Muse
Jolin Tsai

Wishing For Happiness
Rainie Yang

Games We Play
Deserts Chang

Mandopop queen Jolin Tsai is seen wearing a number of sexy outfits in the elaborate music video for a song from her new album. That is no surprise, of course.
Less expected perhaps is the song itself: The Great Artist, a cover of an English tune, is easily the best thing on her new album. It’s sassy, spunky and dripping with attitude.
The Taiwanese singer even takes a stab at rapping on the hard-hitting dance track: “You hypnotise yourself/That he’s a great artist/You give him the colour palette/To mix a collage of betrayal/He is not van Gogh/Or Monet/But he has never lacked for models.”
Buried near the end of the record is another highlight. Penned by Tizzy Bac’s Chen Huei-ting, Someone chugs along with a perky beat paired with musings about love: “Some say I’m too proud when it comes to love/Some people just want someone.”
The rest of the record is not as inspiring, despite the title. It’s not for lack of trying as she works with the big hitters, including sodagreen’s Wu Ching-feng, Peggy Hsu, Tanya Chua and JJ Lin. Maybe that is why it does not feel like a cohesive record.
Still, there is more progress here compared to Rainie Yang’s latest record.
The Taiwanese singer got things right with the sophisticated adult pop of her last album Longing For. But she seems to have gone back to bland ballads and cutesy offerings here.
The title track does her no favours by painting her as the passive party: “I’m just someone wishing for happiness/Why can’t I meet a fate that puts down roots.”
The ballad Missing You turns things around somewhat by being just sweet enough. But despite a song on this album titled Possibilities, she does not seem to be exploring them fully.
With Deserts Chang, one could never accuse her of being anything but ambitious on her new disc.
The lyric booklet for the Taiwanese singer-songwriter’s fifth album opens with the enigmatic phrase: “Fate is the gods, the game, is us.” The record goes on to explore the idea of god and destiny in a musical tapestry woven from indie rock and folk influences.
She imagines on Lunatic’s Sunbath: “God cups you in his hands, this life shimmering gently; alas my life is on the ground.” And, admirably, her songs about relationships such as Significant Others veer away from cliches.
Sky Inside The Eyewall has a moment of pure sweetness and light when she coos “I used to have only you in my sights” and then one of calm epiphany when she croons “Maybe at dream’s exit, peace embraced emotion/Understood in an instant/You are leaving.”
Chang does not need to shout to make herself heard but her insistent whisper lingers on after the record has ended.
(ST)

It is that time of the year that Singapore fans of American TV get to fall in and out of love with a new slew of dramas and comedies.
Welcome to the American fall season, when an array of fresh series hits the screens in what amounts for the viewer to a session of speed-dating.
Watch them and then decide, after an episode or two, which ones you want to continue seeing and which ones you want to dump unceremoniously.
No common themes jump out immediately – fairy tales, for example, inspired the fantasy Once Upon A Time and crime drama Grimm last year – but there are a lot of familiar faces taking another shot at coming up with the Next Big Thing.
Matthew Perry, 43, from the sitcom Friends (1994-2004), is back with a new comedy, Go On. Of his two post-Friends series, the high-profile Aaron Sorkin drama Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip failed to find an audience despite generally good reviews.
Terry O’Quinn, 60, whose charismatic Lost character John Locke proved to be his breakout role, plays a mysterious building owner in supernatural thriller 666 Park Avenue. Sci-fi adventure Lost aired from 2004 to 2010.
And Mindy Kaling, 33, from The Office (2005 to present) comes into her own with The Mindy Project. On paper, this sounds blah – a single female doctor looking for romance. But the twist is that the comedy is headlined by an Asian-American – Kaling is of Indian descent – which is a rarity on American TV.
Margaret Cho’s single-season All American Girl (1994-1995) is the only example that comes readily to mind after all these years.
Still, there has been some headway made.
Lucy Liu, who made a splash in legal dramedy Ally McBeal (1997-2002), is now starring in Elementary as Dr Joan Watson to Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock Holmes. While there are no details now on when it will appear here, keep an eye out for this.
In the meanwhile, check out the new offerings including those from familiar faces, and weigh up if they have earned your commitment. Remember, relationships come and go but TV is forever.

THE NEIGHBORS
What: Aliens are already here and they are living in the suburban community of Hidden Hills. Extra- terrestrial neighbours are definitely more than what the Weavers bargained for when Marty (Lenny Venito) moves there with his family.
Status update: Alien-themed comedies have done well in the past from Alf, which stands for Alien Life Form, in the 1980s to 3rd Rock From The Sun, which ran from 1996 to 2001.
But the clash-of-cultures jokes in The Neighbors were only mildly amusing in the first episode. Maybe intergalactic humour does not travel well in this case.

PARTNERS
What: The creators of the long-running sitcom Will & Grace (1998-2006), Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, have tweaked their formula. Instead of a series about a gay guy and his best friend, a straight woman, Partners is about a gay guy (Ugly Betty’s Michael Urie) and his best friend, a straight man (Numb3rs’ David Krumholtz).
One-time hyped actor Brandon Routh (Superman Returns, 2006) is stuck in the role of the dim-witted boyfriend.
Status update: The laugh-free pilot was painful to sit through and this is one of the worst reviewed new shows, according to the website metacritic.com.
Signs are that this partnership will not last.

MALIBU COUNTRY
What: Reba Gallagher’s (Reba McEntire) world comes crashing down when she discovers her country music legend husband has cheated on her. She heads out to California to restart her own music career with her two children and her sharp-tongued mother (Lily Tomlin) in tow.
The plot sounds like it could have come from some country music tearjerker ballad.
Status update: The only reason this is not called Reba after its country music star McEntire is because she already did that show. The sitcom did well enough to run from 2001 to 2007. So head for Malibu Country if you are a fan of either Reba the show or Reba the singer.

GO ON
What: Matthew Perry stars as Ryan King, host of a sports radio show. He is in denial about losing his wife and is forced to attend grief counselling sessions before he is allowed to return to work. He reluctantly joins a support group and finds an assortment of oddball characters there dealing, or not, with grief.
Perry and show creator Scott Silveri had previously worked together on a little show called Friends (1994-2004).
Status update: Post-Friends, Perry starred in two short-lived series – sitcom Mr Sunshine (2011) and dramedy Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (2006-2007).
Go On might not be third time lucky judging from the first episode, as it seems to be trying too hard. The biggest reason for going on with it is if you are a Perry fan.

THE MINDY PROJECT
What: Single doctor Mindy (Mindy Kaling) loves movie romances and is looking for Mr Right so that her own dream romance can come true. She might not be perfect herself but she is working on it. At work, she flirts with sexy Jeremy Reed (Ed Weeks) and squabbles with Danny Castellano (Chris Messina), who clearly has a thing for her. It is the first American TV series with a South Asian-American starring as the lead.
Status update: Can we see more of each other please? So what if there are shades of Bridget Jones? Kaling makes her flawed character likeable and someone you actually want to spend time with and get to know better. This could be the love of your life, at least for this TV season.

THE WEDDING BAND
What: Four young men have figured out that weddings are the hottest parties in town and they have a ticket to every single one as the wedding band.
Brian Austin Green from teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990-2000) and Harold Perrineau from sci-fi thriller Lost (2004-2010) star.
Status update: The movie Wedding Crashers (2005) was fun but the idea of it stretched out to an entire series is less appealing.
The show is offering a wedding band but commitment might not be forthcoming.

GUYS WITH KIDS
What: The no-effort title does not bode well. Neither does the premise of three 30-something dads who are barely grown up themselves.
The biggest name in the cast is Jesse Bradford, star of films such as erotic thriller Swimfan (2002) and a 2008 Hollywood remake (of the same name) of the hit Korean film My Sassy Girl (2001).
Status update: Enough with men who cannot grow up already. Can this be anything but juvenile?

ANIMAL PRACTICE
What: Dr George Coleman (Justin Kirk) is a top veterinarian who likes to do things his way, and that includes having a capuchin monkey assistant around. Not surprisingly, he clashes with the hospital’s new owner Dorothy Crane (Joanna Garcia-Swisher), who also happens to be his ex.
Status update: There is potential here for all kinds of monkey business so it would be great if the show could loosen up more. If we wanted a strait-laced medical drama, there are plenty of options out there.

ARROW
What: The DC Comics character Green Arrow gets reinvented for the goggle box. Billionaire Oliver Green (Stephen Amell) returns to civilisation after being marooned on an island for five years. Things happened to him there and he returns a changed man and one who now fights injustice in the guise of the Arrow.
Executive producer Greg Berlanti is best known for creating the sensitive cult drama Everwood (2002-2006), though he had made a previous foray into superhero territory with No Ordinary Family (2010-2011).
Status update: Given the underwhelming big-screen adaptations of The Green Hornet (2011) and Green Lantern (2011), dropping the Green from Green Arrow might well be a smart decision.
The hunky Amell could well hold attention for a few episodes but the back story will need to be interesting in order for this to be more than just a crime-fighting caper.

666 PARK AVENUE
What: The swanky apartment building at 666 Park Avenue is a place where dreams come true – but at a price. And owner Gavin Doran (Terry O’Quinn from Lost) is there to extract it. Ugly Betty’s Vanessa Williams plays his none-too-innocent wife.
The new co-managers of the building (Rachael Taylor and Dave Annable) can barely believe their luck in landing their dream jobs. Taylor soon stumbles upon the basement which hints at the building’s dark past.
Status update: If you did not already know, 666 is supposed to be the sign of the devil. Which means that this new show is not particularly subtle.
It seems to be cashing in on the success of American Horror Story’s haunted house premise, so tune in if you like your relationships dark and with a hint of danger.

REVOLUTION
What: A high-concept thriller from Supernatural’s Eric Kripke, produced by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions.
A mysterious blackout renders all technology obsolete and the world is thrust into a post-apocalyptic landscape of manual labour and competing warlords.
The series focuses on the Matheson family who are in possession of a device which could be the key to explaining the blackout – as well as reversing its effects.
Status update: Post-apocalyptic shows are a tough sell. Jericho, for one, struggled to find an audience during its run from 2006 to 2008.
For the moment, Revolution has an intriguing premise in its favour and several revelations at the end of the first episode suggest that the pacing could be snappy enough to keep audiences hooked.

HANNIBAL
What: The fascination with serial murderers translated into success for the books and films about psychiatrist-turned-man-eating-serial-killer Dr Hannibal Lecter, created by best-selling writer Thomas Harris.
The small-screen series zooms in on the relationship between Hannibal (Cannes 2012 Film Festival’s Best Actor Mads Mikkelsen) and FBI criminal profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) as they join forces to nab twisted villains.
This is a departure for creator Bryan Fuller, who is best known for whimsical series such as Wonderfalls (2004) and Pushing Daisies (2007-2009).
Status update: The cast is top-notch and the Hannibal Lecter character is a familiar one. This series could be a killer.

CHICAGO FIRE
What: The title pretty much sums it up as the series is set at a fire station in Chicago where macho men butt heads but stoically put aside their differences when it comes to heroically battling fires.
It is produced by Dick Wolf, best known for creating the evergreen Law & Order franchise.
Status update: Actor-model Taylor Kinney attempts to be known for being more than pop star Lady Gaga’s boyfriend but one gets the feeling that a reality series about their lives would be more entertaining than this by-the-numbers drama.
(ST)

Dangerous Liaisons
Hur Jin Ho
The story: For the sport of it, suave lothario Xie Yifan (Jang Dong Gun) makes a bet with scheming businesswoman Mo Jieyu (Cecilia Cheung) that he can seduce the virtuous, widowed Du Fenyu (Zhang Ziyi). At the same time, the spurned Mo wants Xie to prey on the virginal Beibei (Wang Yijin) to take revenge on her former lover.

Sex, lies and betrayal. No wonder the 1782 French epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses keeps getting the movie treatment.
Notable adaptations include Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons (1988) with Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer; Milos Forman’s Valmont (1989) with Colin Firth and Annette Bening; and a modern-day teenage update Cruel Intentions (1999) with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon.
Korean director Hur Jin Ho’s (One Fine Spring Day, 2001) version sets itself apart in two immediate ways by being a Mandarin feature and with the setting moved to 1930s Shanghai.
But the story remains familiar. Whatever Chinese writer Yan Geling added to the script, the focus of the story is still on the triangle of, in this case, Xie, Mo and Du.
The success of any interpretation depends on the trio. Close, Malkovich and Pfeiffer’s luminous performances made Frears’ take compelling. In comparison, the Asian cast fall short.
Korean A-lister Jang Dong Gun (My Way, 2011) gets the slick charm of Xie down pat. And there is a perpetual smirk that points to an arrogant smugness and unshakeable self-confidence. But he does not project silky menace the way Malkovich did, taking away the elements of danger and amorality, and weakening the impact of the tragedies that lie at the heart of Dangerous Liaisons.
It is a tragedy about Xie, who finds true love against the odds and is then tricked into renouncing it; about Mo, who unhappily turns into a hard and conniving woman in order to survive in a man’s world; and about Du, who gives in to passion and is punished for it.
Cheung (One Nite In Mongkok, 2004) fares a tad better than Jang though there is something a little too deliberate about her performance and there is not enough chemistry between the two conspirators.
After all, the prize at stake in their callous game of sexual conquest is no less than Mo herself.
It is Zhang (House Of Flying Daggers, 2004) who shines as a woman trying desperately not to fall for a cad and yet gives her all when she finally succumbs, literally shaking with love and desire. She is equally convincing as a virtuous widow holding onto the memory of her late husband, a woman made happy by love and, ultimately, a woman destroyed by love.
(ST)

The Bullet Vanishes
Lo Chi Leung
The story: A young girl is accused of stealing bullets at a munitions factory and dies by her own hand with a gun handed to her by the psycho boss (Liu Kai Chi). Not long afterwards, people connected to the case start dying – killed by the lethal bullets nowhere to be found. Song Donglu (Lau Ching Wan), the new police administrator of Tiancheng county, and hot-headed ace detective Guo Zhui (Nicholas Tse) have to crack the mystery of the vanishing bullets.

Dead people tell plenty of tales and the success of television’s CSI series proves there is lots of life in the forensic crime procedural.
In Wu Xia (2011), director Peter Chan thrillingly transplanted the idea to olden- day China and mashed it up with the martial arts genre. With The Bullet Vanishes, writer-director Lo Chi Leung (Double Tap, 2000) transports forensic investigation into the warlord era in China and also introduces some interesting characters to hold the viewers’ attention.
We first meet Song as he is swinging by a rope from the rafters in the toilet of a prison facility. He is not attempting suicide though. Rather, the dedicated officer is trying to find out what exactly happens during death by hanging – thus exonerating an accused person. It seems that Song is much too zealous in his job, which means that he makes enemies easily, especially when he is parachuted into Tiancheng county to clean it up.
The eminently likable Lau makes Song someone to root for as he pits his wits against corrupt police, vanishing bullets and a locked-room murder.
Lau is paired with the always intense Nicholas Tse as Guo Zhui, the broody and hot-headed detective who is a sharpshooter and a sharp observer of details.
Chasing after a suspect who has jumped to the street from a window, Guo is able to quickly discern his quarry’s height and weight based on the suspect’s foot imprints. His relationship with con artist Little Lark (Yang Mi) is less believable though, and their romantic interlude feels a little jarring.
What is fun is watching Song and Guo come up with theories for the vanishing bullets, including the very cool idea of creating bullets from ice.
There are even autopsies performed by a pathologist (Hong Kong singer Yumiko Cheng) as she seeks to unearth clues from the bodies of the victims.
The Bullet Vanishes also has a strong sense of place as the armaments factory looks like something out of a Dickensian nightmare with forbidding barbed wire fences and enormous smokestacks belching out thick black smoke. I was briefly distracted though by the use of the exact same location for the prison in this movie and the intelligence outfit headquarters in recent drama The Silent War (2012).
Still, the film is strong enough to be nominated for several Golden Horse Awards, including a nod for Best Film.
Unfortunately, it over-reaches at the end. Lo wants to explore ideas about the nature of justice but he piles on one revelation too many and, regrettably, the final twist is not fully persuasive.
(ST)

...3mm
Eason Chan

Love, After All
Wan Fang

Heartbreak Is No Nig Deal
Yisa Yu

After a series of adventurous EPs, Hong Kong’s Eason Chan drops a Cantonese full-length album. His latest release opens with the retro synth-pop of Heavy Flavour, taking you immediately back to the 1980s circa A-ha’s Take On Me.
If his concerns on his excellent Mandarin album ? (2011) were broad musings on the mysteries of love and life, ...3mm addresses specific societal issues.
He muses on Class that “Money can’t buy/the cultural index”, while Swipe Card takes a swipe at consumerist culture (“Everyone’s in debt/Happily racking up emotional and monetary debts”). Together with musical collaborators Eric Kwok and Jerald Chan, both of whom are name-checked on one track, Chan has concocted a fun album packed with infectious beats – and something to mull over when the dancing stops.
Even without a propulsive rhythm section, Love, After All is compelling. Wan Fang’s voice suggests mellow sunshine and tender warmth, and the Taiwanese veteran’s latest album showcases it beautifully.
The accompaniment is clean and unfussy on ballads such as Love, After All and Daisy, relying on her pipes to tell tales brimming with gentle quotidian humanity.
In the moving Alzheimer (Silence By The Sea), composed by sodagreen’s Wu Ching-feng with lyrics by theatre director and poet Li Huan-hsiung, you can hear the ache and fragility when she croons: “Forgetting is a really happy form of cruelty/I don’t want cruelty to seem so content content content content”.
There is a literary air to the proceedings and the album is aptly packaged as a book.
China’s Yisa Yu has beautiful vocals as well, though it is in service to a more pop-varnished album. Coming soon on the heels of Add A Little Happiness (2011), there is clearly a concerted effort to turn her into the next Queen of Ballads.
But the title track feels a little too safe and a little too expected. It seems to hark back to the last record’s more affecting Can’t Afford To Get Hurt as she sings about love gone wrong: “Who says heartbreak’s no big deal, only know when it’s gone/Can’t even control my emotions, who dares disturb.”
The light-as-air mid-tempo charmer Dress is a pleasant change of pace. Better yet, it was penned by Yu herself, suggesting that her music could get more interesting – if she gets a bigger say in it.
(ST)

What Are You Waiting For
Jiro Wang
Fahrenheit’s Jiro Wang wants to leave boyband music behind on his rock-flavoured solo debut.
But it is not exactly a clean break.
Opening number Feel Me is all blazing guitars and propulsive drums.
The sentiment, though, sounds suspiciously familiar: “I can hold your hand tight, sketch a beautiful dream for you, I can/I can watch over you, can’t leave your eyes, have my fill of love.”
And the crowd-pleasing love ballads are still present.
However, they are not the best showcase for his pedestrian voice and certainly not when he pits himself against the power vocals of Power Station on Do You Dare To Love Me.
The strongest tracks here are the rock ballad Make-believe and the mid-tempo Perfect Heart Beat.
They were featured in the Taiwanese idol drama Absolute Boyfriend, in which Wang played the perfect robot boyfriend, and cleverly add a pop sheen to his rock leanings.
These credible efforts mean that I would rather wait for Wang’s next solo album than a new disc from Fahrenheit.
(ST)

Jay Chou
2012 Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix
Padang/Last Friday
Like a racer burning rubber on the tracks, Mandopop king Jay Chou was here and gone in a flash.
The 33-year-old Taiwanese singer-songwriter performed for an hour last Friday night at the Padang stage after the night’s race for the 2012 Formula One SingTel Singapore Grand Prix.
He was in pretty good form though the volume for the vocals seemed rather soft especially compared to the roar of the engines.
It seemed ironic when he remarked at one point: “It was pretty loud just now, so my music can’t be too soft either.”
And even under the best circumstances, it can be hard to make out the wordy tongue-twisting lyrics so the slightly muffled sound at points did not help.
Chou kicked things off with newer material – the frenetic title track from Exclamation Point (2011) and the drama- tic title track from The Era (2010).
Tellingly though, it was his older hits that the crowd really responded to.
From his watershed record Fantasy (2001), he performed the slinky Love Before The Century, the poignant ballad Can’t Utter A Word and the high-energy crowd-pleaser Nunchucks.
According to the organisers, 35,000 fans sang and bopped along.
Projecting to such a big crowd is challenging and those standing further back could hardly make him out on stage, so the giant screens flanking the stage were essential.
Given the outdoor setting and the short duration of the performance, the stage set-up was much simpler compared to his full-on gigs here.
As for costumes, he went through a few different black jackets, from one with sequinned sleeves to one which lit up and made him look like a character out of the sci-fi fantasy Tron (1982).
There were some interesting touches here and there to keep things entertaining.
He was raised up on a tiny platform during The Era and for the appropriately themed The Goddess Of Racing, a sleek red sportscar rolled onto the stage as Chou danced with women in bikini tops.
The talented musician also played the piano ivories for a few tracks.
He teasingly launched into a beatbox intro for one song before revealing that it was the so-called China-style ballad Blue And White Porcelain.
While recent publicity pictures had revealed a toned abdomen, there was no flash of it on stage.
Chou did seem slimmer though and from some angles, he looked uncannily like the Korean-American actor John Cho.
Maybe it was the lighting, which was definitely a bright note.
From powerful beams cutting swathes into the night sky to green lasers sweeping across the field to a spray of sparklers shimmering over the stage, the dramatic lighting definitely made an impact.
If only the sound had shone like that.
(ST)

Love Is Revealed In The Long Run
Fish Leong
Sometimes, all we want is comfort food. Nothing fancy or new, just something familiar and reassuring.
This is what Malaysian singer Fish Leong offers with the title track on her 12th studio album.
The ballad is about staying true through trials and tribulations and is tailor-made for her richly soothing voice: “I’m not a rumour, I can’t guess you/This crazy game, who needs to approve it/ Others may talk, I don’t care/Whether I love you or not, all will be revealed in the long run.”
With the song She, Leong ventures beyond love to sing about learning to let go of past hurts: “In the midst of wandering, her hands are empty/But her heart is full.”
Then she strays further and flirts with, gasp, dance pop on Bonjour! and Telepathy. It does not help that the transition from She to Bonjour! is jarring and neither fast-paced track feels particularly necessary.
All is right with the world again with the breezy album ender Around The Four Seasons Of Love, as Leong proclaims joyfully: “Spring summer fall winter/Tour the four seasons with your love, super exciting.”
A couple of adventurous tracks are all the excitement one needs from a Fish Leong album.
(ST)

The spectacular landscape of the Nordic island of Iceland does not seem quite of this world. And that is why it has such a beguiling allure.
American astronauts trained there before walking on the moon as that was the closest they could get to a place that looks like an extra- terrestrial environment.
From fiery volcanic activity to blocks of ice floating serenely in a lagoon, Iceland has it all, thanks to its geographic location atop restless tectonic plates and just on the edge of the Arctic Circle.
And because it is relatively small, its sights are all easily accessible from the capital of Reykjavik.
The adventure starts when you land, as the Blue Lagoon geothermal pool (www.bluelagoon.com) is just 20 minutes away by bus from Keflavik Airport. Book ahead with operators such as Reykjavik Excursions (www.re.is) or Iceland Excursions (www.grayline.is), or sign up at the airport when you arrive.
Lounging in the warm mineral-rich, milky-blue waters with curative powers is the best way to relax after a long flight. Do plaster the white silicate mud on your face to get the most out of the soak. And when you are done, buses can take you straight to Reykjavik, a 50-minute ride away.
Instead of renting cars, my friends and I decided to base ourselves in the city and go on day trips instead.
Top attractions – Thingvellir rift valley, Geysir’s spouting pools and Gullfoss waterfall – are clustered together in a circuit tagged as the Golden Circle.
Most companies offer tours and we decided to go with Gateway To Iceland (www.gti.is) at the recommendation of the staff at the tourist information centre. Our guide was steeped in facts and even told a story about elves, gods and a kettle of gold though on comparing notes later, it seemed that everyone nodded off at some point.
The more ambitious day trip we made was to Vatnajokull, Europe’s largest glacier. It covers 8,100 sq km or over 8 per cent of the country. Vatnajokull National Park is south-east of Iceland, 330km from Reykjavik. We went with Glacier Guides (www.glacierguides.is) because it included both light hiking and a boat ride. The brochure also promised a “warm Icelandic waffle with cream and jam” at the end of the day.
Arriving at the Falljokull (“falling glacier”) section, we geared up with crampons (metal spikes strapped to the shoes) and were soon walking on the glacier itself.
It was an exhilarating experience trekking on 1,000-year-old ice and seeing melted water flowing freely just beneath the solid surface. It felt perfectly safe though our guides pointed out sinkholes and mentioned that one was about 50m to 60m deep.
The reward for our hike was a very special treat indeed. Perched over a rivulet with one’s weight supported by a pickaxe lodged into the ice – Chuck Norris-style, said the guides – I lapped up the purest and most refreshing water I have ever tasted.
There was more to this magical day when we entered the Jokulsarlon lagoon with its serenely floating icebergs in shades of blue and white.
The lagoon has frozen over only once – for James Bond. When they shot Die Another Day (2002) with Pierce Brosnan, the area was dammed up so that sea water could not flow in. The lagoon duly froze over and the film had its stunning chase scene in the bag.
And yes, there were waffles to end the excursion on a sweet note and they were perfect washed down with Vatnajokull beer, which is brewed from glacial water.
In between drinking in the sights, we explored the vibrant city of Reykjavik. Street art blossomed everywhere and you could hardly turn a corner without seeing something thoughtful (“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”), witty (shimmery lava that seemed to flow down a wall) or beautiful (a giant mushroom made up of smaller colourful ones). There was also poetry stencilled onto the pavement.
And when you need a break, pop into one of the cafes or go to Eldur & Is for its yummy ice cream in a cone dipped in your choice of chocolate sauce.
Before the trip, friends had warned that the food “leaves something to be desired”. Either the culinary scene had improved markedly or they somehow missed the best of Icelandic cuisine.
For a light snack, try the hotdogs from the Baejarins Beztu Pylsur stand near the harbour (Tryggvagotu 1). Ask for fried onions to add some crunch and top it off with mustard, with its welcome note of caramel.
The Saegreifinn, or Sea Baron (saegreifinn.is), at the harbour serves excellent lobster soup. The humarsupa came with wonderfully tender chunks of lobster and was faintly reminiscent of laksa broth but without the spiciness, and it tasted as though the essence of the sea had been distilled into it.
At the other end of the dining scale was Dill Restaurant (dillrestaurant.is). Despite an over-liberal use of salt at times, the meal we had there was an exciting one with fresh shrimp, cod, mushrooms and skyr (Icelandic yogurt). We also saw the chef dashing out into the garden to grab a handful or two of herbs.
There were plenty of exotic dishes on offer, from smoked puffin to minke whale sashimi.
We tried hakarl, or rotted shark, which the waitress described as having the taste of strong cheese. It tasted like an animal that had drowned in a pool of urine. It was served cold and when a cube of it warmed up in the mouth from chewing, it released a jolt of pungent ammonia that threatened to overwhelm one’s senses. For some reason, the waitress said she does not eat it.
A quick word about the money situation here.
The Icelandic krona is the currency used and the exchange rate is about 100 krona to S$1. You can change a small amount of it at the airport but plastic is accepted everywhere. My smallest card purchase was for a doughnut which cost the equivalent of S$1.38.
The people there are also great about splitting bills and will happily do so even for large parties. To give a rough idea of how much it costs to eat out: A casual meal of a burger and a beverage at Geysir Bistro & Bar costs 2,760 kr (S$27). A five-course tasting menu plus a bottle of beer at Dill Restaurant cost 9,700 kr.
As for accommodation, the band of 15,000 to 30,000 kr for a standard double room is deemed mid-range by the website wikitravel.org. In other words, it is not very cheap. I found a cosy apartment on airbnb.com located just off the main shopping street of Laugavegur which could comfortably fit three. We paid about S$58 a night a person.
The only place I visited which did not take plastic was The Icelandic Phallological Museum. Its gift shop, by the way, has some fun and naughty souvenirs.
For friends and family with a less liberal sense of humour, get hand-made treats from chocolatier Haflidi Ragnarsson. Or pick up kitschy-cool items with characters such as Bubble the mushroom and Buddha the rock star from the magical world of Tulipop (tulipop.com) by Icelandic illustrator Signy Kolbeinsdottir.
An Icelandic sense of humour is apparent from souvenirs such as message T-shirts (“If you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes”) and offbeat items such as canned air (“For best effect, use outside of Iceland”).
Then again, you probably need a cheery outlook to get you through the long dark winter. Visiting in summer meant re-calibrating one’s idea of the season since temperatures can drop to as low as 10 degrees.
Forbidding as it may seem, we are already looking forward to going to Iceland in the winter. The Aurora Borealis blazing across the night skies has to be the most spectacular light show on earth – or even beyond.
(ST)

Wolf Children
Mamoru Hosoda
It might not be as beautifully drawn as offerings from the famed Studio Ghibli but there is still much to love in the anime Wolf Children.
The title refers to the adorable siblings Yuki and Ame, but the film is also very much about their (human) mother Hana. She raises them single-handedly and also has to help her children cope with their dual human-animal nature.
Despite the fantastical premise, the drama is very much low- key, from Hana struggling with farming and acceptance in a rural community to Yuki and Ame’s differing experiences at school.
While Western stories about werewolves inevitably feature sex and violence, writer-director Mamoru Hosoda has instead fashioned a gentle and moving tale about familial love and becoming your own person – or wolf, as the case may be.
(ST)

Listen To Jane Z Live
Jane Zhang

2020
By2

A live recording works only if one has the voice for it. And China’s Jane Zhang certainly does. She shows off her powerful pipes on this disc – recorded on April 9 in Beijing in front of an intimate audience of fans – which begins with a smoky, smouldering version of the jazzy English standard At Last.
It also helps that she has good taste in music and her covers include a delicate take on the folk-pop classic Meng Tian (Dream Field).
New Mandarin track Not So Easy is a standout. The ballad has an ease and lightness to it, even as it tackles heartbreak and sorrow. Zhang reins in her vocals as she contemplates: “How many drawers are there in the heart, are secrets which can’t be turned over” and then “My life has to go on, not so easy”.
Some of the material are too indulgent, though: I do not need to listen to her ooh-ing and ah-ing along on Concerto Pour Une Voix. Nor is it clear why the instrumental piece Por Una Cabeza is included. Maybe you had to be there at the gig for it to work.
While Zhang’s voice takes centre stage on her album, the focus of home-grown duo By2’s new EP is really the oversized photo books – one with Miko on the cover, the other with Yumi.
The nubile twins roll about on a bed, loll about on a beach and smile, or gaze blankly at the camera, in a series of sexy cutesy shots.
Their breathy vocals are used to best effect on the electropop number Touch Your Heart With Love. The song makes a decent case for bubblegum music by offering rhyming couplets and bouncy rhythms coated with a bright pop sheen.
They fare less well on the ballad You Don’t Know Me. A profession of “I’m so sad, you don’t love me” is so lightweight, the emotion barely registers.
(ST)

The Thieves
Choi Dong Hoon
The story: The MacGuffin here is a dazzling necklace worth millions and the bunch of crooks after it is a pan-Asian line-up of stars. The South Korean team lead by Popie (Lee Jung Jae) and the Chinese team led by Chen (Simon Yam) are brought together by Macao Park (Kim Yun Seok). Naturally, everyone is suspicious of everyone else, especially since Popie, Macao Park and the recently released from jail Pepsee (Kim Hye Soo) share a tangled past.

Korean writer-director Choi Dong Hoon has made away with quite a stash of cash with his latest crime caper.
With more than 12.3 million tickets sold in South Korea, The Thieves is the second highest-grossing local film of all time, trailing only Bong Joon Ho’s creature-feature thriller The Host (2006), which had more than 13 million admissions.
The glittery star power on display certainly helped.
Heart-throb Lee Jung Jae of the time-travelling romance Il Mare (2000) and the erotic thriller The Housemaid (2010) is the somewhat pompous leader who knows more than he lets on.
Gianna Jun (My Sassy Girl, 2001) is cat burglar Yenicall who can make her way into any room. Nice to have the actress back in sassy, sexy mode after seeing her sleepwalk through Snow Flower And The Secret Fan (2011).
Kim Hye Soo, who had starred in Choi’s hit gambling flick Tazza: The High Rollers (2006), brings glamour and vulnerability to the role of safe- cracker Pepsi.
And that is less than half of the Korean cast.
In addition, Hong Kong stalwart Simon Yam plays a wily thief while Malaysia’s Angelica Lee Sinje is another safe-cracker with her own agenda.
In total, there are 10 professionals going after the necklace. Designing the poster to fit everyone in must have been a major challenge.
The crime capers of the Ocean’s Eleven series would seem to be an obvious reference but the grouping here is far more fractious despite the surface attempt to work together.
The scene where the Korean and Chinese teams first meet and suss out each other is fun as they trade under-the-breath insults and engage in some one-upmanship.
To Choi’s credit, he does a decent job of juggling the large cast and drawing out the interplay of the relationships among them.
Yam has a tender interlude with the boozy Chewing Gum (Kim Hae Sook), Jun flirts with the boyish Zampano (Kim Soo Hyun) while the shifting relationships among Popie, Pepsee and Macao Park threaten the entire operation.
Some character development is well and good but a heist film has to deliver the goods when it comes to the heist itself.
The bar has been set very high here with the Ocean’s Eleven series and recent thrillers such as Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), in which Tom Cruise dangled from the world’s tallest building in Dubai.
There is nothing in The Thieves quite as heart- stopping or show-stopping as Cruise’s showpiece stunt but it is entertaining enough to steal away some of your time without you crying foul.
(ST)

Vulgaria
Pang Ho Cheung
The story: Film producer To’s (Chapman To) meeting with prospective investor Tyrannosaurus (Ronald Cheng) takes a strange turn when he finds himself facing the prospect of having sex with a mule. Soon after, he starts to remake the classic erotic film Confessions Of A Concubine with one-time idol Yum Yum Shaw (Susan Shaw) and the deliciously named Popping Candy (Dada Chen). Meanwhile, his shrewish ex-wife (Kristal Tin) wants to stop him from seeing his young daughter so that he will not be a bad influence on her.

This movie is lewd, crude and proud of it, proclaiming its vulgarity like a badge of honour in the title.
The set-up is a simple one: Producer To has been invited to give a talk to a group of students on the business of putting a movie together. As he recounts his experiences, flashbacks unfold.
Very quickly, one gets a sense of the film’s irreverent tone as To launches into a discourse on the purpose of pubic hair, and concludes with the pronouncement: “A great producer is like a thick bunch of pubic hair.”
Writer-director-producer Pang Ho Cheung delivers the laughs along with a send-up of the film industry, where those who hold the purse strings can hold enormous, and dubious, sway.
In an unforgettable dinner scene with a prospective mainland investor, not only does To have to stomach some unusual “delicacies”, but he also has to get it on with a mule. This would placate the loaded triad boss Tyrannosaurus, whose interest in movies is extremely personal and narrow – he wants to remake an erotic classic with the original starlet.
Singer-actor Ronald Cheng gamely plays the swaggering buffoon for laughs in a nicely calibrated performance complete with hilariously intoned Cantonese, or Mandarin for audiences here.
Comedian Chapman To is also stellar as the put-upon producer who is always trying to weasel his way out of tight spots with his gift of the gab and his street smarts.
He is a man under siege as he tries to raise money, convince actors to come on board and juggle his livelihood with fatherhood.
Vulgaria’s cast of colourful characters also includes Dada Chen as Popping Candy, a wannabe- actress with a specific sexual skill, and Hiro Hayama, star of the exploitative flick 3D Sex And Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (2011), as himself.
The Vulgaria version of the Hong Kong-based Hayama is a sly in-joke as he plays an actor who is extremely wary of explosives after his experience on the set of Sex And Zen.
Pang is a director who is able to be raucous and raunchy one moment and sensitive and gentle the next. Like Kevin Smith (Zack And Miri Make A Porno, 2008) or Seth MacFarlane (TV’s Family Guy and Ted, now showing in cinemas), he has a salacious saltiness that is often balanced with an unexpected sweetness at the core.
Add to that his ability to pen sharp and smart lines and his characters come to believably flawed life and make you root for them.
His genuine affection for movies also comes through as he chronicles the difficulties of producers and directors as they wait for the opportunity to do what they love.
With Vulgaria a hit in his native Hong Kong – earning close to HK$28 million (S$4.5 million) to make it the No. 1 local film of the year so far, ahead of his own rom-com sequel Love In The Buff – Pang will probably not have to muck around with a mule to get funding for his next project.
(ST)

Someone Is Waiting
William Wei

Same Species #2
Nylon Chen

Awkward
Kit Teo

Someone is waiting all right.
After releasing a lovely eponymous debut in 2010, Taiwanese singer-songwriter William Wei went off to fulfil his military obligations.
Which means it has been a long wait for the follow-up album from the Golden Melody Award winner for Best New Artist last year.
The accompanying DVD here is a making-of documentary and in it, Wei clearly states his musical direction: He wants to do popular music while realising that the challenge is to do so without being hackneyed or trite.
He succeeds to a large extent.
Moon offers an unusual and out-of- this-world take on heartbreak: “Beneath the moon is my splintered heart/The surface of the moon is where my blood is shed.”
Even when the lyrics are more straightforward as on the gently groovy Tired and the spare Heart Drunk Heart Broken, his evocative singing conveys the emotions convincingly.
We’ll Never Know and Still Get end the album on a poignant note. “We’ll never know the answer/Cause you never chose that choice” is a musing on the road not taken, while Still Get is about the fragility of happiness: “Still get scared/I won’t be by your side when I wake/Scared, won’t ever be next to you”.
In contrast, Taiwanese singer-actor Nylon Chen’s second album, Same Species #2, fails to make much of an impact as neither his voice nor the material is particularly distinctive or memorable.
The lyrics by the singer-songwriter can be rather prosaic as well.
He declares on Just Wish To Embrace You: “I wish to embrace you like this, okay? Okay?/Tightly embrace, no matter how hot it gets”.
Mostly, the love songs sound generic and the sentiment, well, hackneyed.
Malaysia’s Kit Teo does a much better job with the love ballads on the EP Awkward.
At times reminiscent of a less husky-sounding A-do, he is also able to write tunes with a sweeping romanticism to them.
It all comes together on Love Spreads Like An Epidemic: “Love spreads like an epidemic/Would rather be infected than be alone”.
And it was a treat having Taiwanese singer Julia Peng guest on the duet Curved Moon.
She has been rather quiet of late on the music front but her crystal-clear voice sounds as good as ever.
Really, the only thing awkward about this EP is the odd title.
(ST)

Seven Something
The planet Uranus spends about seven years in each sign of the zodiac. This means that every seven years, there will be major changes in a person’s life.
So goes the theory which weakly links the three stories about love in this compendium put together to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the Thai film studio GTH.
The best segment is the third one, 42.195.
A young marathon runner (America- born Nichkhun from the popular Korean boyband 2PM) literally runs into a 42-year-old female newscaster (Suquan Bulakul) at the park and proceeds to turn her life around.
It is an incredibly chaste romance though the two leads keep one watching as they chase after the goal of completing the Bangkok Marathon.
The other two stories are lacklustre in comparison.
The first, 14, is about a teenage crush in the age of social media. The idea is topical and has potential but the segment, like Puan (Jirayu La-ongmanee from the musical comedy SuckSeed, 2011), suffers from attention deficit disorder.
And part two, 28, stars Cris Horwang (Bangkok Traffic (Love) Story, 2009) as a shrill and self-centred actress who is desperate to have a second stab at fame with her former co-star and ex-boyfriend Jon (Sunny Suwanmethanont).
By the time the film ends after 21/2 hours, you feel you deserve a pat on the back for completing something of a marathon yourself.
(ST)

19
19
Do not be misled by the CD cover.
The act 19 is not some young female newcomer but a duo comprising the very seasoned singer-songwriter Sandee Chan and George Chen, noted composer of tunes for theatre, film and advertisement jingles. The album is filled with a sense of adventure and fun that is positively youthful, turning Chen’s score music and commercial work into bona fide pop songs.
Sound-wise, this feels like a natural continuation of Chan’s previous light- hearted foray into electronica on I Love You, John (2011). The soothing romantic ballad Don’t Forget My Kisses was first included on the soundtrack of the hit film Monga (2010) and it is one of many highlights here.
On the ethereal Journey For Two, they muse about wanderlust: “You’d say every time/Sigh, want to go to Bali island/ You’d say every time/Sigh, want to go to Spain and run.”
The restlessness is also seen in the wide-ranging influences on the songs – from the Japanese youth romance film Bataashi Kingyo (1990) inspiring Stupid Goldfish to the ubiquitous leisure activity of karaoke giving rise to KTV Legend.
Meanwhile, the dreamily sultry Boy Boy Girl Girl features two same-sex couples in the blush of nascent love in the music video.
A winning musical experiment from the Taiwanese duo.

Feeling Of Loss
TKB
This is local band TKB’s second EP after last year’s First Step, First Episode.
The emo-rock tracks by the quartet, such as Feeling Of Loss, Mess and Number 17, are the less interesting numbers here, though the inclusion of a violin’s plaintive wails adds some interest to 17.
Head instead for the light-hearted The Last Address, which at least offers a pick-me-up instead of being another downer. Lead vocalist Nicole Teo sings in English for the refrain: “I must be sleeping on a star, let’s not wake up.”
Still, a soporific record is the last thing a band wants.
(ST)

My Ghost Partner
Huang Yiliang
After messing with the wrong guy, conmen Zhang Shi (Huang Yiliang, sporting a trying-too-hard mohawk) and Yi Fei (Brandon Wong in an Ah Beng role that has Mark Lee’s name all over it) get thrown into the sea. Fei survives but Shi does not and he returns as a constantly ravenous ghost. He also acquires powers which are conveyed on screen via cheesy visual effects.
Too bad that Huang, who also served as director and co-scriptwriter, just does not fit the mould of a lovable spook along the lines of Hong Kong’s Raymond Wong in the Happy Ghost films of the 1980s.
Fatal flaws aside, My Ghost Partner could have been a mildly amusing comedy if it had focused on Shi and Fei’s partnership. But with multiple plotlines and a whole bunch of familiar small-screen faces including Dawn Yeoh, Nick Shen, Yang Libing, Carole Lin and even Taiwan’s Sam Tseng, it feels too scattered.
And in its last 30 minutes, the movie completely veers off course.

A high-stakes gambling game is hastily arranged but it is one devoid of any suspense. Bizarrely, the ones with the greatest emotional stakes in the game are not even the protagonists of Shi and Fei but some minor characters. Go figure.

(ST)

Imperfect
Steve Cheng
The story: Teenagers Jianhao (Edwin Goh) and Zach (Ian Fang) are best buds who join a gang headed by Zhihua (Li Nanxing). The two friends are pulled in different directions – Zach is seduced by the easy money that comes from peddling drugs while Jianhao aims to complete his O levels with help from the studious Shanshan (Kimberly Chia). Tragedy strikes when the hot-headed pair get into a fight with the rich brat Alex (Xavier Ong) and they find themselves in bigger trouble than they ever could imagine.

The Channel 8 juvenile delinquency television drama On The Fringe (2011) turned its young leads Edwin Goh, Ian Fang, Kimberly Chia, Elizabeth Lee and Phua Yida into overnight stars.
At a fan meet held last September, 2,000 fans turned up to show their love and support for them despite a drizzle. The next logical step was to parlay their small-screen success into a movie.
Imperfect features the five young actors as well as veteran Li Nanxing from the TV show. But while it covers similar ground of good-at-heart bad kids, the characters here are different.
Goh is watchable as a young man trying to do the right thing, managing to pull off the different sides to his character Jianhao in his interactions with his family and friends.
Sullen and curt with his mother (Taiwanese TV actress Chiang Tsu-ping), he is fiercely loyal when it comes to his buddies, and then with Shanshan, he reveals an impish likability.
Compared to the fully fleshed-out Jianhao, the others are mostly one-note: Fang’s hot-headed Zach is seduced by easy money, Lee is his shallow girlfriend, Chia is the serious and studious girl and Phua, the bumbling friend.
Still, the young actors bring their On The Fringe chemistry to this movie and make their interactions believable.
Clearly, movie and TV producers are eager to bottle their camaraderie for profit – Goh, Fang, Chia and Phua are currently in the Channel 8 school drama Don’t Stop Believin’.
Unfortunately, the film has a tendency to sink into melodrama, perhaps because Hong Kong director Steve Cheng had cut his teeth on TVB dramas.
The late revelations about Jianhao’s parentage are unconvincingly shoehorned into the script, while Jianhao’s unexpectedly tender relationship with his younger sister, touching at first, soon becomes an overused device.
Adding to these woes is the uneven tone of Imperfect – Jianhao’s mother’s limp-wristed suitor (Taiwan’s Li Pei-hsu) strikes an off-note and Hong Kong veteran Liu Kai Chi as the psycho triad boss father of Alex seems to be in a different gangland flick.
At least the producers were honest when coming up with a title for the movie.
(ST)

Ghetto Superstar
MC HotDog
A rapper must surely drive a flashy car and be surrounded by hot model babes. Right?
Well, Taiwan’s MC HotDog self-deprecatingly takes apart that stereotype in the title track which is dense with wordplay and puns. As he claims: “The crappy songs I write are not at all fan te xi/Still living with my mum, she cooks fan tai xi (rice that is too watery)”. “Fan te xi” is likely a reference to Jay Chou’s hit 2001 album Fantasy.
The flashes of humour and cheekiness liven up this collection of singles that he released between 2009 and this year, often with other collaborators. Rocker Chang Chen-yue lends a hand on three tracks including the party dance-pop number High High Life.
No Breakfast For Hip-Hoppers with fellow rapper Soft Lipa is a sly riposte to Crowd Lu’s Rock ’n’ Roll Style in which Lu proclaimed that eating breakfast every morning was a rock ’n’ roll thing to do. MC HotDog fires off: “What does eating breakfast have to do with rock ’n’ roll/I’ve cracked my head and can’t come up with a thing/So, so I’ve decided to declare one thing, which is, not eating breakfast is a very hip-hop thing.”
Breakfast or no, this 17-track offering, inclusive of short audio skits, should fill you right up.

Sexy, Free & Single
Super Junior
You never know what you are going to get with each Super Junior album, in terms of their line-up, that is.
With Kangin having completed his military service, the K-pop supergroup is now 10-strong on its sixth album.
Sound-wise, SuJu bank on their usual mix of dance numbers and ballads, except the material is decidedly less strong here.
The title track is merely serviceable, no match for the insanely catchy Mr. Simple off their 2011 album of the same name.
It appears that the reason for the existence of a track with a name like Sexy, Free & Single is merely to have an excuse to have the lads lounging about topless on the cover of the album.
Then again, since when have K-pop groups needed a reason to play the sexy card?
(ST)

Yan Zi
Stefanie Sun
It was a classic case of overnight success.
With her self-titled debut album, Stefanie Sun was catapulted into the top ranks of Mandopop singers, achieving both popular and critical acclaim.
The disc sold more than 400,000 copies in three months in Taiwan, and was Singapore’s best-selling Mandarin album in 2000. She even beat today’s Mandopop king Jay Chou to nab the Best New Artist accolade at the prestigious Golden Melody Awards in 2001.
While Sun was very much in the girl-next-door mould, she stood out with her short crop and casual get-ups of unfussy tops and pants, rarely skirts. And in further contrast to docile doe-eyed lasses crooning about love, there was a spunky edge to her distinctive lower-pitched voice, particularly on faster-paced numbers.
She looked as though a moderately strong wind could carry her off, but proved to be no frail damsel when she opened her mouth to sing.
Turbo kickstarted the album. The track was designed to differentiate her from the crowd, with its snappy tempo and lyrics pumped full of attitude: “The feeling is right, I’m starting out/Using my own steps.”
The undoubted highlight of the disc, though, was Cloudy Day. The ballad with its poignant refrain of “tee or or, bey lor hor” (“The sky is dark, it is going to rain soon”), taken from a Hokkien folk song, grew to be a monster hit.
The canny sampling of a well-known ditty meant that everyone and their grandmother could easily relate to the song. For deftly updating an oldie and turning it into an instant classic, local songwriter and Sun’s mentor Lee Shih Shiong won the Golden Melody Award for Best Composer in 2001.
The ballad Love Document was also a thoughtfully crafted number. Lyrics such as “distance is a test”, “we are still learning for love” and “this love will have its certificate” were a perfect fit for the then 22-year-old who graduated from Nanyang Technological University that year with a bachelor of business degree.
Sun also showed that she could write music with her composition for Fine. She would go on to hone her skills as a songwriter, particularly on the statement-making Stefanie (2004) for which she composed two tracks and wrote the lyrics for one.
Interestingly, Yan Zi closes with Leave Me Alone, foreshadowing the ambivalent relationship Sun would have with fame. She loves to sing, but is clearly less enamoured with the pressures that come with being a professional entertainer.
When she released her ninth original studio album It’s Time (2011), she told Life!: “I just want to sing and enjoy it. I don’t need any record-breaking sales or awards or more titles, I just want to enjoy it while it lasts.”
Perhaps that ambivalence is in part due to the awareness that it is never just about the singing. While there is no question of Sun’s raw talent, a clever marketing campaign was also key to her early success.
Even before her album was released in Taiwan, Sun was already a recognisable face, thanks to an advertising campaign for sanitary napkins. And a generous NT$40 million (S$1.67 million) was spent on the promotion of the record.
More controversially, a man with an air gun tried to take her hostage during an autograph session in Taipei, an incident dismissed by some as a publicity stunt.
Still, none of this should detract from the fact that Sun was a unique voice in Mandopop from day one and Yan Zi was the album that first showcased her uniqueness. She has since proven to be that rarest of stars – an overnight smash who has endured.
(ST)

Music-Man II World Tour 2012
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Last Saturday
American-born, Taiwan- based Wang Lee Hom certainly knows how to make an entrance.
After an introductory video clip of him as Music Man taking on hordes of nameless opponents, a tank decked out in coloured lights rolled onto the stage to wild screams.
The singer-songwriter was perched atop the vehicle and dressed in an eye-catching all-red outfit with his hair teased into a gravity-defying pompadour. Appropriately, the opening montage included the electro-rock number Fire Power To The Max.
Dramatic fire power is all well and good, but too much of it can end up feeling like mere bombardment.
And, in fact, the concert became more enjoyable towards the end when the still-boyish-looking 36-year-old loosened up noticeably.
As it was, the early ballads such as The Only One and All The Things You Never Knew were pounded into submission and his face scrunched up with the effort.
It did not help that the sound level was too loud and whatever delicacy of feeling that existed in the songs was pretty much obliterated.
His self-described “chinked-out” style of music was also packed into the first half with tracks such as Descendants Of The Dragon 2012, The 18 Martial Arts and Heroes Of Earth in the line-up.
I have never been particularly swayed, however, by his fusion of pop and hip-hop with elements of folk and traditional Chinese music on albums such as Shangri-La (2004) and Heroes Of Earth (2005).
The starting point of ethnic pride is a laudable one but the results are often bombastic and border on the cringe-worthy. The melding can be successful though when it is done more subtly in songs such as Mistake Made In The Flower Field.
It was with Love Love Love, a third of the way into the 21/2- hour-long concert, that Wang seemed to relax and enjoy himself more.
Talking about the song, he asked who needs love and whether Zhang Ziyi needs love as the camera zoomed in on the Chinese actress who was in the audience. He later added that he had been spending the past few weeks in Singapore making a film with her.
For the most part, his banter stuck to a script as it served to segue into announcing the title of the next song. Not that it mattered to the full-house crowd of 10,000 who greeted his every mention of Singapore and “I love you” with loud cheers.
The talented musician also thrilled his fans by playing on, not one, but four instruments – the piano, the violin, the guitar and the erhu.
Even better was the a cappella segment in which he crooned a string of his best-known hits such as The One I Love Is You and Impossible To Miss You – accompanied by six other Lee Homs in a pre-recorded video. The timing was flawless as he “interacted” with and even quarrelled with his other selves.
By the time he took on Forever Love, the ballad sounded decidedly less strained than the earlier offerings.
During his encore, he recorded a video clip of the enthusiastic audience chorusing “I love you” to post on his Weibo microblog.
He also thanked his Singapore fans for their unwavering support from his first album, Love Rival Beethoven, back in 1995 before ending the evening with Kiss Goodbye.
Happily, it was a kiss that had just the right amount of fire power.
(ST)

Dear Orange
Orange Tan Hui Tien

Uncontrolled
Namie Amuro

Johor’s Orange Tan was the women’s champion in the Malaysian version of Project Superstar back in 2007. While it has taken her a few years to produce, her first EP is the perfect showcase for her agreeably husky pipes.
The songs here have an easy-breezy feel. In them, she muses on familiar themes of life, love and friendship, while avoiding the trap of sounding hackneyed.
In the sweetly optimistic Dear Us, she sings: “Dear us, we live for love/Even if we go our separate ways today/The baggage is heavy, we have to lift it somehow/An unwrapped possibility is waiting in the future.”
Interspersed between the five songs are short interludes, including a cute recording of her niece asking if she has eaten and when she is coming home over the telephone. It is all very slice-of-life and charming.
A totally different proposition is Japanese pop queen Namie Amuro’s ninth studio album, Uncontrolled.
Slick and urbane, with polished music videos to go with 11 of the 13 tracks, it feels calculated down to the last beat.
Still, tracks such as In The Spotlight (Tokyo) and Let’s Go – with lyrics such as “It’s the idea, the idea, idea of you/It gets me going, going, it gets me going” – do the job and ought to get one moving on the dance floor.
It is on the slower-paced numbers that one seems to get a hint of Amuro, the person. Get Myself Back has her crooning: “I’ve always been acting strong/Even lying to myself/On the open white map/There isn’t a place I can go to.”
A little more Amuro, and a little less control, would have made for a more fascinating album.
(ST)

Greedy Ghost
Boris Boo
This tedious morality tale about people who are irritants has few scares and fewer laughs.
Lim (Taiwan’s Kang Kang) stumbles across a manuscript with seemingly empty pages. After being harangued by the spirit within it (Mark Lee), Lim decides to bet on the numbers given to him, not realising that he has to pay a high price for his lottery winnings.
Meanwhile, his two layabout friends whose only discernible job is to occasionally dig up old graves end up stealing from one.
Malaysia’s Brendan Yuen overacts as the greedy and all-round nasty piece of work that is Huat. Henry Thia is at least mildly amusing as the devout Buddhist who obsessively arranges his remaining few strands of hair.
Pity Jesseca Liu who is stuck in the thankless role of Huat’s doormat girlfriend. Her character even gets molested by the female ghost incongruously named Madam Butterfly.
Add to the mess a script in which the repartee descends to the level of “you eat s***”, “no, you eat s***”, and the horror is complete.
(ST)

The Silent War
Alan Mak, Felix Chong
The story: Blind piano tuner assistant He Bing (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) has an excellent sense of hearing. He is recruited by Zhang Xuening (Zhou Xun), an agent of 701 Headquarters of the newly established China Republic government in the 1950s, to detect the frequencies on which the enemy, a vague threat, is broadcasting sensitive information.

It has been said that feted Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai acts with his eyes. In acclaimed dramas such as In The Mood For Love (2000) and Lust, Caution (2007), he could convey the emotions roiling beneath a placid surface with just a searing glance.
So how does he fare when the character he is playing is blind?
Pretty well, thank you very much, and this role lets Leung demonstrate that he does not act with just his eyes. His charisma remains intact even while wearing lenses or dark glasses that cover his piercing peepers. It helps that the character is not some angsty tortured person but a likeable rascally fellow who has to get by on his wits.
The sound design also does a good job of putting the audience in He’s shoes by heightening the noises that filter through to him in a scene where he is being tailed by Zhang and her men.
As Zhang and He later work together, she begins to feel protective of him and he starts to have feelings for her. Their relationship is played out with restraint but perhaps a little too tentatively as other characters enter the picture.
One is actually more intrigued by the enigmatic relationship between Zhang and her boss Old Devil (Wang Xuebing). And He later ends up with the cryptologist Shen Jing (Mavis Fan) in a development that feels rather pat.
The film reunites Leung with Hong Kong film-makers Alan Mak and Felix Chong, who had collaborated as writers for the excellent cop thriller Infernal Affairs (2002). Here, Mak and Chong both direct, from a script adapted from China novelist Mai Jia’s An Suan (Plot Against, 2006).
And it seems possible to detect the seeds of The Silent War in that earlier film.
There is a tensely pivotal scene in Infernal Affairs which involved Morse code being tapped out on a window. Here, the transmission of Morse code messages consumes the protagonists.
The stakes, though, are generally vague here and one never gets the sense of the enemy beyond a few references to Chiang Kai-shek.
And when the stakes are made clearer towards the end in a hunt for the master enemy agent Chungking, what unfolds rests too much on the trite coincidence of similar-sounding Morse codes with very different meanings.
The poignancy of the tragedy that strikes He is also diminished as the rationale for his actions is less than fully convincing.
But at least Leung keeps one watching.
(ST)

My Room
Maggie Chiang
In the six years since her last album Crybaby (2006), Taiwan’s Maggie Chiang has been quietly remodelling herself as a singer-songwriter.
The initial impression of My Room is that it does not present a very much different Chiang. After all, she already used to sing sensitively wrought love ballads, penned by others, such as Why Is My Beloved Not By My Side and The Gentleness Of Both Hands.
That is not to say that the album is without its rewards – the better tracks include the easy breezy romance of You Do Love Me and The Weight Of Love, the latter first appearing in an EP of the same name in 2010.
In particular, the gently lilting Under The Moon Light, composed by Chiang with lyrics by her and Peggy Hsu, strikes a tender note: “Hey, you in the moonlight, are you thinking about the past on this lonely night.”
So what if there isn’t a radical departure from the past? The more important thing is that Chiang has decided to take a bigger stake in her music and that can only be a good thing.
As the title track with lyrics by David Ke goes: “Open the window, it’s the same sunlight, and yet the feeling is not the same.”
The same could be said of Chiang.
(ST)

Listening
VC Tan
As a songwriter, Malaysia’s VC Tan has composed memorable hits such as I Love Him for Della Ding Dang and Longing For for Rainie Yang.
Perhaps he should have kept some of it for his new album, the follow-up to 2010’s Goodbye, Single.
He has a pleasant if not overtly distinctive voice and the material here could have done with a bit more oomph.
Ballads such as the title track and Yes Man seem a little too tailored for the mass market. He plays the part of the lovelorn guy on Yes Man: “I’m the lousy good person who loves you/Having loved you, yet I can only hide myself/No matter, don’t worry about how heartbroken I am.”
More interesting are the uptempo jazziness of Nobody, the dance-pop of You Hold My Happiness and the breeziness of Love In This Moment. The Lord’s Prayer is an oddity. It features the Lord’s prayer from the Biblical book of Matthew in Mandarin set to synth-pop. Actually, it works fine if you do not, ironically, listen too closely to the lyrics.
(ST)

Moonrise Kingdom
Wes Anderson
The story: Scout-in-training and orphan Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) elopes with misunderstood Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) on the island of New Penzance in 1965. Scout master Ward (Edward Norton) and police captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) track down the young lovers while Suzy’s parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) fret.

How much you enjoy this film will depend on your appetite for – or tolerance of – what is kooky, off-kilter, precious or twee.
The typical Wes Anderson film traverses the entire spectrum of quirky. The writer-director creates self-contained brightly coloured worlds in which stories of family, whether by blood or by circumstance, unfold drolly.
In The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004), Bill Murray and his submarine crew go after a shark which ate his friend. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) was all about the successes and failures of three privileged siblings.
At his best, Anderson draws you into his richly imagined scenarios with a gentle sense of humour and intriguing oddball characters.
With a relentlessly deadpan relationship at its core, Moonrise Kingdom happens to be among the more indulgent of his works.
It is a little frustrating given the promising set-up as the entire island is turned upside-down when the young lovers run away together.
Jared Gilman brings a likeable mix of bravado and vulnerability to the plucky and resourceful Sam, though Kara Hayward (both above) is largely one-note as the far too passive Suzy.
Maybe because the protagonists are so young, they do not bring that sense of pathos to their roles as, say, Murray and Jason Schwartzman did with their roles in more engaging Anderson films such as Rushmore (1998).
Good thing then that he has surrounded the young ones with a group of experienced and big-name actors who are great to watch as they do their thing in supporting roles.
The usually oh-so-serious Edward Norton is the almost goofily earnest scout master and Bruce Willis, so often the macho action star, is the somewhat pathetic and yet good-hearted Captain Sharp.
Caped and imperious, Tilda Swinton turns up as a character referred to only as Social Services.
You sometimes wonder, though, if the actors had more fun making the film than most viewers will have watching it.
Anderson’s particular brand of aesthetic had actually worked very well in animation for Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), perhaps because whimsicality feels less like an affectation in that genre.
But even in a lesser entry, Anderson’s voice is distinctively present. You could never mistake his movies for anyone else’s.
(ST)

Everything In The World
Qu Wanting
Two female singers currently stand out on the airwaves: Hung Pei-yu singing Dian Qi Jiao Jian Ai (Tiptoe Love) and the other is Qu Wanting on Wo De Ge Sheng Li (You Exist In My Song). There is a rawness to their husky voices that equates with emotional honesty and I have been looking forward to their albums. No word, however, on when Taiwanese Hung is putting out a disc.
China-born Qu is the first one to release a record and she takes an unusual approach. Now based in Vancouver, her debut album comprises nine English tracks and six Mandarin numbers (not counting the demo version of You Exist In My Song).
She had signed on with Canada’s indie label Nettwerk Music which includes Sarah McLachlan on its roster of artists.
While her phrasing may sometimes sound a little stilted on the English material, the singer-songwriter always manages to be compelling. Even when the lyrics feel too prosaic – “When you kissed me on the street, I kissed you back/You held me in your arms, I held you in mine”, on Drenched – she pulls it off with the swoonsome swirling music.
Still, she seems to sound more assured and at ease in the Mandarin numbers. On You Exist In My Song, she pulls you into her reminiscences of a past lover with conversational stanzas and a plaintive refrain: “You exist, in the deepest recesses of my mind/In my dreams, in my heart, in my song”.
And she makes you feel that he is everything in the world to her.
(ST)

Regret (1995)
Mavis Hee
Last heard at a television drama theme song concert earlier this month, Mavis Hee’s soothing mellow voice is still in remarkably good form.
Never mind that her last studio album was 2000’s electronica-infused Heelectronic, or that her public performances have been sporadic since a public meltdown episode in 2006.
At the gig at Resorts World Convention Centre’s Compass Ballroom, Hee, 37, performed 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 the period drama Tofu Street (1996).
Her gentle musical stylings sounded as assured as ever, and she had no problems reaching the low notes.
What was also clear is how closely her early career was linked to local TV dramas. Regret, Moonlight and Iron Window were all collected on her breakthrough second album Regret, which sold more than 50,000 copies here and in Malaysia. Window was the theme song to the women’s prison drama Beyond Dawn (1996).
While each song conjures up the opening credit montage for fans of the shows, they fit together well on the album as well.
It is not surprising when one takes a closer look at the credits.
Of the nine tracks (since there are two versions of Window included), seven are composed by her long-time mentor and producer Chen Jiaming. Singer-songwriter Jimmy Ye contributed one track and Hee herself penned one. As for the lyrics, Chen had a hand in all of the songs, while Hee contributed to three numbers.
There was a very strong point-of-view as Chen and Hee had a clear idea of her strengths and played to them.
On record, she was the queen of melancholia. Whatever passed through her pipes took on a patina of wistfulness, and burnished the tales of loss and regret told in the lyrics.
Even when the tempo quickened and the music became chirpier as on Ai Qing (Love), a chill clung to the lyrics: “Why bother who let whom down, there are no absolutes in this world/There are no regrets after loving, doesn’t matter if I get a little hurt.”
It was not all doom and gloom, though. Her best-known hit Moonlight In The City holds out the balm of hope and redemption: “The moonlight in the city shines on dreams, please keep watch by its side/If we should meet again one day, let happiness be scattered across the night sky.”
Regret was also pivotal for Hee as it was the album that introduced her to the Taiwanese market in 1996. The Taiwanese version of the album included two extra tracks – Ying Zi Qing Ren (Shadow Lover) and the title track from her Singapore-released debut album Ming Zhi Dao (Knowingly, 1994).
At a time when the pristine-voiced Faye Wong ruled the Mandopop scene, Hee stood out with her beautifully low voice. Her subsequent records would regularly notch up sales of more 200,000 in Taiwan. Even more impressively, she would successfully venture into the hard-to-crack Hong Kong market in 1997 with Listen Quietly, a collection of her Mandarin hits augmented with three Cantonese tracks.
The album ended Heavenly King Andy Lau’s reign at the top of the territory’s music charts with Love Is Mysterious and sold more than 100,000 copies there. For trumping a Heavenly King as well as Faye Wong on the charts, Hee earned the nickname of Heavenly Queen Slayer.
Her songs, like her voice, have stood the test of time. Other artists have repeatedly covered her tunes.
Taiwan’s Chyi Chin took on Moonlight In The City, while Malaysia’s Abin Fang and local singer Kit Chan have reinterpreted Regret. None though can replace Hee’s unforgettable originals.
Fittingly, her tentative comeback has been on the soundtrack to the TV series A Song To Remember (2011). She sang four songs there, including the title track and the gorgeous ballad Remembrance (Travelling Together).
Hopefully, she will gain enough confidence to release another album. And if she wants to make a comeback on her own terms – with no interviews and no publicity photos – that is perfectly fine. The only regret would be if she stops singing.
(ST)

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)