History Of Tomorrow
Mayday
The passing of time and growing older are themes that top Taiwanese band Mayday have explored before, on works such as Poetry Of The Day After (2008), and continue exploring on their ninth album, where they ask: “How did they get here? What comes next?”
“If we had never met, where would I be?/If we had never known each other, this song wouldn’t exist,” singer Ashin ruminates on opening track What If... With other songs touching on similar themes (Best Day Of My Life, Beginning Of The End), they cast their gaze to the past and look to the future.
In the five years since their last album, The Second Round (2011), two more members have gotten married, leaving Ashin as the sole bachelor. Perhaps those developments have prompted some of the introspection here.
What remains constant is the band’s ability to come up with compelling hooks that are by turns sunny, sweet and stirring.
One of the most moving numbers here is the poignant Here, After, Us as Ashin’s voice taps directly and deeply into the emotions: “Only hope that the future you will be happy/That’s what the future me wants most of all.”
While some of the tracks feel a little calculated – Party Animal fills the quota for a fast-paced arena anthem – the staunch friendship among the members remains genuine. There is a touching ode to their bond in Brotherhood: “Brothers, how have you been, it’s hard to imagine what things would be like without you.”
Fans of the band would feel the same way.
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Pete's Dragon
David Lowery
The story: After his parents die in a car crash, Pete (Oakes Fegley as the 11-year-old and Levi Alexander as the five-year-old at the time of the accident) comes face to face with a dragon that he names Elliott. Six years later, the forest they live in is being cleared and lumberjack Gavin (Karl Urban) leads an expedition to track down Elliott. Meanwhile, park ranger Grace Meacham’s (Bryce Dallas Howard) maternal instinct is aroused when she comes across Pete. A remake of the 1977 musical live-action/ animated film of the same name.

The animated dragon in the 1977 film was goofy-looking with a mop of red hair and an impressive belly. For this live-action flick, Elliott has been completely reimagined.
While audiences today might be more familiar with the scaly, reptilian creatures of the fantasy
television blockbuster Game Of Thrones or the movie series adaptation of The Hobbit (2012- 2014), moviegoers get quite a different kind of dragon in this feel-good family film.
Elliott is green and furry and behaves like an overgrown puppy, be it bolting through the forest with abandon or chasing after his tail. Little details, such as the coat of fur being ruffled by the wind and a prominent chipped fang, help to bring him to life.
Thankfully, the film-makers resisted giving a speaking voice to the dragon, who communicates through expressive grunts and growls.
What makes the film tick is Oakes as Pete and the connection that he has with Elliott.
While he seems to have a remarkable command of English despite being essentially raised by an animal, the little boy touchingly mimics the dragon by howling when he is upset.
Bryce Dallas Howard, who recently faced down nastier creatures in Jurassic World (2015), provides maternal warmth, while screen legend Robert Redford plays her father, who once encountered
Elliott, with a twinkle in his eye.
With the trigger-happy Gavin, writer-director David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, 2013) seems to be taking aim at how man’s first instinct, when confronted with the unknown, is to pick up a gun and shoot at it.
Still, it is safe for parents to take their little ones to watch Pete’s Dragon. The bigger lessons in this sweet and gentle film are about the family you make, the ties that bind and the fact that you can be a good friend, regardless of your size.
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Power Station Next Station World Tour In Singapore
Resorts World Ballroom, Resorts World Convention Centre/Last Saturday

Right from the get-go, Taiwanese duo Power Station revved up the energy level.
They came on with guitars blazing, tearing into an energetic opening medley. Yu Chiu-hsin and Yen Chih-lin are known for their brand of tuneful, rugged rock as well as their heart-on-sleeve ballads, which reveal a softer side.
Both their voices are instruments of vigour and power, and neither held back as they belted out the high notes with gusto.
You wondered if they could sustain this level of energy and singing for the entire concert. And they did, for an impressive three hours.
They took the full-house crowd of 6,000 on a thorough tour of their catalogue, beginning with their 1997 hit, Cruel Love Letters, through 1998’s Tomorrow’s Tomorrow’s Tomorrow, 2001’s Walking On Chung Hsiao East Road Nine Times, all the way to songs from their latest album, Light (2013).
There were noticeable tweaks to some of the material.
A guitar solo intro was tacked onto Cruel Love Letters and it was a bluesier, grittier version; while Tomorrow was pared down. The result was more intense renditions of the original recordings.
They also covered a few tracks, including an electrifying version of Faye Wong’s hit ballad Sky. Their take came with a propulsive rhythm and a sense of delight at the boundless expanse of the heavens.
What was unnecessary though was a perfunctory stroll through the hits of the four heavenly kings: Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Leon Lai and Aaron Kwok. It came close to feeling like a karaoke session and merely took time away from Power Station’s own material.
Interestingly enough, they had sung the theme songs for several Singapore television series and these were performed in a far more relevant segment.
The best known is probably the inspirational I Can Take Hardships for the period drama, Stepping Out (1999).
Their connection to Singapore goes even deeper and they invited home-grown songwriter Eric Ng on stage as a guest guitarist. It was Ng who co-composed the title theme track for their current tour, Next Stop.
While Yu did most of the talking during the gig, the most heartwarming moment belonged to Yen, when his two young daughters came on stage and sang along on I’ve Loved You.
He cajoled them by saying that next time, they could all sing Let It Go, the megahit from the animated film Frozen (2013).
Given the rousing vocal prowess of Power Station and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of hits, that was the one thing the audience was reluctant to do.
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Terry Lin ONEtake Concert 2016 World Tour In Singapore
Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre/Last Friday

In many ways, Taiwan’s Terry Lin is an unlikely pop star.
Bespectacled and gangly, he is not quite idol material. Nor does he have the effusiveness of a natural entertainer.
Indeed, some of the staging for the concert was a little awkward as he introduced the erhu accompanist as his lover in a past life and the violin player as his current flame.
He also pretended to be an alien from space at one point.
But none of that mattered the moment he started to sing. When Lin sings, he performs an act of alchemy.
As he took on Jay Chou’s Fireworks Cool Easily, he transformed a melancholic pop tune into a thing of beauty shimmering with loneliness and longing.
There is a purity to his voice that makes every emotion ring bright and true, and his is a set of pipes that glides effortlessly over the high notes, even in falsetto.
It all came together wonderfully on ballads such as Losing You, What Does It Matter If I Win The World and The Departed, which he dedicated to his late mother.
Mandopop fans of a certain age would remember Lin and Lee Chi as the pop duo Ukulele from the early 1990s.
As a solo artist, he went on to chalk up a few hits, including Mona Lisa’s Tear and Bachelor’s Love Song. He performed these two tracks right off the bat, cloaked in a bright red coat and sporting shades and a perky pompadour.
There was a point to putting two of his best-known solo numbers up front.
He said to the audience of 6,000: “I usually put one at the beginning and one at the end, so that’s the whole show. Actually, I wanted to let you know I have a lot more good songs beyond these two.”
Many of the numbers during the two-hour-long gig were those he had sung on the popular China television reality show, I Am A Singer, in 2013. He emerged second, behind Chinese duo Yu Quan that first season and it gave his singing career a second wind.
At the concert, he performed Chyi Chin’s exquisite Night Night Night Night and a Mandarin version of Eason Chan’s dramatic Grandiose.
He even breathed new life into that hackneyed love ballad, Air Supply’s Making Love Out Of Nothing At All. This was despite the fact that the 50-year-old was nursing a slight cough and not quite in tip-top condition.
Lin also showed his range by singing in Cantonese and Minnan. And while a jazzy segment was meant to change up the pace, I would have preferred to hear more of his work from his Ukulele days.
Losing You was lovely, but what about Admit I’m Wrong and Journey Of The Young?
As if acknowledging the omissions, he encouraged fans who were left unsatiated to attend his upcoming concert at Taipei Arena in November.
A tempting proposition indeed.
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Rainbow Bot
Stefanie Sun
When was the last time you looked at the world through a child’s eyes?
Inspired by motherhood, Mandopop queen Stefanie Sun has put out an EP that captures the sense of innocence and wonder of childhood.
The title number, Rainbow Bot, is the lone new song here. Over a laidback mid-tempo beat and with a carefree whistled accompaniment, she sings: “Does that cloud look like ice cream/Grasp it between your fingers and it’s a sandwich cookie.”
Other tracks seem to tap into her maternal instinct.
The home-grown star offers a very different version of Guns N’ Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine. In contrast to Axl Rose’s fervent wailing on the rock ballad, she evokes sweetness and even whimsy, through an arrangement which incorporates the ukulele, trumpet and xylophone. When she proclaims “I’d hate to look into those eyes/And see an ounce of pain”, you wonder if she is picturing her son, who is almost four.
Kepler, from her 2014 album of the same name, has been reworked into a sparer version. She launches into the song with no accompaniment save for the natural sounds of night and it feels utterly intimate, as though you were listening in on her singing a lullaby to her child.
The other two songs are Nursery Rhyme 1987, written by xinyao leading light Liang Wern Fook and set to a different tune here, and the achingly poignant This World. It was by Taiwanese singer-songwriter Tsai Lan-chin, who died in 1987 at the age of 22 from illness.
Sweet Child O’ Mine was originally released on the seminal album, Appetite For Destruction in 1987, when Sun was nine.
Rainbow Bot is as much an invoking of her own childhood as a celebration of all children.
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Ben-Hur
Timur Bekmambetov
The story: In the latest adaptation of the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ, Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston) is a wealthy Jewish prince with a Roman adopted brother Messala (Toby Kebbell). Their competing loyalties eventually tear them apart as Messala rises through the ranks to become an officer in the Roman army, which is persecuting the Jews. When Judah is blamed for an assassination attempt on Pontius Pilate, he is sentenced to be a galley slave and his family is taken away on Messala’s orders. Years later, the brothers square off against each other in a chariot race.

A single scene defines the 1959 period action epic Ben-Hur starring Charlton Heston – a heart-stopping chariot race in which the stakes are life and death itself as losers face the threat of getting crushed under the thundering hooves of the horses.
The chariot race remains pivotal to this latest adaptation and director Timur Bekmambetov (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 2012) does away with the flashy sharpened spikes of the souped-up vehicle seen in the 1959 hit.
He favours a grittier approach and still musters plenty of excitement. To get to this point, brother is pitted against brother and familial bonds against the mighty Roman empire.
While the family drama feels a little stilted, Bekmambetov does a good job contrasting the sumptuousness of life in Jerusalem – the feasting, the frescoed walls and the colourful outfits – with the dank and drab hell that is the confines of a galley slave.
Striking an odd note is Morgan Freeman as an African sheik who saves Judah and later trains him to be a charioteer. Playing a wise old man is par for the course for the veteran actor, but the showstopping braided hair seems to belong in another movie, if not another era altogether.
The ending is somewhat rushed and something of a stretch as it involves several miracles.
But then again, this is one of the rare occasions when a deus ex machina is justified since Jesus Christ (a beatific Rodrigo Santoro) shows up as a supporting character.
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Indignation
James Schamus
The story: Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman), the son of an over-protective Jewish butcher, leaves home in Newark, New Jersey, to attend college in Ohio. There, he meets the beautiful but troubled Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon) and their first date turns his world upside down. He later clashes with the school’s pedantic dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts) over religion and the boundaries of personal liberties. Based on the 2008 novel of the same name by acclaimed American writer Philip Roth.

The story is set in the early 1950s against the background of American soldiers being shipped off to the Korean War. While some elements feel dated, Marcus’ frustration as he rails against older authority figures is easy to identify with.
Indignation hinges on the pivotal scenes between him and Caudwell. Letts, who is also an award-winning playwright and screenwriter of August: Osage County (2007), is the man you love to hate as the intransigent, blunt force of authority.
Lerman, who came to fame playing the teenage Percy Jackson in the adventure fantasy film adaptations The Lightning Thief (2010) and Sea Of Monsters (2013), has grown into an actor of some sensitivity in films such as the comingof-age drama The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (2012) – and it is this quality that helps to keep this talky movie afloat.
As Marcus, he goes convincingly from bristling at the injustice of his interrogation by the dean for his decision to switch dorm rooms, to lashing out in a moment of exasperation. The price he pays turns out to be a heavy one, with war and death looming menacingly in the background.
The film also addresses Marcus’ sexual awakening, but the sexual mores of the time seem so quaint now.
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Day By Day
Hebe Tien
On the album cover, singer Hebe Tien is pictured ironing clothes. In the pages of the lyric booklet, she paints her nails and does a yoga stretch.
The prettily coloured and carefully styled images of the most successful solo member of the popular Taiwanese girl group S.H.E were taken by award-winning Slovakian photographer Maria Svarbova. In other words, the singer’s fourth album might be about the quotidian, but there is nothing perfunctory about it.
Ren Jian Yan Huo (Every Day Is A Miracle) is a good example of this.
The phrase “bu shi ren jian yan huo” is used to describe someone who is not quite of this world. So I was expecting something ethereal- sounding, but Tien ventures into upbeat electronica territory instead.
Defying expectations is a good thing and so is sounding different from everything else on the radio, which bodes well for Tien.
The tempo slows down on Useless as her voice casts a languid spell and then gently hits the high notes as she croons a series of zen koans: “Uselessness is useful or completely useless, what’s the difference?”
Working with a wide range of musicians here – from China’s Lan Xiaoxie (lyrics for Useless and others) to Singaporean newcomer Boon Hui Lu (music for Every Day Is A Miracle and Your Body Speaks) – she produces an eclectic, electronic collection that will liven up your day.
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One Night Only
Matt Wu
The story: Gao Ye (Aaron Kwok) is an incorrigible gambler who is deep in debt. Momo (Yang Zishan) is a prostitute who knocks on his door by mistake. Thus begins a night of adventure as they place bets in an underground fight club, get forced into a life-threatening car race and trade stories in an abandoned mansion.

The idea of a story taking place in the course of a single night is an intriguing one.
The compressed timeframe heightens the sense of excitement as characters have to meet, fight, make up or break up – and all before the sun rises.
Before Sunrise (1995) is an engaging talky take on the concept, while Au Revoir Taipei (2010) goes for a more energetic vibe with a caper that is also a love letter to the city’s rich nightlife.
One Night Only is like neither of those films; in fact, it does not seem to know what to do with the concept. Here, the one-night timeframe feels contrived at times as the story has to hinge on the most idiotic of events.
Despite meeting Gao Ye for the first time and despite the fact that he lives in a hovel, Momo happily hands over a stack of cash for him to gamble with. And later, her bunch of sisters-in-trade do the same as well even though he does not seem that persuasive.
Neither are the characters persuasively drawn.
Gao has an estranged daughter but his actions are not exactly consistent with that of a man who wants to have a second chance with his child. Kwok tries but it is hard to feel much sympathy for his character.
Fresh-faced Yang, who broke out in Zhao Wei’s coming-of-age drama So Young (2013), is saddled with inconsistencies in her role as well. Aside from her questionable motivation, there are things about Momo that do not make sense.
It is suggested that she was trafficked into prostitution, yet she seems to be remarkably free when it comes to her time and movements.
It is also incongruous to have all these characters interacting in Mandarin when they are clearly in Thailand, a setting which feels incidental and accidental.
The big reveal at the end is supposed to make everything click. In truth, it raises more questions than it answers.
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HK Forbidden Super Hero: The Abnormal Crisis
Yuichi Fukuda
The story: At the end of HK Forbidden Super Hero (2013), Kyosuke Shikijo (Ryohei Suzuki) – in his alter-ego as Hentai Kamen (literally, Pervert Mask) – has defeated villain Tamao Ogane (Tsuyoshi Muro). His girlfriend Aiko Himeno (Fumika Shimizu) wants him to give up his perverted side and takes back the pair of panties she had gifted him. But when a mysterious force starts to suck up women’s underpants, Kyosuke has to train under the Perverted Hermit (Ken Yasuda) to take down foes old and new. Adapted from the cult manga Kyukyoku!! Hentai Kamen (Ultimate!! Pervert Mask, 1992-1993).

Think that Deadpool, with his snarky barbs as he rains violence down on his enemies, is subversive? How about a superhero who wears a mankini, fishnet stockings and a pair of panties over his head, and whose finishing move is to smush the heads of baddies into his crotch?
The tagline for the movie is No Panties, No Justice. Your reaction to it should determine whether you should watch it or skip it.
Returning director Yuichi Fukuda has fun sending up the superhero genre here, including sending the protagonist on a training stint and journey of self-discovery in the mountains – except that the Perverted Hermit is not quite the wise and respectable Yoda.
He is first shown crouched on the floor, waiting for someone to turn on a whipping machine.
The villains, from a dismembered head scuttling around on mechanical legs like a demented spider to a human-crab cuum hybrid monster, are over the top.
The film sags somewhat as it meanders in the middle, but the game cast keeps its energy level up.
Ryohei Suzuki (My Love Story!, 2015) returns in the title role. He is equally convincing as mild- mannered Kyosuke, aka the in-your-face Hentai Kamen. And Tsuyoshi Muro’s pigtailed Tamao has to be the most annoying villain ever.
For all the sexual innuendos and fetishising of panties, the film manages to retain a sweetness at its core.
After all, as Kyosuke proclaims: “I’m a pervert for justice.”
This is what wholesome smutty fun looks like.
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For A Few Bullets
Peter Pan Anzi
The story: Zhuang (Kenny Lin Gengxin) prides himself as China’s top hustler. He finds himself working with the icy agent Ruoyun (Zhang Jingchu), veteran con man Shi Fo (Tengger) and his wife (Liu Xiaoqing) to retrieve a precious jade seal – one that the Japanese military wants to use to legitimise its rule in Nanjing in the 1940s.

Kenny Lin’s big break came in the period drama Scarlet Heart (2011) in which he stole hearts as the dashing 14th prince.
Seizing his chance to lighten up here, he turns in a charming performance as a rakish con man with a winning smile and a quick wit, which is the best thing about this uneven movie.
His character Zhuang is remarkably cavalier in the way he handles the MacGuffin here, a priceless four dragon rectangular zun (ancient Chinese wine vessel). His carelessness with it reveals the greater treasure within, a royal jade seal which has to be kept out of Japanese hands, a task that falls to an unlikely team assembled by director Peter Pan Anzi (The Palace, 2013).
There are some twists and turns involving traitors and double- crossers, not to mention hurdles that are set up to keep them from their prize. But none of it feels particularly clever or terribly exciting. The ploy to nab the seal on a ship – clearly set up to be a highlight – falls short of being inspired.
It is sad to see Liu Xiaoqing, China’s movie queen in the 1980s, reduced to clowning about in a slight role in a sloppy movie whose villains are hammy, subtitles are rife with errors and computergenerated imagery is distractingly amateurish.
This movie headed by China’s ambitious Wanda Pictures needs stronger ammunition to mount a successful assault on the stranglehold of Hollywood’s best.
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Skiptrace
Renny Harlin
The story: After the death of his partner, Hong Kong police officer Bennie Chan (Jackie Chan) is bent on proving that businessman Victor Wong (Winston Chao) is the crime boss known as The Matador. By chance, scam artist Connor Watts (Johnny Knoxville) ends up with evidence that could implicate Victor. He also falls for Bennie’s goddaughter Samantha (Fan Bingbing), who works at a Macau casino. But first, Bennie has to rescue Connor from the clutches of a Russian gang.

As with any Jackie Chan live-action cartoon, fans can expect the usual mix of smooth moves and humorous gags from the action star in his latest work.
But Skiptrace, which is a travelogue in the guise of an actionadventure comedy, feels more lacklustre than the average vehicle for the star.
Thanks to his passport getting destroyed, Bennie, along with Connor, has to take the scenic route in the journey from Russia to Hong Kong – because, clearly, that is the fastest way to go, with Samantha in the hands of the bad guys and the clock ticking away.
They tangle with traditional wrestlers in Mongolia and there is a campfire rendition of Adele’s Rolling In The Deep complete with the region’s famed throat-singing. In China, they come across a festival and find time to set alight a Kongming, or sky, lantern and then have to sing in order to cross a throng of women in ethnic costumes.
All the while, Bennie is spouting factoids a la a travel show host, until Connor snaps: “Are you on Wikipedia all the time?”
Renny Harlin, who has five Golden Raspberry nominations for Worst Director, could have done with a greater degree of such self-awareness in his approach to the movie.
Instead, he muddies the water with touches such as a choice of hillbilly western songs for the soundtrack. The music mayhem is compounded by a caper involving Hong Kong cops and criminals speaking a version of English as jarring as the buddy pairing of Chan and Knoxville.
The odd couple are a notch above the dud duo of Wallace Chung and Lee Min Ho in Bounty Hunters, but not as entertaining as Chan and motormouth Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour movies.
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What A Folk!!!!!!
Crowd Lu
From the effusion of exclamation marks in the title of his latest album, you can already feel the excitement of Taiwanese singer- songwriter Crowd Lu in returning to the music scene after his military service stint.
What A Folk!!!!!! proves that Lu has plenty to sing about even after leaving the fertile campus ground that had inspired so much of his early work, especially the excellent 2008 debut 100 Ways Of Living.
He is still crooning about chasing after one’s dreams albeit tempered by a reality check. In One-and-a- half Ping (one ping is 3.3 sq m), which refers to the size of the tiny room he had once lived in in Taipei, he sings: “Can I rent some more strength/Lick my wounds/As I continue to make way.”
The optimism of old is not entirely missing, as he scats joyously on the opening number, Happy Chakra, and breezes his way through Summer Song.
On this record, his path seems to have opened up musically and in terms of subject matter.
With its refrain of “look, look”, the Minnan track Little Phone (1) is a gentle reminder to tear one’s gaze away from one’s phone and to notice the world around one instead. After all, as he points out: “A handphone is not your lover.”
Little Phone (2), an acoustic punk number, takes it up a notch, opening with the exhortation: “Stop looking at your phone!”
Wedding Ring, which was co-written with singer-songwriter Cheer Chen, suggests greater emotional maturity on Lu’s part. Rather than a happily-ever-after ballad, it is instead about the fraught meeting between a man and his now-married ex.
Lu’s concerns go beyond the personal to embrace the wider world.
Sleeping Here Today touches on homelessness and it comes from a place of care and compassion. He paints a poignant picture and also offers warm encouragement: “If you are happy that you are living, live life with intent/It’s the best homework in life.”
His positivity can almost seem like rose-tinted optimism, but there is no denying that there is an innocence about him that is genuine and touching. He muses with gratitude on Kind Glasses: “Kind glasses can help you/Discover the beauty of this world.”
We could all do with glasses like these.
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The Edge Of Paradise
Kit Chan
Home-grown singer Kit Chan used to be known for her emotive ballads, in which she would swing for the high notes. Hits such as Heartache and Dazzle made her a star.
She no longer feels a need to engage in vocal dramatics for the sake of doing so. Instead, her voice seems more tender and sensitive in The Edge Of Paradise, her first album of original songs since 2004’s East Towards Saturn.
Perhaps the title track comes closest to the feel of her earlier works, but even then, the effect is more ethereal than forceful when her voice climbs the scale.
There is a laidback ease to her singing on the quietly insistent There’s Been You In My Life and the gentle yet compelling Sudden Rain.
Chan has fun on the playfully jazzy number Don’t Ask Me Why I Love You, composed by singer-songwriter Jimmy Ye. And she pulls off a neat trick by making this seem like a new song with a different arrangement and Cantonese lyrics by the feted Lin Xi on A Missed Opportunity Is Not A Crime.
This is what a Kit Chan album sounds like now.
As she croons on the slow-burn track Spellbound: “My heart has long melted, my love is so passionate.” There is no need for her to showboat, the emotions come through loud and clear.
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Bounty Hunters
Shinterra
The story: Former Interpol agents Lee Shan (Lee Min Ho) and Ayo (Wallace Chung) are now slumming it as bodyguards. A potential job goes seriously awry and they are framed for a hotel bombing. To nail the real mastermind, they join forces with bounty hunter Cat (Tiffany Tang) and her trusty sidekicks, computer whiz Swan (Karena Ng) and butler extraordinaire Babe (Louis Fan).

There are idols who can act. South Korea’s Lee Min Ho is not one of them. Witness a scene where he recoils from the sudden appearance of a kitty – meant to be a funny instance of his phobia of cats, but it comes across instead as laughably fake.
Not much else works in this film. Characters jet about from Tokyo to Bangkok to Jeju island chasing after a villain, but it is hard to work up much enthusiasm to watch them when the proceedings veer between being lame and lacklustre.
Lee Shan and Ayo are a classic pair of bros in a buddy action flick except that there is not much chemistry between them and the bonhomie feels forced.
Lee Shan’s relationship with Cat also fails – their intended mutual simmering attraction is merely lukewarm instead of red-hot. Even when they are thrown together into the boot of a car – a la Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney in 1998’s Out Of Sight – they achieve not sensuousness, but a comic payoff.
Perhaps only singer-turned-actor Wallace Chung shows some potential in the movie, with his game take on a comic role. He is not afraid to be silly or lame and there is a sweet goofiness to his antics.
When the villain is finally revealed, he turns out to be a caricature – shrill, bratty and with more than a screw loose. Actually, the baddies are easy to spot as their dramatic eyeshadow gives them away.
Not much of a hunt after all.
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Yuzu Asia Tour 2016 Summer Natsuiro
*Scape The Ground Theatre
Last Saturday
What a fruitful journey it has been for Japanese folk-pop duo Yuzu.
Yujin Kitagawa and Koji Iwasawa started out busking on the streets of Yokohama in 1996 and have gone on to perform at major arenas such as Tokyo Dome and Yokohama Stadium.
To mark their 20th anniversary, they have embarked on their first Asian tour, which kicked off in Singapore at *Scape.
There is certainly demand for their concert here as tickets were snapped up within four hours.
The Ground Theatre has a capacity of 500 and the majority of the fans there were Japanese. It prompted Iwasawa to joke in English: “Welcome to Singapore.”
The duo spoke largely in Japanese with Kitagawa throwing in a few explanatory phrases in English.
But mostly, their songs spoke for them. There was a joyousness to their sunny and breezy tracks that was irresistible and they were clearly happy to be performing here.
Accompanied by guitars and the plaintive wail of the harmonica, they harmonised on early hits such as the catchy Goodbye Bus and the elegiac Someday.
They also took on more recent works, including the title track from their 13th album Towa (2016) and Reason, off their award- winning record Land (2013).
During one segment, Yuzu went back to their busking roots as it was just the two of them on stage without any backing musician. They sang their original birthday song and inserted the name of one lucky fan.
On many of the numbers, fans clapped along, waved their hands, sang and even danced, making it feel like a cosy, communal experience.
To get everyone loosened up, there was a short workout segment that took place before the gig started. It all led up to the mass dance for the track Love & Peach, in which Kitagawa and Iwasawa appeared with pink peach butts while two Japanese Citron (yuzu) Monkeys led the choreography with instructions such as “Tap tap your bum”.
The energetic two-hour concert ended where it all began, with Yuzu’s first single released in 1998, Natsuiro (Summer Colour). To chants of “one more time”, the duo extended the feel-good track twice before bowing out.
Inevitably, summer must end but, like the season, fans hope that Yuzu will return.
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Jay Chou's Bedtime Stories
Jay Chou
Fourteen albums in, Mandopop king Jay Chou can still put out catchy and chart-scaling songs.
But the inventiveness which marked his early output seems to have been largely spent.
The propulsive beats, the rapid- fire rhythms, the sunny ukulele strumming – they are familiar from earlier works.
On the title track, Bedtime Stories, what starts off as a music- box melody soon gets its tempo tightened and there are even snatches of falsetto singing as the mood grows increasingly frenetic: “You still don’t want to sleep, but I want to sleep”.
Welcome to fatherhood, Chou. His daughter, Hathaway, with model Hannah Quinlivan, was born last July.
Now, finally, he has a reason to play the jester; previously, his inclination towards kiddy-sounding pop, on discs such as Exclamation Mark (2011), was puzzling.
At the mere age of four months, Hathaway inspired Chou to come up with Past Life’s Lover.
Her random tinkling gets her credited as co-composer, which has to be a record of sorts, though you have to wonder how much of that is down to parental pride.
Some of the material – including the radio-friendly A Little and Shouldn’t Be, the attention-grabbing ballad with A-mei – seem to be here merely to tick a box, though.
The duet itself is pretty decent, but their voices simply do not go together.
Among his collaborations, the best remains the unexpected pairing of Chou’s unmistakably contemporary pipes with Fei Yu-ching’s smooth, evergreen croon in Faraway from 2006’s Still Fantasy.
Commercial considerations lie behind other numbers.
Now You See Me is Chou’s contribution to the thriller movie, Now You See Me 2, in which he has a small role. With its inclusion of gaming lingo, Hero points to his entry into that world as the leader of an e-sport team.
Ahead of his sold-out The Invincible concert in Singapore on Sept 3, the release of Bedtime Stories is a timely and canny move.
But it would be nice if the whole thing did not feel so calculated.
(ST)

Cold War 2
Longman Leung and Sunny Luk
The story: In Cold War (2012), deputy police commissioners Sean Lau (Aaron Kwok) and Waise Lee (Tony Leung Ka Fai) butted heads over the handling of the hijacking of a fully equipped police van. Waise’s cop son Joe (Eddie Peng) was eventually jailed for masterminding the daring crime. It ended on a cliffhanger when Sean received a phone call instructing that Joe be released. The sequel picks up at this point. Although Sean is now the police commissioner, his position is at stake and his actions are questioned by a panel of legal experts, which includes a formidable Oswald Kan (Chow Yun Fat). Can he hang on to his job and unravel the big conspiracy that stretches up to the highest echelons of power in Hong Kong?

There was always going to be a sequel to Cold War and not just because it ended on a cliffhanger. The film was a popular and critical success – the highest-grossing domestic film in Hong Kong in recent years, with more than HK$44 million (S$7.7 million) earned and a haul of nine prizes at the Hong Kong Film Awards, including for Best Film.
Unfortunately, scripting and directing pair Longman Leung and Sunny Luk seem to have written themselves into a corner in this instalment.
The greater conspiracy hinted at in the earlier film is revealed here, unsatisfactorily, to be a kingmaker pulling the strings behind the scenes. The villain’s motivation and his relationship with Joe are unconvincing, not to mention terribly complicated. At the same time, the idea of a cabal of crooks controlling the agenda from on high comes across as too sweeping and easy.
What helped to make the first film riveting was that audiences were kept guessing which team Tony Leung Ka Fai’s Waise was truly on. After establishing him as a good guy, the film-makers throw his loyalties into doubt again, unnecessarily, implausibly and unoriginally.
While Leung and Luk have thrown new characters, from Chow Yun Fat’s combative Oswald Kan to his sort-of goddaughter/nosy investigator Isabel Au (Janice Man), into the fray, they come across as superfluous distractions who are never fully fleshed out.
Everything seems over the top, from the intrusive, bombastic music score to a shoot-out scene in a tunnel that descends into ridiculousness. And there is so much macho posturing from Leung, Kwok and Chow that it quickly gets old.
Without the lingering goodwill from the first flick, this overcooked sequel would have left me totally cold.
(ST)

“The magic of the movies” is one of those phrases that have been used so often that we do not give it a second thought. But every once in a while, we get a reminder of the power of the motion picture to cast a spell.
Home-grown film-maker Boo Junfeng recently told The Straits Times: “Sometimes, topics may seem contentious and difficult to deal with, but I’ve always believed that through story-telling, through film, when we are able to humanise characters and make them relatable, these topics no longer remain just topics.”
He then added: “They become human experiences with the potential of inspiring empathy.
The world could use a bit more empathy.”
He achieved that in his second feature Apprentice, currently in cinemas. The film broaches the controversial topic of capital punishment, but steers away from characters soapboxing about its cons. There are names, faces and stories instead of lectures about the inhumanity of the death penalty.
Along with weighing the impact that killing a prisoner has on the family members left behind, Apprentice also contemplates the toll it takes on the hangman. The act of taking another human life is a heinous one that is condemned in every society and yet, one man is sanctioned by the state to do so.
Malaysian actor Wan Hanafi Su’s charismatic Rahim has to come to terms with what he does for a living. It is not exactly a job one can easily talk about and the cost of opening up can be high.
At the same time, he takes pride in doing it well – so that death comes quickly and suffering is minimised for the condemned.
As movies trumpet their use of ever more expensive and expansive computer wizardry, it is worth noting that the best special effect a film can have is to evoke empathy.
And that is a way for projects with much smaller budgets to compete against tentpole titles backed by vast resources.
Shedding light on difficult situations is what some documentaries in the Singapore International Festival of Arts’ ongoing pre-festival programme The O.P.E.N. do as well.
British film-maker Sean McAllister’s A Syrian Love Story (2015) traces the story of Amer and Raghda – they fall in love as political prisoners, get married and start a family. They are lucky in that they were able to obtain asylum in Paris because of Raghda’s status as a known dissident of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
But their exile ultimately tears the couple apart. They escape with their lives, but are still casualties of war. The film also provides an entry point into the complicated conflict engulfing Syria and reducing it to rubble.
In the two-parter Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) (2015), film- maker Abbas Fahdel turns the lens on members of his family to show what life was like before and after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 .
The O.P.E.N.’s closing film, Fire At Sea (2016), winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, casts a compassionate eye on the desperate refugees who risk their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea to escape from the horrors unfolding at home.
The conflicts in Iraq and Syria and the migrant crisis in Europe may dog the news, but nothing crystallises notions of war, strife and suffering the way a film does by making them come alive as we experience them through the characters and subjects on the big screen.
Of course, films do not have to tackle challenging terrain in order to evoke empathy.
Take, for instance, Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda’s wonderfully humane films about ordinary people living everyday lives, in works such as Still Walking (2008) and Our Little Sister (2015).
He makes the quotidian utterly compelling as he gently paints a picture of the contemporary human condition, one rendered with honesty and great affection for the characters.
Empathy has been likened to walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Movies can take you on that journey – and even show you what those shoes look like.
(ST)

Sell Like Hot Cakes
Yoga Lin
Never mind the English album title, which is as bald-faced a statement as it gets. The Chinese title Jin Ri Ying Ye Zhong, Open For Business Today, is less in-your-face, referring to Taiwanese singer Yoga Lin’s return to the music scene after completing his military service last year.
There is a sense of him starting things on a clean slate on opening track Let It Die. “Let the world be destroyed/ Let everything turn to ash, all absurdities end/Let me be destroyed,” he sings.
In other words, this is not quite business as usual for Lin.
There is the surprise of his first Cantonese track, the ballad Worse Comes To Worst, and he does a good job with Wyman Wong’s incisive lyrics: “When everything is bad and you can still be happy, that’s a sublime state.”
He also hints at greater maturity in Spoiled Innocence when he laments: “Do you know the cruellest thing you’ve done/Is to cruelly turn me into a man overnight?”
Some things do not change, though, and there is nothing wrong with that – Lin’s evocative pipes are in fine form and his penchant for musical adventure continues to be given free rein.
And so we get the catchy uptempo rock of Unshakeable Rascals, the loungy jazz of Courage To Remember You and the elegiac ballad Tiny Part Of You, which he composed.
Good to have Lin back in business. And, who knows, the album may just sell like hot cakes.
(ST)