Four Christmases
The story: Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) have been wriggling out of Christmas family gatherings and spending their holidays in exotic locales. When they are found out, they end up visiting both sets of divorced parents. Hence the four Christmases of the title.
’Tis the season for festive comedies.
Just as the lights go up like clockwork in Orchard Road, you can be sure of an offering or two from Hollywood, milking the yuletide tradition of family gatherings for yuks in films such as Home For The Holidays (1995) and Christmas With The Kranks (2004).
In the latest twist on the formula, the writers up the ante by plying the harried couple with four different home gatherings, promising more excruciating embarrassments and awkward situations.
Take Brad’s brothers, for example. They are tattooed paramilitary types who take pleasure in body combat. So Brad soon finds himself the object of flying tackles as his curmudgeonly father (Robert Duvall) looks on in approval.
As the day progresses, Brad and Kate discover things they have kept from each other, such as Brad’s real name and Kate’s fat camp detours as a child. As the skeletons come tumbling out, she begins to question their relationship and where it is headed.
Four Christmases turns out to be a drama about two people learning to commit to each other in the guise of a genre comedy.
Sure, the lessons about familial and romantic love are pat but there is a welcome bounce and edge to the writing.
It certainly helps to have the couple in crisis played by the likeable and winsome Witherspoon and Vaughn, even though his gut is starting to look like it needs its own wardrobe.
Balancing broad comedy with romance is not an easy task but director Seth Gordon pulls it off deftly, delivering a worthy treat for the holidays.
(ST)
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Rihanna!
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Thursday
Who is Rihanna exactly, and where does this 20-year- old from Barbados with the slick chart hits fit in with other female pop stars?
Her latest album is titled Good Girl Gone Bad, but she has some way to go before she can snatch that particular crown from Britney Spears.
Perhaps she fancies herself a consummate entertainer such as Madonna, wanting to Take A Bow for her showmanship.
After all, it seems that she is deliberately inviting such comparisons. The warm-up song before her concert began was, oddly enough, Spears’ Womaniser. And Madonna’s Music was sampled in the introduction to Please Don’t Stop The Music.
And yet, her concert on Thursday night offered few answers.
Rihanna started with Disturbia. She was dressed in dominatrix chic – an all-black ensemble with a sleeveless top that showed off her toned arms and form-fitting pants.
The tough yet sexy effect was unfortunately marred by a mike malfunction which silenced her, not the best way to start a concert. It was left to her hardworking back-up singers to carry the show while she went offstage.
That was not the end of the audio problems. While mostly serviceable, her voice came across as ragged and harsh at times, possibly due to the patchy sound system.
The crowd of almost 8,000 were not put off, though. They came determined to party and nothing was going to get in their way. Fans were on their feet from the opening number and screamed and danced throughout.
Rihanna delivered hits from her three albums, including the infectious SOS, the energetic Pon De Replay and the paean to infidelity, Unfaithful. The crowd lapped them all up eagerly.
But mostly, she seemed to be going through the motions, putting her sharp cheekbones to good use as she preened and posed while singing. It was MTV-ready and it all remained on the surface.
It did not help that even though the show was promoted as a 90-minute affair, it clocked in at a miserly 60 minutes. The singer hardly had time to thank her musicians and crew and did not even change costumes until her encore.
Dressed in a black-and-white showgirl outfit, she ended the evening with her biggest hit, Umbrella, and soaked in the adulation from the crowd.
“I cannot wait to come back. Singapore, I love you,” she claimed.
Yea, yea, but we barely knew you.
(ST)
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Thursday
Who is Rihanna exactly, and where does this 20-year- old from Barbados with the slick chart hits fit in with other female pop stars?
Her latest album is titled Good Girl Gone Bad, but she has some way to go before she can snatch that particular crown from Britney Spears.
Perhaps she fancies herself a consummate entertainer such as Madonna, wanting to Take A Bow for her showmanship.
After all, it seems that she is deliberately inviting such comparisons. The warm-up song before her concert began was, oddly enough, Spears’ Womaniser. And Madonna’s Music was sampled in the introduction to Please Don’t Stop The Music.
And yet, her concert on Thursday night offered few answers.
Rihanna started with Disturbia. She was dressed in dominatrix chic – an all-black ensemble with a sleeveless top that showed off her toned arms and form-fitting pants.
The tough yet sexy effect was unfortunately marred by a mike malfunction which silenced her, not the best way to start a concert. It was left to her hardworking back-up singers to carry the show while she went offstage.
That was not the end of the audio problems. While mostly serviceable, her voice came across as ragged and harsh at times, possibly due to the patchy sound system.
The crowd of almost 8,000 were not put off, though. They came determined to party and nothing was going to get in their way. Fans were on their feet from the opening number and screamed and danced throughout.
Rihanna delivered hits from her three albums, including the infectious SOS, the energetic Pon De Replay and the paean to infidelity, Unfaithful. The crowd lapped them all up eagerly.
But mostly, she seemed to be going through the motions, putting her sharp cheekbones to good use as she preened and posed while singing. It was MTV-ready and it all remained on the surface.
It did not help that even though the show was promoted as a 90-minute affair, it clocked in at a miserly 60 minutes. The singer hardly had time to thank her musicians and crew and did not even change costumes until her encore.
Dressed in a black-and-white showgirl outfit, she ended the evening with her biggest hit, Umbrella, and soaked in the adulation from the crowd.
“I cannot wait to come back. Singapore, I love you,” she claimed.
Yea, yea, but we barely knew you.
(ST)
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Good, The Bad, The Weird
Story: The paths of train robber Yoon Tae Goo (Song Kang Ho), bandit leader Park Chang Yi (Lee Byung Hun) and bounty hunter Park Do Won (Jung Woo Sung) cross over a much-coveted treasure map.
But they are not the only ones after it as the Japanese army and yet another gang of baddies have their sights set on the parchment as well in this actioner set in turbulent 1930s Manchuria.
This is a Korean take on the spaghetti Western The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966), the Sergio Leone classic in which three men who do not trust each other have to work together in order to get to a buried treasure.
Director Kim Jee Woon, who helmed the bloody crime drama A Bittersweet Life (2005), re-imagines the story with three of South Korea’s top male stars.
Song Kang Ho, the award-winning actor in films such as the sci-fi horror flick The Host (2006), provides some comic relief as the blustery and blustering train robber Tae Goo, who unwittingly steals the treasure map in the first place.
Versatile hunk Lee Byung Hun, whose credits include the hit thriller Joint Security Area (2000), jarringly sports earrings and eye-liner in his wild-eyed portrayal of the ruthless Chang Yi, who is out to claim the map for himself.
Heartthrob Jung Woo Sung, star of the romance A Moment To Remember (2004), is the cool and collected Do Won, who has been offered a reward for hunting down Chang Yi.
Perhaps the combined star power accounts for the success of the film, touted by the distributor here as the highest-grossing blockbuster in Korea in 2008.
But that cannot hide the fact that the thin plot merely serves to move the action along from one set-piece to another. No doubt well choreographed, but the overlong gunfights feel like exercises in excessive violence after a while.
Late-in-the-game revelations about Tae Goo are simply not enough to make you care about the thinly-drawn but quick-on-the-draw characters.
By the time of the climactic three-way shootout between the protagonists, you are strangely liberated by the fact that you do not care who lives or dies.
In another misjudged display of excess, the film refuses to end even then, but drags out for another few improbable minutes.
At its best, violence in Korean films explore issues of morality, for example in Park Chan Wook’s vengeance trilogy.
Here however, Kim seems satisfied with violence as a guns a-blazing, bullets a-whizzing end in itself, but too much shoot ’em up action leaves one as stone cold as the corpses which litter the set after a while.
So much sound and fury, signifying oh so very little.
(ST)
Story: The paths of train robber Yoon Tae Goo (Song Kang Ho), bandit leader Park Chang Yi (Lee Byung Hun) and bounty hunter Park Do Won (Jung Woo Sung) cross over a much-coveted treasure map.
But they are not the only ones after it as the Japanese army and yet another gang of baddies have their sights set on the parchment as well in this actioner set in turbulent 1930s Manchuria.
This is a Korean take on the spaghetti Western The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966), the Sergio Leone classic in which three men who do not trust each other have to work together in order to get to a buried treasure.
Director Kim Jee Woon, who helmed the bloody crime drama A Bittersweet Life (2005), re-imagines the story with three of South Korea’s top male stars.
Song Kang Ho, the award-winning actor in films such as the sci-fi horror flick The Host (2006), provides some comic relief as the blustery and blustering train robber Tae Goo, who unwittingly steals the treasure map in the first place.
Versatile hunk Lee Byung Hun, whose credits include the hit thriller Joint Security Area (2000), jarringly sports earrings and eye-liner in his wild-eyed portrayal of the ruthless Chang Yi, who is out to claim the map for himself.
Heartthrob Jung Woo Sung, star of the romance A Moment To Remember (2004), is the cool and collected Do Won, who has been offered a reward for hunting down Chang Yi.
Perhaps the combined star power accounts for the success of the film, touted by the distributor here as the highest-grossing blockbuster in Korea in 2008.
But that cannot hide the fact that the thin plot merely serves to move the action along from one set-piece to another. No doubt well choreographed, but the overlong gunfights feel like exercises in excessive violence after a while.
Late-in-the-game revelations about Tae Goo are simply not enough to make you care about the thinly-drawn but quick-on-the-draw characters.
By the time of the climactic three-way shootout between the protagonists, you are strangely liberated by the fact that you do not care who lives or dies.
In another misjudged display of excess, the film refuses to end even then, but drags out for another few improbable minutes.
At its best, violence in Korean films explore issues of morality, for example in Park Chan Wook’s vengeance trilogy.
Here however, Kim seems satisfied with violence as a guns a-blazing, bullets a-whizzing end in itself, but too much shoot ’em up action leaves one as stone cold as the corpses which litter the set after a while.
So much sound and fury, signifying oh so very little.
(ST)
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Dragon Hunters
You know the school holidays are here when kiddie flicks begin popping up in cinemas.
On paper, what sets the computer-animated Dragon Hunters apart is that it hails from Europe and is based on the French TV animated series of the same name created by Arthur Qwak, who co-writes and co-directs the film.
It also boasts Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker as the voice of the hero Lian-Chu.
Not that this would matter one whit to the target audience.
The quest is straightforward. The big and strong Lian-Chu, Gwizdo, his childhood friend, and Hector, their pet dragon which acts like a little dog, have to go to the ends of the earth to destroy the terrifying monster, World Gobbler.
They are accompanied by Zoe, a talkative little girl who believes that she has found in Lian-Chu the heroic knight of her fantasies.
What lifts the film from its formulaic set-up are the lovely visuals as the story takes place in a world which is literally disintegrating.
While the vistas of floating, drifting land masses are reminiscent of computer games, the big-screen effect is both whimsical and gorgeous. So this one is not just for kids.
(ST)
You know the school holidays are here when kiddie flicks begin popping up in cinemas.
On paper, what sets the computer-animated Dragon Hunters apart is that it hails from Europe and is based on the French TV animated series of the same name created by Arthur Qwak, who co-writes and co-directs the film.
It also boasts Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker as the voice of the hero Lian-Chu.
Not that this would matter one whit to the target audience.
The quest is straightforward. The big and strong Lian-Chu, Gwizdo, his childhood friend, and Hector, their pet dragon which acts like a little dog, have to go to the ends of the earth to destroy the terrifying monster, World Gobbler.
They are accompanied by Zoe, a talkative little girl who believes that she has found in Lian-Chu the heroic knight of her fantasies.
What lifts the film from its formulaic set-up are the lovely visuals as the story takes place in a world which is literally disintegrating.
While the vistas of floating, drifting land masses are reminiscent of computer games, the big-screen effect is both whimsical and gorgeous. So this one is not just for kids.
(ST)
Sunday, November 02, 2008
American Widow
Alissa Torres/Art by Choi Sung Yoon
When the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York collapsed on Sept 11, 2001, as the result of a large-scale terrorist attack, almost 3,000 civilians perished.
Among them was Eddie Torres, who had just started his new job at brokerage house Cantor Fitzgerald the day before.
American Widow is the memoir of his wife Alissa Torres, who was 71/2 months pregnant at the time. It is about her coming to terms with the tragedy and how she navigated the tangled web of aid and compensation that followed.
After an initial outpouring of compassion and promises, red tape slowed down the handing out of monies and she found herself mired in frustration.
On top of all that, she had to battle post-natal depression and a backlash as family members of the 9/11 victims began to be seen by some as opportunists greedy for government handouts.
Her reaction was: 'It felt bad to be hated. It felt even worse to be envied.'
The text is complemented by Choi Sung Yoon's cleanly drawn black-and-white illustrations.
They are shaded in aquamarine, giving a slightly unreal edge to Torres' story, reflecting her own disbelief and struggle to come to terms with what had happened.
The advantage of the graphic novel medium is its flexibility, and good use is made of that here. For example, a one-panel page depicting the emptiness of Ground Zero speaks volumes.
American Widow also tells the story of Torres' husband, who came from Colombia and then snuck into the United States via Mexico, in search of a better future.
He bursts into life, suddenly and unexpectedly, in a two-page spread of photographs and identification cards. And an epic tragedy becomes at once intimate and personal.
If you like this, read: The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman (1996, US$23.10 or S$33.88, Amazon.com). This depiction of the Holocaust, with the Nazis as cats and Jews as mice, has been hailed widely as a modern-day classic.
(ST)
Alissa Torres/Art by Choi Sung Yoon
When the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York collapsed on Sept 11, 2001, as the result of a large-scale terrorist attack, almost 3,000 civilians perished.
Among them was Eddie Torres, who had just started his new job at brokerage house Cantor Fitzgerald the day before.
American Widow is the memoir of his wife Alissa Torres, who was 71/2 months pregnant at the time. It is about her coming to terms with the tragedy and how she navigated the tangled web of aid and compensation that followed.
After an initial outpouring of compassion and promises, red tape slowed down the handing out of monies and she found herself mired in frustration.
On top of all that, she had to battle post-natal depression and a backlash as family members of the 9/11 victims began to be seen by some as opportunists greedy for government handouts.
Her reaction was: 'It felt bad to be hated. It felt even worse to be envied.'
The text is complemented by Choi Sung Yoon's cleanly drawn black-and-white illustrations.
They are shaded in aquamarine, giving a slightly unreal edge to Torres' story, reflecting her own disbelief and struggle to come to terms with what had happened.
The advantage of the graphic novel medium is its flexibility, and good use is made of that here. For example, a one-panel page depicting the emptiness of Ground Zero speaks volumes.
American Widow also tells the story of Torres' husband, who came from Colombia and then snuck into the United States via Mexico, in search of a better future.
He bursts into life, suddenly and unexpectedly, in a two-page spread of photographs and identification cards. And an epic tragedy becomes at once intimate and personal.
If you like this, read: The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman (1996, US$23.10 or S$33.88, Amazon.com). This depiction of the Holocaust, with the Nazis as cats and Jews as mice, has been hailed widely as a modern-day classic.
(ST)
The Little Book
Selden Edwards
Think of this as the literary offspring of the central ideas in the time-travel crowd-pleaser Back To The Future (1985) and Forrest Gump (1994), in which the titular character is inserted into pivotal moments in history.
Rock star and one-time baseball wonder pitcher Wheeler Burden is transported from 1988 back to 1897 Vienna, Austria, where he meets his father, World War II hero Dilly, who is himself transported to the same time and place from 1944.
The mechanics of this, wisely perhaps, are never explained. Instead, the author offers an emotional rationalisation for these feats.
It so happens that fin de siecle Vienna is something that Burden is deeply familiar with, having learnt all about it from his beloved preparatory school mentor Arnauld Esterhazy, who also taught Dilly.
Just as Back To The Future's Marty McFly had to fend off the amorous attentions of his teenage mother, there are complicated liaisons between supposed relatives in this book.
Freud would have a field day with this and he appears in the book, attempting to psychoanalyse Burden, whom he believes to be severely deluded.
First-time author Edwards, who started writing the book in 1974, also serves up cameos from rock legend Buddy Holly and composer Gustav Mahler to American writer Mark Twain and a young Adolf Hitler.
He recreates a detailed sense of time and place, and also has fun with the circular nature of cause and effect inherent in time-travel stories.
The characters, though, come off as too black or white - they are either noble or despicable.
The writing also has a somewhat stilted quality to it and can be a little repetitive at times.
But as befits a former headmaster, there is a well-designed lesson plan here that draws you in, holds your attention and makes you think.
If you like this, read: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (2004, $23.44 with GST, Books Kinokuniya). This devastating tale of the impact of time-travelling on a relationship is at its heart a deeply moving romance.
(ST)
Selden Edwards
Think of this as the literary offspring of the central ideas in the time-travel crowd-pleaser Back To The Future (1985) and Forrest Gump (1994), in which the titular character is inserted into pivotal moments in history.
Rock star and one-time baseball wonder pitcher Wheeler Burden is transported from 1988 back to 1897 Vienna, Austria, where he meets his father, World War II hero Dilly, who is himself transported to the same time and place from 1944.
The mechanics of this, wisely perhaps, are never explained. Instead, the author offers an emotional rationalisation for these feats.
It so happens that fin de siecle Vienna is something that Burden is deeply familiar with, having learnt all about it from his beloved preparatory school mentor Arnauld Esterhazy, who also taught Dilly.
Just as Back To The Future's Marty McFly had to fend off the amorous attentions of his teenage mother, there are complicated liaisons between supposed relatives in this book.
Freud would have a field day with this and he appears in the book, attempting to psychoanalyse Burden, whom he believes to be severely deluded.
First-time author Edwards, who started writing the book in 1974, also serves up cameos from rock legend Buddy Holly and composer Gustav Mahler to American writer Mark Twain and a young Adolf Hitler.
He recreates a detailed sense of time and place, and also has fun with the circular nature of cause and effect inherent in time-travel stories.
The characters, though, come off as too black or white - they are either noble or despicable.
The writing also has a somewhat stilted quality to it and can be a little repetitive at times.
But as befits a former headmaster, there is a well-designed lesson plan here that draws you in, holds your attention and makes you think.
If you like this, read: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (2004, $23.44 with GST, Books Kinokuniya). This devastating tale of the impact of time-travelling on a relationship is at its heart a deeply moving romance.
(ST)
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Camera Obscura
Esplanade Concert Hall/Wednesday
Scottish band Camera Obscura seem at once dated and timeless.
They came on stage in dresses and ensembles of collared shirts and pants, with nary a T-shirt or a pair of jeans in sight.
Lead vocalist Tracyanne Campbell was in a cream outfit with white stockings and the entire group could have been out for a quiet night on the town - circa the 1950s.
But like fellow Glaswegian band Belle & Sebastian, also formed in 1996, they mine a rich vein of timeless melodic pop paired with arch observations.
Sample lyric: You're not a teenager/So don't act like one/Sure she is a heart-breaker/Does she have one?
For most of the 80-minute set though, the near-capacity crowd of 1,500 were content to stay in their seats.
The line-up was heavy on tracks from their last two albums Let's Get Out Of This Country (2006) and Underachievers Please Try Harder (2003), and fans were also treated to three songs from their forthcoming album.
Campbell's voice, however, was decidedly less ethereal and dainty compared to the recordings. The iffy lower range and flattening of the higher notes pointed to her vocal limitations in a live setting.
The fact that the band were static on stage, barely budging from their positions throughout the show, did not help.
It took a while for the crowd to warm up and during an early lull between songs, someone yelled 'It's oh so quiet' to scattered laughter.
Still, the band injected some welcome surprises into the set, segueing into Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al from Let's Get Out Of This Country and leaving their stamp on a cover of Abba's Super Trouper.
By this time, the fans were won over by Campbell's unassuming, low-key charm. Before launching into Super Trouper, she noted: 'Just for the record, we actually didn't write this song.'
Responding to shouted-out requests for obscure numbers such as San Francisco Song, she demurred: 'It's always amusing when people ask us for songs we've forgotten how to play.'
The track that finally roused the house was If Looks Could Kill, with its thumping bass-line and joyous hand-claps. It prompted Campbell to quip: 'We need to write a few more songs that can get us that reaction.'
On the closing number Razzle Dazzle Rose, Camera Obscura proved that, unlike their namesake - an optical device - they were no dated curiosity, pulling off an exquisitely drawn-out finale that drew enthusiastic claps and cheers.
(ST)
Esplanade Concert Hall/Wednesday
Scottish band Camera Obscura seem at once dated and timeless.
They came on stage in dresses and ensembles of collared shirts and pants, with nary a T-shirt or a pair of jeans in sight.
Lead vocalist Tracyanne Campbell was in a cream outfit with white stockings and the entire group could have been out for a quiet night on the town - circa the 1950s.
But like fellow Glaswegian band Belle & Sebastian, also formed in 1996, they mine a rich vein of timeless melodic pop paired with arch observations.
Sample lyric: You're not a teenager/So don't act like one/Sure she is a heart-breaker/Does she have one?
For most of the 80-minute set though, the near-capacity crowd of 1,500 were content to stay in their seats.
The line-up was heavy on tracks from their last two albums Let's Get Out Of This Country (2006) and Underachievers Please Try Harder (2003), and fans were also treated to three songs from their forthcoming album.
Campbell's voice, however, was decidedly less ethereal and dainty compared to the recordings. The iffy lower range and flattening of the higher notes pointed to her vocal limitations in a live setting.
The fact that the band were static on stage, barely budging from their positions throughout the show, did not help.
It took a while for the crowd to warm up and during an early lull between songs, someone yelled 'It's oh so quiet' to scattered laughter.
Still, the band injected some welcome surprises into the set, segueing into Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al from Let's Get Out Of This Country and leaving their stamp on a cover of Abba's Super Trouper.
By this time, the fans were won over by Campbell's unassuming, low-key charm. Before launching into Super Trouper, she noted: 'Just for the record, we actually didn't write this song.'
Responding to shouted-out requests for obscure numbers such as San Francisco Song, she demurred: 'It's always amusing when people ask us for songs we've forgotten how to play.'
The track that finally roused the house was If Looks Could Kill, with its thumping bass-line and joyous hand-claps. It prompted Campbell to quip: 'We need to write a few more songs that can get us that reaction.'
On the closing number Razzle Dazzle Rose, Camera Obscura proved that, unlike their namesake - an optical device - they were no dated curiosity, pulling off an exquisitely drawn-out finale that drew enthusiastic claps and cheers.
(ST)
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