Hysteria
Tanya Wexler
The story: In strait-laced late 19th-century Victorian England, hysteria is a supposed medical condition afflicting half the women. The young and idealistic Dr Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) gets a job which essentially requires him to give women massages to provide sexual relief. Meanwhile, he finds himself drawn to his employer’s daughters, gentle Emily (Felicity Jones) and firebrand Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Along the way, the vibrator is born.

There must have been a lot of sexually frustrated women in Victorian England. The societal strictures and mores of the time would be more suffocating than a tightly drawn corset.
Then again, the concept of sexual frustration did not even exist. Instead, a whole host of symptoms and vague complaints were tagged with the label of hysteria.
The audience is quickly given a sense of the state of science and medicine when a senior physician dismisses germ theory as “poppycock” and leeches are routinely used to suck blood from patients in the misguided belief that this would cure them.
Enter the idealistic Dr Granville who puts his faith in science and simply wants to help people. He is such a decent chap, he even refuses to take money from his rich eccentric friend (Rupert Everett).
Looking like he stepped out from the pages of a Jane Austen novel, Hugh Dancy is perfectly cast as Dr Granville.
With his pleasant features and earnest demeanour, he is like a less stuttery but still charming version of Hugh Grant.
Dancy – incidentally the star of romantic drama The Jane Austen Book Club (2007) – keeps the character likeable even when he is shown up to be rather conservative and stodgy after all by the firebrand that is Charlotte Dalrymple.
As Charlotte, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s eyes are bright with hope and conviction as she agitates for a more equal society. It is clear that the two are attracted to each other even though Dr Granville is initially drawn to the more ladylike and genteel younger sister Emily.
Without quite realising it, he ends up playing a part in the revolution as well, nudging sexual equality along by coming up with the vibrator. The joke is that he initially conceives of it in order to give his tired hands a rest from massaging so many women.
Director Tanya Wexler handles the material here with a light touch and finds the humour in the absurdity of the situation: Perfectly proper women flock to the doctor and everyone is in denial about the fact that the women are essentially receiving sexual favours from the dishy young doctor.
And instead of feeling smutty, the feel-good scenes of a variety of women achieving pleasure are gently amusing.
In its good-natured celebration of female sexuality, Hysteria brings to mind John Cameron Mitchell’s outlandish but sweet Shortbus (2006).
Watch the end credits to learn about the amusing nicknames the vibrator has had over the years, from the squealer to the sorcerer’s apprentice.
(ST)

Lullaby
Tracy Huang
Fourteen years after her last album Crazy For Love (1998), Taiwan-born Tracy Huang has decided to put out a new album. Her 51st release is not a record of new material but, as the title points out, a collection of tunes to soothe and comfort.
It is a kind of benediction as well.
She writes in the liner notes: “I hope and pray that every child with a lullaby will grow up happily with the accompaniment of singing. For the child without a lullaby, I send him one as a gift to comfort all his unease.”
At 60, Huang’s voice can still sound as gentle as a caress and the effect is buttressed by the dreamy reverb as she sings a selection of Mandarin and English folk and pop classics.
Illustrator Jimmy Liao’s whimsical drawings add to the child-like vibe of innocence here. Huang’s take on The Mamas & The Papas’ Dream A Little Dream Of Me even features the voice of her then six-year-old niece.
A highlight here is the Minnan number My Sweet Baby, composed by feted singer-songwriter Lo Ta-yu.
Huang might not have biological children of her own but her hopes and wishes for the child in the song are touchingly moving.
Rest assured, grown-up fans, this is not just for children but also for the child in you.

On My Way
Jane Huang
After two albums as one-half of rock duo Y2J, Taiwan’s Jane Huang goes solo with a clutch of strong songs, courtesy of a stellar group of lyricists and composers.
Slightly left-of-centre electro-pop opener Run Run Run by Sandee Chan serves as a good introduction to what is on offer here – Huang as a spirited indie musician who is trying to find her way forward.
Make no mistake, she might have a bright open voice but there is an edge to it that tips her over into rocker rather than sweet-young-thing territory.
Chan is also responsible for the ballad Good Enough, which begins with the evocative couplet: “You’re good to me, the coldest winter has left behind your jacket/Your jacket, has imbued even my shadow with your scent ever since.”
Power rocker Wu Bai contributes three tracks. His strong personal style can sometimes overwhelm the material he writes for others but the surprisingly understated alt-rock vibe of I Won’t Cry proves to be the perfect fit for Huang.
The album’s title track, meanwhile, is radio-friendly pop fare and the idol drama theme song for Ti Amo Chocolate should serve to attract a wider audience to her debut.
On My Way suggests that Huang might not have all the answers regarding her destination but she knows that the journey itself is meaningful.
(ST)

30th Drama Anniversary – Our Theme Song Concert
Resorts World Convention Centre
Compass Ballroom/Sunday
A theme song has to set the tone for the television show it soundtracks, be it a slice-of- life comedy or a wrenching drama. The best ones can call up images from a particular series from the first strains of the music.
Some, such as Mavis Hee’s City In The Moonlight, even take on a life beyond the confines of the goggle box to become enduring hits.
In three decades, MediaCorp (previously Singapore Broadcasting Corporation and then Television Corporation of Singapore) has certainly amassed a treasure trove of material.
On Sunday night, a near sold-out crowd of 3,000-plus fans mostly in their 30s and older came to reminisce and to sing along.
Veteran singer Eric Moo got things off to a rousing start with four songs, including Kopi-O and Forget The Past from The Coffee Shop (1986). He reveals that he had insisted on being able to include the term “kopi-o” (local colloquialism for black coffee) in the song despite the ban on dialects on TV. It just would not have been the same if the Mandarin name for it had been used – “kafeiwu” just didn’t have the same authentic ring as “kopi- o”.
There were also cameos by actors Xiang Yun and Huang Wenyong, who talked about their historical drama The Awakening 1 (1984), and Wang Yuqing, making a cheeky appearance in school uniform when Maggie Theng sang the theme song for Flying Fish (1983), the drama that made him a pin-up star then.
While their appearances were welcome, the over 21/2-hour-long concert could have moved along at a brisker pace. And instead of having singer-songwriter Lee Wai Shiong perform an incongruously campy dance remix medley of numbers penned by him, they could have squeezed in, say, The Awakening’s stirring theme song or The Little Nyonya (2008)’s popular ballad Like Swallow.
At least the organisers were canny enough to save the best for last.
Singer Kit Chan gave a loose-limbed take on the jazzy Looking At The Moon from Driven By A Car (1998) as well as a diva-esque rendition of Stubborn from Devotion (2011).
She then introduced Hee, who has given only sporadic public performances after a public meltdown in 2006.
Dressed in a loose earth-toned gown and wearing big hoop earrings, she still possessed a rich balm of a voice. In fact, she sounded better here than she did at the xinyao-themed Chong Feng 7 concert in 2009 and at her guest appearance in last year’s musical-concert Don’t Forget To Say Good Bye.
On Sunday, she sang Sunshine Always Comes After The Rain from The Silver Lining (1997), Regret from Mirror Of Life (1996), the wistful title track to A Song To Remember (2011) and, of course, her signature hit Moonlight In The City from Tofu Street (1996).
Hee told the audience shyly: “Although I don’t see everyone very often, I miss you guys. And I’m doing okay.”
Her gentle musical stylings gave way to the blistering rock balladry of Taiwanese duo Power Station.
It turns out that they have had quite an affinity with local drama series. Who knew that their hit Na Jiu Zhe Yang Ba (Just Let It Be Then) was from Knotty Liaisons (2000)?
The final number of the night was the determinedly dramatic Wo Chi De Qi Ku (I Can Endure Hardships) from Stepping Out (1999), also known as the show for which actress Cynthia Koh shaved her head.
Despite the simple stage set-up and only an occasional use of vintage footage from yesteryear, the crowd seemed to have a good time. Even local drama stars such as Thomas Ong and Pan Lingling could be seen chorusing along enthusiastically among the audience.
As Moo sang on Friendship Lies In The Heart: “There’s yours, there’s mine, the traces of our growing up years.”
(ST)

Fiction
Yoga Lin
At this point, Taiwanese singer Yoga Lin’s biggest competition is himself.
Having released the adventurous Senses Around (2009) and the stellar Perfect Life (2011), the 25-year-old has set the bar very high indeed.
On his fourth album, he plays around with the conceit of fiction and storytelling, and things start off promisingly.
Opening track Si Fan (Captain S.V) takes an unusual point-of-view and is about aliens visiting earth. He ponders: “I must quickly find out the charms of this backward planet, the captain who should have long since returned, why does he refuse to leave.”
It feels, though, that much of Fiction lacks something of the surprise and urgency that the previous two records conveyed. In part due to the broad theme, the album is more like a disparate collection of songs than a tightly knit record.
Not that the songs are terrible – they just do not reach past heights.
With the inclusion of Unrequited, Fools’ Bliss and Fool, there also seems to be one too many love ballad by composer Cheng Nan, even with Lin’s emotive voice in fine form throughout.
Perhaps the lack of a breakthrough is due to the fact that Perfect Life was released little more than a year ago. It is worth bearing in mind that music, like fiction, needs time to be carefully crafted.

The Last Day Of Summer
831
Are Taiwanese rock band Mayday releasing a new album so soon after their triumphant six-statuette haul at the Golden Melody Awards?
One would be forgiven for thinking so upon hearing fellow Taiwanese band 831’s third and latest disc, given how vocalist Up Lee’s enunciation on the ballad The Best Ending makes him sound exactly like Ashin, frontman of Mayday.
There is also more than a passing similarity between the sound of quintets 831 and Mayday, as both serve up tenderly earnest ballads and blistering rock numbers. In fact, Ashin even wrote the lyrics for 831’s Lunatic here.
The Last Day Of Summer is not a bad record at all, but it does 831 no favours to be so closely associated with a bigger, more established act. If they want to be a band for all seasons, they need to think about staking out a more distinctive sound on their fourth album.
(ST)

Ice Age 4: Continental Drift
Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
The story: Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano) gets separated from his mate Ellie (Queen Latifah) and daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) when the unstable land mass breaks apart. Together with his friends Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) and Diego the sabre- toothed cat (Denis Leary), he has to outwit pirates and survive other dangers to reunite with his family.
Are they running out of ideas for the Ice Age franchise?
In Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), a flood threatened to inundate the gang’s valley home. In Ice Age 4, it is another natural calamity, another journey for Manny and gang – just as it is in every Ice Age film.
Worse, some of the plot contrivances this time around feel too outlandish even for an animated flick.
Take, for instance, the pirate-ship conceit. A crew led by a giant ape Gutt (Peter Dinklage) terrorise the seas for... what exactly? Amassing booty from talking prehistoric animals?
Equally incongruous and incomprehensible is the appearance of deadly seductive sirens, as the film suddenly riffs on the seafaring adventures of the Greek hero Odysseus.
Clearly, Ice Age 4 is trying too hard, particularly in broadening its appeal to everyone from six to 66.
For the older crowd, the MannyPeaches storyline about an overprotective father connecting with a rebellious daughter is like a family sitcom made over for the animated ice age. It makes sense given Romano’s background in TV comedy (Everybody Loves Raymond, 1996-2005) but it feels too pedestrian to engage.
For the younger crowd, there are the funny faces by Sid and the silly action gags to amuse.
The stunt star-casting does not always work in Ice Age 4, either. While Game Of Thrones star Dinklage snarls and menaces as Gutt, singer Jennifer Lopez just sounds like herself instead of trying to essay the female sabre-toothed cat she voices.
It is left to the opening silent short film, which stars baby Maggie Simpson from TV’s animated first family of dysfunction, to provide some wit and charm.
There is also, of course, the reliable charm of the always-thwarted sabre- toothed squirrel Scrat, whose obsessive hunt for acorns triggers off the continental cataclysm in the first place.
In comparison, the recently released Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012) is a smarter and more imaginative sequel which takes more risks in its storytelling and is the richer for it.
Maybe it is time to put this franchise on ice before it goes completely adrift.
(ST)

Motorway
Soi Cheang
The story: Cheung (Shawn Yue) is a young-punk cop with a taste for speed while his partner Lo (Anthony Wong) is just looking forward to retirement. When ace getaway driver Jiang (Guo Xiaodong), who had previously tangled with Lo, resurfaces, it is up to Cheung to stop him in his tracks.
Someone has clearly been watching Drive (2011), the oh-so-cool crime thriller by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn.
While the magnetic getaway driver played by Ryan Gosling was the focus of that film, Motorway takes a more conventional route by setting up the good cops against the bad robbers.
Other familiar elements here include the odd-couple pairing between the cops played by Yue and Wong.
When Yue needs advice on how to rev up his skills so that he can make an impossibly tight corner, no prizes for guessing who takes on the Yoda-mentor role.
And then there are the driving-as-life metaphors which tend to be rather heavy-handed.
Where director Soi Cheang (Accident, 2009) excels is in his use of Hong Kong locations.
The city’s distinctive warren of narrow one-way streets is used to great effect when Cheung pursues Jiang down darkened alleys. And watch how Jiang slips out of the law’s grasp with some nifty driving.
Later on, there is an epic race-off as cars chase one another down twisty mountainous roads with hairpin turns and somehow, Jiang goes from being the pursued to the pursuer.
The final showdown is cleverly set in a parking lot where columns restrict one’s line of sight and being able to drive fast is not quite as important as being skilled.
While the film might not be quite as fetishistic as, say, the Fast And Furious flicks, Cheang does manage to work in loving close-ups of sleek-looking mechanical parts pumping away smoothly and gauge needles swinging seductively.
Wong is reliably dependable as the older and wiser cop who has seen it all while there is not much for Yue, so good in Love In A Puff (2010), to do here but glower and look intense.
Guo (Summer Palace, 2006) adds gravitas to the role of Jiang but can only do so much with a thinly written character.
It is a pity that the story is rather bare and does not pack much in the way of surprises.
The female characters are also given short shrift and Barbie Hsu’s love-interest doctor is awkwardly superfluous.
But it is still satisfying to watch Cheung fulfil his destiny as a Jedi-knight driver and become one with the wheel.
(ST)

Ideal Life
Lala Hsu
The pixie-faced Lala Hsu is one of the most promising singer-songwriters to have emerged from the singing competition One Million Star.
She made a strong showing with her self-titled debut album in 2009. It included the excellent Riding On A White Horse, which unexpectedly and successfully mixed pop with Chinese opera.
Follow-up album Limits (2010) was less memorable though the ballad Acrophobia was a decided highlight.
On her new record, Hsu sounds more mature and assured than ever.
The heart of the album are ballads that throb with a morass of emotions.
I Dare You has her challenging a lover: “I dare you to/Say that hating me is like loving me, a determination springing from the heart/I dare you, loving someone can make you feel petty and low.”
And the title track with lyrics by David Ke is heartbreakingly poignant: “Are we happier than before/Each leading our ideal lives/ Knowing better than anyone in my heart/No one is more suitable than you.”
The rest of the album is no slouch either.
From charming opener Cuckoo, on which her dulcet tones gently caress the lyrics, to energising closer Lala’s Squad, Hsu has crafted a beautifully honest and moving record about love and life.

Mr. Jazz – A Song For You
Jam Hsiao
Asian singers have proved before that they can do jazz.
Hong Kong’s Jacky Cheung tackled the genre in Cantonese on Private Corner (2010), while Taiwan’s Soft Lipa collaborated with Japanese jazz quintet Jabberloop on the heady concoction that was Moonlight (2010).
Unfortunately, Mr Jazz takes a step backward.
Yes, Taiwan’s Jam Hsiao has the pipes, but his phrasing often feels stiff and overly mannered here.
And do we really need another version of chestnuts such as Rhythm Of The Rain and Put Your Head On My Shoulder?
His less-than-perfect diction further distracts.
Listening to him sing “I thing of you every morneeeng” on (I Love You) For
Sentimental Reasons, you would seriously wish you did not.
(ST)

Painted Skin: The Resurrection
Wuershan
The story: The fox spirit Xiaowei (Zhou Xun) needs a human to willingly give her a heart so that she can become mortal. She comes between princess Jing (Zhao Wei) and general Huo Xin (Chen Kun) in a triangle of love and lust.
In Gordan Chan’s Painted Skin (2008), fox spirit Xiaowei (Zhou) falls for general Wang Sheng (Chen) who is married to Peirong (Zhao).
The sequel or rather reboot reunites the main cast with Zhou reprising her role. But even though Zhao and Chen play new characters, there is a sense of karmic continuity as the three are entangled once again.
Princess Jing has been in love with Huo for a long time but he is reluctant to reciprocate because of their different stations in life.
After an accident in the woods which leaves her horribly scarred, Huo is sent to the western frontier to guard the Han Dynasty from the animalistic Tian Lang kingdom. Thrown into the mix is the appearance of fox spirit Xiaowei, who wins Jing’s trust and then bewitches Huo with her beauty.
In the end, she offers Jing a deal – a human heart in exchange for Xiaowei’s skin so the disfigured princess can win Huo’s affection.
In a fantastical setting, the film explores age-old questions about the nature of love by pushing things to the extreme and giving up one’s heart to love is taken literally.
Taking over from Hong Kong’s Gordan Chan, China director Wuershan (The Butcher, The Chef And The Swordsman, 2010) imbues Resurrection with a languid sensuality.
A key scene of Xiaowei and Jing swopping identities is languorously teased out as the two women get under each other’s skins in a steamy pool. What prevents this from tipping over into cheesy pervy territory is the fantasy element as the skin is removed and then put on as if it were a costume.
Striking visual effects are also put to good use elsewhere such as in depicting Xiaowei’s imprisonment in an icy abyss at the beginning of the film.
The cast is uniformly competent, from Zhou’s husky-voiced seductive spirit to Chen’s conflicted general to Zhao’s painfully-in-love princess.
Look out for 1980s Mandopop idol Fei Xiang, who is almost unrecognisable as a Tian Lang seer with a bulbous bald head and sunken eyes.
Going by his birth name Kris Phillips, the Chinese-American looker has made a gutsy move that might just resurrect his Chinese show business career.
(ST)

Tanya (1999)
Tanya Chua
How does one go from being a feted small-time singer- songwriter to being a commercially viable pop star?
Beyond being worthy records in and of themselves, Tanya Chua’s early works offer some interesting answers.
Her debut album Bored (1997) sold 3,000 copies while her second record Tanya (1999, above) racked up sales of over 200,000 in the fiercely competitive Taiwan market.
The most obvious difference between the two is the language. Chua, 37, sings in English on Bored and in Mandarin on Tanya. Her lightly husky pipes, honed from years of performing in live venues, is equally at home in both languages.
What made her stand out, particularly in the Mandopop market, was also the fact that she was no sweetie-pie singer but someone who clearly had a mind of her own and was not afraid to speak it.
It helped that she was both a composer and lyricist and English tracks such as Bored, You Sorry Ass!! and My Colour TV Set had an engaging honesty. While none of the Chinese lyrics were written by her, there was a clear link between the material on her first two solo albums.
The English songs found their way to the album Tanya in different ways and to different degrees. While there is a track titled Hao Wu Liao (Bored), it features a new melody from Chua.
As opposed to the more downbeat Bored with lines such as “I wanna get that silly high on cigarettes”, Hao Wu Liao paired a breezy jangly melody with lyrics about love. It won her the best local music composition prize at the 6th Singapore Hit Awards in 1999.
One could say that Hao was playing to the Mandopop market in which love songs are the mainstay.
But it did so in a way that was smart and one still had a sense of Chua’s spirited character with lyrics such as: “I hate arguing with you/Can sing a different tune to anything/Why not go our separate ways/Better than being bored together.”
Other songs had a more straightforward makeover in which the melody remained but the lyrics were changed.
The spunky You Sorry Ass!! became Ni Kuai Zou Kai (You’d Best Get Lost). In Ass, the vitriol directed at an ex-lover is cushioned by jangly guitars: “I hope someday you will find someone/And she will treat you like you treated me/Then how you’ll fall apart now I should wonder?”
The sting is further lessened on Zou Kai, though she still berates an ex: “I hate the tone you take with women/Don’t care about me at all, I’ve really had enough/You’d best get lost”.
Impressively, while it builds upon an earlier record, Tanya manages to be a cohesive album in its own right, balancing commercial dictates with a singersongwriter’s distinctive voice. While the Chinese lyrics were farmed out, Chua composed the music for seven tracks.
Apart from the fact that she could pen memorable hooks, the use of the harmonica on several tracks also gives the album a distinctive folk-pop sound.
Unfortunately, the record company’s pick for the lead single was Breathe, one of three tracks not composed by Chua.
To add insult to injury, her face was not seen in the music video, which led to speculation she must be a plain Jane.
In later interviews, Chua would say she felt trapped when she could not express herself in her own words. And one can see how she has sought greater control of her music over the years.
She wore the producer hat for the first time on Goodbye & Hello (2007) and by her seventh album If You See Him (2009), she was responsible for penning more than half the Chinese lyrics.
It is a journey that has borne fruit as she has now reaped three prestigious Golden Melody Awards for Best Female Mandarin Singer, the latest for Sing It Out Of Love (2011).
Chua, who will perform at The Straits Times Appreciates Readers (Star) concert on July 15 at Gardens by the Bay, has indeed come a long way.
Regardless of how she might feel about her Mandarin debut now, it introduced her to a bigger audience and paved the road for her future successes.
And it remains a treat to listen to today.
(ST)

Lost And Found
Jason Chan

Black Rainbow
Dominique Tsai

Crossroad - Greatest Hits
Kelvin Tan

Following up his last studio album Put On (2010), Hong Kong’s Jason Chan offers a little of everything on Lost And Found.
Opening Cantonese track Give Oneself A Break is a collaboration with hip-hop group Fama, while the Pakho Chau-composed Murder Case is a ballad with dark electronic overtones.
The three Mandarin numbers are, as far as pronunciation is concerned, happily easy on the ear. Yet, only the midtempo Charge leaves an impression as Chan’s falsetto soars.
One of the six Cantonese tracks on the disc, Mr Espresso, turns out to be the most satisfying offering here – a love ballad that lingers in the mind.
Meanwhile, Taiwanese singersongwriter Dominique Tsai serves up a more cohesive treat on her third album.
The sassy electropop of This Ain’t Love is followed by Midnight Dance with its pumping beats and synth lines.
The lyrics of title track Black Rainbow plays with contrasting opposites: “Turning around I saw a black rainbow/Far away, but as though it’s mine/It said there’s only one kind of happiness left, only loneliness is left.”
The dark sensuality here is alluring.
In contrast, local singer Kelvin Tan plays with both light and dark in this two-disc collection which comprises material taken from his three albums from 2006 to 2009.
Ballads about lost love and dashed dreams make up Black Disc, while hope finds its way to the White Disc.
The sole new track here is Crossroad on which the balladeer bemoans: “Why is it the more you love someone the more that person gets hurt/Why do good people come to bad ends”.
His mellifluous tones are showcased to best effect on emotive hit ballads such as Love.Hate, Break Up Letter and All I Want Is.
And it is Tan’s balm of a voice that shines light on darkness.
(ST)

One In A Thousand
Della Ding Dang

Kimberley Debut Album
Kimberley Chen

OMG
Li Sheng

With great lung power comes great responsibility.
It has taken a few albums, but China- born Della Ding Dang is finally comfortable reining her voice in.
Once, she unleashed it all, such as while covering Taiwanese singer Chao Chuan’s I’m A Small Small Bird. Now, she knows a song can often be more moving when it is sung with greater delicacy.
Album opener How Rare is about how hard it is to fall for the right person and yet, devastatingly, have the relationship not meant to be. The songs Not Your Fault and Impossible On One’s Own further explore the emotional terrain of heartbreak.
For a change of pace, Della lets her hair down on the dance track Wild Beast, and has some fun.
Newcomer Kimberley Chen might not be a power belter like Della, but she certainly makes an impression in her debut. In the rather obviously named Kimberley Debut Album, she goes from sweet in Love You to funky in the Lady Gagainfluenced Wonderland.
The bright-eyed, Melbourne-born 18-year-old brings with her an energising freshness as she sings in both Mandarin and English.
The lyrics are filled with references to gaming and social media, and even a certain popular game. She warns in Friday: “I can be an Angry Bird, fly away and leave you hurt.”
It would be too precious for words for anyone older to attempt this, but the youthful vibe fits Chen like a candycoloured glove.
A standout here is the slinkily hypnotic Can’t Do Without Me for which she co-wrote the lyrics. Here, she sings about a boy who has fallen hard for her: “He gazes at the computer day by day/Listening to Jay Chou’s Secret Signal, asking me to steal away his troubles.”
You might just fall for her music too.
China’s Li Sheng (below), on the other hand, seems to have caught a terminal case of the cutes on her debut.
Fresh from her starring role in New My Fair Princess, the latest ingenue to play the winning role of the bubbly Little Swallow has branched out into singing.
Unfortunately, cuteness oozes from every line in tracks such as Oh My God, Love Superman and, um, Pizza Pizza, a chirpy ode to that savoury pie complete with a cheerleader chant. And Lucky Song is sung in character as Little Swallow.
When she sings the ballad Love You Innocently, you realise that she has a pleasant enough voice. Too bad it is mostly smothered by the material here.
Unless you are a fan of her in the show, OMG, this album might be too much to swallow.
(ST)

Snowfall In Taipei
Huo Jianqi
China’s Huo Jianqi had previously directed the well-received drama Postmen In The Mountains (2002). Unfortunately, it turns out that he has no feel for romance at all.
In this film, the cheerful do-gooder Hsiao-mo (Chen Bo-lin’s charm is wasted here) is paired with the bland singer-on-the-run May (Zhang Ziyi lookalike Tong Yao).
Too much time is spent on her story – she has lost her voice, various people are looking for her, and none of it is urgent or interesting.
Meanwhile, there is a not-quite- romance between Hsiao-mo and May as she pines after a music producer who spouts lines such as “Rain is the poetry of the world”.
Given her dubious taste in men, it is hard to care whom she ends up with.
It does not help that Huo includes, without a trace of irony, a dated music video montage scene set to singer Meng Ting-wei’s To Taipei To See The Rain In Winter.
Even worse, he manages to use indie singer-songwriter Cheer Chen’s songs in a way that makes them seem twee instead of deeply felt.
At least he cannot mangle the scenic setting of the film.
Just as Cape No. 7 (2008) boosted Hengchun’s tourism, Snowfall In Taipei makes you feel like making a trip to Chingtung old town the next time you are in Taiwan.
(ST)

Sadako
Tsutomu Hanabusa
The story: There is a cursed video clip online that shows a man committing suicide. After watching it, the viewer dies as well. When one of her students dies after stumbling upon the footage, high school teacher Akane (Satomi Ishihara) is reluctantly drawn in. It turns out that Akane has special powers and she has to use them to battle the curse of a resurrected Sadako, the long-haired ghoul who first appeared in Hideo Nakata’s Ring (1998).

Even curses need to get with the times.
In the original Ring, Sadako’s curse was spread via a videotape. How quaintly old school. Without an upgrade, the curse would have soon met with a quick end in this day and age. Accordingly, the curse of Sadako is now transmitted via an online video clip so that curious students and geeky techie types can serve as cannon fodder.
The other aspect of the film that has been updated is that audiences can now watch this in 3-D. Given that the scene of Sadako crawling out of a television screen in Ring is such an iconic one, you wonder how the 3-D effect will be used here. Disappointingly, it is merely employed for cheap scares.
Worse, the scares are really not very scary. Ring was creepily atmospheric but director Tsutomu Hanabusa, whose previous credits include comedies such as The Handsome Suit (2008), is this close to venturing into parody territory here.
As Kashiwada, the man who brings back Sadako and dies on film, Yusuke Yamamoto’s performance is exaggerated to the point of being campy. And while there was Nanako Matsushima’s harried reporter to root for previously, the protagonists here are the blandly pleasant-looking Satomi Ishihara and Koji Seto, who plays Akane’s boyfriend Takanori.
There is actually a sweet backstory on how Akane and Takanori got together in high school after she was ostracised for her powers but it is buried beneath the garbled and nonsensical goings-on in the present.
For example, we are shown Akane’s special power the first time she encounters Sadako. And yet in the final showdown, she does not use it right from the start and instead unleashes it only after a drawn-out cat-and-mouse sequence.
This movie just feels like a shoddy exercise to cash in on a certain long-haired ghoul’s notoriety. Sadako would not be pleased.
(ST)

2012 Shinhwa Grand Tour In Singapore: The Return
Resorts World Convention Centre
Compass Ballroom/Last Saturday

From Take That to Backstreet Boys to New Kids On The Block, boybands everywhere have been on a resurgent streak. Add to that list South Korea’s Shinhwa, who have reportedly sold more than five million records worldwide.
Over the past four years, the group had been on a hiatus due to the compulsory military obligations that the members had to fulfil. With that out of the way, K-pop’s longest-lasting boyband is back with a bang with their 10th album The Return (2012) and an Asian tour.
On homeground, tickets for their two shows in Seoul were sold out within 40 minutes. In Singapore, they played to a sold-out crowd of about 5,000 people.
The fans came dressed in orange and carried orange lights, flags and placards. That has apparently been the official colour of the fanclub since 1998, when the six boys made their debut.
Eric Mun, Lee Min Woo, Kim Dong Wan, Shin Hye Sung, Jun Jin and Andy Lee are in their early 30s but they can still trigger frenzied screams and piercing chants simply by stepping on stage.
With their coordinated outfits and choreographed dance moves, Shinhwa – which means myth or legend – stuck close to the K-pop boyband playbook.
They made their entrance in white ensembles and then launched into dance number T.O.P, the Swan Lake-sampling title track off their second album from 1999. Over the two-hour-plus long concert, they performed songs from throughout their career.
They acted cute on Eusha! Eusha! from debut album Revolver (1998), pumped up the energy on Hey, Come On (2001) and grooved to the slinky R&B of Addiction (2003). But unfortunately, Shinhwa were none too impressive vocally. This seemed to be partly due to glitches with the sound equipment and Kim even went off stage more than once to get things fixed.
The group had a couple of rough patches and on Perfect Man (2002), pitching was far from perfect and it took a while for everyone to agree on the key.
Another source of frustration was the fact that the banter between songs was left untranslated. This was not an obstacle for a sizeable portion of the audience since understanding Korean is a mark of the true-blue K-pop fan.
But for the rest of the audience, the only thing that registered was the repeated reference to Singapore.
And also when Kim spoke in Mandarin, his lines were cheesy: “My girlfriend is beautiful. My girlfriend is all of you.”
But they worked on the female fans.
It may not have been the perfect comeback but it bodes well for the guys that the loudest cheers and most enthusiastic singalong segment were for the updated electropop of comeback single Venus.
Looks like Shinhwa’s “legend” has not hit its expiry date yet.
(ST)

Accidentally In Love
Freya Lim

9ood Show
Show Lo

Influens
Da Mouth

Taiwan-born Malaysian Freya Lim’s fourth and comeback album, Holding Back The Tears (2010), was a grower and a keeper, and she was deservedly nominated for a Golden Melody Award for best female pop vocal performance.
Her gently emotive voice remains exquisite on this follow-up album, but Accidentally In Love lacks the ballad power hitters such as Wounded and Scared from her previous disc.
Still, there are pleasures to savour, as Lim offers an adult’s point of view on love and intimacy on tracks such as My Neurosis and Can I Be Happier.
In the song Rift, she probes the gap between what is observed and what is experienced: “In the eyes of outsiders, we are content and without flaws/You have done for me all that you can/That’s not what I want, do you understand”.
While Lim displays greater maturity in her work compared to her earlier albums, singer-host Show Lo continues to play with puns on his name.
Not that one minds when it is something like the campily fun Love Is A Show. The dance tracks also include Count On Me, which seems to hark back to the days of Hong Kong’s Grasshopper with its retro-sounding synth lines. And the duet with Rainie Yang on When The King Meets The Queen is easy on the ear as well.
But nine albums in, Lo should know that he really cannot handle ballads and he should stop trying. Skip numbers such as Love In Fantasy and save yourself the underwhelming experience of listening to him trying to emote.
Hip-hop quartet Da Mouth stick to their strengths on their follow-up to One Two Three (2010) and have come up with a corker of a fourth album, even though Japan-born vocalist Aisa’s pronunciation still isn’t quite perfect.
From the first track, Open Your Damn Mouth, to the late-in-the-album BaBOO, the party does not stop as the band dish out groovy hooks and propulsive beats.
And they can do tender as well, as they demonstrate on hip-hop number Sweetest Hug and hip lullaby Baby Gnite.
A hidden track, Play!, is no throwaway but a joyful dance ditty that keeps the after-party going.
Get ready to be infected.
(ST)

My Way
Kang Je Gyu
The story: Korean Joon Sik (Jang Dong Gun) and Ja- panese Tatsuo (Joe Odagiri) are marathon competitors in a sensitive time and place – Seoul under Japanese occupation in 1938. After things go awry at one contest, Joon Sik is conscripted into the Japanese Imperial Army as punishment. It would be the first of several army uniforms from different countries that he dons as he seeks to stay alive in World War II. Eventually, he crosses paths with Tatsuo again.

Guns N' Roses
Ning Hao
The story: Against the backdrop of Japanese military aggression in China in the 1930s, Xiao Dongbei (Lei Jiayin) survives by his quick wit. He unwittingly gets roped into a scheme by an underground resistance group to pull off a robbery of Japanese gold bullion.

My Way and Guns N’ Roses take different approaches to the war movie. Both are only intermittently successful.
Despite the assertive title, My Way takes the more familiar route and offers up heroes and stirring deeds.
While Korean A-lister Jang is too old at 40 to be playing a young rickshaw puller, you have to admire the fact that he is fit enough to do so. As a man holding on steadfastly to his morals in the midst of war, Jang fares better.
Director Kang Je Gyu also handles the epic battle scenes with the kind of assurance you would expect from the man behind the Korean War blockbuster hit Taegukgi (2004). He is able to zoom in and pan out, capturing the bewilderment of being in the thick of action and also conveying the devastating scale of destruction.
My Way was actually inspired by the astonishing true story of a Korean man in German uniform captured by the Americans at Normandy beach in 1944. It transpired that he had been forced to serve the Japanese army, captured by the Soviets in Manchuria and then captured again by the Germans.
Such an extraordinary tale is apparently not enough for Kang to build a movie around. He felt it necessary to include Joon Sik and Tatsuo’s rivalry-turned- bromance, which turns unintentionally comedic when the two meet again on a beach and actually start running towards each other.
On the other hand, it would have been nice to have more laughs in Guns N’ Roses. As it is, the film feels like a lite version mo lei tau, the Hong Kong absurd comedy sub-genre made famous by Stephen Chow. It does not reach the heights of silly comedy in All The Wrong Spies (1983), which took the Japanese resistance plot element and just ran with it. Nor does it have the zing or satisfying heft of Jiang Wen’s Let The Bullets Fly (2010).
The tone of Guns N’ Roses also lurches from comedy to romance to suspense and serious drama, with Ning Hao, writer- director of the hit comedy Crazy Stone (2006), unable to juggle them smoothly to convincingly tell the story of one man’s political awakening.
Still, actor Lei Jiayin makes for a likable rascal and there is one laugh-out- loud scene when he has to hide from his pursuers in a church.
Former synchronised swimmer Tao Hong also leaves an impression as the glamorous actress Fang Die who is also the cool-headed leader of the resistance group. It helps that this is a far more substantive role than Fan Bingbing’s shoehorned cameo in My Way as a prisoner of war.
In both films, the Japanese, by dint of history, are cast as the villains. Guns N’ Roses’ Toriyama (Keiichi Yamasaki) is a cruel soldier whose villainy runs the gamut from chilling to almost cartoonish, while My Way’s Tatsuo is a more nuanced character.
Though by the time Tatsuo ends up in a German uniform, My Way suddenly morphs into a war film with an intractable mystery: How does Joe Odagiri get to keep his lovely head of hair in war time?
(ST)

Hebe Singapore Concert 2012
Resorts World Convention Centre,  Compass Ballroom
Last Saturday

Taiwan’s Hebe Tien has decidedly good taste in music.
This was not always evident in her role as one-third of the popular girl group S.H.E churning out sometimes kiddy and playful pop. As a solo artist, there is no mistaking her ability to pick out winners.
On the 29-year-old’s two well-received albums To Hebe (2010) and My Love (2011), she worked with some of the best composers and lyricists in Chinese pop, including Sandee Chan, Deserts Chang, Chen Hsiao-hsia and feted indie band sodagreen’s Wu Ching-feng.
They came up with songs that showcased the grounded sensuality of her voice. While a good number of them were about the well-worn topic of love, Tien also showed an adventurous side on unexpected charmers such as Utopia and Flower and even tackling conservation of the environment on To Hebe.
Live in concert, she handled the coloratura on Flower with ease and, in general, proved that the nuanced and full-bodied sound on her second album did not come about via electronic fiddling.
Her two solo records belie an impressive number of memorable tracks and she duly delivered them including My Love, You’re Too Much, I Think I Won’t Love You, Love!, Please Give Me A Better Love Rival and Still Want Happiness.
They covered various aspects of love but it sometimes felt as though Tien herself remained a little aloof from the material. She seemed to be singing about love than from her heart.
Filling out the two-hour-plus concert were a good number of covers, which provided some of the highlights of the gig.
Taiwanese diva A-mei’s explosive Kai Men Jian Shan (a Chinese idiom meaning to get straight to the point) was slowed down and slinked up, while Swedish singer Lykke Li’s sultry Dance, Dance, Dance was sweetened by a tambourine-shaking Tien.
She sounded uncannily like the pristine-voiced Faye Wong on a rock-out version of Sandee Chan’s Nicholas and then took on Wong’s To Love, which featured a blistering guitar solo.
She stumbled on British band Florence And The Machine’s Girl With One Eye, though. Tien is simply not vicious enough to pull off a line like “I’ll cut your little heart out cos you made me cry”.
Besides, by covering one too many such unfamiliar songs consecutively at one point, she lost the interest of the sold-out crowd of more than 5,000, though never the easy rapport with them.
After the song What To Say, which included a line about “squeezing out a career line (cleavage)”, she joked that she should be using her sheng xian (voice) instead of her xiong xian (cleavage).
When a supportive female fan yelled out “Your chest is large enough!”, Tien mused “I thought you guys were passionate but more conservative” before graciously thanking her admirer.
Finding success on her own apparently has not been at the expense of her bond with S.H.E. This was most apparent when she sang the touching You, a song about group-mate Selina Jen, who was injured in an explosive accident on a film set in 2010.
While Tien did not take on any of the group’s hits, she told the audience that she missed performing with Jen and Ella Chen. Loud cheers erupted when she mentioned that she was looking forward to a new album release from the trio this year.
They should take Tien’s lead in picking songs.
(ST)

The Dazy Eyes
The Freshman

A Little Blue Jazz
Elaine Lam

One Fine Day
Cheryl Wee

The follow-up to The Freshman’s promising 2010 debut is an EP that casts them in a new light. Sophomore offering The Dazy Eyes is a more assured and mature effort from the duo comprising Project Superstar’s Chen Diya and Carrie Yeo.
The arrangements are confidently stripped down, putting the focus on the lyrics and the melodic tunes – more Indigo Girls folk-pop and less 2 Girls power-pop. The title track explores the idea of seeing and observing: “How much bigger are your eyes compared to mine/How truer is the city you see/How much more myopic are you compared to me/The you in front of me, why can’t you see.”
It links thematically to the next track Spectacle Friend and the EP ends with the English number, It’s Getting So Hard. They might croon that “It’s getting too hard to write a song/A song you might like, or not”, but Dazy Eyes should see their fans liking it more than not.
On her debut EP, local singer-songwriter Elaine Lam keeps it light and jazzy with an offering of five tracks in English and Mandarin.
There is sunniness on The Apple Of My Eye, while innocence and childhood run through The Little Blue Princess and The Boy And His Trains. The Mandarin tracks Drunkard and Bad Temper change tack abruptly and it is a little jarring to have her soothing voice singing, “After downing that martini, you’re now eyeing that whisky” and “Please keep quiet and listen/Don’t keep spouting profanities”. Still, she keeps you listening.
Also making her debut is doe-eyed beauty queen Cheryl Wee. Her sweet but thin voice is best served by tracks which do not tax it too much, so the Jim Lim and Xiaohan-penned Moonlight Serenade and the breezy opener Happiness! are okay.
Unfortunately, she has also decided to cover vocally superior singers with choices such as Stefanie Sun’s Encounter and Mayday’s Gratitude. It is not a smart move for a newcomer to invite comparisons to these acts. The worst offender here is the cover of Crowd Lu’s Zai Jian Gou Gou (Goodbye Pinky Swear), which is bizarrely translated as Hello Doggie! in the album. For some reason, she tackles this in her limited lower range which struggles to be cheery against the happy-peppy arrangement.
Regrettably, this is not the sound of one fine day.
(ST)

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath and Conrad Vernon
The story: In Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) land in Africa. In this instalment, they have to figure out how to get back to their park-enclosure home in New York. They catch up with the scheming penguins in Monte Carlo, attract the attention of the zealous animal control officer Captain Chantel DuBois (Frances McDormand) and end up with a travelling circus.

The circus is in town and it is a circus unlike any you have seen before.
Unfettered by the laws of physics and freed from the realm of plausibility, directors Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath and Conrad Vernon have cooked up a giddy extravaganza of colour, light and movement.
There is Alex on the trapeze, Marty in a riotous afro and Melman and Gloria up on the tight rope as the four friends turn into circus performers in an attempt to get back home to New York.
By now, audiences would be familiar with Ben Stiller’s leader-of-the-pack lion, Chris Rock’s exuberant zebra, David Schwimmer’s shy giraffe and Jada Pinkett Smith’s assertive hippo.
So introducing the circus and adding some new characters is a great way to liven up the proceedings.
Bryan Cranston from television’s Breaking Bad brings a prickly imperiousness to Vitaly the tiger, a bad-tempered washed-up has-been.
He was once a star performer with his ability to jump through breathtakingly small hoops until he was brought down by hubris.
Watch how he bounces back with help from Alex.
Martin Short’s mopey seal also leaves an impression although Jessica Chastain’s Gia is a little underwritten and is mainly there to serve as Alex’s feline love interest.
And in the most entertaining cross- species romance since Donkey met Dragon in the Shrek films, the lemur King Julien XIII (Sacha Baron Cohen) falls hard for a tutu-clad circus bear who is presented as an unspeaking beast rather than a talking character.
Stealing some of the spotlight from the animals is the dogged animal control officer Captain Chantel DuBois, played with relish by McDormand.
Drawn with fierce eyes, thin cruel lips and a generous waist, DuBois turns out to be a formidable match even for the smart and devious penguins.
One has the feeling that audiences have not quite seen the last of the captain.
Perhaps she could turn up in the likely sequel Madagascar 4 or even in the spin-off flick for the penguins.
The circus element has clearly energised the film-makers here and they show there is plenty of wild and wacky life in the Madagascar franchise.
(ST)

One of the pleasures of reality television shows is getting all judgmental about the contestants. You, the viewer, get to see how they perform under a set of highly artificial and stressful conditions, and then decide if they are worthy of taking up more of your precious TV time.
And you also get to measure your opinions against those of experts in the field, be it singing, fashion or culinary skills.
To add a dash of glamour to the proceedings, since the shows usually feature unknowns, producers have taken to filling those judging panels with celebrities.
Sometimes, the choices make sense.
Singer-songwriters Christina Aguilera and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine bring with them music cred when they critique hopeful wannabes on The Voice. She has one of the biggest voices in pop, while Maroon 5 have had critical and popular success with albums such as Songs About Jane (2002) and It Won’t Be Soon Before Long (2007).
Better yet, the two have upped the drama on the second season of the show by trading jabs. Though you might wonder how much of that is playing to the camera since Aguilera was featured on Maroon 5’s hit single Moves Like Jagger (2011).
At other times, the choices boggle the mind. Former American Idol judge and singer-dancer Paula Abdul sometimes seemed not quite all there with her rambling and incoherent comments. Not to mention that her voice, memorably described as chipmunk-on-helium, does not exactly set a high vocal standard.
While new American Idol judge Steven Tyler, from rock band Aerosmith, has the music chops, he has packed only his leer for the show. When the sexagenarian singer ogled a belly-dancing contestant, talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel took a dig at him in a segment titled The Steven Tyler Creepy Leer Of The Night.
So will singers Britney Spears, Demi Lovato and fashion blogger Bryanboy liven things up on The X-Factor and America’s Next Top Model or drag proceedings down?
SundayLife! casts a critical eye on the three new celebrity judges.

BRITNEY SPEARS, 30
Appearing on: The X-Factor, US, Season 2, September
Drama erupted on the first day of taping on May 24, when she reportedly walked off the set after her song Hold It Against Me was butchered by a contestant.
She later tweeted: “#Britneywalksoff??? LOL was just taking a little break people. I am having the BEST time!!!”
Qualifications: Her trainwreck of a personal life serves as a cautionary/ inspirational tale to bright-eyed contestants that showbiz can chew you up and spit you out. And then hand you a second chance as a judge on a reality show.
Her Auto-Tuned voice makes her sound like a fembot, but it sends the message loud and clear that not having a good voice is no obstacle to a music career.
Better fit on: There is actually a reality show named after a Spears song, Hit Me Baby One More Time, in which singers who are past their prime compete for a cash donation to charity in the 2005 American version. But having to sing live could prove tricky for Spears.

DEMI LOVATO, 19
Appearing on: The X-Factor, US, Season 2, September
Qualifications: Since Spears might have had too much life experience, the producers decided to include a 19-year-old on the panel, just to balance things out. To be fair, the singer-songwriter had a stint on Barney & Friends, so she can probably dispense tips on dealing with dinosaurs such as Tyler.
Better fit on: Lovato is clearly on the show to appeal to a younger demographic so why not revive the now-defunct American Juniors, which was American Idol for kids? Fans of the Disney sitcom Sonny With A Chance (2009-2011), on which she played a rising teen actress, are from this age group anyway.

BRYANBOY, 25
Appearing on: America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 19, October
This is the college edition so expect to see lots of SPGs, or sorority party girls.
Qualifications: As the Filipino star fashion blogger himself has said: “Other than the occasional on-cam interviews, I have ZERO television experience.”
What he does have is a huge following, both of his blog www.bryanboy.com and on Twitter. He also has cachet given that top American designer Marc Jacobs even named a bag after him.
And he already has a signature phrase, which is how he signs off his blog postings – Baboosh!.
Better fit on: How about having him as a guest judge on Project Runway where the focus is on clothes rather than models? It will be fun to see how he copes when he is caught between designer Michael Kors’ outlandish outbursts – “She looks like a transvestite flamenco dancer at a funeral” – and fashion journalist Nina Garcia’s icy putdowns.
(ST)

Sherlock
Shinee

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Way Of Love
2AM

Volume Up
4Minute

After focusing their energies on the Japanese market last year, boyband Shinee are back with a new Korean release.
The title track Sherlock is a mash-up remix of Clue and Note and it starts off with a swell of strings before the fat beats quickly kick in. It bristles with attitude and hooks and marks a welcome return for the group. Clue and Note are also included here as separate tracks and they work on their own too.
Fans will love that each of the five pretty boys – Onew, Jonghyun, Key, Minho and Taemin – gets his own photo book, though one wonders what the mystery- themed Sherlock has to do with the topless-boys-in-a-boudoir vibe of the picture spreads.
The packaging and theme are more consistent on 2AM’s release. The literary reference is echoed in the hardback lyric/photo booklet which is nestled within a box.
But while the title and the sepia-tinted pictures of the boys in suits suggests swoon-worthy romantic balladry, the songs can fall a little short. What you get is tasteful aural wallpaper – agreeable, but not particularly memorable.
On the final track, I Love You, I Love You, the tempo goes up a notch and the breeziness feels like a breath of fresh air.
Never mind 4Minute’s moniker. The five girls of the group – Ji Hyun, Gayoon, Ji Yoon, HyunA and So Hyun – have stuck around long enough to be releasing their fourth EP.
The first two tracks, Get On The Floor and Volume Up, get the party started. It is clear that their strength lies in the energetic dance tracks. Just to mix things up a little, they have also included the ballad I’m OK.
And in the picture cards here, the girls cover all bases as well. They are sexy in one set of photos, sassy in the next and sweet in yet another.
They turn the volume up in more ways than one.
(ST)

Door (1986)
Liang Wern Fook
Listening to Liang Wern Fook’s first album, Door, is like opening a door into the past.
The Mandarin album, put out 26 years ago, is the very first solo album by a xinyao (Singapore folk) artist as it is entirely composed and written by one person.
The norm up till then was for xinyao singers to put out compilation albums featuring compositions from different writers.
Liang, now 48, was a key figure in the xinyao movement which bubbled up from Singapore campuses in the early 1980s, and for this and subsequent contributions, he was awarded the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s highest accolade for culture and the arts, in 2010.
As a songwriter, he went on to pen pop hits such as Kit Chan’s Worried, while a new generation of listeners has been introduced to his works through 2007’s If There’re Seasons, a musical built around his existing songs, and instrumental versions of his songs in discs released in 2010 and last year.
As he reinterprets his past works, it is also timely to take stock of them in their original versions.
Door is refreshingly free of the slick arrangements associated with pop music nowadays and there is an earnestness to the lyrics that can sometimes seem almost touchingly naive.
Delve deeper and you will revel in the joy of a singer-songwriter discovering his voice, and in the process, shaping a music movement that is uniquely and distinctly Singaporean.
His four subsequent albums would all revolve around the concept of the solo singer-songwriter.
From the very beginning, his concerns as a singer-songwriter went beyond mere navel-gazing as he pondered the state of society around him.
Side A of the cassette was Men Wai (Outside The Door), which was concerned with society at large, and side B was Men Nei (Behind The Door), which explored the personal.
On the title track, Koh Nam Seng sang poignantly: “Ah, opening the door and shutting it, shutting it and opening it/Who has the time to knock on someone else’s door/Everyone is successful, everyone is happy/Who still has the courage to open their heart’s door.”
The track Ah Ben Ah Ben painted a portrait of a directionless young man and playfully sampled the Malay folk song Di Tanjong Katong and even local band Tokyo Square’s Within You’ll Remain.
Bizarrely enough, the song ran into trouble with the authorities for including a few English words in the lyrics and was banned from the airwaves.
The good thing is that this probably led to a greater interest in the song and the album.
On Door, A Song For You and Where Are Our Songs? point to two threads in the burgeoning xinyao movement – the simple joy of writing a song and having it heard, and the fact that it was part of the ongoing search for Singapore’s cultural identity.
A Song For You was the first commercially released song that Liang wrote and it was originally included on the 1984 xinyao compilation album Hai Die Zhu Ri (Ocean Butterflies Chasing After The Sun). It was not part of the 1986 release but was included by Ocean Butterflies in the August 2007 re-release of Liang’s albums in a box set.
The lyrics are about the simple and irresistible delight of songwriting: “Write a song for you, sing out what I feel/Let my feelings of joy shower over the earth.”
Meanwhile, Where Are Our Songs bemoaned the lack of stories which Singaporeans could call their own, with its heartfelt refrain of “Where are our songs”.
Vocally, Liang is not the most polished singer but there is a homespun, modest charm to his pipes and the guy-next- door vibe only made his songs more accessible, as they seemed to be the intimate musings of a close friend on songs such as New Clothes Aren’t As Good As Old Ones.
While numbers such as New Clothes will be familiar to listeners from their inclusion in later collections and compilations, Door offers new pleasures even for diehard xinyao fans.
For example, My Feelings At 17:00, sung by The Straws, pairs a breezy tune with darker lyrics about the toll life can exact.
Door is not just a work of historical significance, but also one which continues to reward listeners today.
Step through it and you will be surprised by what you find.
(ST)

Din Tao: Leader Of The Parade
Fung Kai
The story: A-tai (Alan Kuo) is estranged from his father (Chen Po-cheng), the head of the Chiu-tien din tao troupe in Taichung. Returning home after a stint in Taipei studying rock music, A-tai throws down the gauntlet to a rival outfit. He has to prove that he can rally the troupe members together while fending off intimidating gestures from his competitor, the arrogant A-hsien (Alien Huang).
The film is inspired by the true story of Taichung’s Chio-Tian Folk Drums And Arts Troupe, which engages in din tao, the traditional Taiwanese practice of performing at religious festivals.
Chio-Tian is known for its exhilarating drumming performances as well as for its unusual way of seeking blessings for Taiwan – by circumnavigating the island on foot with their big drums and the full- body costumes of deities such as Prince Nezha.
The strongly localised story is probably the reason the film has struck such a chord at home. Din Tao’s box-office takings have exceeded NT$317 million (S$13.7 million), making it Taiwan’s top-grossing film of the year so far.
Unfortunately, the movie might have a harder time parlaying that success overseas.
It is a pity because the material definitely has potential. The religious rites and rituals are bursting with colour and sound and movement and writerdirector Fung Kai captures some of that excitement.
However, the first-time film-maker is unable to weave together an engaging drama from the many standard narrative elements here: the feud between father and son, the clash between tradition and innovation, the rivalry between different troupes and the inevitable triumph of the underdogs.
The Chiu-tien troupe also comprises a ragtag bunch of familiar types from the tomboyish girl to the outsider guy who turns out to be something of a drumming freak.
Despite his genuine affection for the characters and the subject, Fung’s handling of the story is often clunky, as if he has no idea how to propel it forward.
Take, for instance, the relationship between A-tai and A-hsien. The laughably exaggerated rivalry between the two is marked by bravado and posturing: A-hsien would turn up and hassle A-tai and his troupe in the midst of their training. And for some reason, Fung feels the need to make this point more than once, making the movie longer than it needs to be.
As a documentary, the film could have been fascinating. As filmed entertainment, unlike recent crowd-pleasing box-office hits from Taiwan such as Cape No. 7 (2008) and You Are The Apple Of My Eye (2011), Din Tao fails to drum up much excitement.
(ST)

Absolute Boyfriend Original TV Soundtrack
Various artists

Those Years
Roger Yang Pei-an

The Taiwanese idol drama adaptation of the manga Absolute Boyfriend (2003-2005) feels like a live-action cartoon with its exaggerated tone and slapstick humour.
Thankfully, the soundtrack is more grown-up.
Fahrenheit’s Jiro Wang gets to flaunt his buff bod on the show and also gets to strut his stuff here.
He performs the synth-pop opener Mr Perfect with his fellow boyband members, and goes solo on the rock ballad Make-believe and the mid-tempo number Perfect Heart Beat.
The lyrics on Make-believe smartly play on his role as the perfect robot boyfriend in the show: “Take me apart, discard me, throw me away to the ends of the earth/Continue to love me, and there’s no result, only torment.”
Selections from Anthony Neely, Olivia Ong and One Million Star season 5 champ Dennis Sun round up this palatable offering.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Roger Yang’s ill-conceived album of covers.
The Taiwanese singer has taken a bunch of classic English rock tunes such as Bryan Adams’ Summer Of ’69 and Metallica’s Enter Sandman and covered them in the most unimaginative way possible.
Not to mention that trying to out-Bono Bono on U2’s With Or Without You is an exercise in futility.
It is a pity because Yang is not a bad singer as he demonstrates on the tacked- on tribute to the late singer-songwriter Chang Yu-sheng.
His soaring vocals on Never Look Back and the unreleased composition Dream Of suggest that a covers album of Chang songs would have been a far more compelling proposition.
As for English covers, indulge your inner rock god by all means, but do it at the karaoke or on Guitar Hero like everyone else.
(ST)

The Killer Wolf Yoo Ha The story: A man mysteriously bursts into flames and dies in his car. Sang Gil (Song Kang Ho) is assigned to the case and he reluctantly takes on rookie female detective Eun Young (Lee Na Young). Another unusual killing occurs and they soon discover that the deaths are linked. There are bite marks on both bodies and they speculate that a wolfdog – a cross between a wolf and a dog – is responsible for the killings. Lassie, the celebrated home-coming dog, has nothing on the lupine-canine star of this film. If you think that a dog finding its way home is impressive, wait till you see what the wolfdog Jilpoong does for its owner here. Like Jilpoong, the movie is something of a crossbreed as well. On one hand, there is the crime thriller aspect as detectives chase after clues and hunt down suspects. On the other hand, the film is also clearly aimed at animal lovers as Eun Young strikes up a bond with Jilpoong and there are long and adoring shots of the wolfdog bounding along on the road. Writer-director Yoo Ha had previously helmed the neo-noir mob drama A Dirty Carnival (2006) as well as the racy period drama A Frozen Flower (2008). With his latest, he continues to elude easy categorisation. He has also added a few other interesting elements to the story though not all of them lead to a satisfactory pay-off. Lee Na Young (Maundy Thursday, 2006) gets to act tough here as the rookie cop battling blatant sexism while trying to crack a puzzling case. Not only does Eun Young have to endure barbs and insults from her chauvinistic colleagues, she also has to endure kicks and punches in the line of duty. Given that the behaviour of the cops borders on villainy, the actual bad guys are painted an unambiguous shade of black as they are guilty of the most heinous crime of child prostitution. Added to the mix is Song Kang Ho (The Host, 2006), often hailed as one of Korea’s best actors. He once again plays a detective nine years after 2003’s excellent Memories Of Murder (2003). The comparison to the understated and gripping Murder only shows up how gimmicky The Killer Wolf is. But the twist of a serial-killer animal is unusual enough to pique one’s interest and keep one watching to find out how and why the murders were committed and who the mastermind behind them all is. Given the premise, you would be barking up the wrong tree if you were expecting subtlety here. (ST)

What To Expect When You Are Expecting Kirk Jones The story: Five couples in Atlanta deal with the joys and heartaches of getting a baby. Fitness guru Jules (Cameron Diaz) is pregnant with her dancer boyfriend Evan’s (Matthew Morrison) child. The Breast Choice boutique owner Wendy (Elizabeth Banks) is expecting one with her husband Gary (Ben Falcone). Gary’s father Ramsey (Dennis Quaid) is about to be a dad all over again with his much younger trophy wife Skyler (Brooklyn Decker). Food-truck entrepreneur Rosie (Anna Kendrick) unexpectedly gets knocked up by her business competitor Marco (Chace Crawford). Photographer Holly (Jennifer Lopez) and her husband Alex (Rodrigo Santoro) are looking to adopt a baby. The film is said to be inspired by the classic antenatal advice tome, What To Expect When You’re Expecting (1984). The best-selling What To Expect When You’re Expecting has been called the bible of American pregnancy – many mothers-to-be refer to it religiously. You might think that there is no way a guidebook can be adapted into a narrative film, and you would be right. But that has not stopped Hollywood from blatantly attempting to cash in on a well-known title. And it does so in the laziest of ways – serving up an assortment of pregnancy woes in a buffet-style movie. The five couples’ stories are an attempt to capture the spectrum of experiences that people have in getting a child from easy-breezy pregnancy to drastic hormonal mood swings; from those who get a bun in the oven by accident to those who just cannot deliver the goods; and even from the joy of carrying twins to the pain of suffering a miscarriage. The bloated film is further stuffed with sideplots such as Alex joining a group of dads to work through his mixed feelings about adopting a baby. With so much going on in the film, there is barely time for the individual stories to make an impact. Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine, 1998) does not help matters with his glossy direction, which only adds to the sense of glibness. After a while, the stories begin to feel like case studies. Remember the smart comedy Juno (2007) or the sweetly raucous Knocked Up (2007)? Actually, all you need is one pregnancy for a movie to get that glow. (ST)

Love In The Buff
Pang Ho Cheung
The story: At the end of Love In A Puff (2010), adman Jimmy (Shawn Yue) won over cosmetics salesgirl Cherie (Miriam Yeung). But happily ever after proves elusive as they begin to fight and Jimmy leaves Hong Kong to work in China. Cherie eventually finds herself working on the mainland too. They remain attracted to each other even though Jimmy is dating a stewardess (Yang Mi) and Cherie is pursued by an older businessman (Xu Zheng).

 The criminally overlooked Love In A Puff was one of the best films of 2010, so it is with delight and trepidation that one approaches its sequel. The good news is that Love In The Buff is a worthy successor even if it does not quite reach the same heights as Puff. Right off the bat, Buff echoes the earlier film’s sly opening gambit in which the narrative thread that is unfolding turns out to be a story that a character in the movie is relating. In this case, it is Cherie telling Jimmy a yarn. Listening to his characters talk is one of the greatest pleasures of watching a film by Pang Ho Cheung, a leading light of Hong Kong cinema in recent years. The writer-director has a keen ear for dialogue, both in the way characters engage in conversation and the way they tell one another tales. He reminds one of American film-maker Kevin Smith (Clerks, 1994), who also crafts movies full of sharp repartee with a good- natured sweetness at a script’s core. Because the dialogue is so realistic, Jimmy and Cherie come across as flesh-and-blood characters. Yue and Yeung are also perfectly cast: He as the impish boy-man and she as the older, more mature woman. And of course, the two share a cosy chemistry that makes you root for them even as obstacles threaten to trip them up. There is a pivotal scene in which Cherie admits to Jimmy that being with him has changed her and yet it ends on a funny note with a comment from him. It beautifully illustrates how different the two of them are and yet also compellingly demonstrates why they would be attracted to each other. Buff meanders more than Puff did, though there are a few amusing cameos thrown in here, including from popular 1990s singer Linda Wong and China actor Huang Xiaoming. Best of all is singer-actor Ekin Cheng appearing as himself as Jimmy tries to ferret out whether he was, as Cherie claims, her first boyfriend. Do not be in a hurry to leave after the film ends as there is a bonus music video clip that is a hoot to watch. In a way, the movie itself reflects the progression of Jimmy and Cherie’s relationship. What was fresh, fun and exciting at first has become familiar. To Pang’s credit, he manages to pull out some surprises and he shows that familiar characters can still create sparks together. (ST)

Being Flynn Paul Weitz The film is based on American playwright and poet Nick Flynn’s memoir, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City (2004). Clearly, this was never going to be a barrel of laughs given that it tackles estrangement, suicide and living on the streets. Robert De Niro is the deluded and stubborn father Jonathan Flynn, Julianne Moore (both below) is the single mother struggling to keep it all together, and Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, 2006) is the emotionally distant son, Nick. After being largely absent from his son’s life, Jonathan gets in touch out of the blue when he is evicted from his apartment. They later cross paths again at the homeless shelter where Nick works. Awkwardness ensues. Scriptwriter and director Paul Weitz (About A Boy, 2002) tries to go for a quirky offbeat tone in handling the material, except that the attempt does not quite stick and Being Flynn remains largely unaffecting. (ST)

Fairy Tale Killer Danny Pang The story: Jun (Wang Baoqiang), a stutterer with his face painted white, confesses to five murders in a police station but is released as his statement does not add up. But the next day, the brutal murders he confessed to begin. Each time, the word “wolf” is left at the scene of the crime. Detective Han (Lau Ching Wan) has to hunt down Jun while covering up his team’s slip-up in the first place. The latest offering from Hong Kong director Danny Pang is like Frankenstein’s monster assembled from disparate movie cast-offs, with all the rough joints showing. Fairy-tale fever has been sweeping Hollywood with movies such as Mirror Mirror and the upcoming Snow White And The Huntsman, so Pang has decided to cash in by clumsily adding a fairy-tale motif to the killings. He then pilfers a central conceit from the South Korean thriller The Chaser (2008), in which the killer confesses to his crimes but is then set free for lack of evidence. Indeed, the Mandarin title of this film is Zhui Xiong, or Chasing The Murderer. Pang then proceeds to pile on the crazy. Jun appears to be mentally unstable and he is seen with a long-haired woman (Elanne Kwong). She could be a Chinese Rapunzel or, more likely, Sadako from the Japanese horror flick Ring (1998) – after all, she paints creepy drawings which are full of violence and gore. Coincidentally, Han has an autistic son also given to scribbling all over their apartment. Guess who later conveniently puts together clues for Han? There is also the side plot of Han’s team falling apart as the members suspect him of betraying one of them. The more pressing question here is: Why must all five of them in the team go on an investigation together? So that we can have a multitude of reaction shots when some discovery is made? Everything is treated with a heavy hand and underlined with a loud and intrusive score. Even the usually solid Lau cannot save this hysterical mess as the film ends on a wildly over-the-top note in an abandoned concrete “castle”. By this point, Fairy Tale Killer has slaughtered all plausibility and murdered in the audience any remaining interest in the story. (ST)

The Original Karen Mok Show @ Taipei (3DVD + CD) Karen Mok The bad news is that Singapore was not a pit stop on Hong Kong singer-actress Karen Mok’s last concert tour. The good news is that fans can now catch her being crazy, sexy and cool up close on DVD. The recording was made at her gig in Taipei Arena last August and we get to see an unusually emotional Mok on stage as it was her final live performance before her wedding last October. But first, the crazy. That would have to be the headpiece she wore which looked like giant feelers. The sexy was par for the course for the singer who had posed nude for the cover of her 1996 Cantonese album, Karen Mok In Totality. For the gig, she shimmied about in hot pants and flesh-toned stockings and even lounged about on a bed on stage. Cool were the songs themselves, particularly those off her covers album, Aftertaste (2009), such as her distinctively husky reinvigoration of classics such as Zhou Xuan’s Blooming Flowers And The Full Moon. Disappointingly, the Xinjiang folk song Playing Hand Drum Singing Song from that album was not part of the show. The set list here also includes her signature songs such as Cloudy Day, Love and He Doesn’t Love Me, an early hit from her first Mandarin album To Be (1997). The final track is the Wakin Chau-penned I’m Going To Marry You Tomorrow, a fitting send-off for Mok as she walked down the aisle. Hopefully, marriage won’t mean the end of the crazy, sexy, cool Mok her fans know and love. (ST)

Ella To Be Ella Chen As part of Taiwan’s popular girl group S.H.E, Ella Chen (right) has always been cast as the tomboyish one, partly because of her low, alto voice. In her new EP, she ditches that image for edgier looks. In the picture on the cover, she wears a fierce-looking deconstructed leather jacket studded with spikes. But unlike fellow group member Hebe Tien’s To Hebe (2010) and My Love (2011), Chen’s solo sojourn is decidedly less of a revelation music-wise. The material here includes the retro synth-pop of Bad Girl, the theme song for her romantic comedy of the same name, as well as Know Me Then Love Me, a romantic ballad by her and Tank. It is pretty much standard-issue stuff and nothing that would be out of place on a S.H.E record. The stronger ballad here is definitely You Have Been Written Into My Song with sodagreen frontman Wu Ching- feng, though this was already included in that band’s What Is Troubling You (2011) album. More interesting are the jazzy I Am Who I Am and the breezily adorable Thick-skinned. Chen composed the music and wrote the lyrics for both and one can imagine her serenading her husband-to-be, Malaysian marketing executive Alvin Lai, with the latter: “Thick-skinned, you always make me happy, thank you for loving me more than yourself.” The bonus disc comprises three Chen-composed tracks which includes 330, a birthday song for Tien, and Princess Selina, a sweet number written for Selina Jen, the third member of the trio who was hurt in an explosion accident in Oct 2010. They might all be releasing solo material but they all still get along swimmingly, which means that fans of the group need not worry about S.H.E splintering. While this is not an offering that will radically change one’s view of Chen, the EP does provide a promising glimpse of the Ella to be. (ST)

The Raven James McTeigue The story: A serial killer is recreating the gruesome murders from the fevered imagination of 19th-century writer Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack). The stakes are raised even higher when Poe’s beloved Emily (Alice Eve) gets abducted. Racing against time, he works with Detective Fields (Luke Evans) to hunt down the mastermind. The title is a reference to Poe’s narrative poem of the same name in which a man, in despair over the loss of his lover, slowly descends into madness. Actor John Cusack has clearly been watching Sherlock Holmes. Not the BBC’s small-screen adaptation with Benedict Cumberbatch as the arrogant and coolly cerebral detective but the splashier big-screen adaptations from Guy Ritchie in which Robert Downey Jr plays the crime-solver with a kind of manic energy that flirts with parody. So we get Cusack channelling the showier performance when one might expect a more morose and brooding Poe, say, one along the lines of Michael Fassbender’s Edward Fairfax Rochester in Jane Eyre (2011). This is Poe then, as the film imagines, in his last days – out of ideas and numbing himself with drink. And also improbably in love. The bigger problem is that one finds it hard to buy Cusack as someone from the Victorian era the moment he opens his mouth. Cusack as a hitman in the dark comedy Grosse Point Blank (1997)? Sure. Cusack as a lovelorn record store owner in High Fidelity (2000)? Absolutely. There is something so undeniably contemporary about his speech that it would take a great leap of faith to accept him as Poe. In contrast, the square-jawed and muttonchopped Luke Evans (Immortals, 2011) is perfectly at home in the movie’s setting, while the lovely Alice Eve gamely makes the most of her role as the spirited and spunky Emily. Miscasting aside, there is some thrill in following the macabre mystery as it unfolds. It is like a twisted treasure hunt in which one clue leads to the next except that here, the clues are found on the murder victims and point the way to the next body. Frustratingly, the slippery perpetrator is always just one step ahead and manages to elude the grasp of the police each time. The big reveal, like Cusack’s performance, falls a little short. Stretching oneself is all well and good but should the 45-year-old actor attempt another period piece when modernity clings to him with every word he speaks? As Poe himself had written so succinctly: “Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore’.” (ST)

Skip Beat! Original Soundtrack Various artists The idol drama Skip Beat! stars Taiwan’s Ivy Chen as well as Choi Si Won and Lee Dong Hae from the popular K-pop boyband Super Junior. No surprises then that Super Junior M – the Mandarin-singing offshoot of Super Junior which includes Choi and Lee – contribute to the soundtrack as well. Opening theme S.O.L.O. and ending theme That’s Love are bouncy poppy numbers that are easy on the ears. Just don’t listen too closely – the Mandarin enunciation is rather stilted and awkward at times. For a more impressive show of pipes, head for the ballad Wait by A-lin, rock ballad Hands by Shin and electro-rocker Future by Mify from the girl group Roomie. Flame Of Love Hu Xia The hit Taiwanese film You Are The Apple Of My Eye (2011) not only turned actors Kai Ko and Michelle Chen into stars, but it also launched China singer Hu Xia (below) into the big time. The theme song Those Bygone Years was a poignant ballad about missed opportunities that was perfect for Hu’s pristine and youthful vocals. And it did more for him than any song on his debut album Hu Ai Xia (2010). Tacked on as a bonus track, it is still the most memorable thing here. As with his previous record, there is a preponderance of love ballads and that makes it hard to get through Flame in one sitting. Let Me Love You seems like an attempt to recapture some of that Apple magic, since “Let me continue to love you” was a key piece of dialogue from the film. But Hu might want to think about moving on. Lonely Fairytales starts off promisingly with its unusually structured stanzas. It is too bad, then, that the track lapses into conventional emo ballad territory when it hits the chorus. The good news is that he sounds a little more impassioned than usual on the title track. But it is not quite enough to set my world aflame. (ST)

Gone
Heitor Dhalia
The story: Jill (Amanda Seyfried) has never been the same ever since she escaped from a serial killer who left her at the bottom of a hole in the woods. She now lives with her sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) and is slowly trying to put her life together again. When Molly disappears, Jill is convinced that the killer is back. But since the police doubt Jill was ever abducted in the first place, she has to track her sister down before it is too late.
Going, going, gone. Is that the trajectory of Amanda Seyfried’s once-hot now-cooling acting career?
The actress had successfully made the jump from the small screen after notable roles in the young adult sleuthing drama Veronica Mars (2004-2007) and the polygamy drama Big Love (2006-2011).
Her winning turn as the spirited bride-to-be in the hit musical Mamma Mia! (2008) promised to be the start of bigger and better things to come.
But that promise seems to have fizzled out with her recent roles in underwhelming films such as the romance Dear John (2010), the fairy-tale reboot Red Riding Hood (2011) and the science-fiction thriller In Time (2011). At least she cannot be accused of being a slacker.
In Gone, Seyfried’s big eyes are used to good effect to convey fear and frustration. And it is interesting the way Jill just casually cooks up stories whenever she is trying to pump someone for information. Too bad the plot never really goes anywhere.
While the cops think that she is a nutjob, the film does not do enough to make you wonder whether Jill was abducted in the first place.
Instead, the bulk of the film focuses on her improbably smooth trek towards the perpetrator. To ratchet up the tension, the action here is compressed into a day or two. But this means there is precious little time for dead ends or red herrings. A clue will lead her down some path where some other clue will conveniently present itself. This is a most careless killer at work here.
After all that chasing about, the film ends rather abruptly on an anti-climactic note that is not very satisfying at all.
If you are a fan of missing-person genre films, hunt down The Vanishing instead – not the cop-out 1993 American remake but the riveting and chilling 1988 Dutch original.
As for Seyfried, there is still hope for her yet. She plays porn actress Linda Lovelace in the upcoming biopic, Lovelace, and also the role of the tragic Cosette in the musical film Les Miserables. Just for displaying that fearless range, the actress deserves to stick around a little longer.
(ST)

The Cabin In The Woods
Drew Goddard
The story: Five college students (Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz and Jesse Williams) head to a remote cabin for a getaway. It seems like the cliched set-up for a slasher flick but it becomes apparent that there are lab technicians (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) pulling the strings. Is anyone going to survive and what is the point of the manipulation?

If you have always thought that the deck was stacked against the hapless nubile victims of countless slasher flicks, this movie confirms your suspicions. And then it takes the genre further, much further.
Right off the bat, there is the suggestion that this is not your normal slasher flick.
Two men in lab coats (Jenkins and Whitford) seem like they could be technicians at any run-of-the-mill industry.
They look like jovial geeky types but some of their dialogue does not make sense and one is intrigued as to whom or what they are working for.
The plot thickens when a betting pool is launched in the lab, though again, it is not clear exactly what people are betting on.
Meanwhile, the college students discover a basement in the cabin and eventually head there.
Writer-producer Joss Whedon and writer-director Drew Goddard have previously worked together on the fantasy adventure television Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and Angel (1999-2004) and it is clear that their partnership works.
Fans of their work will relish the snappy dialogue here as well as the appearance of Kranz, from Whedon’s short-lived sci-fi drama series Dollhouse (2009-2010), and Amy Acker, from both Dollhouse and Angel, in a supporting role.
The film is a chance for the writers’ imagination to run wild and, indeed, they do not hold back. They have fun with conventions such as the creepy guy whose words of warning are always ignored as well as ominous Latin incantations.
Word of advice: If a phrase includes the word “animus”, best not to read it aloud.
They even find a way to pay homage to horror tropes of other cultures, most memorably that of Japan’s.
There are shades of The Hunger Games (2012) here in the way that events are being rigged and controlled but the ends are even more sinister.
Crucially, after leading the audience down a certain path, Whedon and Goddard do not cheat with the ending.
The smart, knowing and thoroughly enjoyable Scream (1996) breathed new life into the moribund slasher flick.
Cabin changes the game altogether.
(ST)

m.e.s.s.u.u.p
lgf

Play Pretend
Elyzia

Holding Tightly Onto The Sun
Redpoll

Love Has To Be Timely
ah5ive

Going by these singles from newly set-up local label Live For The Moment, female-fronted bands certainly seem to be having their moment in the sun.
Electro-pop act lgf, rock band Elyzia and folk rock outfit Redpoll all feature women vocalists with alternative popsters ah5ive being the sole male-fronted group.
Of the lot, it is lgf, also known as Little Green Frog, who leave the strongest impression.
The single m.e.s.s.u.u.p has attitude to spare and also boasts the most impressive vocals.
Singer Regine Han is sassy and menacing when she threatens to “mess you up” over a thumping synth line.
Elyzia serve up angsty rock on Poison and Creep. Poison benefits from an unexpected Cantonese rap while Creep (not a Radiohead cover) is a melodious melancholic number that could do with a set of stronger pipes.
Unsatisfactory vocals dog Redpoll as well. A Song That Has Ended Before Even Starting is the more promising of their two tracks with its contrast of a jaunty tune with less sunny lyrics.
As for ah5ive, the phrasing on Love Comes Too Late is a little too in-your- face, preventing one from immersing in the emo ballad.
It is a pity given that some care and thought has gone into the design of the singles and ah5ive’s paper envelope packaging is one of the most striking.
On the whole, the launch of the label excites with its promise to contribute to the local music scene.
(ST)

Perfect Two
Kevin Chu
Watch this film and you will do a double take. Child star Xiao Xiao Bin is the spitting image of his father Xiao Bin Bin when he was young – that is the most interesting thing about this throwaway flick.
Taiwanese pretty boy Vic Chou plays Xiao Xiao Bin’s father Bee. He was once a successful motorcycle racer but has been a deadbeat drunk since his wife left him. While there is some chemistry between Chou and his pint-sized co-star, too much of this Kevin Chu movie feels lazily plotted and incredibly manipulative.
Furthermore, Chou is not an actor who can convincingly tap into darkness. Ella Chen, from popular girl group S.H.E, does not have much to do as a tomboyish cafe owner pining after Bee.
If titles were honest, this film would be called Far From Perfect.
(ST)

Sandy Lam MMXII Concert – Singapore
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Last Friday
It could easily have been a Mandopop greatest hits concert but Hong Kong singer Sandy Lam had something else in mind.
To her Mandarin-speaking fans, she is best known for her effortless balladry. There is light and sweetness in that voice of hers whether she is pining after a wayward lover on Ai Shang Yi Ge Bu Hui Jia De Ren (In Love With Someone Who Doesn’t Come Home) or being unabashedly romantic on Zhi Shao Hai You Ni (At Least There Was You).
But those who grew up with her Cantonese releases would be familiar with the dance diva side of her as well.
It was a sexy Sandy who greeted the sold-out crowd of 7,500 as she returned to her dance roots in an early medley. The 45-year-old sizzled on stage in a short sequined dress and a head of loosely tousled tresses. Digging deep into her repertoire, she belted out early Cantonese hits such as Grey (1987) and Burn, off City Project Part II – Fuir La Cite (1989).
Late in the set, the energetic performer put together yet another dance medley which ended with the awesome Feng Le (Crazy) off Drifting (1991). It was not for nothing that a set musician rapped during the track: “Lady Gaga’s got nada on you.”
It was a treat indeed for her long-time supporters though it probably left the non-Cantonese-speaking fans a little cold.
It was clear from the enthusiastic reaction to the familiar opening strains of ballads such as Ai Shang, from her debut Mandarin album in 1990, the monster hit Shang Hen (Scar) and Dang Ai Yi Cheng Wang Shi (Love Forgone) off the Farewell My Concubine (1993) soundtrack, what many in the audience had come for.
And Lam delivered the goods with a voice that remains in great shape.
She bantered happily in Mandarin, English and Cantonese as she told the crowd that “Singapore is like my second home”.
The seasoned performer also sang a few English covers including All-4-One’s I Swear. She then gamely played the guitar for the first time on stage in Singapore when she crooned The Everly Brothers’ Crying In The Rain, the song that first got her into the business.
For those looking for clues to her upcoming new album – her first since the Mandarin disc Breathe Me (2006) – the concert offered some tantalising hints.
The segue to Shi Zi (Persimmon) was a little jarring with the visuals of cataclysmic destruction but the new Mandarin song was definitely a showcase number. Lam was dressed in a striking red gown while a flight of stairs stretched above her. Her voice swooped and swirled during the Gothic ballad’s chorus, which comprised the word wu ya (raven) repeated and drawn out.
This is as experimental as Lam has ever been.
The slice of moody electronica that was the opening Cantonese number Impermanence also gave off an alt-rock vibe. On the other hand, Liang Xin Hua (Two Heart Flower) from the Hong Kong film Hi, Fidelity (2011), was a gorgeously tender Cantonese ballad that would not be out of place on her previous records.
One can only eagerly await the new album to see where Lam takes us next. Meanwhile, it is time to dig out her old hits and party like it’s 1989.
(ST)

More About Love
Tiger Huang
The Queen of Pub has been enjoying a second wind in her career since making an acclaimed comeback in 2009 with Simple/Not Simple.
On her latest album, Taiwan’s Tiger Huang seems to be a little more upbeat about love, despite having seen the ups and downs of life.
Her husky vocals sound hopeful and poignant as she sings on Expectation For Love: “I still have expectations of love/There’s still an after when a relationship ends”. And the Paul Lee-composed Shatter is a quiet paean to the power of love: “Tenderness shatters obstinacy, trust shatters all fear/From resistance to understanding/Deep feelings, true feelings, let myself be transformed”.
Musically, the disc, like One More Time, One More Chance (2011), offers up a range of genres. She takes on the electronica of Delusion, the retro- rock of Hello Happiness, as well as the gospelflavoured The More You Love, The Wiser You Get.
Tiger, Tiger, burning bright – proof that the longer she sings, the better she gets.

Jay Park Vol. 1 – New Breed
Jay Park
With his tattoos and macabre skull-like make-up for the CD inset pictures, Jay Park (below) makes it clear that he is edgier than your average K-popster.
The Korean-American was actually part of boyband 2PM’s original line-up, but was dropped in 2009 after he was found to have made disparaging comments about Korea on his MySpace account.
He certainly has the swagger on the opening title track: “I’m hip-hop just for the record and I got respect for people that put that real s**t in there music”. There is plenty here, though, that would not be out of place on any self-respecting pop idol’s CD. Park is smooth and slinky on the R&B track Star, and sexy and seductive on Come On Over.
The last four tracks venture back into hip-hop territory and he boasts: “You can’t do what I does, so just clap for me.”
New Breed might have something of an identity problem, but one thing it’s not lacking in is self- confidence.
(ST)

Nightfall
Roy Chow
The story: After serving a 20-year prison sentence, Eugene (Nick Cheung) is released and chances upon Zoe (Janice Man), who looks like the woman he was convicted of raping and murdering. When Zoe’s creep of a father is found murdered, all clues point towards Eugene as the culprit. But police inspector Lam (Simon Yam) discovers that the two crimes are related.

One can hardly believe that the writer-director behind the assured Nightfall, Roy Chow, is the same man responsible for the preposterous Murderer.
That 2009 thriller starring Aaron Kwok was filled with twist after twist, leading up to a jaw-dropping stunner which made you want to laugh and swear at the same time.
In Nightfall, Chow never loses the plot.
It certainly helps that he has the compelling Nick Cheung here, one of the most consistently watchable actors in Hong Kong cinema at the moment.
As the mute Eugene, he keeps you guessing what his true intentions are regarding Zoe. He can only make strangled noises – the result of stabbing his own throat with a pencil in a suicide attempt all those years ago – and everything is communicated through his eyes and body language.
Even a simple scene of him eating an ice cream after his release is shot through with ambiguity and a vague sense of unease.
Is he a psychopathic creep whose brain has been fried after the long years of incarceration? Or is there genuine tenderness in his feelings for her? And why is he drawing attention to himself over the murder of Zoe’s father?
Cheung also demonstrates his commitment to the role by buffing up considerably. The results can be prominently seen on the poster and publicity stills for the film. His breakthrough turn as a desperate kidnapper in Beast Stalker (2008) had won him multiple Best Actor accolades and he could well be in the running again with this role, come awards season.
Meanwhile, Simon Yam is reliably good as the dogged cop with excellent instincts. He carries with him the baggage of a wife who committed suicide and a tenuous relationship with an unhappy daughter.
As Nightfall gets closer to unmasking the truth, Chow doles out details skilfully enough to keep one riveted as flashbacks with a younger and innocent Eugene (Shawn Dou) flesh out the tale.
With its themes of vengeance, justice and familial bonds, one can see shades of Korean auteur Park Chan Wook’s Old Boy (2003) here. Chow, though, takes Nightfall in a less intense direction.
Eventually, you realise that the film is a tragic melodrama in the guise of a murder thriller. The final revelations cast previous scenes in a different light, including the enigmatic portrait of Eugene watching Zoe play the piano.
To Chow’s credit, the thriller is satisfying and the melodrama devastating.
(ST)