Who says we do not get the seasons here in Singapore? We might not get leaves turning shades of red, orange and brown but we still get to experience autumn – in the form of the American fall TV season.

Pay TV operators mio TV and StarHub have been steadily upping their game and Singaporeans have at least 17 new titles heading their way from now till the end of the year, with more to come next year.

Sci-fi has a splashy presence among the offerings with an alien invasion in Falling Skies and terrifying dinosaurs in Terra Nova. Take a look at the executive producer credits for both shows and one name jumps out – Steven Spielberg, one of the most influential and successful American film-makers of all time.

Intriguingly, Spielberg has his hand in yet another series. This is Smash, about a hit Broadway musical for which the curtain goes up next year.

Other name producers with new projects include Lost’s J.J. Abrams with the crime thriller Person Of Interest and 24’s Howard Gordon with the counter-

terrorism drama Homeland.

Also making an impact are fairy tales. They are the inspiration for Once Upon A Time, in which familiar characters are transported to a modern-day setting, and the 2012 offering Grimm, in which the villains turn out to be real and only one homicide detective has the power to stop them.

Given the success of Modern Family, sitcoms about parents and children continue to sprout. This year’s healthier-than-usual crop includes Suburgatory, I Hate My Teenage Daughter and Man Up.

Staples such as the medical drama are being given a new lease of life with a new star as Rachel Bilson headlines Hart Of Dixie.

The one series that really stands out is American Horror Story with its unusual tone and vibe. It could turn out to be this year’s Twin Peaks (1990-1991), an unexpected hit that came from nowhere.

To ease the transition to a new season, Life! gives a rundown on 16 new shows and lets you in on what to expect.

Happy fall season everyone!

Terra Nova

When: From Wednesday (mio), Oct 29 (StarHub)

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 727; Fox Channel, StarHub Channel 505; Fox Channel HD, StarHub Channel 558

What: Dinosaurs. Steven Spielberg. I am sold. Given executive producer Spielberg’s success with the Jurassic Park movie series, everyone is hoping for a monster hit with Terra Nova.

In the year 2149, Earth is severely overpopulated and all life is on the brink of extinction. The Shannon family are among the lucky few who get to be part of a new colony, Terra Nova, which has been established 85 million years in the past. The catch – it is a time when ravenous carnivorous dinosaurs tore across the land.

The best-known actor here is probably Stephen Lang (far right, foreground). He was the tough-guy Colonel Miles Quaritch in James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) and here, he plays the tough-guy Commander Taylor who heads the colony.

No expense has been spared in bringing this vision to life and Terra Nova is reportedly the most expensive TV series ever. The Independent newspaper estimated that it cost £200,000 (S$398,000) to make one minute of the sci-fi drama.

There is no doubt that the series looks good but given its cost, the big question here is whether it can break new ground in attracting audiences to the small screen.

Man Up

When: From Oct 20

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 732

What: What does it mean to be a man in today’s world? Will Keen (Mather Zickel, centre) is married with children and he wants to be a role model for his teenage son. He also wants gaming time with his buds, the loud and excitable Kenny Hayden (Dan Fogler, right) and the dweeby Craig Griffith (series creator Christopher Moynihan, left).

Good on Fogler for parlaying his Tony Award-winning performance in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee into a viable career, but he has to watch out being typecast.

Think of this as a younger version of Men Of A Certain Age (2009 to 2011).

Homeland

When: From Oct 4

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 731

What: A top-notch cast headlines this topical drama about terrorism in America.

Say “welcome back” to Claire Danes, best known for her work on the critically acclaimed but short-lived teen drama My So-Called Life (1994 to 1995). And “hello again” to TV veteran Mandy Patinkin, last seen on Criminal Minds.

A prisoner-of-war (Damian Lewis, far right, as sergeant Nicholas Brody) believed to be dead is rescued in Iraq and returns home to a hero’s welcome. But CIA officer Carrie Mathison (Danes) has her doubts and tries to convince her mentor Saul Berenson (Patinkin) that he has switched loyalties.

Meanwhile, on the home front, Brody’s wife (Morena Baccarin, right) and children have to adjust to the return of a husband and father.

The series opener sets up several promising narrative threads. A seemingly more realistic version of the counter-terrorism drama 24, though a CIA officer is already breaking federal laws in the first episode.

Hart Of Dixie

When: From Wednesday

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 725

What: Another Everwood-influenced medical drama. Dr Zoe Hart (Rachel Bilson, right) packs her bags and moves to Alabama where she will learn that caring for patients is not the same as merely treating them.

The series marks the second collaboration between executive producer Jason Schwartz and star Bilson. He created the teen soap The O.C., which provided her with the breakout role of party-girl Summer. Bilson turned what could have been a one-note sidekick into a spirited character whom audiences could root for.

Her likeable charm is still intact even if her potential love interests – The Good Wife’s Scott Porter and The Young And The Restless’ Wilson Bethel – are already all sketched out in the first episode.

2 Broke Girls

When: Currently available

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 704

What: Poor girl Max (Kat Dennings, right) and down-and-out rich girl Caroline (Beth Behrs, far right) are twenty-something waitresses at a Brooklyn diner. Despite their chalk-and-cheese personalities, they become friends. They dream of making US$250,000 (S$317,000) so that they can open their own cupcake shop.

At the end of the first episode, the amount they have raised thus far is shown. Expect a snakes-

and-ladders situation as they trudge towards their goal.

The series was co-created by Sex And The City’s Michael Patrick King. Dennings’ sassy and sensible Max is likeable.

American Horror Story

When: From Oct 7

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 706

What: Ben (Dylan McDermott, above centre) and Vivien (Connie Britton, left) are trying to salvage their marriage and they decide a fresh start is the answer. They move into an old mansion in Los Angeles with their daughter Violet (Taissa Farmiga, right), unaware that there are ghosts lurking and skeletons rattling about.

The new series from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, who are behind high-school musical Glee (2009-present) and plastic surgery soap drama Nip/Tuck (2003-2010), is intriguing, all right. The ensemble cast is a strong one with actress Jessica Lange signing on for her first regular TV role as the next-door neighbour who knows more than she lets on, Frances Conroy (the matriarch in Six Feet Under) as the housekeeper and McDermott playing angsty once more after The Practice.

American Horror Story keeps the viewer off-kilter and though the first episode has almost too much weirdness, its creepy vibe is a welcome addition to the TV landscape.

Falling Skies

When: From Oct 3 at 8.20pm

Where: AXN Beyond, StarHub Channel 525

What: Aliens have invaded Earth and decimated most of the human race. Survivors form a resistance group, Second Massachusetts. They are led by former military officer Weaver (Will Patton) and history professor Tom Mason (Noah Wyle, third from left), who is searching for his son. For some nefarious reason, the aliens have been rounding up children and attaching a metallic device to each of them.

Fans of Wyle will be glad to see him back on the small screen after his low-key big screen outings. He is best known for his turn as Dr John Carter (1994 to 2005) in the long-running medical drama ER (1994 to 2009) and was named by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in 2001.

Producer Steven Spielberg is attached to the project and given his sci-fi flicks such as Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) and War Of The Worlds (2005), expectations were high. The series has garnered some positive reviews and will be back for a second season of another 10 episodes next year.

Prime Suspect

When: From Nov 3 Where: Diva Universal, StarHub Channel 522

What: The ground-breaking British police procedural of the 1990s and 2000s starred Helen Mirren as a no-nonsense detective.

Maria Bello (left) gamely steps into the role for the American remake after hanging up her scrubs on the medical drama ER (1994-2006). Joining her is actor Aidan Quinn, once a leading man in films such as the thriller Blink (1993).

Crossovers between the Atlantic are not uncommon but success is by no means assured.

For every The Office, there are misguided efforts such as Coupling and Life On Mars.

Person Of Interest

When: From tomorrow

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 719

What: John Reese (Jim Caviezel, above) is a former CIA agent hired by the mysterious Mr Finch (Michael Emerson) to stop crimes before they occur.

What sounds like a crime procedural with a twist comes with an impressive pedigree. The show is created by Jonathan Nolan, author of the short story Memento Mori, which his brother Christopher adapted into the acclaimed film Memento (2000).

Person Of Interest marks Caviezel’s return to the small screen. He had appeared on shows such as Murder, She Wrote early on in his career before taking to film in works such as Terrence Malick’s war drama The Thin Red Line (1998) and Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ (2004).

The Secret Circle

When: Currently available

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 702

What: Given the success of The Vampire Diaries, it is no surprise that another work by author L.J. Smith has been brought to the small screen.

As with Diaries, there is once again a young woman dealing with a world of fantasy and magic, one that holds both promise and danger. Here, Cassie discovers that she comes from a family of witches after losing her mother. She also finds out that she completes a ritual circle of six and, like it or not, she has powers that others have already made plans for.

A new crop of actors with flawless skin and perfect hair such as Thomas Dekker and Brittany Robertson (both above) will hope that their circle of fans can be as large as Diaries’.

Friends With Benefits

When: Currently available

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 549

What: Beyond sharing a title with the Justin Timberlake-Mila Kunis romantic comedy, there does not seem to be anything linking the series to the film.

Unfortunately, the attractiveness quotient of the friends enjoying mutual benefits seems to be decidedly lower here. The cast includes Ryan Hansen (left), Danneel Ackles (far left), Jessica Lucas, Zach Cregger and Andre Holland. Who, you ask? Exactly. The show about friends in Chicago was canned in the US after 12 episodes, so don’t get too attached.

A Gifted Man

When: 2011

Where: AXN Beyond, StarHub Channel 525

What: Touched By An Angel meets Everwood as a self-absorbed and brilliant neurosurgeon Michael Holt (Patrick Wilson) learns to be gentler and kinder through visits from his dead ex-wife (Jennifer Ehle). Jonathan Demme (The Silence Of The Lambs, 1991) directed the pilot and is executive producer.

After belting out songs in Broadway musicals, Wilson left an impression in films as different as sex predator thriller Hard Candy (2005) and the dark drama Little Children (2006). Can he can make his surgeon role more complicated, and interesting?

Also worth noting is Julie Benz. She has made her supporting work count in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel and Dexter, and plays Wilson’s onscreen supernatural-believing sibling.

I Hate My Teenage Daughter

When: From Dec 2

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 736

What: The set-up of two divorced mothers raising their teenage daughters sounds like the makings of a generic sitcom.

But Jaime Pressly, so good at being nasty on My Name Is Earl (2005 to 2009), has comic verve as the mum with the ultra- conservative upbringing, Annie Watson. And she has an easy chemistry with fellow mum/best friend Nikki Miller, who is still haunted by her past as an unpopular girl. Nikki is played by Katie Finneran, who was in the brilliant and all-too-brief Wonderfalls (2004).

So far, the mothers are proving to be far more interesting than the bland and manipulative daughters played by Kristi Lauren and Aisha Dee. Keep the focus on Annie and Nikki and the show will be fine.

New Girl

When: From Oct 1

Where: Star World, StarHub Channel 501; Star World HD, StarHub Channel 555

What: A newly single Jess (Zooey Deschanel, far right) moves into an apartment with three single guys: (from left) Coach the former athlete (Damon Wayans Jr), Nick the bartender (Jake Johnson) and Schmidt the Casanova (Max Greenfield).

Deschanel’s kooky charm has served her well in films such as (500) Days Of Summer (2009) and she is also one-half

of the acclaimed music act She & Him.

She muscles in on her sister’s territory – Emily Deschanel in crime drama Bones. But since Zooey has guest-starred on Bones, bet on Emily to return the favour at some point, if New Girl is around long enough.

Once Upon A Time

When: From Oct 25 (mio), December (StarHub)

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 734; and Star World, StarHub Channel 501; Star World HD, StarHub Channel 555

What: The world of fairy tales has lost its happily-ever-after. Characters such as Snow White (Big Love’s Ginnifer Goodwin, left) are now trapped in a town called Storybrooke where they have different identities and not an inkling of their storied past.

It is up to sceptical Emma Swan (House’s Jennifer Morrison) to break the curse of the evil queen and things are set in motion when a son (Jared Gilmore) she gave up for adoption turns up on her doorstep 10 years after the fact.

The set-up is long and laborious and seems quite dully serious when a lighter touch would have been nice.

Revenge

When: From today

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 715

What: It is billed as an adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel The Count Of Monte Cristo. The key word missing here is “loose”.

Emily VanCamp (right) is Emily Thorne, a young woman vowing vengeance on the people who killed her father and destroyed her life. In the playground of the rich and powerful that is the Hamptons, Thorne schemes and plots to bring down Victoria Grayson (Madeleine Stowe, looking great at 53) and those close to her.

In Everwood (2002-2006) and Brothers & Sisters (2007-2010), VanCamp played a sensitive high-school student and a young woman dealing with family secrets. She now morphs into a cold-blooded instrument wreaking havoc and devastation. They sure do grow up quickly.

Suburgatory

When: From Sept 30

Where: mio TV Season Pass, Channel 729

What: Despite the terrible tongue-twisting clunker of a title, Suburgatory turned out to be a most promising series. Not since Wonderfalls (2004) and Dead Like Me (2003-2004) has there been such a mordantly funny young woman on television.

Sixteen-year-old Tessa (Jane Levy) has been forcibly transplanted to suburbia by her father George (Jeremy Sisto, left). Stuck in her own private purgatory, she copes by employing her cynical wit and an acid tongue.

Newcomer Levy is one to watch while Sisto gets to hang loose after his three-year stint on the sombre Law & Order.

I Don't Know How She Does It

Douglas McGrath

The story: Kate (Sarah Jessica Parker) juggles marriage to architect Richard (Greg Kinnear), their two young children and a demanding job as an investment banker. When her pitch for a new product is picked up by higher-up Jack (Pierce Brosnan), the tricky act becomes even more frenetic. Based on the 2002 best-selling novel of the same name by Allison Pearson.

Ignoring the ghastly movies, this could be the alternate-universe sequel to the hit TV series Sex And The City (1998 to 2004).

In the HBO series, Sarah Jessica Parker plays Carrie, a single woman in her 30s living and loving in New York and writing about her experiences for a newspaper.

It is a role that she is immediately associated with, to the point where it can become difficult to separate the actress from the character.

And deliberate or not, some of the mannerisms Parker imbued Carrie with are present in Kate in this movie, most notably a tendency to be klutzy when she is nervous.

As a single in New York, Carrie remarks that one is always looking for a job, a boyfriend or an apartment.

Well, Kate is married to a nice-guy architect (Kinnear), has a job that she loves and is presumably not looking for a new house. Instead, her challenge is to keep it all together.

The idea of women taking on multiple roles has been around for a while. Author Shirley Conran promised to tell women how to be a working wife and mother in Superwoman (1975), while feminist Betty Friedan addressed the multiple demands placed on women in The Second Stage (1981).

I Don’t Know How She Does It does not really add anything meaningful to the conversation.

Basically, Kate gets lots of breaks. She has a mostly supportive husband, a charming work partner (Brosnan) and a not-very-scary boss – after all, he is played by Kelsey Grammer from TV’s Frasier (1993 to 2004). All this makes her work-home balance problem seem like not much of a dilemma when it gets resolved.

Neither does the film rate highly as a light-hearted comedy and only Olivia Munn as Kate’s robotic assistant with a heart of gold grows on you.

Douglas McGrath’s direction is mostly workman-like and the flourishes, such as the documentary-style interviews with the characters, feel gimmicky as they are not particularly interesting.

What is curious about the movie is how it obviously seeks to rehabilitate the rock-bottom reputations of bankers in the wake of the financial tsunami.

Kate’s proposed product is all about helping people to retire because, hey, that is what really matters to investment firms rather than the bottom line.

And at a friendly bowling game, Jack is told that he would be forgiven for being a banker if he wins the competition for the group. No prizes for guessing whether he does.

It does make you wonder whether Wall Street fat cats bankrolled the film.

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Fright Night

Craig Gillespie

The story: Charley (Anton Yelchin) discovers that his next-door neighbour Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a murderous vampire. He turns to Las Vegas showman Peter Vincent (David Tennant), a self-styled vampire expert, for help. Jerry later goes on a rampage to take down Charley, his mother (Toni Collette) and his girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots). Look out for a cameo from Chris Sarandon who played Jerry in the original Fright Night from 1985.

The 1985 original was a funny, sexy and thrilling vampire flick. Is there a need for a remake?

By now, vampires have overrun the pop culture landscape. Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) mixed the same elements to great success on the small screen, the Twilight series is a phenomenon in both print and on celluloid while the likes of Alexander Skarsgard are oozing menace and sex from every undead pore on TV’s True Blood.

To the credit of scribe Marti Noxon, who wrote and produced for Buffy, and director Craig Gillespie, who helmed the sensitively quirky Lars And The Real Girl (2007), the remake is justified.

For one thing, the script has been thoughtfully updated. Most notably, the new setting is Las Vegas, where people are always coming and going and disappearing, and the character of Peter Vincent is now a flamboyant magician instead of a two-bit TV host who used to play vampire killers.

Noxon has also fleshed out the role of Charley by delving into the cruel world of high school. He is an ex-nerd dating a hot girl, which means he has to cut off ties with his old mates and hang out with the cool gang now. Poignantly, it is his former buddy Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) who discovers the truth about Jerry and pays a price for it.

There are also some sharply written lines scattered throughout the dialogue. When Charley asks Amy why she went out with him, she tells him it is because he is different and also, “your skin cleared up”.

Gillespie handles the material with an assured hand as he ratchets up the tension and then releases it again and again. He displays equal skill switching between the various moods and tones in the movie.

Central to the film’s success is Farrell’s take on the creature of the night. Instead of reprising Chris Sarandon’s more sardonic Jerry, the Irish actor brings out the brutal, animal nature of the beast. And yes, he brings the sexy, too.

Maybe True Blood could do with some new blood for season five next year.

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Weibird Concert Live

Weibird Wei

Releasing a live album after just one full-length record could be either an act of hubris or a blatant attempt to milk the cash cow. The good news is that Taiwanese singer-songwriter Weibird Wei’s offering is neither.

There are three strands here: live renditions from his 2010 self-titled debut which won him Best Newcomer at the Golden Melody Awards, covers of Mandarin and English songs and, best of all, new material.

The 24-year-old proves he can hold his own in a live setting and that the intimate experience of listening to his justly lauded record translates well to the stage.

As Wei shares in speech interludes about how his life has changed since his CD took off and about his ambivalent relationship with fans, you feel like you are at the gig at the Taipei International Convention Centre in September last year.

His covers are no fillers. He is equally at home covering everything from A-mei’s Hostage and Khalil Fong’s Love Love Love to James Blunt’s You’re Beautiful and Damien Rice’s Blower’s Daughter. For those who first saw him in the now-defunct TV talent show Happy Sunday in 2007, his emotive English renditions would come as no surprise.

There are three new songs included here: the humorous Me, A Pig, And His Girlfriend, the English ballad She’ll Be An Angel, and the standout Why Life.

The last track was a response to what he saw in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot’s destruction in August 2009.

Accompanied by an acoustic guitar, its pointed lyrics go: “Why oh why, no answer/Life oh life, can’t live it over... The corrupt don’t have to run, good people help out and die.”

It is one young man’s attempt to make sense of the world and even if he provides no answers, his questions and observations are worth listening to.

Super Kelly

Kelly Poon

Local singer Kelly Poon puts on a brave front on her EP with her new record label. In the opening track, she declares: “Cos I’m an inde-inde-independent girl/And I don’t need don’t need don’t need you to rock my world.”

It sounds like a defiant riposte to critics who say she has been struggling to make a breakthrough in the industry since emerging as the female champion in the Project Superstar singing competition in 2005. chk

Part of the problem is that she never had a distinctive enough image and Independent Girl is at least a step in the right direction with its spunky spirit.

While the girl-power message gets muddied with the conventional ballad My Love and the cutesy photographs, props must go to Poon for continuing to plug away and for having a hand in writing all five songs here.

Here’s hoping she gets more love this time around.

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Not Playing By The Rules

Magic Power

Erotic is not something that Mandopop, dominated by chaste, cutesy young things, does very often. No wonder six-member band Magic Power have taken it upon themselves to, well, bring sexy back.

The title track has them going “You really wanna do do do it all night” over a thumping beat and a bouncy synth line.

And on the duet Hush with Della Ding Dang, they heat things up further: “I wanna see you naked... on my bed/Now sexy lady let me hear you sing”.

It should be interesting to see how this plays out during the upcoming [B’3] concert here tomorrow at The Max Pavilion @ Singapore Expo.

Apart from the dance tracks, the band also cover their bases with tuneful ballads such as Tomorrow Comes The Armageddon and I’ll Always Be With You, both chosen to be the theme songs for the Taiwanese broadcast of the Korean television drama Stormy Lovers.

While their self-titled debut last year seemed to be more joyous and less slick, Magic Power remain an entertaining proposition.

(ST)

Longing For

Rainie Yang

With a chic new bob, Taiwanese singer, actress and host Rainie Yang has given up on cutesy behaviour and is ready to act her age – that is, 27 – on her sixth studio album.

The title track is sophisticated pop that bodes well for the album. Over a breezily engaging melody by Malaysian singer-songwriter Vchuan Chen, Yang sings of yearning: “Longing for dreams to give me strength, won’t let love run away, won’t let my heart hide, let me be strong.”

In a smart move, she ropes in singer-songwriter Lala Hsu and lyricist Ko Ta-wei for some indie cred on Fast Forward. Yang deserves credit for trying, but her voice is still on the thin side. One cannot help but think that Hsu would have done greater justice to the track she had written if she had sung it instead.

It is two steps forward and one step back as the first plug Love Fool is too stolidly commercial. It has been doing well on the charts, though, as it has been used on her new idol drama While We Were Drunk. Lovelution, meanwhile, seems to hark back to cutesy Rainie.

The album closes with the fast-paced Happy Ending, and it has certainly been one for Yang.

Vindicating her new direction, the record has topped the album charts in Taiwan for several weeks. Hopefully, this means the more mature Yang is here to stay.

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It is a holiday trip in which you call the shots. You decide what time to get up and set off, how long to linger at each attraction or even whether to wander off the set path.

While Singaporeans are familiar with the pleasures of driving trips in countries such as New Zealand and the United States, the idea can seem rather daunting in a place where you do not understand the language.

But on recent trips to Okinawa and Chubu in Japan, Life! found the driving experience to be breezy and fuss-free.

The trip was organised by local tour agency Follow Me Japan, which has been organising fly-and-drive Japanese holidays since 2005.

All cars come equipped with a GPS navigation system, which means that getting from point A to point B is as simple as keying in a numerical map code and then following the English voice instructions. It also helps that the Japanese are patient and polite drivers and you never feel hassled on the roads.

You get a detailed booklet with a suggested itinerary, complete with maps, colour photographs and descriptive passages. Much care goes into putting all this together and there are also recommendations on popular local eateries and specialities one should not miss.

Also, since most cellphones in Singapore do not work in Japan because of the different technologies adopted, the agency issues its customers with a local mobile phone for ease of communication within the group.

Follow Me Japan started off with driving tours to Hokkaido and has since added other destinations such as the regions of Tohoku and Chubu, and recently, the southern-most prefecture of Okinawa.

The main island of Okinawa is blessed with a rugged coastline and clear, shallow waters teeming with an abundance of marine life and colourful corals. Divers can plunge right in and swim alongside more than 1,000 species of fish, marine mammals and sea turtles and more than 200 reef-building corals.

For non-divers, the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium (oki-churaumi.jp, tel: +81-980-48-3748) is a good place to start getting acquainted with beauteous and bountiful nature. After all, Churaumi means beautiful sea in the local dialect.

It recreates, in air-conditioned comfort, the experience of venturing from the shallow shores to the deep sea as you saunter from the fourth floor to the first, passing by garden eels, an array of darting fish and the carcass of a giant squid.

The world-class aquarium boasts a central tank which houses 70 species, including regal manta rays and circling whale sharks, the largest fish in the world which grow to an average length of 7.6m.

When you venture outdoors, it pays to be well prepared with sunscreen, headgear and shades as the summer heat is intense and the light piercingly bright.

The Busena Marine Park (www.busena-marinepark.com is in Japanese only or www.okinawastory.jp, tel: +81-980-52- 3379) offers rides in a glass-bottom boat and fabulous views at 3 to 4m deep from the underwater observatory tower. This is as close as you can get to the tropical fish and delicate corals without getting your feet wet.

There are clownfish clowning about among the poisonous tentacles of sea anemone, while the flamboyant Banana Wrasse steals the show every time its vivid rainbow colours come into view.

Since this is a free-and-easy driving trip, feel free to stop at any of the scenic lookout points and take in the dramatic coastline. At Cape Manzamo, an “elephant” carved out of the rock by the relentless waves looks like it is about to dip its trunk into the irresistible waters for a refreshing drink.

Climb the 30m-tall lighthouse at Cape Zanpa for panoramic views of sea and land as the wind rushes about.

For the most part, driving in Okinawa is easy as the traffic is fairly light except during rush hour in the evenings.

While it is not as scenic as, say, Hokkaido, you do get rewarded with flashes of brilliantly blue water every so often.

After all that activity and driving around, reward yourself by tucking into the delicious harvest served up by the sea.

Try the local speciality, umibudo (seagrapes), at the popular Ganso Umi Budo Honten restaurant (tel: +81-98-966- 2588). The seagrape-don has a generous helping of the seaweed along with ikura (salmon roe), uni (sea urchin) and yamakake (grated Japanese mountain yam). The reason for the name is apparent when you see it as it looks like little bunches of green grapes. The seaweed bursts in your mouth and tastes of the sea. Think of seagrapes as a firmer and less salty version of salmon roe.

The nearby Yakaji Island produces kuruma ebi (literally, car prawns) and you can have them tempura-style at Kuruma Ebi Shokudo (tel: +81-980-47-7888). The fresh and juicy prawns are coated in a light batter and then deep-fried to perfection. Wash them down with an ice- cold mug of the local Orion beer.

A good way to beat the heat is to tuck into zenzai. It is a Zen version of ice kacang with no bells and whistles or artificial colouring, yet it is amazing how satisfying the simple combination of shaved ice and red beans can be.

At Makishi Public Market in bustling Kokusai Street, pick up the catch of the day and have it served to you at the eateries conveniently located on the second floor of the market.

There is a lot more to explore when it comes to Okinawan cuisine. A distinguishing feature is the prominence of ingredients such as pork and goya (bitter gourd). Dig into the cooling stir-fry of goya champuru as well as the melt-in-your-mouth tenderness of rafute – a dish of braised pork belly that was fit for the royal family of the Ryukyu Kingdom, which is present-day Okinawa.

The splendours of the kingdom can be glimpsed from a visit to Shurijo Castle (www.oki-park.jp, tel: +81-98-886- 2020), which was first built between the 13th and 14th centuries. As befitting a major trading port which absorbed influences from abroad, the castle has elements of mainland Japanese, Chinese and Korean architecture.

If you are keen to learn more about Okinawa’s storied past, drop by sights such as the Zakimi Castle ruins (www.okinawastory.jp, tel: +81-98-958- 3141) and Shikinaen Royal Garden (www.okinawastory.jp, tel: +81-98-855- 5936), as well as the Okinawa Prefectural Museum (www.museums.pref.okinawa. jp, tel: +81-98-941-8200) with its detailed dioramas and extensive write- ups in English.

At some point though, do head for the beach. Feel the sun on your skin, get your feet wet and just lose yourself in a sea of dazzling blues.

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C’est La “V”

Van Ness Wu

Best known for being a quarter of Taiwanese boyband F4 (now renamed JVKV), Van Ness Wu has always been eclipsed by the uber-popularity of bandmates Jerry Yan and Vic Chou.

But with a new album, a hit idol drama Autumn’s Concerto in 2009 and another, Material Queen, currently airing, Wu’s solo star may be shining the brightest at the moment.

Material Queen’s theme song Is This All has been getting attention and airplay as it features Ryan Tedder from the American rock band OneRepublic.

Its lyrics – “What am I chasing after/So it’s all just air/So is this all I’ve been waiting for?” – seem to reflect his spiritual state after the one-time playboy famously embraced Christianity.

The K-pop-cloning Love, Faith, Live and the dance-pop of Do It keep things promising with their thumping grooves.

They may be a tad predictable, but there is no denying that things move along like well-oiled machinery.

The album starts to lose momentum with When You’re Near.

This is supposed to be the show-stopping, heartfelt ballad of the disc, but his so-so voice doesn’t quite tug at the heartstrings.

Instead, the track wanders off into filler territory.

Things end with another high-profile collaboration. The English track Knockin’, written and produced by American singer-songwriter Bruno Mars, is a catchy slice of rhythmic pop with lyrics about being overlooked.

Well, Wu need not worry about that, the way his career is going right now.

(ST)

Treasure Hunt

Wong Jing

The story: Peggy (Cecilia Cheung) decides to travel to a remote island to direct an advertisement with the perpetually sozzled star Mr Big (Ronald Cheng). Angered by this, her husband takes off with their son (Lucas Tse). On the island, Peggy and gang encounter an environmentalist, Star (Shao Bing), his son Starlet (Peng Gen) and a group of baddies who are after a long-lost treasure.

If you are watching this for the cute moppet Lucas Tse’s big-screen debut, don’t bother.

The elder son of estranged celebrity couple Cecilia Cheung and Nicholas Tse appears only at the beginning and end of the movie. It is as if the four-year-old is already a big-enough star to do a cameo even though this is his first role.

While no one is expecting him to pull off a Victoire Thivisol (who controversially won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1996 at the age of five for playing a child dealing with grief in the drama Ponette), he really does not do much here.

We know that Lucas is capable of a more spirited showing given that he had previously upstaged Hong Kong actor-

director Stephen Chow at a press conference. He had said to the adoring media: “Hello, I love you. I love everyone. Don’t say my mummy is fat.”

It also irked to have him dubbed over in Mandarin. For all you know, some jaded six-year-old was passing himself off as four-year-old Lucas.

Even without him, though, this cheap and tacky looking film features an unusually large number of children. Mr Big has a daughter, his agent Wayne has a son and the environmentalist who comes from out of nowhere also has a son.

Bizarrely, the children tag along on the work trip to a remote island and Wayne’s son even joins the advertisement’s cast and crew when they head out for drinks. Was this Bring Your Child To Work day?

At least the child actors up the cute quotient and make the movie less excruciating to watch. In particular, Peng Gen steals the limelight in Lucas’ absence.

Otherwise, the film is mostly ludicrously irritating rather than entertainingly over the top, lazily tacking on a treasure hunt story on top of a family drama.

The baddies are from the cartoon school of villainy and the treasure map is a bad joke. There are Easter egg hunts more exciting than this treasure hunt.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.”

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)

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.

(ST)