Why Not
Ella Chen
Among the members of Taiwanese girl group S.H.E, Ella Chen was the first to release an EP on her own. It was a charity single named Qiang Qiang (2007) and it was a sweet and touching ballad about her pet dog which had died.
She is now the last of the three singers to release a full-length solo album. With Hebe Tien having established her left-of-centre credentials over three well-received records and Selina Jen shimmying down the dance route on her recent debut 3.1415, what is left for Chen?
On the track Ah 30, the happily married singer seems to acknowledge that time is ticking by: “Did happiness corrupt the dream/Or was I too lazy?”
It is not too late, though. Chen gets to flaunt her sassy side here, the nonchalant title Why Not summing up her attitude.
The album is at its strongest on tracks such as Are You Normal, with pointed lyrics by Wyman Wong questioning what exactly is normal.
Chen sings on the spirited refrain: “If one could choose only between monotony and boredom in life/I would rather choose to go mad.”
This is pretty far off the path from the manufactured girl-group pop of early S.H.E and the risks she takes do not always pay off. For instance, the spoken word opener Why Not seems more indulgent than cogent.
The best thing about the record? It does not sound like yet another S.H.E disc.
(ST)

The Age Of Adaline
Lee Toland Krieger
The story: After surviving a car crash at the age of 29 in 1937, Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) realises that her body stopped ageing. To keep this a secret, she has had to reinvent her identity every so often in order not to raise suspicions. She is unable to form lasting relationships and her aged daughter (Ellen Burstyn) worries about her. But when Adaline meets the charming and determined Ellis (Michiel Huisman), her defences start to crumble.

The Age Of Adaline is about a woman who is concerned about the fact that she cannot age. Clearly, this is a fantasy of the highest order.
Maybe we should not be so quick to judge. After all, even a beautiful, ageless woman has plenty to worry about. She is cursed to have dalliances with good-looking men over the years but can never commit to anything deeper.
Poor thing.
Poor us, actually. Given a headlining role, Lively, alumnus of young adult soap Gossip Girl (2007-2012), is not charismatic enough to command one’s interest in Adaline’s unusual plight.
Neither is the appearance of rising star Michiel Huisman, currently seen on the fantasy blockbuster series Game Of Thrones, enough to raise the pulse of the movie.
They meet at a new year’s eve party at a hotel. He looks like a dapper tuxedo-ed model for a Chanel commercial and she looks like she has stepped out of a Gucci ad with her tastefully sexy gown. He is charming, he is rich and he cooks for her. She is evasive and unencouraging – and beautiful all the while.
In fact, Huisman was cast as Chanel’s leading man in a video for its classic No. 5 scent and Lively was the face of Gucci Premiere perfume. It seems appropriate then that the romance between the two here is as pretty and shallow as an ad campaign.
Director Lee Toland Krieger (Celeste And Jesse Forever, 2012) strings out the blah relationship for a good hour before Harrison Ford shows up as Ellis’ father.
The spectre of a potentially icky relationship situation hovers over the movie but, thankfully, I am spared my worst fears.
If it is fantasy you are hankering after, Game Of Thrones is a far more satisfying fix.
(ST)

Helios
Longman Leung, Sunny Luk
The story: A portable nuclear device, DC8, has been stolen from South Korea by a ruthless criminal (Chang Chen) and his accomplice (Janice Man). As the weapon will change hands in Hong Kong, Lee (Nick Cheung) from the territory’s Counter Terrorism Response Unit sets up a task force, which includes police officer Fan (Shawn Yue), to deal with the crisis. He enlists physics professor Siu (Jacky Cheung) as an adviser and has to work with South Korean weapon experts Choi (Ji Jin Hee) and Pok (Choi Si Won). Despite their efforts, the elusive criminal mastermind, Helios, is always a step ahead of Lee.

Two heads are better than one when it comes to Hong Kong film-makers Longman Leung and Sunny Luk. In their debut film, police thriller Cold War (2012), they juggled a star-studded cast and an intricate story to entertaining effect. The movie also brushed aside the competition with a haul of nine trophies at the Hong Kong Film Awards.
Their follow-up is even more ambitious, with a cast of A-listers from China, Hong Kong and South Korea jetting around the region, including Macau and Japan.
Tension is ratcheted up as personalities, points of view and agendas clash, along with languages (Leung and Luk cleverly handle the often awkward problem of featuring different tongues in a movie with a plausibly high-tech device which enables instantaneous interpretation; they even wring some humour out of it by having the actors pause and put on their earpieces before proceeding to converse in Korean and Chinese).
The South Koreans want to keep the bomb safe and bring it home. Prickly physics professor Siu wants it out of Hong Kong as well. The paternalistic and patronising senior Chinese official Song (Wang Xueqi) demands that the weapon remain in the territory and has the weight of the law behind him. Lee is caught in the middle, torn between wanting to protect his home and having to follow orders.
Then the big-name stars start getting killed – a sign that Helios – and the film-makers – mean business. But which ones?
Prof Siu, a somewhat fusty and principled academic, convincingly played by Jacky Cheung? The more straightforward heroic characters of Choi (Ji, television’s Jewel In The Palace) and Pok (Choi of boyband Super Junior)? Conflicted cop Lee, a familiar role for Nick Cheung?
Cheung, a two-time Hong Kong Film Awards Best Actor winner (Beast Stalker, 2008; Unbeatable, 2013), is barely tested, but the slugfest between him and Man is an action highlight.
Just as things start to get interesting, the movie ends abruptly. It is either a jarring set-up for part two or a disappointingly anti-climactic resolution to an involving thriller.
If it is the former, one wonders how long audiences will be left dangling, given that the sequel to Cold War – also alluded to at the film’s conclusion – has yet to materialise.
(ST)

Candle
Sarah Cheng-De Winne

Perfect Healer
Lin Si Tong

Brave Tears
Emily Haw

Local female singer- songwriters are enlivening the music scene with several new releases.
On the English-Mandarin EP Candle, Sarah Cheng-De Winne’s (right, above) diction is a little raw on the Mandarin tracks. But her emotive singing makes up for it on the ballad The Grace Of Love and on I Need You, which starts as a mid-tempo track and transitions to the dance floor.
On the bouncy title track, her luscious vocals swoop high and dip low as she promises: “Baby you are my candle/ I’m gonna burn with you again.”
Lin Si Tong is mostly sweet and cheery on the five-track Perfect Healer, the follow-up to her debut EP, Tong’s Music (2012). Amid easygoing fare, the most dramatic number is the ballad Black-Winged Heart as she sings: “Tears protest silently, yet so transparently, that you can’t see clearly/But time will reveal all mysteries.”
Coincidentally, Emily Haw also sings about transparent tears on her EP’s title track. The EP is a little raw around the edges and some of the line phrasings feel awkward. The electronica-infused Waiting is the most distinctive track here and that was from her 2012 “photo-audio project” released on DVD.
(ST)

Murmur Of The Hearts
Sylvia Chang
The story: Escaping an unhappy marriage, mother Jen (Lee Sinje) takes her daughter Yu-mei away from their Green Island home, reluctantly leaving her son Yu-nan with her husband. Years later, Yu-mei (Isabella Leong) is an artist cast adrift by her past, while Yu-nan (Lawrence Ko) works as a tour guide on the island, their paths never crossing. What helps to keep Yu-mei grounded is her relationship with boxer Hsiang (Joseph Chang), who bears the emotional scars of an absent father.

It takes a while to get there, but it eventually becomes clear that the film is about the gaping holes absent parents leave in the lives of their children.
Director and co-writer Sylvia Chang (20 30 40, 2004) jumps between the restless, unsettled present and vignettes from the past, inexorably linking the two.
Jen is a warm and loving presence in the lives of Yu-mei and Yu-nan. She takes them to the beach and comes up with stories about a mermaid that she tells them each night. But she is trapped in a loveless marriage and eventually makes the wrenching decision to leave.
Hsiang is worse off than Yu-mei and Yu-nan. He barely has any memories of his father to hold on to, having merely a father figure in the form of his boxing coach (Wang Shih-hsien). In the present, the three adults are unhappy, struggling to fill the void they carry inside them.
The pacing of the film is uneven, though, as it shifts focus from one character to the next. It plods along slowly and then suddenly lurches into a long scene which comes out of nowhere, as when Hsiang has to confront his failure as a boxer.
The tone is patchy as well.
Chang injects some surrealism with a character who pops up unexpectedly in Yu-mei and Yu-nan’s lives, but it sits oddly with the rest of the film, which also attempts to provide a socio-historical context to Green Island to ground the story by making references to a church and prison on it.
More successful is a scene between an adult Yu-nan and the mother he remembers as a child which seems to take place in their home on Green Island. They interact, but she does not know who he is and the entire sequence is moving, mysterious and filled with conflicting emotions.
The film could have had more of such moments.
(ST)

Marvel's Avengers: Age Of Ultron
Joss Whedon
The story: Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) ropes in Dr Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) to help create the ultimate solution to protect Earth – an artificial intelligence named Ultron (voiced by James Spader). But Ultron has a mind of its own and turns into a powerful foe with a very different agenda. Its plan is to develop an even more powerful version of itself – Vision (Paul Bettany). The Avengers are also under attack from the genetically enhanced Maximoff twins – Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who can move at superhuman speed, and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who can control minds. Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) are all rattled by her. Only Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) manages to dodge her clutches.

Saving the world can be a deadly serious and even grimly dour business.
Thank goodness then for writer-director Joss Whedon. He spent years honing the art of saving the world while firing off well-aimed zingers on television series such as action-fantasy Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and sci-fi adventure Firefly (2002).
Here, he finds moments of humour and playfulness that make Age Of Ultron a fun watch. When Iron Man stands before a wall and goes: “Please be a secret door, please be a secret door. Yay!”, it makes you smile and the cocky billionaire character becomes a little more human.
There are also zippy one-liners flying to and fro.
Most rib-tickling of all is the Avengers party game of who-can-lift-Thor’s-hammer (check out Thor’s fleeting frown of concern when the celestial weapon gets moved a teeny bit). This joke, which answers the burning question of what superheroes do for fun when they get together for drinks, even has a pay-off later on.
One of the challenges in a movie of this scale is juggling multiple characters and parcelling out screen time to all.
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the characters who get a little more exposure this time are those without a movie franchise of their own. Step right up, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Hulk. Fans get a peek into Barton’s personal life and are teased by the prospect of a romance between Romanoff and Banner.
There are also multiple storylines to weave together, connecting Age Of Ultron to previous films in the Marvel universe and setting up the stage for future instalments. (Say hello to Avengers: Infinity War in 2018 and, possibly, Thor: Ragnarok in 2017.)
At the same time, Age Of Ultron has to stand on its own as a movie. The resolution of the conflict with Ultron feels a little anticlimactic, maybe because Whedon has already thrown everything and the kitchen sink at the audience earlier in terms of spectacular showdowns (the film opens right in the heat of a snowy battle, Hulk goes on a raging bender and Ultron musters an army of droids to take down the Avengers). While there is a certain poetic justice in Ultron’s fate, it seems a little too tidy.
With The Avengers (2012) the third-highest grossing movie worldwide with US$1.5 billion
(S$2 billion) in earnings, Whedon must have been under pressure to deliver yet another gargantuan moneymaker.
When an exhausted Hawkeye sighs that it has been a very long day, one imagines that he is echoing how the director must have felt at the end of the punishing shoot. Whedon has already made his mark in the Marvel universe, never mind that he will not be helming the two-part Infinity War.
(ST)

Kintsugi
Death Cab for Cutie
The opening strains of the first track No Room In Frame are a distorted snatch of a vaguely Oriental-sounding riff. It is merely a feint, though, as the guitars kick in and we are back on familiar ground.
This is the American indie rock band’s eighth studio album and they can still make melancholia sound seductive, even when cloaked in more upbeat guises.
On the uptempo The Ghosts Of Beverly Drive, lead singer Ben Gibbard muses: “I don’t know why I don’t know why/I return to the scenes of these crimes.”
At live gigs, his dry sense of humour comes through and there are glimmers of it here on Good Help (Is So Hard To Find). The track seems to be about hubris and as skyscrapers go up, he deadpans: “But beware that the air’s so thin/It starves the brain of oxygen.”
The title Kintsugi is a Japanese term which refers to a type of art involving the fixing of broken pottery. But there is a whiff of another philosophy here: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The problem is familiar ground can seem overly familiar – at times, I have flashbacks to earlier Death Cab works.
The closing ballad Binary Sea evokes comparison to the majestic Transatlanticism, with its similar theme and imagery. But as Gibbard sings on No Room In Frame: “You cannot outrun a ghost.”
(ST)

Amit2
A-mei
It seems that someone has been watching American Horror Story.
In the music video for Freak Show, Taiwanese diva A-mei, well, gets her freak on as she appears with creepy pinpoint irises and pale make-up.
Then again, her alter ego Amit has always been her licence to wander into the darker corners of her mind. The moniker is both a reference to her Puyuma aboriginal name, Amit Kulilay, and an acronym, which stands for A-mei: Music Is Transformed.
Her 2009 record as Amit was a revelation.
Freed from the expectations of what an A-mei album should sound like, she tore into rockers such as the brash Minnan scorcher Come On If You Dare and the thrillingly fastpaced Black Eat Black. And in a body of work filled with classic ballads, she delivered some of her most moving work on titles such as Alter Ego and Fallen.
On Amit2, she continues to rock out and lash out.
She seethes with anger on Matriarchy: “I smile gently but my heart is tougher than steel/Men proclaim themselves kings while women have to bear the weight of the world.”
Her voice drips with disdain on What D’ya Want?: “You’re despicable/I despise you.”
Best not to get on the wrong side of Amit.
Perfectly in keeping with the darker gothic vibe here is the hypnotic A Bloody Love Song as she offers: “Let me write you a horror novel.”
Amit also seems to be more open to experimentation. Jamaican Betel Nut by producer-songwriter Adia is an unusual marriage of reggae, electronica and Taiwan’s betel nut-chewing culture.
The singer is now wowing audiences in Taipei with live versions of these songs and more at her Utopia concert and one can only hope she makes her way here soon.
With the stellar Faces Of Paranoia released just nine months ago, A-mei – or should it be Amit? – is clearly on a roll.
(ST)

Ode To My Father
Yoon Je Kyoon
The story: Yoon Deok Soo (Hwang Jung Min) has had a hard life. Uprooted from home because of the Korean War (1950-1953), he had to shoulder the burden of being the man of the family after getting separated from his father and younger sister.
To make more money, he signs up to be a miner in Germany in the 1960s and subsequently works as a technician in Vietnam in the 1970s during the Vietnam War. In Germany, he meets Young Ja (Kim Yun Jin), a nurse he later marries.

In 1983, major broadcast stations in South Korea aired programmes about the reunion of families torn apart during the Korean War.
A nation was transfixed as heartrending stories played out on the small screen.
Equally moving was the sight of posters and signs blanketing the area in front of the National Assembly Building in Seoul as thousands of people came from all over South Korea, clinging desperately to the hope of finding their loved ones.
These images are at the heart of Ode To My Father, a drama that delves into the shadow that the war casts on the Korean psyche.
In South Korea, the film has clearly tapped into a pain that is deeply rooted – it is the second highest grossing film with 14.2 million admissions.
Director Yoon Je Kyoon, whose credits include the comedy Sex Is Zero (2002) and the tidal wave disaster flick Haeundae (2009), made the movie as a personal tribute to his father. The two protagonists are named after his parents.
While the film sometimes borders on melodrama, it still manages to be a powerfully effective tearjerker. I have not cried this much at a movie since Feng Xiaogang’s earthquake drama Aftershock (2010).
Hwang Jung Min’s moving performance is key. An award-winning actor in films such as tragic romance You Are My Sunshine and violent crime thriller A Bittersweet Life (2005), he is utterly believable here as Yoon Deok Soo, a decent and dogged Korean everyman thrust into the tide of history.
Deok Soo toils in mines in Germany and then risks life and limb in war-torn Vietnam, ever mindful of his duty to his family.
Containing shades of Forrest Gump (1994), his journey through life mirrors a nation’s development even as a tragic past haunts and galvanises him.
There are chance encounters with major figures in Korean society, such as the founder of Hyundai Group, Mr Chung Ju Yung; a romance with Young Ja (Kim Yun Jin from television’s sci-fi mystery Lost), which gives him strength; and humour courtesy of funnyman Oh Dal Su (Miracle In Cell No. 7, 2013) as Deok Soo’s sidekick and best friend.
In the end, the film is an ode, not just to a father, but to an indomitable generation who survived war and then fought hard to rebuild their lives.
(ST)

Pinyon pines and coniferous junipers cluster on the hill, partially obscuring a set of modest, rustic-looking wooden buildings.
Step inside and one is greeted with an onsen complex offering everything from a communal bath to private dips. Soak away the cares of this world as you ease into the hot water and contemplate the serene view of nature before you.
This is not Anywhere, Japan, though. Instead, Ten Thousand Waves swirls around on the edge of Hyde Memorial State Park, just outside the city limits of the art-and-adobe-architecture city of Santa Fe in south-west America.
According to their website, the place is inspired by Japanese mountain hot spring resorts.
The literature adds: “Everything we do from the gardens to the woodwork, from the therapies to the therapists, has been constantly and thoughtfully refined over the last 34 years. We pride ourselves on being ‘real’.”
Authenticity is clearly a selling point here.
The novelty alone of a Japanese hot spring experience on a chilly spring day in New Mexico was initially irresistible to me and my travel companion. But there was also the shadow of a doubt as to whether this would be more kitsch than kosher.
After all, this was transplanting a very different bathing style 10,000km to a place better known for its harsh landscapes and native American culture.
Would “real”, used with quotation marks on the website, turn out to be like “natural” and “home-made” – words debased of meaning when used in marketing and advertising?
On first impression, the place appeared to pass muster. The forest setting of the nearby national park was well-chosen and it was clear that great care had been taken with the architecture. The use of wood and stone gave a distinctive sense of place and signalled that one was not quite in New Mexico anymore.
Dark-blue noren, traditional Japanese fabric dividers, were hung in a doorway.
The attention to detail continued indoors. Patrons were issued yukata robes and the array of cleansing gels and lotions were scented with hinoki, a Japanese cypress, and yuzu, a Japanese citrus.
But in the end, there were limits to authenticity.
A small statue of Buddha respectfully housed outdoors in a wooden structure seemed a little out of place. That does not seem very Japanese, groused my friend.
The pre-bath cleaning areas featured showerheads one stands under rather than low stools for you to sit on as you perform your ablutions.
The communal pool turned out to be rather small and there was the forced proximity of having to sit right next to strangers. The tiny pocket of personal space here was perhaps more Western than Asian.
So was the wooden sauna cabin located adjacent to the pool. After all, there is a rich tradition of public baths in the West, from the thermal waters of the sprawling Szechenyi Baths in Budapest to the sweltering sauna. The term sauna itself is an old Finnish word which refers to the traditional Finnish bath and the bathhouse.
Also, the communal hot tub at Ten Thousand Waves is open to both men and women. In Japan, however, the baths have been segregated by gender since the Meiji restoration, which spanned the late 19th and early 20th century.
This is according to Wikipedia because how else would a non-Japanese be able to assess the purported authenticity of a Japanese-style onsen?
We crave the idea of authenticity as both an ideal and perhaps as a bragging right. Not all experiences are equal so surely the truer one is superior – even if the yardstick for measuring the degree of authenticity is beyond our grasp. After all, bathing culture in Singapore is more likely to be a quick zip to the shower than a long soak of any kind.
In comparison, determining whether an eatery offering a foreign cuisine is authentic seems easier, at least in Singapore. Take a look at the clientele and see if there are natives dining there. It is trickier to do so at Izanami, the Japanese restaurant on the grounds of Ten Thousand Waves, given that New Mexico is not exactly a magnet for the Japanese.
But even if there are limits to how authentic an onsen can be in Sante Fe, one appreciates the effort that went into creating an unusual bathing experience.
A tweaking and adaptation of imported customs and cultures can certainly be a good thing. And a slavish and rigid adherence to the orthodoxy of authenticity can well stifle the flow of creative juices and prevent innovation and breakthroughs.
Thoughts can start to drift when you let Ten Thousand Waves carry you away.
Next time though, I would book ahead for a private tub.
(ST)

For Music, For Life... Liang Wenfu Concert 2015
The Star Theatre / Last Friday

It was a concert 35 years in the making.
Singer-songwriter Liang Wern Fook penned his first song, Write A Song For You, at the age of 16 and went on to give a voice to a whole generation in five seminal albums released between 1986 and 1992.
In the process, he helped to create and define a genre of Singaporean songs, or xinyao.
For Music, For Life... Liang Wenfu Concert 2015 – which sold out two nights at the 5,000-capacity Star Theatre last Friday and Saturday – was the first time an entire concert was devoted solely to his works (although he has performed at other gigs, notably at xinyao-themed shows).
It was clearly a momentous occasion for Liang. On Friday, despite his usual calm and collected demeanour, he kept glancing nervously at the lyrics on a monitor at his feet at first.
As the show went on, he drew strength from the appreciative audience and his many old friends.
It felt like a gathering of classmates, the visuals of the xinyao singers in their tender youth bringing back memories of yesteryear. Liang even quipped that it was like being back in a school hall.
When the call went out for them to take part in his concert, they answered.
Koh Nam Seng flew back from the United States, Liu Ruizheng from Guangzhou, Billy Koh from Beijing and Dawn Gan from Hong Kong.
Others travelled shorter distances but it was no less moving to see Jimmy Ye, Wang Bangji, Hong Shaoxuan, Jiu Jian, Deng Shuxian and Pan Ying, as each hugged the man of the night in turn.
“Everyone who appears will sing better than me,” said Liang, who is primarily a songwriter, not a singer, and many of his works were performed by others, even on his xinyao albums.
To keep the show fresh for the following night’s crowd, he urged everyone not to share the evening’s proceedings on social media (reviews of the first night were embargoed until after the show).
How all his guests sang, taking us back in time as they performed familiar favourites from New Clothes Aren’t As Good As Old Ones and Love’s Refuge to Let The Night Fall Gently.
Hong brought out the drama of From The Day You Looked Back with his rich vibrato, Ye did a jaunty version of the pop hit Every Time I Wake and Deng shared a chastely sweet love duet, Blue And Red, with Liang.
There was also an epic version of the quintessential xinyao classic Friendship Forever when everyone joined in for the final number of the night, which ran more than four hours and there was still not enough time to cover the more than 200 songs he wrote.
(Perhaps the two segments highlighting the musicals Liang had been involved in, December Rains and If There’re Seasons, could have been dropped. While they helped to provide a more complete picture of Liang’s output, they also broke the rhythm of the show somewhat.)
Liang himself sang numbers such as Eve Of The History Exam, Sparrow With A Bamboo Twig and Step By Step, sharing little anecdotes about his works.
It was touching to find out how often his wife, Xiumei, figured in his music, either as first recipient or inspiration.
For her, he sang Aska Yang’s That Man because it was the Taiwanese theme song to her favourite Korean drama, Secret Garden. It was the only song performed in the show that Liang did not have a hand in creating.
He also had a few surprises up his sleeve. He turned Write A Song For You into a tribute to the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew and also updated Singapore Pie with lyrics taking on recent developments such as MRT train breakdowns and rising COE prices.
So what if he is not the most polished singer? There is an honesty and intimacy in his delivery that gives his renditions a charm of their own.
Liang’s influence as a songwriter extends far beyond xinyao – he later wrote hits for pop stars such as Kit Chan (Worry), Andy Lau (Every Time I Wake) and Jacky Cheung (She Came To Listen To My Concert). All three paid tribute to him via video messages.
Singer Joi Chua, the final guest to appear, sang the moving hit ballad Catch The Sunrise With Me. Liang’s lyrics include the line: “No matter how strong the wind, it can’t blow away your blessing.”
That is what his songs have been and continue to be – each and every single one a blessing.
(ST)

Here
Yoyo Sham
This has been a most eagerly awaited debut album. Hong Kong singer-songwriter Yoyo Sham had previously released two EPs – 2/2 (2012) and 4-6pm (2011). In particular, 2/2 was a beguiling affair and I could not wait to hear more.
She does not do run-of-the-mill, conventionally structured pop songs about love. Instead, you get a sense of the person from the unhurried yet quietly evocative tracks that sometimes meander in unexpected directions.
Her lightly husky pipes caress and cajole as she sings about living in the now on opening track Starting Tomorrow: “Actually, I’m swamped/Need to focus on spacing out/Feel the now/ Leave the future in the future.”
On the title track, she ponders: “Look at us walking along/Underfoot are the fallen leaves we’ve missed.”
Not so much carpe diem and seizing the day but, rather, just enjoying the little moments that come our way.
Elsewhere, she sings about light – on Glow, You And I and a devastating, slowed-down cover of the rock song Wings Of Light. Over a plaintive guitar and string arrangement, she does the near impossible and makes a Faye Wong song indelibly her own.
Also included are two Cantonese numbers – one a delicate Watercolour and the other, Bu Wang Wo Men Zhang Shan Shi Nian, a rumination on the passage of time.
Sham is equally at home in English and apart from her own compositions, she also covers the English number Twistable Turnable Man, from a tribute album to American children’s book author Shel Silverstein.
This offbeat choice could easily seem calculated but, somehow, it fits right in with her indie and citizen-of-the-world sensibility, along with the interludes titled Tokyo, Taipei and India.
Just take her advice and bask in the Here and now.
(ST)

The Last Five Years
Richard LaGravenese

The story: The film begins with forlorn actress Cathy Hiatt (Anna Kendrick) reading a farewell note from her husband Jamie Wellerstein (Jeremy Jordan), a rising novelist. We find out how the couple went from the heady flush of a new love to their irreconcilable present over the course of five years. Adapted from the musical of the same name by Jason Robert Brown.

How does a couple who start out so in love end up walking away from a marriage? What happened? When did it all go wrong?
The idea that there are two sides to every story works its way into the structure of this musical. We hear from both Cathy and Jamie in turn as the narrative jumps back and forth in time.
Tellingly, we hardly hear the two sing together.
Mostly, we hear Cathy’s perspective, starting from the bitter end and moving back in time. On the other hand, Jamie’s voice begins from the golden glow of new love and moves forward.
They meet in the middle at a pivotal moment when, finally, both sing together as Jamie proposes to Cathy.
But director Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You, 2007) throws a kink into the narrative, suggesting that the two remember the event differently.
Even when you break it down and thoroughly dissect a relationship, it might not be possible to say for certain what went wrong.
Whose fault is it that Jamie’s success drives a wedge between them and Cathy flounders to find her own voice? From wanting “miles and piles” of Jamie at first, she finds that “miles and piles” of him begin to suffocate her.
In the songs that have a slice-of-life feel to them and are often conversational in tone, both actors convey that intimacy with ease.
It more than helps that both stars are well qualified to sing and act and emote through song. With Broadway experience and a Tony nomination under her belt, Kendrick has become a go-to actress for film musicals, including Into The Woods (2014) and Pitch Perfect (2012). Jordan’s Broadway musical credits are even more extensive than hers, including 2011’s Bonnie & Clyde.
Both their characters come across as real and flawed, both trying to make things work and frustrated by the impossibility of it.
The musical was based on composer- lyricist Brown’s failed marriage and there is poignancy here in the contrast between the sweet happiness of love’s first bloom and the pain and frustration when it sours.
That contrast is movingly presented in the final song when their positions are reversed: Cathy is brimming with hope and joy at the start of the relationship and Jamie is hurting at its end.
It is not an ending that either could have dreamt of or wanted, and yet, there they are.
(ST)

Back in 2009, several new shows made their debut on American television. In a season that included comedy Cougar Town (just concluded), supernatural thriller The Vampire Diaries (ongoing) and sci-fi mystery FlashForward (short-lived), Glee was a clear standout.
The use of music in an hour-long drama felt daring and exciting, and there was an infectious sense of joy and fun that lived up to the title of the series. It was love at first episode for me.
But by the third season, the magic had worn off. Characters I had rooted for stopped behaving like characters and were instead jerked around according to whatever the script demanded of them each week.
It was time to part ways with the show.
So my response to the sixth and final season which ended on March 20 in the United States: You mean it hung around for so long?
Glee was created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. At that point, Murphy was best known for the violent and twisted plastic surgery drama Nip/Tuck (2003-2010).
But tucked into his resume was also the high school dramedy Popular (1999-2001). It included an episode in which a hilarious musical about sexually transmitted diseases – That Burning Sensation – is performed for kindergarteners. Clearly, the song- and-dance premise for Glee was right up his alley.
The excellent pilot episode set up the main arc for the first season: Can a ragtag bunch of students come together under the leadership of teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) and take the glee club, New Directions, all the way to the regional finals?
The choir members included wildly ambitious Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), gay and dapper Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer), big-voiced Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley) and wheelchair-bound Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale).
Joining the freaks and geeks were jocks and cheerleaders from the upper rungs of high school hierarchy – star quarterback Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith), bad boy Noah “Puck” Puckerman (Mark Salling) and pretty Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron).
Then there were the teachers, who included abrasive cheerleader coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) and mousy guidance counsellor Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays).
With such a sprawling cast, there was plenty of drama as rivalries sprouted, passions flamed and songs were sung.
Along the way, the series tackled issues such as teenage sexuality and identity, race and relationships, set to irresistible mash-ups and musical homages to the likes of Madonna and Britney Spears.
But after two seasons, the show began to feel tired as yet another competition loomed and the mash-ups and clashes started to feel formulaic. Finn, Rachel and Quinn in a stew once more? Will and Sue at each other’s throats again?
Worse, characters behaved out of turn – bitchy and nasty one moment, mature and reasonable the next – the key motivation for their actions being the whims of the plot.
In later years, occasionally hearing about the show was like getting scraps of news of an old friend who has changed beyond recognition after graduation. (Who got engaged? Who got married? There was a sex tape between who?)
While Monteith’s tragic death from a mixed drug toxicity in 2013 came as a shocker, there was no impulse to return to the series. Too much water had passed under the bridge.
Audience numbers in the US for Glee were strong for the first four seasons. It hit a high of 10.11 million in season 2 and then plunged to 4.57 million in season 5.
But for me, the music had stopped long before that.
(ST)

Human
Fei Xiang

Mask
Maggie Chiang

Face
Sam Lee

It feels like veterans’ day with this clutch of releases from familiar names: Taiwanese-American Fei Xiang, also known as Kris Phillips; and Taiwan’s Maggie Chiang and Sam Lee.
They have all been out of the limelight for a while and are trying something different in their new works.
The ageless Fei ventures into electronica and purrs on the opening track: “I’ll be your man.” There are some intriguing sentiments here and, on Moment, he muses: “Perhaps love doesn’t need truth and honesty/Perhaps love is not about should or should not.”
He had a stint on Broadway in the 1990s, when he starred in musicals such as Miss Saigon, but the songs here tend to be more mellow than showstopper-bellow.
The CD cover is an image of an X-ray and Fei notes poignantly in the liner notes that it is the most
“truthful” photo of him and that deep down, we are all the same.
Chiang also wrestles with authenticity on her EP.
She sings on the title track, which she composed: “Take down the mask, and have again/The freedom to cry, the freedom to love.”
The singer-songwriter is best known for her ballads, but she also includes a few mid-tempo numbers here. Do not mistake the breezy-sounding Way Oh for a light-hearted track though, as she takes on urban alienation: “Crowded Taipei, how many buildings/Carve up the sky/I’m drowning in the midst.”
From Mask, we move on to Face, the first salvo in a planned trio of EPs from ballad prince Lee.
While the trilogy packaging is a little unusual, the songs here are the most conventional of the lot. They mostly circle around love, and while Wish You Happy and Passenger find him on emo ballad mode, at least My Love ups the tempo.
Let’s App feels like a strained attempt to be hip with references to downloading an app and dancing to reggae. It is an oddity that will not save Face.
(ST)