Coexistence
Denise Ho
It was big news when Hong Kong singer Denise Ho came out of the closet at the Hong Kong Pride Parade in November. The bigger news is that doing so has freed her as an artist. She sounds honest and open here – completely comfortable in her own skin at last.
Opening track Alcohol And Cigarette is a loose- limbed piece of garage rock that sets the tone, if not genre, for what is to follow.
Faceless Person tackles head-on questions of identity and the lyrics point to the painful process of someone coming to terms with herself: “Every time I look at myself, that me I don’t recognise/ Will my life/Be forgotten like today’s news/Am I existing? Or am I merely living?”
Even though the lyrics are by prolific Wu Ching- feng from Taiwan’s sodagreen, there is no denying how close to the bone they cut.
The album title itself is a naked plea to live and let live but Ho has no interest in wallowing in victimhood. To the question of the song titled What Do You Love?, her response sounds like a manifesto: “I love freedom and my life/It’s not for anyone else to call the shots/And what do you love?”
She even makes a joyous foray into dance on Bye Bye, bidding farewell to “a world of the old me”, “a world of shallow rules” and “a world that’s upside- down”. The sound of Coexistence is a beautiful one indeed.
(ST)

The Incredible Truth
Leong Tak Sam
The incredible truth about this movie is that it is spectacularly bad. Hong Kong’s Christy Chung should have stuck to slimming advertisements instead.
She plays Wei Ling, a stylist who travels to Japan to search for her friend, Jia Jia (Liu Yan), who has gone missing. Showing a complete lack of self-preservation skills, the stylist stays at a strange resort peopled by creepy characters. Chief among them is innkeeper’s daughter Michiko Shimizu (Megumi Kagurazaka), who goes from being intimidating to seductive to flat-out crazy.
The musical cues are loud and jarring and the acting is hammy and laughable. Chung tries her earnest best but fails in the face of a ludicrously lazy script.
For example, Wei conveniently finds a diary in the forest which spells out everything that happened.
It is so terrible that The Incredible Truth is good for a few laughs.
(ST)

This Is 40
Judd Apatow
The story: This is the spin-off sequel to writer-director Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up (2007), in which the moviegoer was first introduced to the characters of Debbie (Leslie Mann) and Pete (Paul Rudd). She now runs a clothing shop and he owns a tiny record label. They are still married, have two daughters and are about to hit the speed bump that is the big 4-0.

Is writer-director Judd Apatow losing his Midas touch? After hits such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and Knocked Up (2007), one was expecting yet another raucous comedy filled with potty- mouthed dialogue and laugh-out-loud situations.
Instead, this feels like Apatow’s attempt to go in a more dramatic direction.
This Is 40 strings up scenes from a marriage between the more uptight Debbie and the laidback Pete and ends up feeling episodic in nature.While there is plenty of smutty dialogue, much of the talk about sex is graphic in a way that is not particularly funny.
Where it works is in Apatow’s ability to convey that volatile mixture of intimacy and resentment that long-time couples share. One moment, Debbie can be needling Pete about his junk food-eating habits; the next, she is reluctantly examining his bottom for haemorrhoids.
It comes together in a sweet scene in bed when they fondly talk about how they would kill each other off.
Paul Rudd (I Love You, Man, 2009) and Leslie Mann (Funny People, 2009) make the relationship feel lived-in and the frustrations of the characters keenly felt.
That said, the movie is simply too long and the moments of genuine emotional connection are few and far between.
Instead of focusing on family – what with Debbie’s distant father Oliver (John Lithgow) and Pete’s childish dad Larry (Albert Brooks) and his brood of three very young sons – the script is burdened with unnecessary extras. There is Megan Fox as an employee Debbie suspects is stealing from her and Melissa McCarthy as a mother Pete has a run-in with.
You wonder how much of his own marriage Apatow is channelling since he and Mann are married in real life with two daughters, Maude and Iris, who play 13-year-old Sadie and eight-year-old Charlotte in the film.
There is more blurring of reel and real as the artist Pete is promoting is real-life under-the-radar act Graham Parker & The Rumour.
Perhaps a greater separation of fact and fiction would have helped. As it is, This Is 40 feels self- indulgent to an extent that previous Apatow comedies did not.
(ST)

Glass Anatomy: The Musical
Various artists
Often, soundtrack albums serve as a souvenir of a show one has enjoyed.
This is one of the rare occasions where the record works better than the full-fledged musical, an adaptation of the Taiwanese film Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing? (1983). Glass Anatomy is currently playing at the Esplanade Theatre until Sunday.
For starters, the songs are presented in their entirety, not in snippets. Also, they are not repeated ad nauseam as they were during the show.
Classic numbers such as The Same Moonlight and Please Come With Me are given an orchestral makeover complete with harmonising. Do You Have Any Beer Bottles To Sell starts off mournful and builds to a dramatic outpouring of emotions.
Pop star Della Ding Dang does a decent job taking on numbers first made famous by veteran singer Julie Su Rei. Having the requisite lung power certainly helps.
Also effective is local actress Audrey Luo’s take on the movingly steadfast Holding Hands, a track marred by overuse in the production.
Take the songs here and build your own musical in your head instead.
(ST)

The Big Wedding
Justin Zackham
The story: Alejandro (Ben Barnes) is getting married to Missy (Amanda Seyfried) and the guest list includes his divorced adoptive parents, Don (Robert De Niro) and Ellie (Diane Keaton), as well as Don’s current partner Bebe (Susan Sarandon). Also attending are his Colombian Catholic biological mother Madonna (Patricia Rae) and sultry birth sister Nuria (Ana Ayora). The catch: Don and Ellie have to pretend they are still married in order not to offend Madonna’s conservative sensitivities. A remake of the French film My Brother Is Getting Married (2006).

Going by the movies made about weddings, one would think that there is no such thing as a small, low-key ceremony.
From My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) to Bride Wars (2009), the occasion has to be big, bold and brash. And there has to be mayhem as one crisis after another unfolds, though everything gets neatly tied up by the time we get to “I do”.
The Big Wedding does not stray from the template. Even though it does not break the mould, it is pleasant enough as a sweetly amiable family comedy.
Here, the young couple getting married are almost incidental and in fact, Ben Barnes and Amanda Seyfried do not take up too much screen time.
Rather, part of the movie’s charm comes from watching veteran actors just doing their thing.
Robert De Niro gives a loose, relaxed performance as the patriarch who cannot commit to his new partner and is more likeable here than in the shrilly exaggerated Meet The Parents (2000).
There is an easy vibe to his squabbling and bantering with one-time best friends Susan Sarandon and Diane Keaton as the three of them sort out their relationships.
And Robin Williams is nicely restrained, for once, in the role of a priest counselling the young couple.
To justify the “Big” in the title, there is also Katherine Heigl (27 Dresses, 2008) as a brittle sister whose marriage is on the rocks, while Topher Grace (That ’70s Show, 1998-2006) rounds up the ensemble cast as a doctor brother still holding on to his virginity.
Writer-director Justin Zackham (writer for The Bucket List, 2007) works in secrets, revelations, punches and a touch of naughtiness before the de rigueur happy ending rolls around.
(ST)

2013 Spring Wave Music Festival
The Meadow, Gardens by the Bay
Last Saturday
Spring Wave swept into Singapore for the first time last Saturday.
And the popular Taiwanese music festival brought with it a swell line-up of artists, including indie queen Cheer Chen, rocker Wu Bai, popster Jam Hsiao, smoky-voiced Joanna Wang, pop-rocker Chang Chen-yue and home-grown singer Olivia Ong. Each performed a set between 30 and 40 minutes long.
According to the organiser, Taiwan’s Friendly Dog Entertainment, 5,000 people attended the concert.
First among the headliners to take the stage at The Meadow at Gardens by the Bay shortly after 3pm was Ong. Dressed in a black and white sleeveless top and a yellow skirt, she offered some breezy pop to help beat the heat.
She sang her own material such as ballad When The Seas Run Dry And The Stones Go Soft and covered English pop numbers such as Venus. She also tested fate with Let It Rain but the weather held.
The early birds who braved the sun came armed with umbrellas, caps and wet wipes. One group came with its own shade.
Mr Sun Jianhang, 26, from Shenyang and working in the logistics industry here, brought along a blue and orange tent. This was the result of experience gleaned from attending past festivals, such as the Strawberry Music Festival in China, he said.
Teacher James Wong, 41, was there with three friends and they came well equipped with mats, food and even card games. He said: “The concert is a very long one. To outlast it, we thought we had to be more prepared.”
Apart from the line-up of artists, there was also a showcase segment for the Singapore Press Holdings- organised Singapore Entertainment Awards 2013 (see other story).
Taiwan’s Bai An was the only regional artist present to collect her trophies for Most Popular Regional Newcomer and Singapore Entertainment Awards Media Award – Newcomer of the Year.
She graced the stage in a little black dress and performed three songs from her debut album of electronica pop, The Catcher In The Rye (2012).
The Singapore singers on hand to receive their prizes were Ming Bridges for Best Local Singer and Best Local Album, as well as The Freshman duo – comprising Chen Diya and Carrie Yeo – for Best Local Lyrics.
Singer Wang, dressed in striking green, took the stage next. From Coins, “a sarcastic song about spending money”, to lilting ballad Apathy, she entertained with her brand of kooky musical story- telling. She even turned American rock band Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun into a whimsical ditty.
Rocker Chang then turned the dial up to party mode. With his infectious sing-along hits such as Love’s First Experience and Freedom, he had the crowd up on its feet and dancing happily along.
He was dressed in what looked like a light khaki safari suit and he cheekily shook his bum as a farewell gesture after his final number.
In contrast, the vibe for indie queen Cheer Chen’s set was mellow and chill, thanks to the sensitively wrought ruminations of tracks such as Jealousy and Travel With Sound. But the versatile musician proved that she could also pick up the pace when she had a go on the drums.
It was left to consummate showman Hsiao to really work the crowd and he did so with ease, pointing to fans when he sang “miss you, you, you” from Can Only Miss You.
He powered through rock numbers Princess and Holmes and sassed his way through Michael Jackson’s Black Or White.
Even the light drizzle could not dampen the mood and it gave Hsiao the opening to quip: “It’s raining so I have to go.”
Six hours after Ong, veteran rocker Wu Bai came on stage. He closed the evening with an invigorating blast of music, taking the audience from an explosive Volcano to anthemic Minnan number No. 1 In The World. The concert ended close to 10pm.
He revelled in the outdoor setting and acknowledged every segment of the crowd, from those in front to “those on the left of the left”.
At his command, he also set off the Mexican wave on the sea of green. And the fans roared in delight.
Among them was teacher Bernice Tan, 24, who said that it was a good experience overall. Given the variable weather, she added: “Maybe they can have some shelters if they have another one in future.”
While Spring had come and gone for the concertgoers, for those planning to boogie at the late-night dance party, there was still another Wave to ride.
(ST)

Stories Untold
JJ Lin
He made his debut in 2003 with Music Voyager and a decade later, local singer-songwriter JJ Lin is a star releasing his milestone 10th album.
From a fresh-faced boy singing about being Booksmart, the still-boyish singer is now a bankable entertainer who continues to have a knack for writing strong tunes even as his range broadens.
Take lead single The Dark Knight, a canny collaboration with Mayday’s Ashin. The rousing rock number does not lazily ride on superhero popularity but thoughtfully explores that world: “Why after catching all the thieves, with no robbery witnessed in years/Yet poverty is like a flood, drowning the dignity of survival/At the peak of civilisation, mankind and bats are back living in caves”.
Another singer-songwriter making an appearance is Taiwan-based Wang Leehom, who plays the violin for the dramatic pop of lone English track One Shot.
Even Lin’s family gets in on the act as his brother Eugene duets with him on the nostalgic Fly Back In Time. Fun fact: The brothers were part of Ocean Butterflies’ Very Singers’ Training Course in 1999.
Of course, Lin gets to shine on his own as well with a classy romantic ballad Practising Love and a cheerful slice of upbeat pop Here Because Of You.
Less successful is the gimmicky Remember Me A Thousand Years Later. The point of the song seems to be to spot where snatches of melody had previously appeared in his earlier works. The title helps you with one example with its reference to 2005’s A Thousand Years Later.
Aside from the odd little homage to himself, Stories Untold is mostly a solid effort from a consistently entertaining home-grown star.
(ST)

Identity Thief
Seth Gordon
The story: With a simple phone call, Diana (Melissa McCarthy) steals the identity of accountant Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) from Denver. She goes on a spending spree with his credit card information, lands him in trouble with the law and even jeopardises his new job. With his life spiralling out of control, Sandy has to travel to Florida and bring Diana back with him to clear his name.

Identity theft is committed by people who are actually good at heart, according to the makers of this film. The thieves are just a little bit lost and surely it is not their fault if they had a terrible childhood.
If you buy this, I know a Nigerian bank account you can send some money to in order to claim your lottery winnings.
The problem is not that the film makes light of a serious issue. It is that it does not do it well.
The first act of the film is essentially a convoluted set-up to justify Sandy and Diana travelling together. And in order to get them on a good old-fashioned road trip as opposed to a quick plane ride, some other lame reason is whipped up by screenwriter Craig Mazin (Scary Movie 4, 2006).
Not trusting Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy, the Oscar-nominated breakout star of Bridesmaids (2011), to hold your attention, he overcooks the plot by throwing in a bounty hunter (Robert Patrick) and two gang members who are after Diana as well.
There is also an extended and unnecessary interlude with a cowboy character (Eric Stonestreet from sitcom Modern Family) Diana picks up in a bar.
The jokes mostly miss the mark and a lame one about Sandy being a girl’s name is, lamentably, repeated.
Bateman (TV’s Arrested Development, 2003-2006, 2013) and McCarthy are a riot when given good material.
But they struggle here to overcome the thin characterisation: Sandy is mostly mousey as the guy who plays by the rules while Diana is a pathological liar the moviegoer is abruptly asked to feel sympathy for at the end.
Director Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses, 2011) has to shoulder some of the blame as well for the film’s uneven tone and problematic pacing. There is even a makeover scene for Diana which is not just cliched but also gratuitous.
The biggest crime this movie is guilty of is stealing your time.
(ST)

Light
Power Station
Aboriginal Taiwanese rock duo Power Station are still going strong, 16 years after their debut Cruel Love Letters (1997).
Their brand of blazing emo rock is alive and well on tracks such as Never Forget The Earliest Inspiration.
Yu Chiu-hsin and Yen Chih-lin’s voices soar as they sing: “Never forget, that year, that day, the dream in our hearts when we set off.” Although they are now in their mid-40s, there remains a youthful idealism in their cover of American country-pop group Lady Antebellum’s Never Alone.
Lead single Elena is a definite highlight here.
The music has a tribal folk song feel to it and the title is both a woman’s name and also sounds like “lover ah” in Minnan. The poignant chorus goes: “Elena, I’m back, know how much I’ve missed you/Elena, I’m back, your heart is my home”.
Parts of the album, though, feel like they could have been recorded back in the 1990s or early noughties. The challenge for the duo is whether they can power ahead and not just power on.
(ST)

AV Idol
Hideo Jojo
It is counter-programming time as behemoth Marvel’s Iron Man 3 opens in cinemas this week. And this sex comedy is as different as it gets in terms of content.
Japanese adult video star Ryoko (played by real- life AV idol Yui Tatsumi) reluctantly heads to Korea to shoot a new flick. After a series of mishaps, she bumps into the innocent Yuna (Yeo Min Jeong), who has dreamed of being a (legit) idol star all her life.
There are some funny bits in here, such as when the filming crew has to pass through Korean customs with their sex aids and later on, when the hack of a director blatantly rips off hit Korean TV drama Winter Sonata (2002) for the plot of his cross-cultural porn flick.
As a silly sex comedy though, its tone is uneven and it never hits the heights of, say, Pang Ho Cheung’s AV (2005), which managed to be both salty and sweet.
Ultimately, the movie does not stray far from its AV roots and both sweet girl-next-door Yuna and sexy goddess Ryoko disrobe for sex scenes.
(ST)

Finding Mr Right
Xue Xiaolu
The story: Jiajia (Tang Wei) arrives in Seattle from Beijing to give birth to her child with a married man because she cannot give birth legally in China. She is loud, spoilt and demanding, and clashes with almost everyone. Only Frank (Wu Xiubo), a driver sent to pick her up from the airport, is patient enough to deal with her. He used to be a doctor back in Beijing but now takes care of his daughter as his wife makes more money. Gradually, Jiajia and Frank come to care for each other.

Hanging over this movie is the shadow of another – the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan romance Sleepless In Seattle (1993).
It is a film that Jiajia holds dear to her heart and she even takes Frank’s daughter to a screening of it.
The problem is that it feels as though writer- director Xue Xiaolu is using that as a crutch to bolster Finding Mr Right’s own credentials as a romance.
Neither does it help that the ending of this movie is pilfered from Sleepless’ finale atop the Empire State Building.
Sleepless In Seattle paid homage to An Affair To Remember (1957) in the way it used that iconic building as a setting; Finding Mr Right merely rips off Sleepless In Seattle.
It is rather disappointing considering that this is the second feature from writer-director Xue. Her debut film was the well-received tearjerker Ocean Heaven (2010), which starred Jet Li as the father of an autistic son.
The romance is also too long and muted.
Jiajia inadvertently hits upon another reason for the film’s sluggishness when she says to Frank: “You know what your problem is? You’re too nice.”
He is nice to the point of being a doormat, even picking up his ex-wife’s wedding gown for her upcoming nuptials.
The saintly Frank is underplayed by well-known China television and movie actor Wu Xiubo (The Four, 2012) and is just too passive.
In contrast, Jiajia is a brash spoilt brat and Tang Wei, best known for her intense turn in sexy espionage thriller Lust, Caution (2007), has fun with the role.
Predictably, there is a redemption story arc and Jiajia learns to be a better person.
The two actors have a believable low-key chemistry when they are together, though it would be nice to have the heat turned up beyond simmering.
After a slow-moving build-up, Xue inexplicably piles on the schmaltziness for the resolution and it feels out of step with the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, she failed to find the right note for the ending.
(ST)

365
JPM
The boys of JPM seem to be in the mood for love, judging by this follow-up to their debut album, Moonwalk (2011).
But that does not mean the Taiwanese trio – LilJay, Prince and Modi – are pensive.
Opener 365 Days is a catchy dance track that is more about moving the feet than the heart: “Why is the love I have for you so strong, miss you every day/Every day every night.”
She Wanna Go, meanwhile, is a breezy slice of rock-tinged pop that sees the boys hanging tough: “I’m already so grown-up, I can withstand this hurt/If you wanna go, just go.”
Also of interest is Internet, a look at romance in this brave new digital world, featuring singer Kimberley Chen: “Although we haven’t met/And you haven’t replied to my messages/Waiting for you to say hey, even a ‘like’ from you is OK.”
The boys flounder on the slow sappy numbers, though, such as I Don’t Miss You That Much.
Such tracks could have been dropped from the record and I would not have missed them at all.
(ST)

Machi Action
Jeff Chang
Remember those cheesy Japanese live-action series with a hero who transforms into a suited-up warrior in order to do battle with all manner of monsters?
Machi Action clearly has a soft spot for those shows and some of the scenes showing how the fictitious Taiwanese series Superhero Fly is filmed can be quite fun.
Mostly, though, the film flounders about like a clumsy monster with no clue what it wants to achieve.
Chen Bo-lin is the nice-guy actor, Tie-nan (literally “iron man”), who plays Fly.
Cast adrift after a new superhero, Face (Owodog), takes his place, Tie-nan goes from hawking dubious products on television to, inadvertently, signing up for a porn flick.
The scattershot film even has a tearjerker melodrama skulking about on the edges as there are flashbacks to Tie-nan as a child, acting as a superhero to cheer up his seriously ill younger brother.
It seemed like a fun film to make, judging from the outtakes, but it was not a fun film to watch.
(ST)

Judgment Day
Ong Kuo Sin
There is nothing like impending doom to put things in perspective.
With 72 hours to go before a meteorite wipes out Earth, priorities are straightened and secrets start spilling out faster than worms crawling out of the woodwork.
Family man Fu-an (Henry Thia) announces to his wife and children that he wants to be a woman; a cop (Jeffrey Wang) confesses to his colleague (Mark Lee) that he took a bribe many years ago; Shuzhen (Alice Ko) tells her husband (Tender Huang) that she has fallen for her superior (Guo Liang); and Rebecca (Rebecca Lim) chooses to go to Cambodia instead of accepting a marriage proposal from Richard (Chua Enlai).
After a promising set-up, writer-director Ong Kuo Sin has no idea what to do with the various stories, which mostly get neatly resolved with a Big Speech moment.
And because there are so many threads and characters, the treatment of the material inevitably feels glib and clumsy.
Judgment Day also features the late John Cheng, better known as Ah Nan, as a temple medium who knows how to bend with the wind. He has some interesting observations about religion, but too bad the scene concocted for him to share them is completely contrived.
(ST)

Dark Skies
Scott Stewart
The story: Strange things are happening at the Barrett residence. Lacy (Keri Russell) and Daniel (Josh Hamilton) try to make sense of what is happening while protecting their two boys, Jesse (Dakota Goyo) and Sammy (Kadan Rockett).

This is the kind of movie where the less you know about it, the more effective it is.
It opens with scenes of normal suburban life – children playing in the streets, a lawn being watered, a barbecue gathering.
Then something happens in the Barrett household.
Someone, or something, comes into their kitchen at night and leaves a mess. It could almost be a prank though Lacy wonders what would eat the lettuce but leave the bacon. A giant rabbit with opposable thumbs is her husband’s quick comeback.
From this almost innocuous incident, writer-director Scott Stewart (Priest, 2011) slowly escalates the tension and the stakes as the incidents get harder and harder to explain away.
A big part of why the movie works is due to the casting.
Keri Russell was defined by the college student title role she played in the television drama Felicity (1998-2002) and it is nice to see that she has matured into a compelling actress without any offscreen drama, thank you very much.
She is well-matched by Josh Hamilton, an actor better known for his work on Broadway in award-winning plays such as Proof (2000) and The Coast Of Utopia (2002).
They are believable as a regular couple coping with ordinary pressures, from keeping up with mortgage payments to trying to build a better life for their family.
Adding to the sense of reality is Dakota Goyo (Real Steel, 2011) as a 13-year-old beginning to be interested in girls and to chafe at parental restrictions. At the same time, he is also a protective sibling to his younger and possibly over- imaginative brother (Kadan Rockett).
There is also a nice dynamic between Lacy the believer and Daniel the sceptic when things get more hairy, a gender reversal of the Mulder-Scully relationship in the iconic sci-fi series The X-Files (1993-2002).
Even when the movie moves into familiar Paranormal Activity (2007) territory as Daniel installs surveillance cameras in the house, Stewart manages to hold your attention.
The film could have easily elicited snorts given its subject matter, but by the time the word “aliens” is mentioned, the moviegoer is an hour into the film, and Dark Skies has cast an unsettling spell.
(ST)

Good Rogue
Eric Lin
Unless you are a fan of televised singing competition shows, you are not likely to be familiar with Malaysia’s Eric Lin.
Even though he released his first EP in Malaysia back in 2002, it was his stints on various contests, including the popular Chinese Million Star, that have raised his profile in recent years. It has even paved the way for him to release his first full-length album, Good Rogue.
As the title suggests, the persona here is one of a sensitive tough guy. He sings on the Percy Phang-composed title track: “I just keep loving/Keep loving/You can criticise as you wish/Even if it’s arrogance/I’m a good rogue”.
Lin has a decent set of pipes and he is versatile enough to handle faster-paced tracks and even take on English, as Like A Love Song proves. But he could do with more distinctive material. It gets hard to tell apart one mid-tempo ballad from another after a while.
Instead of this album, it might well take another television appearance to boost his profile once more.
(ST)

Don't Cry Mommy
Kim Yong Han
The story: Recently divorced Yoo Lim (Yoo Seon) lives with her only daughter, highschooler Eun Ah (Nam Bo Ra, below). Her world falls apart when Eun Ah is raped by three schoolmates (U-KISS member Shin Dong Ho plays one of them) and ultimately takes her own life. Faced with a legal system that coddles juvenile offenders, Yoo Lim decides to mete out her own brand of justice.

Rape is a horrific crime. And it is frustrating when the perpetrators get away with little more than a slap on the wrist if they happen to be underage, in the case of South Korea’s courts.
Faced with this devastating injustice, Yoo Lim takes matters into her own hands when she tracks down the three schoolboys who attacked her daughter.
Writer-director Kim Yong Han wants to draw attention to a serious issue and a glaring loophole in the courts. But Don’t Cry Mommy ends up pushing easy buttons in a lazy way.
The rapists are absolute scum with no humanising qualities whatsoever. They even videotape the vicious rape and end up blackmailing Eun Ah with the footage in order to abuse her further. You, too, will be baying for their blood.
What is interesting is that one of the perpetrators is actually a baby-faced boy whom Eun Ah initially had a crush on. He could pass off for a boyband member and, in fact, is played by one, U-KISS’s Shin Dong Ho. Kudos to him for taking on such a risky role.
Too much of the movie is frustrating though. Eun Ah (a sweetly innocent Nam Bo Ra from The Moon Embracing The Sun, 2012), and Yoo Lim (Yoo Seon from The Sons Of Sol Pharmacy, 2009) keep getting placed in situations that leave them vulnerable to attack. The actions of the mother, in particular, will have you sighing loudly in exasperation as she clumsily confronts the boys responsible for the heinous crimes.
The movie is not satisfying as a vigilante flick nor does it engage with the issues in a thoughtful way, when other Korean films have shown that it is possible to do so. There is Lee Chang Dong’s Poetry (2010), which was also triggered by the gangrape of a schoolgirl, but he juxtaposes the ugly crime with lyrical beauty in a film of quiet power.
Then there is Park Chan Wook’s vengeance trilogy (including Oldboy, 2003), which explored the theme in far greater depth. It is smart enough to have you baying for blood – and then satiates that with generous doses of violent payback.
(ST)

Ricky Is A Nice Guy
Ricky Hsiao
Who says nice guys finish last? Not Taiwan’s Ricky Hsiao. The blind singer-songwriter’s fifth Mandarin album makes it all the way to the top of the G-Music album charts at home.
The opening track Live My Own Life is a winner with Lin Xi’s poignant lyrics paired with Hsiao’s memorable melody. He sings with a sense of purpose lines such as “I live the life I want, so long it’s not life living me” and “I own time, and time doesn’t have my notice”.
The folksy strains of Lotus Seed Heart also complement well a moving tale about a past love.
He might be nice but that does not mean he is bland. He gets emo on the Tanya Chua-penned ballad Who Said You Could. He wallows in misery here: “Who said you could, no one said you could, think I don’t care/But actually I hate myself, why did I fall for you”.
Not to worry, though, the album ends with a breezy pick-me-up, Simple Happiness. He lifts you up as he sings: “I’ve learnt to want the simple pleasures/Use love to experience each day I live”. A sweet sentiment from a nice guy.
(ST)

Lay The Favourite
Stephen Frears
The story: The phrase “lay the favourite” comes from the arena of sports gambling. It is a world that private dancer Beth (Rebecca Hall) discovers when she moves to Vegas for a fresh start. She works for Dink (Bruce Willis), clashes with his wife Tulip (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and ends up making a pivotal bet on a basketball game. Based on Beth Raymer’s 2010 memoir of the same name.

The best thing about this film is Rebecca Hall.
Somehow, she manages to give stripper- turned-gambler Beth an aura of innocence. The wide-eyed naivete is all the more impressive considering that the English actress is now 30.
Even when she is putting the moves on Dink, randomly hooking up with a stranger (Joshua Jackson) or just making bad decisions in general, there is an essential sweetness about her that is endearing.
From Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) to The Town (2010) to the stage production of The Winter’s Tale, the chameleonic actress has slipped into a wide variety of roles and imbued them all with a ring of authenticity.
If only the movie were as good as she is. There is a gentle sense of humour to the proceedings, but this is a film that could have done with a more brazen tone.
Oddly enough, there are brazen roles here, including Vince Vaughn (Wedding Crashers, 2005) as showy bookie Rosie and Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago, 2002) as the tanned and formidable Tulip who warns Beth: “Do not f*** my husband.”
They are not meaty enough, though, to make for interesting character studies.
At the same time, there is not much momentum propelling the story forward.
The pivotal bet placed on the outcome of a basketball game is supposed to introduce some tension, but it feels a little abrupt and not particularly exciting.
Director Stephen Frears has done better work before – from Dirty Pretty Things (2002) to High Fidelity (2000). This is not among them.
(ST)

In The House
Francois Ozon
The story: Claude (Ernst Umhauer) insinuates himself with a classmate Rapha (Bastien Ughetto) and gets invited to his home. He then writes about Rapha and his parents (Emmanuelle Seigner, Denis Menochet) for a school assignment. Teacher Germain (Fabrice Luchini) is intrigued by the voyeuristic essay and encourages Claude to keep writing. Unexpected consequences follow. Based on the play The Boy Who Sat In The Last Row by Juan Mayorga.

French writer-director Francois Ozon sets up a twisted little premise here and then lets it unfold in a darkly delicious manner.
The first time Germain reads about Rapha and his family in Claude’s essay, he gets a little concerned about the detailed description of an intrusion into someone else’s house. Even more troubling is the superior smirking tone of the essay which sets off alarm bells.
And yet, he is intrigued. Compared to the usual dross that is submitted, Claude’s writing has a spark. The whole “peeping through a keyhole” voyeurism transfixes him, and the audience. Each essay ends with the tantalising “To be continued”, and like Germain, the viewer wants to know more.
Is Claude a skilful manipulator or just an awkward, if talented, teenager? Is he imagining what is happening at Rapha’s house or is he faithfully recording events as they occur?
The set-up is also used to satirise the creative process.
At times, it even feels like a meta-commentary on the movie itself as when Germain expounds on what makes for a good ending.
Since this is a film by Ozon, who directed the sexy thriller Swimming Pool (2003) , there are also sexual undertones that gradually bubble to the surface.
Claude is attracted to Rapha’s mother, “the most bored woman in the world”. He shares an intimate moment with Rapha and there are hints of an attraction with the father even.
It prompts Germain to exclaim in exasperation that Claude seems to have wandered into a Pasolini movie. And Germain’s wife asks him point blank whether he desires Claude.
The cast is uniformly good from Fabrice Luchini (The Women On The 6th Floor, 2010) as the well-intentioned but misguided teacher to relative newcomer Ernst Umhauer whose enigmatic Claude keeps one guessing, to English actress Kristin Scott Thomas (Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, 2011) in a French-speaking role as Germain’s sceptical wife.
They bring the various characters to life as curiosity, creativity and perversity are blended together in this compelling tale.
(ST)

Jazz Channel
Yoga Lin
While most cover albums by Mandopop singers seem like a lazy way of cashing in, this two-disc offering from Taiwan’s Yoga Lin is happily different.
He is a singer of some sensitivity and interpreting the material here – including a wide range of English songs from jazz standards such as As Time Goes By to Bonnie Raitt’s ballad I Can’t Make You Love Me – in a lightly jazzy idiom prevents this from sounding like a karaoke session. But his less-than-perfect English enunciation is a little distracting at times.
The Mandarin covers work better, whether he is taking on the Teresa Teng chestnut I Only Care About You or Sandee Chan’s regret-filled Not In Time. He even reworks two of his own tracks – Gone With The Wind and Fairy Tale from Senses Around (2009) – to good effect.
In particular, Gone is sparer and more haunting as Lin sings: “I play this song for you on a sunny day/I fall deeply asleep on a cloudy day/And you’re gone.” Tune into Jazz Channel when you want to soak up the blues, but not if you want to chase them away.
(ST)

Midnight's Children
Deepa Mehta
The story: Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on Aug15, 1947, the moment of India’s Independence. His life and the lives of the other special children born in that first hour are inextricably linked and play out against the birthing pains of a nation. Saleem (Satya Bhabha) has telepathic powers, charismatic Shiva (Siddharth Narayan) is his nemesis and Parvati (Shriya Saran) is the witch who flits between the two men. Based on Salman Rushdie’s 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name.

History, as historian Arnold Toynbee once observed, is just one damn thing after another. And there is plenty of history to get through in Midnight’s Children.
There are the last days of the British empire leading to the partition of India and Pakistan, war between the two countries, and civil war in Pakistan resulting in the creation of Bangladesh. While a novel has the luxury of space to shape events into a narrative thread, a film, even one over two hours long like this, has much less leeway to do so.
After a while, the characters begin to feel like pawns of history, swept up in a tide that they have no control over.
Director Deepa Mehta (Fire, 1996, Earth, 1998, and Water, 2005) could have sharpened the focus of the film much more so that the backdrop of unfolding events does not overwhelm it. As it stands, it is not easy for the viewer to immerse himself in the story of the characters.
It is a pity because there is plenty of drama, melo- and otherwise, in the recounting of Saleem’s family history and the single rebellious act of a nurse that changes his fate as well as Shiva’s forever.
Satya Bhabha (Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, 2010) is the somewhat passive Saleem, whose telepathic power is thrust upon him courtesy of a bulbous and snivelly nose, while Siddharth Narayan (Bommarillu, 2006) is the charismatic Shiva, whose ambitions take a dark turn.
Unfortunately, while the rivalry between Saleem and Shiva is established early on, it does not really pay off till late in the movie.
The impact of the relationship triangle with Parvati (Shriya Saran from Sivaji: The Boss, 2007) is also diminished, given the short shrift the character gets.
Still, there is a point to the tangled web of relations and relationships woven here: Who is whose son, who is whose mother, who is whose father?
The film’s resolution suggests that, in the end, you make your own family, just as you make your own country.
(ST)

Ip Man - The Final Fight
Herman Yau
And this makes Ip Man number four.
Donnie Yen gave us a stoic and macho action hero in Ip Man (2008) and Ip Man 2 (2010). Tony Leung Chiu Wai gave us arthouse Ip Man in The Grandmaster (2013). Dennis To gave us Ip Man-lite in Ip Man: The Legend Is Born (2010).
Anthony Wong’s portrayal of the wing chun martial arts teacher is also stoic and comes with a tad more gravitas. Too bad it feels unnecessary.
The episodic film has something of a split personality with an odd mix of realist historical drama and chopsocky gongfu action. The setting is Hong Kong at a time of worker unrest in the 1950s and features Ip Man’s students (including Jordan Chan as a conflicted cop and Gillian Chung in a minor role) being involved in the strikes and clashes.
At the same time, setpiece fights have to be worked into the movie, including a final showdown between Ip Man and a triad boss.
The entire exercise just feels like overkill.
(ST)

The Host
Andrew Niccol
The story: A parasitic alien race has conquered Earth. Melanie Stryder’s (Saoirse Ronan) body is inhabited by a “soul” named Wanderer, but her consciousness refuses to just fade away. Eventually, they set off in search of her younger brother in a remote human hideout. There, she finds her boyfriend Jared (Max Irons) while another young man, Ian (Jake Abel), is drawn to Wanderer. Based on Stephenie Meyer’s 2008 book of the same name.

The last adaptation of a Stephenie Meyer’s work was a little series called Twilight. There are, naturally, some high expectations for The Host, but it is actually a very different creature altogether.
This feels like a more contemplative movie. After the basic premise has been set up, writer-director Andrew Niccol is happy to explore the ramifications in a low-key and understated manner.
Those familiar with his earlier works such as the sci-fi flick Gattaca (1997), starring Ethan Hawke as a genetically inferior man with big ambitions in a dystopian future, would not be too surprised by the approach.
The central idea here is of two personalities forced to share one body.
This has often been played for laughs such as in All Of Me (1984), in which Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin comically fought for control.
In The Host, though, the Melanie/ Wanderer struggle is played for dramatic effect.
The two start off as antagonists, as Melanie is understandably hostile towards the alien invader trying to probe her memories in order to ferret out the human resistance. Eventually, the two begin to, well, start seeing eye to eye.
Saoirse Ronan, nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in Atonement (2007), is quietly compelling to watch as she makes both Melanie’s trapped frustration and Wanderer’s growing awareness believable.
What is also interesting here is the kind-of love triangle that is set up.
Melanie is in love with Jared (Max Irons from 2011’s Red Riding Hood) while Ian (Jake Abel from 2010’s Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief) falls for Wanderer.
The catch, of course, is that Melanie and Wanderer share one body. Some of what transpires treads on giggly teenage romance territory as when Wanderer kisses Jared and Melanie gets jealous.
The film is refreshingly honest. Wanderer tells Ian that he does not love her, but is merely in love with Melanie’s body. After all, her physical form is a tentacled ball of light and she adds that if Ian could hold that in his arms, he would crush her.
Adding excitement to the romantic tension are aliens hot on the trail of the humans, with The Seeker (Diane Kruger) particular hellbent on their destruction.
The various threads are resolved by the end, some more clumsily than others, and the tacked-on coda could have been dropped.
Still, for a good stretch The Host envelops you in its strange world.
(ST)

52 Hertz
The Verse

Parallel Universe
The Girl And The Robots

There is plenty of dance music in the Asian pop scene, thanks to the Koreans. But thoughtful explorations of electronica are few and far between.
On 52 Hertz, indie singer- songwriter Cheer Chen teams up with her producer boyfriend Tiger Chung and noted composer Chen Chien-chi for a fruitful expedition.
The Verse prove to be a most flexible outfit as they sing in English and Mandarin over a diverse range of music.
Only Love Can is dreamily romantic with English lyrics to match: “We’re swimming in the moonlight/ We go to another side of world/In the wave moved by the star”.
The title track works in EKG- machine-like beeps, underscoring the fragility of life as Chen croons delicately in Mandarin: “Because I love, because I live, because I’m lonely, I search”.
There is playfulness here as well, as the arrangement for Six sounds like a tinny video-game soundtrack while Rapid Eye Movement edges into dance-rock territory.
The world of electronica is definitely a big one, big enough for Taiwanese trio The Girl And The Robots to venture to a Parallel Universe on their second album.
They sweep you up in the title track as female vocalist Riin sings: “Take me away/Take me away to another universe/A universe with you”.
There is a strong dance vibe here but the group want to engage your head as well as your feet. Fish, for example, explores an unusual point of view: “Fish/Says he wants silence/ Says you don’t understand/Spits out a mouthful of froth.”
And for those who associate Minnan with old-school ballads and getai techno, Waiting comes as a classy surprise. It might change your view of Minnan pop just as these albums might get you to rethink what you know about electronica.
(ST)

Gambit
Michael Hoffman
The story: The put-upon British art curator Harry Deane (Colin Firth) has come up with a ploy to take revenge on his bully of a media mogul boss, Lord Lionel Shabandar (Alan Rickman). To pull it off, he needs the help of Texan cowgirl PJ Puznowski (Cameron Diaz) and the counterfeiting skills of his pal, The Major (Tom Courtenay). A loose remake of the 1966 film of the same name starring Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine.

Gambit wants to be a light-footed caper but ends up flailing and stumbling.
The script is by Joel and Ethan Coen, though the acclaimed team behind gems such as Fargo (1996) seem to be dialling it in here. Their trademark sharpness of wit and humour is hardly in evidence.
Maybe they knew it was not quite up to snuff because instead of them directing it, Michael Hoffman (The Last Station, 2009) took it on instead.
Colin Firth (The King’s Speech, 2010) tries his best in the role of the mousy fumbling Englishman. Too bad the lacklustre script does not give him much to work with.
A scene filled with naughty double entendres as Harry Deane talks about The Major feels tired and might only raise a weak smile or two at the most.
The bigger problem is the big fat zero in chemistry between Firth and Cameron Diaz (What Happens In Vegas, 2008), which means that the bantering and bickering between the two fall flat.
And she lays it on so thick for the role of a smarter-than-she-looks hick that PJ comes across as fake as opposed to spunky and likeable.
At least Alan Rickman (from the Harry Potter fantasy series) has some fun as the imperious boss who does not bother to disguise his contempt for Harry.
The caper flick also flirts with farce. In a mildly amusing sequence, Harry scampers about the classy Savoy Hotel without his pants on.
It could have been pushed even more, though, for bigger laughs.
The ending is not too satisfactory either, hinging as it does on an unlikely security system and even more improbable rodeo roping skills.
This Gambit could have done with more time on the drawing board.
(ST)

Tennis
Esplanade Theatre Studio/Last Friday
Tennis serve up images of sun, sea and surf with the laidback vibe of their retro pop.
It is not quite what one would expect given that the husband-and-wife duo of guitarist Patrick Riley and singer/key- boardist Alaina Moore are from Middle America Denver.
But they had taken a seven-month- long sailing expedition together and that trip has seeped thoroughly into their music.
You can practically smell the brine from the titles on their debut album Cape Dory (2011). From Seafarer to Waterbirds, the shore is never far away.
The chill and easy feel of their songs translated well to a live setting in which Moore and Riley were backed by a drummer and another guitarist.
Her voice tended to get overwhelmed by the music when she went for the low notes. But otherwise, her sweet-but- not-twee pipes, his Hawaiian shirt, the breezy melodies and the bouncy beats all helped to evoke a cosily specific time and space during the hour-long gig.
Tennis ventured further afield thematically on their second album Young & Old (2012) though they continued to play with a nostalgic pop sound.
There is more to them than nautical adventures even as the band remained on the move. Moore sang on It All Feels The Same: “Took a train to/Took a train to get to you”.
In between numbers, she did the talking. Referring to her mane of frizzy curls, she quipped at one point: “I hope you guys can appreciate what your weather does to my hair.
She had prepared some dance choreography for My Better Self but confessed that she “discovered the hard way” that she could not sing and groove at the same time. No matter, her fans were happy to see her self-described “high school dance talent show” moves.
There is a charming sunniness to their material that shines through even when the inspiration might have been something darker in the first place.
Moore explained that Marathon was one of the first songs they wrote and it came out of the scary experience of sailing at night. But the cascade of “ooh-ooh-oohs” that follows the line “Will we make it out alive” feels more comforting than distressing.
And Baltimore is actually about them facing the bleak prospect of being unemployed after college. The lyrics are stark as Moore croons: “Can we get a job, can we get a job/We need off this dock, is that asking a lot”.
She tells the audience cheerily though: “You should try starting a band cos somehow that worked for us.”
(ST)

Contradiction
Hanjin Tan

Disturb Love
Steve Chou

Hanjin Tan is a talented and inventive songwriter. But you would not know it from his latest Mandarin album, Contradiction.
Musically, the Hong Kong-based Singaporean has opted to go for a stripped-down approach here. But minimal does not have to mean single-minded and the mid-tempo guitar strumming on track after track gets repetitive.
I Love You leaves an impression, in part because it sounds more upbeat. Tan sings: “Happiness is loving you/I have no hesitation/The biggest decision in my life turned out to be so simple.”
There is no mistaking the honesty of his lyrics and his clear tenor pipes, but he could have made the going a little easier on the musical front. Check out Who Is Hanjin Tan? (2011) instead for a more compelling portrait of the man.
Still, a less-than-stellar record from Tan feels more vital than Taiwanese singer-songwriter Steve Chou’s new album, Disturb Love. There is greater diversity here in the music, which ranges from synth-pop to radio-friendly ballads, but it only runs the gamut from mildly pleasant to forgettably bland.
Rejection pairs a light-hearted melody with heavy-hearted lyrics and is one of the stronger numbers here: “The sky is dark, can the lights remain off/Let my defeated heart, possess total darkness.”
Album closer Not The Same repeatedly asserts the title sentiment – a point that should have been made by the material instead.
(ST)

Warm Bodies
Jonathan Levine
The story: R (Nicholas Hoult) is a zombie shuffling about aimlessly until he meets the lovely, and human, Julie (Teresa Palmer). When he decides to protect Julie instead of feasting on her as a second course after her boyfriend, it sets off a chain of events with momentous consequences for the zombie horde. Based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Isaac Marion.

There is life yet in the undead genre.
Shaun Of The Dead (2004) had previously mashed up genres and billed itself as a rom-zom-com, a romantic zombie comedy. On the other hand, the ongoing television series The Walking Dead has been pushing the boundaries when it comes to depicting gore and violence.
With Warm Bodies, writer-director Jonathan Levine, who last helmed the cancer comedy 50/50 (2011), still manages to give us something fresh.
The book’s zombie point of view has been preserved, the unusual perspective generating some welcome humour.
We first hear R voicing the thoughts in his head as he wonders why he is unable to connect with anyone. “Oh right, it’s cos I’m dead,” he concludes.
He might be a sensitive young man on the inside, but from the outside, R is like any other zombie – a growling shuffler who looks like death and smells of rot.
His initial encounter with Julie is less than promising. He is part of a pack of zombies attacking her and her friends and he ends up snacking on her boyfriend’s brain. That means that R also consumes his memories of Julie.
Hoult, the About A Boy star (2002) recently seen in Jack The Giant Slayer (2013), is charmingly gauche as he goes about trying to woo Julie. He is frustrated by his own inarticulation and, instead, plays retro music on vinyls to signal that there is more to him than the average zombie.
And, yes, the film has a perfectly judged soundtrack from the nostalgic rock of John Waite’s Missing You to indie darlings The National’s broodily atmospheric Runaway.
Palmer (Take Me Home Tonight, 2011), meanwhile, does a credible job with the role of the spunky Julie, who begins to question what she knows about zombies.
There is more to Warm Bodies, though, than just some fluffy piece of entertainment with a canny mix of young romance and the popular undead genre.
It can also be read as a take on emotional alienation and its cure. Ultimately, this zombie flick makes the same famous exhortation as English writer E.M. Forster: Only connect.
(ST)

Mosaic Music Festival
Grimes
Esplanade Theatre Studio/Last Saturday

She looked like a runaway Las Vegas child bride with a pink wedding veil over a black-and-gold T-shirt and black-and- pink short skirt. And the music of Grimes is likewise a mix of delicate innocence and knowing attitude.
Over 55 minutes, the 24-year-old Canadian artist served up a seamless serving of eight tracks as one flowed into the next. Most of them were taken off her breakthrough third album, Visions (2012), on which her sweet girlish voice floated over hypnotic synth lines and a pulsating bass.
Grimes was a captivating presence on stage. She danced to the music, sang, twiddled knobs and fiddled with dials. She teased and threatened on Vanessa: “Hey hey you wanna play/But baby I can go go”.
There was a youthful playful energy that held the sold-out crowd in thrall as they danced along. It seemed entirely appropriate when bubbles streamed into the air late in the set.
She also kept the transitions between numbers interesting. At one point, she seemed to be reciting an incantation. Whatever spell she was casting worked as the energy level in the room went up a notch when the distinctive intro for Oblivion kicked in.
The segue into Nightmusic had a totally different vibe. She worked herself up into a scream and the interlude that followed was like the soundtrack to a nightmare you wanted to dance to.
Sharing the stage with Grimes were one back-up vocalist and two dancers. One of them looked as though she had come straight from the now-defunct Mandopop club Dragonfly and her thrusting proved to be rather distracting at times.
Because of the way the set was structured, it felt like an abrupt break in the flow of the music when Grimes spoke.
The first time she said: “Oh, by the way, thank you for having me. I’m having the best time in Singapore.”
She then added: “I will now continue. As soon as I start talking, it starts going downhill.”
Later, she proclaimed that her second show of the night was better because “I’m more into it”.
Actually, her speedy bursts of speech were rather charming.
The encore number was her collaboration with dance act Blood Diamonds, Phone Sex. It was the most conventional sounding track of the night but everyone was having too much fun to care.
She made you think that running away with her would be a most exciting adventure.
(ST)

Ming Day
Ming Bridges
This is a calculated effort to break local singer-songwriter Ming Bridges into the Taiwan market.
Essentially, her bilingual debut record released here, Who Knows (2012), has been repackaged with more Mandarin numbers. The English tracks, with lyrics by Bridges, are collected on a second disc.
Chirpy, teeny-boppy numbers such as Under The Stars and Have To Love You commingle with radio-friendly ballads including Tears Fall Like Rain on the main disc. But they are all polished to a sheen that feels generic.
Instead, it is the bonus disc that gives one a better sense of Bridges as a person, whether she is bemoaning her bad luck in love on Sweet Misfortune or overanalysing things on Miss Thinkalot.
It is a pity this does not come through more on the Mandarin material. Balancing her unique personality with a commercial sound is something she will have to grapple with in the days ahead.
(ST)

Stand Up Guys
Fisher Stevens
In The Expendables (2010), a bunch of ageing action stars were assembled together for a pleasantly B-grade outing. Stand Up Guys brings together a couple of ageing wise guys, but to lesser effect.
Val (Al Pacino) is released from jail after 28 years and is picked up by his former partner Doc (Christopher Walken). Val wants to live it up by partying with booze and women and Doc obliges him.
They later spring their old getaway driver Richard (Alan Arkin) from a nursing home and proceed to raise a ruckus. Meanwhile, the clock ticks away as Doc has a mission to accomplish by 10am.
There is some humour milked from the fact that they are all getting on in years. When two of them break into a pharmacy to get some “boner pills” for Val, Doc casually picks up refills for his meds for various ills.
However, there is not enough tension to propel the movie forward and the dialogue is not deadpan enough for a black comedy.
Having assembled veteran actors Pacino, Walken and Arkin, director Fisher Stevens cannot decide whether this is The Bucket List (2007) for tough guys or a more conventional gangster flick. A missed opportunity.
(ST)

21 & Over
Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
The story: It is Jeff Chang’s (Justin Chon) 21st birthday and his high-school buddies Miller (Miles Teller) and Casey (Skylar Astin) surprise him by turning up at his college to celebrate the occasion. The festivities start with plenty of booze, take in a detour to a Latina sorority and end with Miller and Casey walking through campus with nothing on but strategically placed tube socks.
Turning 21 is a majorly big deal in America because that is the age at which one can drink alcohol legally.
No more mucking around with fake identification and trying to scam the bouncers, which means one thing – the way to liver-destroying levels of binge-drinking is now free and clear.
With similarities of heavy boozing and wild shenanigans, you could think of this as The Hangover (2009) for the recently legal set.
This is no mere coincidence as Jon Lucas and Scott Moore wrote the earlier hit comedy. They write and make their directorial debut here.
So yes, 21 & Over is a dumb and crass comedy but it also has a little heart and some smarts.
The dumb and crass part is quickly established when Miller and Casey meet before heading over to Jeff’s place. The two argue about having sex with Casey’s sister and that sets the tone for the level of humour found here.
And when Jeff gets on a mechanical bull and makes like a merlion, the projectile vomiting is lovingly captured in slow motion.
Not surprisingly, he is too drunk to be coherent. With an important interview the next morning on the line, his friends try to get him back home.
This is where the heart and smarts come in.
The central theme in 21 & Over is really about growing up and what happens to once-cherished friendships when everyone embarks on different paths after high school.
What start off as one-note roles – obnoxious and pushy Miller, sensible and stuffy Casey, over-achieving pre-med Asian guy Jeff – begin to feel like plausible characters struggling with the transition to adulthood.
The film also works because Justin Chon (The Twilight Saga film series, 2008-2012), Miles Teller (Rabbit Hole, 2010) and Skylar Astin (Pitch Perfect, 2012) are game actors who have no trouble making utter fools of themselves.
This is a spirited comedy in more ways than one.
(ST)

If You LuVVVVV Me
Eve Ai

Yellow Jacket
Rachel Liang

It seems British singer- songwriter Adele has become a favourite point of reference for Taiwanese female newcomers. First there was Jia Jia, who made her solo debut with Unforgettable (2013), and now there is Eve Ai.
Ai, the fifth champion of the singing competition Super Idol (2010-2011), certainly has a set of alluring pipes. She is also versatile enough to handle a variety of material from the sassy swing of Dark Angel (“I’m a dark angel, dark angel/ Observing which girl is too accommodating towards love”) to the lovely ballad Critical Juncture (“The critical juncture when love comes/See a sunny day I haven’t seen in a while”).
There is even an English track, Metal Girl, which she co-wrote. It is a jazzy number about toughening up in the face of heartbreak: “Like I said, when you’ve been through it, then you’re a metal girl/Lift your pride, girl wipe your eyes, girl let it shine.” Ai is definitely one to watch, Adele comparison or no.
Taiwan’s Rachel Liang, another star from the singing competition reality show circuit, is onto her fourth album.
I could not recognise who it was on Yellow Jacket’s cover when I first saw it – and that is a good thing. She was in danger of becoming too predictable with sweet vacant poses paired with records dominated by love ballads. The new disc sees her taking on upbeat numbers and she has had a styling makeover as well.
The title track is a cheery song about a cherished piece of clothing: “If god lets me bring just one item to a desert island/And I have 15 seconds to decide/I think I only have this quality product I can’t bear to leave behind.”
There are still ballads here, of course, and the standout is songwriter-producer Adia’s What Is Love with its slow-burn chorus: “I miss you, I miss you/Unable to break away/I love you, I love you/Unable to hold back.”
Yellow Jacket’s direction is a good fit for her.
(ST)

Bekas
Karzan Kadir
The story: In Iraqi Kurdistan in 1990, orphan brothers Zana (Zamand Taha), six, and Dana (Sarwar Fazil), 10, dream of going to America to meet Superman. Their journey begins on the back of a donkey named Michael Jackson and their adventure is, by turns, sweet, funny and harrowing. Bekas means “parentless” in Kurdish.

Under Saddam Hussein’s despotic rule, the Iraqi Kurdish were targeted in a genocidal campaign and then cruelly repressed when they rose up against the regime after the Gulf War ended in 1991.
Writer-director Karzan Kader fled from Kurdistan that same year with his family to Sweden to start a new life. It must have been an intense experience for the six-year-old Kader, yet the film that emerges from such a grim history is one that is charming and endearing.
The story is simple as it focuses on a pair of brothers and their dream of going to America. They plan to look up Superman there and get him to right all manner of wrongs from dealing with Saddam to bringing their parents back from the dead.
Zana is at an impressionable young age where he believes in Superman’s powers and much of what his older brother tells him. Dana is older and knows enough about the world to want to protect his brother from it.
The performances from Zamand Taha and Sarwar Fazil are wonderfully unaffected and they are utterly believable as brothers, playing and laughing one minute and fighting and arguing the next.
Zamand, in particular, makes the spunky Zana come alive, whether he is excitedly yelling for his brother, sulking when he gets scolded or lighting up the screen with his smile. He manages to win you over even though Zana is stuck at one volume level – piercingly loud.
The story starts off almost fable-like. Yes, the boys are homeless and too poor to even afford clean water for washing.
Yet they live in a world where they get by on the kindness of other people and they seem to be cushioned from the harshest realities by an aura of innocence.
As they journey forth, however, the real world begins to intrude, although Kader handles that with a light touch.
The boys encounter border crossings manned by armed soldiers and have to figure out how to slip past them. Not quite as thrilling as Argo’s (2012) hostage-rescue perhaps, but the scenes are still tense and dramatic. Towards the end, the film gets a little repetitive, perhaps a consequence of lengthening a short film into a feature-length drama.
Bekas (2010) won a silver medal at the Student Academy Awards in 2011.
Still, there is much to like here for the glimpse it offers into a foreign land and culture and the appealing turns by the two non-professional child actors.
Hopefully, the film will not be orphaned in theatres here.
(ST)

Hollywood Zoo
Gary Chaw

Free Spirit
Lara Veronin

Actually Love
Nick Yeo

Show business is a zoo and entertainers are like caged animals.
The conceit is a cynical one on the second of Malaysian singer-songwriter Gary Chaw’s albums out last year: Released in December, Hollywood Zoo follows Gary Chaw Project Sensation 1 Jazz, his English-language interpretation of jazz classics with South American band Musa’s Trio, six months earlier.
The ballad Not Good? opens with the image of impossible escape: “If I could have wings, I want to fly to another life.”
He also sings on Zoo: “I am like a declining old tiger, locked up by you here, only loneliness remains.”
It is not all gloom and doom, though. The swinging retro pop of Hollywood oozes fun and glamour, while the cheery Malay folk song Rasa Sayang gets worked into the breezy Sunshine.
In contrast, Russian-Taiwanese- American singer-songwriter Lara Veronin is feeling like a free spirit.
The jangly title track sets the laidback mood for the follow-up to her debut album Hello (2010), as she croons: “Want to add some colour to your black and white life?/Free your soul.”
Apple is another charmer with an irresistibly upbeat melody paired with adorable lyrics by Gary Yang: “Heads shoulders knees and knees and toes/ Fermenting the smile of love, I’m about to be swallowed.”
Being free is also about being honest. She promises on Darling: “Darling, this time I’m going to love you more truthfully/Throw away the mask and face myself completely.”
Free Spirit is the sound of an artist coming into her own and it will win you over.
Meanwhile, local newcomer Nick Yeo makes a good first impression with his debut EP Actually Love.
The singer-songwriter has a soothing voice with a hint of raspiness. He is well-suited for ballads and his debut EP cleverly capitalises on that.
This is a batch of easy-on-the-ears tunes paired with the able work of local lyricist Kaiyang.
On the track Able, Yeo sings: “You are able to turn day and night upside down/You are able to wilfully ignore advice.”
Thank You sounds like a regular love song at first: “Your love is like oxygen/Lets me breathe/The strength to strive for my dreams.”
But it is actually a touching and tender note of affection and gratitude to his father.
Hopefully, Yeo will not get lost in the shuffle of male balladeers out there as he can sound like, among others, Jaycee Chan.
But if he continues to write strong material, that should not be a concern.
(ST)

Huayi 2013: in::music – Deserts Xuan: Songs Of Tea And Wine
Esplanade Recital Studio/Monday
One person, one world, one kind of music. That is what good music should be to Taiwanese singer-songwriter Deserts Xuan, also known as Chang Xuan.
And the world she presents through her music is one that shimmers with mystery and beauty. Her voice goes from a beguilingly throaty low to a delicate high register as she sings about love and life accompanied by drums and guitars.
On Monday evening, the first of three sold- out shows, she sang tunes from her four albums. She opened with the title track of her 2006 major label debut, My Life Will, and also took on material from Dear... I Still Don’t Know (2007), City (2009) and Games We Play (2012).
Exuding casual cool in a black-and-white print top, skinny jeans and mid-calf black boots, she looked the part of the indie rocker on more uptempo tracks such as Selling and the encore number Crazy Sunshine.
It was on the quieter numbers, though, that her magnetic voice got to breathe, such as a cover of the Velvet Underground track I Found A Reason. And on her own Blue Sky White Clouds, she was achingly tender when she repeated the line: “I used to have only you in my eyes.”
Instead of easy answers or cliched sentiments on her songs, there is the sense of someone engaging with life on her own terms and trying to find her way forward.
The audience got a peek into her thought process when she spoke between songs. She was endearingly shy and tentative, and sometimes, her words flowed as though reflecting the stream of consciousness in her head.
She was clearly pleased to be performing here, bowing deeply to the audience several times and happily slipping in references to local singers Stefanie Sun and Tanya Chua. She joked: “Tomorrow night, I’m autographing for Stefanie Sun” and added later, “Tanya is doing very well in Taiwan, don’t worry.”
Regrettably, she signed on for just an hour- long gig. She would have preferred a longer show as she could then do “unimportant songs” such as the six-minute-long Days and “so that you know what I get up to in Taiwan”.
There is no question that fans here would love to find out.
(ST)

Safe Haven
Lasse Hallstrom
Is novelist Nicholas Sparks running out of ideas? This adaptation of his 2010 work strongly suggests that the answer is yes.
Katie (Julianne Hough) is on the run and decides to settle down in a small seaport town. She meets Alex (Josh Duhamel, both right), a widower with two kids, and gradually falls for him. Meanwhile, a strangely obsessive cop (David Lyons) flagrantly flouts the rules to track her down.
The blandly pretty and pretty bland Hough (Footloose, 2011) cannot anchor the film and her slowly burgeoning romance with Duhamel is a snoozefest.
How it all goes down during a Fourth of July parade is supposed to be dramatic and exciting but is instead exasperating and forced. Worse still is the schmaltzy ending with a lame, gimmicky twist.
Worst of all, for film buffs, is to realise that Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom was once responsible for lauded fare such as My Life As A Dog (1985) and The Cider House Rules (1999). His previous adaptation of a Sparks novel, Dear John (2010), had its problems but it was more watchable compared to this.
(ST)

The Last Stand
Kim Ji Woon
The story: Drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) makes a daring escape from custody and speeds towards Mexico in a Chevrolet. The only thing standing between him and freedom is Sheriff Ray Owens (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his motley crew comprising cops (Jaimie Alexander, Luis Guzman), a former Marine (Rodrigo Santoro) and a vintage arms collector (Johnny Knoxville).

A Korean director taking on a genre as quintessentially American as the western, with an Austrian-born actor in the lead role, is a big multi-cultural gamble.
But if anyone can do it, it would be Kim Ji Woon. After taking a shot at the genre in 2008 with the Korean-language The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008), he ups the stakes in his American directorial debut – and he succeeds in delivering an entertaining action film with a healthy dose of humour.
The script by newcomer Andrew Knauer smartly plays off Arnold Schwarzenegger’s celluloid tough-guy persona and the fact that he is getting on in age. The one-time champion bodybuilder is now 65 and his last lead role was sci-fi action flick Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (2003).
When his character, the sheriff of sleepy border town Sommerton, examines a corpse, he has to put on a pair of glasses. And asked how he is at one point, he responds: “Old.”
There is also a delicious line that foreshadows what is to come as he says ominously: “I saw enough blood and death... I know what’s coming.”
Schwarzenegger has, of course, seen plenty of blood and death in his career as an action hero from Conan The Barbarian (1982) to Collateral Damage (2002).
Apart from mucho macho action, what makes an Arnie flick an Arnie flick are also quotable quotes such as “I’ll be back” from The Terminator (1984). Contenders here include “You make us immigrants look bad” and “You f***** up my day off”.
In addition to making good use of his ageing star, Kim is also adept at pacing. He contrasts a tense and quiet scene with a burst of action, effectively building up tension and then releasing it.
The supporting characters are easily recognisable types, from Johnny Knoxville (Jackass: The Movie, 2002) as a goofy arms collector and Luis Guzman (Boogie Nights, 1997) as a seemingly cowardly deputy to Peter Stormare (Fargo, 1996) as a ruthless henchman.
They are well-sketched enough that even the early death of a minor character means something.
The final showdown between Ray and Gabriel starts with a beautifully lensed car chase through golden corn fields and ends with man-to-man fisticuffs.
Off-screen, Schwarzenegger’s image took a beating after his infidelity scandal but on-screen, he can still be persuasive as a man of honour holding down the fort.
(ST)

Huayi 2013: in::music – BearBabes
Esplanade Recital Studio, Sunday
Life may be chaotic but it can be a beautiful mess in the music of Taiwanese quintet BearBabes, who performed songs mostly from their third album, Beautiful Chaos (2012), at their first gig in Singapore.
Light Of Darkness was a spirited number awash in a buzz of guitars and animated drumming, as lead singer Chang Chia-heng, also known as Bing Gan, cajoled: “Come on, let’s dancing (sic), babe.”
Even on the more contemplative English track 17, a streak of positivity was apparent as she sang about believing in oneself.
There was a sense of texture and layering to their material as, apart from guitars and drums, a keyboard or cello would sometimes be added to the mix. When the music got raucous, though, Bing Gan’s vocals could sometimes be a little overwhelmed.
It was only when her pipes were front and centre on tracks such as Crossing Borders – with just Wei Chun’s acoustic guitar for accompaniment – that one could fully appreciate her gentle and alluring voice.
Sprinkled across the hour-long set was older material including Crossing Borders from Years (2010) and Simple from debut album 03:53 (2006). The ballad One Man’s Sky Light from their 2011 EP of the same name offered something different as it was the sole Minnan track.
The seated Esplanade Recital Studio, which was about two-thirds full on Sunday night, was something different as well for the indie band as they are used to standing-room livehouse venues in Taiwan.
And Bing Gan hoped that when they next met their Singapore fans, everyone would stand to enjoy the music as they would feel closer to the band.
For their encore, BearBabes took the audience on a Tour Around The Island. As Bing Gan sang, cellist Luo Fei-tsuei and guitarist Da Wei gamely acted out a comical skit of a couple on a road trip.
At drummer Cheng Han’s urging, fans started streaming onto the floor and gathered right in front of the band. Tour Around The Island morphed into a fast-paced rocker and they began dancing along. Just like that, Bing Gan’s wish came true, even before the band’s next gig here.
(ST)

Huayi 2013: in::music – The Freshman: Sophomore's Dream
Esplanade Recital Studio, Last Friday
Over the course of an 85-minute-long set, home-grown duo The Freshman took the audience along on their seven-year journey together.
Chen Diya and Carrie Yeo became firm friends through singing contest Project Superstar 2 (2007) and made their debut with the album Life Experiment 101 in 2010. Last year, they released a follow-up EP, The Dazy Eyes, and also toured Taiwan.
Musically, they have grown from the power-pop offerings of the first record to a more confident acoustic sound on the EP. Their friendship, though, was put to the test after a period of non-stop work.
Appropriately enough, the set began with the ballad Strong Front. Yeo’s rawer vocals joined with Chen’s brighter smoother tones as they sang about putting on a brave face when confronted with difficulties.
It took a little while for Yeo’s voice to warm up and she sounded more secure only after a few songs. Chen was nervous at the start as well, knocking over the microphone at one point. Perhaps because this was the “grandest intimate” venue that they have performed in.
They loosened up after a few up-tempo numbers such as the playful Rotten People Club and Chen proved to be pretty good at bantering with the crowd between numbers.
She shared that they had started out with the dream of making music and discovered along the way that things were not always so simple.
It was clear though that they still enjoy making music as a duo and that is what has kept them together.
Backed by six musicians, including two violinists, The Freshman presented tweaked versions of their material. The ballad 1924 sounded sparer and more haunting live, while Spectacle Friend underwent a change of tempo midway and turned into a rollicking rocker.
Yeo later revealed that the song was actually about their big fight. The good thing, though, is that they are able to laugh and joke about it now.
The strongest sign that they have moved forward is the fact that they premiered a new song, Sophomore’s Dream. It was a lively track about self-acceptance and the duo cleverly worked in lyrics asking the crowd to get on their feet.
The catchy pop of Life Experiment 101 brought the evening to a close. Its joyousness was infectious and sounded a note of cheery optimism for whatever comes next for the duo.
(ST)

Beautiful Creatures
Richard LaGravenese
The story: Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) is a “caster” with growing supernatural powers and when she turns 16, her fate – whether she is claimed for light or dark – will be decided. Complicating matters is a blossoming romance with a regular high school boy, Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), against the wishes of her uncle, Macon Ravenwood (Jeremy Irons). Based on the 2009 young adult novel of the same name by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.

Nature abhors a vacuum and so does show business. With the conclusion of the hugely successful Twilight film franchise after Breaking Dawn – Part 2 last November, the hunt is on for the next breakout hit combining supernatural creatures and young love.
Instead of vampires and werewolves, there are witches, magic spells and a powerful curse.
And attempting to replace Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in the popularity stakes are relative newcomers Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert, daughter of film-makers Jane Campion and Colin Englert.
Ehrenreich has the easier task here as Ethan is, for the most part, a sunny smiley boy who wins over Lena with his love of banned books and earnest determination. Englert has the tougher job as the pale and mysterious new girl in town who is hiding some very big secrets.
Together, they manage to convey some of the intensity and tempestuousness of young love, a situation that is heightened by the high stakes facing Lena.
When a female member of Lena’s family turns sweet 16, she gets all this power kicking in like an avalanche of hormones and she can either use it for good or evil – but it is not quite in her control how it all turns out.
In the case of her cousin, Ridley (Emmy Rossum from The Phantom Of The Opera, 2004), it was a none-too-subtle transformation from virginal good girl to va-va-voom man-baiting temptress.
This part of the story is problematic as it essentially seems to be driven by a misogynistic fear of female sexuality.
Thank goodness it veers away from that premise to a more palatable message of self-determination as Lena searches for a way to lift the curse on her. The price is, of course, a high one and there is a twist to how it plays out.
Director and screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (writer of The Fisher King, 1991) just about manages to pull the film together, despite some familiar elements and the occasional use of cliches (the gate to Lena’s home is a forbidding design of spreading tree branches which practically screams: “Creepy creatures live here!”).
He also works in some welcome humour in what can easily be an overwrought genre, even slipping in a dig at former American First Lady Nancy Reagan for being scarily formidable.
The supporting cast is credible, with Jeremy Irons as the gruff but protective uncle, Emma Thompson as the rabidly Christian mother of Ethan’s friend who is not all she appears to be, and Viola Davis as Amma, Ethan’s surrogate mother and yet another keeper of secrets.
The film possesses a keen sense of the place it is set in – a small town in the American south – with flashbacks and a re-enactment of a civil war battle being pivotal scenes here.
Englert’s wavering accent can be a little distracting, though.
Still, by the end, you care enough about Lena and Ethan’s story to be curious about the twists and turns ahead in the next three instalments of the Caster Chronicles book series: Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos and Beautiful Redemption.
Hollywood is betting that this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
(ST)

The Catcher In The Rye
Bai An

Unforgettable
Jia Jia

Archer
Magic Power

Record label B’in Music fielded five of its acts for a massive concert in the Taipei Arena earlier this month.
The Taiwanese line-up comprised newcomers Bai An and Jia Jia, as well as more established acts: singer-songwriter Yen-j, kooky trio Cosmos People and pop group Magic Power.
It was a smart way to create buzz, although singer-songwriter Bai An has already been generating plenty of that on her own. Her voice has a distinctive timbre that reminds one of Singapore’s own Stefanie Sun and British songstress Dido. Yet, Bai An’s unusual enunciation – in which she pronounces “zhai” instead of “zai” (Mandarin for ‘existing’), for instance – sets her apart.
Cloaked in electronica, her debut album has a decidedly youthful vibe about it. Not in the sense of having a childish theme or sounding kiddie, but in the way she engages with the world.
For example, on the title track, she sings: “Cos I know you won’t be here/Cos I know you won’t be there/I don’t even wanna talk/But I’ll catch your smile/I’m the catcher in the rye”.
From the reference to J.D. Salinger’s classic American novel of adolescent angst in the title, to songs with names such as I Only Wish To Care About The Things I Care About, this album smells like teen(-ish) spirit all right.
Both Bai An and Jia Jia made it to No. 3 on the G-Music album charts with their records.
While this is Jia Jia’s solo debut, she is actually a Golden Melody Award-winning artist for her collaboration with Hao En on the bluesy Blue In Love (2006).
She is the real deal, a power vocalist who knows when to rein it in and when to belt it out.
And the material on Unforgettable showcases her pipes beautifully.
Soul Turned Into Stone is a moving ballad with an aching refrain: “If one day my emptiness meets his love, love/If one day his emptiness meets my love, love”.
The album is not just chock-a-block with ballads though. She is sweetness and light on the flirty Fireworks Festival, and then swings with the rhythm on the retro-pop of Common Sense Of Breaking Up.
Good as she sounds on record, she sounds even better live.
Live is also the best way to experience the hip-hop party pop of Magic Power’s third album.
The title track Archer comes with some simple dance moves and is guaranteed to put a smile on the face of anyone doing it. And kudos to them for unexpectedly rhyming “lock and load” with “rock ’n’ roll” – and pulling it off.
The beat-heavy synth-pop continues with Feeling Guilty: “When the feeling comes, just love/As long as the feeling’s right, just love”.
When the feeling is right, just move. And Archer is right on target for music that gets you grooving.
(ST)

Upside Down
Juan Solanas
The story: Adam (Jim Sturgess) and Eden (Kirsten Dunst) live on a planet with dual gravity. She lives in rich and prosperous Up and he lives in the hardscrabble world of Down. They meet and gradually fall in love when they are young but are forcibly separated. Ten years later, Adam searches for a way to reach Eve in her world.

Think you are facing some tough obstacles in your relationship?
Thank your lucky stars, or planet, that you are not Adam. Because in his case, it is something as elemental as gravity that is keeping him from the love of his life.
The sci-fi twist to this romance is a promising one and the film starts off by listing the rules of the planet’s gravity.
Essentially, they point the way to how he will eventually cross over into her world.
Writer-director Juan Solanas (Northeast, 2005) has a keen eye when it comes to establishing the aesthetics of the film.
So we get gorgeous scenes of Up suspended above Down, like a not-quite
reflection in the sky. There is also a mega corporation, TransWorld, which has a massive building which links the two worlds.
And right in the middle where Up and Down meet is a spectacular office level with no ceilings but two floors occupied by cubicles and workers, one hanging right over the other.
Unfortunately, gee-whiz visuals alone are not enough to sustain the story.
An early scene in which Adam and Eden meet as a result of hearing each other just seems silly. Okay, I can buy a planet with two gravities, but that does not mean that sound can just willy-nilly break the laws of physics in the way it travels.
The bigger problem is that not enough happens, and not at a fast enough pace, to keep the film interesting.
It is a pity given that Jim Sturgess (Across The Universe, 2007, and One Day, 2011) is so likable when he plays the earnest romantic Adam that you want to root for him.
Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia, 2011), meanwhile, is wasted in her role as there is little for Eden to do.
And there is not quite enough chemistry in this pairing to have the audience fully invested in what happens.
Upside Down actually contains the sketch of a more intriguing film.
There is something of the dystopic sci-fi flick here in the fraught, exploitative relationship between Up and Down.
In it, there is an echo of the uneasy real-world relationship between the Northern hemisphere and the South.
Also, the film’s resolution, even if not fully persuasive, justifies the biblical naming of the characters.
Solanas has some interesting ideas, but they do not come to fruition here, certainly not enough to turn your world upside down.
(ST)

Luna Sea The End Of The Dream
Asia Tour 2013
The Star Theatre, The Star Performing Arts Centre
Last Friday

It has been a long wait for fans here.
Japanese rock band Luna Sea released their self-titled debut album back in 1991 and hit the height of their popularity in the late 1990s with chart-topping albums Style (1996) and Shine (1998). They later disbanded in 2000 and then got back together in 2010.
And it was not till last Friday night that they finally performed in Singapore for the first time.
All that pent-up anticipation was palpable as close to 3,000 fans, a good number of them wearing black Luna Sea concert t-shirts, surged to their feet from the moment the lights dimmed.
The band did not disappoint, delivering one high-powered hit after another over a two-hour show. Dressed mostly in black, Luna Sea kicked off the night with mid-tempo rock tune Loveless and let the music do the talking for them.
Lead singer Ryuichi Kawamura’s sonorous vocals were in fine form and on the gothic rock of Moon, he went from scaling high notes one moment to howling the next.
Many of the songs were propelled by a propulsive rhythm and energetic drummer Shinya Yamada was more than up to the job.
The three axemen – lead guitarist Yasuhiro “Sugizo” Sugihara, bassist Jun “J” Onose and rhythm guitarist Kiyonobu “Inoran” Inoue – were charismatic performers as well. At one point, Onose even flung the mike stand into the air. How very rock ’n’ roll. Several times, the lights were trained on Sugihara as he unleashed mighty riffs and showed off nimble fingerwork. He also displayed his versatility with the dramatic violin solo opening to the ballad Providence.
Instead of fancy video projections, there was effectively choreographed lighting, ranging from strobe-like flashes to effects which were perfectly synced with the music.
They saved one of their biggest hits, I For You, for the encore. If you know only one song by the band, this is likely to be it. The ballad was the theme song of a popular Japanese drama series which dealt with Aids, titled God, Please Give Me More Time (1998). After their final number Wish, the band members happily threw out guitar picks and drum sticks into the crowd. And Sugihara said in English: “I promise we will come back soon, I love you so much, bye-bye.”
Kawamura also spoke, in Japanese, to the fans several times and noted that Singapore was the final stop of their The End Of The Dream tour.
But with an album slated for release this year, this is merely a new beginning for the veterans of the J-rock scene.
(ST)

Being Lonely Is The Thing I Do
Jeff Chang
His pristine high-pitched vocals are so familiar by now, it is easy to take them for granted.
But with an above-average batch of songs on his new record – his 31st, counting some permutations released by record companies of his albums – Taiwanese singer Jeff Chang sounds more moving than he has in a while.
The follow-up to Genesis (2010) opens with the title track. It sounds like a classic emotive Jeff Chang ballad, except that it takes on urban alienation instead of a broken heart: “The time that’s freed up is just right for loneliness/Don’t think of deciding for me what I want/Too lazy to communicate with everyone, they won’t understand anyway.”
Even if Chang is now 45, the confessional Thirty Something sounds heartfelt: “Thirty something, hard not to sigh at this age/I’m used to myself, used to the breathing of the long night.”
And just in time for Chinese New Year, Switch, the up-tempo duet with Ricky Hsiao, wants to help you springclean your relationships: “Women fear the dark, men fear tiredness/If you want different situations/Why not switch rooms.”
Chang also takes a stab at doing the boogie on Mr. No but, really, it was not necessary. Dance numbers are not the thing that he does.
(ST)

Journey To The West
Stephen Chow, Derek Kwok
The story: Xuanzang (Wen Zhang) is a demon hunter whose weapon of choice is singing from the book of 300 Nursery Rhymes. Fellow demon hunter Duan (Shu Qi), who works with spiffy magical flying rings, ridicules Xuanzang at first but soon falls for him. The demons who threaten them include the powerful Monkey King Sun Wukong (Huang Bo) and the rapacious KL Hogg (Chen Bing Qiang).

Despite bearing the same English title as the beloved classical Chinese novel about Buddhist monk Xuanzang’s pilgrimage to obtain sutras, this movie is actually a prequel to the story.
Xuanzang is not yet a monk but a good-hearted demon hunter with a mop of unruly hair. Sun Wukong, Sha Wujing and Piggy, inscrutably named KL Hogg here, are not yet his disciples – they are demons to be conquered. The film is quite episodic as Xuanzang confronts one challenge after another, each more potent than the last – a water demon, a pig demon and, finally, the monkey demon.
While the pacing could have been tighter, particularly for the first battle, directors Stephen Chow (CJ7, 2008) and Derek Kwok (Gallants, 2010) manage to keep one entertained throughout.
The water demon plagues a picturesque fishing village, which turns into an inventive backdrop for the battle. Wooden walkways turn into ramps and seesaws as Xuanzang tries to save the villagers from the demon’s jaws.
The humour runs the gamut from low-brow (it takes a plus-sized girl to toss the demon onto land by jumping on the upraised end of a seesaw) to the sublimely ridiculous (Xuanzang sings a nursery rhyme to subdue the monster).
Adding to the fun are kooky characters, from a demon hunter with one giant foot to the crafty, almost Gollum-like Sun Wukong. Wen Zhang, who touched hearts playing an autistic character in Ocean Heaven (2010), is a hoot here as he has no qualms making a fool of himself. In a hilarious scene, Xuanzang is made to dance seductively in front of two other men and Wen totally gets into it.
At the same time, he conveys the essential innocence of the character and the struggle Xuanzang faces in coming to terms with his feelings for Duan.
Shu Qi, for once in her career, gets to be gauche and uncouth as Duan, whose warped idea of courtship is to trick Xuanzang into having sex with her. It is fun watching the actress who usually plays sexy urbanite roles needing lessons on how to seduce a man. That her relationship with Xuanzang means something more than a gag is credit to the film-makers.
Chow had previously starred in the two-part modern classic A Chinese Odyssey (2004), a loose adaptation of Journey To The West. In it, he utters a key piece of dialogue about loving someone for 10,000 years. There is actually an entry in the Baidu online encyclopaedia on this.
He uses it again here, with a moving twist to it. When Xuanzang finally attains enlightenment, the price he pays is a devastating one.
Chow may give the impression that he is a crude and rough director given his association with nonsensical comedies but he is actually a very thoughtful one. Little details – from the book of nursery rhymes to Duan’s ring – serve different purposes at different points in the movie and yet, at the end, it all makes sense. This was a journey worth taking.
(ST)

Opus 12
Jay Chou

Keep Loving
Claire Kuo

Beautiful Chaos
BearBabes

The early signs were not encouraging for Mandopop king Jay Chou’s 12th album. That blond hair. That buffed-up bod. The K-pop styling makeover gave me an ominous sense of foreboding about the music direction. It is hence a relief to find that Opus 12 is not an album of bopping dance tracks filled with inane lyrics. It also feels less kiddy compared to the deliberately cartoonish Exclamation Point (2011).
There is an ebullience here that is infectious, beginning with the chugging Train Of The Four Seasons and continuing with the giddily entertaining Dizzy Eunuch.
Chou and his long-time lyricist Vincent Fang definitely had a ball writing these songs and it shows.
The singer also roped in other vocalists on two tracks. Skip the sappy Giggle with Cindy Yen and groove along to the jazzy A Larger Cello featuring Lara Veronin and Gary Yang.
This is an album on which the faster tempo tracks outshine the ballads. From love ballad Obviously to the so-called China-style Red Dust Inn, Chou has been down these roads before to greater effect.
For that matter, so has Taiwanese sweetie-pie Claire Kuo. I sound like a broken record when it comes to her albums – nothing offensively bad but nothing to get too excited about.
Her sweet voice leaves more of an impression on breezy tunes such as The Way I Am rather than on standard ballads such as the title track Keep Loving.
She also appears in miniature amid knick-knacks in the lyric booklet. Is that supposed to be making literal a little- woman persona who yearns for love even on the number Shining Single Life?
Offering a very different sound and vibe are Taiwanese indie band BearBabes. The quintet serve up rock with distorted feedback and a skittering of electronica, defiantly finding beauty in chaos. There is celebration and positivity here.
Light Of Darkness extends an invitation of “Come on let’s dancing babe” while female lead vocalist Chang Chia-heng declares, “This is what I want”, on the track of the same name.
There is also pain and uncertainty. The lyrics for the ballad 17 go, “Life is nothing but the struggle within myself”, while Chang sings in Fisherman: “Following the wind, proudly sailing forward towards an unknown wildness, no matter how dispiriting reality is”.
Life is messy but it can be a beautiful mess, especially with music like this.
(ST)