Vulgaria
Pang Ho Cheung
The story: Film producer To’s (Chapman To) meeting with prospective investor Tyrannosaurus (Ronald Cheng) takes a strange turn when he finds himself facing the prospect of having sex with a mule. Soon after, he starts to remake the classic erotic film Confessions Of A Concubine with one-time idol Yum Yum Shaw (Susan Shaw) and the deliciously named Popping Candy (Dada Chen). Meanwhile, his shrewish ex-wife (Kristal Tin) wants to stop him from seeing his young daughter so that he will not be a bad influence on her.

This movie is lewd, crude and proud of it, proclaiming its vulgarity like a badge of honour in the title.
The set-up is a simple one: Producer To has been invited to give a talk to a group of students on the business of putting a movie together. As he recounts his experiences, flashbacks unfold.
Very quickly, one gets a sense of the film’s irreverent tone as To launches into a discourse on the purpose of pubic hair, and concludes with the pronouncement: “A great producer is like a thick bunch of pubic hair.”
Writer-director-producer Pang Ho Cheung delivers the laughs along with a send-up of the film industry, where those who hold the purse strings can hold enormous, and dubious, sway.
In an unforgettable dinner scene with a prospective mainland investor, not only does To have to stomach some unusual “delicacies”, but he also has to get it on with a mule. This would placate the loaded triad boss Tyrannosaurus, whose interest in movies is extremely personal and narrow – he wants to remake an erotic classic with the original starlet.
Singer-actor Ronald Cheng gamely plays the swaggering buffoon for laughs in a nicely calibrated performance complete with hilariously intoned Cantonese, or Mandarin for audiences here.
Comedian Chapman To is also stellar as the put-upon producer who is always trying to weasel his way out of tight spots with his gift of the gab and his street smarts.
He is a man under siege as he tries to raise money, convince actors to come on board and juggle his livelihood with fatherhood.
Vulgaria’s cast of colourful characters also includes Dada Chen as Popping Candy, a wannabe- actress with a specific sexual skill, and Hiro Hayama, star of the exploitative flick 3D Sex And Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (2011), as himself.
The Vulgaria version of the Hong Kong-based Hayama is a sly in-joke as he plays an actor who is extremely wary of explosives after his experience on the set of Sex And Zen.
Pang is a director who is able to be raucous and raunchy one moment and sensitive and gentle the next. Like Kevin Smith (Zack And Miri Make A Porno, 2008) or Seth MacFarlane (TV’s Family Guy and Ted, now showing in cinemas), he has a salacious saltiness that is often balanced with an unexpected sweetness at the core.
Add to that his ability to pen sharp and smart lines and his characters come to believably flawed life and make you root for them.
His genuine affection for movies also comes through as he chronicles the difficulties of producers and directors as they wait for the opportunity to do what they love.
With Vulgaria a hit in his native Hong Kong – earning close to HK$28 million (S$4.5 million) to make it the No. 1 local film of the year so far, ahead of his own rom-com sequel Love In The Buff – Pang will probably not have to muck around with a mule to get funding for his next project.
(ST)

Someone Is Waiting
William Wei

Same Species #2
Nylon Chen

Awkward
Kit Teo

Someone is waiting all right.
After releasing a lovely eponymous debut in 2010, Taiwanese singer-songwriter William Wei went off to fulfil his military obligations.
Which means it has been a long wait for the follow-up album from the Golden Melody Award winner for Best New Artist last year.
The accompanying DVD here is a making-of documentary and in it, Wei clearly states his musical direction: He wants to do popular music while realising that the challenge is to do so without being hackneyed or trite.
He succeeds to a large extent.
Moon offers an unusual and out-of- this-world take on heartbreak: “Beneath the moon is my splintered heart/The surface of the moon is where my blood is shed.”
Even when the lyrics are more straightforward as on the gently groovy Tired and the spare Heart Drunk Heart Broken, his evocative singing conveys the emotions convincingly.
We’ll Never Know and Still Get end the album on a poignant note. “We’ll never know the answer/Cause you never chose that choice” is a musing on the road not taken, while Still Get is about the fragility of happiness: “Still get scared/I won’t be by your side when I wake/Scared, won’t ever be next to you”.
In contrast, Taiwanese singer-actor Nylon Chen’s second album, Same Species #2, fails to make much of an impact as neither his voice nor the material is particularly distinctive or memorable.
The lyrics by the singer-songwriter can be rather prosaic as well.
He declares on Just Wish To Embrace You: “I wish to embrace you like this, okay? Okay?/Tightly embrace, no matter how hot it gets”.
Mostly, the love songs sound generic and the sentiment, well, hackneyed.
Malaysia’s Kit Teo does a much better job with the love ballads on the EP Awkward.
At times reminiscent of a less husky-sounding A-do, he is also able to write tunes with a sweeping romanticism to them.
It all comes together on Love Spreads Like An Epidemic: “Love spreads like an epidemic/Would rather be infected than be alone”.
And it was a treat having Taiwanese singer Julia Peng guest on the duet Curved Moon.
She has been rather quiet of late on the music front but her crystal-clear voice sounds as good as ever.
Really, the only thing awkward about this EP is the odd title.
(ST)

Seven Something
The planet Uranus spends about seven years in each sign of the zodiac. This means that every seven years, there will be major changes in a person’s life.
So goes the theory which weakly links the three stories about love in this compendium put together to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the Thai film studio GTH.
The best segment is the third one, 42.195.
A young marathon runner (America- born Nichkhun from the popular Korean boyband 2PM) literally runs into a 42-year-old female newscaster (Suquan Bulakul) at the park and proceeds to turn her life around.
It is an incredibly chaste romance though the two leads keep one watching as they chase after the goal of completing the Bangkok Marathon.
The other two stories are lacklustre in comparison.
The first, 14, is about a teenage crush in the age of social media. The idea is topical and has potential but the segment, like Puan (Jirayu La-ongmanee from the musical comedy SuckSeed, 2011), suffers from attention deficit disorder.
And part two, 28, stars Cris Horwang (Bangkok Traffic (Love) Story, 2009) as a shrill and self-centred actress who is desperate to have a second stab at fame with her former co-star and ex-boyfriend Jon (Sunny Suwanmethanont).
By the time the film ends after 21/2 hours, you feel you deserve a pat on the back for completing something of a marathon yourself.
(ST)

19
19
Do not be misled by the CD cover.
The act 19 is not some young female newcomer but a duo comprising the very seasoned singer-songwriter Sandee Chan and George Chen, noted composer of tunes for theatre, film and advertisement jingles. The album is filled with a sense of adventure and fun that is positively youthful, turning Chen’s score music and commercial work into bona fide pop songs.
Sound-wise, this feels like a natural continuation of Chan’s previous light- hearted foray into electronica on I Love You, John (2011). The soothing romantic ballad Don’t Forget My Kisses was first included on the soundtrack of the hit film Monga (2010) and it is one of many highlights here.
On the ethereal Journey For Two, they muse about wanderlust: “You’d say every time/Sigh, want to go to Bali island/ You’d say every time/Sigh, want to go to Spain and run.”
The restlessness is also seen in the wide-ranging influences on the songs – from the Japanese youth romance film Bataashi Kingyo (1990) inspiring Stupid Goldfish to the ubiquitous leisure activity of karaoke giving rise to KTV Legend.
Meanwhile, the dreamily sultry Boy Boy Girl Girl features two same-sex couples in the blush of nascent love in the music video.
A winning musical experiment from the Taiwanese duo.

Feeling Of Loss
TKB
This is local band TKB’s second EP after last year’s First Step, First Episode.
The emo-rock tracks by the quartet, such as Feeling Of Loss, Mess and Number 17, are the less interesting numbers here, though the inclusion of a violin’s plaintive wails adds some interest to 17.
Head instead for the light-hearted The Last Address, which at least offers a pick-me-up instead of being another downer. Lead vocalist Nicole Teo sings in English for the refrain: “I must be sleeping on a star, let’s not wake up.”
Still, a soporific record is the last thing a band wants.
(ST)

My Ghost Partner
Huang Yiliang
After messing with the wrong guy, conmen Zhang Shi (Huang Yiliang, sporting a trying-too-hard mohawk) and Yi Fei (Brandon Wong in an Ah Beng role that has Mark Lee’s name all over it) get thrown into the sea. Fei survives but Shi does not and he returns as a constantly ravenous ghost. He also acquires powers which are conveyed on screen via cheesy visual effects.
Too bad that Huang, who also served as director and co-scriptwriter, just does not fit the mould of a lovable spook along the lines of Hong Kong’s Raymond Wong in the Happy Ghost films of the 1980s.
Fatal flaws aside, My Ghost Partner could have been a mildly amusing comedy if it had focused on Shi and Fei’s partnership. But with multiple plotlines and a whole bunch of familiar small-screen faces including Dawn Yeoh, Nick Shen, Yang Libing, Carole Lin and even Taiwan’s Sam Tseng, it feels too scattered.
And in its last 30 minutes, the movie completely veers off course.

A high-stakes gambling game is hastily arranged but it is one devoid of any suspense. Bizarrely, the ones with the greatest emotional stakes in the game are not even the protagonists of Shi and Fei but some minor characters. Go figure.

(ST)

Imperfect
Steve Cheng
The story: Teenagers Jianhao (Edwin Goh) and Zach (Ian Fang) are best buds who join a gang headed by Zhihua (Li Nanxing). The two friends are pulled in different directions – Zach is seduced by the easy money that comes from peddling drugs while Jianhao aims to complete his O levels with help from the studious Shanshan (Kimberly Chia). Tragedy strikes when the hot-headed pair get into a fight with the rich brat Alex (Xavier Ong) and they find themselves in bigger trouble than they ever could imagine.

The Channel 8 juvenile delinquency television drama On The Fringe (2011) turned its young leads Edwin Goh, Ian Fang, Kimberly Chia, Elizabeth Lee and Phua Yida into overnight stars.
At a fan meet held last September, 2,000 fans turned up to show their love and support for them despite a drizzle. The next logical step was to parlay their small-screen success into a movie.
Imperfect features the five young actors as well as veteran Li Nanxing from the TV show. But while it covers similar ground of good-at-heart bad kids, the characters here are different.
Goh is watchable as a young man trying to do the right thing, managing to pull off the different sides to his character Jianhao in his interactions with his family and friends.
Sullen and curt with his mother (Taiwanese TV actress Chiang Tsu-ping), he is fiercely loyal when it comes to his buddies, and then with Shanshan, he reveals an impish likability.
Compared to the fully fleshed-out Jianhao, the others are mostly one-note: Fang’s hot-headed Zach is seduced by easy money, Lee is his shallow girlfriend, Chia is the serious and studious girl and Phua, the bumbling friend.
Still, the young actors bring their On The Fringe chemistry to this movie and make their interactions believable.
Clearly, movie and TV producers are eager to bottle their camaraderie for profit – Goh, Fang, Chia and Phua are currently in the Channel 8 school drama Don’t Stop Believin’.
Unfortunately, the film has a tendency to sink into melodrama, perhaps because Hong Kong director Steve Cheng had cut his teeth on TVB dramas.
The late revelations about Jianhao’s parentage are unconvincingly shoehorned into the script, while Jianhao’s unexpectedly tender relationship with his younger sister, touching at first, soon becomes an overused device.
Adding to these woes is the uneven tone of Imperfect – Jianhao’s mother’s limp-wristed suitor (Taiwan’s Li Pei-hsu) strikes an off-note and Hong Kong veteran Liu Kai Chi as the psycho triad boss father of Alex seems to be in a different gangland flick.
At least the producers were honest when coming up with a title for the movie.
(ST)

Ghetto Superstar
MC HotDog
A rapper must surely drive a flashy car and be surrounded by hot model babes. Right?
Well, Taiwan’s MC HotDog self-deprecatingly takes apart that stereotype in the title track which is dense with wordplay and puns. As he claims: “The crappy songs I write are not at all fan te xi/Still living with my mum, she cooks fan tai xi (rice that is too watery)”. “Fan te xi” is likely a reference to Jay Chou’s hit 2001 album Fantasy.
The flashes of humour and cheekiness liven up this collection of singles that he released between 2009 and this year, often with other collaborators. Rocker Chang Chen-yue lends a hand on three tracks including the party dance-pop number High High Life.
No Breakfast For Hip-Hoppers with fellow rapper Soft Lipa is a sly riposte to Crowd Lu’s Rock ’n’ Roll Style in which Lu proclaimed that eating breakfast every morning was a rock ’n’ roll thing to do. MC HotDog fires off: “What does eating breakfast have to do with rock ’n’ roll/I’ve cracked my head and can’t come up with a thing/So, so I’ve decided to declare one thing, which is, not eating breakfast is a very hip-hop thing.”
Breakfast or no, this 17-track offering, inclusive of short audio skits, should fill you right up.

Sexy, Free & Single
Super Junior
You never know what you are going to get with each Super Junior album, in terms of their line-up, that is.
With Kangin having completed his military service, the K-pop supergroup is now 10-strong on its sixth album.
Sound-wise, SuJu bank on their usual mix of dance numbers and ballads, except the material is decidedly less strong here.
The title track is merely serviceable, no match for the insanely catchy Mr. Simple off their 2011 album of the same name.
It appears that the reason for the existence of a track with a name like Sexy, Free & Single is merely to have an excuse to have the lads lounging about topless on the cover of the album.
Then again, since when have K-pop groups needed a reason to play the sexy card?
(ST)

Yan Zi
Stefanie Sun
It was a classic case of overnight success.
With her self-titled debut album, Stefanie Sun was catapulted into the top ranks of Mandopop singers, achieving both popular and critical acclaim.
The disc sold more than 400,000 copies in three months in Taiwan, and was Singapore’s best-selling Mandarin album in 2000. She even beat today’s Mandopop king Jay Chou to nab the Best New Artist accolade at the prestigious Golden Melody Awards in 2001.
While Sun was very much in the girl-next-door mould, she stood out with her short crop and casual get-ups of unfussy tops and pants, rarely skirts. And in further contrast to docile doe-eyed lasses crooning about love, there was a spunky edge to her distinctive lower-pitched voice, particularly on faster-paced numbers.
She looked as though a moderately strong wind could carry her off, but proved to be no frail damsel when she opened her mouth to sing.
Turbo kickstarted the album. The track was designed to differentiate her from the crowd, with its snappy tempo and lyrics pumped full of attitude: “The feeling is right, I’m starting out/Using my own steps.”
The undoubted highlight of the disc, though, was Cloudy Day. The ballad with its poignant refrain of “tee or or, bey lor hor” (“The sky is dark, it is going to rain soon”), taken from a Hokkien folk song, grew to be a monster hit.
The canny sampling of a well-known ditty meant that everyone and their grandmother could easily relate to the song. For deftly updating an oldie and turning it into an instant classic, local songwriter and Sun’s mentor Lee Shih Shiong won the Golden Melody Award for Best Composer in 2001.
The ballad Love Document was also a thoughtfully crafted number. Lyrics such as “distance is a test”, “we are still learning for love” and “this love will have its certificate” were a perfect fit for the then 22-year-old who graduated from Nanyang Technological University that year with a bachelor of business degree.
Sun also showed that she could write music with her composition for Fine. She would go on to hone her skills as a songwriter, particularly on the statement-making Stefanie (2004) for which she composed two tracks and wrote the lyrics for one.
Interestingly, Yan Zi closes with Leave Me Alone, foreshadowing the ambivalent relationship Sun would have with fame. She loves to sing, but is clearly less enamoured with the pressures that come with being a professional entertainer.
When she released her ninth original studio album It’s Time (2011), she told Life!: “I just want to sing and enjoy it. I don’t need any record-breaking sales or awards or more titles, I just want to enjoy it while it lasts.”
Perhaps that ambivalence is in part due to the awareness that it is never just about the singing. While there is no question of Sun’s raw talent, a clever marketing campaign was also key to her early success.
Even before her album was released in Taiwan, Sun was already a recognisable face, thanks to an advertising campaign for sanitary napkins. And a generous NT$40 million (S$1.67 million) was spent on the promotion of the record.
More controversially, a man with an air gun tried to take her hostage during an autograph session in Taipei, an incident dismissed by some as a publicity stunt.
Still, none of this should detract from the fact that Sun was a unique voice in Mandopop from day one and Yan Zi was the album that first showcased her uniqueness. She has since proven to be that rarest of stars – an overnight smash who has endured.
(ST)

Music-Man II World Tour 2012
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Last Saturday
American-born, Taiwan- based Wang Lee Hom certainly knows how to make an entrance.
After an introductory video clip of him as Music Man taking on hordes of nameless opponents, a tank decked out in coloured lights rolled onto the stage to wild screams.
The singer-songwriter was perched atop the vehicle and dressed in an eye-catching all-red outfit with his hair teased into a gravity-defying pompadour. Appropriately, the opening montage included the electro-rock number Fire Power To The Max.
Dramatic fire power is all well and good, but too much of it can end up feeling like mere bombardment.
And, in fact, the concert became more enjoyable towards the end when the still-boyish-looking 36-year-old loosened up noticeably.
As it was, the early ballads such as The Only One and All The Things You Never Knew were pounded into submission and his face scrunched up with the effort.
It did not help that the sound level was too loud and whatever delicacy of feeling that existed in the songs was pretty much obliterated.
His self-described “chinked-out” style of music was also packed into the first half with tracks such as Descendants Of The Dragon 2012, The 18 Martial Arts and Heroes Of Earth in the line-up.
I have never been particularly swayed, however, by his fusion of pop and hip-hop with elements of folk and traditional Chinese music on albums such as Shangri-La (2004) and Heroes Of Earth (2005).
The starting point of ethnic pride is a laudable one but the results are often bombastic and border on the cringe-worthy. The melding can be successful though when it is done more subtly in songs such as Mistake Made In The Flower Field.
It was with Love Love Love, a third of the way into the 21/2- hour-long concert, that Wang seemed to relax and enjoy himself more.
Talking about the song, he asked who needs love and whether Zhang Ziyi needs love as the camera zoomed in on the Chinese actress who was in the audience. He later added that he had been spending the past few weeks in Singapore making a film with her.
For the most part, his banter stuck to a script as it served to segue into announcing the title of the next song. Not that it mattered to the full-house crowd of 10,000 who greeted his every mention of Singapore and “I love you” with loud cheers.
The talented musician also thrilled his fans by playing on, not one, but four instruments – the piano, the violin, the guitar and the erhu.
Even better was the a cappella segment in which he crooned a string of his best-known hits such as The One I Love Is You and Impossible To Miss You – accompanied by six other Lee Homs in a pre-recorded video. The timing was flawless as he “interacted” with and even quarrelled with his other selves.
By the time he took on Forever Love, the ballad sounded decidedly less strained than the earlier offerings.
During his encore, he recorded a video clip of the enthusiastic audience chorusing “I love you” to post on his Weibo microblog.
He also thanked his Singapore fans for their unwavering support from his first album, Love Rival Beethoven, back in 1995 before ending the evening with Kiss Goodbye.
Happily, it was a kiss that had just the right amount of fire power.
(ST)

Dear Orange
Orange Tan Hui Tien

Uncontrolled
Namie Amuro

Johor’s Orange Tan was the women’s champion in the Malaysian version of Project Superstar back in 2007. While it has taken her a few years to produce, her first EP is the perfect showcase for her agreeably husky pipes.
The songs here have an easy-breezy feel. In them, she muses on familiar themes of life, love and friendship, while avoiding the trap of sounding hackneyed.
In the sweetly optimistic Dear Us, she sings: “Dear us, we live for love/Even if we go our separate ways today/The baggage is heavy, we have to lift it somehow/An unwrapped possibility is waiting in the future.”
Interspersed between the five songs are short interludes, including a cute recording of her niece asking if she has eaten and when she is coming home over the telephone. It is all very slice-of-life and charming.
A totally different proposition is Japanese pop queen Namie Amuro’s ninth studio album, Uncontrolled.
Slick and urbane, with polished music videos to go with 11 of the 13 tracks, it feels calculated down to the last beat.
Still, tracks such as In The Spotlight (Tokyo) and Let’s Go – with lyrics such as “It’s the idea, the idea, idea of you/It gets me going, going, it gets me going” – do the job and ought to get one moving on the dance floor.
It is on the slower-paced numbers that one seems to get a hint of Amuro, the person. Get Myself Back has her crooning: “I’ve always been acting strong/Even lying to myself/On the open white map/There isn’t a place I can go to.”
A little more Amuro, and a little less control, would have made for a more fascinating album.
(ST)

Greedy Ghost
Boris Boo
This tedious morality tale about people who are irritants has few scares and fewer laughs.
Lim (Taiwan’s Kang Kang) stumbles across a manuscript with seemingly empty pages. After being harangued by the spirit within it (Mark Lee), Lim decides to bet on the numbers given to him, not realising that he has to pay a high price for his lottery winnings.
Meanwhile, his two layabout friends whose only discernible job is to occasionally dig up old graves end up stealing from one.
Malaysia’s Brendan Yuen overacts as the greedy and all-round nasty piece of work that is Huat. Henry Thia is at least mildly amusing as the devout Buddhist who obsessively arranges his remaining few strands of hair.
Pity Jesseca Liu who is stuck in the thankless role of Huat’s doormat girlfriend. Her character even gets molested by the female ghost incongruously named Madam Butterfly.
Add to the mess a script in which the repartee descends to the level of “you eat s***”, “no, you eat s***”, and the horror is complete.
(ST)

The Silent War
Alan Mak, Felix Chong
The story: Blind piano tuner assistant He Bing (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) has an excellent sense of hearing. He is recruited by Zhang Xuening (Zhou Xun), an agent of 701 Headquarters of the newly established China Republic government in the 1950s, to detect the frequencies on which the enemy, a vague threat, is broadcasting sensitive information.

It has been said that feted Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai acts with his eyes. In acclaimed dramas such as In The Mood For Love (2000) and Lust, Caution (2007), he could convey the emotions roiling beneath a placid surface with just a searing glance.
So how does he fare when the character he is playing is blind?
Pretty well, thank you very much, and this role lets Leung demonstrate that he does not act with just his eyes. His charisma remains intact even while wearing lenses or dark glasses that cover his piercing peepers. It helps that the character is not some angsty tortured person but a likeable rascally fellow who has to get by on his wits.
The sound design also does a good job of putting the audience in He’s shoes by heightening the noises that filter through to him in a scene where he is being tailed by Zhang and her men.
As Zhang and He later work together, she begins to feel protective of him and he starts to have feelings for her. Their relationship is played out with restraint but perhaps a little too tentatively as other characters enter the picture.
One is actually more intrigued by the enigmatic relationship between Zhang and her boss Old Devil (Wang Xuebing). And He later ends up with the cryptologist Shen Jing (Mavis Fan) in a development that feels rather pat.
The film reunites Leung with Hong Kong film-makers Alan Mak and Felix Chong, who had collaborated as writers for the excellent cop thriller Infernal Affairs (2002). Here, Mak and Chong both direct, from a script adapted from China novelist Mai Jia’s An Suan (Plot Against, 2006).
And it seems possible to detect the seeds of The Silent War in that earlier film.
There is a tensely pivotal scene in Infernal Affairs which involved Morse code being tapped out on a window. Here, the transmission of Morse code messages consumes the protagonists.
The stakes, though, are generally vague here and one never gets the sense of the enemy beyond a few references to Chiang Kai-shek.
And when the stakes are made clearer towards the end in a hunt for the master enemy agent Chungking, what unfolds rests too much on the trite coincidence of similar-sounding Morse codes with very different meanings.
The poignancy of the tragedy that strikes He is also diminished as the rationale for his actions is less than fully convincing.
But at least Leung keeps one watching.
(ST)

My Room
Maggie Chiang
In the six years since her last album Crybaby (2006), Taiwan’s Maggie Chiang has been quietly remodelling herself as a singer-songwriter.
The initial impression of My Room is that it does not present a very much different Chiang. After all, she already used to sing sensitively wrought love ballads, penned by others, such as Why Is My Beloved Not By My Side and The Gentleness Of Both Hands.
That is not to say that the album is without its rewards – the better tracks include the easy breezy romance of You Do Love Me and The Weight Of Love, the latter first appearing in an EP of the same name in 2010.
In particular, the gently lilting Under The Moon Light, composed by Chiang with lyrics by her and Peggy Hsu, strikes a tender note: “Hey, you in the moonlight, are you thinking about the past on this lonely night.”
So what if there isn’t a radical departure from the past? The more important thing is that Chiang has decided to take a bigger stake in her music and that can only be a good thing.
As the title track with lyrics by David Ke goes: “Open the window, it’s the same sunlight, and yet the feeling is not the same.”
The same could be said of Chiang.
(ST)

Listening
VC Tan
As a songwriter, Malaysia’s VC Tan has composed memorable hits such as I Love Him for Della Ding Dang and Longing For for Rainie Yang.
Perhaps he should have kept some of it for his new album, the follow-up to 2010’s Goodbye, Single.
He has a pleasant if not overtly distinctive voice and the material here could have done with a bit more oomph.
Ballads such as the title track and Yes Man seem a little too tailored for the mass market. He plays the part of the lovelorn guy on Yes Man: “I’m the lousy good person who loves you/Having loved you, yet I can only hide myself/No matter, don’t worry about how heartbroken I am.”
More interesting are the uptempo jazziness of Nobody, the dance-pop of You Hold My Happiness and the breeziness of Love In This Moment. The Lord’s Prayer is an oddity. It features the Lord’s prayer from the Biblical book of Matthew in Mandarin set to synth-pop. Actually, it works fine if you do not, ironically, listen too closely to the lyrics.
(ST)

Moonrise Kingdom
Wes Anderson
The story: Scout-in-training and orphan Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) elopes with misunderstood Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) on the island of New Penzance in 1965. Scout master Ward (Edward Norton) and police captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) track down the young lovers while Suzy’s parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) fret.

How much you enjoy this film will depend on your appetite for – or tolerance of – what is kooky, off-kilter, precious or twee.
The typical Wes Anderson film traverses the entire spectrum of quirky. The writer-director creates self-contained brightly coloured worlds in which stories of family, whether by blood or by circumstance, unfold drolly.
In The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004), Bill Murray and his submarine crew go after a shark which ate his friend. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) was all about the successes and failures of three privileged siblings.
At his best, Anderson draws you into his richly imagined scenarios with a gentle sense of humour and intriguing oddball characters.
With a relentlessly deadpan relationship at its core, Moonrise Kingdom happens to be among the more indulgent of his works.
It is a little frustrating given the promising set-up as the entire island is turned upside-down when the young lovers run away together.
Jared Gilman brings a likeable mix of bravado and vulnerability to the plucky and resourceful Sam, though Kara Hayward (both above) is largely one-note as the far too passive Suzy.
Maybe because the protagonists are so young, they do not bring that sense of pathos to their roles as, say, Murray and Jason Schwartzman did with their roles in more engaging Anderson films such as Rushmore (1998).
Good thing then that he has surrounded the young ones with a group of experienced and big-name actors who are great to watch as they do their thing in supporting roles.
The usually oh-so-serious Edward Norton is the almost goofily earnest scout master and Bruce Willis, so often the macho action star, is the somewhat pathetic and yet good-hearted Captain Sharp.
Caped and imperious, Tilda Swinton turns up as a character referred to only as Social Services.
You sometimes wonder, though, if the actors had more fun making the film than most viewers will have watching it.
Anderson’s particular brand of aesthetic had actually worked very well in animation for Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), perhaps because whimsicality feels less like an affectation in that genre.
But even in a lesser entry, Anderson’s voice is distinctively present. You could never mistake his movies for anyone else’s.
(ST)

Everything In The World
Qu Wanting
Two female singers currently stand out on the airwaves: Hung Pei-yu singing Dian Qi Jiao Jian Ai (Tiptoe Love) and the other is Qu Wanting on Wo De Ge Sheng Li (You Exist In My Song). There is a rawness to their husky voices that equates with emotional honesty and I have been looking forward to their albums. No word, however, on when Taiwanese Hung is putting out a disc.
China-born Qu is the first one to release a record and she takes an unusual approach. Now based in Vancouver, her debut album comprises nine English tracks and six Mandarin numbers (not counting the demo version of You Exist In My Song).
She had signed on with Canada’s indie label Nettwerk Music which includes Sarah McLachlan on its roster of artists.
While her phrasing may sometimes sound a little stilted on the English material, the singer-songwriter always manages to be compelling. Even when the lyrics feel too prosaic – “When you kissed me on the street, I kissed you back/You held me in your arms, I held you in mine”, on Drenched – she pulls it off with the swoonsome swirling music.
Still, she seems to sound more assured and at ease in the Mandarin numbers. On You Exist In My Song, she pulls you into her reminiscences of a past lover with conversational stanzas and a plaintive refrain: “You exist, in the deepest recesses of my mind/In my dreams, in my heart, in my song”.
And she makes you feel that he is everything in the world to her.
(ST)

Regret (1995)
Mavis Hee
Last heard at a television drama theme song concert earlier this month, Mavis Hee’s soothing mellow voice is still in remarkably good form.
Never mind that her last studio album was 2000’s electronica-infused Heelectronic, or that her public performances have been sporadic since a public meltdown episode in 2006.
At the gig at Resorts World Convention Centre’s Compass Ballroom, Hee, 37, performed Sunshine Always Comes After The Rain from The Silver Lining (1997), Regret from Mirror Of Life (1996), the wistful title track to A Song To Remember (2011) and, of course, her signature hit Moonlight In The City from the period drama Tofu Street (1996).
Her gentle musical stylings sounded as assured as ever, and she had no problems reaching the low notes.
What was also clear is how closely her early career was linked to local TV dramas. Regret, Moonlight and Iron Window were all collected on her breakthrough second album Regret, which sold more than 50,000 copies here and in Malaysia. Window was the theme song to the women’s prison drama Beyond Dawn (1996).
While each song conjures up the opening credit montage for fans of the shows, they fit together well on the album as well.
It is not surprising when one takes a closer look at the credits.
Of the nine tracks (since there are two versions of Window included), seven are composed by her long-time mentor and producer Chen Jiaming. Singer-songwriter Jimmy Ye contributed one track and Hee herself penned one. As for the lyrics, Chen had a hand in all of the songs, while Hee contributed to three numbers.
There was a very strong point-of-view as Chen and Hee had a clear idea of her strengths and played to them.
On record, she was the queen of melancholia. Whatever passed through her pipes took on a patina of wistfulness, and burnished the tales of loss and regret told in the lyrics.
Even when the tempo quickened and the music became chirpier as on Ai Qing (Love), a chill clung to the lyrics: “Why bother who let whom down, there are no absolutes in this world/There are no regrets after loving, doesn’t matter if I get a little hurt.”
It was not all doom and gloom, though. Her best-known hit Moonlight In The City holds out the balm of hope and redemption: “The moonlight in the city shines on dreams, please keep watch by its side/If we should meet again one day, let happiness be scattered across the night sky.”
Regret was also pivotal for Hee as it was the album that introduced her to the Taiwanese market in 1996. The Taiwanese version of the album included two extra tracks – Ying Zi Qing Ren (Shadow Lover) and the title track from her Singapore-released debut album Ming Zhi Dao (Knowingly, 1994).
At a time when the pristine-voiced Faye Wong ruled the Mandopop scene, Hee stood out with her beautifully low voice. Her subsequent records would regularly notch up sales of more 200,000 in Taiwan. Even more impressively, she would successfully venture into the hard-to-crack Hong Kong market in 1997 with Listen Quietly, a collection of her Mandarin hits augmented with three Cantonese tracks.
The album ended Heavenly King Andy Lau’s reign at the top of the territory’s music charts with Love Is Mysterious and sold more than 100,000 copies there. For trumping a Heavenly King as well as Faye Wong on the charts, Hee earned the nickname of Heavenly Queen Slayer.
Her songs, like her voice, have stood the test of time. Other artists have repeatedly covered her tunes.
Taiwan’s Chyi Chin took on Moonlight In The City, while Malaysia’s Abin Fang and local singer Kit Chan have reinterpreted Regret. None though can replace Hee’s unforgettable originals.
Fittingly, her tentative comeback has been on the soundtrack to the TV series A Song To Remember (2011). She sang four songs there, including the title track and the gorgeous ballad Remembrance (Travelling Together).
Hopefully, she will gain enough confidence to release another album. And if she wants to make a comeback on her own terms – with no interviews and no publicity photos – that is perfectly fine. The only regret would be if she stops singing.
(ST)

Hysteria
Tanya Wexler
The story: In strait-laced late 19th-century Victorian England, hysteria is a supposed medical condition afflicting half the women. The young and idealistic Dr Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) gets a job which essentially requires him to give women massages to provide sexual relief. Meanwhile, he finds himself drawn to his employer’s daughters, gentle Emily (Felicity Jones) and firebrand Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Along the way, the vibrator is born.

There must have been a lot of sexually frustrated women in Victorian England. The societal strictures and mores of the time would be more suffocating than a tightly drawn corset.
Then again, the concept of sexual frustration did not even exist. Instead, a whole host of symptoms and vague complaints were tagged with the label of hysteria.
The audience is quickly given a sense of the state of science and medicine when a senior physician dismisses germ theory as “poppycock” and leeches are routinely used to suck blood from patients in the misguided belief that this would cure them.
Enter the idealistic Dr Granville who puts his faith in science and simply wants to help people. He is such a decent chap, he even refuses to take money from his rich eccentric friend (Rupert Everett).
Looking like he stepped out from the pages of a Jane Austen novel, Hugh Dancy is perfectly cast as Dr Granville.
With his pleasant features and earnest demeanour, he is like a less stuttery but still charming version of Hugh Grant.
Dancy – incidentally the star of romantic drama The Jane Austen Book Club (2007) – keeps the character likeable even when he is shown up to be rather conservative and stodgy after all by the firebrand that is Charlotte Dalrymple.
As Charlotte, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s eyes are bright with hope and conviction as she agitates for a more equal society. It is clear that the two are attracted to each other even though Dr Granville is initially drawn to the more ladylike and genteel younger sister Emily.
Without quite realising it, he ends up playing a part in the revolution as well, nudging sexual equality along by coming up with the vibrator. The joke is that he initially conceives of it in order to give his tired hands a rest from massaging so many women.
Director Tanya Wexler handles the material here with a light touch and finds the humour in the absurdity of the situation: Perfectly proper women flock to the doctor and everyone is in denial about the fact that the women are essentially receiving sexual favours from the dishy young doctor.
And instead of feeling smutty, the feel-good scenes of a variety of women achieving pleasure are gently amusing.
In its good-natured celebration of female sexuality, Hysteria brings to mind John Cameron Mitchell’s outlandish but sweet Shortbus (2006).
Watch the end credits to learn about the amusing nicknames the vibrator has had over the years, from the squealer to the sorcerer’s apprentice.
(ST)

Lullaby
Tracy Huang
Fourteen years after her last album Crazy For Love (1998), Taiwan-born Tracy Huang has decided to put out a new album. Her 51st release is not a record of new material but, as the title points out, a collection of tunes to soothe and comfort.
It is a kind of benediction as well.
She writes in the liner notes: “I hope and pray that every child with a lullaby will grow up happily with the accompaniment of singing. For the child without a lullaby, I send him one as a gift to comfort all his unease.”
At 60, Huang’s voice can still sound as gentle as a caress and the effect is buttressed by the dreamy reverb as she sings a selection of Mandarin and English folk and pop classics.
Illustrator Jimmy Liao’s whimsical drawings add to the child-like vibe of innocence here. Huang’s take on The Mamas & The Papas’ Dream A Little Dream Of Me even features the voice of her then six-year-old niece.
A highlight here is the Minnan number My Sweet Baby, composed by feted singer-songwriter Lo Ta-yu.
Huang might not have biological children of her own but her hopes and wishes for the child in the song are touchingly moving.
Rest assured, grown-up fans, this is not just for children but also for the child in you.

On My Way
Jane Huang
After two albums as one-half of rock duo Y2J, Taiwan’s Jane Huang goes solo with a clutch of strong songs, courtesy of a stellar group of lyricists and composers.
Slightly left-of-centre electro-pop opener Run Run Run by Sandee Chan serves as a good introduction to what is on offer here – Huang as a spirited indie musician who is trying to find her way forward.
Make no mistake, she might have a bright open voice but there is an edge to it that tips her over into rocker rather than sweet-young-thing territory.
Chan is also responsible for the ballad Good Enough, which begins with the evocative couplet: “You’re good to me, the coldest winter has left behind your jacket/Your jacket, has imbued even my shadow with your scent ever since.”
Power rocker Wu Bai contributes three tracks. His strong personal style can sometimes overwhelm the material he writes for others but the surprisingly understated alt-rock vibe of I Won’t Cry proves to be the perfect fit for Huang.
The album’s title track, meanwhile, is radio-friendly pop fare and the idol drama theme song for Ti Amo Chocolate should serve to attract a wider audience to her debut.
On My Way suggests that Huang might not have all the answers regarding her destination but she knows that the journey itself is meaningful.
(ST)

30th Drama Anniversary – Our Theme Song Concert
Resorts World Convention Centre
Compass Ballroom/Sunday
A theme song has to set the tone for the television show it soundtracks, be it a slice-of- life comedy or a wrenching drama. The best ones can call up images from a particular series from the first strains of the music.
Some, such as Mavis Hee’s City In The Moonlight, even take on a life beyond the confines of the goggle box to become enduring hits.
In three decades, MediaCorp (previously Singapore Broadcasting Corporation and then Television Corporation of Singapore) has certainly amassed a treasure trove of material.
On Sunday night, a near sold-out crowd of 3,000-plus fans mostly in their 30s and older came to reminisce and to sing along.
Veteran singer Eric Moo got things off to a rousing start with four songs, including Kopi-O and Forget The Past from The Coffee Shop (1986). He reveals that he had insisted on being able to include the term “kopi-o” (local colloquialism for black coffee) in the song despite the ban on dialects on TV. It just would not have been the same if the Mandarin name for it had been used – “kafeiwu” just didn’t have the same authentic ring as “kopi- o”.
There were also cameos by actors Xiang Yun and Huang Wenyong, who talked about their historical drama The Awakening 1 (1984), and Wang Yuqing, making a cheeky appearance in school uniform when Maggie Theng sang the theme song for Flying Fish (1983), the drama that made him a pin-up star then.
While their appearances were welcome, the over 21/2-hour-long concert could have moved along at a brisker pace. And instead of having singer-songwriter Lee Wai Shiong perform an incongruously campy dance remix medley of numbers penned by him, they could have squeezed in, say, The Awakening’s stirring theme song or The Little Nyonya (2008)’s popular ballad Like Swallow.
At least the organisers were canny enough to save the best for last.
Singer Kit Chan gave a loose-limbed take on the jazzy Looking At The Moon from Driven By A Car (1998) as well as a diva-esque rendition of Stubborn from Devotion (2011).
She then introduced Hee, who has given only sporadic public performances after a public meltdown in 2006.
Dressed in a loose earth-toned gown and wearing big hoop earrings, she still possessed a rich balm of a voice. In fact, she sounded better here than she did at the xinyao-themed Chong Feng 7 concert in 2009 and at her guest appearance in last year’s musical-concert Don’t Forget To Say Good Bye.
On Sunday, she sang Sunshine Always Comes After The Rain from The Silver Lining (1997), Regret from Mirror Of Life (1996), the wistful title track to A Song To Remember (2011) and, of course, her signature hit Moonlight In The City from Tofu Street (1996).
Hee told the audience shyly: “Although I don’t see everyone very often, I miss you guys. And I’m doing okay.”
Her gentle musical stylings gave way to the blistering rock balladry of Taiwanese duo Power Station.
It turns out that they have had quite an affinity with local drama series. Who knew that their hit Na Jiu Zhe Yang Ba (Just Let It Be Then) was from Knotty Liaisons (2000)?
The final number of the night was the determinedly dramatic Wo Chi De Qi Ku (I Can Endure Hardships) from Stepping Out (1999), also known as the show for which actress Cynthia Koh shaved her head.
Despite the simple stage set-up and only an occasional use of vintage footage from yesteryear, the crowd seemed to have a good time. Even local drama stars such as Thomas Ong and Pan Lingling could be seen chorusing along enthusiastically among the audience.
As Moo sang on Friendship Lies In The Heart: “There’s yours, there’s mine, the traces of our growing up years.”
(ST)

Fiction
Yoga Lin
At this point, Taiwanese singer Yoga Lin’s biggest competition is himself.
Having released the adventurous Senses Around (2009) and the stellar Perfect Life (2011), the 25-year-old has set the bar very high indeed.
On his fourth album, he plays around with the conceit of fiction and storytelling, and things start off promisingly.
Opening track Si Fan (Captain S.V) takes an unusual point-of-view and is about aliens visiting earth. He ponders: “I must quickly find out the charms of this backward planet, the captain who should have long since returned, why does he refuse to leave.”
It feels, though, that much of Fiction lacks something of the surprise and urgency that the previous two records conveyed. In part due to the broad theme, the album is more like a disparate collection of songs than a tightly knit record.
Not that the songs are terrible – they just do not reach past heights.
With the inclusion of Unrequited, Fools’ Bliss and Fool, there also seems to be one too many love ballad by composer Cheng Nan, even with Lin’s emotive voice in fine form throughout.
Perhaps the lack of a breakthrough is due to the fact that Perfect Life was released little more than a year ago. It is worth bearing in mind that music, like fiction, needs time to be carefully crafted.

The Last Day Of Summer
831
Are Taiwanese rock band Mayday releasing a new album so soon after their triumphant six-statuette haul at the Golden Melody Awards?
One would be forgiven for thinking so upon hearing fellow Taiwanese band 831’s third and latest disc, given how vocalist Up Lee’s enunciation on the ballad The Best Ending makes him sound exactly like Ashin, frontman of Mayday.
There is also more than a passing similarity between the sound of quintets 831 and Mayday, as both serve up tenderly earnest ballads and blistering rock numbers. In fact, Ashin even wrote the lyrics for 831’s Lunatic here.
The Last Day Of Summer is not a bad record at all, but it does 831 no favours to be so closely associated with a bigger, more established act. If they want to be a band for all seasons, they need to think about staking out a more distinctive sound on their fourth album.
(ST)

Ice Age 4: Continental Drift
Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
The story: Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano) gets separated from his mate Ellie (Queen Latifah) and daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) when the unstable land mass breaks apart. Together with his friends Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) and Diego the sabre- toothed cat (Denis Leary), he has to outwit pirates and survive other dangers to reunite with his family.
Are they running out of ideas for the Ice Age franchise?
In Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), a flood threatened to inundate the gang’s valley home. In Ice Age 4, it is another natural calamity, another journey for Manny and gang – just as it is in every Ice Age film.
Worse, some of the plot contrivances this time around feel too outlandish even for an animated flick.
Take, for instance, the pirate-ship conceit. A crew led by a giant ape Gutt (Peter Dinklage) terrorise the seas for... what exactly? Amassing booty from talking prehistoric animals?
Equally incongruous and incomprehensible is the appearance of deadly seductive sirens, as the film suddenly riffs on the seafaring adventures of the Greek hero Odysseus.
Clearly, Ice Age 4 is trying too hard, particularly in broadening its appeal to everyone from six to 66.
For the older crowd, the MannyPeaches storyline about an overprotective father connecting with a rebellious daughter is like a family sitcom made over for the animated ice age. It makes sense given Romano’s background in TV comedy (Everybody Loves Raymond, 1996-2005) but it feels too pedestrian to engage.
For the younger crowd, there are the funny faces by Sid and the silly action gags to amuse.
The stunt star-casting does not always work in Ice Age 4, either. While Game Of Thrones star Dinklage snarls and menaces as Gutt, singer Jennifer Lopez just sounds like herself instead of trying to essay the female sabre-toothed cat she voices.
It is left to the opening silent short film, which stars baby Maggie Simpson from TV’s animated first family of dysfunction, to provide some wit and charm.
There is also, of course, the reliable charm of the always-thwarted sabre- toothed squirrel Scrat, whose obsessive hunt for acorns triggers off the continental cataclysm in the first place.
In comparison, the recently released Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012) is a smarter and more imaginative sequel which takes more risks in its storytelling and is the richer for it.
Maybe it is time to put this franchise on ice before it goes completely adrift.
(ST)

Motorway
Soi Cheang
The story: Cheung (Shawn Yue) is a young-punk cop with a taste for speed while his partner Lo (Anthony Wong) is just looking forward to retirement. When ace getaway driver Jiang (Guo Xiaodong), who had previously tangled with Lo, resurfaces, it is up to Cheung to stop him in his tracks.
Someone has clearly been watching Drive (2011), the oh-so-cool crime thriller by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn.
While the magnetic getaway driver played by Ryan Gosling was the focus of that film, Motorway takes a more conventional route by setting up the good cops against the bad robbers.
Other familiar elements here include the odd-couple pairing between the cops played by Yue and Wong.
When Yue needs advice on how to rev up his skills so that he can make an impossibly tight corner, no prizes for guessing who takes on the Yoda-mentor role.
And then there are the driving-as-life metaphors which tend to be rather heavy-handed.
Where director Soi Cheang (Accident, 2009) excels is in his use of Hong Kong locations.
The city’s distinctive warren of narrow one-way streets is used to great effect when Cheung pursues Jiang down darkened alleys. And watch how Jiang slips out of the law’s grasp with some nifty driving.
Later on, there is an epic race-off as cars chase one another down twisty mountainous roads with hairpin turns and somehow, Jiang goes from being the pursued to the pursuer.
The final showdown is cleverly set in a parking lot where columns restrict one’s line of sight and being able to drive fast is not quite as important as being skilled.
While the film might not be quite as fetishistic as, say, the Fast And Furious flicks, Cheang does manage to work in loving close-ups of sleek-looking mechanical parts pumping away smoothly and gauge needles swinging seductively.
Wong is reliably dependable as the older and wiser cop who has seen it all while there is not much for Yue, so good in Love In A Puff (2010), to do here but glower and look intense.
Guo (Summer Palace, 2006) adds gravitas to the role of Jiang but can only do so much with a thinly written character.
It is a pity that the story is rather bare and does not pack much in the way of surprises.
The female characters are also given short shrift and Barbie Hsu’s love-interest doctor is awkwardly superfluous.
But it is still satisfying to watch Cheung fulfil his destiny as a Jedi-knight driver and become one with the wheel.
(ST)

Ideal Life
Lala Hsu
The pixie-faced Lala Hsu is one of the most promising singer-songwriters to have emerged from the singing competition One Million Star.
She made a strong showing with her self-titled debut album in 2009. It included the excellent Riding On A White Horse, which unexpectedly and successfully mixed pop with Chinese opera.
Follow-up album Limits (2010) was less memorable though the ballad Acrophobia was a decided highlight.
On her new record, Hsu sounds more mature and assured than ever.
The heart of the album are ballads that throb with a morass of emotions.
I Dare You has her challenging a lover: “I dare you to/Say that hating me is like loving me, a determination springing from the heart/I dare you, loving someone can make you feel petty and low.”
And the title track with lyrics by David Ke is heartbreakingly poignant: “Are we happier than before/Each leading our ideal lives/ Knowing better than anyone in my heart/No one is more suitable than you.”
The rest of the album is no slouch either.
From charming opener Cuckoo, on which her dulcet tones gently caress the lyrics, to energising closer Lala’s Squad, Hsu has crafted a beautifully honest and moving record about love and life.

Mr. Jazz – A Song For You
Jam Hsiao
Asian singers have proved before that they can do jazz.
Hong Kong’s Jacky Cheung tackled the genre in Cantonese on Private Corner (2010), while Taiwan’s Soft Lipa collaborated with Japanese jazz quintet Jabberloop on the heady concoction that was Moonlight (2010).
Unfortunately, Mr Jazz takes a step backward.
Yes, Taiwan’s Jam Hsiao has the pipes, but his phrasing often feels stiff and overly mannered here.
And do we really need another version of chestnuts such as Rhythm Of The Rain and Put Your Head On My Shoulder?
His less-than-perfect diction further distracts.
Listening to him sing “I thing of you every morneeeng” on (I Love You) For
Sentimental Reasons, you would seriously wish you did not.
(ST)

Painted Skin: The Resurrection
Wuershan
The story: The fox spirit Xiaowei (Zhou Xun) needs a human to willingly give her a heart so that she can become mortal. She comes between princess Jing (Zhao Wei) and general Huo Xin (Chen Kun) in a triangle of love and lust.
In Gordan Chan’s Painted Skin (2008), fox spirit Xiaowei (Zhou) falls for general Wang Sheng (Chen) who is married to Peirong (Zhao).
The sequel or rather reboot reunites the main cast with Zhou reprising her role. But even though Zhao and Chen play new characters, there is a sense of karmic continuity as the three are entangled once again.
Princess Jing has been in love with Huo for a long time but he is reluctant to reciprocate because of their different stations in life.
After an accident in the woods which leaves her horribly scarred, Huo is sent to the western frontier to guard the Han Dynasty from the animalistic Tian Lang kingdom. Thrown into the mix is the appearance of fox spirit Xiaowei, who wins Jing’s trust and then bewitches Huo with her beauty.
In the end, she offers Jing a deal – a human heart in exchange for Xiaowei’s skin so the disfigured princess can win Huo’s affection.
In a fantastical setting, the film explores age-old questions about the nature of love by pushing things to the extreme and giving up one’s heart to love is taken literally.
Taking over from Hong Kong’s Gordan Chan, China director Wuershan (The Butcher, The Chef And The Swordsman, 2010) imbues Resurrection with a languid sensuality.
A key scene of Xiaowei and Jing swopping identities is languorously teased out as the two women get under each other’s skins in a steamy pool. What prevents this from tipping over into cheesy pervy territory is the fantasy element as the skin is removed and then put on as if it were a costume.
Striking visual effects are also put to good use elsewhere such as in depicting Xiaowei’s imprisonment in an icy abyss at the beginning of the film.
The cast is uniformly competent, from Zhou’s husky-voiced seductive spirit to Chen’s conflicted general to Zhao’s painfully-in-love princess.
Look out for 1980s Mandopop idol Fei Xiang, who is almost unrecognisable as a Tian Lang seer with a bulbous bald head and sunken eyes.
Going by his birth name Kris Phillips, the Chinese-American looker has made a gutsy move that might just resurrect his Chinese show business career.
(ST)

Tanya (1999)
Tanya Chua
How does one go from being a feted small-time singer- songwriter to being a commercially viable pop star?
Beyond being worthy records in and of themselves, Tanya Chua’s early works offer some interesting answers.
Her debut album Bored (1997) sold 3,000 copies while her second record Tanya (1999, above) racked up sales of over 200,000 in the fiercely competitive Taiwan market.
The most obvious difference between the two is the language. Chua, 37, sings in English on Bored and in Mandarin on Tanya. Her lightly husky pipes, honed from years of performing in live venues, is equally at home in both languages.
What made her stand out, particularly in the Mandopop market, was also the fact that she was no sweetie-pie singer but someone who clearly had a mind of her own and was not afraid to speak it.
It helped that she was both a composer and lyricist and English tracks such as Bored, You Sorry Ass!! and My Colour TV Set had an engaging honesty. While none of the Chinese lyrics were written by her, there was a clear link between the material on her first two solo albums.
The English songs found their way to the album Tanya in different ways and to different degrees. While there is a track titled Hao Wu Liao (Bored), it features a new melody from Chua.
As opposed to the more downbeat Bored with lines such as “I wanna get that silly high on cigarettes”, Hao Wu Liao paired a breezy jangly melody with lyrics about love. It won her the best local music composition prize at the 6th Singapore Hit Awards in 1999.
One could say that Hao was playing to the Mandopop market in which love songs are the mainstay.
But it did so in a way that was smart and one still had a sense of Chua’s spirited character with lyrics such as: “I hate arguing with you/Can sing a different tune to anything/Why not go our separate ways/Better than being bored together.”
Other songs had a more straightforward makeover in which the melody remained but the lyrics were changed.
The spunky You Sorry Ass!! became Ni Kuai Zou Kai (You’d Best Get Lost). In Ass, the vitriol directed at an ex-lover is cushioned by jangly guitars: “I hope someday you will find someone/And she will treat you like you treated me/Then how you’ll fall apart now I should wonder?”
The sting is further lessened on Zou Kai, though she still berates an ex: “I hate the tone you take with women/Don’t care about me at all, I’ve really had enough/You’d best get lost”.
Impressively, while it builds upon an earlier record, Tanya manages to be a cohesive album in its own right, balancing commercial dictates with a singersongwriter’s distinctive voice. While the Chinese lyrics were farmed out, Chua composed the music for seven tracks.
Apart from the fact that she could pen memorable hooks, the use of the harmonica on several tracks also gives the album a distinctive folk-pop sound.
Unfortunately, the record company’s pick for the lead single was Breathe, one of three tracks not composed by Chua.
To add insult to injury, her face was not seen in the music video, which led to speculation she must be a plain Jane.
In later interviews, Chua would say she felt trapped when she could not express herself in her own words. And one can see how she has sought greater control of her music over the years.
She wore the producer hat for the first time on Goodbye & Hello (2007) and by her seventh album If You See Him (2009), she was responsible for penning more than half the Chinese lyrics.
It is a journey that has borne fruit as she has now reaped three prestigious Golden Melody Awards for Best Female Mandarin Singer, the latest for Sing It Out Of Love (2011).
Chua, who will perform at The Straits Times Appreciates Readers (Star) concert on July 15 at Gardens by the Bay, has indeed come a long way.
Regardless of how she might feel about her Mandarin debut now, it introduced her to a bigger audience and paved the road for her future successes.
And it remains a treat to listen to today.
(ST)

Lost And Found
Jason Chan

Black Rainbow
Dominique Tsai

Crossroad - Greatest Hits
Kelvin Tan

Following up his last studio album Put On (2010), Hong Kong’s Jason Chan offers a little of everything on Lost And Found.
Opening Cantonese track Give Oneself A Break is a collaboration with hip-hop group Fama, while the Pakho Chau-composed Murder Case is a ballad with dark electronic overtones.
The three Mandarin numbers are, as far as pronunciation is concerned, happily easy on the ear. Yet, only the midtempo Charge leaves an impression as Chan’s falsetto soars.
One of the six Cantonese tracks on the disc, Mr Espresso, turns out to be the most satisfying offering here – a love ballad that lingers in the mind.
Meanwhile, Taiwanese singersongwriter Dominique Tsai serves up a more cohesive treat on her third album.
The sassy electropop of This Ain’t Love is followed by Midnight Dance with its pumping beats and synth lines.
The lyrics of title track Black Rainbow plays with contrasting opposites: “Turning around I saw a black rainbow/Far away, but as though it’s mine/It said there’s only one kind of happiness left, only loneliness is left.”
The dark sensuality here is alluring.
In contrast, local singer Kelvin Tan plays with both light and dark in this two-disc collection which comprises material taken from his three albums from 2006 to 2009.
Ballads about lost love and dashed dreams make up Black Disc, while hope finds its way to the White Disc.
The sole new track here is Crossroad on which the balladeer bemoans: “Why is it the more you love someone the more that person gets hurt/Why do good people come to bad ends”.
His mellifluous tones are showcased to best effect on emotive hit ballads such as Love.Hate, Break Up Letter and All I Want Is.
And it is Tan’s balm of a voice that shines light on darkness.
(ST)

One In A Thousand
Della Ding Dang

Kimberley Debut Album
Kimberley Chen

OMG
Li Sheng

With great lung power comes great responsibility.
It has taken a few albums, but China- born Della Ding Dang is finally comfortable reining her voice in.
Once, she unleashed it all, such as while covering Taiwanese singer Chao Chuan’s I’m A Small Small Bird. Now, she knows a song can often be more moving when it is sung with greater delicacy.
Album opener How Rare is about how hard it is to fall for the right person and yet, devastatingly, have the relationship not meant to be. The songs Not Your Fault and Impossible On One’s Own further explore the emotional terrain of heartbreak.
For a change of pace, Della lets her hair down on the dance track Wild Beast, and has some fun.
Newcomer Kimberley Chen might not be a power belter like Della, but she certainly makes an impression in her debut. In the rather obviously named Kimberley Debut Album, she goes from sweet in Love You to funky in the Lady Gagainfluenced Wonderland.
The bright-eyed, Melbourne-born 18-year-old brings with her an energising freshness as she sings in both Mandarin and English.
The lyrics are filled with references to gaming and social media, and even a certain popular game. She warns in Friday: “I can be an Angry Bird, fly away and leave you hurt.”
It would be too precious for words for anyone older to attempt this, but the youthful vibe fits Chen like a candycoloured glove.
A standout here is the slinkily hypnotic Can’t Do Without Me for which she co-wrote the lyrics. Here, she sings about a boy who has fallen hard for her: “He gazes at the computer day by day/Listening to Jay Chou’s Secret Signal, asking me to steal away his troubles.”
You might just fall for her music too.
China’s Li Sheng (below), on the other hand, seems to have caught a terminal case of the cutes on her debut.
Fresh from her starring role in New My Fair Princess, the latest ingenue to play the winning role of the bubbly Little Swallow has branched out into singing.
Unfortunately, cuteness oozes from every line in tracks such as Oh My God, Love Superman and, um, Pizza Pizza, a chirpy ode to that savoury pie complete with a cheerleader chant. And Lucky Song is sung in character as Little Swallow.
When she sings the ballad Love You Innocently, you realise that she has a pleasant enough voice. Too bad it is mostly smothered by the material here.
Unless you are a fan of her in the show, OMG, this album might be too much to swallow.
(ST)

Snowfall In Taipei
Huo Jianqi
China’s Huo Jianqi had previously directed the well-received drama Postmen In The Mountains (2002). Unfortunately, it turns out that he has no feel for romance at all.
In this film, the cheerful do-gooder Hsiao-mo (Chen Bo-lin’s charm is wasted here) is paired with the bland singer-on-the-run May (Zhang Ziyi lookalike Tong Yao).
Too much time is spent on her story – she has lost her voice, various people are looking for her, and none of it is urgent or interesting.
Meanwhile, there is a not-quite- romance between Hsiao-mo and May as she pines after a music producer who spouts lines such as “Rain is the poetry of the world”.
Given her dubious taste in men, it is hard to care whom she ends up with.
It does not help that Huo includes, without a trace of irony, a dated music video montage scene set to singer Meng Ting-wei’s To Taipei To See The Rain In Winter.
Even worse, he manages to use indie singer-songwriter Cheer Chen’s songs in a way that makes them seem twee instead of deeply felt.
At least he cannot mangle the scenic setting of the film.
Just as Cape No. 7 (2008) boosted Hengchun’s tourism, Snowfall In Taipei makes you feel like making a trip to Chingtung old town the next time you are in Taiwan.
(ST)

Sadako
Tsutomu Hanabusa
The story: There is a cursed video clip online that shows a man committing suicide. After watching it, the viewer dies as well. When one of her students dies after stumbling upon the footage, high school teacher Akane (Satomi Ishihara) is reluctantly drawn in. It turns out that Akane has special powers and she has to use them to battle the curse of a resurrected Sadako, the long-haired ghoul who first appeared in Hideo Nakata’s Ring (1998).

Even curses need to get with the times.
In the original Ring, Sadako’s curse was spread via a videotape. How quaintly old school. Without an upgrade, the curse would have soon met with a quick end in this day and age. Accordingly, the curse of Sadako is now transmitted via an online video clip so that curious students and geeky techie types can serve as cannon fodder.
The other aspect of the film that has been updated is that audiences can now watch this in 3-D. Given that the scene of Sadako crawling out of a television screen in Ring is such an iconic one, you wonder how the 3-D effect will be used here. Disappointingly, it is merely employed for cheap scares.
Worse, the scares are really not very scary. Ring was creepily atmospheric but director Tsutomu Hanabusa, whose previous credits include comedies such as The Handsome Suit (2008), is this close to venturing into parody territory here.
As Kashiwada, the man who brings back Sadako and dies on film, Yusuke Yamamoto’s performance is exaggerated to the point of being campy. And while there was Nanako Matsushima’s harried reporter to root for previously, the protagonists here are the blandly pleasant-looking Satomi Ishihara and Koji Seto, who plays Akane’s boyfriend Takanori.
There is actually a sweet backstory on how Akane and Takanori got together in high school after she was ostracised for her powers but it is buried beneath the garbled and nonsensical goings-on in the present.
For example, we are shown Akane’s special power the first time she encounters Sadako. And yet in the final showdown, she does not use it right from the start and instead unleashes it only after a drawn-out cat-and-mouse sequence.
This movie just feels like a shoddy exercise to cash in on a certain long-haired ghoul’s notoriety. Sadako would not be pleased.
(ST)

2012 Shinhwa Grand Tour In Singapore: The Return
Resorts World Convention Centre
Compass Ballroom/Last Saturday

From Take That to Backstreet Boys to New Kids On The Block, boybands everywhere have been on a resurgent streak. Add to that list South Korea’s Shinhwa, who have reportedly sold more than five million records worldwide.
Over the past four years, the group had been on a hiatus due to the compulsory military obligations that the members had to fulfil. With that out of the way, K-pop’s longest-lasting boyband is back with a bang with their 10th album The Return (2012) and an Asian tour.
On homeground, tickets for their two shows in Seoul were sold out within 40 minutes. In Singapore, they played to a sold-out crowd of about 5,000 people.
The fans came dressed in orange and carried orange lights, flags and placards. That has apparently been the official colour of the fanclub since 1998, when the six boys made their debut.
Eric Mun, Lee Min Woo, Kim Dong Wan, Shin Hye Sung, Jun Jin and Andy Lee are in their early 30s but they can still trigger frenzied screams and piercing chants simply by stepping on stage.
With their coordinated outfits and choreographed dance moves, Shinhwa – which means myth or legend – stuck close to the K-pop boyband playbook.
They made their entrance in white ensembles and then launched into dance number T.O.P, the Swan Lake-sampling title track off their second album from 1999. Over the two-hour-plus long concert, they performed songs from throughout their career.
They acted cute on Eusha! Eusha! from debut album Revolver (1998), pumped up the energy on Hey, Come On (2001) and grooved to the slinky R&B of Addiction (2003). But unfortunately, Shinhwa were none too impressive vocally. This seemed to be partly due to glitches with the sound equipment and Kim even went off stage more than once to get things fixed.
The group had a couple of rough patches and on Perfect Man (2002), pitching was far from perfect and it took a while for everyone to agree on the key.
Another source of frustration was the fact that the banter between songs was left untranslated. This was not an obstacle for a sizeable portion of the audience since understanding Korean is a mark of the true-blue K-pop fan.
But for the rest of the audience, the only thing that registered was the repeated reference to Singapore.
And also when Kim spoke in Mandarin, his lines were cheesy: “My girlfriend is beautiful. My girlfriend is all of you.”
But they worked on the female fans.
It may not have been the perfect comeback but it bodes well for the guys that the loudest cheers and most enthusiastic singalong segment were for the updated electropop of comeback single Venus.
Looks like Shinhwa’s “legend” has not hit its expiry date yet.
(ST)

Accidentally In Love
Freya Lim

9ood Show
Show Lo

Influens
Da Mouth

Taiwan-born Malaysian Freya Lim’s fourth and comeback album, Holding Back The Tears (2010), was a grower and a keeper, and she was deservedly nominated for a Golden Melody Award for best female pop vocal performance.
Her gently emotive voice remains exquisite on this follow-up album, but Accidentally In Love lacks the ballad power hitters such as Wounded and Scared from her previous disc.
Still, there are pleasures to savour, as Lim offers an adult’s point of view on love and intimacy on tracks such as My Neurosis and Can I Be Happier.
In the song Rift, she probes the gap between what is observed and what is experienced: “In the eyes of outsiders, we are content and without flaws/You have done for me all that you can/That’s not what I want, do you understand”.
While Lim displays greater maturity in her work compared to her earlier albums, singer-host Show Lo continues to play with puns on his name.
Not that one minds when it is something like the campily fun Love Is A Show. The dance tracks also include Count On Me, which seems to hark back to the days of Hong Kong’s Grasshopper with its retro-sounding synth lines. And the duet with Rainie Yang on When The King Meets The Queen is easy on the ear as well.
But nine albums in, Lo should know that he really cannot handle ballads and he should stop trying. Skip numbers such as Love In Fantasy and save yourself the underwhelming experience of listening to him trying to emote.
Hip-hop quartet Da Mouth stick to their strengths on their follow-up to One Two Three (2010) and have come up with a corker of a fourth album, even though Japan-born vocalist Aisa’s pronunciation still isn’t quite perfect.
From the first track, Open Your Damn Mouth, to the late-in-the-album BaBOO, the party does not stop as the band dish out groovy hooks and propulsive beats.
And they can do tender as well, as they demonstrate on hip-hop number Sweetest Hug and hip lullaby Baby Gnite.
A hidden track, Play!, is no throwaway but a joyful dance ditty that keeps the after-party going.
Get ready to be infected.
(ST)

My Way
Kang Je Gyu
The story: Korean Joon Sik (Jang Dong Gun) and Ja- panese Tatsuo (Joe Odagiri) are marathon competitors in a sensitive time and place – Seoul under Japanese occupation in 1938. After things go awry at one contest, Joon Sik is conscripted into the Japanese Imperial Army as punishment. It would be the first of several army uniforms from different countries that he dons as he seeks to stay alive in World War II. Eventually, he crosses paths with Tatsuo again.

Guns N' Roses
Ning Hao
The story: Against the backdrop of Japanese military aggression in China in the 1930s, Xiao Dongbei (Lei Jiayin) survives by his quick wit. He unwittingly gets roped into a scheme by an underground resistance group to pull off a robbery of Japanese gold bullion.

My Way and Guns N’ Roses take different approaches to the war movie. Both are only intermittently successful.
Despite the assertive title, My Way takes the more familiar route and offers up heroes and stirring deeds.
While Korean A-lister Jang is too old at 40 to be playing a young rickshaw puller, you have to admire the fact that he is fit enough to do so. As a man holding on steadfastly to his morals in the midst of war, Jang fares better.
Director Kang Je Gyu also handles the epic battle scenes with the kind of assurance you would expect from the man behind the Korean War blockbuster hit Taegukgi (2004). He is able to zoom in and pan out, capturing the bewilderment of being in the thick of action and also conveying the devastating scale of destruction.
My Way was actually inspired by the astonishing true story of a Korean man in German uniform captured by the Americans at Normandy beach in 1944. It transpired that he had been forced to serve the Japanese army, captured by the Soviets in Manchuria and then captured again by the Germans.
Such an extraordinary tale is apparently not enough for Kang to build a movie around. He felt it necessary to include Joon Sik and Tatsuo’s rivalry-turned- bromance, which turns unintentionally comedic when the two meet again on a beach and actually start running towards each other.
On the other hand, it would have been nice to have more laughs in Guns N’ Roses. As it is, the film feels like a lite version mo lei tau, the Hong Kong absurd comedy sub-genre made famous by Stephen Chow. It does not reach the heights of silly comedy in All The Wrong Spies (1983), which took the Japanese resistance plot element and just ran with it. Nor does it have the zing or satisfying heft of Jiang Wen’s Let The Bullets Fly (2010).
The tone of Guns N’ Roses also lurches from comedy to romance to suspense and serious drama, with Ning Hao, writer- director of the hit comedy Crazy Stone (2006), unable to juggle them smoothly to convincingly tell the story of one man’s political awakening.
Still, actor Lei Jiayin makes for a likable rascal and there is one laugh-out- loud scene when he has to hide from his pursuers in a church.
Former synchronised swimmer Tao Hong also leaves an impression as the glamorous actress Fang Die who is also the cool-headed leader of the resistance group. It helps that this is a far more substantive role than Fan Bingbing’s shoehorned cameo in My Way as a prisoner of war.
In both films, the Japanese, by dint of history, are cast as the villains. Guns N’ Roses’ Toriyama (Keiichi Yamasaki) is a cruel soldier whose villainy runs the gamut from chilling to almost cartoonish, while My Way’s Tatsuo is a more nuanced character.
Though by the time Tatsuo ends up in a German uniform, My Way suddenly morphs into a war film with an intractable mystery: How does Joe Odagiri get to keep his lovely head of hair in war time?
(ST)

Hebe Singapore Concert 2012
Resorts World Convention Centre,  Compass Ballroom
Last Saturday

Taiwan’s Hebe Tien has decidedly good taste in music.
This was not always evident in her role as one-third of the popular girl group S.H.E churning out sometimes kiddy and playful pop. As a solo artist, there is no mistaking her ability to pick out winners.
On the 29-year-old’s two well-received albums To Hebe (2010) and My Love (2011), she worked with some of the best composers and lyricists in Chinese pop, including Sandee Chan, Deserts Chang, Chen Hsiao-hsia and feted indie band sodagreen’s Wu Ching-feng.
They came up with songs that showcased the grounded sensuality of her voice. While a good number of them were about the well-worn topic of love, Tien also showed an adventurous side on unexpected charmers such as Utopia and Flower and even tackling conservation of the environment on To Hebe.
Live in concert, she handled the coloratura on Flower with ease and, in general, proved that the nuanced and full-bodied sound on her second album did not come about via electronic fiddling.
Her two solo records belie an impressive number of memorable tracks and she duly delivered them including My Love, You’re Too Much, I Think I Won’t Love You, Love!, Please Give Me A Better Love Rival and Still Want Happiness.
They covered various aspects of love but it sometimes felt as though Tien herself remained a little aloof from the material. She seemed to be singing about love than from her heart.
Filling out the two-hour-plus concert were a good number of covers, which provided some of the highlights of the gig.
Taiwanese diva A-mei’s explosive Kai Men Jian Shan (a Chinese idiom meaning to get straight to the point) was slowed down and slinked up, while Swedish singer Lykke Li’s sultry Dance, Dance, Dance was sweetened by a tambourine-shaking Tien.
She sounded uncannily like the pristine-voiced Faye Wong on a rock-out version of Sandee Chan’s Nicholas and then took on Wong’s To Love, which featured a blistering guitar solo.
She stumbled on British band Florence And The Machine’s Girl With One Eye, though. Tien is simply not vicious enough to pull off a line like “I’ll cut your little heart out cos you made me cry”.
Besides, by covering one too many such unfamiliar songs consecutively at one point, she lost the interest of the sold-out crowd of more than 5,000, though never the easy rapport with them.
After the song What To Say, which included a line about “squeezing out a career line (cleavage)”, she joked that she should be using her sheng xian (voice) instead of her xiong xian (cleavage).
When a supportive female fan yelled out “Your chest is large enough!”, Tien mused “I thought you guys were passionate but more conservative” before graciously thanking her admirer.
Finding success on her own apparently has not been at the expense of her bond with S.H.E. This was most apparent when she sang the touching You, a song about group-mate Selina Jen, who was injured in an explosive accident on a film set in 2010.
While Tien did not take on any of the group’s hits, she told the audience that she missed performing with Jen and Ella Chen. Loud cheers erupted when she mentioned that she was looking forward to a new album release from the trio this year.
They should take Tien’s lead in picking songs.
(ST)

The Dazy Eyes
The Freshman

A Little Blue Jazz
Elaine Lam

One Fine Day
Cheryl Wee

The follow-up to The Freshman’s promising 2010 debut is an EP that casts them in a new light. Sophomore offering The Dazy Eyes is a more assured and mature effort from the duo comprising Project Superstar’s Chen Diya and Carrie Yeo.
The arrangements are confidently stripped down, putting the focus on the lyrics and the melodic tunes – more Indigo Girls folk-pop and less 2 Girls power-pop. The title track explores the idea of seeing and observing: “How much bigger are your eyes compared to mine/How truer is the city you see/How much more myopic are you compared to me/The you in front of me, why can’t you see.”
It links thematically to the next track Spectacle Friend and the EP ends with the English number, It’s Getting So Hard. They might croon that “It’s getting too hard to write a song/A song you might like, or not”, but Dazy Eyes should see their fans liking it more than not.
On her debut EP, local singer-songwriter Elaine Lam keeps it light and jazzy with an offering of five tracks in English and Mandarin.
There is sunniness on The Apple Of My Eye, while innocence and childhood run through The Little Blue Princess and The Boy And His Trains. The Mandarin tracks Drunkard and Bad Temper change tack abruptly and it is a little jarring to have her soothing voice singing, “After downing that martini, you’re now eyeing that whisky” and “Please keep quiet and listen/Don’t keep spouting profanities”. Still, she keeps you listening.
Also making her debut is doe-eyed beauty queen Cheryl Wee. Her sweet but thin voice is best served by tracks which do not tax it too much, so the Jim Lim and Xiaohan-penned Moonlight Serenade and the breezy opener Happiness! are okay.
Unfortunately, she has also decided to cover vocally superior singers with choices such as Stefanie Sun’s Encounter and Mayday’s Gratitude. It is not a smart move for a newcomer to invite comparisons to these acts. The worst offender here is the cover of Crowd Lu’s Zai Jian Gou Gou (Goodbye Pinky Swear), which is bizarrely translated as Hello Doggie! in the album. For some reason, she tackles this in her limited lower range which struggles to be cheery against the happy-peppy arrangement.
Regrettably, this is not the sound of one fine day.
(ST)

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath and Conrad Vernon
The story: In Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) land in Africa. In this instalment, they have to figure out how to get back to their park-enclosure home in New York. They catch up with the scheming penguins in Monte Carlo, attract the attention of the zealous animal control officer Captain Chantel DuBois (Frances McDormand) and end up with a travelling circus.

The circus is in town and it is a circus unlike any you have seen before.
Unfettered by the laws of physics and freed from the realm of plausibility, directors Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath and Conrad Vernon have cooked up a giddy extravaganza of colour, light and movement.
There is Alex on the trapeze, Marty in a riotous afro and Melman and Gloria up on the tight rope as the four friends turn into circus performers in an attempt to get back home to New York.
By now, audiences would be familiar with Ben Stiller’s leader-of-the-pack lion, Chris Rock’s exuberant zebra, David Schwimmer’s shy giraffe and Jada Pinkett Smith’s assertive hippo.
So introducing the circus and adding some new characters is a great way to liven up the proceedings.
Bryan Cranston from television’s Breaking Bad brings a prickly imperiousness to Vitaly the tiger, a bad-tempered washed-up has-been.
He was once a star performer with his ability to jump through breathtakingly small hoops until he was brought down by hubris.
Watch how he bounces back with help from Alex.
Martin Short’s mopey seal also leaves an impression although Jessica Chastain’s Gia is a little underwritten and is mainly there to serve as Alex’s feline love interest.
And in the most entertaining cross- species romance since Donkey met Dragon in the Shrek films, the lemur King Julien XIII (Sacha Baron Cohen) falls hard for a tutu-clad circus bear who is presented as an unspeaking beast rather than a talking character.
Stealing some of the spotlight from the animals is the dogged animal control officer Captain Chantel DuBois, played with relish by McDormand.
Drawn with fierce eyes, thin cruel lips and a generous waist, DuBois turns out to be a formidable match even for the smart and devious penguins.
One has the feeling that audiences have not quite seen the last of the captain.
Perhaps she could turn up in the likely sequel Madagascar 4 or even in the spin-off flick for the penguins.
The circus element has clearly energised the film-makers here and they show there is plenty of wild and wacky life in the Madagascar franchise.
(ST)

One of the pleasures of reality television shows is getting all judgmental about the contestants. You, the viewer, get to see how they perform under a set of highly artificial and stressful conditions, and then decide if they are worthy of taking up more of your precious TV time.
And you also get to measure your opinions against those of experts in the field, be it singing, fashion or culinary skills.
To add a dash of glamour to the proceedings, since the shows usually feature unknowns, producers have taken to filling those judging panels with celebrities.
Sometimes, the choices make sense.
Singer-songwriters Christina Aguilera and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine bring with them music cred when they critique hopeful wannabes on The Voice. She has one of the biggest voices in pop, while Maroon 5 have had critical and popular success with albums such as Songs About Jane (2002) and It Won’t Be Soon Before Long (2007).
Better yet, the two have upped the drama on the second season of the show by trading jabs. Though you might wonder how much of that is playing to the camera since Aguilera was featured on Maroon 5’s hit single Moves Like Jagger (2011).
At other times, the choices boggle the mind. Former American Idol judge and singer-dancer Paula Abdul sometimes seemed not quite all there with her rambling and incoherent comments. Not to mention that her voice, memorably described as chipmunk-on-helium, does not exactly set a high vocal standard.
While new American Idol judge Steven Tyler, from rock band Aerosmith, has the music chops, he has packed only his leer for the show. When the sexagenarian singer ogled a belly-dancing contestant, talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel took a dig at him in a segment titled The Steven Tyler Creepy Leer Of The Night.
So will singers Britney Spears, Demi Lovato and fashion blogger Bryanboy liven things up on The X-Factor and America’s Next Top Model or drag proceedings down?
SundayLife! casts a critical eye on the three new celebrity judges.

BRITNEY SPEARS, 30
Appearing on: The X-Factor, US, Season 2, September
Drama erupted on the first day of taping on May 24, when she reportedly walked off the set after her song Hold It Against Me was butchered by a contestant.
She later tweeted: “#Britneywalksoff??? LOL was just taking a little break people. I am having the BEST time!!!”
Qualifications: Her trainwreck of a personal life serves as a cautionary/ inspirational tale to bright-eyed contestants that showbiz can chew you up and spit you out. And then hand you a second chance as a judge on a reality show.
Her Auto-Tuned voice makes her sound like a fembot, but it sends the message loud and clear that not having a good voice is no obstacle to a music career.
Better fit on: There is actually a reality show named after a Spears song, Hit Me Baby One More Time, in which singers who are past their prime compete for a cash donation to charity in the 2005 American version. But having to sing live could prove tricky for Spears.

DEMI LOVATO, 19
Appearing on: The X-Factor, US, Season 2, September
Qualifications: Since Spears might have had too much life experience, the producers decided to include a 19-year-old on the panel, just to balance things out. To be fair, the singer-songwriter had a stint on Barney & Friends, so she can probably dispense tips on dealing with dinosaurs such as Tyler.
Better fit on: Lovato is clearly on the show to appeal to a younger demographic so why not revive the now-defunct American Juniors, which was American Idol for kids? Fans of the Disney sitcom Sonny With A Chance (2009-2011), on which she played a rising teen actress, are from this age group anyway.

BRYANBOY, 25
Appearing on: America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 19, October
This is the college edition so expect to see lots of SPGs, or sorority party girls.
Qualifications: As the Filipino star fashion blogger himself has said: “Other than the occasional on-cam interviews, I have ZERO television experience.”
What he does have is a huge following, both of his blog www.bryanboy.com and on Twitter. He also has cachet given that top American designer Marc Jacobs even named a bag after him.
And he already has a signature phrase, which is how he signs off his blog postings – Baboosh!.
Better fit on: How about having him as a guest judge on Project Runway where the focus is on clothes rather than models? It will be fun to see how he copes when he is caught between designer Michael Kors’ outlandish outbursts – “She looks like a transvestite flamenco dancer at a funeral” – and fashion journalist Nina Garcia’s icy putdowns.
(ST)

Sherlock
Shinee

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Way Of Love
2AM

Volume Up
4Minute

After focusing their energies on the Japanese market last year, boyband Shinee are back with a new Korean release.
The title track Sherlock is a mash-up remix of Clue and Note and it starts off with a swell of strings before the fat beats quickly kick in. It bristles with attitude and hooks and marks a welcome return for the group. Clue and Note are also included here as separate tracks and they work on their own too.
Fans will love that each of the five pretty boys – Onew, Jonghyun, Key, Minho and Taemin – gets his own photo book, though one wonders what the mystery- themed Sherlock has to do with the topless-boys-in-a-boudoir vibe of the picture spreads.
The packaging and theme are more consistent on 2AM’s release. The literary reference is echoed in the hardback lyric/photo booklet which is nestled within a box.
But while the title and the sepia-tinted pictures of the boys in suits suggests swoon-worthy romantic balladry, the songs can fall a little short. What you get is tasteful aural wallpaper – agreeable, but not particularly memorable.
On the final track, I Love You, I Love You, the tempo goes up a notch and the breeziness feels like a breath of fresh air.
Never mind 4Minute’s moniker. The five girls of the group – Ji Hyun, Gayoon, Ji Yoon, HyunA and So Hyun – have stuck around long enough to be releasing their fourth EP.
The first two tracks, Get On The Floor and Volume Up, get the party started. It is clear that their strength lies in the energetic dance tracks. Just to mix things up a little, they have also included the ballad I’m OK.
And in the picture cards here, the girls cover all bases as well. They are sexy in one set of photos, sassy in the next and sweet in yet another.
They turn the volume up in more ways than one.
(ST)

Door (1986)
Liang Wern Fook
Listening to Liang Wern Fook’s first album, Door, is like opening a door into the past.
The Mandarin album, put out 26 years ago, is the very first solo album by a xinyao (Singapore folk) artist as it is entirely composed and written by one person.
The norm up till then was for xinyao singers to put out compilation albums featuring compositions from different writers.
Liang, now 48, was a key figure in the xinyao movement which bubbled up from Singapore campuses in the early 1980s, and for this and subsequent contributions, he was awarded the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s highest accolade for culture and the arts, in 2010.
As a songwriter, he went on to pen pop hits such as Kit Chan’s Worried, while a new generation of listeners has been introduced to his works through 2007’s If There’re Seasons, a musical built around his existing songs, and instrumental versions of his songs in discs released in 2010 and last year.
As he reinterprets his past works, it is also timely to take stock of them in their original versions.
Door is refreshingly free of the slick arrangements associated with pop music nowadays and there is an earnestness to the lyrics that can sometimes seem almost touchingly naive.
Delve deeper and you will revel in the joy of a singer-songwriter discovering his voice, and in the process, shaping a music movement that is uniquely and distinctly Singaporean.
His four subsequent albums would all revolve around the concept of the solo singer-songwriter.
From the very beginning, his concerns as a singer-songwriter went beyond mere navel-gazing as he pondered the state of society around him.
Side A of the cassette was Men Wai (Outside The Door), which was concerned with society at large, and side B was Men Nei (Behind The Door), which explored the personal.
On the title track, Koh Nam Seng sang poignantly: “Ah, opening the door and shutting it, shutting it and opening it/Who has the time to knock on someone else’s door/Everyone is successful, everyone is happy/Who still has the courage to open their heart’s door.”
The track Ah Ben Ah Ben painted a portrait of a directionless young man and playfully sampled the Malay folk song Di Tanjong Katong and even local band Tokyo Square’s Within You’ll Remain.
Bizarrely enough, the song ran into trouble with the authorities for including a few English words in the lyrics and was banned from the airwaves.
The good thing is that this probably led to a greater interest in the song and the album.
On Door, A Song For You and Where Are Our Songs? point to two threads in the burgeoning xinyao movement – the simple joy of writing a song and having it heard, and the fact that it was part of the ongoing search for Singapore’s cultural identity.
A Song For You was the first commercially released song that Liang wrote and it was originally included on the 1984 xinyao compilation album Hai Die Zhu Ri (Ocean Butterflies Chasing After The Sun). It was not part of the 1986 release but was included by Ocean Butterflies in the August 2007 re-release of Liang’s albums in a box set.
The lyrics are about the simple and irresistible delight of songwriting: “Write a song for you, sing out what I feel/Let my feelings of joy shower over the earth.”
Meanwhile, Where Are Our Songs bemoaned the lack of stories which Singaporeans could call their own, with its heartfelt refrain of “Where are our songs”.
Vocally, Liang is not the most polished singer but there is a homespun, modest charm to his pipes and the guy-next- door vibe only made his songs more accessible, as they seemed to be the intimate musings of a close friend on songs such as New Clothes Aren’t As Good As Old Ones.
While numbers such as New Clothes will be familiar to listeners from their inclusion in later collections and compilations, Door offers new pleasures even for diehard xinyao fans.
For example, My Feelings At 17:00, sung by The Straws, pairs a breezy tune with darker lyrics about the toll life can exact.
Door is not just a work of historical significance, but also one which continues to reward listeners today.
Step through it and you will be surprised by what you find.
(ST)