Romance

Olivia Ong

Feel About You

Bevlyn Khoo

Her work has been released in Japan, she has sung a theme song for the hit MediaCorp series, The Little Nyonya, and she is now releasing on home ground a new album of English and Mandarin numbers about love.

I am talking about Olivia Ong. And Bevlyn Khoo. In the Channel 8 drama, Ong crooned Like A Swallow and Khoo sang Keep Warm. Their approach here is similar in another key respect. Ong flexes her song-writing chops on an album of largely original material, while Khoo also composes several tracks on her record.

Compared to the ho-hum selection of cover material on Olivia (2010), Romance offers a dreamy and breezy range of material that is tailor-made for Ong’s sweetly charming vocals.

Let It Rain is, well, a sunny song that waltzes along prettily: “Let it rain, rain/It’s the perfect weather for contemplating/Let it rain, rain/For after such weather /Sunshine will come.”

When The Seas Run Dry And The Stones Go Soft, meanwhile, is gently epic in its ebb and swell: “With you in my heart, life is anchored/Even the wind won’t drift/Watch the seas run dry and stones go soft together, wait for the end of time/Love slowly, no need to rush.”

The constant switching between Mandarin and English takes a little getting used to but it certainly helps that the material is engaging. Ong even cuts loose on The Silly Song. The closing hymn, Amazing Grace, feels out of place though.

There are also cover tracks on Khoo’s offering: Saint Etienne’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart is heartfelt at a slowed-down tempo, but Duran Duran’s Ordinary World is merely pedestrian.

In her own songs, the sentiment is too bald at times. On the title track, she confesses: “Because I love you/Because I need you/Because I want you/And I absolutely hate to let you go.”

At least Call It A Day does something more interesting with the premise of a long-distance relationship: “I love you in the springtime/But you can’t warm my hands/I love to see your flowers/But not the delivery man.”

The three Mandarin tracks here are tacked on as a bonus but there is nothing throwaway about them. They include Keep Warm and Please Don’t Say, a bittersweet love song.

Bitter or sweet, love is in the air for both these songbirds.

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Incendies

Denis Villeneuve

The story: Acting on instructions in their mother Nawal’s will, siblings Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette) try to deliver letters to a father they thought was dead and to an elder brother they did not know they had. They travel to the Middle East to retrace the journey Nawal (Lubna Azabal) took from the land of her birth to Canada and end up uncovering devastating family secrets.

Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies opens with a slap to the face and ends with a punch to the gut.

When siblings Simon and Jeanne find out the contents of their mother’s will, they react with anger and disbelief: Why were they never told about their brother? How can their father be alive? Who is this woman whom they called mother and yet know so little about?

These intensely personal questions anchor the moviegoer’s interest in the story even as a family mystery seems to shift into a political drama.

The tangled politics of Christians versus Muslims and powerful warlords is the incendiary, and sometimes confusing, back story that gradually unfolds. Zeroing in on Nawal’s journey, Villeneuve gives the film a sense of direction and focus.

It is all too easy to be numb to reports of internecine war and the senseless carnage it wreaks.

Here, the devastation is played out in one woman’s fate and in the eyes of the magnetic Azabal, perhaps best known for playing an anti-war activist in the Palestinian film about two friends-turned-suicide bombers in Paradise Now (2005).

She holds court as she ages from a young woman who pays a heavy price for falling in love over her family’s objections to a determined mother tracking down her child as war erupts around her and, finally, to a shell of a woman who is shocked into catatonic silence in her final days.

As the daughter searching for answers and the son who slowly comes to terms with his mother’s past, Desormeaux-Poulin and Gaudette are believable as well.

The ending might seem melodramatic to some but it is entirely plausible within the film and there is an implacable logic to it.

To reveal more would be to rob you of the intense experience of watching the film. Suffice to say the emotional wallop it packs at the end will leave you reeling.

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Overheard 2

Alan Mak, Felix Chong

The story: Manson (Lau Ching Wan) is the frontman broker for a group of Hong Kong tycoons known as the Landlord Club. Their less-than-legal manipulation of the stock market is being monitored by the tech-savvy Joe (Daniel Wu), who has a score to settle with the head of the club, Tony Wong (Kenneth Tsang). Inspector Jack Ho (Louis Koo) has to find out who the bad guys are even as he is forced to do Joe’s bidding.

Despite the title and the return of key cast and crew members, Overheard 2 has nothing to do with the original 2009 film: the stories are not at all linked and the characters are totally different.

What they have in common is a thriller plot where modern surveillance technology is used and abused.

Previously, Lau Ching Wan, Daniel Wu and Louis Koo were on the same team. The situation in the current film is more complicated: Lau, the flawed moral centre of the first film, is more enigmatic here and you are never quite sure where his loyalties lie.

Koo is fairly sympathetic as a cop whose sense of justice is so strong, he even turns in his own wife. Unfortunately, the character is not developed enough.

Overheard 2 can be said to be Wu’s show as Joe employs cool technology in order to exact vengeance for past wrongs.

We are clearly meant to be rooting for him as he is the filial son trying to fulfil his mother’s wish before she topples over into the oblivion of Alzheimer’s disease. Wu also gets to show his stuff as an action leading man as he is involved in the car and foot chase that opens the film.

Writer-directors Alan Mak and Felix Chong are in their element in the tight action scenes – keep an eye out for how Wu wields his motorcycle as a weapon in yet another high-speed pursuit.

There is definitely an attempt to ramp up the thrill level in this chapter but the film still sags in the middle. And for all the high-octane goings-on, Overheard 2 feels less tightly knit and engaging compared to its predecessor.

At least Mak and Chong manage to bring things to an exciting end as Joe tries to outwit Tony Wong (a smug and scowling Kenneth Tsang) and his cronies at their own stock-market game.

With a credible follow-up in the bag, the Overheard series probably is not over and done with just yet.

(ST)

The Ripples

Ellen Loo

Hong Kong’s Ellen Loo makes a splash with her debut solo album. Better known as one-half of indie folk-pop duo at17, the singer-songwriter-guitarist proves she has the chops to go it alone.

There is a raw edge to her earthy tones. Right off the bat, she makes clear with the spirited The Girl Who Doesn’t Play Dumb that this is not some slick anonymous pop product.

This is followed by Freckles and Wait, two tracks that are undoubted highlights. The use of strings gives Freckles an air of doomed melancholy: “Loving you so fiercely, burying that weak shout/The wind blows and the rain departs, leaving me inundated.”

And the rhythmic repetition of words on Wait imbues it with a gently pulsating sense of yearning: “Wait wait, wait wait wait, wait wait wait/Wait for your glance/Wait wait, wait wait wait, wait wait again/Wait for you to say us.”

The record also features two Cantonese numbers: Complete, a dreamy duet with indie stalwart Anthony Wong, and Summer Of Love, probably the most mainstream track here. It also comes with a DVD which includes the music videos for The Girl Who Doesn’t Play Dumb, Freckles, Wait and Summer Of Love. Go ahead, take the plunge into her music.

Love Addict

Prudence Liew

Singer-actress Prudence Liew made her debut in 1986 with her self-titled Cantopop album. She took a break in the late 1990s, released a Mandarin record in 2000, vanished from the scene again, before making a comeback in 2009 with The Queen Of Hardships.

It has been a journey full of ups and downs for the twice-divorced Liew. And now this: an album of Mandarin covers focusing on her need for love. Too bad that the songs picked here are not a particularly revealing bunch. And too much of their arrangement falls into dreaded jazz-lite, easy-listening territory.

While her timbre has some colour, it is by no means alluring. She does a rendition of David Huang’s You Get Me Drunk, which Singapore singer Kit Chan covered as well in her Re-interpreting Kit Chan album earlier this year. Comparing both versions, I would rather go for Chan’s take as I prefer the cleaner, less dated arrangement and her more emotive vocals.

The breezy version of Chyi Chin’s The Original Me and a reworked Jungle Drums from Wong Kar Wai’s Days Of Being Wild are, at least, welcome attempts at something different. They won’t be enough to get you hooked on the album, though.

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Fortune Buddies

Chung Shu Kai

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Hong Kong’s Hui brothers found success with a string of comedies which focused on working-class folks and their hare- brained get-rich-quick schemes.

Fortune Buddies employs that same formula, but without success. Actor-hosts Louis Yuen, Wong Cho Lam and Johnson Lee share an easy chemistry and have that will-do-anything-for-a-laugh spirit which sees them togged out in bad drag and getting beaten up in wrestling matches.

Despite this, Buddies is only intermittently amusing and engaging. The Mandarin dub of the original Cantonese dialogue probably did not help, either.

The film is less a cohesive work than a series of gags and skits, making it hard for the audience to root for the characters, and yet it is not madcap enough to keep one in stitches. One is better off revisiting the Hui brothers’ classic flicks instead.

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Graceful Porcupine

Waa Wei

Moonlight

Soft Lipa & Jabberloop

Matzka

Matzka

Newcomers Matzka’s Best Band win at the Golden Melody Awards in June could just help raise the profile for their unique brand of Taiwanese reggae.

Their self-titled album, Waa Wei’s Graceful Porcupine and Soft Lipa & Jabberloop’s Moonlight are some under-the-radar releases that deserve to be heard.

Singer-songwriter Wei is probably best known here as she was the vocalist for the Taiwanese indie band Natural Q and is also the elder sister of pop singer Queen Wei.

The artist, who once sang about menstruation, may have mellowed a little though the title suggests she is not about to get too cuddly.

Trapped In is a definite highlight on her album as her ethereal voice floats above a delicate sheen of electronica. The whole song shimmers like the sunlit sea, but one with a dark undertow: “You are trapped in memories of me, I am trapped in your suspicions, neither of us can breathe.”

Meanwhile, the Sandee Chan-penned I Am Not A Mathematician plumbs the unknowability of the outcome in a love triangle. Waa Wei complements the naive-sounding lyrics with a babyish coo: “Me plus you minus love/Does that equal to you thinking of him.”

Also giving collaboration a good name is Taiwanese rapper Soft Lipa. On his third album, he works with Japanese jazz quintet Jabberloop to concoct a heady musical fusion on Moonlight.

Opener We Got Jazz spells out what’s involved here: “We got sax, trumpet, keyboard, bass, drums/And we got luv, we got soul, we got skillz, and we got jazz.”

Classic! points to his ambition. On it, he samples Yao Su-rong’s evergreen Not Coming Home Today and asks: “What’s the meaning of super classic? Won’t be changed, won’t be forgotten, won’t be stopped, won’t stop singing.”

The album is richly layered and both the elegantly elegiac She Waltzes With Time and the unsentimental Process ruminate on life and living.

This is the most exciting example of musical cross-pollination in the Chinese pop scene since home-grown singer- songwriter Hanjin Tan and rapper MC Jin’s Buy 1 Get 1 Free (2010).

On the subject of cross-pollination, Matzka’s Taiwanese reggae is an unlikely sounding hybrid that actually bears fruit.

Leader singer Matzka is from the Paiwan aboriginal tribe and while the album appropriates foreign musical forms, the results are undeniably Taiwanese with their colourful language and use of the indigenous dialect.

There is a good-time vibe and leery side to the band. He sings on M.A.T.Z.K.A.: “Looking at your chest’s D-cups makes me want to commit a crime.”

But there is a more serious side to them as well. On the track No K, the band wave the flag of ethnic pride: “Taiwanese, foreigner, can’t tell them apart/Aboriginal, black, can’t tell them apart/Taiwanese people sing Taiwanese songs!”

Even when they obliquely tackle racism and discrimination in Taitung Handsome Chap, they make you want to get your groove on.

So rock on with Matzka, soak up the Moonlight or just chill out with Porcupine. Better yet, make time for all three.

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Confusion

Edison Chen

Disgraced singer-actor Edison Chen lays himself bare on this record – his first album since the sex photo scandal involving him and a bevy of female Hong Kong celebrities broke in January 2008.

For those who want to parse this for his take on the entire affair, he offers plenty of fodder.

In his hip-hop update on the doo-wop of Mr Sandman, he raps in Mandarin: “My name is Chen Guanxi, I’m just like you/I have pain and pressures, and have thought of giving up.”

Later, he goes on: “My life is like a circus show/Jumping around to get to the next stage, I’m like Super Mario.”

One of the most nakedly telling tracks is Man In The Mirror, in which Chen confronts himself: “I’m not perfect but neither am I completely evil/Or I won’t have times when I ponder/The things I’ve done before, I think I’ve seen enough/My experience lets me differentiate between right, wrong, good, evil.”

Admirably, there is little wallowing in self-pity and, against the odds, what strikes you is how defiantly joyous and playful the record sounds. On the brassy Cantonese number Reboot, he exhorts himself to “Upgrade, Reboot”.

The album also boasts contributions from Taiwanese rapper MC HotDog on tracks such as Where Are You, as well as Jay Chou, who wrote lyrics for I Can Fly.

Confusion is both a musically absorbing adventure and a fascinatingly personal document.

Add A Little Happiness

Yisa Yu

Less than a year after her debut album Blue Shorts was released, China’s Yisa Yu (left) is back with her follow-up. Despite the seeming haste, this is a better and more cohesive record than the first.

Yu has found her forte in ballads: not the showboating octave-scaling kind, but the quietly moving variety that gives her crystalline voice ample room to shine.

Prime examples here include Alleyway, Can’t Afford To Get Hurt, Already Nothing To Do With Him and the title track Add A Little Happiness.

Meanwhile, the Wu Bai-composed Don’t You Want Me Any More takes a detour into rock territory while another song, I, starts off slow and ends up jaunty. Her duet with Freya Lim, Listen To You, taken from the hit television series The Fierce Wife, is an uplifting number about friendship.

And her distinctive take on Fish Leong’s Quiet Summer, a version Yu performed at Rock Records’ 30th anniversary gigs, is another disc highlight.

Happiness is a consistently engaging album from start to end.

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West Is West

Ayub Khan-Din

The story: Fifteen-year-old Sajid (Aqib Khan) is bullied at school for being half-Pakistani. His father George Khan (Om Puri) decides that it is time Sajid learnt to be proud of his roots and takes the boy to Pakistan for a visit. Sajid’s English mother Ella (Linda Bassett) is worried about the trip because George still has a wife and family back in Pakistan.

In East Is East (1999), the clash between George’s strict Muslim upbringing and the more liberal Western values his children embraced took place in Salford, Lancashire in 1971.

Five years later, in this sequel, the stage is set for a reverse culture clash when George takes his youngest son back to George’s country of birth to give him a sense of his roots.

Actor-playwright Ayub Khan-Din drew on his own life in writing both films. Sajid is his alter-ego and newcomer Aqib Khan plays the role with spirit and charm.

At first, Sajid seems rather pitiful as someone who is unhappy at school and angry at home. But though initially resistant and defiant, he soon begins to blossom in Pakistan.

All the acting out by Sajid – skipping school, shoplifting – is a cry for attention as he needs a role model in his life. Naturally, he meets a quirky wise old man (Nadim Sawalha) who nudges him along in the right direction. He also strikes up a friendship with a local boy, Zaid the goatherd (Raj Bhansali).

Apart from Sajid’s coming-of-age, several other subplots are worked into the film, including Sajid’s brother Maneer’s (Emil Marwa) search for a bride and the tangled past to be sorted out between George and his two wives.

There is a touching scene between the two women – Ila Arun as Basheera, the wife who was left behind, and Linda Bassett as Ella, George’s second wife – as they seek to communicate their complicated emotions despite the language barrier.

While the film loses some steam in the middle, the Pakistan in the 1970s evoked by the film is a colourful and entrancing distraction, even though the movie was shot in India. The original songs by Indian trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy add to the sense of time and place.

By the time the film starts to tie up all the loose ends, you have come to care for the large cast of characters, even the obstinate and bad-tempered George.

It is good news then that another chapter about the Khan family is being planned. The titles of the first two movies are taken from the Rudyard Kipling poem The Ballad Of East And West though it seems unlikely that they will name the third Never The Twain Shall Meet.

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Fish – The Love Library World Tour 2011

Singapore Indoor Stadium

Last Saturday

It was the perfect endorsement of her title as Queen of Love Songs.

During Malaysian singer Fish Leong’s concert, a fan went down on his knees and proposed to his girlfriend while his buddies held up placards to help him pop the question.

Safe to say that this was truly a most memorable concert for that couple as Leong later offered her congratulations as well. And it was pretty good for the rest of the 6,500-strong crowd, too.

It can be quite a challenge for a singer who is primarily known for her ballads to put on a three-hour-long show. More so because she is neither an energetic performer with sizzling dance moves nor a belter made for huge venues.

Cleverly, the creative folk behind the show kept it interesting with a darker segment: Leong wore an unlikely black leather outfit to venture into rock territory with tracks such as Swallow-tailed Butterfly. As she acknowledged: “I usually sing more gentle love songs and I wouldn’t wear such costumes.”

Even more unusual was the get-up she first appeared in. It was a cream-coloured sculpted confection of feathers that Leong jokingly referred to as her Angry Birds look. Throughout an entertaining and engaging show, the 33-year-old’s trademark warm and nasal tones were in full evidence, though the sound system had her coming across a little too echoey.

And then there were the songs themselves. Leong herself said that she was “lucky and fortunate” to have had such well-written tracks to sing. Cries of recognition greeted the opening strains of each song and fans would sing along with well-loved hits such as Courage, Adoration and Love Song.

Her take on the singer-descends-to- the-stands moment was thoughtful. She went around the hall on a small mobile elevated platform so she remained visible at all times even as it gave fans their chance to take close-up snapshots.

Given her steady output of about an album a year since she started out in 1999, only a small portion of her body of work could be covered. Unfortunately, my favourites such as the sweeping ball- ad Silk Road (2005) and the more recent Will You? (2010) did not make the cut.

Still, it was a treat to hear Grown Up Overnight from her 1999 debut album, bringing one back to when one first encountered that beautifully rich timbre. This was immediately followed by What Love Songs Didn’t Tell You (2010), the hit title track of her latest studio album.

The musical journey reflects Leong’s remarkable tale, of a self-professed timid girl with an unforgettable set of pipes who made her way to become Mandopop royalty.

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Compass Of Life

Dadado Huang

Think of this as the antithesis of K-pop. Instead of brash hooks propelled by thumping beats, we get gently strummed acoustic guitars. It’s Kings Of Convenience’s Quiet Is The New Loud mantra adapted for the Taiwanese folk scene.

Indie singer-songwriter Huang Jie (right) is after the authenticity of experience and emotion. The first track, My High School Classmates, begins: “Graduated from university, went into the army, as for the future, not really curious about it.”

The slacker vibe continues on What Day Is It Today: “On this breezy and sunny spring afternoon/Can we not think about consequences.”

From the title alone, Taipei Balaba looks like it might be a reworking of Dadadalada off his debut EP, Hard Days (2007), but it is a more sprightly and humorous take on a budding romance: “Babalabalabalabala give me childishness/Babalabalabala I’m giving you a toy for a present.”

His soothing, lulling voice goes hand in glove with the material and when he asks on Butterfly: “Do you like to listen to music like me/Do you wish to learn more about the world?”, you will find yourself nodding in assent.

On album closer Me And You, he muses: “I honestly face all the happiness and unhappiness/To find the balance between reality and dreams.”

Huang might be an idealistic and child-like slacker adrift in the sometimes confusing cityscape of modern life but Compass points the way to a momentary respite.

Jam Wild Dreams

Jam Hsiao

Local composers and lyricists have been making their mark on the regional Mandopop scene for a while now. Still, it is quite unusual to see so many of them credited on an album by a non-home-grown singer.

On Taiwanese singer Jam Hsiao’s third album of original material, the credits list includes Hanjin Tan, Eric Ng, Xiaohan, Lee Shih Shiong, Lee Wai Shiong and Tanya Chua.

Chua’s Can Only Miss You is a sensitive ballad that has Hsiao emoting in his falsetto range while Xiaohan once again pens a set of thoughtful lyrics for Clone about the wish to create a stand-in for a person when his heart dies.

Between Lee Shih Shiong’s two contributions, I prefer the urbane R&B-flavoured A World With Continual Surprises to the bombastic prog-rock title track, Wild Dreams.

The bonus disc is all Hsiao as he sings his own compositions. For advertisement songs, they are surprisingly listenable. In particular, Legend Of The White Snake stands out for marrying traditional Chinese opera music with rock bravado, while Jasmine Love is sweetly intoxicating.

The question has never been whether Hsiao can sing. Rather, it has always been what he will choose to do with that richly evocative voice.

Judging from the range of the material on this album, he seems to want to be all things to all people.

It is a wild dream but with those pipes, he comes closer than almost anyone else in pulling it off.

(ST)

Wu Xia

Peter Chan

The story: Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen) appears to be a simple papermaker living with his wife (Tang Wei) and two sons in a quiet village. His real identity is questioned when he, unarmed, kills two highly skilled brigands who try to rob a shop. Detective Xu Baijiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) investigates and discovers his connection to a powerful, shadowy figure known as The Master (Jimmy Wang Yu).

When director Peter Chan named this movie Wu Xia – which refers to the adventures of martial arts proponents and the category of movies dealing with such tales – it signalled his grand ambition to take on an entire genre that is as rich as it is well worn.

And he has turned in a work that is invigorating and exhilarating, undiminished by the fact that acclaimed auteurs such as Zhang Yimou and Lee Ang had in recent years left their marks on the genre with modern-day classics Hero (2002) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

While big names such as Donnie Yen and Takeshi Kaneshiro headline the film, it is the casting coup of Jimmy Wang Yu that elevates Wu Xia to a different level.

Wang was the biggest male star of the late 1960s and he was best known for playing the heroic pugilist in classics such as The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), a film that Chan pays homage to here.

The imposingly authoritative Wang brings a palpable sense of menace to the role of The Master and his final fight with Yen is both emotionally tense and physically intense.

Before the electrifying showdown, however, the film has to cover quite a bit of ground first. The first part of Wu Xia plays like a mix of Reign Of Assassins (2010) and Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame (2010) by way of American rock band REM’s visually inventive Imitation Of Life video.

As Xu investigates the deaths of the robbers, the fluidly executed robbery sequence – props to Yen for the action choreography – is played back in fast-forward, rewind and slow-motion modes as the camera zooms in and out on small details.

Wu Xia has a strong sense of a specific time and place, as opposed to the more generic wuxia settings seen in recent gongfu movies such as 14 Blades (2010) and True Legend (2010).

It adds to the film’s emotional resonance to see villagers expressing their feelings in song and there are striking scenes of them hailing Liu’s heroic exploit and berating Xu when he goes too far in his investigation.

In another welcome surprise, Yen actually turns in a genuinely moving performance. Whereas his hooded eyes sometimes seemed to be masking boredom as he went through the motions in other action flicks, here they serve to hide a painful past which his character would rather forget.

For a film-maker known for his sensitive dramas such as Comrades: Almost A Love Story (1996), Chan fittingly offers more than just sterling action and serves up musings on the nature of law, justice and humanity.

As Xu digs deeper into Liu’s background, he ponders whether it is worthwhile to pursue justice at all costs: “Is the law more important than humanity?”

Wu Xia is a cinematic treat that engages the eye, the heart and the mind.

(ST)

Win Win

Thomas McCarthy

The story: Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) is a middle-aged family man struggling to keep it all together. His legal practice is barely surviving, he has bills to pay and the high school wrestling team he is coaching is stuck on a losing streak. Through some questionable manoeuvring, he begins to collect monthly cheques for looking after an older client, Leo (Burt Young). Then out of the blue, Leo’s grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) turns up.

A Paul Giamatti casting is cinematic shorthand for a very specific type of role: someone to whom life has not been quite kind, but while he might be down from a couple of hard knocks, he is certainly not out. The way he plays it with a quirky, comic edge, he has you rooting for his underdog persona.

He is fondly remembered for his turn as a wine-loving failed writer in Sideways (2004) and Win Win seems at first to offer a study of a familiar character. One of the pleasures of the film is that it does not quite go where you think it is headed.

The set-up points us towards a mid-life crisis for Mike but imperceptibly, and in a completely natural manner, the film shifts into a drama about wrestling.

Writer-director Thomas McCarthy had previously helmed the acclaimed dramas The Visitor (2008) and The Station Agent (2003), both about lonely men forging emotional connections. He is again in fine form here as he approaches the cliche-ridden sports film, well, sideways.

Win Win is the likeable, low-key, indie version of something like, say, The Blind Side (2009), where an unlikely athlete triumphs against the odds.

When Kyle first turns up in the movie as a troubled runaway kid, he appears to be a typical sullen movie teenager and the scrawny and tattooed boy’s unexpected blossoming on the wrestling mat is a delight to watch.

Newcomer Shaffer was himself a successful high-school wrestler and that probably adds to the authenticity of his portrayal.

More importantly, it is a performance without guile or artifice.

The supporting cast is strong as well, particularly Bobby Cannavale (from TV’s Third Watch and Will & Grace) and Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development) as Mike’s bickering fellow coaches.

More plot turns lie in the movie: Kyle’s mother gets out of rehab and shows up, threatening to upset Mike’s win-win situation with regard to both the guardianship of her father and Kyle’s winning ways.

By that point, we have come to care about the fates of the various characters in McCarthy’s deeply humanist drama, which is really about whether one man will do the right thing.

(ST)

Ocean Butterflies 25th Anniversary Concert Compilation

Various artists

What better way to tell the story of a record label than through its music?

Home-grown Ocean Butterflies marked a quarter of a century in existence with a big bash concert at The Max Pavilion on June 25, and has now released a commemorative album.

The title is somewhat misleading as the songs collected here are not from the gig but are mostly the original studio versions.

The heavily nostalgic Disc One points to the label’s xinyao or Singapore folk roots, and the opening strains of Liu Ruizheng’s Tracks In The Desert will immediately transport you back to the genre’s 1980s heyday.

The compilation format also harks back to the company’s first releases such as The Earliest Dream.

If you need more help travelling back in time, check out the photographs of those bygone days in the commemorative magazine, which is sold bundled with the discs only at CD- Rama.

Disc Two marks the label’s ventures into pop territory with the inclusion of the now-defunct 2Girls’ Da Sao (Cleaning), Joi Chua’s Kan Jian (See) and By2’s World Of Adults.

The label’s big guns are easily identifiable as they are represented by at least two songs and include xinyao pioneer Liang Wern Fook as well as regional successes Kit Chan, A-do and JJ Lin.

The Straws trio, who co-founded Ocean Butterflies, also get two numbers here.

The collection is a rich and diverse offering. But even this selection is a mere taste of what the record company has put out over the years.

Dive right in.

Reform

Jane Zhang

This is a big, bright, glossy pop album from China’s Jane Zhang. The dubious sartorial choice of a bodysuit for her cover shot aside, it is a move in the right direction.

It is certainly more engaging than her fourth record Believe In Jane (2010), which was over-long and too generic in parts.

Things get off to a stomping start as she declares on My Looks: “My time, is now on stage, come on”. Crazy For Love is slick R&B, while the Adia-penned Love Just Love is a definite highlight even with its echoes of Rihanna.

Zhang is equally at home with ballads such as If It’s Wrong Then Let It Be Wrong. And she is confident enough of her vocal abilities to not over-sing.

On the album-closing title track, she pronounces: “I say I want to change, so I’ll change, If you see a flaw, you should build it over.”

Can’t go wrong with that attitude.

(ST)

A Beautiful Life

Andrew Lau

The story: Outgoing Li Peiru (Shu Qi) works as a property agent in Beijing. She and shy copper Fang Zhendong (Liu Ye) meet at a karaoke joint one night when she throws up on him after one too many drinks. Thus begins a tangled relationship set against the backdrop of an economic downturn, a terminal illness and more boozing.

There needs to be a moratorium on Shu Qi acting drunk. She was drunk in Hou Hsiao- Hsien’s Millennium Mambo (2001) and drunk again in Feng Xiaogang’s If You Are The One (2008).

Is there some clause in her contract that stipulates she needs to get all boozy and tipsy in every other film?

The character of Peiru seems at first to be a retread of If You Are The One’s hard-drinking and deeply unhappy Xiaoxiao. It is as if the investors wanted a version of that huge box-office hit with a more traditionally good-looking leading man in the form of Liu Ye as opposed to the bald and older Ge You.

And one with more scenarios of Shu Qi inebriated. Director Andrew Lau pretty much lets her run amok in one drunken scene after another as she flails about and rails about how unhappy she is.

Perhaps Lau, who is best known for the Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002-2003), should stick to thrillers and keep away from romantic dramas.

Forget subtlety as the opposites- attract angle is worked to death here. She is outgoing and brash and having an affair with her boss; he is shy and straight as an arrow and chastely alone after his wife left him. She lives in a cold and alienating modern high-rise apartment; he lives in a hutong or narrow alley, with its rustic down-to-earth charm.

True, Peiru does have reasons to be unhappy but the way her problems are revealed does not make her sympathetic, merely wearying.

Liu, who has done good work in superior movies such as Lan Yu (2001) and City Of Life And Death (2009), does his darnedest to emote but is wasted in this muddled melodrama.

It is hard to work out the attraction between the two leads when Peiru is nice to Zhendong only when she needs something from him and the only thing he can articulate is that he likes hearing her call his name.

Then again, he has something of a messiah complex and Peiru needs plenty of rescuing, so maybe they are right for each other after all.

He is devoted to taking care of his somewhat simple-minded brother Zhencong (former Olympic diving champion Tian Liang) and it is the latter’s romance with a mute girl that is the more moving tale here.

There is an abrupt switch from unconvincing romance to manipulative tearjerker in the last 30 minutes of the film.

And the ridiculous ending leaves Life with an aftertaste that is anything but beautiful.

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I Love You, John

Sandee Chan

Taiwan’s Sandee Chan has tackled weighty topics before. The song Too Late examined death, while her last album’s title track, If There Is One Thing That Is Important, wrestled with the question of what fans are looking for. For her existential pains, she walked away with the Golden Melody Award for Best Mandarin Female Singer in 2009.

This time around, the singer-songwriter-producer-arranger lightens up and serves up electronic pop. Her declaration of intent can be found on the track Youth: “Music, let’s play”.

Hence, the title track chugs along on synthesizer riffs as Chan purrs playfully: “What’s up John/John’s very strange/Is it really John/John it is/Or don’t you want John/Oh it’s probably John.”

It is pop with a wink and a nudge from someone who once declared I Have Never Been A Humorous Girl.

She free-associates on Lullaby: “Baby pink, Baby blue, Baby grand, playing your lullaby.” She juxtaposes gym workouts and relationships on Calisthenics For Two with its refrain of “I love you, two of us exercising four limbs”.

Another theme running through the album is music itself.

Chan asks on Beautiful Life: “How do you sing the chorus of a beautiful life so that it sounds moving and thoughtful?” While on Youth, she pleads: “Music, please please quickly save me, please please teach me to rock, please please give me soul”.

Happily, her own albums are part of the answer.

Sticky

Cyndi Wang

Has Taiwan’s Cyndi Wang gotten less annoying or have I just grown accustomed to her voice?

The album might be Sticky but the cutie-pie is at her least cloying here.

The singer-actress wrote Stick To You, a slice of light-hearted pop about a nascent relationship which ends on an unexpectedly snarky note.

She also dishes out helpings of bouncy dance pop, with the retrolicious Rock Girl being the most fun.

Wang does a passable job with the radio-friendly ballads such as Don’t Cry and Love Is Empty. But it stops short of being deeply felt, even when she sings on the latter: “When dreams and reality collide/I realise love has become empty/As if a blackhole/Has swallowed love whole.” Not that it will matter to those who simply want to drown in her liquid Bambi eyes.

Sense Of Security

Red Flower

The debut album from Red Flower mixes a pop-rock sensibility with musings mostly about love.

Apart from engaging, energetic numbers such as A Sense Of Security, Love Second Time Round and High High High, the material sometimes suffers from a lack of distinctiveness.

If this Taiwanese band are to bloom, they will need more songs such as Moonlight, which sounds sinuous and at once retro and modern – and unlike anything else on the disc.

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Japanese Singer

Ken Hirai

The title may be prosaic, the record is anything but.

The smooth vocal stylings of Japanese singer-songwriter Ken Hirai cover quite a bit of ground on his eighth studio album.

R&B is a self-deprecating exploration of his identity: “R&B, I’m Japanese, but I love it/Although my dance moves aren’t fantastic/R&B, I’m Japanese, but I love it/Although my English ain’t that great.”

Loving You is a retro-sounding ballad that was the theme song for the Japanese-Korean remake of the romance Ghost.

Hirai goes slinky on Candy, complete with falsetto flair: “Love me love me love me love me, you see me sticking out my tongue/Coming coming coming coming I’m your cherry, a little erotic, intense, painful, jealous.” It is pure ear candy even if a snatch of melody is pilfered from Hikaru Utada’s Wait & See: Risk.

Since his third record The Changing Same (2000) topped the Oricon album chart, he has been a regular fixture on the J-pop music scene.

Be it something uplifting, romantic or sexy, as Hirai proclaims on the opening track, he just wants to “sing sing sing forever”.

Love Presents

Linda Liao

Taiwan’s Linda Liao has gone from presenting songs on the weekly countdown show on MTV Chinese to appearing on the charts in her own right.

Seven years after the release of her second album I Support You, she is having another go at a singing career.

Love Oh Love has a mid-tempo groove that does not overtax her so-so vocals while the English lyrics blithely rhyme fly, cry, try.

At least there is a welcome display of spunkiness on tracks such as Crown Prince Imperial Concubine, Starring Role and LP, a duet in which she and Malaysian singer-songwriter Penny Tai trade advice and encouragement on relationships.

Perhaps the Arys Chien-composed I Will Work Hard offers a glimpse into how she feels about music at this juncture: “I know it’s not easy, but I will work hard/Compose my heart, venture bravely on alone.”

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Not Alone

Yen-j

After losing out on the Golden Melody Best New Artiste award to Weibird Wei, Taiwanese singer-songwriter Yen-j has pipped him to the release of a sophomore album.

Yen-j rightly deserved a nomination for the fresh jazz-pop sounds of Thanks Your Greatness (2010). And the bouncy opener here Thanks For Your Inspiration initially suggests that Not Alone will be more of the same – both in name and music.

Unfortunately, lightning fails to strike twice. The inventiveness and playfulness that characterised his debut album seems to be less in evidence here.

Where he once wondered if he was ahead of the curve of mainstream Mandopop, he is now firmly ensconced in it on tracks such as Good Things and the duet with Rene Liu, No Melody Can Match To You.

While Love Is Curry from the first album had deliciously sampled the jazz standard Take The A Train, his take here on Charlie Parker’s classic bebop track Donna Lee is less satisfying.

Still, the album perks up towards the end and Take Your Willpower has flashes of that fiercely individualistic young man who broke out last year: “Want to hurt me? Want to scare me? Not that easily.”

Here’s hoping that Yen-j maintains that kind of courage when it comes to his music.

Answer

Hagen Troy

Local singer-songwriter Hagen Troy is the man behind hits such as Wonder In Madrid for Jolin Tsai and Love Has Always Been There for Rachel Liang.

He has a knack for easy-breezy radio-friendly compositions which Answer serves up on tracks such as As Long As You’re Happy. Meanwhile, Let Me Tell You and Puppet venture into dance-pop territory. The album is lyrically diverse as well, tackling everything from romantic relationships to the nature of lies to the greatness of mothers.

If you have questioned what is happening with the local music scene, this is one Answer worth checking out.

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Treasure Inn

Wong Jing

If Hong Kong’s Wong Jing had a middle name, it would be Prolific. He has directed 98 films, produced 138 and has scriptwriter credit for 149.

His output is highly erratic, encompassing everything from the action comedy of the classic God Of Gamblers (1989) to sexploitation flicks such as Raped By An Angel 4: The Raper’s Union (1999).

Happily, Treasure Inn is in the vein of the former. The MacGuffin here is a stolen white jade Guanyin statue but the point is really to watch the actors making fools of themselves.

Nick Cheung and Nicholas Tse, who were both in the taut thriller The Stool Pigeon (2010), ditch their grim and intense personas and put on their silly hats. Cheung is a hoot to watch as a lowly buck-toothed constable who has an inflated view of his looks. Tse, though, perhaps distracted by marital problems with wife Cecilia Cheung, seems rather subdued here.

Throw in Huang Yi and Charlene Choi as their respective love interests, a gathering of crooks and thieves at a desert inn auction and nonsensical gags and it all adds up to an enjoyably rambunctious ride.

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13 Assassins

Takashi Miike

The story: In the dying days of the feudal system in Japan, Lord Naritsugu’s (Goro Inagaki) twisted appetite for sex and violence ignites widespread outrage. But he is above the law as he is the younger brother of the shogun. A trusted samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) is hired to kill Naritsugu and he rounds up 11 more men for the job. They are later joined by a hunter Koyata (Yusuke Iseya), making up the titular 13 killers.

Japanese director Takashi Miike is associated with graphic violence in movies such as Ichi The Killer (2001).

Perhaps having gotten that gore fest out of his system, 13 Assassins, a remake of Eeichi Kudo’s 1963 black- and-white film, feels restrained.

There are at least two scenes of seppuku, or ceremonial self-disembowelling, but Miike refrains from zooming in on the guts spilling out.

Not that there is a lack of onscreen violence, though some of it is implied rather than depicted. Before we see Lord Naritsugu, viewers are told horrific tales of his rapaciousness, including details of what he does to the daughter of a rebel leader.

It is hard to imagine that a man could be so depraved but Goro Inagaki from the evergreen J-pop outfit SMAP turns in a chilling performance with his cold, dead eyes.

The film then becomes a battle of wits between Shinzaemon, which veteran actor Koji Yakusho imbues with noble gravitas, and Naritsugu’s head samurai Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), a tragic samurai who clings desperately onto the notion of loyalty. Both sides work out their attack and defence strategies as Naritsugu has to travel home from Edo.

All this is a set-up for the last stand, in which the vastly outnumbered 13 assassins turn a small peaceful town into a death trap.

Miike keeps the ensuing bloodbath riveting as there are myriad inventive ways in which the town has been rigged with booby traps and divisive barriers and incredibly, the 13 men seem to be gaining the upper hand at first.

Inevitably, the sheer numerical superiority of Naritsugu’s forces begins to wear them down.

It would not be giving anything away to reveal that there are losses among the assassins. But since there are 13 of them, personalities get lost in the mix and the emotional impact of some of the deaths is negligible.

Among the characters who do stand out are Masataka Kubota as Oguta, the poignantly young samurai, and Takayuki Yamada as Shinrokuro, a dispirited samurai taking a gamble on achieving something with his life.

While the plot to bring down Naritsugu is painted in black-and-white, good-and-evil extremes, Miike is also clearly ambivalent about the samurai ethos of honour, loyalty and sacrifice.

The hunter Koyata, played with humour and loose-limbed dexterity by model-actor Yusuke Iseya, grouses about the “boring samurai” and in one scene, displays a voracious sexual appetite as well.

It is a funny and disquieting moment that unmistakably marks this as a Miike flick.

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Green Lantern

Martin Campbell

The story: Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is a brash and cocky pilot who has yet to come to terms with his father’s death in a plane crash. He also has an unresolved relationship with fellow pilot Carol Ferris (Blake Lively). Naturally, all this makes him the top pick to be a new Green Lantern warrior, the first human to be chosen to be a protector of the universe. His power comes from a ring which enables him to physically project his will and he later proves to be instrumental in the battle against an enemy, Parallax, who feeds on fear.

You wonder if Green Lantern gets much respect from his fellow spandexed crime fighters and world saviours.

Should there be a convention of superheroes in town, one imagines that Superman automatically gets bragging rights for, well, being born super; Spider-Man can boast of his Broadway musical (even if it has been critically panned); while Iron Man will look smugly on, as he knows that his movie franchise has made heaps of money.

Meanwhile, Green Lantern has to lug his lantern around for fear of running out of power for his cheap-looking ring.

And the others probably resent the fact that there are a few thousand intergalactic Green Lantern warriors taking up space and hogging the hors d’oeuvres.

The only one Lantern gets to lord over is Green Hornet, who is not even part of the line-up of either DC or Marvel Comics. Tsk.

All of which is to say that Green Lantern is not a cool superhero and that is something a US$200-million (S$247-million) budget, 3-D effects and Ryan Reynolds in a skin-tight sheath cannot quite fix.

Even director Martin Campbell, who successfully rebooted the James Bond franchise with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006), is not up to the task.

He aims a potshot or two, but is otherwise reluctant to take the mickey out of a superhero who has the lamest masked disguise ever.

Instead, we get earnest speeches about conquering fear and a decidedly lacklustre scene in which Hal argues for Earth’s survival before a council of elders.

With the exception of perhaps Buried (2010), Reynolds’ onscreen achievements continue to be eclipsed by his off-screen ones, notably as People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive last year and a two-year stint as Mr Scarlett Johansson.

Regrettably, the chemistry between him and co-star Blake Lively (from TV’s Gossip Girl) is more friendly than sizzling.

But at least she gets to be the spunky gal who helps to save the day rather than a mere damsel in distress.

There is one other key element missing from this superhero flick: A memorable arch enemy. Where would Superman be without Lex Luthor or Spider-Man without the Green Goblin?

Here, we get the amorphous blob that is Parallax, an error of a villain who barely has a personality.

The potential of Peter Saarsgard’s Dr Hector Hammond – as a tragic character who is thrust into villainy – is, unfortunately, not fulfilled.

The teaser at the end of the film suggests, though, that a more interesting nemesis lies in wait for Hal should a sequel roll around.

If not, Green Lantern should just skip the next gathering of superfolk and spare himself the ragging.

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The Tell Tale Heart

Tizzy Bac

Taiwanese indie stalwarts Tizzy Bac take inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe’s macabre tale of murder and insanity on their fifth full-length album.

The first nine tracks – beginning with All Is Dream and ending with Dream Is Over – can be taken as a song cycle in which the trio tackle the darker side of relationships and life with numbers such as Death Of An Insurance Salesman.

They won me over with Who Has Eaten My Brain, in which loneliness is personified as a brain-eating zombie.

Vocalist and lyricist Chen Hui-ting imagines herself being stalked: “Hiding in the crowd, don’t be too conspicuous, I can’t, can’t be found by loneliness.”

Doomsday Piano Player, though, feels like a weaker retread of the brilliant Wedding Singer off their wonderfully titled last album, I’m Not Afraid Of Demons If I’ve Seen Hell (2009).

The penchant for doom and gloom could easily be dreary but there is a wicked sense of humour that rears its head every so often.

The accompanying visuals in the lyric booklet certainly help with Chen, drummer Lin Chein-yuan and bassist Hsu Che-yu quirkily represented by toy figurines.

And on the song Nobility And Humour, with its hand claps and joyous piano, they declare: “Everyone wants to look dashing, I just want nobility and humour.”

There is more to savour after the song cycle as Tizzy Bac dive into a rich clutch of songs.

There is I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone with its skittering beats, the synth-propelled Forget Throw Away and the English number Every Dog Has Its Lawn, which is somewhat nonsensical, but winningly so.

The sprawling album may seem a little daunting to get through at first but it is rich in musical and lyrical detail that makes it worth revisiting.

This is one that you will take to heart.

People Sing For People

Mr.

Since emerging from the underground indie scene in 2008, Canto-rock quintet Mr. have quickly built a name for themselves.

I did a double take listening to them for the first time as lead singer Alan Po sounds like a dead ringer for one of my favourite male vocalists Eason Chan. There is that same rich, expressive voice, though Po’s is a shade less evocative.

Indeed, the band once recorded a track titled If I Were Eason Chan for their debut album If I Am... (2009).

On their new album, Mr. go for energetic rousers such as Zero Hour Commotion and stirring anthems such as Storm.

It is their soft-rock ballads that leave the most lasting impression, though, as Po shows his more sensitive side with numbers such as That Year, This Day.

On the beautifully understated closer Forget You In This Way, Po delivers a restrained performance that puts his sexy lower register front and centre. He comes more into his own and sounds less like Chan. And that is certainly no bad thing.

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Pinoy Sunday

Ho Wi Ding

The story: Filipinos Dado (Bayani Agbayani) and Manuel (Jeffrey ‘Epy’ Quizon) are guest workers in Taipei. One Sunday, they come across a red couch that is abandoned on the street and decide to haul it back to their dormitory.

One of the pleasures of watching films is the fact that it can open a window into a new world – which sometimes happens to be one you are familiar with, only seen from a totally different perspective.

Pinoy Sunday takes place in Taipei but is largely filtered through the eyes of its Filipino characters. Instead of Mandarin and Minnan, it is Tagalog we hear even as the iconic Taipei 101 building looms in the background. Indeed, Anna (Meryll Soriano), a Filipino domestic helper, remarks at one point: “My ears hurt when they curse in Chinese.”

The movie is an exercise in empathy, which director and co-scriptwriter Ho Wi Ding executes with humour and compassion. The Malaysia-born, Taipei- based film-maker was named Best New Director at the Golden Horse Awards last November for this film.

In addition, the film also features a classic odd-couple set-up. Manuel is the charming daydreamer who cajoles the more cautious Dado into taking part in his schemes. As the irascible Manuel, Epy Quizon mixes smooth-talking smarts with a sparkle in his eye, playing off Bayani Agbayani’s grumpy reluctance.

It is an engagingly realistic friendship as they quibble, sulk and groan their way across Taipei while straining under the weight and bulk of a red couch.

The sight of two men struggling with a sofa is a simple but effective visual gag and Ho also cooks up several entertaining episodes along the way, including a detour to the police station and their involvement in an attempted suicide.

For all its light comedic tone, there are glimpses of the darker underside of the lives of foreign workers.

Celia (Alessandro de Rossi), the girl who catches Manuel’s eye, is a domestic helper who is sleeping with a married man. And one of the first things that Dado sees on arriving at Taipei’s airport is a fellow countryman being deported back to the Philippines.

It also means, however, that the film takes a while to get to the men’s adventures in furniture transportation.

There is a sense of urgency to their undertaking as they need to make it back to their dormitory before the curfew and the very real threat of deportation hangs over their heads.

You root for them to beat the clock and wonder how such a story would have unfolded here and what Singapore would look like through Filipino eyes.

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Diva

Wakin Chau

Taiwan’s Wakin Chau gets in touch with his feminine side – complete with make-up and hairpiece. Yes, that’s him on the cover as a Chinese opera female impersonator.

The makeover makes sense since Chau is covering songs by women singers here. He does not change the gender in the material, so on Winnie Hsin’s Understanding, he sings: “I thought I would seek revenge/But I didn’t/When I saw the man I once loved deeply as helpless as a baby.”

There is a sensitivity to his reading that just about makes it work. He comes off even better when one compares this to Eric Moo’s nuance-free belting on The Classic (2009), in which he also covered songs by female artists. Some of the more recent numbers, including Sandy Lam’s At Least There Is Still You and A-mei’s Hostage, are still too fresh in the mind to be reinterpreted.

The remake of Anita Mui’s Women Are Like Flowers is anything but safe, though, as it features Peking opera artist Hu Wenge. While the late Mui’s singular version sounded like a lament, Chau’s version, intriguingly enough, sounds more like a paean to women. Guess you could say this record is one instance where diva behaviour is acceptable.

Soul_Mate

Rachel Liang

On her third album, Taiwan’s Rachel Liang ventures beyond singing about love and muses about friendship as well. The title track is in fact how one shades into the other, though the lyrics pretty much spell things out: “I love you very much, I’m really sure, you’re like a lover, and a soul mate.”

The runner-up in the second season of singing competition One Million Star sounds shrill on the ballads and fares better on the faster-paced tracks. The perky Happy Holiday is about leaving a love triangle behind while the Adia-penned Can’t Take It captures the dizzy joy of falling in love.

After all the ups and downs of friendships and relationships, the album ends with Still Friends, an upbeat number about moving on, which accepts that love, sometimes, is simply not meant to be.

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Something Borrowed

Luke Greenfield

The story: Attorney Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the wallflower to Darcy’s (Kate Hudson) obnoxious Venus flytrap. Somehow though, they have remained best friends through the years and Darcy even met her husband-to-be Dex (Colin Egglesfield) through Rachel. Then one night, after having had too much to drink, Rachel ends up sleeping with Dex.

Ginnifer Goodwin is 33 but there is still something of the little-girl-lost look about her.

Best known for her turn as a Mormon wife in the television drama Big Love, she is well cast as Rachel, bringing a degree of vulnerability to a character who is something of a doormat.

It also means that we are firmly in her corner when Rachel slips up and sleeps with her best friend’s fiance.

The deck is further stacked in her favour when we learn, though a series of flashbacks, that there used to be a flickering attraction between Rachel and Dex back in law school.

Goodwin and Colin Egglesfield, from the long-running soap opera All My Children, make for a sweet couple and it is clear who is meant to end up with whom.

It never is a mystery in romantic comedies as to who is right for each other but the pleasure is in watching the characters get there.

The problem here is that the more the movie drags on, the less sympathetic Rachel and Dex become.

Taiwanese soaps are not the only culprits when it comes to characters who dither about without being able to make up their minds and take action.

The only one spouting some sense is Ethan, a long-time friend of Rachel and Darcy.

John Krasinski, from the TV comedy The Office, plays the platonic confidante and also serves up some laughs when he pretends to be gay to escape the attention of an over-zealous female admirer.

After all that set-up and build-up, the inevitable showdown between Rachel and Darcy is simply not very satisfying.

In a sign that her star is not shining quite as brightly after ho-hum romantic comedies such as Fool’s Gold (2008) and Bride Wars (2009), Hudson has been relegated to playing second fiddle here. And an unlikeable one at that.

Ideally, the film, based on the 2005 novel by Emily Giffin, would have explored in a more thoughtful manner the toxic relationship between the two frenemies.

But for that to happen, Darcy would need to be an actual character and not a convenient irritant.

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Finishing The Hat

By Stephen Sondheim

American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim is a towering figure in the genre of musical theatre. His body of work is held in such high esteem that a 1994 New York Magazine cover story even asked, “Is Stephen Sondheim God?”

He started out as a lyricist for the hit shows West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959) and went on to pen both the music and words for influential works such as Company (1970), which explored modern-day relationships, and Sweeney Todd (1979), whose unlikely protagonist was a murderous barber.

What this volume does is to collect his lyrical output from 1954’s Saturday Night through to 1981’s Merrily We Roll Along. As the subtitle spells it out, the lyrics are presented with “attendant comments, principles, heresies, grudges, whines and anecdotes”.

Sondheim has three key principles that he constantly reiterates: God is in the details, less is more and content dictates form.

For example, he points out that in the song Losing My Mind, the line “To think about you” is more effective than “And think about you” as it takes a character deeper into her obsession.

Not that Finishing The Hat is insufferably self-congratulatory. If anything, Sondheim is his own harshest critic and often points out what he considers to be flaws in his work.

He also takes potshots at some unexpected composers and lyricists, including Oscar Hammerstein II. Not only was he one-half of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the team behind South Pacific (1949) and The Sound Of Music (1959), he was also a mentor and surrogate father to Sondheim.

While acknowledging his debt to the man, Sondheim calls him out for redundancy and sometimes getting carried away with pretty images.

There are also juicy bits of trivia and arresting anecdotes scattered throughout the volume from the fact that he has stockpiled a lifetime’s supply of Blackwings pencils and yellow legal pads to Hermione Gingold’s surprising audition for A Little Night Music (1973).

This is essential reading for fans and anyone with an interest in the process of artistic creation. Sondheim’s musicals are, of course, essential for everyone.

If you like this, read: Art Isn’t Easy: The Theater Of Stephen Sondheim by Joanne Gordon. An academic look at Stephen Sondheim’s musicals.

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R U Watching?

A-Mei

All eyes are on how the Taiwanese diva will follow up her 2009 breakthrough album Amit. For Amit, she had scooped six trophies, including one for Best Female Vocalist, at the Golden Melody Awards last year.

There is no sign here of Amit, the alter ego unveiled on her last record, although her latest offering does display a split personality.

R U Watching? is daringly sequenced, with five ballads in a row, followed by five uptempo songs. Top lyricist Lin Xi writes the words for all the ballads, while A-Mei’s manager Chen Chen-chuan pens the words to the five fast tracks.

Artists would usually mix it up to keep things interesting for listeners with short attention spans. But A-Mei is confident enough that she can draw you in with her big emotive voice. And she does.

The first half works beautifully because of the quality of the material. The opener is a bluesy torch number, What Time Is It Already, while A Dialogue With Myself has her singing a duet with herself. Taiwanese newcomer Yen-J composed They, a sweet tale of romance. And My Dearest has A-Mei musing tenderly about a former lover.

When listeners get to the title track, after the halfway mark, the record’s tempo and character change: The song, with its mysterious, thrilling and shrill strings, sounds like it could be the Mandarin theme song to a James Bond-esque flick.

Should you wish to nitpick, you could moan that nothing in the upbeat quintet of tracks is as exhilaratingly brash as Come On If You Dare from her last record.

That said, A-Mei is unmistakeably at the top of her game and the confidence shows in her delivery throughout. Your loss, if you’re not watching – and listening, to – her.

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15

Khalil Fong

Hong Kong-based singer-songwriter Khalil Fong is singing the blues on his fifth studio album of original

material. The title refers to the age he first learnt to play the guitar, under the influence of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King.

In a spoken interlude at the beginning of Because Of You, the question is posed whether the new songs are different from his previous offerings. It is probably rhetorical since he has always plied his trade in soul and R&B, from his debut album Soul Boy (2005) to 2008’s Orange Moon. The difference is perhaps most apparent on the English-language opener Gotta Make A Change.

It is a call to social activism and is infused with the spirit of the blues: “It’s your world, don’t forget your world/Don’t you turn your back on the things that you do.”

It is apparent from his songs that Fong’s concerns go beyond the narrow and personal.

He rocks out on Tan Hua (the Dutchman’s Pipe Cactus) and Zhang Yongcheng (the name of skilled martial artist Ip Man’s wife), while Love- winning Strategy, Two Person Journey and Not So Easy explore modern-day relationships.

The quirkily titled No Mushroom Friends was

inspired by a news article about a murder committed by a man after he took some hallucinogenic mushrooms. The folksy ballad serves as a counterpoint to the dark topic and he puns “no mushroom friends” with “innocent friends” in Mandarin.

There are lots of singers on the R&B wagon, but Fong is one of the rare few taking the reins and heading off in a different direction.

My Girl

Kim Hyung Jun

The, Park Jung Min

Park Jung Min

SS501 bandmates Kim Hyung Jun and Park Jung Min square off with the release of their solo EPs.

It is all friendly competition as the group insist they are still intact.

Which probably means that they will stick together until a solo career or two takes off.

Kim’s dance-pop offering is more predictable, though still easy on the ears. The standout track here is oH! aH!.

He had me at: “Bomb-Bomb-B Bomb-Bomb-B Bomb-Bomb-B Bomb-B-Bomb Yo”.

Park mixes it up slightly. The mawkish Tears Of Happiness is thankfully followed by the more uptempo tracks Walk Away Walk Away and Not Alone.

The seasonal-sounding Every Day With You Is Christmas, complete with sleighbells, is the more successful ballad.

In the battle of heart-throb pictures that come with the musical offerings, Kim looks a tad chubby in some poses, while Park boasts sharper cheekbones and more liberal use of lipstick and eyeliner.

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The Adventures Of The Mad Chinaman

Esplanade Recital Studio/Tuesday

The title of home-grown singer-songwriter Dick Lee’s solo revue is taken from his 2004 autobiography. The show, as he jokingly told the full- house crowd, is for those who cannot read. Tickets for all three performances have been snapped up.

But even those who can read will enjoy this intimate evening of music and reminiscing which takes the audience from Lee’s childhood right up to 1989, the year in which the seminal album The Mad Chinaman was released and which made his reputation. The record, which gleefully fused Eastern and Western musical influences and featured a polyglot of languages, was a breakthrough effort and won him fans in the region as far afield as Japan.

The 54-year-old looked dapper in a pale pink suit in the transformed Esplanade Recital Studio. The usually bare staging area looked like a cosy living room, complete with a piano. Lee proved to be an engaging story-teller and often a self-deprecating and humorous one.

There was a running gag over his age and his announcement that he was born in “nineteen fifty-...” trailed off into a volley of coughs as he explained that he was allergic to his year of birth. He delved into family history and shared anecdotes about his father Lee Kip Lee, 90, and mother Elizabeth Lee, 77, who were in the audience on Tuesday night.

In between stories of his rascally shenanigans, Lee would take to the piano. He sang the nostalgia-laden Return To Beauty World from the 1985 album of the same name, the jaunty Wo Wo Ni Ni (literally, Me Me You You) from The Mad Chinaman and also paid tribute to his key influences – Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Elton John.

A highlight of the revue was when he performed a medley of stinkers, “a bunch of songs I can’t stand and I hope you hate them too”. They included “horrible song” Ballade Pour Adeline, the well-known piano piece popularised by Richard Clayderman, and an exaggeratedly twangy performance of the John Denver song Country Roads.

To the audience’s delight, Lee went on to parody the recent General Election to the tune of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance and Rihanna’s Umbrella. Sample lyric: “Vivian B, tell us, was it all an error error?”

Another crowd-pleaser was a segment on hilarious television clips from the 1980s, complete with Lee’s running commentary as he gamely made fun of his hairstyles and fashion faux pas. There were poignant moments in the show as well. Some might still remember the controversial Pope outfit he wore for his 50th birthday bash, but there is a sad story about a family tragedy that explains his fabulous themed birthday parties.

There was also a glimpse of the entertainer’s serious side when he explained why his album was called The Mad Chinaman. It came about because he was confused about his cultural identity and also because of his anger, as a Chinese, over the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4, 1989.

The final song of the evening was Home, the first National Day song written by a Singaporean, as Lee proudly pointed out. His mellifluous singing might not be as polished as, say, Kit Chan’s, but there was real emotion in his delivery and the crowd responded with a standing ovation.

Listening to Lee’s distinctively Singaporean songs, particularly those from his lesser-known albums in the 1980s, one cannot help but think that he was ahead of his time. The records might have bombed then but there is clearly an appreciative audience for them today.

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Dylan Dog: Dead Of Night

Kevin Munroe

The story: When her father is killed by a mysterious creature, Elizabeth (Anita Briem) seeks down-and-out paranormal investigator Dylan Dog (Brandon Routh) to look into the case. He does so with the help of his undead assistant Marcus (Sam Huntington). Based on the Italian comic book Dylan Dog by Tiziano Sclavi.

When American actor Brandon Routh was announced as the new Superman in October 2004, he flew from obscurity to celebrity overnight.

But Superman Returns (2006) failed to take off and his career was stuck in Clark Kent-like mundanity.

With a recurring role as a secret agent in season three of the TV series Chuck and now a lead film role, it seems that Routh might be making a return of his own.

Unfortunately, he is miscast as Dylan Dog. The strapping frame that made him the natural choice for donning a superhero cape feels somewhat out of place in this noirish crime thriller.

He is not quite persuasive as the wary investigator who has paid a price for dealing with werewolves and vampires. For one thing, his deadpan delivery could have been drier.

Still, his performance is not so bad that it sinks the film, which is buoyed by wry dialogue and a quirky sense of humour.

Providing some laughs is the newly undead Marcus (Huntington, incidentally, was also Routh’s sidekick in Superman Returns as photographer Jimmy Olsen) who reluctantly comes to terms with his unusual status and his now less-than-savoury dietary requirements.

The film also has fun melding the paranormal aspect of the story with more familiar concepts. There is a zombie support group and a shop supplying unusual spare parts.

Satisfyingly, good and evil are presented in shades of grey rather than a simple dichotomy of good humans versus evil monsters.

Despite its Italian inspiration, Dylan Dog actually calls to mind the American TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), with its mix of supernatural elements, action and comedy.

Even without new tricks, this Dog still entertains.

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Perfect Life

Yoga Lin

Taiwanese singer Yoga Lin’s last album Senses Around (2009) was an impressive concept album that pointed to his growth and ambition as a musician.

Perfect Life, the third record from the champ of the singing contest One Million Star in 2007, is yet another winner.

The 23-year-old works with a wide range of composers and lyricists. Yet, Perfect Life feels cohesive, even as it offers something to pique one’s interest and hold one’s attention throughout.

The opening title track teams American songwriter Roger Joseph Manning Jr with Hong Kong lyricist Lin Xi and the result is a joyful jolt of pop: “Such a perfect life/How can you bear not to live it well/How can you bear not to be happy.”

Wake Up, composed by Li Shih-i, has lyrics by Wyman Wong which slip in a reference to the hit sci-fi film Inception (2010): “Don’t care how bad these crazy times are/Just want to stay at level six of my subconscious.”

While Senses Around had the beautifully aching ballad that was Heartbreak, it is Freedom that will move you here: “Only you understand that I’m like a caged wild animal/Yearning for freedom among skyscrapers.”

While I used to think that Lin had a rather mannered way of singing, it seems less and less an affectation than his way of emotionally connecting with a song. Take his reading of the Chen Hsiao-hsia-penned Good Night, which comes on like an oasis of calm every time it is played on the radio. It is a soothing balm which ends the album on a lilting note of hope.

The tacked-on Fly My Way is rightly termed a bonus track as the theme song for an online game does not fit into the overall scheme.

I am not a fan of lazy covers albums, but an accompanying disc of added material is generous and welcome. After displaying impeccable taste in collaborators on the album, Lin also gets to show his eclectic taste in music on the bonus disc by taking on tracks from Blur’s Song 2 to Buddy Holly’s Everyday to Mavis Fan’s Darling.

Life might not be perfect, but music can sometimes make it seem so.

Break Time

U-Kiss

Attention, K-pop fans: This is the fourth EP and last on which we have the original seven members of Korean boyband U-Kiss. Alexander and Ki Bum have left but, already, their shoes have been filled on the group’s new EP after this disc, Bran New Kiss.

The change in line-up is unlikely to make any difference to their dance-

floor-friendly sound, in any case. Here, they tell you to Shut Up, Light It Up and to Rock Ya Body.

Surrender to the beat and move your feet, and marvel at how apt the album title turned out to be.

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In A Better World

Susanne Bier

The story: Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is a Swedish doctor who divides his time between working in a Sudanese refugee camp and living in Denmark. His 12-year-old son Elias (Markus Rygaard) is bullied at school and new boy Christian (William Johnk Nielsen) comes to his rescue. When Anton is later slapped by a stranger at a playground, Christian comes up with a terrible way to exact revenge.

The Best Foreign Language Film award is no more than a sideshow at the Oscars. But the category has often highlighted cinematic gems from around the world, including the devastating police state drama The Lives Of Others (2006) and the bleak humour of war in No Man’s Land (2001).

The Danish film In A Better World (2010), while not exactly in the same league, is still a worthy winner. It is a well-meaning film which asks moral questions about the way we live our lives.

Violence is everywhere in the film, from the barbaric acts perpetrated by a sadistic war lord in Sudan to bullying at school to a small incident at a playground, which quickly escalates to a random stranger slapping Anton around. The original Danish title is, in fact, The Revenge.

Anton, though, turns the other cheek at the playground and later tells his two sons and Christian: “You just can’t go around beating people up. That doesn’t help anything. What kind of world would we get? He’s a jerk. If I hit him, I’m a jerk too.”

The problem is, meekness is seen as weakness, particularly when the children have just learnt a different lesson: Elias stops getting bullied when Christian pulls a knife on the ring leader.

The film could easily have been didactic and preachy but Persbrandt’s Anton is not just a saintly do-gooder. Faced with the dilemma of whether or not to treat the war lord who storms into the medical compound with men and guns, Anton ultimately proves to be fallibly human.

Rygaard turns in a strong performance as the persecuted and easily influenced Elias, while Nielsen delivers the goods as the grieving and angry Christian.

There is plenty to mull over here and if anything, there is perhaps too much plot packed in, what with Anton’s crumbling marriage and Christian’s strained relationship with his father after his mother’s death.

But in the face of vigilante thrillers which barely bat an eyelid over the consequences of vengeance, In A Better World looks at the ugliness of violence squarely in the eye and asks how we should respond to it.

The lesson here is not an easy one to teach. It is an even harder one to learn.

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Opus VI – Atlantis

F.I.R.

Six albums in, F.I.R. are exploring and tinkering with their sound, pushing the boundaries of their musical map. The Taiwanese trio made their name with a distinctive pop-rock groove. Then, for a while, producer Ian Chen, guitarist/vocalist Real Huang and singer Faye Chan threatened to become predictable and boring.

On their latest album, however, they do not sound like their usual selves – and that is a good thing. There is a tinge of Irish folk to opener Atlantis while Chinese orchestral instruments can be heard on Flowers Aren’t Flowers.

These touches do provide some musical interest, even if one is not sure what point they are making with regard to the national or ethnic identity of Atlantis.

Meanwhile, the breezy and optimistic Say Hello and Screw (as in the metal fastener) show us another side of F.I.R., even if they are not exactly sailing into uncharted waters.

BLAQ Style 3D Edition (CD & DVD)

MBLAQ

Before K-pop fans get too excited, the 3-D effects here apply to a photo booklet and not the DVD. The album comes with a pair of low-tech blue- and-red-lens cardboard spectacles and squinting at the images is more likely to give you a headache than a rush of blood to the head.

Music-wise, the quintet are pretty much interchangeable with the other Korean boybands out there; even the track titles – Stay, Cry, You, Tonight, Darling – are as generic as they come.

Still, the songs from Music Boys Live in Absolute Quality (MBLAQ, above right) are consistently listenable with their R&B-influenced dance grooves.

The DVD includes two music videos and a making-of clip in which you get to see superstar Rain giving his proteges pointers. Unfortunately, it seems to come with only Korean subtitles.

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The Detective 2

Oxide Pang

The story: The near-sighted private detective Tam (Aaron Kwok) looks into a series of seemingly unrelated grisly murders upon the request of his police inspector friend Fung Chak (Liu Kai Chi). Their ongoing investigation alternates with the story of a young boy who grows up to be disturbed and violent when he finds out the truth about his parentage.

Late in this sequel to his 2007 hit The Detective, writer-director Oxide Pang slips in a homage to Roman Polanski’s noir classic Chinatown (1974).

It is an unexpected moment of quirk which does not feel out of place given that the film is set in Thailand, with Thai extras milling about and Thai pop playing in the background, and yet the key protagonists are Hong Kong actors speaking in (dubbed-over) Mandarin.

There is a fascinatingly gritty sense of time and place evoked with nary a tourist attraction in sight. It probably helped that Hong Kong-born Pang had started his film career in Bangkok as a colourist.

A film, though, has to get more than the mood and setting right. And where The Detective 2 comes up short is in the story. The set-up of a seemingly unrelated series of grisly murders is promising, but the way that Tam has his eureka moments is far too convenient.

It is also not quite clear how the police narrowed down their list of suspects to a bunch of psycho cuckoos, including TV veteran Cheung Siu Fai’s broad turn as a volatile and mentally unstable man.

Still, the story is less preposterous than star Aaron Kwok’s previous crime thriller outing Murderer (2009), in which the villain is revealed to be an adult in the body of a child. In fact, Pang seems to be taking a dig at it when Tam asks incredulously at one point: “Is it possible for a kid to be a killer?”

It also helps that Kwok slips easily into the role of the smarter-than-he-looks scrappy investigator with severe myopia and there is a genial vibe to the friendship between Tam and Liu Kai Chi’s inspector Fung Chak.

The Detective 2 is a little more rooted in reality, minus the supernatural elements of the first instalment. However, Pang seems to be stuck in horror-film mode and the overly obvious music score can be rather distracting at times.

The ending leaves the way open for another sequel, one which would likely focus on Tam’s past and the mystery of his parents’ murders. The premise alone makes it seem like it would be worth investigating.

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Beastly

Daniel Barnz

The story: High-school kid Kyle (Alex Pettyfer) is rich, good-looking and arrogant. When he humiliates fellow student Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen), she casts a spell that makes him look as ugly on the outside as he is inside. His only hope for the curse to be lifted is for Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens) to see beyond the surface and fall in love with him. A modern-day retelling of the fairy tale Beauty And The Beast based on Alex Flinn’s 2007 novel.

Just because it is a teen-flick makeover does not mean it has to suck. Clueless (1995) was a clued-in update of Jane Austen’s Emma, while 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) was a smart and sassy take on Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew.

Beastly, however, is a heavy-handed and clunky affair weighed down by leaden lines and a lame story.

The film has one central message of looking beyond appearances – and it hammers that home repeatedly. Because it does not have very much to say, it relies heavily on a soundtrack packed with indie bands such as The Vines and Death Cab For Cutie to pad up scenes.

Writer-director Daniel Barnz seems to have no idea how teenagers actually speak and gives us howlers along the lines of “I guess this cage set me free”.

The plot mechanics are laboured as well. The way Lindy ends up in the same apartment as Kyle because of an accidental shooting simply makes no sense.

Playing the underwritten role of Lindy, Hudgens, from the High School Musical series, is sweet but bland.

The touted Next Big Thing Pettyfer comes off worse. This is strike No.2 for him after the critical lambasting and mediocre box-office performance of sci-fi drama I Am Number Four (2011).

Stuck in the sidekick roles are Lisa Gay Hamilton (from TV’s Men Of A Certain Age) as the kindly and wise housekeeper Zola from Jamaica and Neil Patrick Harris (TV’s How I Met Your Mother) as the blind wisecracking tutor Will. They deserve better.

Early on in the film, Kyle thunders: “Embrace the suck.” Erm, no thanks, I’ll pass.

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Lee Chien Na

Gina Lee

With so many singing competition winners jostling to release albums, no wonder the wait for those who did not win can be rather long.

Taiwan’s Gina Lee made it to the top 10 of the popular One Million Star show in 2007 but is releasing her Mandarin debut album only now.

Her Golden Horse win for Best New Performer in the romantic drama omnibus Juliets (2010) probably didn’t hurt.

A pity then that her promise in acting is not repeated in her music. The most interesting tracks here are the two Minnan songs which bookend the record.

Last Train puts an R&B spin on a rather conventional scenario – “The train slowly pulls out of the station/Leaving your love” – and even samples George Michael’s Careless Whisper.

Meanwhile, Ardently Thinking Of Him is retro-licious sounding, complete with lyrics about pining for an old love.

The rest of the album is, alas, largely mired in maudlin ballad territory.

Still, if things don’t work out for her musically, at least she has a back-up career option.

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Red Dragonflies

Liao Jiekai

The story: Junior college students Rachel (Oon Yee Jeng), Tien (Yeo Shang Xuan) and Jun (Ong Kuan Loong) explore disused railway tracks and then an accident happens. Years later, Rachel (played by Ng Xuan Ming as an adult) and Tien (played by Jason Hui as an adult) cross paths again.

The title references the 1990 Mandopop hit of the same name by the now-defunct boyband Little Tigers. The song is a light-hearted affair about youthful idyll and chasing after one’s dreams.

While the film takes on some of the same themes, the mood here is different. It unfolds at a leisurely and ruminative pace and works best when it focuses on the friends as they follow the abandoned railway tracks. It is an exploration for the audience as well as they wend through tunnels and lush foliage, and past homes with backyards and walls with graffiti.

What also helps to draw one in is the unforced banter and naturalistic interaction among the non-professional actors.

But since this is not enough to fill out a full-length feature, writer-director Liao Jiekai adds another dimension to the story. A 26-year-old Rachel returns to Singapore from abroad to hold an art exhibition and she reconnects with Tien.

The fact that they never mention Jun is intriguing at first but it soon becomes frustrating. Also, the ending of the film introduces some unexpected elements and throws up questions which remain unresolved.

Subtlety and a low-key approach are too often under-rated qualities in local productions but in this case, they are taken to the extreme and the movie ends up feeling murky rather than illuminating, on themes such as nostalgia, growing up and how the past shapes people.

The spirit of exploration is alive and well in Red Dragonflies but, unfortunately, this feature debut feels like it may have wandered off the tracks.

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Open Heart

Mark Chang

Taiwanese newcomer Mark Chang has often been compared to Dick And Cowboy’s Lau Tieh as they both have manly husky pipes. But Chang has gone the pop route instead of following the older man’s rocker ways.

Album opener Fall In Love And Go Under is a fairly typical emo ballad but it does play to his strengths as a singer.

The delicate ballad The Wind Is Still Blowing, composed by Chen Hsiao-hsia, also leaves an impression.

The runner-up of season four of the One Million Star singing competition shows us different sides of himself on the breezy Loneliness Convenience Store and the disco-tinged Human Shaped Standee.

But for all that, it never quite feels that he is opening up his heart to us in the music.

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Port Entropy

Shugo Tokumaru

Joy is such an elusive emotion to capture on record – which is why Japanese singer- songwriter Shugo

Tokumaru’s (below) last full-length album Exit (2007) is so precious.

His gee-whiz multi-instrumental DIY wizardry remains intact in Port Entropy, if in a less exuberant form. Tracks such as Lahaha and the bucolic yet buoyant Rum Hee come closest to conjuring that sense of playful happiness. The latter is definitely a highlight here, though fans would have heard it already on the Rum Hee EP released in 2009.

Elsewhere, the animated Drive-thru sounds like it could be the soundtrack to a cartoon, while Tracking Elevator offers a smooth ride by pairing his clear unblemished vocals with the sweet strum of guitars and a back-up chorus.

The tempo slows down on Linne and the toy piano-backed Orange, with Tokumaru evoking a more contemplative and ruminative mood in these.

Poised between the lyrical beauty of his debut album Night Piece (2004) and the giddy glee of Exit, Port Entropy occupies a place that is still enchanting and wondrous.

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A Chinese Ghost Story

Wilson Yip

The story: The young official Ning Caichen (Yu Shaoqun) is sent to Black Mountain to help solve

the village’s water woes. He meets and falls in love with a beautiful spirit, Nie Xiaoqian (Liu Yifei), not knowing that she is under the control of the 1,000-year-old Tree Demon (Kara Hui). Meanwhile, demon hunter Yan Chixia (Louis Koo) is out to vanquish the evil monster.

At its entertaining best, Hong Kong cinema offers genrehopping fare which merrily mashes up comedy, romance, fantasy and action.

Prime examples include Stephen Chow’s A Chinese Odyssey (1994) and Ching Siu Tung’s version of A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which is loosely adapted from a classic tale in the 18thcentury Pu Songling collection, Strange Tales Of Liaozhai.

Similarly varied, director Wilson Yip’s take on the latter is an enjoyable offering, even if it does not hit the giddy heights of those films.

The arc here is largely similar to the 1987 movie: Boy meets ghost, boy falls in love with ghost, boy seeks to free ghost. Yip’s twist is to have the demon hunter fall for the lovely spirit even before the scholar enters the picture.

While this adds tension to the movie, it dilutes the pure love story between boy and ghost, one of the main reasons the earlier version remains ingrained in the memory of those who have watched it.

Ching’s casting was pitch-perfect: Leslie Cheung was the handsome and timid Caichen, Joey Wong was the ethereally beautiful Xiaoqian and Wu Ma was the gruff and righteous ghost-catcher.

Indeed, the film was responsible for boosting the popularity of both Cheung and Wong.

In the new version, Yu Shaoqun, so memorable in the Mei Lanfang biopic Forever Enthralled (2008), makes the role of the scholar his own.

The pretty Liu Yifei, last seen in the disastrous romance comedy Love In Disguise (2010), is less convincing when she has to play coquettish, but she and Yu do make a cute couple.

In comparison, the relationship between Liu’s Xiaoqian and Louis Koo’s demon hunter seems a little out of place, particularly towards the end.

The 1987 flick is also indelible for Lau Siu Ming’s high camp portrayal of the Tree Demon, which seemed to be both male and female as its voice swung between a rumbly growl and a flirty squeal.

Kara Hui has fun in the arch villain role as well and the voice modulation remains intact.

Perhaps where the US$20-million (S$25-million) remake has an edge is in the use of special effects and the epic finale is a glorious showdown of flying fabric, flying swords and flying hair.

And there is nothing quite like it in Hollywood movies.

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The Seeds Of Hope

Yang Pei-an

Late-bloomer Yang Pei-an is proof that the seeds of hope will eventually flower.

In 2006, the Taiwanese singer released his debut record at the age of 35, wowing listeners with his soaring vocals on his breakthrough hit I Believe.

No wonder he is optimistic on his fourth full-length album.

Titles such as Dreams Start From The Heart, Fiery Phoenix and The End Of The Rainbow give you a good idea of the songs’ never-give-up theme.

The lyrics, too, reinforce the message of striving to achieve one’s goals. He sings on Dreams: “Every step is filled with unwavering persistence, only I can write my own exciting story.”

On the Phoenix track, a collaboration with Chemical Monkey Band, the rocker exhorts: “Not afraid of shattered bones or staggering along/Be brave and take a risk, let life be filled with limitless light.”

Even a ballad such as Moonlight is anchored by the same sentiment.

You know where to head the next time you need a pick-me-up.

The Next Me

Aaron Yan

Taiwanese boyband Fahrenheit are not particularly known for their singing prowess, so a solo effort from member Aaron Yan does not have one exactly trembling in eager anticipation.

The singing is passsable and the title track is a tuneful offering with lyrics about the contradictory ambitions and emotions of a young man: “The next me/What role will I play/Loving gently on one hand/Hating passionately on the other/How many hearts can I have.”

Yan also teams up with Singapore singer Olivia Ong on Just One Look for an obligatory duet between label-mates. He covers Hong Kong singer Karen Mok’s Suddenly as well, but his version seems less deeply felt.

Still, the disc has already topped the album charts in Taiwan for two weeks.

As for Yan's next role, it's a case of the record company knows best. Despite rumours of them disbanding, Fahrenheit are reportedly attempting to heat up the charts with another group album.

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Norwegian Wood

Tran Anh Hung

The story: Tokyo college student Toru Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama) encounters a dead friend’s former girlfriend Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi) in the city and the two strike up a tentative relationship. At the same time, he is also drawn to Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), a free-spirited girl who is the opposite of Naoko in temperament. Then tragedy strikes again. Based on Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’s 1987 novel of the same name.

This was never going to be an easy book to adapt for the big screen.

Haruki Murakami’s breakthrough novel was a deeply intimate portrayal of youthful melancholy, uncertainty and desire and how they all dissolve into one another.

Toru Watanabe is figuring out his identity and exploring his sexuality in a rite of passage that most young adults go through.

But for him, the shadow of his best friend’s unexplained suicide looms over everything.

In the book, we are privy to his thoughts and events are seen from his point of view. In the film, he comes across as more of a cipher.

In one scene, what is attributed to Toru in the book is said by Naoko in the film when she muses that it would be better if people went back and forth between 18 and 19 instead of growing older.

He merely reacts to what she says and we lose that little bit of insight into what makes him tick.

This idea of a passive Toru is reinforced by him constantly saying “Of course” in conversation. Co-scriptwriter and director Tran Anh Hung also portrays him walking through campus, almost oblivious to the student protests erupting around him in the tumult of the late 1960s.

It could be argued that the film-maker intends the passivity as Toru’s way of coping, but it also makes it more difficult to feel for the character.

The film also feels more intensely oppressive. Little touches of humour that leaven the mood in the book, such as the comic episodes involving Toru’s roommate whom he nicknames “Storm Trooper”, have been excised.

What keeps the movie watchable are the performances. Kenichi Matsuyama, best known as the detective L in the Death Note adaptations, imbues the character of Toru with a degree of vulnerability despite his passivity.

Rinko Kikuchi seems to have an affinity for emotionally volatile roles. Feral in Babel (2006), she is touchingly fragile here.

Model-actress Kiko Mizuhara’s sunny charm is the perfect counterpoint to Kikuchi’s darker allure.

The protagonists unfold their drama amid beautifully framed outdoor vistas, a signature of Tran’s also seen in The Scent Of Green Papaya (1993) and Cyclo (1995). In a powerful scene set in a desolate spot with thunderous crashing waves in the background, Matsuyama telegraphs raw and overwhelming grief as Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s sweeping score builds to a climax.

By the end, we care enough that Toru seems to be taking a step in the direction of life and healing, even if he is not completely out of the woods.

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