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)