Fanboys
Kyle Newman

The story: Eric (Sam Huntington) has lost touch with his high school buddies and fellow Star Wars devotees Linus (Chris Marquette), Hutch (Dan Fogler) and Windows (Jay Baruchel) after graduation.
When he finds out that Linus is dying from cancer, the gang, including Zoe (Kristen Bell), decide to embark on one last hurrah – to sneak into George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch and steal a first peek at Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999).



Fanboys is a reminder of a more innocent time when everything was still possible and Jar Jar Binks had yet to taint the Star Wars universe. In short, it was 1998.
A little background on the significance of the date. The original Star Wars was released in 1977 and re-released on its 20th anniversary in 1997 as a special edition titled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
This heightened anticipation to fever pitch for the prequels, of which Episode I: The Phantom Menace was slated for release in 1999.
As card-carrying, or rather, lightsaber-wielding fanboys of the space opera, Eric and gang have fantasised from an early age about sneaking into Star Wars creator George Lucas’ workplace, Skywalker Ranch.
But life drives a wedge into their friendship after graduation, with Eric working at his father’s car dealership and drifting apart from his friends.
When he discovers that Linus is dying from cancer, he rallies the gang to realise their unfulfilled dream and be the first to watch The Phantom Menace in the process.
Actual fanboys will get the biggest rush from the film as the characters argue passionately about Star Wars and have their credentials as fanatics tested with obscure trivia questions.
They will also get a kick out of the cameos from Star Wars actors Carrie Fisher (who played Princess Leia) and Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian), as well as William Shatner, best known as Captain Kirk in the rival sci-fi series Star Trek.
Even casual fans with some basic knowledge of the franchise will enjoy the flick, which includes references to lightspeed, Darth Vader and a funny showdown between the Star Wars enthusiasts and the Star Trek groupies.
Unfortunately, the force is not strong with the film and it has earned only US$600,000 (S$905,000) at the American box office after seven weeks.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that this is 2009 and not 1998.The film ends with the ironic question about The Phantom Menace: “Guys, what if it sucks?”
Knowing with the benefit of hindsight how disappointing the prequels were and how it soured fan expectations, it would take more than a Jedi mind trick to turn Fanboys into a big hit.
(ST)

malacca, eaten

we've only just begun
this is pit stop no. 1
went to the loo
at pit stop 2
satay spree
pit stop 3
we roared: 'give us more!'
it was only pit stop 4
gula melaka glaze does thrive
on the donuts at pit stop 5
cold drinks and verbal tricks
at pit stop no. 6
bite-sized snack heaven
is pit stop 7
it was a full meal that we ate
at memorable pit stop 8
rise and shine
pit stop 9
can we do it? yes we can!
forward march to pit stop 10
almost extinct but not quite forsaken
tai bak at pit stop no. 11
into teochew cuisine we did delve
it was penultimate pit stop 12
what a great trip this has been
made it to pit stop 13!

Detroit Metal City
Toshio Lee


The story: All Soichi Negishi (Kenichi Matsuyama) wants to do is to sing his sweet, twee songs about love. But he ends up spewing dark fantasies about rape and murder as Johannes Krauser II, the lead singer of a heavy metal band called Detroit Metal City.
The increasingly frustrated singer runs away from Tokyo just before a hotly anticipated showdown with notorious death metal singer Jack Il Dark.


Music soothes the savage beast. But in the case of death metal, music is the savage beast.
Mild-mannered Soichi Negishi gets more than he bargains for when he unwittingly ends up as the lead singer of Detroit Metal City in this comedy based on a best-selling manga. To his horror, the heavy metal band grows ever more popular while there is barely an audience for his cutesy romantic songs.
His monstrous boss (Yasuko Matsuyuki in a total about-turn from her role as the damsel in distress in Suspect X) gives him hell and is so tough that she puts out cigarettes on her tongue.
Wedged between his demonic alter-ego Johannes Krauser II and his unlucky- in-love troubadour self, Negishi ends up bolting for home.
Last seen as the title character in L: Change The World, a spin-off sequel to the popular Death Note big-screen adaptations (2006), Matsuyama carries the film here with his hilarious performance. He convinces you that he is both Negishi and Krauser, alternating between an awkwardly shy geek and a snarling devil spawn.
When the worlds collide, hilarity ensues.
There is the priceless sight gag of Matsuyama running down the chic shopping street of Omotesando in full death metal get-up. He comes to a stop in front of Cute Music Studio, beats his fists against the glass wall in frustration – and succeeds in scaring the little tots inside.
And in the final showdown with Jack Il Dark (Gene Simmons of the metal band Kiss, whose song Detroit Rock City inspired the title of Kiminori Wakasugi’s manga), Detroit Metal City fans stoically endure the melding of the worlds of twee pop and death metal.
Negishi comes to realise that his mantra of “No music, no dream” applies even to death metal. As his mother puts it: “No matter what you look like or how you say it, helping someone dream is amazing.”
Still, you have to ask, what kind of dream exactly?
The reconciliation between pop and metal might not be fully satisfactory, but director Toshio Lee has delivered a funny, riotous and sometimes riotously funny film.
Detroit Metal City is an adaptation that works because it preserves the out-sized drama of manga which death metal, with its make-up and pageantry, is tailor made for. And which Wakasugi would have you believe is all bark and no bite.
(ST)

The Tale Of Despereaux
Sam Fell, Robert Stevenhagen

The story: Despereaux, a tiny mouse with oversized ears, is born into a kingdom which has been plunged into unhappiness ever since the Queen died of a heart attack. When the Princess ends up in the clutches of the dastardly rats, it is up to Despereaux to save the day.


Rats. After having their dubious reputation rehabilitated in the animated Pixar feature Ratatouille (2007), they once again have their name dragged into the sewer.
Even though the title points to Despereaux (voiced by Matthew Broderick) as the hero, the tale actually begins with the sea-faring rat Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman), who finds himself in the kingdom of Dor where soup is revered.
His pursuit of fine dining lands him in hot soup when he drops into the Queen’s bowl and triggers a heart attack.
Driven by grief, the King outlaws soup and rats, and Dor is plunged into a grey pall of misery. This is the kingdom that Despereaux is born into but there is more to come.
And that is part of the problem with this adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s award-winning children’s fantasy book. There are simply too many ingredients in the pot.
There is the lonely Princess Pea (Emma Watson); the piggish-looking maid who longs to be a princess (Tracey Ullman); Roscuro’s search for atonement; Despereaux’s search for his place in the world; and a race to save the princess from bloodthirsty rats in the finale.
Yet for all the plot developments, directors Sam Fell and Robert Stevenhagen cannot quite grasp the art of pacing and the film often feels draggy.
A pity really, for it has a few things going for it. The visuals are lovely and given a fairy-tale feel with soft lighting. The worlds of humans, mice and rats are all depicted with great details and are carefully differentiated.
There is wittiness in the use of a snarling cat in a Ratworld stadium as the equivalent of a lion in the Roman arena.
The film also deals with several themes, almost as many as there are plot strands.
One of the key ideas is that of identity. Despereaux’s parents worry that “he doesn’t scurry, he doesn’t cower” and want him to fit in with all the other mice. Yet, it is his fearlessness and his curiosity, which set him apart and lead to his encounter with the Princess and his subsequent adventures.
The film ends with a too-neat homily about the circle of pain that only forgiveness can break and, ultimately, it feels like a missed opportunity. Rats.
(ST)

Race To Witch Mountain
Andy Fickman

The story: Seth (Alexander Ludwig) and Sara (AnnaSophia Robb), teenage visitors from another planet, have crashlanded on Earth and need help getting home. Enter cab-driver extraordinaire Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson) and UFO expert Dr Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino).

Look out, Brendan Fraser, ex-wrestler The Rock is attempting to muscle in on your territory.
Fraser, the go-to guy for family-friendly adventure fare, racked up three movies last year alone: Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor and Inkheart.
But perhaps there is room for another player in this lucrative box-office genre. After The Game Plan (2007), about a football player bonding with his eight- year-old daughter, Dwayne Johnson is ready to step up and help shoulder the weight of PG-rated heroics.
In Race, he happens to be in the right place at the right time and reluctantly picks up Seth and Sara, whom he thinks are teenagers on the run.
Here, the plot police would like to pull over this vehicle for a serious infraction. Seth is able to manipulate his molecular make-up and pass through solid surfaces, and Sara is able to move objects, including controlling the steering wheel and shifting gears, just by thinking about it. And yet, they are happy to sit in the back of the cab until Jack Bruno turns up.
But Race has already sped on, leaving logic and reason behind in a cloud of dust.What follows is a standard chase movie as the government goons and an assassin from another world go after the conveniently telegenic aliens while Jack drives like a man possessed in the sturdiest cab known to man.
Then, as if having decided that, oops, some kind of female star is needed to serve as a foil to Johnson, Seth and Sara pinpoint Dr Alex Friedman as the one person who can help them locate their ship, which has been confiscated by the military.
You have to wonder if the budget ran out at this point, or if they overspent on that miraculous cab, because the flying saucer looks like a leftover prop from the 1970s. The ship in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) looked more impressive. So much for progress and advanced alien technology.
Johnson has a natural charisma and an easy grace, but he needs stronger material if he is serious about challenging Fraser.
As a reminder of the fickleness of the showbusiness, Tom Everett Scott pops up in a minor role as a government agent. Yes, that same actor from the candy-coloured musical That Thing You Do! back in 1996.
He is a stern reminder to Johnson that if the wrestling star wants to remain a contender in the entertainment ring, he will have to step up his game.
(ST)

Oscar-bashing is a hobby for many at the start of every year. Nothing the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the United States do seems to please anybody.
Yet they have almost never found themselves in the conundrum of nominating a movie that enjoyed neither boxoffice success nor some sort of critical acclaim, even if they cannot always decide which they prefer.
Just like the people behind the Oscars, the organisers of the inaugural Singapore Film Awards cannot make up their minds either. Some of the odd choices on the nomination list suggest that neither popularity nor quality was a determining factor.
The nominees in the Best Film category are Royston Tan’s 12 Lotus, Han Yew Kwang’s 18 Grams Of Love, Cheng Ding An’s Kallang Roar The Movie, Tony Kern’s A Month Of Hungry Ghosts, Kelvin Tong’s Rule #1 and Lucky7 by Sun Koh, K. Rajagopal, Boo Junfeng, Brian Gothong Tan, Chew Tze Chuan, Ho Tzu Nyen and Tania Sng.
Kallang Roar, which is about Singapore’s legendary football coach Choo Seng Quee in the 1970s, received middling reviews and earned only $90,000 at the box office. How exactly does the film fit into even the most generous definition of the word “best”?
You could also argue that there is a vast difference between Tong’s polished Rule#1 and the experimental Lucky7. To lump them together does neither film justice.
The new awards come under the umbrella of the Singapore International Film Festival’s Silver Screen Awards, which were introduced in 1991 with an Asian feature film component as well as a local short film competition.
To qualify for the Singapore Film Awards, the films must be feature length (at least 60 minutes in duration), shot mostly in Singapore and with a Singaporean or permanent resident holding a major creative role as director, producer, writer or actor. They also have to be completed and screened in the previous calendar year.
The inaugural nominees competing in the categories of Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Performance and Best Cinematography are a hodgepodge group that gives little indication as to what exactly the awards are meant to honour.
Are they an unabashed popularity contest along the lines of the MTV Movie Awards, whose categories include Best Kiss and Best Fight? Clearly not, since the experimental anthology Lucky7 received three nods for Best Film, Best Performance and Best Cinematography.
Maybe they are meant to reward quality? After all, they are associated with the Silver Screen Awards, which has tended to shower accolades on arthouse offerings such as Indonesian film-maker Garin Nugroho’s Ramayana-inspired Opera Jawa (2006).
In that case, one wonders if the bar has been set too low. Of the 20 entries the organisers received, six are being considered for Best Film. That 30 per cent of the local films released last year were deemed good enough for that category is just way too generous by any yardstick.
The powers-that-be should take a leaf from the committee behind the Singapore Literature Prize, which is held once every two years, to maintain the quality of the picks. Even then, there were only three nominees for the English writing section in 2006.
In fact, why have a separate category for home-grown films in the first place and risk having the Singapore Film Awards seem like a poorer cousin to the Asian Feature Film Competition?
Local films have been nominated and even won when going head-to-head against regional entries. In 2006, Tong was named Best Director for Love Story.
This year, Singaporean Alec Tok’s A Big Road, about the lives of three women in Shanghai, is among the Asian Feature Film Competition nominees. His film has not been released here, so it is ineligible for the Singapore Film Awards.
If the Singapore Film Awards are intended to encourage film-makers, then one has to ask: How much back-patting and hand-holding do aspiring film-makers need? The Singapore Short Film Competition’s list of past winners already reads like a who’s who of Singapore cinema today.
Eric Khoo won the main prize that first year for August; Tong, Sandi Tan and Jasmine Ng’s A Moveable Feast was named Best Short Film in 1996; Jack Neo won for Best Director for Replacement Killers in 1998; and Royston Tan’s Sons picked up two awards in 2000.
To their credit, the organisers of the Singapore Film Awards are not unaware of some of these pitfalls.
Ms Yuni Hadi, one of two new directors of the Singapore International Film Festival, said: “Taiwan, Hong Kong, Turkey and even Thailand have their own local film awards, but the question always is ‘Will a Singapore Oscars work?’ We don’t know.
“But I think we have to take a chance and begin this movie journey for Singapore cinema. The Singapore Film Awards is a chance for us to celebrate our local talent.”
Celebrating local talent is a laudable sentiment, but an award with questionable standards and one unclear about what it stands for does neither itself nor the films it is supposed to honour any good.
(ST)

Audition
By Ryu Murakami

Those who watched Takashi Miike’s hair- raising, nightmare inducing film adaptation (1999) would have had the experience seared into their brains.
The book is less showily creepy. Instead, it creates a sense of niggling unease, slowly letting the tension tighten and grow taut until it snaps in the horrific ending.
Since the death of his wife seven years ago, documentary film-maker Aoyama has not dated. A remark by his teenage son gets him thinking about remarriage.
His best friend Yoshikawa hits upon the idea of holding fake film auditions as the best way to meet prospective brides. He has reservations about taking advantage of a system where “the commodity an actor or model offered for sale was nothing less than her own being” but goes along with the idea.
When he meets the beautiful ballet- trained Yamasaki Asami, he falls head over heels in love. There are hints that there is more to her than meets the eye but he is too obsessed to see or care.
Without giving anything away, let’s just say that things end badly.
Early on, Murakami makes a point about modern malaise: “People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneliness with stress and enervation, and all sorts of madness can occur. Anxiety increases, and in order to obliterate the anxiety, people turn to extreme sex, violence and even murder.”
One could also read Audition as a feminist fantasy about wreaking vengeance on men who abuse their power. But Aoyama, while flawed, does not strike one as a bad or evil person. Does he deserve to be punished? Or was he culpable the moment he agreed to the auditions?
Whichever way you slice it, Audition has been executed with bone-chilling flair.


If you like this, read: Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami. His debut novel about a group of young people who dive headlong into sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll won the country’s top literary accolade, the Akutagawa Prize, and established his reputation as the bad boy of Japanese fiction.
(ST)

Slumberland
By Paul Beatty

It's official. Berlin is hip.
It is not just that this year is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, that symbol of the Cold War. It is also the fact that the city has been steadily making its way into the cultural zeitgeist.
The New York Times picked it as one of the 44 places to visit this year, it was one of the key settings in the critically acclaimed 2008 Broadway musical Passing Strange, and here it plays a central role in the story of a man on a quest while navigating the cultural burdens of being black.
Ferguson Sowell, or DJ Darky, has come up with the perfect beat. After listening to it, one of his mates declares that “anything I have heard on pop radio in the last five years feels like a violation of my civil rights”.
All he needs now is the kiss of approval from a credible and influential source. This leads him to seek out the mysterious Schwa, a little-known avant- garde jazz musician, so nicknamed because “his sound, like the indeterminate vowel, is unstressed, upside-down and backward”.
The only clue to his whereabouts is a videotape of a man having sex with a chicken featuring the elusive one’s music, mailed to DJ Darky from a German address. Which is how the DJ ends up at the Slumberland bar in Berlin as a jukebox sommelier.
More than just a setting, the city is a character. And the pivotal moment of the fall of the Wall is beautifully described from an outsider’s point of view.
The themes of identity and the weight of history culminate in the erecting of a new Berlin Wall, a wall of sound that is “inspiration, encouragement, and hope” heard from the western side, and a “wailing wall” when heard from the east.
Beatty’s razzle-dazzle prose-poetry is energetic and rhythmic, and it approximates a free-form jazz piece transcribed to the page. The writing can be dense with obscure name-dropping and slang but just hang on for the ride. It's an exhilarating one.

If you like this, read: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. A funny novel about heartbreak, growing up and music – listening to it, arguing about it and obsessing about it.
(ST)

Kung Fu Chefs
Wing Kin Yip


As the title implies, this combines chop-socky action with chopping board exploits.
Wong Bing-Yi (a solemn-faced Sammo Hung) is cast out from his village after his dish makes everyone at a banquet ill. It turns out that he was set up by his vengeful nephew, though it seems strange that a supposed master chef like Wong would not be able to distinguish salt from poison.
No matter, it creates the chance for Wong to cross paths with promising chef and martial arts fighter Jung Kin-Yat (a cheeky Vanness Wu), whose love interest is the cutesy spunky Shen Ying (Ai Kago, a Ryoko Hirosue lookalike).
Mix in a cooking competition whose outcome is never in doubt and cheesy lines such as “Cooking is easy. Being a man is hard”, and voila, a bland blend.
(ST)

Marley & Me
David Frankel


The story: As readers of the 2005 best-selling memoir of the same name know, Marley is the world’s worst dog. Bought by American journalist John Grogan (Owen Wilson) soon after his marriage to fellow writer Jenny (Jennifer Aniston), the labrador retriever shares in the ups and downs of their lives and becomes an integral part of the family over the years.


They should have been tipped off when Marley was the only one in the litter of yellow labrador retrievers which came with a discount.
The Grogans soon find out why as the pup goes berserk during thunderstorms, chews through partition walls and does not understand the command “heel”.
Marley’s refusal to follow commands even gets him kicked out of obedience school after he shows up an uptight dog trainer (Kathleen Turner in a cameo).
At the same time, his shenanigans prove to be rich fodder for John’s increasingly popular newspaper columns for the Miami Herald.
As much as this is a story about a rascally dog, the film is also about John’s journey through life, from marriage to career developments to fatherhood.
While he has a good friend Sebastian (Eric Dane), whose swinging bachelor lifestyle is a pointed contrast to his own, Marley is often the one he would talk aloud to and is more of a constant companion.
Mostly, Marley & Me plods along in a not unpleasant, genial manner. The light-hearted tone, though, jars with parts of the film which delve into the bumps on the road that the Grogans face.
For example, John and Jenny do not have a perfect marriage. They go through a rocky patch when she has to deal with giving up her career for the sake of their children. And John, despite a successful column, is restless and wants a change in the direction of his career.
But somehow, watching the beautiful blonde and blonder movie stars deal with ordinary, real- people predicaments makes the issues less compelling.
One also cannot help but be distracted by the thought that this is the first film Wilson made after his suicide attempt in 2007, reportedly over the split from actress Kate Hudson.
To his credit, the actor, best known for his laid-back comic roles in films such as Wedding Crashers (2005), seems to have moved on from the incident and is amiably low-key as John.
There isn’t much for Aniston to do here in what is essentially a supporting role. Still best known for her turn as Rachel in the popular sitcom Friends, the actress has shown that she can do interesting work in offbeat films such as The Good Girl (2002). Too often, though, she seems to settle for more conventional wife/girlfriend roles that do not do her any favours, as is the case here.
As the film moves to its conclusion, the focus shifts back to Marley. Animal lovers, be warned, the ending is a teary one.
Perhaps what makes animal performances in films touching is the simple fact that animals do not act. You would not tell a dog to emote sadness, but instead you instruct it to paw at the door and whimper. In a way, that removes a layer of artifice from what we watch on screens.
Or perhaps here, it merely proves the old adage that a dog is a man’s best friend, even when the canine in question is the world’s worst.
(ST)

If You Are The One
Feng Xiaogang

The story: Qin Fen (Ge You) places a personals ad for a wife, and to his surprise, the beautiful Xiaoxiao (Shu Qi) responds. They form a tentative friendship which grows into something stronger.

After a detour into the genre du jour of historical epics with The Banquet (2006) and Assembly (2007), director Feng Xiaogang is back doing what he does best – gently skewering modern society and making you laugh in the process.
The template here is taken from Taiwanese writer-director Chen Kuo-fu’s The Personals (1998), in which singer-actress Rene Liu was a single professional woman seeking a husband. This was the set-up for a wry look at love and life in modern Taiwan.
In If You Are The One, which Chen produced, it is a middle-aged man searching for a wife on the mainland.
Released in China on Dec 22 last year, the film struck a chord with audiences. It has earned 350 million yuan (S$78 million) at the box office, one of the highest-grossing Chinese films, and also set off a trend of people looking for spouses online.
The succinct, funny and poignant ad written by Qin Fen (a homonym of the Mandarin term for hardworking) is destined to be a classic circulated through e-mail messages and online forums.
He is realistic: “If you’re an angel, I won’t be able to handle you. I don’t expect you to look like that girl on the magazine cover, scattering souls with just one look.”
He is detailed: “I like a woman who knows how to fold clothes such that when you finish washing, ironing and folding them, they will look exactly like when you bought them from the stores. Specific enough?”
He is honest: “My character’s a 50-50 split and I’m not exactly an honest man. But I was born timid, even if it is not illegal to kill, I wouldn’t kill anyone. My conscience will be tortured by guilt if I do anything cruel to others.”
Yet who should walk into his life but the gorgeous Xiaoxiao, who responds to the ad for reasons of her own. Shu Qi downplays her natural sultriness and is a good foil to Ge, making it one of those rare odd couple pairings which actually seem plausible.
Feng and Ge have worked together in several films from the hit comedy Be There Or Be Square (1998) to the infidelity drama Cell Phone (2003) and the loose Hamlet adaptation The Banquet. They have a good thing going and Feng knows how best to showcase his leading man’s charms.
The genius of Ge’s performance is that he underplays the scenes, remaining unflappable and genial even when presented with increasingly unusual respondents to his ad.
The meetings with prospective partners are milked for laughs but are also a sly comment on society today. There is the grave plot saleswoman, the trader who likens picking a mate to betting on stocks and even a man who nurses a crush on Qin.
Feng riffs on anything and everything from China-Taiwan relations to materialism to the preferred frequency of sex in a relationship.
Unfortunately, the film is marred by the final act which takes place in Hokkaido.
Qin and Xiaoxiao, the not-quite-couple, go on the trip as she intends to make a symbolic clean break with her married lover where it had all started. Some forced dramatics are thrown in and derail the film.
But overall, this is an enjoyable film largely buoyed by Ge’s deft performance.
(ST)

Suspect X
Hiroshi Nishitani

The story: The body of a man has been discovered, his face pulverised and his prints removed. Police officer Kaoru Utsumi (Kou Shibasaki) is assigned to the case and she enlists the help of brilliant physicist Manabu Yukawa (Masaharu Fukuyama), also known as Detective Galileo. His suspicions come to rest on a former schoolmate, the highly intelligent mathematician Tetsuya Ishigami (Shinichi Tsutsumi).

Suspect X is a crime thriller but it is not one of the usual suspects.
It has an impressive pedigree, based on the award-winning mystery writer Keigo Higashino’s popular Detective Galileo series and it reunites the principal cast from the hit TV adaptation.
Like the compelling Korean hit The Chaser (2008), we know who the killer is from the start.
We are witness to an act of violence that takes place when former hostess Yasuko Hanaoka (Yasuko Matsuyuki) receives an unwelcome visit from her loutish ex-husband.
After she and her daughter Misato (Miho Kanazawa) unintentionally kill him, things take an unexpected turn when her neighbour Tetsuya Ishigami knocks on her door and offers to help her out.
Knowing whodunnit in no way diminishes the pleasure of watching Suspect X. We watch with rapt attention as the neighbour constructs an alibi for mother and daughter, coaching them on how to stay a step ahead of the police.
Too many Hollywood cop flicks have a fetish for stylish and glamorous violence, and it is deeply satisfying to have a back-to-basics thriller which is all about the battle of wits between two superior minds.
The film signals its intentions early on when Professor Manabu Yukawa delivers a lecture on cause-and-effect rationality to detective Kaoru Utsumi, who is seeking his help on another case. The kicker though is the seemingly throwaway comment that love is irrational and cannot be resolved in an equation.
Suspect X pivots on a few of these little scenes which take on greater significance at the end of the film.
Cast-wise, pop singer-actor Masaharu Fukuyama imbues the cerebral physicist Yukawa with a light touch of playfulness while Kou Shibasaki has less to do in the role of earnest cop Utsumi. As the beauty in trouble, Matsuyuki brings together vulnerability and a streak of steely defiance.
The revelation here is Shinichi Tsutsumi. As Ishigami, he is calm and collected throughout, his eyes droopy, his movements slow and deliberate, yet he is able to convince one that the mind of a genius lies behind that misleading facade. His performance only serves to increase the power of the emotional wallop that hits you at the end of the film.
Not only is Suspect X a fine thriller, retaining the ability to surprise even when it seems that the case is closed, it is also, movingly, about the small acts of kindness which can sustain someone’s life and how love can be both a redemptive and destructive force.
Police procedurals such as Crime Scene Investigation may wow you with technical wizardry but such gizmos are useless when it comes to plumbing the unfathomable depths of the human heart.
(ST)

Chong Feng 7
Esplanade Concert Hall
Last Saturday


Chong Feng means “to meet once again” and this seventh installation of the popular concert brought together local and Taiwanese singers crooning hits from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
The event was in many ways like a school reunion. The pleasure of meeting old friends you grew up with was, at the same time, tinged with anxiety. How have they changed? Will they still be recognisable?
These questions were particularly, and poignantly, relevant to Hee, who had not performed live in Singapore in eight years. At the height of her popularity in the mid-1990s, she was out-selling albums by the Hong Kong heavenly kings but faded away from the music scene in the early noughties.
In June 2006, she hit the headlines when she was arrested for harassing two guests in the Ritz-Carlton hotel, yelling at them to “Call me God”. She was the final act in the three- hour-long concert.
The 34-year-old appeared in a dark pink top, patterned pants and a sequinned cap. She seemed a little nervous, but smiled widely, clearly happy to be back on stage again.
She did not say much, preferring to let her music do the talking. She performed three songs, Regret, Sunshine Always Follows The Rain and her best-known hit Moonlight In The City.
It was a pleasure to hear the mellow honeyed warmth of her voice once more though it seemed to have narrowed in range and the lowest notes on Regret were now a bit of a stretch for her.
If Hee played the role of comeback kid, then Jiang Hu was the one-time class heart-throb whose gentle, lilting tenor was tailor-made for ballads. He still had it but the voice was a tad more fragile.
He said: “I’ve lost 70 per cent of my prowess, only 30 per cent left to fool you guys with.”
The clean-cut boyishness of the 1980s had given way to a look that would not be out of place in a hip-hop outfit. Jiang sported a dog-tag and wore a sports zip-up over army fatigue pants.
Clad in matching black suits, high achiever Su Xinquan, a doctor of 18 years, and xinyao singer Hong Shaoxuan, entertained the audience with a specially arranged medley of four songs, switching with ease between Mandarin and English numbers.
The class clowns turned out to be the even more linguistically talented TCR Acappella. The five-member group was a crowd-pleaser, hamming it up in Cantonese-accented Mandarin, Japanese-accented English and Thai-accented English.
They delivered two Chinese hits back to back with their original versions in Japanese and Thai and even showed off some smooth moves on the Grasshopper track Shi Lian Zhen Xian Lian Meng (Broken Hearts Club).
Chong Feng 7 also featured Taiwanese acts Kay Huang Yun-ling, Tseng Shu-chin, Nan Fang Er Chong Chang (Southern Duo) and Mu Ji Ta (Wooden Guitar).
It was a treat to have Huang, these days a judge for singing competition One Million Star, playing the piano and delivering tracks she wrote in her slightly husky vocals.
It was even better to hear that she was working on an album of new material.
A reunion need not be about simply reliving the past, it can also be about forging new connections and looking to the future.
(ST)

K-20: Legend Of The Mask
Shimako Sato


The year is 1949 and the place is Teito, Japan, in an alternate universe where World War II never happened. In this society with rigid class boundaries, K-20, The Phantom Thief with 20 Faces, steals from the rich to give to the poor.
Unwittingly, circus acrobat Heikichi Endo (an earnest, if slightly detached, Takeshi Kaneshiro) takes the fall for the real McCoy and is captured by detective Kogoro Akechi (a laidback, smirky Toru Nakamura).
The acrobat sets out to clear his name and finds an unexpected ally in the duchess Yoko Hashiba (Takako Matsu providing some comic relief), Akechi’s fiancee.
This period sci-fi flick borrows elements from movies ranging from Face/Off (1997) to the secret agent James Bond franchise. It cruises along pleasantly enough in handsomely rendered sets with an old-fashioned twist at the end.
Surprisingly, the film is not a manga adaptation. The characters were created by late author Rampo Edogawa, the father of the Japanese mystery novel.
(ST)

Forever Enthralled
Chen Kaige

The story: Beijing opera singer Mei Lanfang (1894-1961) was one of the biggest stars of his time. This biopic covers several key periods in the female impersonator’s life, including his rise to prominence, his successful American tour and his refusal to perform in Japanese-occupied China.

Mention Chen Kaige and opera, and the first thing that comes to mind is the China film-maker’s Farewell My Concubine, winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993.
There are some surface similarities between the two films – the epic sweep, the elegant art direction – but unlike Farewell, Forever Enthralled is more concerned with events than characters.
In this sense, it would be more apt to compare it with martial arts biopic Ip Man (2008). Both story arcs are similar, portraying the protagonist at his peak, how he deals with challenges and finally his heroic defiance of the Japanese.
But Mei is less of a paper cut-out than Ip Man, even though it is hard to reconcile the spirited younger Mei played by real-life opera singer Yu Shaoqun with the older version, whom Cantopop Heavenly King Leon Lai portrays as languid and rather one-note.
At the beginning of his career, Mei challenges the strict rules of Beijing opera in order to inject a greater dose of reality into the art, going so far as to clash head-on with veteran actor Shisan Yan (Wang Xueqi in a poignant performance).
You get a sense of the artist as an iconoclast, and Yu does a marvellous job of conveying the steely reserve beneath the gentle exterior. There is then an odd disconnect when Lai takes over as Mei.
Making up for Lai’s underwhelming performance, the strong supporting cast steal the limelight in a number of key roles. Sun Honglei is impassioned and ultimately tragically sympathetic as Mei’s lifelong supporter Qiu Rubai, and Chen Hong, Chen Kaige’s wife, prevents Mei’s shrewd and protective wife from becoming a caricature.
However, the romance between Mei and male impersonator Meng Xiaodong (Zhang Ziyi, who can play sassy in her sleep) is less than convincing.
The relationship between a female impersonator and a male impersonator is tailor-made for an exploration of gender roles but Chen Kaige barely ventures there. This is a glaring omission since it is said of Mei that the peak of his artistry was that he was “more like a woman than the real thing”.
Forever Enthralled does not live up to its overwrought English title. Instead, it is a technically competent if emotionally distant by-the-numbers biopic whose stately pace starts to wear thin in the final act set during the Japanese Occupation.
Chen Kaige and opera still add up to Farewell My Concubine.
(ST)

New In Town
Jonas Elmer


Even the romantic comedy is not spared the economic realities of the times.
The set-up here seems pretty straightforward at first.
Chic city executive Lucy Hill (Renee Zellweger, more reined-in from her Bridget Jones cartoon mode) from sunny Miami suddenly finds herself in wintry Minnesota on a work assignment.
The only attractive man for miles around happens to be union rep Ted Mitchell (a charming Harry Connick Jr who seems to have lost that weird sneer he had on TV series Will & Grace).
They get on each other’s nerves when they meet for the first time. And they clash at the factory too since she has been sent to retrench half the workforce.
No prizes for guessing what happens next.
But as much as this is a meet-cute fantasy romance, it is also a proletariat fantasy.
Factory workers who do not own the means of production get a boss who saves them from being kicked out into the cold, not just once, but twice. And then gives power back to them in a scheme to purchase the factory back from greedy capitalists.
A romantic comedy with Marxist undertones? That is certainly new in town.
(ST)

White Palms
Szabolcs Hajdu


As a child, Miklos Dongo was a promising gymnast in Hungary but, somehow, he ends up coaching Canada’s medal hope for the 2002 world gymnastics championship.
It is interesting to look at a film like this and marvel at all the ways that Hollywood would have mucked it up.
Award-winning Hungarian director Szabolcs Hajdu is not interested in a rah-rah tale of athletic triumph and personal redemption.
Instead, he presents viewers with a non-linear story with portraits of Dongo at ages 10 (Orion Radies), 13 (Silas Wind Radies) and 32 (Zoltan Miklos Hajdu).
The harsh training conducted by coach Ferenc (Gheorghe Dinica) robs Dongo of the ordinary joys of childhood. At 13, the unhappy gymnast runs away to join the circus. As a coach, he has to find a way to connect with his trainees and come to terms with his past.
There is a telling bit of dialogue by Ferenc when the big top folks come by the gym to look for a replacement trapeze artiste: “Hey! This is not a circus! Hey! They are not monkeys!”
But the director juxtaposes the gymnastics competition with the trapeze performance, brilliantly linking the two scenes through the use of music and sound.
It is not always clear whether you are looking at the spectacle of a competition or a death-courting circus act, or both.
But there is no doubt that Hajdu has crafted a compelling and surprising film.
(ST)

Crowd Lu
Esplanade Recital Studio
Last Saturday


Mrs This
Esplanade Recital Studio
Last Friday

Crowd Lu and Mrs This have each released an album, appealing mostly to students and those in their 20s and 30s, and both acts fall under the umbrella of Chinese indie pop. But their concerts proved to be very different experiences.
Lu, 23, delivered a mesmerising show, demonstrating why he is one of the most promising Taiwanese singer-songwriters to emerge in recent years. In contrast to his sunny demeanour and music, compatriots six-piece ensemble Mrs This mined a more melancholic vein of electronic pop-rock, a performance which sometimes threatened to slip into minor key monotony.
Lu’s songs about life and love from a young person’s point of view have resonated strongly with music fans and he sold out two shows at the 245-seat Esplanade Recital Studio.
Dressed in an orange T-shirt worn over another black one, bermudas, calf-high socks and white sneakers, and sporting his trademark black-rimmed glasses and mop top, he looked like an awkward, gangly, overgrown student.
But he captured one’s attention the moment he started playing the guitar and singing because he performed with his entire body. Eyes closed, fingers strumming, legs tapping and kicking away, he was completely into the moment.
He dove headlong into his songs with a passion that was palpable and his clear, bright voice, as open and direct as his personality, was a compelling and moving instrument.
His enthusiastic bursts of “Yeah!” punctuated the end of each song and were peppered all over his patter, which included anecdotes such as how his first single Yuan Ming, which appears to be about escaping from reality, was actually written when he was upset with a friend for not waking him up for class.
The female leads for Mrs This, A Mu and Hei Lang, also displayed a playful side in their banter, while to the crowd’s delight, bassist Fang Q showed off some Singlish phrases he had picked up.
Their music, however, was a tougher sell live. The vocals were in danger of being overwhelmed by the drums at times and the band could have been tighter as an outfit.
It did not help that the same few photo stills were recycled endlessly in the background and soon became annoying. Either add more photos or just do away with them entirely.
Mrs This were at their best on tracks such as And I and I See Many People, which were infused with a sense of much-needed drama.
There was no certainly no lack of drama in Lu’s gig and he kept the energy level high throughout.
He tackled the hard-to-reach notes on Really Feel Like Being Self-Indulgent, charmed his way through School Belle 2008, and got the audience to chorus “That’s right! That’s right!” on Good Morning, Beauty Of Dawn!
Lu’s gig was so entertaining, it did not even matter one whit that he skipped the chart-topping title track from his album 100 Ways For Living.
It is still early days for 2009, but you have the feeling that you have already seen one of the best concerts of the year.
(ST)

Traffic
Tom Vanderbilt


Driving is “probably the most complex everyday thing we do”, and yet we barely pause to think about it.
So it is a good thing that we have someone like Tom Vanderbilt who decides to examine this phenomenon in great detail, unearthing nuggets of interesting information and fascinating insights into this quotidian activity.
He unpacks certain basic questions and assumptions including what it means to pay attention on the road. He points out that if we were to process every single piece of information out there, we would be overwhelmed.
After all, when driving, we are travelling at speeds for which we are not evolutionarily adapted to.
Some of his conclusions seem counter-intuitive at first. For example, that more seemingly dangerous roads might actually have lower rates of accidents. On such roads, drivers take greater care while so-called safer roads with a multitude of signs and safeguards could actually encourage drivers to drive more dangerously.
The paradox is that when drivers feel more at risk, they behave more cautiously, making the roads safer.
Vanderbilt backs up his assertions with lots of studies and research material. But he handles it with a light and humorous touch so you do not feel like you are stuck in a morass of information.
Apart from academic studies, he also dives headlong into the infamous road snarls of cities such as Beijing and Mumbai and draws upon historical situations from ancient Rome to mediaeval England to give a sense of perspective to this thing called traffic.
There is certainly plenty to mull over here. One question: If we are not evolutionarily equipped to move at driving speeds, what does this say about flying?

If you like this, read: Stiff by Mary Roach. Another topic we do not think about much, human cadavers, is explored in an unexpectedly funny and illuminating manner.
(ST)

All's Well, Ends Well 2009
Vincent Kok

For a period in the 1980s and 1990s, all- star Hong Kong comedies were a staple during the Chinese New Year holidays.
The Eighth Happiness (1988) with Chow Yun Fat and Carol Cheng and All’s Well, Ends Well (1992) with Leslie Cheung and Stephen Chow were madcap affairs which proved to be crowd-pleasers.
The 2009 version of All’s Well is the third entry in the franchise and the producers are probably banking on the fact that the familiar title will pull in the crowds. Plot-wise, the three films feature different characters though they share a certain silliness.
Sandra Ng, who has often played ugly, loud and uncouth characters, gets to be the modern career woman this time, but one whose abrasive manner has left her on the shelf.
This is a problem for her younger brother Ronald (Ronald Cheng) because of a family rule that stipulates the eldest child has to get married first. Enter Louis (a charred-looking Louis Koo), a love guru whom Sandra takes a shine to. And Raymond Wong pops up as a detective (Mr Wong) Sandra loves to hate.
The paper-thin plot is really an excuse to string together a series of jokes. There are some funny slapstick moments but the hit-to-miss ratio is not quite high enough while the chemistry-free romance sub-plot between Louis and sweet young thing Man (Miki Shen) is simply grating.
(ST)

George Lam and the symphony orchestra
Max Pavilion @ Singapore Expo
Saturday

Hong Kong singer George Lam may be soft-spoken when it comes to interviews but he had no problems belting it out and delivering a solid show on Saturday night.
The audience demographic at the concert reflected the 61-year-old’s longevity as a singer. The more than 5,000 fans ranged from those in their 30s to silver-haired supporters in their 60s.
The dapper and lithe Lam appeared in a velvet suit over a white shirt and dark tie and opened with the Barry Manilow classic I Write The Songs.
This segued cleverly into songs Lam had written for other singers, including Happy Birthday To Me for his wife Sally Yeh, as well as Shadow Of The Starlight for Paula Tsui and Still Remember That Time for Teresa Carpio.
The repertoire leaned heavily on Cantonese tracks, including Number Life, Mirage and Lonely Won’t Leave Me Alone, but he also showed his versatility with the bluesy rock of When A Man Loves A Woman.
He proved to be a canny showman, milking the drama of Guys Be Strong, the theme song from the gongfu flick Once Upon A Time In China, which he sang in both Cantonese and Mandarin.
Backed by a 30-piece symphony orchestra, he gunned for the high notes and also executed with a flourish the demanding fast tracks such as the cheesily entertaining Ali Baba.
During a medley of quick numbers, he lobbed tennis balls into the audience, pumping up the crowd which had been largely content to show its appreciation with scattered applause.
The first encore featured crowd-pleasing Cantonese cover versions of hits such as Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl, Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now as well as Sarah Brightman and Jose Carreras’ Amigos Para Siempre (Friends For Life).
In between songs, Lam chatted with the crowd in English and Cantonese. He said that it was nice to be in Singapore as it was one of the few places where he could speak English and be understood.
The self-deprecating Lam also took a few digs at his age. He recalled that when he first came to Singapore to perform, “you had to cut your hair to come in”, referring to the 1970s when the authorities frowned upon men with long hair.
When an enthusiastic audience brought him back for a second encore, he joked: “You want some more? Old folks like me need to sleep early.”
While he may not be the flashiest of performers, he had an easy affability which endeared him to the crowd.
For the hit duet Xuan Ze (Choice), he picked a partner, Rose, from the audience. She turned out to be a big fan who had kept one of the tennis balls Lam had thrown at a concert at the Harbour Pavilion 10 years ago.
A beaming Lam gave her a kiss on the cheek and made her day with a small memento after their duet together.
“I hope I don’t have to keep this for another 10 years. Please come more often,” she said, a sentiment his fans would agree with wholeheartedly.
(ST)

It should really be called the Blue Dissected Plateau. “But that does not quite have the same ring as the Blue Mountains, does it?” asks Mr Tim Tranter, owner-operator of Tread Lightly Eco Tours (http://www.treadlightly.com.au/).
Located 90 minutes from Sydney by car, the Blue Mountains World Heritage National Park is a sprawling 2,500 sq km of forested valleys, sheer cliffs and plunging waterfalls.For those who have been to Sydney and think of it as an urban, coastal cityscape, the proximity of the mountains is a lovely surprise.
And the best way to learn about it is to sign up for a fully guided bush walk conducted by someone such as Mr Tranter, who has lived in the area for more than 40 years, served as a fire and rescue team member, and saves trapped snakes in his spare time.
The name of his company, Tread Lightly, reflects the philosophy of its tours:to leave a minimal imprint on nature through the use of eco-friendly resources. His four-wheel drive runs on liquefied petroleum gas and he wants to convert it to operate on natural gas, which pollutes even less.
Given his background and his love of the place, he is a fount of information.
The area is called Blue Mountains because the light refracted through the oil released by the eucalyptus or gum trees, makes the haze look blue from a distance.
That, however, is possibly the least fascinating aspect of the area’s ecology. It seems things are done differently Down Under, even when it concerns nature.
Fires are often seen as a destructive force but the frequency of their occurrence here has contributed to some unusual flora. The banksia plant, for instance, actually needs fire for its seedpods to burst open and scatter the seeds inside.
As we drive down a track through the bush, Mr Tranter grabs a leaf off a branch, crushes it and passes it to me. “Here, smell this,” he says. The oil in the eucalyptus leaves fuels the fire so that it burns faster, thus sparing the trunks from combusting.
He also points out edible shoots, leaves and fruits from what, to the undiscerning eye, looks like a big patch of green. “These shoots taste like carrots,” he says encouragingly.
Maybe my taste buds are not meant to sample nature raw and unprocessed. Another berry I try is mostly just chewy in texture.
He says the cockroaches can be eaten as well because they feed on nectar instead of faeces. Good thing we do not see any running around.
Most people who come to the Blue Mountains make a beeline for the Three Sisters at Echo Point, a spectacular sandstone formation. According to an Aboriginal legend, a witch doctor turned three sisters into stone to protect them from harm but he died before he could reverse the spell.
But there are other vistas with curiously little human traffic. At Anvil Point,we are greeted by a lush and verdant view of the valley with the bonus that it is completely deserted.
If you prefer your nature in a more familiar theme park-like setting, Scenic World (www.scenicworld.com.au) is a good bet. The picturesque railway is on the world’s steepest rail incline while the cable-car ride over Jamison Valley affords a bird’s-eye view of the plunging Katoomba Falls.
There are reportedly discussions underway to build a roller-coaster ride which will hug the escarpment. It seems hard to square this with eco-protection but it does sound like a heck of a ride.
For a change of pace, mosey over to Leura Mall for some shopping for everything from beaded lamps to scented candles to all kinds of sugar rush at an old-fashioned candy store.
My favourite shop here is Cafe Josophan for its delicious homemade chocolates. Even wild cockatoos know to head here for the muffin crumbs.
After a fruitful day spent exploring and hiking, unwind at a private guesthouse such as the Silvermere (www.silvermere.com.au), originally built in 1923 and handsomely restored.
There are also various spa resorts catering to different tastes, from the five-star Lilianfels Blue Mountains Resort & Spa (www.lilianfels.com.au) to the exotic Japanese bath house Blue Mountains Sparadise(http://www.japanesebathhouse.com.au/).
If you need to balance your fix of nature with the bright lights of a big city, it is comforting to know that Sydney is nearby. Even for those who have visited, this cosmopolitan metropolis still offers fresh things to discover with new restaurants and nightspots constantly sprouting up.
See the city from a different perspective, on a motorbike(www.bluethunderdownunder.com.au) with Steve White, your friendly leather-wearing, Harley- revving guide.Granted it is a little difficult to keep up with the guide’s running commentary when you are riding pillion but you do get personally chauffeured to little-known viewing spots which offer uncluttered views of the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The monikers of these iconic structures might seem a little prosaic but then, what’s in a name right?

Getting there
Singapore Airlines, Qantas and British Airways fly direct to Sydney daily. The flight is about seven hours long.
The Blue Mountains are about an hour to 90 minutes away from Sydney by car. Another option is to travel by train from Sydney’s Central Railway Station. The journey can take from one to two hours, depending on your exact destination.

5 things to do
1 Do pack warm clothes, even when travelling in summer, as it can get chilly in the mountains.
2 Do bond with the locals. Stop by Glenbrook, the gateway to the Blue Mountains, to view wild kangaroos, kingfishers and cockatoos.
3 Do walk on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It can be quite “educational”. Once, a guided group – the first of the day – found an abandoned shopping cart filled with beer cans at the bridge’s highest point. They never found out who hauled it up there.
4 Do tour the Sydney Opera House and learn about the challenges in realising the audacious vision for the dramatic structure. It was designed by Danish architect Jorn Utzon, who died in November last year. Forced to resign as chief architect before the project was completed, he never saw the finished building.
5 Do hop on a boat for a sail and see Sydney from the water. There is plenty to explore given that this is the world’s largest natural harbour with over 240km of shoreline.

2 don’ts
1 Don’t forget to pack comfortable walking shoes for the hikes.
2 Don’t miss out on the diverse dining options, from the casual cafes in the warren of streets behind Bondi Beach to the hip, big-name restaurants.
(ST)

Passengers
Rodrigo Garcia


It would be safe to say that this will not be part of your in-flight entertainment.
After a plane crash, Claire Summers (Anne Hathaway) is assigned to counsel the survivors. When one of them turns out to be the charming Patrick Wilson (above,as the seemingly in denial Eric), you know that professional lines are going to be crossed.
The film cannot decide if it wants to be a conspiracy thriller, a romance or a family reconciliation drama and lurches distractingly from one genre to the next.
Director Rodrigo Garcia drops hints with his sombre colour palette that there is something else going on here but the last act is still preposterous.
(ST)

The Women
Diane English


Four women friends go through thick and thin in the city of New York.
With such a familiar premise and a sitcom-ish quality to the script and acting,this feels like a two-hour pilot for a Sex And The City knock-off.
When Mary Haines (Meg Ryan), who seems to have it all, finds out her husband is having an affair, her friends – magazine editor Sylvia (Annette Bening), housewife Edie (Debra Messing) and writer Alex (Jada Pinkett Smith) – rally around her.
Despite the modern-day setting, there is something really dated about The Women. Is it Ryan’s curls? Or the fact that she chooses not to confront her husband about his philandering ways? That is so 1930s.
Oh wait, that was when the original by George Cukor was made – in 1939.
The film even ends with that tired cliche – a birth scene, though Messing gives it her all and even makes it mildly funny.
But given the cast assembled, including Candice Bergen, Carrie Fisher, Bette Midler and Eva Mendes, one would have hoped for a little more spark and a little less fizzle.
(ST)

Alan's War
By Emmanuel Guibert


You never know what can happen when you ask a stranger for directions.
In the case of illustrator Emmanuel Guibert, then 30, it led to a firm friendship with the 69-year-old Alan Cope, an American who married and settled down in France. And their conversations led to this vividly written and drawn biography.
In 1943, during World War II, an 18-year-old Cope is drafted by the United States army. The most dangerous things, though, happen outside combat. He almost gets killed by a falling tree during training and just misses being crushed under a tank.
When he is eventually sent to France on a mission in February 1945, the war is ending and he does not see much combat action.
As a soldier, he is not perfect as he sometimes breaks rules. As a person, he can be stubborn as well. But he is also open-minded and generous, striking up friendships with some Germans, even though fraternising is forbidden.
The last part of the book takes a rather sharp turn when Cope has an epiphany at 55, realising he has never lived his life fully.
He sees in society “overcrowding by too many dogmas, false values, and wrong thinking; a kind of psychic illness that afflicts the human race and prevents people from knowing what to do with their lives”.
It prompts him to reconnect with the people in his life as a way of seeking closure.
While Guibert’s black-and-white ink washes are beautiful and bring Cope’s story to life by evoking landscapes, personalities and situations, they are never intrusive.
The tale is fully Cope’s, warts and all, and it is his voice we hear. This is an easy, intimate conversation between friends and you feel privileged to be able to sit in.

If you like this, read: The Professor’s Daughter by Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert
See Guibert’s deft touch in a different light with this comic romance between a mummy and an Egyptologist’s daughter set in Victorian London.
(ST)

College
Deb Hagan


The burning question here is: Why didn’t this go straight to video? Actually no, it should be, why did this even get made in the first place?
The mean-spirited film takes three high-school seniors and plonks them at a college’s orientation weekend. This turns into an excuse for an exercise in excess as they get sloshed, get hazed and get laid.
It is a mystery why bland Kevin (Drake Bell), nerdy Morris (Kevin Covais) and chubby Carter (Andrew Caldwell) are even friends since they barely have anything in common.
Carter is a bully who delights in being mean to Morris while Kevin is, well, bland.
The hangover you will have after partying on New Year’s Eve will be more fun than this.
(ST)

Bedtime Stories
Adam Shankman

The story: Hotel handyman Skeeter Bronson (Adam Sandler) has to come up with the winning theme for a proposed new project so that he, instead of the brown-nosing manager Kendall (Guy Pearce), can run the place.
At the same time, he has to babysit his sister Wendy’s (Courteney Cox) children with the help of her friend Jill (Keri Russell). He tells the kids fantastical bedtime stories which start to come true.

Bedtime Stories will not quite lull you to sleep but it will not keep you on the edge of your seat either.
Clearly, they had money to spend on this film. The audience is transported to a mediaeval castle town, outer space and even ancient Rome, the settings of the various fantasies. But you end up feeling like you are watching an attention-deficit child and the gimmickry only displays a lack of trust in the material.
Which is not all that inspiring in the first place. When Skeeter realises that his nephew and niece’s pronouncements are coming true, he is chiefly concerned with his own needs, including getting a Ferrari, kissing the girl and winning the contest.
In another plot device, the bedtime stories come true, but not necessarily in the way one would expect. While this creates a little interest, it also means sitting through two versions of the same tale.
As for the cast, the hardworking Sandler is back on the big screen for the second time this year after the hairstylist comedy You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, but maybe he should take a break. He dials in a low-key performance, coasting by on what he imagines to be his goofy charm.
Russell, playing the love interest, looks miffed and is probably wondering: “What am I doing in this movie?” At least she has a bigger role than Cox, who recycles her uptight- but-actually-decent persona from the sitcom Friends.
British comedian Russell Brand seems to be the oddball sidekick du jour and pops up here after the comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), while Australian actor Pearce is somewhat miscast as the toadying Kendall.
If you want a movie about fairy tales with actual charm and heart, do pick up a copy of romance classic Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride (1987) instead.
(ST)

Ip Man
Wilson Yip


The story: In the thriving southern Chinese city of Foshan in the 1930s, martial arts expert Ip Man (Donnie Yen) tries to keep above the fray of martial arts schools competing fiercely for students. When war breaks out and the Japanese army swoops in, Ip can no longer keep a low profile.

Ip who, you ask?
You might not be familiar with the man, but perhaps you have heard of his most famous disciple – gongfu superstar Bruce Lee. The movie was probably greenlit on the strength of that fact.
However, if it is a detailed biography of the late Ip Man you are looking for, this is not the place to find it. And no, Bruce Lee does not appear either.
It would be more accurate to think of this as a gongfu flick with Ip’s life serving as a loose narrative structure.
When the audience first meets Ip, he is a man in the prime of his life who seems to have it all. He is the acknowledged gongfu champ in Foshan despite not having a single student. He lives in a big house and has a beautiful wife (Lynn Xiong) and a young son.
His biggest problem, which he despatches while barely breaking a sweat, is a gang of ruffians from the north who go around challenging, and defeating, all the other teachers.
Biopics sometimes drown you in details but in this case, you wish there was some explanation of how Ip got to where he was at the beginning of the film. Instead, you barely get a sense of the man beyond the fact that he is a saint.
When war breaks out, Ip is turned out of his house and forced to scrape an existence from menial work. Still, he keeps his cool until his friends are killed in matches with Japanese karate fighters, organised for the amusement of General Miura (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi).
The showdown between Ip and Miura is the action highlight of the film but while the fight sequences are entertaining enough, there is nothing about them that is truly surprising or inventive.
With his martial arts background, Yen does a credible job with the combat scenes and to his credit, he imbues the upright and moral Ip with the hint of a smile and prevents the character from becoming too stuffy.
There is little for Xiong, singer-actor Aaron Kwok’s purported real-life squeeze, to do here in the role of the supportive wife.
Since this is not a strictly factual biopic anyway, it might have been nice to see her break the ornamental huaping (flower vase) mould and bust out some gongfu moves of her own.
(ST)

Journey to the Centre of the Earth 3-D
Eric Brevig


Journey is a film tailor-made to showcase 3-D technology.
The plot is an excuse to get geologist Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser), his nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson) and their guide Hannah (Anita Briem) to the otherworldly realm at the centre of the earth, one filled with exotic flora and fauna.
Naturally, the way there involves a jolting ride in an abandoned mine and lots of freefalling.
The 3-D effect took a little getting used to, especially when Fraser pops into larger-than-life view for the first time.
But the you-are-there impact was cool for the roller coaster ride, which could definitely have been longer. Another standout sequence was that of Sean crossing over a pathway of floating magnetic rocks.
Somewhat surprisingly, the real-life landscape of Iceland fared much better in 3-D than the computer-generated vistas, which seemed kind of flat in the distance.
On the whole, this is an enjoyable romp but you wonder if you should be watching this in an amusement park instead of in a cinema.
(ST)

Cicakman 2: Planet Hitam
Yusry Abdul Halim


This plays like an episode of the cheesy 1960s Japanese superhero TV show Ultraman, only with less subtle acting.
It is up to Cicakman (Saiful Apek), or Lizardman, to save the day when the evil Professor Klon (Aznil Nawawi) hatches a plot to turn the world’s water supply black.
Lurking in this Malaysian film is the interesting premise of a superhero struggling to earn his keep in the regular world. But this is something that director Yusry Abdul Halim is not interested in exploring.
Clearly the movie is not meant to be taken seriously when the arch-villain Klon first appears looking like an overgrown and unwashed hobbit.
But what little irreverent charm there is is simply overwhelmed by baddies who cackle incessantly, a noisy soundtrack and acting so exaggerated that this could be an invaluable how-not-to guide.
(ST)

Igor
Anthony Leondis

At the annual Evil Scientists’ Fair, the best in the land of Malaria (the awkward name being an example of the writer trying too hard to be funny) battle it out with their dastardly inventions. They are helped by Igors, those born with a hunched back and destined to be second-class citizens.
One such Igor (John Cusack) dares to dream above his station and successfully invents life in the form of the comically proportioned Eva (Saturday Night Live’s Molly Shannon). But her evil bone is not activated and she is instead brainwashed to become an actress who yearns for her big break.
This conceit is the funniest thing here, and Shannon gives a nicely restrained performance. Steve Buscemi as Scamper, the immortal rabbit with a death wish, and Sean Hayes as the none-too-bright Brain, also steal a couple of laughs as the oddball sidekicks.
But the whole is less than the sum of its parts, and like an invention missing the critical spark, the movie never feels fully alive.
(ST)

All Our Worldly Goods
Irene Nemirovsky


This could well be a Gallic take on a Jane Austen study on manners and courtship, sense and sensibility.
Pierre Hardelot and Agnes Florent are in love at a time when one’s class dictates one’s match. His grandfather is an iron-fisted industrialist while her family are brewers. When he defies social norms to marry Agnes, Pierre is cut off from the family business.
The outbreak of World War I soon dwarfs every other concern. In an economical 30 pages, Nemirovsky parses the psyche of a nation at war – despair, fear, numbness, hope, relief – with a few incisive episodes.
The couple get on with their lives after the war ends, only to face the outbreak of World War II decades later.
Nemirovsky marks the fragility of achingly casual happiness in the interim with a family outing to the woods.“They brushed aside the day, relegating it to the past, to obscurity, without a single regret. It had been one of the sweetest and most peaceful days of their lives. But they had no way of knowing that.”
The novel covers an extraordinary period in history when a generation lived through two world wars in the span of about 30 years. When World War II erupts, Pierre has to watch his son take up arms, knowing that even the illusion of the glory of war was gone as “they know that all our sacrifices were useless, that victory conquered no one”.
What is remarkable is the note of hope the novel ends on, all the more heartbreaking when you consider that Nemirovsky died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of 39.

If you like this, read: All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. A searing indictment of the horrors of war as seen through the eyes of a young soldier from the trenches of World War I.
(ST)

Burma Chronicles
Guy Delisle


Is it Burma or Myanmar? Delisle addresses the different names for the country right off the bat and the choice of his title indicates he does not consider the ruling government to be a legitimate one.
Despite the overtly political start, Burma Chronicles is more a personal memoir of life in a repressed and isolated regime. When his wife Nadege, who works with Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), receives her new assignment, Delisle and their toddler son Louis go along for the ride.
The cartoonist finds humour in learning about, and adapting to, a different country and culture. His black-and- white sketches offer charming, and sometimes instructive, anecdotes about such events as taking part in the water festival, surviving the rainy season or simply trying to find the right kind of ink.
While Louis is a universal ice-breaker with regard to meeting the locals, Delisle’s own profession opens some doors – he meets fellow illustrators and conducts private animation classes.
But inadvertently, politics intrude every aspect of life. For one thing, Nobel laureate and pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi is kept under house arrest near where they live.
Delisle also touches on the Orwellian regime’s control over the media, the exploitative gem trade, the easy availability of heroin in some places and the wildly different worlds of the privileged few vis-a-vis most ordinary Burmese.
His generally simple and direct style serves the stories well. And his depiction of sightseeing tours to Bagan and Lake Inlay displays wit and elegance. Instead of the usual six panels a page, he works in 15 wordless panels, conveying the harried, manic quality of such outings.
If you want a humane and humorous peek into the country, this is a good place to start.


If you like this, read: Pyongyang: A Journey In North Korea by Guy Delisle (2007, US$10.17 (S$15.50), www.amazon.com). Here is a glimpse into another repressive regime from Delisle, who seems to have an affinity for them.
(ST)

Sex Drive
Sean Anders


Ian (Josh Zuckerman) is a high-school senior who wants to lose his virginity but he is secretly in love with Felicia (Amanda Crew), his platonic female friend.
His best pal Lance (Clark Duke) is a chick magnet and just wants to help him get laid.
Didn't they already make this film?
Just because it is a teenage sex comedy does not mean it has to be generic. I enjoyed it when it was called Superbad (2007), which had heart and likeable characters along with the ribald humour.
Sex Drive, though, is merely content to cross one dated genre (teenage sex comedy) with another (the road movie) as Ian goes on a nine-hour car trip to keep a date with an Internet hook-up.
There are a couple of funny moments with a giant doughnut costume and Seth Green as a deadpan Amish but otherwise, Zuckerman as the blandly sweet Ian and Crew fail to leave much of an impression.
Mostly, this ride just limps along.
(ST)

Four Christmases
The story: Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) have been wriggling out of Christmas family gatherings and spending their holidays in exotic locales. When they are found out, they end up visiting both sets of divorced parents. Hence the four Christmases of the title.

’Tis the season for festive comedies.
Just as the lights go up like clockwork in Orchard Road, you can be sure of an offering or two from Hollywood, milking the yuletide tradition of family gatherings for yuks in films such as Home For The Holidays (1995) and Christmas With The Kranks (2004).
In the latest twist on the formula, the writers up the ante by plying the harried couple with four different home gatherings, promising more excruciating embarrassments and awkward situations.
Take Brad’s brothers, for example. They are tattooed paramilitary types who take pleasure in body combat. So Brad soon finds himself the object of flying tackles as his curmudgeonly father (Robert Duvall) looks on in approval.
As the day progresses, Brad and Kate discover things they have kept from each other, such as Brad’s real name and Kate’s fat camp detours as a child. As the skeletons come tumbling out, she begins to question their relationship and where it is headed.
Four Christmases turns out to be a drama about two people learning to commit to each other in the guise of a genre comedy.
Sure, the lessons about familial and romantic love are pat but there is a welcome bounce and edge to the writing.
It certainly helps to have the couple in crisis played by the likeable and winsome Witherspoon and Vaughn, even though his gut is starting to look like it needs its own wardrobe.
Balancing broad comedy with romance is not an easy task but director Seth Gordon pulls it off deftly, delivering a worthy treat for the holidays.
(ST)

Rihanna!
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Thursday

Who is Rihanna exactly, and where does this 20-year- old from Barbados with the slick chart hits fit in with other female pop stars?
Her latest album is titled Good Girl Gone Bad, but she has some way to go before she can snatch that particular crown from Britney Spears.
Perhaps she fancies herself a consummate entertainer such as Madonna, wanting to Take A Bow for her showmanship.
After all, it seems that she is deliberately inviting such comparisons. The warm-up song before her concert began was, oddly enough, Spears’ Womaniser. And Madonna’s Music was sampled in the introduction to Please Don’t Stop The Music.
And yet, her concert on Thursday night offered few answers.
Rihanna started with Disturbia. She was dressed in dominatrix chic – an all-black ensemble with a sleeveless top that showed off her toned arms and form-fitting pants.
The tough yet sexy effect was unfortunately marred by a mike malfunction which silenced her, not the best way to start a concert. It was left to her hardworking back-up singers to carry the show while she went offstage.
That was not the end of the audio problems. While mostly serviceable, her voice came across as ragged and harsh at times, possibly due to the patchy sound system.
The crowd of almost 8,000 were not put off, though. They came determined to party and nothing was going to get in their way. Fans were on their feet from the opening number and screamed and danced throughout.
Rihanna delivered hits from her three albums, including the infectious SOS, the energetic Pon De Replay and the paean to infidelity, Unfaithful. The crowd lapped them all up eagerly.
But mostly, she seemed to be going through the motions, putting her sharp cheekbones to good use as she preened and posed while singing. It was MTV-ready and it all remained on the surface.
It did not help that even though the show was promoted as a 90-minute affair, it clocked in at a miserly 60 minutes. The singer hardly had time to thank her musicians and crew and did not even change costumes until her encore.
Dressed in a black-and-white showgirl outfit, she ended the evening with her biggest hit, Umbrella, and soaked in the adulation from the crowd.
“I cannot wait to come back. Singapore, I love you,” she claimed.
Yea, yea, but we barely knew you.
(ST)

The Good, The Bad, The Weird

Story: The paths of train robber Yoon Tae Goo (Song Kang Ho), bandit leader Park Chang Yi (Lee Byung Hun) and bounty hunter Park Do Won (Jung Woo Sung) cross over a much-coveted treasure map.
But they are not the only ones after it as the Japanese army and yet another gang of baddies have their sights set on the parchment as well in this actioner set in turbulent 1930s Manchuria.


This is a Korean take on the spaghetti Western The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966), the Sergio Leone classic in which three men who do not trust each other have to work together in order to get to a buried treasure.
Director Kim Jee Woon, who helmed the bloody crime drama A Bittersweet Life (2005), re-imagines the story with three of South Korea’s top male stars.
Song Kang Ho, the award-winning actor in films such as the sci-fi horror flick The Host (2006), provides some comic relief as the blustery and blustering train robber Tae Goo, who unwittingly steals the treasure map in the first place.
Versatile hunk Lee Byung Hun, whose credits include the hit thriller Joint Security Area (2000), jarringly sports earrings and eye-liner in his wild-eyed portrayal of the ruthless Chang Yi, who is out to claim the map for himself.
Heartthrob Jung Woo Sung, star of the romance A Moment To Remember (2004), is the cool and collected Do Won, who has been offered a reward for hunting down Chang Yi.
Perhaps the combined star power accounts for the success of the film, touted by the distributor here as the highest-grossing blockbuster in Korea in 2008.
But that cannot hide the fact that the thin plot merely serves to move the action along from one set-piece to another. No doubt well choreographed, but the overlong gunfights feel like exercises in excessive violence after a while.
Late-in-the-game revelations about Tae Goo are simply not enough to make you care about the thinly-drawn but quick-on-the-draw characters.
By the time of the climactic three-way shootout between the protagonists, you are strangely liberated by the fact that you do not care who lives or dies.
In another misjudged display of excess, the film refuses to end even then, but drags out for another few improbable minutes.
At its best, violence in Korean films explore issues of morality, for example in Park Chan Wook’s vengeance trilogy.
Here however, Kim seems satisfied with violence as a guns a-blazing, bullets a-whizzing end in itself, but too much shoot ’em up action leaves one as stone cold as the corpses which litter the set after a while.
So much sound and fury, signifying oh so very little.
(ST)

Dragon Hunters

You know the school holidays are here when kiddie flicks begin popping up in cinemas.
On paper, what sets the computer-animated Dragon Hunters apart is that it hails from Europe and is based on the French TV animated series of the same name created by Arthur Qwak, who co-writes and co-directs the film.
It also boasts Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker as the voice of the hero Lian-Chu.
Not that this would matter one whit to the target audience.
The quest is straightforward. The big and strong Lian-Chu, Gwizdo, his childhood friend, and Hector, their pet dragon which acts like a little dog, have to go to the ends of the earth to destroy the terrifying monster, World Gobbler.
They are accompanied by Zoe, a talkative little girl who believes that she has found in Lian-Chu the heroic knight of her fantasies.
What lifts the film from its formulaic set-up are the lovely visuals as the story takes place in a world which is literally disintegrating.
While the vistas of floating, drifting land masses are reminiscent of computer games, the big-screen effect is both whimsical and gorgeous. So this one is not just for kids.
(ST)

American Widow
Alissa Torres/Art by Choi Sung Yoon

When the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York collapsed on Sept 11, 2001, as the result of a large-scale terrorist attack, almost 3,000 civilians perished.
Among them was Eddie Torres, who had just started his new job at brokerage house Cantor Fitzgerald the day before.
American Widow is the memoir of his wife Alissa Torres, who was 71/2 months pregnant at the time. It is about her coming to terms with the tragedy and how she navigated the tangled web of aid and compensation that followed.
After an initial outpouring of compassion and promises, red tape slowed down the handing out of monies and she found herself mired in frustration.
On top of all that, she had to battle post-natal depression and a backlash as family members of the 9/11 victims began to be seen by some as opportunists greedy for government handouts.
Her reaction was: 'It felt bad to be hated. It felt even worse to be envied.'
The text is complemented by Choi Sung Yoon's cleanly drawn black-and-white illustrations.
They are shaded in aquamarine, giving a slightly unreal edge to Torres' story, reflecting her own disbelief and struggle to come to terms with what had happened.
The advantage of the graphic novel medium is its flexibility, and good use is made of that here. For example, a one-panel page depicting the emptiness of Ground Zero speaks volumes.
American Widow also tells the story of Torres' husband, who came from Colombia and then snuck into the United States via Mexico, in search of a better future.
He bursts into life, suddenly and unexpectedly, in a two-page spread of photographs and identification cards. And an epic tragedy becomes at once intimate and personal.

If you like this, read: The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman (1996, US$23.10 or S$33.88, Amazon.com). This depiction of the Holocaust, with the Nazis as cats and Jews as mice, has been hailed widely as a modern-day classic.
(ST)

The Little Book
Selden Edwards
Think of this as the literary offspring of the central ideas in the time-travel crowd-pleaser Back To The Future (1985) and Forrest Gump (1994), in which the titular character is inserted into pivotal moments in history.
Rock star and one-time baseball wonder pitcher Wheeler Burden is transported from 1988 back to 1897 Vienna, Austria, where he meets his father, World War II hero Dilly, who is himself transported to the same time and place from 1944.
The mechanics of this, wisely perhaps, are never explained. Instead, the author offers an emotional rationalisation for these feats.
It so happens that fin de siecle Vienna is something that Burden is deeply familiar with, having learnt all about it from his beloved preparatory school mentor Arnauld Esterhazy, who also taught Dilly.
Just as Back To The Future's Marty McFly had to fend off the amorous attentions of his teenage mother, there are complicated liaisons between supposed relatives in this book.
Freud would have a field day with this and he appears in the book, attempting to psychoanalyse Burden, whom he believes to be severely deluded.
First-time author Edwards, who started writing the book in 1974, also serves up cameos from rock legend Buddy Holly and composer Gustav Mahler to American writer Mark Twain and a young Adolf Hitler.
He recreates a detailed sense of time and place, and also has fun with the circular nature of cause and effect inherent in time-travel stories.
The characters, though, come off as too black or white - they are either noble or despicable.
The writing also has a somewhat stilted quality to it and can be a little repetitive at times.
But as befits a former headmaster, there is a well-designed lesson plan here that draws you in, holds your attention and makes you think.

If you like this, read: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (2004, $23.44 with GST, Books Kinokuniya). This devastating tale of the impact of time-travelling on a relationship is at its heart a deeply moving romance.
(ST)

Camera Obscura
Esplanade Concert Hall/Wednesday

Scottish band Camera Obscura seem at once dated and timeless.
They came on stage in dresses and ensembles of collared shirts and pants, with nary a T-shirt or a pair of jeans in sight.
Lead vocalist Tracyanne Campbell was in a cream outfit with white stockings and the entire group could have been out for a quiet night on the town - circa the 1950s.
But like fellow Glaswegian band Belle & Sebastian, also formed in 1996, they mine a rich vein of timeless melodic pop paired with arch observations.
Sample lyric: You're not a teenager/So don't act like one/Sure she is a heart-breaker/Does she have one?
For most of the 80-minute set though, the near-capacity crowd of 1,500 were content to stay in their seats.
The line-up was heavy on tracks from their last two albums Let's Get Out Of This Country (2006) and Underachievers Please Try Harder (2003), and fans were also treated to three songs from their forthcoming album.
Campbell's voice, however, was decidedly less ethereal and dainty compared to the recordings. The iffy lower range and flattening of the higher notes pointed to her vocal limitations in a live setting.
The fact that the band were static on stage, barely budging from their positions throughout the show, did not help.
It took a while for the crowd to warm up and during an early lull between songs, someone yelled 'It's oh so quiet' to scattered laughter.
Still, the band injected some welcome surprises into the set, segueing into Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al from Let's Get Out Of This Country and leaving their stamp on a cover of Abba's Super Trouper.
By this time, the fans were won over by Campbell's unassuming, low-key charm. Before launching into Super Trouper, she noted: 'Just for the record, we actually didn't write this song.'
Responding to shouted-out requests for obscure numbers such as San Francisco Song, she demurred: 'It's always amusing when people ask us for songs we've forgotten how to play.'
The track that finally roused the house was If Looks Could Kill, with its thumping bass-line and joyous hand-claps. It prompted Campbell to quip: 'We need to write a few more songs that can get us that reaction.'
On the closing number Razzle Dazzle Rose, Camera Obscura proved that, unlike their namesake - an optical device - they were no dated curiosity, pulling off an exquisitely drawn-out finale that drew enthusiastic claps and cheers.
(ST)

Salawati
Marc X Grigoroff


This shot-in-Singapore film starts out as a study in how people cope with grief.
After the death of 15-year-old Shahim, his father questions his faith while his sister, 12-year-old Salawati (a sombre-faced Siti Aisyah Masgot, below), withdraws into a world of her own.
She also begins trailing two men, Raj (Ravi Kumar) and Chan (Chaar Chun Kong), who were somehow involved in her brother’s drowning.
The fact that Wati is Malay, Raj is Indian and Chan is Chinese suggests some kind of comment on race relations.
Salawati owes more than a passing debt to the Oscar-winning Crash (2004), which used intersecting stories to touch on the prickly issue of race in Los Angeles. But like Crash, the set-up here is too deliberate and over-engineered to seem provocative.
Whatever American and Singapore permanent resident writer/director Marc X Grigoroff might have to say about this sensitive topic is undercut by the thinly drawn characters which themselves play into racial stereotypes.
(ST)

The Guardpost
Gong Su Chang


A remote guardpost in the demilitarised zone separating North and South Korea is the perfect setting for this creepy tale.
The film begins with a group of soldiers nervously patrolling the maze-like post and finding several dead bodies as well as a bare-bodied soldier covered in blood and menacingly holding an axe.
Military investigator Sergeant Major Noh (Chun Ho Jin) is given until the morning to unravel the truth of what happened, as the head of the post was the son of the army chief of staff and the cover-up will soon begin.
The opening had promise but the film is littered with red herrings, swimming in a graphic sea of blood and body parts, including brain matter and a blown-off limb.
After a while, you begin to admire writer/director Gong Su Chang’s gumption in upending the audience’s assumptions of the horror thriller genre.
But the movie starts to drag in the middle and, most annoyingly, a videotaped clip which explains what went down just happens to have a crucial portion missing when it ends up in Noh’s hands.
If he had seen this key footage, which is revealed to the audience at the very end, a good 30 minutes could have been shaved off the two-hour running time.
(ST)

Her costumes glittered but it was A*mei herself who shone the brightest at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on Saturday night.
This was the encore performance of the Taiwanese singer's Star tour, which came to Singapore in November last year, and it could just as well have been titled High High High.
The live wire delivered her dance hits with crackling energy and belted out her ballads with aplomb, moving from one to the other with effortless ease. She also rapped, covered Alicia Keys' If I Ain't Got You and surprised the audience with a new Japanese song.
She commanded the four-sided stage and had the capacity crowd of 10,000 enthralled throughout the three-hour show.
In turn, she was visibly moved by the enthusiastic fans who screamed, danced and sang along with gusto.
'I think the rest of the shows should all be held in Singapore,' said an appreciative A*mei. She praised the fans several times but there was no mistaking who the star of the show was.
(ST)

Stir-fried And Not Shaken
By Terry Tan

Monsoon Books/ Paperback/256 pages and eight pages of photos/$23.50 before GST/Major bookstores
This is a fun and funny look at life in Singapore from the 1940s to the 1970s. There is no narrative arc as such. Instead, it is a collection of episodic anecdotes, each affectionately recounted in an easily digestible couple of pages.
Food writer and television chef Terry Tan, who was born in Singapore in 1942 and later moved to London in 1983, makes clear early on that this is not a chronicle of 'the horrors of war or its aftermath' but an idiosyncratic and deeply personal jaunt down memory lane.
'I prefer to perpetuate happier memories instead.'
Even his accounts of the Japanese soldiers are not about their cruelty but include an almost comic look at their propensity for bathing in public in loincloths.
Not surprisingly, a lot of his memories have to do with food, from his grandmother's flying fox curries to vanishing hawker fare such as keropok ubi (tapioca crisps) and tang hu lu (rock sugar bottle gourd).
Tan peppers his memoirs with a large assortment of mischievous cousins, colourful aunts and one very feisty grandmother. In his vignettes, they get into trouble, go on dates, gamble and battle with thieving neighbours, all to amusing effect.
There are also nuggets of trivia scattered throughout the book. I had always thought that lau pok car meant crappy old car, but found out from this book that Piak and Pok were actually the corrupted forms of Fiat and Ford.
Tan also offers glimpses into his own Peranakan heritage, Malay culture, the hard lives of samsui women and what it meant to live in a British colony.
Reading the memoir, you get a sense of the massive transformations that have taken place in Singapore in the past few decades, leaving you both heartened and with an inexplicable sense of loss.


If you like this, read: Sweet Mandarin by Helen Tse (2008, $21.03 without GST, major bookstores). Tse recounts her family history from life in a poor Chinese village to bustling Hong Kong to Britain, and how it is deeply intertwined with food.
(ST)

Big Stan
Rob Schneider


Imagine The Shawshank Redemption filtered through a raunchy, comic sensibility and you have Big Stan - a feel-good prison comedy.
Stan Minton (Saturday Night Live alumnus Rob Schneider) is a two-bit conman who wins a six-month reprieve from jail by hiring a shyster lawyer. He spends this period training under The Master (a chain-smoking, deadpanning David Carradine) in order to protect himself in prison.
By the time he enters jail, the skilled Stan uses his power for good, outlawing rape, sexist rap music and other violent entertainment. But he lets himself be talked into a deal with the prison warden, which threatens to undermine everything he has accomplished.
While the mix of physical comedy and vulgar jokes do not always hit the mark, there are a couple of laughs here for those who are not too thin-skinned.
But then Schneider, star of films such as The Animal (2001) and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), has already shown more restraint as a rookie director than one might expect.
(ST)

The Black Swindler
Yasuharu Ishii

Pop and drama idol Tomohisa Yamashita reprises the role he played in the TV-series adaptation of the best-selling manga Kurosagi, which looks at the world of swindlers.
White swindlers (shirosagi) scam victims for their money while red swindlers (akasagi) steal your heart. Kurosaki (Yamashita) is a black swindler, or kurosagi, who preys on other swindlers.
He does this because his family was wiped out by cheats in a plot masterminded by Katsuragi (Tsutomu Yamazaki), whom he now depends upon for information about other swindlers.
Needless to say, theirs is a complicated relationship.
Yamashita's blank-faced pretty-boy looks are put to good use since he has to adopt various identities as a con artist, but the set-up for the final scam takes way too long and lacks the wow factor, after films such as Hollywood's Ocean's Eleven series.
The cast of characters is also not drawn well and some of the relationships between the characters are not clearly delineated.
Also, repeatedly pinning the blame for Japan's long-lingering economic malaise on bankruptcy fraud perpetrated by swindlers is just too far-fetched and jarring.
You begin to wonder what scam the film-makers are pulling.
(ST)

A Guide to the Birds of East Africa
Nicholas Drayson


On first introduction, Mr Malik is a gentlemanly retiree who spends his time bird-watching. Pleasant enough, but perhaps not the most exciting prospect for Rose Mbikwa, the widowed guide of the weekly bird walks in Nairobi, Kenya.
When a flamboyant schoolmate, Harry Khan, turns up from Mr Malik’s past, the stage is set for a contest between the two. Whoever identifies the greatest number of bird species in a week will earn the privilege of asking Rose to the Nairobi Hunt Club Ball.
This book’s unassuming charm grows on the reader, rather like Mr Malik. Decency and goodness are not the most flashy qualities, but as the contest progresses, Drayson has you rooting firmly for the “short, round and balding” underdog.
The story appears somewhat slight at first, but there is more to bird-watching than meets the eye. It is a hobby, but it can also be a lesson about the virtues of paying attention to one’s surroundings and discovering the richness around us.
A bird’s-eye view can be instructive as the avian world can be read as an allegory for the shenanigans taking place in Kenyan politics.
Drayson does not shy away from the darker side of life in Nairobi. Besides talking about corruption, he also touches on crime, the devastation caused by Aids and the abduction of young men to be sold as soldiers in nearby countries.
A seemingly trifling premise opens up into a far more bountiful world.


If you like this, read: Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
This genteel tale of crime-solving is set in Gaborone, Botswana.
(ST)

Boys Over Flowers The Movie
Yasuharu Ishii

The story: Tsukasa Domyoji, the rich young head of a business conglomerate, announces that he will be marrying Tsukushi Makino in the spring. But the engagement gift of a bejewelled tiara, a Domyoji heirloom, is stolen. In order not to jeopardise the wedding, the two decide to recover it on their own.
Boys Over Flowers is the best-selling shojo (young girl) manga of all time in Japan. It has been the source material for various adaptations, including the Taiwanese version Meteor Garden, which launched the career of the F4 pop idols.
A little background here as the movie picks up where the second season of the Japanese live-action TV series left off, with the cast reprising their roles on the big screen.
Tsukushi Makino (TV actress Mao Inoue) attends a high school for the privileged and finds herself a fish out of water given her lower-class background.
Worse, she crosses the path of F4, the ruling clique of four guys who can make life hell for anyone they choose. But she eventually falls for Tsukasa Domyoji (Jun Matsumoto, member of popular boyband Arashi), the leader of F4, and at the end of Season 2, says yes when he proposes.
There was talk at first of a third season but the producers chose to wrap up the series with a movie instead.
The problem, as with such jumps from the small screen to the big, is how to tell a story that would engage new fans as well as satisfy old ones. Unfortunately, there is little here for the former and only slightly more for the latter.
The contrived story has Makino and Domyoji searching for a stolen tiara so that they can learn about the true meaning of love. The plot is simply an excuse to move them to exotic locations such as Las Vegas, Hong Kong and an island supposedly in the South Seas, to fill up the two-hour-plus running time.
Matsumoto as the arrogant and hot-headed Domyoji and Inoue as the plucky yet vulnerable Makino share some chemistry, but the bickering grows tedious and the lessons learnt are too pat. The issue of class differences is raised and then dismissed in throwaway lines.
To be sure, one is not expecting a serious dissection of social issues here, but perhaps this would have worked better as a two-part TV series finale instead.
Released in Japan in June, distributor Toho expects the film to gross over 10 billion yen (S$130 million), which would make it one of the top-grossing domestic movies of the year.
I guess Boys still rule in Japan.
(ST)