and starred in, lifelong friendships in the Charlestown neighbourhood of Boston are tested when pressure mounts on a gang of robbers.
As a testosterone-heavy tale of greed gone awry, it is superior to the New Orleans-set American Heist, where the testy love-hate relationship between brothers James and Frankie is central.
Heist does not make much use of its setting, a pity considering New Orleans’ rich and distinctive culture.
The characters are flawed, but not in a way that makes them compelling. James is just too gullible. Asked to meet an “investor” together with his brother’s shady pals in the middle of the night and all he can muster up is: “I got a bad feeling about this.”
His romantic interest Emily (Brewster) just happens to work as a dispatch officer for the cops, which means she conveniently gets to hear first-hand what unfolds at the stick-up via police radio transmissions.
At least, Brody (Dragon Blade, 2015) turns Frankie into the scumbag you love to hate – a none-too-competent weasel whose main skill seems to be using emotional blackmail on his younger brother.
The heist itself is not very exciting, which is rather a let-down considering the grand-sounding title. It also gets increasingly tedious and ludicrous as the bank job gets stretched into an extended finale.
Armenian film-maker Sarik Andreasyan (That Was The Men’s World, 2013) squeezes in some fancy point-of-view sequences, but they feel showy and seem unnecessary.
Despite the effort, American Heist is simply not that arresting.
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White
Pakho Chau
Hong Kong singer-songwriter Pakho Chau held his first gig in Singapore only last month. But he has been chalking up Cantopop hits at home since his debut in 2007.
His new EP continues that streak as the ballad Little White scaled the territory’s charts.
There is something interesting going on thematically on the record as the tracks touch on impermanence and fragility as well as holding on to innocence. White is a symbol for both emptiness and purity.
“The kite descends quietly/Paradise is flattened quietly,” he sings in Prologue.
And on Little White, he reminds listeners: “No matter how fickle and fragile life is, it still has a unique meaning/You are the child who has come to tell me everything.”
With his sonorous and soothing pipes, the former model and national basketball player nabbed the Best Male Singer Gold accolade for the first time at the Ultimate Song Chart Awards 2014, beating veterans Andy Hui and Eason Chan.
His credible sole Mandarin effort here, Make The Same Mistake, suggests he is ready for his crossover into the big time.
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Wonder Mama
Clifton Ko
The story: Lovely (Petrina Fung Bo Bo) is a mousy librarian trying to keep the peace at home between her warring parents (Kenneth Tsang and Susan Shaw). Meanwhile, her grown son (Babyjohn Choi) is unemployed and stays cooped up in his room. Things come to a head when her father gets the maid pregnant after moving to Guangzhou in the wake of getting a divorce.

Veteran Hong Kong star Fung Bo Bo is the best reason to watch this movie.
Her last role was a cameo as a lesbian in Ann Hui’s All About Love (2010) and she has come out of semi-retirement for writer-director Clifton Ko’s Wonder Mama.
Over the course of the movie, she gets to blossom from a timid mouse who needs to check with her father when her boss offers a promotion, to a woman who begins to live for herself and not just for others.
Lovely has been so wrapped up in the lives of her parents and her son that she does not even have any friends of her own. Whenever she needs to talk through her frustrations, she would go to a doctor (Tse Kwan Ho) just before closing time to make sure she gets all the attention she needs.
Fung adds a touch of playfulness to a character who has been hard done by fate, beginning with a husband who disappeared without a trace years ago. When she learns about the maid’s pregnancy, she can only laugh in the face of the tragicomedy that is her life.
As a whole though, Wonder Mama is somewhat uneven. The peculiarly Hong Kong mix of blithe comedy and melodrama feels a little jarring here. The scream fests between Kenneth Tsang and Susan Shaw are bruising and brutal take-no-prisoners affairs. But the intensity is undercut by the comic appearance of the luckless panda-eyed neighbours who can never get any peace.
Neither are the Stephen Chow references for Wen Chao, who used to imitate the Hong Kong comedian as a newcomer, particularly funny. Wen plays Lovely’s mainland cousin here.
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Minions
Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda
The story: Without a villain to serve, the Minions (Pierre Coffin) are purposeless and listless. So adventurous Kevin, rocker Stuart and little Bob head off into the world to search for a despicable master. They find Scarlet Overkill (Sandra Bullock) at Villain-Con in Orlando in 1968. With the help of gadgets from her inventor husband Herb (Jon Hamm), the trio attempt to steal the Queen’s crown in London. A spin-off and prequel to the Despicable Me movies.

The Minions were the breakout stars of the Despicable Me animated flicks. Cheerfully yellow and irrepressibly riotous, they had a knack for causing mayhem and an endearing ability to laugh at themselves. They were like eager-to-please children running amok, babbling away cutely in baby-talk gobbledygook.
There is no doubt that they are entertaining as sidekicks and in short little segments. Their nonsensical banana song, done barbershop quartet style, has been viewed more than 57 million times on YouTube. And that is just for one version of the clip.
Can they shoulder an entire movie on their own though? Especially since they have no shoulders.
The answer is – sort of.
Instead of attempting to subtitle the Minions, actor Geoffrey Rush provides the droll narration of how the creatures have sought out the biggest and baddest through the ages. There are amusing vignettes of the Minions in prehistoric times, in ancient Egypt and with Dracula. But inadvertently, they end up killing those they serve.
For fans, there is also the fun of finding out how they ended up with their trademark overalls look.
A movie needs to be more than a series of little skits strung together, however, so a new superbaddie is introduced. Unfortunately, Scarlet Overkill is not very interesting despite being hyped as the first female super villain. So she has some kind of mechanical contraption for a skirt which holds weapons, big deal. The kooky contraptions her husband comes up with are more imaginative.
Sandra Bullock (Gravity, 2013) also seems miscast as her voice lacks the oomph and character needed for an animated evildoer. Other big names lending their voices include Jon Hamm (Mad Men, 2007-2015) as Scarlet’s hubby as well as Allison Janney (The West Wing, 1999-2006) and Michael Keaton (Birdman, 2014) as a bank-robbing couple.
The best voice work, though, was by co-director Pierre Coffin, who breathes life into Kevin, Stuart, Bob and a whole bunch of other Minions. Now, that is wicked.
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Kit Chan Spellbound Concert 2015
The Star Theatre / Last Friday
It was towards the end of the concert that home-grown singer Kit Chan dropped a bombshell. She told a hushed hall: “Less than a year ago, I wasn’t sure if I could sing.”
Due to complications caused by acid reflux, she underwent surgery on her vocal cords in the first half of last year. She had “no voice” after the procedure and it was a traumatic time for her.
It has been a deeply personal and spiritual journey of recovery culminating in this concert, a mostly sold-out two-night affair which kicked off her maiden regional tour.
And so, she was moved to share this publicly for the first time. If she had kept mum, no one would have been the wiser.
Over the course of a 2½-hour-long concert, her pipes were in fine form.
She is an emotive and sensitive singer with a clear and bright upper register and a rich and warm lower range and one could hear it all, thanks to the crisp sound.
The only quibble was that the volume of the music was sometimes a tad too loud.
The focus was clearly on the singing and the music, so the staging was kept simple with some choice costumes providing the visual flourish.
Chan first appeared in a Vegas-ready feathered and sequinned white pantsuit and cape outfit and later changed into a beaded gown which exuded old-world glamour.
Between numbers, the seasoned performer shared stories, joked, teased and easily commanded the stage.
She also taught the audience a thing or two, including the definition of a “ba la” song. And no, in the context of music, the Mandarin term does not refer to guava but, instead, a ballad which is “very emo” and often performed with a pained expression.
Nowadays, she seldom belts out this genre of songs, even when they might have stood her in good stead in the recent season of the China reality television show I Am A Singer.
But she acknowledges the fact that her fans would want to hear them at her solo concert and so she duly trotted out hits such as Dazzle.
Unlike most Mandopop concerts, however, the lyrics were not shown for fans to sing along to, save for the track Heartache, one of her biggest hits. She would be the one doing the singing, thank you very much.
In addition to the de rigeur signature tunes such as Home and Liking You, she also showcased her versatility with the Cantonese numbers Waiting and the late Leslie Cheung’s Chase, as well as covers of Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares To You and Lana Del Ray’s Young And Beautiful.
There was also an unplugged segment during which she delivered some of her lesser known, but not necessarily lesser, tracks.
Chan was clearly enjoying herself. She said at one point: “It’s fun to sing songs, but telling stories through song is shiok.”
On Marilyn Monroe’s saucy and slinky My Heart Belongs To Daddy, she told a captivating tale as she let her closet cabaret girl out for a whirl.
It came with an amusing anecdote. She had performed it as a 16-year-old, complete with somewhat inappropriate actions, for a charity event that was attended by an audience full of older men.
“But I’ll sing it because I’m of age now,” she purred.
Like fine wine, she has gotten better with age. By the time she ended the show with the new slow-burn ballad Spellbound, the audience was probably feeling pleasantly tipsy.
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On The Way To The Stars
Kenji Wu
Taiwan’s Kenji Wu has the pretty-boy looks and he has talent. Apart from writing and producing for himself, he has also penned hits for others, including Landy Wen’s Fool.
For some reason, he has never really broken out here in Singapore, other than the occasional hit such as Poems For You.
It certainly sounds like he wants to change things on the title number: “I’m waiting for someday to come back, I dream about someday to come back/Want to shine for you, prove that I exist, as proudly as a star exists.”
He makes no bones about the fact that he wants to be a star.
Besides statements of intent and love ballads, Wu shows off his versatility on the bonus disc with the aggressive Minnan techno track Flip Over The Table. One can just imagine that performed at getai, complete with flashing coloured lights.
The duet You Are So Cute, though, comes across as trying too hard and South Korean actress Song Ji Hyo’s heavily accented Mandarin does not help. Still, the melodic Britpop stylings here and a thoughtful space theme – You Are My Jupiter is another highlight – could well propel him to greater heights of popularity.
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Man Up
Ben Palmer
The story: Thanks to a case of mistaken identity, awkward Nancy (Lake Bell) ends up on a blind date with an older, divorced man Jack (Simon Pegg). They get along swimmingly and, somehow, there is never a right moment for her to confess the error. When he eventually finds out, is there still a chance for them? Or will she fall into the clutches of a former classmate, Sean (Rory Kinnear), who has an unhealthy obsession with her?

What is the one sure sign that you are watching a British romantic comedy instead of an American one? Look at the teeth.
In Stateside flicks, the chompers are unnervingly, blindingly white. In English movies, the state of dental aesthetics is less oppressively perfect. Just look at Pegg’s regular, stained teeth here.
It points to a fundamental difference in the two branches of the genre. American rom-coms tend to be glossy fairy tales while British ones are more relatable and, often, more genuinely sweet.
Pegg is a funny and easily likable actor and what he lacks in swoonsome looks, he makes up for with charm, wit and a deep-seated sense of decency. He is the everyman you root for, be it in apocalyptic comedies such as Shaun Of The Dead (2004) and The World’s End (2013) or in a romance here.
Bell (Boston Legal, 2004-06) is actually American, but don’t hold that against her. Besides, she is not quite in the mould of pretty-women leads such as Reese Witherspoon and Rachel McAdams. She is gawky, cynical and vulnerable in an endearing way, without quite getting into the cartoonish territory of Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001).
Pegg and Bell have a nice energy between them as they bond over crime thriller The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) and dance with choreographed aplomb to Duran Duran’s The Reflex.
Director Ben Palmer, who has a knack for comedy as evidenced by his work on the hilarious British sitcom The Inbetweeners (2009-10), paces Man Up nicely. Writer Tess Morris, who has worked largely on TV, lands a few sharp observations on modern romance. The unkindest cut of a break-up turns out to be deauthorising an ex from a shared iTunes account.
Bland title aside, Man Up is a rom-com that gets both the romance and the comedy right.
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We demand answers from intelligent personal assistants such as Siri and rely ever more on smart devices for work, play and communication. And yet, our relationship with technological progress is a fraught one.
As artificial intelligence gets more sophisticated and complex, the possibility of a sentient system looms larger as well. And the idea both fascinates and repels.
Perhaps reflecting our conflicting attitudes is a recent crop of films. Automata (2014) and Ex Machina (2015) are dystopian dramas which explore the theme. At first, the birthing of autonomous intelligence is held up as a crowning achievement – only to be followed by tragic consequences and a stark message: It is hubris to think that man can simply play god.
On the other hand, Chappie (2015) and Marvel’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015) tackle the topic with a lighter hand and feature entities which might even be the saviours of man.
Set in 2044, Automata stars Antonio Banderas as insurance investigator Jacq in a ravaged world where humanoid robots are used for manual labour. Automata is the plural of automaton, a self-operating machine.
The robots are subject to two unalterable protocols: They cannot harm a human and they cannot alter another robot or itself. But Jacq suspects someone may be illegally modifying the machines and tries to garner evidence to that end.
Science fiction crosses paths with noirish murder mystery here and we also get the indelible image of Banderas tentatively dancing with a robot. Brave new world indeed.
The film draws on a wide variety of influences from past works such as the dystopian sci-fi noir Blade Runner (1982) and Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in which a computer, HAL 9000, kills to prevent its own demise.
In the case of Automata, the first protocol prevents Jacq from coming to harm at the hands of the androids, but still leaves him vulnerable to human treachery.
Trickery and treachery lie at the core of Ex Machina, the quietly compelling directorial debut of novelist Alex Garland (The Beach, 1996). The title comes from the phrase deus ex machina, which literally means god from a machine.
The set-up is simple. A programmer Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is chosen by his boss Nathan (Oscar Isaac) to test whether Ava (Alicia Vikander) is able to pass for human by interacting with her.
Soon enough, the questions begin to stack up. Why was Caleb picked? Does Ava need to be female? Can Nathan be trusted? Is deception a uniquely human trait? Is seduction a uniquely human trait?
Part of the draw here is in the depiction of Ava, a humanoid robot with a life-like visage. Apart from the human face and hands, she is metallic frame and pulsing lights and the effect is at once both eerie and pretty cool. It is a rendering made possible and easier with technological advancement.
In A Space Odyssey, HAL was an unblinking red light. In Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), the robots were given human form and played by actors Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law.
Ava’s clearly non-human appearance makes the audience complicit in Caleb’s undertaking as you try to finesse that fine line between a very smart program and a robot with a mind of its own.
There is no question that Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie is a robot with a mind of its own as it is able to feel and learn.
Which is not to say that everything is open and shut here. Mixed in among the thrilling action sequences are posers on consciousness, mortality and whether the body can be separated from the soul.
Artificial intelligence is neither inherently good or bad, but a function of what Chappie is taught. Pointedly, it behaves like a child and then, like a petulant teenager.
Even a crowd-pleasing blockbuster such as Age Of Ultron is ambivalent when it comes to A.I. True, the android Vision saves the day, but it is Ultron, yet another sentient entity, who brings earth to the brink of obliteration in the first place.
Hero and villain both share perhaps what is the overriding imperative of life, and that is the principle of self-preservation. Is the ability to weigh the cost and morality of doing so what differentiates us from them then?
More works engaging with artificial intelligence will come our way, including a television series titled Humans on AMC channel. The drama imagines a world in which synthetic humans are available for purchase to do chores.
Its title is telling. Be it computer, robot or even superhero, at its heart, the exploration of artificial intelligence is to grapple and wrestle with the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
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