Bonnie
Bonnie Loo

Wings Of Dreams
Stella Seah

Televised singing competitions continue to be a good way of launching newcomers and two champs of local shows have released their debuts. Bonnie Loo won Campus Superstar last year, while Stella Seah (below) came up tops in Sunsilk Academy Fantasia in 2012.
Loo has a powerhouse voice and the the first two tracks showcase it. They also show her range – Don’t Want To Admit is an emotional ballad, while Yolo is a thumping dance track.
She balances restraint with belting on Admit: “I don’t want to admit/Admit you’re the one that I loved/Facing your cold greeting/I smile, I remain calm, but I’m just putting on a front.”
The sassy attitude of Yolo, that youthful cry of You Only Live Once, is a good fit for her, though the word “zhui” (to fall) is noticeably mispronounced as “zui”.
Loo also takes on legendary singer Teresa Teng’s I Only Care About You and local singer Kit Chan’s Heartache. She gives a sweeter spin to the songs, which works for I Only Care About You, but not so much for Heartache.
Seah also does a cover on her EP, a version of Dawn Gan’s Our Class that is not too different from the original. But it is at least consistent with the sweetie- pie image she is going for here.
Head instead for the breezy pop of Go Local, which is peppered with references to all things home-grown. She sings: “Local go go go, local enough?/ Kopi-O is tastier than espresso/You teach me to wrap a dumpling/I’ll treat you to curry fish- head.”
One way to spice up your music diet is to give these new records a go.
(ST)

Women Who Flirt
Pang Ho Cheung
The story: Shanghai urbanite Zhang Hui (Zhou Xun) has been pining for her colleague Gong Zhiqiang (Huang Xiaoming) since they were university classmates. When he falls for a Taiwanese girl Bei Bei (Sonia Sui), Zhang turns to her good friend (Evonne Sie) for tips on flirting and getting her man. Inspired by the advice book Everyone Loves Tender Woman.

China actress Zhou Xun is not a girly girl.
She looks like she could be one, with those big doe eyes and that petite frame. But when she opens her mouth to speak, it is a husky voice and not some delicate coo.
That unexpected juxtaposition has served her well in the movies in which she played an enigmatic beauty in mermaid costume (Suzhou River, 2000), temptress demon (Painted Skin, 2008) and even masked hero (Flying Swords Of Dragon Gate, 2011).
Here, Huang Xiaoming’s Zhiqiang pretty much sees her character Hui as a bro.
But act cute? That is a side of Zhou cinemagoers rarely get to see and it is one of the pleasures of the film. It is not a juicy dramatic role and it might not win her any awards, but her performance here is a charming turn that is a worthy addition to her body of work.
While the title translates “sajiao” as flirting, the term is actually a specific type of flirting in which acting cute is paramount and the arsenal of weapons employed includes, but is not limited to, pouting, baby talk and the fluttering of eyelashes.
Zhou seems a little embarrassed when she tries to master the art of saying
“taoyan” (literally, I hate you) in a coquettish manner, but that only strikes the perfect note for her character.
After all, this is war and, like it or not, the clash is on. It is not just a matter of Hui versus Bei Bei, but of Shanghai girls versus Taiwanese girls. The stakes are not just personal.
Gamely embodying the worst cliches about Taiwanese women is Sonia Sui, star of TV dramas such as The Fierce Wife (2010). So good is she at playing the helpless, hapless damsel that she has Zhiqiang completely under her thumb.
While the dialogue is more sparkling in writer-director Pang Ho Cheung’s movies in which he employs his native Cantonese compared with the Mandarin banter here, he invigorates the often dismal genre of romantic comedy with some much needed life.
With Hui and Zhiqiang, he has created yet another indelible modern-day couple after Cherie (Miriam Yeung) and Jimmy (Shawn Yue) in Love In A Puff (2010) and Love In The Buff (2012), in which they navigate the tricky waters of modern love.
Cherie and Jimmy are perhaps more well-rounded – Zhiqiang is a little underwritten, given that the focus is on Hui.
(ST)

Shut Up And Kiss Me
Elva Hsiao

Fighting For Love
Magic Power

While balladry remains a mainstay in Mandopop, there are a few acts that choose to move to a different, faster, beat.
Taiwan’s Elva Hsiao has been styling herself as a dance diva for some time now and her latest release appears to have an added edge. From the assertive title to the body-hugging leather, it seems as though she is going for sexy with a hint of naughty.
But it stops at hinting. After all, the album contains tracks such as Romance Strikes, Dare To Love and Love Like A Teen.
And despite its title, Play The Field is a ballad that laments such behaviour: “Play the field, you let us be surrounded by variables/I can only worry and persuade myself not to mind.”
At least the title track has some show of sass as she fires off a riposte to those snooping around her love life: “I am who’s who, who cares as long as I love/Who’s nagging, who’s preaching, who’s ardently probing/Don’t feel like explaining, too boring, only need to work hard when kissing.”
The low point here has to be Thunder Of Love. There is more than a whiff of desperation here as it sounds like a track grimly determined to be hip and with it. It manages to be a patchwork of cribbed ideas without a tune.
While they also tease, Taiwan’s Magic Power do a better job and nail a stronger album.
God Of War’s opening harks to the industrial metal of German band Rammstein with its war-like chant, but it quickly returns to a more mainstream synth dance-pop sound.
Adding some variety are the retro-dance vibes of Venus and the crowd-pleasing ballad, I Still Love You.
The jaw-dropping oddity here is the English track Rock Zombie in which the link between sex and rock ’n’ roll is made explicitly: “In this new age we are the rock stars/You can be my personal porn star.”
There are even more risque lines and it seems totally out of place on an album called Fighting For Love.
(ST)

Dearest
Peter Chan
The story: In 2009 in Shenzhen, Tian Wenjun (Huang Bo) and his ex-wife Lu Xiaojuan (Hao Lei) lose their three-year-old son, Pengpeng, to an abductor. Over the next few years, the search for the boy consumes Tian. Miraculously, Pengpeng is eventually found in a farming village in Anhui, but he now calls Li Hongqin (Zhao Wei) mother. Based on a true story.

Losing a child is every parent’s worst nightmare.
Preoccupied with some unruly customers while helping out at an Internet cafe, Tian has no time to chase after his son when he runs off to play with his friends, merely shouting for an older child to look after him. But Pengpeng gets distracted when he sees his mother driving and tries in vain to follow along. He then gets stranded in traffic.
In the aftermath of the abduction, both blame themselves. Tian is consumed with searching for his son, putting up posters, appearing in video clips and chasing down every last dubious lead from monstrous con men.
Huang, who broke out in the black comedy Crazy Stone (2006), is riveting as a parent drowning in grief and guilt. The hope of finding his son is the one thing that keeps him afloat. As heartless as the scam artists are, they nevertheless hold out the illusion of hope. But as the years pass, even they give up harassing him.
Hao (Summer Palace, 2006) also turns in a wrenching performance.
Director Peter Chan (American Dreams In China, 2013) is a sensitive film-maker who handles the moments of frenetic action and scenes of emotional devastation equally well.
At their lowest point, Tian and Lu find solace in a support group of parents whose children have also gone missing. While the group led by Han Dezhong (Zhang Yi) offers understanding, encouragement and even moments of light-heartedness, gut-churning grief is never far below the surface and the precarious mood can turn on just a dime.
Chan takes a gamble, though, by shifting the focus of the story when Pengpeng is found.
The wife of a child abductor is a tricky role to play and the casting of Zhao (Love, 2012) is a smart choice. You need an actress who has enough star power to hold an audience when a movie pivots to her late in the proceedings and someone for whom you might be willing to reserve judgment for a while.
While her husband might be a child abductor, Li is depicted as a loving mother even if you wonder how much she really knew. When Pengpeng is first snatched back by Tian and Lu, he cries out piteously for Li as his mother in a heart-rending scene.
Zhao has been nominated for a Golden Horse Award for Best Actress for her role as an uneducated rural farmer who turns out to be a tenacious mother.
Some of the most moving scenes in the film come on after the end credits start rolling. There is footage of the people the movie is based on, including the mischievous-looking little boy and his father, who makes a touching visit to the home of the woman who raised the boy for several years under a different name.
These scenes can sometimes undercut the fictional film, but in this case, they lend the drama a note of searing authenticity and teary grace.
(ST)

Stonehearst Asylum
Brad Anderson
The story: A young doctor, Edward (Jim Sturgess), travels to the bleak and forbidding Stonehearst Asylum around the turn of the 20th century for his apprenticeship. He meets the charismatic man in charge, Dr Lamb (Ben Kingsley), his unsavoury right-hand man Finn (David Thewlis) and the lovely and fragile Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale). But nothing and no one are what they seem. Based on the short story The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether by Edgar Allan Poe.

Madness, murder and mayhem. These were the stuff of lurid Victorian drama and also of writer Poe’s works. And director Brad Anderson (The Machinist, 2004) does a good job of bringing that melodramatic sensibility to the big screen.
He deftly evokes a specific time and place with the first scene set in Oxford University in 1899. A distraught and dishevelled woman is wheeled into a room full of medical students and a professor intones that every mad woman insists she is sane. In such unenlightened times, terrible fates awaited women unlucky enough to be diagnosed with “hysteria”.
The next time we see her, though, the beautiful Graves is dressed in a gown and playing the piano. No doubt she is in an asylum, but her circumstances are much improved.
The questions of how and why start to form in viewers’ minds. Anderson doles out scenes which seem reasonable and plausible while, at the same time, sowing seeds of doubt in your mind. Something is not quite right, but viewers cannot quite put their finger on what is wrong.
Lamb seems at first to be some kind of visionary who advocates treating patients with kindness. But his method of feeding fantasies is radical and he takes issue with the idea of curing them. Regarding a man who imagines himself to be an animal, he says: “Cure them and make a miserable man out of a perfectly happy horse?”
What is going on at Stonehearst Asylum? Why does Graves seem so frightened? Who exactly is Dr Lamb?
Kingsley, with his piercing gaze and sometimes off-kilter pronouncements, keeps you guessing. Edward appears to be an earnest do-gooder and Beckinsale (Underworld: Awakening, 2012) is well cast as the beauty in peril who brings out the protective side of men.
As revelations unfold, you find your sympathies swinging one way then the other like a boat on gloomy, choppy seas.
The best way to enjoy the film is to know as little about it as possible and let Anderson take you on a dark and Gothic thrill ride.
(ST)

What's Next
Bai An

It’s Still Summer
Calvin Chen

Before anyone can fire that salvo, Bai An jumps the gun and asks herself on her second album, What’s Next?
The Taiwanese singer- songwriter broke out with her debut album, The Catcher In The Rye, in 2012 and there is undoubtedly pressure to follow through on her follow-up.
And she proves that there is more to her than just one good record.
Some things are familiar, such as the shimmery dusting of electronica, which makes her music sound youthful and au courant, and her distinctive, less-than-perfect enunciation.
For all the pressure she must have faced for her sophomore album, its vibe is surprisingly chill.
She will not be rushed, as she sings on the title track: “Give me, give me, some time/Let me, let me, figure it out/Don’t keep rushing forward.”
While she could sound tentative at times, she has the tenacity to stick to her guns.
Right And Wrong has her pondering: “Maybe I’ll look back someday, will no longer be surprised, I’ll still choose the same answer.”
Perhaps her coping mechanism includes denial. On Forgetting Tomorrow, she sings: “Just pretend that tomorrow is very far away, I know I’m not prepared to face all this.”
The thing is, she is smart enough to turn her fears and insecurity into compelling music.
As the last member of Taiwanese boyband Fahrenheit to release a solo record, Calvin Chen must have been feeling the heat as well.
He shrugs it off in the title dance track in which he urges: “It’s still summer, the beers are icy/Life is about being happy in the moment.”
But was there any doubt that Me And You, the heart-on-sleeve ballad from the romantic drama 3 Peas In A Pod (2013), which he starred in, would be included here?
Still, the big decision here for the average- voiced singer might have nothing to do with the music.
The six-track EP comes packaged with one of two different set-in-Dubai pictorial books.
One has him looking all suave and mostly covered up and the other has him showing off his buff bod. Sizzling enough?
(ST)

Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2
Johnnie To
The story: At the end of Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (2011), analyst Cheng Zixin (Gao Yuanyuan) chose architect Fang Qihong (Daniel Wu) over financial hotshot Cheung Shen Ren (Louis Koo). In the sequel, the couple are due to tie the knot but Cheung is still unable to get over her. Complicating things further are Zixin’s brother Paul (Vic Chou), who has returned from France and falls for her new boss Yang (Miriam Yeung), who just so happens to be dating Cheung.

In the first film, Zixin dithers between two men – steadfast Qihong and and the slick Cheung. But even though she is supposed to be marrying Qihong here, the dithering is not quite over yet.
In the first film, Cheung is capricious and insensitive. Here, he seeks to get over his unhappiness by sleeping around and stringing Yang along, all the while still pining for Zixin.
In the first film, Zixin and Cheung flirted using Post-its as they worked in facing glass buildings. Here, he flirts with other women and Post-its again demonstrate their versatility as a piece of office stationery.
Why am I watching the same thing again?
As if conceding that the central triangle’s entanglements are not enough to fill up another movie, director Johnnie To (Blind Detective, 2013) hastily throws in two more characters. The addition of Zixin’s brother and her new boss are meant to complicate matters but it is hard to care when everyone acts like a petulant child.
Also, there is not much chemistry between Taiwan’s Chou and Hong Kong’s Yeung. And having him spout smatterings of French because he supposedly lived there does not make him charming – it merely makes him pretentious.
The misunderstandings between the various characters are so slight that they come across as the flimsiest of excuses to keep things moving along. It all threatens to tip over into farce, but stops short, wallowing instead in exaggerated dramatics such as having Cheung scale a building’s exterior.
If the first movie was an unwitting indictment of the sorry state of modern romance, this sounds its death knell. The actors deserve better and so do audiences.
(ST)

Wayang Boy
Raymond Tan
The story: Raja (Denzyl Dharma) comes to Singapore from India and has difficulty adjusting to life here. At school, egged on by fellow student Shi Han (Tan Wei Tian), he gets into a fight with Xavier (Loh Ren Jie). All three end up getting roped into the Chinese Opera club by Mr Koay (Law Kar Ying). Raja also misses his father and lashes out at his stepmother (Chantel Liu).

This is the hook: An Indian boy sings Chinese opera. And that, as the school principal in the film crassly puts it, is akin to the spectacle of a fish walking on land.
The question is, how do you make an entire film out of it?
Director Raymond Tan builds upon his own short film Wa Is For Wayang (2011) and ends up surrounding the fish-out-of-water with all manner of unnecessary sideshows, such as a drawn-out endurance competition to win a car.
Hong Kong actress Michelle Yim’s turn as the principal’s secretary is also pointless, beyond the veteran star lending some big-name glamour to the production.
An extensive plug for a security company and the career opportunities it offers is so intrusive as a product placement that Jack Neo would be proud.
The central story has some promise, but even in multicultural Singapore, this is not quite run-of-the-mill.
Yet there are no explanations given for these somewhat unusual situations and we are simply expected to accept them as given.
Given that the movie is titled Wayang Boy, it is also reasonable for viewers to expect to see a fair bit about Raja learning Chinese opera. Unfortunately, aside from the final performance, Chinese opera does not get much of an airing.
Instead, the film gets bogged down with Tan framing the subject matter as one of foreigners versus Singaporeans and then piling on more of such examples. Henry (Chen Tianwen), for example, keeps getting passed over for promotion as foreigners get parachuted in. He is also not happy that his son has a smaller role in the opera skit compared to Raja, a foreigner.
There is nothing new here that is not already heard in the media and on social media.
It also does not help that everyone is a shrill variation of the ugly Singaporean, even though Denzyl is watchable as the Mandarin-speaking boy struggling to cope in a new environment after leaving India, both at school and at home; and Liu is sympathetic as the stepmother.
To its credit, the film tries to dismantle some stereotypes, such as having a Caucasian executive (played by Bobby Tonelli) speak Mandarin rather than appear completely clueless. But it inexplicably feeds into others, such as having Indian workers dance whenever they hear music. What would Raja have made of that?
(ST)

Dumb And Dumber To
Bobby and Peter Farrelly
The story: Lloyd (Jim Carrey) has been committed to a medical facility for years and his best friend Harry (Jeff Daniels) has been faithfully visiting him. It turns out to be an elaborate prank (it is no spoiler as this is already in the trailer) and the two dimwits set off on a new adventure. They need to track down Harry’s newly discovered daughter (Rachel Melvin) as he needs a kidney transplant. The sequel to Dumb And Dumber (1994).

At the start of the film, Lloyd is confined to a medical care facility. Wild-haired and unkempt, he seems to have lost control of his limbs and bodily functions. Mentally, he does not seem to be all there either. He is as helpless as a baby and needs to be cared for like one.
It turns out to be an elaborate prank, one that is 20 years in the making.
Talk about commitment to comedy. It is a claim made not just for Lloyd, but also for writer-directors Bobby and Peter Farrelly.
It is also a short and smart way of accounting for the two-decade absence of Lloyd and Harry from the big screen. Dumb And Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd from 2003 does not count as it was a prequel. Also, it did not involve the Farrelly Brothers or Carrey and Daniels.
In this sequel, the brothers are determined to make you laugh and they unleash the full arsenal of rib-tickling weaponry on you.
There are the physical gags which include Harry pulling out a catheter from Lloyd’s groin area and the two farting in a car to overwhelm an unsuspecting victim. There are jokes playing on how dumb they are and include oblivious word substitution by Lloyd: A “genetic organ match” becomes “genital organ match”. And there is the general mayhem that ensues when the two are let loose on a brainiac scientific convention.
The jokes are hit and miss, but it helps that the actors are committed to them.
Carrey and Daniels are totally game to make fools of themselves while Kathleen Turner (The War Of The Roses, 1989) has fun as a one-time tramp who fooled around with Lloyd and Harry.
For all the dumb antics and rude innuendos, there is a sweet centre to this confection. There is something touching about the life-long friendship between the two men and their air of cheery optimism in the face of insults and putdowns. So what if they are the butt of jokes? They might just have the last laugh.
(ST)

Over the weekend in the United States, animation Big Hero 6 beat out sci-fi drama Interstellar for the top spot at the box office. A huge part of its appeal comes from big and fluffy Baymax, the bot hero of the piece, so here is a look at five reasons why he, and the movie, are ballooning in popularity.

1. Big Hero 6 is inspired by the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name. And Marvel, home of Spider-Man, the Avengers and Guardians Of The Galaxy, can do no wrong in the superhero stakes these days.

2. In the comics, Baymax was a science project by brilliant teenage boy Hiro, originally designed to serve as his personal bodyguard, butler and chauffeur. His default form is a humanoid male and he can transform into a green winged monster or even a powerful mechanical robot. He gets the cute and cuddly Disney treatment and is an inflatable robot in the film. This is probably what the Michelin Man looks like when his folds get ironed out.

3. Cute and cuddly is great for merchandising. Also, Baymax can potentially drive a spike in demand for certain items, merely by association. A character says of him: "It's like spooning a warm marshmallow." A smart tie-up would have the puffy snack rocketing off shelves. Maybe airbags designed to look like Baymax when inflated could even make collisions less traumatic? Heck, just put two eyes on any white blob and let the movie do the advertising, I mean, story-telling.

4. Baymax is a little awkward. He is not not the smoothest guy around and manoeuvring in tight spaces gets a teensy bit challenging with that pot belly. And when his batteries run low, he behaves like an amusing helium-voiced drunk. This means that he is not at all intimidating and is easy to like. One minute, he is protecting his human Hiro from harm and the next, he could be used as a bouncy castle.

5. The depiction of Baymax is almost ridiculously simple and childlike. And that means that even very young kids can cosy up to him in all his forms – stuffed toy, shimmery balloon, comfy beanbag and easy-to-complete drawing books.
(ST)

A critic tears a movie to shreds and its distributor quakes with fear.
It sounds like a fairy tale of a bygone time when a critic could wield enormous power over the fate of a film. In this age of easily accessible information, that sphere of influence has been whittled down considerably. But still, to paraphrase writer Mark Twain, reports of the critic’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
At a Singapore Writers Festival panel discussion two weeks ago titled Death By Keyboard, the subject under scrutiny was the review itself. The session was moderated by the very funny Adrian Tan, novelist and film producer, and I was on the panel with Helmi Yusof from The Business Times and Genevieve Loh from Today.
Helmi critiques theatre and the visual arts and used to review movies for The Straits Times. Loh writes about films and I cover movies and music.
For the most part, the conversation swirled around the movie review.
What a review does is to introduce a film and it can serve as a useful guide for someone deciding whether to watch a movie. It gives you an idea of what the work is about and can touch on one or more aspects of the following – plot, acting, cinematography, sound and direction.
But a review is not the final word. It is not meant to dictate to the reader what to think of the film and certainly not what to think of the film in lieu of watching it. A review is an opinion and one is free to disagree with it.
Since a review is an opinion, it has to be said that all reviews are subjective. My review is my response to watching a movie and that is shaped by everything else, from other films I have seen to how I feel about particular actors, and the fact that preposterous plotholes irk me to no end. Of course, whether something is preposterous is also a matter of personal taste.
In fact, a completely objective review is pointless.
You might as well outsource a review to the robot TARS from the sci-fi drama Interstellar, having set the parameters of 100 for Truth and, say, 80 for Humour. And that one single piece would be dogma.
The diversity of views and reactions to the same film opens up room for debate and enriches the conversation we have about the work.
The different views are all easily available on the Internet through review aggregating portals such as metacritic.com. This might diminish the amount of sway any single critic might have, but at the same time, the collective power of reviews still has weight.
If, say, out of 100 reviews, 80 are telling you it is bad in 80 different ways, it might well give you pause. Call it critical mass.
The Internet is also a repository of all manner of information that you might want to know about a film before watching it. There are teaser posters, trailers, making-of clips, interviews and even gossip about the stars.
Much of this is extraneous noise and what a review can help do is cut through the hype and distractions. When every film that comes along is spectacular, mind-blowing and simply the best, you begin to doubt your understanding of those terms.
As far as possible, I try to know as little about a film as I can before watching it so that I do not have any preconceived notions. At the same time, a review should also give some context to a work, be it referring to a film-maker’s body of work or other similarly themed movies.
Ideally, all films should be treated the same, but the thing is, not all films are created equal.
The bigger a film’s marketing budget, the more hype it generates. And so a blockbuster is at your bus stop, in your fast-food meal and in your hair, while an indie production will not have the luxury of trumpeting its existence. In some way, having no or few preconceived notions about a film when one steps into the cinema is also about being fair to differently-sized movies.
It is also in keeping with the egalitarian nature of the film-going experience itself where it is still possible to watch vastly different offerings at a similar price, regardless of the production budget.
Falling into a category of its own is home-grown films. We want to encourage a local film industry for the simple reason that if we do not make films about ourselves, no one else will.
But that does not mean that critics should treat local films with kid gloves. A local movie will have to compete with everything else out there for an audience.
And the reviewer has a responsibility to the reader as well. Having a laxer standard for Singapore-made films and another for all others does no one any favours and only erodes the credibility of the reviewer.
In the end, writing a review is not an exact science but a balancing act.
Personally, I find that it is easiest to write reviews about films that I love and hate. When a film is great, you cannot wait to tell everyone about it and how and why it moved you. When a film is terrible, you cannot wait to tell everyone about it and why they should steer clear.
The majority of movies falls in between and it takes more work to come to grips with them.
And yes, movie reviewing is work. Some imagine that the reviewer gets to watch a film while sipping wine and reclining in a gold-class seat during work hours and think that it must be the cushiest job in the world.
I jest about the gold-class seat. But, and this is a big one, people conveniently forget about Theodore Sturgeon’s observation that 90 per cent of everything is cr**. And there have been times when I feel that the sci-fi writer was being too generous with his observation.
But the prospect of beauty, of coming across a hidden gem, keeps me watching.
(ST)

The Seventh Sense
Jane Zhang

More
Popu Lady

China’s Jane Zhang goes for pink and sexy in the images for The Seventh Sense.
While the makeover packs a punch, it sounds jarring when she attempts to be sexy on the English track, Unwind: “Our bodies are touching baby/Feelin’ so lonely lately/My luck’s gonna change/I ain’t got no shame.”
The song has nothing to do with the rest of the album and adds to the sense of this being a fractured record.
It comes across as her trying too hard to cover all her bases, even rapping on the Jay Chou-composed number, Isn’t It.
Zhang is at her best on the ballads and R&B-flavoured tracks.
She sounds relaxed as she swings to the laidback groove of Last Smile by Khalil Fong and Xiaohan: “I really miss you/And I’m really sorry/Thinking of you every second/I’m really jealous.”
It is okay not to cram everything into one album. Sometimes, less is more.
And sometimes, more is not enough.
On Popu Lady’s third EP, the Taiwanese quintet still sound thin- voiced and the music still feels like an afterthought compared with the accompanying glossy pictorial book which the group flew to Guam for.
But at least they are smart enough to go for bouncy pop which does not tax their vocals too much.
Come Dance With Me goes the electro-pop route, while Different When With You is breezy and upbeat. I could do without the cutesy enunciation though.
They lay it on thick on the title track: “One more, Two more/Can’t get enough of sweetness/Want more/More than more.”
How about cutting back on the aural sugar levels the next time?
(ST)

The Best Of Me
Michael Hoffman
The story: After surviving an oil rig accident, Dawson (James Marsden) believes there is a reason why he was spared. Later, he is reunited with his high-school sweetheart Amanda (Michelle Monaghan), now a wife and mother, at the will-reading of a mutual friend. Through flashbacks, we learn about Dawson and Amanda’s love story and why they have not met in 21 years. An adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ 2011 novel of the same name.

The Best Of Me could be a best-of collection of previous Nicholas Sparks weepies. As you read the general plot of the new movie adaptation, past Sparks stories will come to mind.
For instance: Dawson says at one point that he and Amanda are the lucky ones for getting a second chance at love, reminding one that Zac Efron had just starred in The Lucky One (2012), yet another Sparks adaptation.
Worse news for the writer than the fact that he appears to be repeating himself is that The Best Of Me limped to a US$10-million (S$12.9-million) opening in the United States.
That is less than half what the last Sparks adaptation, Safe Haven (2013), earned in its first weekend (US$21 million).
In the new work, Australian up-and-comer Luke Bracey (November Man, 2014), playing the younger Dawson, is a brainiac who does not know how to flirt.
He is also the boy from the wrong side of the tracks and so Amanda’s father tries to pay him off to keep him away. America in the 1990s has more in common with the Hong Kong of 1950s melodramas than one might suspect.
It is also very thoughtful of the villains, namely Dawson’s dad and assorted other deadbeat relatives, that they show up at the most opportune moments and inflict just enough villainy to move things along.
Fast forward two decades and the movie poses the conundrum: What happens to a romance when one party is now a wife and mother?
And what is the woman to do when faced with a doe-eyed and dishy James Marsden (Hairspray, 2007)?
For all the justifications of a sweet romantic history and a cooling marriage, there is no denying the fact that the movie treads on adultery territory.
As if knowing he is in a morally unsavoury situation, director Michael Hoffman (who also helmed the lacklustre Gambit, 2012) then extricates himself from it in the most preposterous way possible.
Alas, there are at least two more Sparks adaptations in the works.
(ST)

Paradise In Service
Doze Niu
The story: The film is set on the Taiwanese island of Kinmen from 1969 to 1972, at a time when relations between Taiwan and mainland China are tense. During his military service, Pao (Ethan Juan) is posted to Unit 831, code for an officially sanctioned military brothel. He strikes up a friendship with one of the women there, the beautiful and enigmatic Nini (Regina Wan Qian). Meanwhile, Pao’s one-time instructor, Old Chang (Chen Jian-bin), falls for A-chiao’s (Ivy Chen) coquettish charms.

After taking to the streets in the gritty gangster flick Monga (2010) and exploring romance in the light-hearted Love (2012), Taiwanese film-maker Doze Niu turns his eye to a neglected and controversial episode in Taiwan’s history.
He takes great care in evoking the sights and psyche of the time and the period details feel authentic.
Pao is originally assigned to the Sea Dragon unit and what marks them out as elite is the fact that they go about everywhere in their red training shorts, including trips into a carefully reconstructed town with vintage signboards.
The mood is far from idyllic though as Taiwan and the mainland blast propaganda messages at each other across the narrow strait of water separating the two. At other times, the blasts are more deadly as shelling shatters the island’s calm.
It is against this backdrop that the story of Unit 831 unfolds through Pao’s eyes after he flunks out of physical training. Making his tale more interesting, the young soldier played by heart-throb Juan has made a vow of chastity for his girlfriend.
Despite that, it is the stories of the characters surrounding him that are more moving. “Demon” instructor Chang is a tragic figure who left China as a prisoner of war and can never return home. He falls for 831’s flirty A-chiao but things do not turn out the way he expects.
For his moving and naturalistic performance as Chang, Chen Jian-bin has been nominated for a Golden Horse Award for Best Supporting Actor, one of six nods, including Best Supporting Actress for Regina Wan and Ivy Chen.
It is a pity that Niu does not spend more time on them. As a result, the movie ends up feeling scattered.
Moreover, given that history has silenced the women of Unit 831, this feels like a missed opportunity for them to find their voice.
(ST)

Jack And The Cuckoo-Clock Heart
Mathias Malzieu, Syephane Berla
The story: On a day so cold that birds fall out of the sky, Jack (Mathias Malzieu) is born with a frozen heart. He is saved by a midwife-cum-witch who replaces it with a cuckoo clock. Later, he travels across Europe to seek the girl of his dreams, Miss Acacia (Olivia Ruiz). It is a mission overshadowed by tragedy as Jack has been warned never to fall in love – doing so would mess with his cogs and gears and kill him. Based on the 2007 illustrated novel by Malzieu, lead singer of French rock band Dionysos.
Once in a while, Singapore moviegoers get to watch something from Europe that reminds them there is more to animation than just Pixar’s fully realised computer-generated world, Studio Ghibli’s hand-drawn loveliness and the flatter look found on television series. The Triplets Of Belleville (2003), for example, had a distinctive style and story about a kidnapped Tour de France cyclist.
So too does Jack And The CuckooClock Heart, a unique and offbeat-
looking work that takes an unusual premise and just runs with it.
The cuckoo clock behaves like a mechanical device as well as an organ. Instead of Jack’s heart pumping wildly when he gets scared or excited, the cuckoo might shoot out instead.
Peopled with other unusual characters, such as a man with a xylophone on his back and an excitable Georges Melies (based on the real-life pioneering filmmaker who straddled the 19th and 20th centuries), this is a film that is not too concerned with linear logic.
And this frees directors Malzieu and Stephane Berla to let their imaginations roam when it comes to depicting Jack’s world. The village he lives in is not some rectilinear grid. Instead, there is hardly a straight line to be found. Water flows upwards in a fountain and an accordion train moves by compressing and extending itself.
Add characters that look like alabasterskinned dolls who break into song to express their emotions and it all sounds a little, well, cuckoo.
But it works, with everything coming together to make an intriguing package.
(ST)

Interstellar
Christopher Nolan
The story: The future is here and it is a dismal one. Massive dust storms threaten food production, hope is running out. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is recruited as a pilot for a last-ditch space mission to find a planet suitable for human habitation.
The crew includes scientist Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) and a robot, Tars (Bill Irwin). One consequence of interstellar and wormhole travel is that time passes differently for those out in space. Cooper’s daughter Murph (Jessica Chastain) grows up and assists Amelia’s father, Professor Brand (Michael Caine), with the mission back on earth.

No shortage of motivational speakers have said that you should reach for the moon because even if you miss, you will land among the stars.
Director Christopher Nolan has learnt the lesson well. There is no lack of ambition in his space odyssey; in certain parts, in fact, you can almost feel the movie striving for monumentality in every frame. While it eventually falls short, it is still a work that holds your attention as you are watching it.
The themes and topics here are as grand as they get – mankind’s thirst for exploration, the survival instinct, the question of what exactly is out there in space and love.
Expectations are high because Nolan is one of the most vital story-tellers in cinema today. There is always the sense of someone highly intelligent behind the camera, from the intricately plotted stories to his refusal to spell everything out. And, as seen in the Dark Knight trilogy (2005-2012) and the mind-blowing thriller Inception (2010), he is no stranger to working on an epic canvas.
But with Interstellar, wormholes and black holes suddenly feel like too-convenient plot devices to propel the story in a certain direction. And the relativity effect of visiting a particular planet keeps getting repeated, that one hour equals seven years. One might have thought that this was a detail that would have been taken into consideration from the start.
More than once, the audience is asked to take a huge leap of faith with where the film is headed.
Good thing that it is Matthew McConaughey in the lead role of the space pilot Cooper, asking us to make that jump. Is it the intensity of his deep-set gaze, that mesmerising drawl or the sharpness of his cheekbones – or a combination of all that – that is making him one of the most compelling actors to watch?
He has gone from cut-rate romantic comedies leading man to acclaimed turns on the big and small screen in stripper flick Magic Mike (2012), Aids drama Dallas Buyers Club (2013) and crime thriller True Detective (2014). It is a remarkable turnaround that shows no signs of slowing down.
Early on, when Interstellar goes from being a cautionary tale about man’s destructive nature to a space mission movie, the process it takes to convince Cooper to join the mission helps the audience buy into the film and take a stake in it as well.
In depicting the mission to find out which planet among three possibilities is capable of sustaining life, Nolan packs in surprises, visual beauty and much welcome moments of lightness, thanks to the inclusion of robots whose truth and humour settings are adjustable.
When the tiny spacecraft is juxtaposed against the immensity of the cosmos, it underlines the puny nature and fragility of human life and endeavour.
At his best, Nolan made films that you kept playing over and over in your head. Psychological thriller Memento (2000) and Inception made you question what you thought you knew.
But Interstellar – with clunky dialogue that conveys different viewpoints rather than what the characters are feeling – holds up less well in the harsh light of day.
What ultimately anchors the film is the bond between parent and child.
Unlike the mawkish treatment that bond was given in the Oscar- winning sci-fi thriller Gravity (2013), the fierce love between Cooper and Murph is at the very heart of Interstellar.
(ST)