Juno ¡uno!
Juno Lin

Jacky Chew Eponymous EP
Jacky Chew

Juno Lin and Jacky Chew are two new home-grown male singer- songwriters who have released polished debuts, adding some excitement to the Singapore Mandopop scene.
Even better, their vocals remind one of other Singapore artists who have made a mark regionally.
Lin’s lightly raspy pipes sound like Huang Yida’s, particularly on the ballads Anyway, It’s Love and Survival Of The Fittest.
He conjures up a sci-fi scenario on Survival Of The Fittest, a number about holding on to your dreams: “Dreamt of a time machine, no manual can explain/Need to rely yourself to travel through time.”
He also dabbles in electronica and rap, flirting with falsetto on Poison and gets pumped up with patriotism on War referencing Count On Me, Singapore with the English lines: “There was a time when people said it/That we were never gonna make it.”
The lyrics were written by Lin while the music was composed by label-mate Chew, who takes a somewhat different route on his own record, even though War is on it as well.
There are radio-friendly ballads on Chew’s eponymous EP that would not be out of place on a JJ Lin album.
He croons convincingly on It’s My Bad: “I won’t, don’t want to, put an end to this/Can’t pretend, can’t fool, still need/Your goodness.”
R&B rules on tracks such as Live Your Dream, a different take on going after one’s dreams.
Defiance is palatably cloaked under a steady swinging beat: “Can you give me one more second/Can there be silence with no interruptions/Can you listen to me sing this song/Can you support the heartbeat of my dream.”
Those are the key questions that Chew and Lin are throwing out there.
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Dark Places
Gilles Paquet-Brenner
The story: Libby’s (Charlize Theron) mother (Christina Hendricks) and sisters were killed one horrific night when she was eight. As a result of her testimony, her brother Ben (Corey Stoll) is jailed for their murders. Twenty-five years later, Libby reluctantly meets a group of amateur investigators who call themselves The Kill Club. Lyle (Nicholas Hoult), one of its members, wants her to help prove that Ben is innocent. Based on Gillian Flynn’s 2009 novel of the same name.

Would Dark Places have been made without the success of the previous Gillian Flynn adaptation Gone Girl (2014)? Probably. But it would not be attracting the same level of attention.
David Fincher’s assured handling of a genre-crossing dark tale turned Gone Girl into a critical and commercial hit, along with lead actress Rosamund Pike winning accolades and several Best Actress awards.
Dark Places has managed to attract a top-drawer cast as well, including Oscar-winner Theron, Hendricks from television’s Mad Men (2007 - 2015) and hot, young stars Hoult and Chloe Grace Moretz, who plays teenaged Ben’s wild girlfriend.
Instead of Flynn adapting her novel for the big screen, like she did for Gone Girl, French film-maker Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Sarah’s Key, 2010) pulls double duty as screenwriter and director. This is why Dark Places stumbles a little.
The story throws up some intriguing questions: Did Libby lie or was she just a scared little girl? If Ben was innocent, why has he remained silent all these years? Who is he protecting? And perhaps the biggest mystery of them all: If not Ben, then who committed the murders?
But the dots are connected a little too easily and conveniently here, even though Paquet-Brenner tries to build tension by cutting back and forth between the past and present.
As the adult Libby, Theron gives a sense of her pain and vulnerability. She dresses like someone who wants to disappear into the crowd – with a cap pulled low, a nondescript jacket and ratty jeans. She wants to leave behind a dark past which insists on haunting her.
Moretz grabs your attention as an out-of-control daddy’s girl, while Hoult has little to work with as a geekish-looking advocate for Ben’s innocence.
There is some satisfaction in seeing how the truth comes to light. And learning that, sometimes, the darkest places are of our own imagining.
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Change The World
Bevlyn Khoo
Local singer-songwriter Bevlyn Khoo’s new EP comprises songs for television drama Jump Class, which aired recently on StarHub TV. Based on the comic of the same name by Johnny Lau of
Mr Kiasu fame, the show is about a primary school pupil who discovers he can travel to a less stressful parallel universe.
In keeping with the show’s youthful vibe, the songs here are mostly cheery and chirpy. Over a jaunty guitar and harmonica accompaniment on Haha Song, she sings charmingly: “Come along and sing along with me, don’t let your thoughts run wild/All together now, hahahahahahahaha.”
The title track is a paean to positivity and a call to action: “Change the world, change your space, step across that stubborn and invisible boundary.”
Think of it as a pick-me-up anthem for Monday mornings.
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American Heist
Sarik Andreasyan
The story: After committing a crime with his older brother Frankie, who takes the rap for it, James (Hayden Christensen) tries to stay on the straight and narrow by working in a car repair shop. When Frankie (Adrien Brody) gets released from prison, though, he gets pulled into a bank heist job. James is reluctant, but the fates of his girlfriend Emily (Jordana Brewster) and Frankie are on the line.

This crime thriller is based on the 1959 film The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery. But it also seems to be influenced by the more recent The Town (2010).
In that hold-up flick which Ben Affleck co-wrote, directed and starred in, lifelong friendships in the Charlestown neighbourhood of Boston are tested when pressure mounts on a gang of robbers.
As a testosterone-heavy tale of greed gone awry, it is superior to the New Orleans-set American Heist, where the testy love-hate relationship between brothers James and Frankie is central.
Heist does not make much use of its setting, a pity considering New Orleans’ rich and distinctive culture.
The characters are flawed, but not in a way that makes them compelling. James is just too gullible. Asked to meet an “investor” together with his brother’s shady pals in the middle of the night and all he can muster up is: “I got a bad feeling about this.”
His romantic interest Emily (Brewster) just happens to work as a dispatch officer for the cops, which means she conveniently gets to hear first-hand what unfolds at the stick-up via police radio transmissions.
At least, Brody (Dragon Blade, 2015) turns Frankie into the scumbag you love to hate – a none-too-competent weasel whose main skill seems to be using emotional blackmail on his younger brother.
The heist itself is not very exciting, which is rather a let-down considering the grand-sounding title. It also gets increasingly tedious and ludicrous as the bank job gets stretched into an extended finale.
Armenian film-maker Sarik Andreasyan (That Was The Men’s World, 2013) squeezes in some fancy point-of-view sequences, but they feel showy and seem unnecessary.
Despite the effort, American Heist is simply not that arresting.
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White
Pakho Chau
Hong Kong singer-songwriter Pakho Chau held his first gig in Singapore only last month. But he has been chalking up Cantopop hits at home since his debut in 2007.
His new EP continues that streak as the ballad Little White scaled the territory’s charts.
There is something interesting going on thematically on the record as the tracks touch on impermanence and fragility as well as holding on to innocence. White is a symbol for both emptiness and purity.
“The kite descends quietly/Paradise is flattened quietly,” he sings in Prologue.
And on Little White, he reminds listeners: “No matter how fickle and fragile life is, it still has a unique meaning/You are the child who has come to tell me everything.”
With his sonorous and soothing pipes, the former model and national basketball player nabbed the Best Male Singer Gold accolade for the first time at the Ultimate Song Chart Awards 2014, beating veterans Andy Hui and Eason Chan.
His credible sole Mandarin effort here, Make The Same Mistake, suggests he is ready for his crossover into the big time.
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Wonder Mama
Clifton Ko
The story: Lovely (Petrina Fung Bo Bo) is a mousy librarian trying to keep the peace at home between her warring parents (Kenneth Tsang and Susan Shaw). Meanwhile, her grown son (Babyjohn Choi) is unemployed and stays cooped up in his room. Things come to a head when her father gets the maid pregnant after moving to Guangzhou in the wake of getting a divorce.

Veteran Hong Kong star Fung Bo Bo is the best reason to watch this movie.
Her last role was a cameo as a lesbian in Ann Hui’s All About Love (2010) and she has come out of semi-retirement for writer-director Clifton Ko’s Wonder Mama.
Over the course of the movie, she gets to blossom from a timid mouse who needs to check with her father when her boss offers a promotion, to a woman who begins to live for herself and not just for others.
Lovely has been so wrapped up in the lives of her parents and her son that she does not even have any friends of her own. Whenever she needs to talk through her frustrations, she would go to a doctor (Tse Kwan Ho) just before closing time to make sure she gets all the attention she needs.
Fung adds a touch of playfulness to a character who has been hard done by fate, beginning with a husband who disappeared without a trace years ago. When she learns about the maid’s pregnancy, she can only laugh in the face of the tragicomedy that is her life.
As a whole though, Wonder Mama is somewhat uneven. The peculiarly Hong Kong mix of blithe comedy and melodrama feels a little jarring here. The scream fests between Kenneth Tsang and Susan Shaw are bruising and brutal take-no-prisoners affairs. But the intensity is undercut by the comic appearance of the luckless panda-eyed neighbours who can never get any peace.
Neither are the Stephen Chow references for Wen Chao, who used to imitate the Hong Kong comedian as a newcomer, particularly funny. Wen plays Lovely’s mainland cousin here.
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Minions
Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda
The story: Without a villain to serve, the Minions (Pierre Coffin) are purposeless and listless. So adventurous Kevin, rocker Stuart and little Bob head off into the world to search for a despicable master. They find Scarlet Overkill (Sandra Bullock) at Villain-Con in Orlando in 1968. With the help of gadgets from her inventor husband Herb (Jon Hamm), the trio attempt to steal the Queen’s crown in London. A spin-off and prequel to the Despicable Me movies.

The Minions were the breakout stars of the Despicable Me animated flicks. Cheerfully yellow and irrepressibly riotous, they had a knack for causing mayhem and an endearing ability to laugh at themselves. They were like eager-to-please children running amok, babbling away cutely in baby-talk gobbledygook.
There is no doubt that they are entertaining as sidekicks and in short little segments. Their nonsensical banana song, done barbershop quartet style, has been viewed more than 57 million times on YouTube. And that is just for one version of the clip.
Can they shoulder an entire movie on their own though? Especially since they have no shoulders.
The answer is – sort of.
Instead of attempting to subtitle the Minions, actor Geoffrey Rush provides the droll narration of how the creatures have sought out the biggest and baddest through the ages. There are amusing vignettes of the Minions in prehistoric times, in ancient Egypt and with Dracula. But inadvertently, they end up killing those they serve.
For fans, there is also the fun of finding out how they ended up with their trademark overalls look.
A movie needs to be more than a series of little skits strung together, however, so a new superbaddie is introduced. Unfortunately, Scarlet Overkill is not very interesting despite being hyped as the first female super villain. So she has some kind of mechanical contraption for a skirt which holds weapons, big deal. The kooky contraptions her husband comes up with are more imaginative.
Sandra Bullock (Gravity, 2013) also seems miscast as her voice lacks the oomph and character needed for an animated evildoer. Other big names lending their voices include Jon Hamm (Mad Men, 2007-2015) as Scarlet’s hubby as well as Allison Janney (The West Wing, 1999-2006) and Michael Keaton (Birdman, 2014) as a bank-robbing couple.
The best voice work, though, was by co-director Pierre Coffin, who breathes life into Kevin, Stuart, Bob and a whole bunch of other Minions. Now, that is wicked.
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Kit Chan Spellbound Concert 2015
The Star Theatre / Last Friday
It was towards the end of the concert that home-grown singer Kit Chan dropped a bombshell. She told a hushed hall: “Less than a year ago, I wasn’t sure if I could sing.”
Due to complications caused by acid reflux, she underwent surgery on her vocal cords in the first half of last year. She had “no voice” after the procedure and it was a traumatic time for her.
It has been a deeply personal and spiritual journey of recovery culminating in this concert, a mostly sold-out two-night affair which kicked off her maiden regional tour.
And so, she was moved to share this publicly for the first time. If she had kept mum, no one would have been the wiser.
Over the course of a 2½-hour-long concert, her pipes were in fine form.
She is an emotive and sensitive singer with a clear and bright upper register and a rich and warm lower range and one could hear it all, thanks to the crisp sound.
The only quibble was that the volume of the music was sometimes a tad too loud.
The focus was clearly on the singing and the music, so the staging was kept simple with some choice costumes providing the visual flourish.
Chan first appeared in a Vegas-ready feathered and sequinned white pantsuit and cape outfit and later changed into a beaded gown which exuded old-world glamour.
Between numbers, the seasoned performer shared stories, joked, teased and easily commanded the stage.
She also taught the audience a thing or two, including the definition of a “ba la” song. And no, in the context of music, the Mandarin term does not refer to guava but, instead, a ballad which is “very emo” and often performed with a pained expression.
Nowadays, she seldom belts out this genre of songs, even when they might have stood her in good stead in the recent season of the China reality television show I Am A Singer.
But she acknowledges the fact that her fans would want to hear them at her solo concert and so she duly trotted out hits such as Dazzle.
Unlike most Mandopop concerts, however, the lyrics were not shown for fans to sing along to, save for the track Heartache, one of her biggest hits. She would be the one doing the singing, thank you very much.
In addition to the de rigeur signature tunes such as Home and Liking You, she also showcased her versatility with the Cantonese numbers Waiting and the late Leslie Cheung’s Chase, as well as covers of Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares To You and Lana Del Ray’s Young And Beautiful.
There was also an unplugged segment during which she delivered some of her lesser known, but not necessarily lesser, tracks.
Chan was clearly enjoying herself. She said at one point: “It’s fun to sing songs, but telling stories through song is shiok.”
On Marilyn Monroe’s saucy and slinky My Heart Belongs To Daddy, she told a captivating tale as she let her closet cabaret girl out for a whirl.
It came with an amusing anecdote. She had performed it as a 16-year-old, complete with somewhat inappropriate actions, for a charity event that was attended by an audience full of older men.
“But I’ll sing it because I’m of age now,” she purred.
Like fine wine, she has gotten better with age. By the time she ended the show with the new slow-burn ballad Spellbound, the audience was probably feeling pleasantly tipsy.
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On The Way To The Stars
Kenji Wu
Taiwan’s Kenji Wu has the pretty-boy looks and he has talent. Apart from writing and producing for himself, he has also penned hits for others, including Landy Wen’s Fool.
For some reason, he has never really broken out here in Singapore, other than the occasional hit such as Poems For You.
It certainly sounds like he wants to change things on the title number: “I’m waiting for someday to come back, I dream about someday to come back/Want to shine for you, prove that I exist, as proudly as a star exists.”
He makes no bones about the fact that he wants to be a star.
Besides statements of intent and love ballads, Wu shows off his versatility on the bonus disc with the aggressive Minnan techno track Flip Over The Table. One can just imagine that performed at getai, complete with flashing coloured lights.
The duet You Are So Cute, though, comes across as trying too hard and South Korean actress Song Ji Hyo’s heavily accented Mandarin does not help. Still, the melodic Britpop stylings here and a thoughtful space theme – You Are My Jupiter is another highlight – could well propel him to greater heights of popularity.
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Man Up
Ben Palmer
The story: Thanks to a case of mistaken identity, awkward Nancy (Lake Bell) ends up on a blind date with an older, divorced man Jack (Simon Pegg). They get along swimmingly and, somehow, there is never a right moment for her to confess the error. When he eventually finds out, is there still a chance for them? Or will she fall into the clutches of a former classmate, Sean (Rory Kinnear), who has an unhealthy obsession with her?

What is the one sure sign that you are watching a British romantic comedy instead of an American one? Look at the teeth.
In Stateside flicks, the chompers are unnervingly, blindingly white. In English movies, the state of dental aesthetics is less oppressively perfect. Just look at Pegg’s regular, stained teeth here.
It points to a fundamental difference in the two branches of the genre. American rom-coms tend to be glossy fairy tales while British ones are more relatable and, often, more genuinely sweet.
Pegg is a funny and easily likable actor and what he lacks in swoonsome looks, he makes up for with charm, wit and a deep-seated sense of decency. He is the everyman you root for, be it in apocalyptic comedies such as Shaun Of The Dead (2004) and The World’s End (2013) or in a romance here.
Bell (Boston Legal, 2004-06) is actually American, but don’t hold that against her. Besides, she is not quite in the mould of pretty-women leads such as Reese Witherspoon and Rachel McAdams. She is gawky, cynical and vulnerable in an endearing way, without quite getting into the cartoonish territory of Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001).
Pegg and Bell have a nice energy between them as they bond over crime thriller The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) and dance with choreographed aplomb to Duran Duran’s The Reflex.
Director Ben Palmer, who has a knack for comedy as evidenced by his work on the hilarious British sitcom The Inbetweeners (2009-10), paces Man Up nicely. Writer Tess Morris, who has worked largely on TV, lands a few sharp observations on modern romance. The unkindest cut of a break-up turns out to be deauthorising an ex from a shared iTunes account.
Bland title aside, Man Up is a rom-com that gets both the romance and the comedy right.
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We demand answers from intelligent personal assistants such as Siri and rely ever more on smart devices for work, play and communication. And yet, our relationship with technological progress is a fraught one.
As artificial intelligence gets more sophisticated and complex, the possibility of a sentient system looms larger as well. And the idea both fascinates and repels.
Perhaps reflecting our conflicting attitudes is a recent crop of films. Automata (2014) and Ex Machina (2015) are dystopian dramas which explore the theme. At first, the birthing of autonomous intelligence is held up as a crowning achievement – only to be followed by tragic consequences and a stark message: It is hubris to think that man can simply play god.
On the other hand, Chappie (2015) and Marvel’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015) tackle the topic with a lighter hand and feature entities which might even be the saviours of man.
Set in 2044, Automata stars Antonio Banderas as insurance investigator Jacq in a ravaged world where humanoid robots are used for manual labour. Automata is the plural of automaton, a self-operating machine.
The robots are subject to two unalterable protocols: They cannot harm a human and they cannot alter another robot or itself. But Jacq suspects someone may be illegally modifying the machines and tries to garner evidence to that end.
Science fiction crosses paths with noirish murder mystery here and we also get the indelible image of Banderas tentatively dancing with a robot. Brave new world indeed.
The film draws on a wide variety of influences from past works such as the dystopian sci-fi noir Blade Runner (1982) and Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in which a computer, HAL 9000, kills to prevent its own demise.
In the case of Automata, the first protocol prevents Jacq from coming to harm at the hands of the androids, but still leaves him vulnerable to human treachery.
Trickery and treachery lie at the core of Ex Machina, the quietly compelling directorial debut of novelist Alex Garland (The Beach, 1996). The title comes from the phrase deus ex machina, which literally means god from a machine.
The set-up is simple. A programmer Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is chosen by his boss Nathan (Oscar Isaac) to test whether Ava (Alicia Vikander) is able to pass for human by interacting with her.
Soon enough, the questions begin to stack up. Why was Caleb picked? Does Ava need to be female? Can Nathan be trusted? Is deception a uniquely human trait? Is seduction a uniquely human trait?
Part of the draw here is in the depiction of Ava, a humanoid robot with a life-like visage. Apart from the human face and hands, she is metallic frame and pulsing lights and the effect is at once both eerie and pretty cool. It is a rendering made possible and easier with technological advancement.
In A Space Odyssey, HAL was an unblinking red light. In Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), the robots were given human form and played by actors Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law.
Ava’s clearly non-human appearance makes the audience complicit in Caleb’s undertaking as you try to finesse that fine line between a very smart program and a robot with a mind of its own.
There is no question that Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie is a robot with a mind of its own as it is able to feel and learn.
Which is not to say that everything is open and shut here. Mixed in among the thrilling action sequences are posers on consciousness, mortality and whether the body can be separated from the soul.
Artificial intelligence is neither inherently good or bad, but a function of what Chappie is taught. Pointedly, it behaves like a child and then, like a petulant teenager.
Even a crowd-pleasing blockbuster such as Age Of Ultron is ambivalent when it comes to A.I. True, the android Vision saves the day, but it is Ultron, yet another sentient entity, who brings earth to the brink of obliteration in the first place.
Hero and villain both share perhaps what is the overriding imperative of life, and that is the principle of self-preservation. Is the ability to weigh the cost and morality of doing so what differentiates us from them then?
More works engaging with artificial intelligence will come our way, including a television series titled Humans on AMC channel. The drama imagines a world in which synthetic humans are available for purchase to do chores.
Its title is telling. Be it computer, robot or even superhero, at its heart, the exploration of artificial intelligence is to grapple and wrestle with the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
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Air World Tour 10
sodagreen
To mark their milestone 10th anniversary, feted Taiwanese band sodagreen embarked on a regional tour for much of last year.
Named after their first single Air (2004), the concerts were about taking stock and bearing witness to how far the band have come in a decade. They were also an opportunity to celebrate their much-loved works from Little Love Song to Once In A Lifetime to What Is Troubling You over the course of nine studio albums.
The meat of this package – a record of their gig at the Taipei Arena last July – is really in the DVD, which offers over 100 minutes of footage from the concert, capturing lead vocalist Wu Ching-feng’s peerless live singing as well as the top-of-the-line visual effects. From the video imagery to the rotating raised platforms, it was clear that a lot of thought had gone into the presentation of the songs.
The CD almost feels like an afterthought with only 10 tracks on it. Also, an audio-only version of a track with fans singing chunks of the chorus is not the most exciting thing to listen to.
On DVD, though, the extent of fan fervour comes across compellingly. Even then, it does not quite capture the full flavour of a sodagreen live performance, which often runs to three hours and longer.
If you can, get the version with the bonus DVD featuring the top 10 song requests made on the tour. This is a fan favourite segment as they get to shout out the song that they want to hear.
Not only does it showcase the musicality of the band as they take on sometimes obscure material on the fly, but it is also a chance for Wu to wear his variety show host hat and entertain with his quick wit and cutting remarks.
Now that the anniversary festivities are over, they will be working on the final album in their ambitious four-season project. Winter is coming and that is the best news for sodagreen fans.
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Red Amnesia
Wang Xiaoshuai
The story: Old Deng (Lv Zhong) lives alone after the death of her husband. Her elder son Jun (Feng Yuanzheng) has a family of his own while her younger son Bing (Qin Hao) has a male lover, a fact she does not approve of. She begins to get harassed by phone calls from someone who never says a word. Meanwhile, there is an intruder breaking into homes in her neighbourhood.
Is there any connection between the two things? And why does she keep seeing a teenage boy around?

This is an intriguing shape-shifter of a movie. It seems at first to be a portrayal of contemporary China society, warts and all.
Age-old values of filial piety and respect for the elderly are put to the test in today’s bustling cities. Nursing homes are packed to the brim, even drawing long lines as beds need to be reserved in advance. Deng’s mother is in a home and she herself does not wish to be a burden to her children.
Prickly and hard to get along with, she cannot see eye-to-eye with her daughter-in-law (Qin Hailu) and disapproves of the fact that her younger son is gay.
Stage and screen actress Lv Chong is excellent, conveying Deng’s pride, resilience and vulnerability in equal measure, in the process making the character sympathetic.
Writer-director Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle, 2001) has more up his sleeve, though. The Chinese title Chuangruzhe, which means intruder, points to the mystery-thriller part of the film.
Questions start piling up: Who is the teenage boy lounging about in different apartments? Who is making nuisance phone calls to Deng? Why does she feel guilty?
Then the film takes another turn, seemingly towards a ghost story of sorts. Or is Deng losing her grip on reality?
The different threads start coming together when she returns to Guizhou where she and her family were stationed during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution, a sensitive period Wang had previously dealt with in the dramas Shanghai Dreams (2005) and 11 Flowers (2011).
As the sins of her past are revealed, she gets cast in a new light and one’s sympathy for her is put to the test. Red Amnesia’s unusual structure can be frustrating at times, but it might well mean that you will not be forgetting this movie in a hurry.
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Good Kill
Andrew Niccol
The story: Major Thomas Egan (Ethan Hawke) used to be a combat pilot. Now, he executes drone strikes and returns home each day to his wife (January Jones) and children in a Las Vegas suburb. His superior, Colonel Jack Johns (Bruce Greenwood), believes in following orders, while newcomer to the team, Vera Suarez (Zoe Kravitz), believes in speaking her mind. When the orders to kill start coming in from a disembodied voice over the telephone from the Central Intelligence Agency instead of the military, some start to question the morality of their actions.

Ethan Hawke is haunted and haunting in Good Kill.
Teaming up again with writer-director Andrew Niccol, with whom he had worked on the stylish and absorbing sci-fi drama Gattaca (1997), the actor known for films such as Boyhood (2014) and Before Midnight (2013) slips thoroughly under the skin of Egan to create a compellingly flawed character.
Not only is he a combat pilot who gets his wings clipped, to add insult to injury, he also has to continue to wear a flight suit even though his work station is now a bunker in the Nevada desert.
He does not want to burden his wife with the murky details of work, preferring to keep it all bottled up and releasing stress by drinking.
The not-very-helpful advice from his boss is to keep compartmentalising.
Each time he completes a successful drone strike, he utters: “Good kill.”
It is a phrase that grows increasingly ironic and fraught as Niccol examines what it means to kill from a distance. While the crew are removed from the actual location, what they see through the drone’s camera is shockingly intimate, as they can even make out faces and expressions.
The television drama Homeland explored similar terrain over the course of Season Four, albeit without much discussion of the ethics of a drone strike which triggers a dramatic chain of events.
Good Kill takes a quieter approach by forgoing an emotive music score for much of the film and is also more thoughtful, raising all kinds of questions.
Much of the outright querying is by junior airman Suarez. The pointed posers include why are they carrying out missions in Yemen, a country not at war with the United States, and whether striking a target twice to fully eliminate a threat puts them on a par with terrorists who wait for rescuers to arrive and then attack again.
She even asks sarcastically at one point: “Was that a war crime?”
The movie also addresses the changing nature of war to one in which the combatants are now playing a shooting game, a comparison that was presciently drawn in the 1985 classic sci-fi novel Ender’s Game.
Towards the end, the film stumbles with a few false steps. Egan’s actions stretch plausibility, yet they make sense in the context of one man’s attempt to redeem his humanity.
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Spy
Paul Feig
The story: Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy) feeds suave spy Bradley Fine (Jude Law) intelligence from behind her desk at the headquarters. When he falls off the grid, she steps up and goes undercover to get close to arms dealer Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne). The bumbling efforts of compromised agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham) get in her way.

A-list leading man Jude Law (Sherlock Holmes, 2009) is in this movie and so is Jason Statham, the go-to guy for mid-budget action flicks such as the Transporter trilogy (2002-2008).
But there is no mistaking the fact that Melissa McCarthy is the star here. Even better, her character is no loser spy, but an effective one who can run, shoot and get out of tight spots like the best of them. Score one for the women.
It is good to see McCarthy finally land a vehicle that does her justice.
She has always been likeable and fans remember her fondly as the excitable chef Sookie St James on the drama Gilmore Girls (2000-2007). After she broke out on the big screen with a memorable turn in the raunchy Bridesmaids (2011), she seemed to be stuck in movies which ran the gamut from crappy to lacklustre: Identity Thief (2013), The Heat (2013) and Tammy (2014).
Teaming up again with writer-director Paul Feig after Bridesmaids and The Heat, she strikes gold this time.
Feig juggles spy-thriller parody, physical comedy and creatively salty insults in a movie that comes together nicely. From the opening credit sequence and theme song, which clearly reference James Bond, it is clear he has great affection for the globetrotting action-thriller genre even as he sends it up.
Neither is McCarthy merely the brunt of jokes – she blossoms from a mousy deskbound operative nursing a crush on super spy Fine to an effective agent who proves to be quick on her feet, despite being saddled with lame disguises (“I look like someone’s homophobic aunt,” she decries in one instance).
In a sizzling kitchen showdown with knives, pots and pans within easy reach, she also gets to unleash her lethal side.
The supporting players pull their weight as well.
Statham pokes fun at his oh-so intense on-screen persona through a character who talks big, but is something of a dimwit.
Peter Serafinowicz (Shaun Of The Dead, 2004) raises chuckles as an incorrigibly lecherous Italian agent who keeps hitting on Cooper.
Laughs, action and, buried beneath the pottymouthed dialogue, an inspirational message of believing in yourself – Spy has it all.
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Half. Wan Fang's Little Theatre
Wan Fang

Anyway, I Believe
Shin

Those in Singapore probably know Taiwan’s Wan Fang as a singer. But she is also an accomplished actress. This release explores her dual identity. Happy Reading is the theme song of a play she has acted in, Happy Receipt Of The Letter. While it references specific characters, it is also self-contained enough to stand on its own as a short epistolary love story.
There is a poetic sensibility to the EP’s five songs, which works well with the spare arrangements and Wan’s thoughtful readings. The Same Existence from the play Merry Christmas juxtaposes opposites: “In the night, flying in search of the sun/In the day, waiting for night to fall.”
Who is a haunting ballad with the late singer- songwriter Koumis, who died tragically young in 2013 from illness. Life, love, death – it is all here in the space of an EP titled Half. As she asks intriguingly in the liner notes: How would you know that half is not the whole?
Such contemplation is not rocker Shin’s thing. On his sixth studio album, Anyway, I Believe, he cranks up the volume and tosses odd lyrics in the title track that make it sound like the theme song for a trashy B-grade flick: “When you take off your underwear, you are my everything.”
He also amps up the drama in a reworking of Su Rei’s pop-rock classic The Same Moonlight, but it does not quite feel like an improvement. The material works best when he takes it down a notch, as on the moody-broody ballad, It Would Be Great If You Were Still Here.
He growls, he screams, but I would rather just hear him sing.
(ST)

Pitch Perfect 2
Elizabeth Banks
The story: After an embarrassingly disastrous performance, the Bellas are banned from recruiting new members on campus. The only chance for them to redeem themselves is if they win the World Championships of A Cappella in Copenhagen. The band of sisters include ambitious Beca (Anna Kendrick), out-there Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) and high-strung Chloe (Brittany Snow). Freshman Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) manages to join the group as her mother used to be a Bella.

The first Pitch Perfect (2012) was a sleeper hit, grossing more than US$113 million (S$150 million) on a budget of US$17 million.
The music video for the song Cups sung by Anna Kendrick has racked up close to 200 million views on YouTube and the album was the best-selling soundtrack of 2013.
In other words, a sequel was inevitable.
But how to take the story forward?
In the earlier film, the Bellas won the national a cappella competition. So this time, they head for the world championships, but it feels like a perfunctory progression.
Pitch Perfect opened with a performance marred by projectile vomiting. So the sequel opens with Fat Amy accidentally flashing the audience during a stunt gone wrong – an incident quickly tagged, among other labels, as Southern Exposure.
The jokes strain for laughs and border on the offensive, whenever a ridiculously sexist commentator (John Michael Higgins) shoots off his mouth. The idea, which does not work, is that he is so off- the-charts outrageous that he is funny.
The Bellas themselves are a collection of paper-thin types. The exception is Kendrick, who gets a little more plot to work with as Beca finds herself thinking about life beyond college and interns at a record label.
Her crush on the Amazonian leader (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen) of the German group Das Sound Machine is also mildly amusing. Every time she tries to come up with an insult or retort, Beca ends up complimenting her instead.
Still, for a Kendrick who sings with genuine emotion, catch her in The Last Five Years instead.
Mostly, the middling Pitch Perfect 2 muddles along from incident to incident. The more interesting competition is not the world championship, but a strange little sing-off between a cappella groups that takes place mid-way through the movie.
Actress Elizabeth Banks from The Hunger Games franchise makes her feature directorial debut here. She probably found that getting the Pitch right, much less perfect, is harder than it looks.
(ST)

Tamalakao
Jane Huang
Going back to their aboriginal roots has proven to be a musical boon for the likes of A-mei and Chang Chen-yue. Chang’s album, Ayal Komod, was one of Mandopop’s highlights in 2013 and A-mei’s excursions under her Puyuma moniker, Amit, have been sterling outings.
Following suit is rocker Jane Huang, One Million Star singing competition alumna and formerly of the duo Y2J. The title Tamalakao is the tribal area where she was born and home is a recurring theme on the disc.
The album begins with a tribal chant and the first song is Where I Belong, written by Chang. She yearns to be away from the stifling metropolis as she sings: “Standing in the middle of the road, can’t smell the fragrance of grass/ Wandering, drifting, the city has no place for dreams.”
The sense of alienation lingers on the rocker Sleepless In Supermarket, in which the supermarket is both an imagery and a metaphor, and she warns: “Don’t let them buy away your unique, authenticated smiling face.”
A highlight here is Silent Protest, a beautiful ballad written by Penny Tai. Huang sensitively charts out the rocky terrain of a relationship: “You stammer through your ‘Sorry’/I object, but what good is that.”
This is no mopey record, though, and an insouciant spirit comes through on the positive spin of A Speck Of Dust, the breezily light-hearted Understood and the uptempo Crazy World.
Huang finds strength in her home and identity and the results speak for themselves on Tamalakao.
(ST)

Big Game
Jalmari Helander
The story: As a rite of passage, 13-year-old Oskari (Onni Tommila) has to venture into a Finnish forest and hunt down an animal on his own. What he chances upon is the president of the United States (Samuel L. Jackson), ejected to safety after Air Force One is shot down. With the villains on the hunt for their big game, it is up to Oskari to thwart their devious scheme and save the day.

There are actually two movies here.
One is a cinematic update of an almost quaint genre – boys’ adventure, as exemplified in magazines such as Boy’s Own Paper (1879-1967) that were geared towards entertainment and character-building.
In order to prove that he is no longer a child and make his father proud, Oskari has to track down a deer and claim it as a trophy – even if he is not quite ready.
The other movie is a more conventional Hollywood-type action thriller with stock villains out to hunt down a target – the American president.
When the two movies collide, the result is a passably entertaining flick, helmed by Finnish writer-director Jalmari Helander (Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, 2010).
It helps that the two worlds are so different. If Oskari had been an American kid, the movie would have been far less intriguing. Tommila, who had also acted in Helander’s Rare Exports, is likeably plucky without a shred of self-aware cutesiness.
Jackson (Pulp Fiction, 1994) is cast against type as a lame duck president, not just politically, but also physically – he has to depend on Oskari for survival. Still, Helander could not resist giving Jackson a badass moment late in the film.
Big Game begins like an arthouse film with characters speaking in Finnish, with ideas of masculinity a constant theme.
The intrusion of the Hollywood action flick is when the film gets dumbed down.
Oskari’s conflicted attitude towards masculinity is met with pat advice such as: “You don’t have to be tough, you just have to look tough.”
At the same time, the boy’s fantasy adventure aspect of the story takes off, complete with aerial stunts and underwater exploits and much hand-wringing from hapless Pentagon officials.
Without the unusual Finnish elements, this would have been a far more mundane Game.
(ST)

Why Not
Ella Chen
Among the members of Taiwanese girl group S.H.E, Ella Chen was the first to release an EP on her own. It was a charity single named Qiang Qiang (2007) and it was a sweet and touching ballad about her pet dog which had died.
She is now the last of the three singers to release a full-length solo album. With Hebe Tien having established her left-of-centre credentials over three well-received records and Selina Jen shimmying down the dance route on her recent debut 3.1415, what is left for Chen?
On the track Ah 30, the happily married singer seems to acknowledge that time is ticking by: “Did happiness corrupt the dream/Or was I too lazy?”
It is not too late, though. Chen gets to flaunt her sassy side here, the nonchalant title Why Not summing up her attitude.
The album is at its strongest on tracks such as Are You Normal, with pointed lyrics by Wyman Wong questioning what exactly is normal.
Chen sings on the spirited refrain: “If one could choose only between monotony and boredom in life/I would rather choose to go mad.”
This is pretty far off the path from the manufactured girl-group pop of early S.H.E and the risks she takes do not always pay off. For instance, the spoken word opener Why Not seems more indulgent than cogent.
The best thing about the record? It does not sound like yet another S.H.E disc.
(ST)

The Age Of Adaline
Lee Toland Krieger
The story: After surviving a car crash at the age of 29 in 1937, Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) realises that her body stopped ageing. To keep this a secret, she has had to reinvent her identity every so often in order not to raise suspicions. She is unable to form lasting relationships and her aged daughter (Ellen Burstyn) worries about her. But when Adaline meets the charming and determined Ellis (Michiel Huisman), her defences start to crumble.

The Age Of Adaline is about a woman who is concerned about the fact that she cannot age. Clearly, this is a fantasy of the highest order.
Maybe we should not be so quick to judge. After all, even a beautiful, ageless woman has plenty to worry about. She is cursed to have dalliances with good-looking men over the years but can never commit to anything deeper.
Poor thing.
Poor us, actually. Given a headlining role, Lively, alumnus of young adult soap Gossip Girl (2007-2012), is not charismatic enough to command one’s interest in Adaline’s unusual plight.
Neither is the appearance of rising star Michiel Huisman, currently seen on the fantasy blockbuster series Game Of Thrones, enough to raise the pulse of the movie.
They meet at a new year’s eve party at a hotel. He looks like a dapper tuxedo-ed model for a Chanel commercial and she looks like she has stepped out of a Gucci ad with her tastefully sexy gown. He is charming, he is rich and he cooks for her. She is evasive and unencouraging – and beautiful all the while.
In fact, Huisman was cast as Chanel’s leading man in a video for its classic No. 5 scent and Lively was the face of Gucci Premiere perfume. It seems appropriate then that the romance between the two here is as pretty and shallow as an ad campaign.
Director Lee Toland Krieger (Celeste And Jesse Forever, 2012) strings out the blah relationship for a good hour before Harrison Ford shows up as Ellis’ father.
The spectre of a potentially icky relationship situation hovers over the movie but, thankfully, I am spared my worst fears.
If it is fantasy you are hankering after, Game Of Thrones is a far more satisfying fix.
(ST)

Helios
Longman Leung, Sunny Luk
The story: A portable nuclear device, DC8, has been stolen from South Korea by a ruthless criminal (Chang Chen) and his accomplice (Janice Man). As the weapon will change hands in Hong Kong, Lee (Nick Cheung) from the territory’s Counter Terrorism Response Unit sets up a task force, which includes police officer Fan (Shawn Yue), to deal with the crisis. He enlists physics professor Siu (Jacky Cheung) as an adviser and has to work with South Korean weapon experts Choi (Ji Jin Hee) and Pok (Choi Si Won). Despite their efforts, the elusive criminal mastermind, Helios, is always a step ahead of Lee.

Two heads are better than one when it comes to Hong Kong film-makers Longman Leung and Sunny Luk. In their debut film, police thriller Cold War (2012), they juggled a star-studded cast and an intricate story to entertaining effect. The movie also brushed aside the competition with a haul of nine trophies at the Hong Kong Film Awards.
Their follow-up is even more ambitious, with a cast of A-listers from China, Hong Kong and South Korea jetting around the region, including Macau and Japan.
Tension is ratcheted up as personalities, points of view and agendas clash, along with languages (Leung and Luk cleverly handle the often awkward problem of featuring different tongues in a movie with a plausibly high-tech device which enables instantaneous interpretation; they even wring some humour out of it by having the actors pause and put on their earpieces before proceeding to converse in Korean and Chinese).
The South Koreans want to keep the bomb safe and bring it home. Prickly physics professor Siu wants it out of Hong Kong as well. The paternalistic and patronising senior Chinese official Song (Wang Xueqi) demands that the weapon remain in the territory and has the weight of the law behind him. Lee is caught in the middle, torn between wanting to protect his home and having to follow orders.
Then the big-name stars start getting killed – a sign that Helios – and the film-makers – mean business. But which ones?
Prof Siu, a somewhat fusty and principled academic, convincingly played by Jacky Cheung? The more straightforward heroic characters of Choi (Ji, television’s Jewel In The Palace) and Pok (Choi of boyband Super Junior)? Conflicted cop Lee, a familiar role for Nick Cheung?
Cheung, a two-time Hong Kong Film Awards Best Actor winner (Beast Stalker, 2008; Unbeatable, 2013), is barely tested, but the slugfest between him and Man is an action highlight.
Just as things start to get interesting, the movie ends abruptly. It is either a jarring set-up for part two or a disappointingly anti-climactic resolution to an involving thriller.
If it is the former, one wonders how long audiences will be left dangling, given that the sequel to Cold War – also alluded to at the film’s conclusion – has yet to materialise.
(ST)

Candle
Sarah Cheng-De Winne

Perfect Healer
Lin Si Tong

Brave Tears
Emily Haw

Local female singer- songwriters are enlivening the music scene with several new releases.
On the English-Mandarin EP Candle, Sarah Cheng-De Winne’s (right, above) diction is a little raw on the Mandarin tracks. But her emotive singing makes up for it on the ballad The Grace Of Love and on I Need You, which starts as a mid-tempo track and transitions to the dance floor.
On the bouncy title track, her luscious vocals swoop high and dip low as she promises: “Baby you are my candle/ I’m gonna burn with you again.”
Lin Si Tong is mostly sweet and cheery on the five-track Perfect Healer, the follow-up to her debut EP, Tong’s Music (2012). Amid easygoing fare, the most dramatic number is the ballad Black-Winged Heart as she sings: “Tears protest silently, yet so transparently, that you can’t see clearly/But time will reveal all mysteries.”
Coincidentally, Emily Haw also sings about transparent tears on her EP’s title track. The EP is a little raw around the edges and some of the line phrasings feel awkward. The electronica-infused Waiting is the most distinctive track here and that was from her 2012 “photo-audio project” released on DVD.
(ST)

Murmur Of The Hearts
Sylvia Chang
The story: Escaping an unhappy marriage, mother Jen (Lee Sinje) takes her daughter Yu-mei away from their Green Island home, reluctantly leaving her son Yu-nan with her husband. Years later, Yu-mei (Isabella Leong) is an artist cast adrift by her past, while Yu-nan (Lawrence Ko) works as a tour guide on the island, their paths never crossing. What helps to keep Yu-mei grounded is her relationship with boxer Hsiang (Joseph Chang), who bears the emotional scars of an absent father.

It takes a while to get there, but it eventually becomes clear that the film is about the gaping holes absent parents leave in the lives of their children.
Director and co-writer Sylvia Chang (20 30 40, 2004) jumps between the restless, unsettled present and vignettes from the past, inexorably linking the two.
Jen is a warm and loving presence in the lives of Yu-mei and Yu-nan. She takes them to the beach and comes up with stories about a mermaid that she tells them each night. But she is trapped in a loveless marriage and eventually makes the wrenching decision to leave.
Hsiang is worse off than Yu-mei and Yu-nan. He barely has any memories of his father to hold on to, having merely a father figure in the form of his boxing coach (Wang Shih-hsien). In the present, the three adults are unhappy, struggling to fill the void they carry inside them.
The pacing of the film is uneven, though, as it shifts focus from one character to the next. It plods along slowly and then suddenly lurches into a long scene which comes out of nowhere, as when Hsiang has to confront his failure as a boxer.
The tone is patchy as well.
Chang injects some surrealism with a character who pops up unexpectedly in Yu-mei and Yu-nan’s lives, but it sits oddly with the rest of the film, which also attempts to provide a socio-historical context to Green Island to ground the story by making references to a church and prison on it.
More successful is a scene between an adult Yu-nan and the mother he remembers as a child which seems to take place in their home on Green Island. They interact, but she does not know who he is and the entire sequence is moving, mysterious and filled with conflicting emotions.
The film could have had more of such moments.
(ST)

Marvel's Avengers: Age Of Ultron
Joss Whedon
The story: Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) ropes in Dr Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) to help create the ultimate solution to protect Earth – an artificial intelligence named Ultron (voiced by James Spader). But Ultron has a mind of its own and turns into a powerful foe with a very different agenda. Its plan is to develop an even more powerful version of itself – Vision (Paul Bettany). The Avengers are also under attack from the genetically enhanced Maximoff twins – Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who can move at superhuman speed, and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who can control minds. Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) are all rattled by her. Only Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) manages to dodge her clutches.

Saving the world can be a deadly serious and even grimly dour business.
Thank goodness then for writer-director Joss Whedon. He spent years honing the art of saving the world while firing off well-aimed zingers on television series such as action-fantasy Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and sci-fi adventure Firefly (2002).
Here, he finds moments of humour and playfulness that make Age Of Ultron a fun watch. When Iron Man stands before a wall and goes: “Please be a secret door, please be a secret door. Yay!”, it makes you smile and the cocky billionaire character becomes a little more human.
There are also zippy one-liners flying to and fro.
Most rib-tickling of all is the Avengers party game of who-can-lift-Thor’s-hammer (check out Thor’s fleeting frown of concern when the celestial weapon gets moved a teeny bit). This joke, which answers the burning question of what superheroes do for fun when they get together for drinks, even has a pay-off later on.
One of the challenges in a movie of this scale is juggling multiple characters and parcelling out screen time to all.
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the characters who get a little more exposure this time are those without a movie franchise of their own. Step right up, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Hulk. Fans get a peek into Barton’s personal life and are teased by the prospect of a romance between Romanoff and Banner.
There are also multiple storylines to weave together, connecting Age Of Ultron to previous films in the Marvel universe and setting up the stage for future instalments. (Say hello to Avengers: Infinity War in 2018 and, possibly, Thor: Ragnarok in 2017.)
At the same time, Age Of Ultron has to stand on its own as a movie. The resolution of the conflict with Ultron feels a little anticlimactic, maybe because Whedon has already thrown everything and the kitchen sink at the audience earlier in terms of spectacular showdowns (the film opens right in the heat of a snowy battle, Hulk goes on a raging bender and Ultron musters an army of droids to take down the Avengers). While there is a certain poetic justice in Ultron’s fate, it seems a little too tidy.
With The Avengers (2012) the third-highest grossing movie worldwide with US$1.5 billion
(S$2 billion) in earnings, Whedon must have been under pressure to deliver yet another gargantuan moneymaker.
When an exhausted Hawkeye sighs that it has been a very long day, one imagines that he is echoing how the director must have felt at the end of the punishing shoot. Whedon has already made his mark in the Marvel universe, never mind that he will not be helming the two-part Infinity War.
(ST)

Kintsugi
Death Cab for Cutie
The opening strains of the first track No Room In Frame are a distorted snatch of a vaguely Oriental-sounding riff. It is merely a feint, though, as the guitars kick in and we are back on familiar ground.
This is the American indie rock band’s eighth studio album and they can still make melancholia sound seductive, even when cloaked in more upbeat guises.
On the uptempo The Ghosts Of Beverly Drive, lead singer Ben Gibbard muses: “I don’t know why I don’t know why/I return to the scenes of these crimes.”
At live gigs, his dry sense of humour comes through and there are glimmers of it here on Good Help (Is So Hard To Find). The track seems to be about hubris and as skyscrapers go up, he deadpans: “But beware that the air’s so thin/It starves the brain of oxygen.”
The title Kintsugi is a Japanese term which refers to a type of art involving the fixing of broken pottery. But there is a whiff of another philosophy here: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The problem is familiar ground can seem overly familiar – at times, I have flashbacks to earlier Death Cab works.
The closing ballad Binary Sea evokes comparison to the majestic Transatlanticism, with its similar theme and imagery. But as Gibbard sings on No Room In Frame: “You cannot outrun a ghost.”
(ST)

Amit2
A-mei
It seems that someone has been watching American Horror Story.
In the music video for Freak Show, Taiwanese diva A-mei, well, gets her freak on as she appears with creepy pinpoint irises and pale make-up.
Then again, her alter ego Amit has always been her licence to wander into the darker corners of her mind. The moniker is both a reference to her Puyuma aboriginal name, Amit Kulilay, and an acronym, which stands for A-mei: Music Is Transformed.
Her 2009 record as Amit was a revelation.
Freed from the expectations of what an A-mei album should sound like, she tore into rockers such as the brash Minnan scorcher Come On If You Dare and the thrillingly fastpaced Black Eat Black. And in a body of work filled with classic ballads, she delivered some of her most moving work on titles such as Alter Ego and Fallen.
On Amit2, she continues to rock out and lash out.
She seethes with anger on Matriarchy: “I smile gently but my heart is tougher than steel/Men proclaim themselves kings while women have to bear the weight of the world.”
Her voice drips with disdain on What D’ya Want?: “You’re despicable/I despise you.”
Best not to get on the wrong side of Amit.
Perfectly in keeping with the darker gothic vibe here is the hypnotic A Bloody Love Song as she offers: “Let me write you a horror novel.”
Amit also seems to be more open to experimentation. Jamaican Betel Nut by producer-songwriter Adia is an unusual marriage of reggae, electronica and Taiwan’s betel nut-chewing culture.
The singer is now wowing audiences in Taipei with live versions of these songs and more at her Utopia concert and one can only hope she makes her way here soon.
With the stellar Faces Of Paranoia released just nine months ago, A-mei – or should it be Amit? – is clearly on a roll.
(ST)

Ode To My Father
Yoon Je Kyoon
The story: Yoon Deok Soo (Hwang Jung Min) has had a hard life. Uprooted from home because of the Korean War (1950-1953), he had to shoulder the burden of being the man of the family after getting separated from his father and younger sister.
To make more money, he signs up to be a miner in Germany in the 1960s and subsequently works as a technician in Vietnam in the 1970s during the Vietnam War. In Germany, he meets Young Ja (Kim Yun Jin), a nurse he later marries.

In 1983, major broadcast stations in South Korea aired programmes about the reunion of families torn apart during the Korean War.
A nation was transfixed as heartrending stories played out on the small screen.
Equally moving was the sight of posters and signs blanketing the area in front of the National Assembly Building in Seoul as thousands of people came from all over South Korea, clinging desperately to the hope of finding their loved ones.
These images are at the heart of Ode To My Father, a drama that delves into the shadow that the war casts on the Korean psyche.
In South Korea, the film has clearly tapped into a pain that is deeply rooted – it is the second highest grossing film with 14.2 million admissions.
Director Yoon Je Kyoon, whose credits include the comedy Sex Is Zero (2002) and the tidal wave disaster flick Haeundae (2009), made the movie as a personal tribute to his father. The two protagonists are named after his parents.
While the film sometimes borders on melodrama, it still manages to be a powerfully effective tearjerker. I have not cried this much at a movie since Feng Xiaogang’s earthquake drama Aftershock (2010).
Hwang Jung Min’s moving performance is key. An award-winning actor in films such as tragic romance You Are My Sunshine and violent crime thriller A Bittersweet Life (2005), he is utterly believable here as Yoon Deok Soo, a decent and dogged Korean everyman thrust into the tide of history.
Deok Soo toils in mines in Germany and then risks life and limb in war-torn Vietnam, ever mindful of his duty to his family.
Containing shades of Forrest Gump (1994), his journey through life mirrors a nation’s development even as a tragic past haunts and galvanises him.
There are chance encounters with major figures in Korean society, such as the founder of Hyundai Group, Mr Chung Ju Yung; a romance with Young Ja (Kim Yun Jin from television’s sci-fi mystery Lost), which gives him strength; and humour courtesy of funnyman Oh Dal Su (Miracle In Cell No. 7, 2013) as Deok Soo’s sidekick and best friend.
In the end, the film is an ode, not just to a father, but to an indomitable generation who survived war and then fought hard to rebuild their lives.
(ST)

Pinyon pines and coniferous junipers cluster on the hill, partially obscuring a set of modest, rustic-looking wooden buildings.
Step inside and one is greeted with an onsen complex offering everything from a communal bath to private dips. Soak away the cares of this world as you ease into the hot water and contemplate the serene view of nature before you.
This is not Anywhere, Japan, though. Instead, Ten Thousand Waves swirls around on the edge of Hyde Memorial State Park, just outside the city limits of the art-and-adobe-architecture city of Santa Fe in south-west America.
According to their website, the place is inspired by Japanese mountain hot spring resorts.
The literature adds: “Everything we do from the gardens to the woodwork, from the therapies to the therapists, has been constantly and thoughtfully refined over the last 34 years. We pride ourselves on being ‘real’.”
Authenticity is clearly a selling point here.
The novelty alone of a Japanese hot spring experience on a chilly spring day in New Mexico was initially irresistible to me and my travel companion. But there was also the shadow of a doubt as to whether this would be more kitsch than kosher.
After all, this was transplanting a very different bathing style 10,000km to a place better known for its harsh landscapes and native American culture.
Would “real”, used with quotation marks on the website, turn out to be like “natural” and “home-made” – words debased of meaning when used in marketing and advertising?
On first impression, the place appeared to pass muster. The forest setting of the nearby national park was well-chosen and it was clear that great care had been taken with the architecture. The use of wood and stone gave a distinctive sense of place and signalled that one was not quite in New Mexico anymore.
Dark-blue noren, traditional Japanese fabric dividers, were hung in a doorway.
The attention to detail continued indoors. Patrons were issued yukata robes and the array of cleansing gels and lotions were scented with hinoki, a Japanese cypress, and yuzu, a Japanese citrus.
But in the end, there were limits to authenticity.
A small statue of Buddha respectfully housed outdoors in a wooden structure seemed a little out of place. That does not seem very Japanese, groused my friend.
The pre-bath cleaning areas featured showerheads one stands under rather than low stools for you to sit on as you perform your ablutions.
The communal pool turned out to be rather small and there was the forced proximity of having to sit right next to strangers. The tiny pocket of personal space here was perhaps more Western than Asian.
So was the wooden sauna cabin located adjacent to the pool. After all, there is a rich tradition of public baths in the West, from the thermal waters of the sprawling Szechenyi Baths in Budapest to the sweltering sauna. The term sauna itself is an old Finnish word which refers to the traditional Finnish bath and the bathhouse.
Also, the communal hot tub at Ten Thousand Waves is open to both men and women. In Japan, however, the baths have been segregated by gender since the Meiji restoration, which spanned the late 19th and early 20th century.
This is according to Wikipedia because how else would a non-Japanese be able to assess the purported authenticity of a Japanese-style onsen?
We crave the idea of authenticity as both an ideal and perhaps as a bragging right. Not all experiences are equal so surely the truer one is superior – even if the yardstick for measuring the degree of authenticity is beyond our grasp. After all, bathing culture in Singapore is more likely to be a quick zip to the shower than a long soak of any kind.
In comparison, determining whether an eatery offering a foreign cuisine is authentic seems easier, at least in Singapore. Take a look at the clientele and see if there are natives dining there. It is trickier to do so at Izanami, the Japanese restaurant on the grounds of Ten Thousand Waves, given that New Mexico is not exactly a magnet for the Japanese.
But even if there are limits to how authentic an onsen can be in Sante Fe, one appreciates the effort that went into creating an unusual bathing experience.
A tweaking and adaptation of imported customs and cultures can certainly be a good thing. And a slavish and rigid adherence to the orthodoxy of authenticity can well stifle the flow of creative juices and prevent innovation and breakthroughs.
Thoughts can start to drift when you let Ten Thousand Waves carry you away.
Next time though, I would book ahead for a private tub.
(ST)

For Music, For Life... Liang Wenfu Concert 2015
The Star Theatre / Last Friday

It was a concert 35 years in the making.
Singer-songwriter Liang Wern Fook penned his first song, Write A Song For You, at the age of 16 and went on to give a voice to a whole generation in five seminal albums released between 1986 and 1992.
In the process, he helped to create and define a genre of Singaporean songs, or xinyao.
For Music, For Life... Liang Wenfu Concert 2015 – which sold out two nights at the 5,000-capacity Star Theatre last Friday and Saturday – was the first time an entire concert was devoted solely to his works (although he has performed at other gigs, notably at xinyao-themed shows).
It was clearly a momentous occasion for Liang. On Friday, despite his usual calm and collected demeanour, he kept glancing nervously at the lyrics on a monitor at his feet at first.
As the show went on, he drew strength from the appreciative audience and his many old friends.
It felt like a gathering of classmates, the visuals of the xinyao singers in their tender youth bringing back memories of yesteryear. Liang even quipped that it was like being back in a school hall.
When the call went out for them to take part in his concert, they answered.
Koh Nam Seng flew back from the United States, Liu Ruizheng from Guangzhou, Billy Koh from Beijing and Dawn Gan from Hong Kong.
Others travelled shorter distances but it was no less moving to see Jimmy Ye, Wang Bangji, Hong Shaoxuan, Jiu Jian, Deng Shuxian and Pan Ying, as each hugged the man of the night in turn.
“Everyone who appears will sing better than me,” said Liang, who is primarily a songwriter, not a singer, and many of his works were performed by others, even on his xinyao albums.
To keep the show fresh for the following night’s crowd, he urged everyone not to share the evening’s proceedings on social media (reviews of the first night were embargoed until after the show).
How all his guests sang, taking us back in time as they performed familiar favourites from New Clothes Aren’t As Good As Old Ones and Love’s Refuge to Let The Night Fall Gently.
Hong brought out the drama of From The Day You Looked Back with his rich vibrato, Ye did a jaunty version of the pop hit Every Time I Wake and Deng shared a chastely sweet love duet, Blue And Red, with Liang.
There was also an epic version of the quintessential xinyao classic Friendship Forever when everyone joined in for the final number of the night, which ran more than four hours and there was still not enough time to cover the more than 200 songs he wrote.
(Perhaps the two segments highlighting the musicals Liang had been involved in, December Rains and If There’re Seasons, could have been dropped. While they helped to provide a more complete picture of Liang’s output, they also broke the rhythm of the show somewhat.)
Liang himself sang numbers such as Eve Of The History Exam, Sparrow With A Bamboo Twig and Step By Step, sharing little anecdotes about his works.
It was touching to find out how often his wife, Xiumei, figured in his music, either as first recipient or inspiration.
For her, he sang Aska Yang’s That Man because it was the Taiwanese theme song to her favourite Korean drama, Secret Garden. It was the only song performed in the show that Liang did not have a hand in creating.
He also had a few surprises up his sleeve. He turned Write A Song For You into a tribute to the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew and also updated Singapore Pie with lyrics taking on recent developments such as MRT train breakdowns and rising COE prices.
So what if he is not the most polished singer? There is an honesty and intimacy in his delivery that gives his renditions a charm of their own.
Liang’s influence as a songwriter extends far beyond xinyao – he later wrote hits for pop stars such as Kit Chan (Worry), Andy Lau (Every Time I Wake) and Jacky Cheung (She Came To Listen To My Concert). All three paid tribute to him via video messages.
Singer Joi Chua, the final guest to appear, sang the moving hit ballad Catch The Sunrise With Me. Liang’s lyrics include the line: “No matter how strong the wind, it can’t blow away your blessing.”
That is what his songs have been and continue to be – each and every single one a blessing.
(ST)

Here
Yoyo Sham
This has been a most eagerly awaited debut album. Hong Kong singer-songwriter Yoyo Sham had previously released two EPs – 2/2 (2012) and 4-6pm (2011). In particular, 2/2 was a beguiling affair and I could not wait to hear more.
She does not do run-of-the-mill, conventionally structured pop songs about love. Instead, you get a sense of the person from the unhurried yet quietly evocative tracks that sometimes meander in unexpected directions.
Her lightly husky pipes caress and cajole as she sings about living in the now on opening track Starting Tomorrow: “Actually, I’m swamped/Need to focus on spacing out/Feel the now/ Leave the future in the future.”
On the title track, she ponders: “Look at us walking along/Underfoot are the fallen leaves we’ve missed.”
Not so much carpe diem and seizing the day but, rather, just enjoying the little moments that come our way.
Elsewhere, she sings about light – on Glow, You And I and a devastating, slowed-down cover of the rock song Wings Of Light. Over a plaintive guitar and string arrangement, she does the near impossible and makes a Faye Wong song indelibly her own.
Also included are two Cantonese numbers – one a delicate Watercolour and the other, Bu Wang Wo Men Zhang Shan Shi Nian, a rumination on the passage of time.
Sham is equally at home in English and apart from her own compositions, she also covers the English number Twistable Turnable Man, from a tribute album to American children’s book author Shel Silverstein.
This offbeat choice could easily seem calculated but, somehow, it fits right in with her indie and citizen-of-the-world sensibility, along with the interludes titled Tokyo, Taipei and India.
Just take her advice and bask in the Here and now.
(ST)

The Last Five Years
Richard LaGravenese

The story: The film begins with forlorn actress Cathy Hiatt (Anna Kendrick) reading a farewell note from her husband Jamie Wellerstein (Jeremy Jordan), a rising novelist. We find out how the couple went from the heady flush of a new love to their irreconcilable present over the course of five years. Adapted from the musical of the same name by Jason Robert Brown.

How does a couple who start out so in love end up walking away from a marriage? What happened? When did it all go wrong?
The idea that there are two sides to every story works its way into the structure of this musical. We hear from both Cathy and Jamie in turn as the narrative jumps back and forth in time.
Tellingly, we hardly hear the two sing together.
Mostly, we hear Cathy’s perspective, starting from the bitter end and moving back in time. On the other hand, Jamie’s voice begins from the golden glow of new love and moves forward.
They meet in the middle at a pivotal moment when, finally, both sing together as Jamie proposes to Cathy.
But director Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You, 2007) throws a kink into the narrative, suggesting that the two remember the event differently.
Even when you break it down and thoroughly dissect a relationship, it might not be possible to say for certain what went wrong.
Whose fault is it that Jamie’s success drives a wedge between them and Cathy flounders to find her own voice? From wanting “miles and piles” of Jamie at first, she finds that “miles and piles” of him begin to suffocate her.
In the songs that have a slice-of-life feel to them and are often conversational in tone, both actors convey that intimacy with ease.
It more than helps that both stars are well qualified to sing and act and emote through song. With Broadway experience and a Tony nomination under her belt, Kendrick has become a go-to actress for film musicals, including Into The Woods (2014) and Pitch Perfect (2012). Jordan’s Broadway musical credits are even more extensive than hers, including 2011’s Bonnie & Clyde.
Both their characters come across as real and flawed, both trying to make things work and frustrated by the impossibility of it.
The musical was based on composer- lyricist Brown’s failed marriage and there is poignancy here in the contrast between the sweet happiness of love’s first bloom and the pain and frustration when it sours.
That contrast is movingly presented in the final song when their positions are reversed: Cathy is brimming with hope and joy at the start of the relationship and Jamie is hurting at its end.
It is not an ending that either could have dreamt of or wanted, and yet, there they are.
(ST)

Back in 2009, several new shows made their debut on American television. In a season that included comedy Cougar Town (just concluded), supernatural thriller The Vampire Diaries (ongoing) and sci-fi mystery FlashForward (short-lived), Glee was a clear standout.
The use of music in an hour-long drama felt daring and exciting, and there was an infectious sense of joy and fun that lived up to the title of the series. It was love at first episode for me.
But by the third season, the magic had worn off. Characters I had rooted for stopped behaving like characters and were instead jerked around according to whatever the script demanded of them each week.
It was time to part ways with the show.
So my response to the sixth and final season which ended on March 20 in the United States: You mean it hung around for so long?
Glee was created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. At that point, Murphy was best known for the violent and twisted plastic surgery drama Nip/Tuck (2003-2010).
But tucked into his resume was also the high school dramedy Popular (1999-2001). It included an episode in which a hilarious musical about sexually transmitted diseases – That Burning Sensation – is performed for kindergarteners. Clearly, the song- and-dance premise for Glee was right up his alley.
The excellent pilot episode set up the main arc for the first season: Can a ragtag bunch of students come together under the leadership of teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) and take the glee club, New Directions, all the way to the regional finals?
The choir members included wildly ambitious Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), gay and dapper Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer), big-voiced Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley) and wheelchair-bound Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale).
Joining the freaks and geeks were jocks and cheerleaders from the upper rungs of high school hierarchy – star quarterback Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith), bad boy Noah “Puck” Puckerman (Mark Salling) and pretty Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron).
Then there were the teachers, who included abrasive cheerleader coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) and mousy guidance counsellor Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays).
With such a sprawling cast, there was plenty of drama as rivalries sprouted, passions flamed and songs were sung.
Along the way, the series tackled issues such as teenage sexuality and identity, race and relationships, set to irresistible mash-ups and musical homages to the likes of Madonna and Britney Spears.
But after two seasons, the show began to feel tired as yet another competition loomed and the mash-ups and clashes started to feel formulaic. Finn, Rachel and Quinn in a stew once more? Will and Sue at each other’s throats again?
Worse, characters behaved out of turn – bitchy and nasty one moment, mature and reasonable the next – the key motivation for their actions being the whims of the plot.
In later years, occasionally hearing about the show was like getting scraps of news of an old friend who has changed beyond recognition after graduation. (Who got engaged? Who got married? There was a sex tape between who?)
While Monteith’s tragic death from a mixed drug toxicity in 2013 came as a shocker, there was no impulse to return to the series. Too much water had passed under the bridge.
Audience numbers in the US for Glee were strong for the first four seasons. It hit a high of 10.11 million in season 2 and then plunged to 4.57 million in season 5.
But for me, the music had stopped long before that.
(ST)

Human
Fei Xiang

Mask
Maggie Chiang

Face
Sam Lee

It feels like veterans’ day with this clutch of releases from familiar names: Taiwanese-American Fei Xiang, also known as Kris Phillips; and Taiwan’s Maggie Chiang and Sam Lee.
They have all been out of the limelight for a while and are trying something different in their new works.
The ageless Fei ventures into electronica and purrs on the opening track: “I’ll be your man.” There are some intriguing sentiments here and, on Moment, he muses: “Perhaps love doesn’t need truth and honesty/Perhaps love is not about should or should not.”
He had a stint on Broadway in the 1990s, when he starred in musicals such as Miss Saigon, but the songs here tend to be more mellow than showstopper-bellow.
The CD cover is an image of an X-ray and Fei notes poignantly in the liner notes that it is the most
“truthful” photo of him and that deep down, we are all the same.
Chiang also wrestles with authenticity on her EP.
She sings on the title track, which she composed: “Take down the mask, and have again/The freedom to cry, the freedom to love.”
The singer-songwriter is best known for her ballads, but she also includes a few mid-tempo numbers here. Do not mistake the breezy-sounding Way Oh for a light-hearted track though, as she takes on urban alienation: “Crowded Taipei, how many buildings/Carve up the sky/I’m drowning in the midst.”
From Mask, we move on to Face, the first salvo in a planned trio of EPs from ballad prince Lee.
While the trilogy packaging is a little unusual, the songs here are the most conventional of the lot. They mostly circle around love, and while Wish You Happy and Passenger find him on emo ballad mode, at least My Love ups the tempo.
Let’s App feels like a strained attempt to be hip with references to downloading an app and dancing to reggae. It is an oddity that will not save Face.
(ST)

Chappie

Neill Blomkamp

The story: In the year 2016, Johannesburg is deploying robots to keep the streets safe. The humanoid crime-fighters are installed with a Scout programme written by Deon (Dev Patel). Vincent (Hugh Jackman) has created a competing Moose programme and is envious of Scout's success. When Deon creates a new algorithm and uploads it into a robot, Chappie (Sharlto Copley) - who is capable of learning and feeling - is born. Desperate criminal Ninja (Watkin Tudor Jones) wants to make use of Chappie to commit a daring heist.

Writer-director Neill Blomkamp is that rare film-maker who can both execute exciting action scenes and also fill a movie with ideas.

His debut feature District 9 (2009) was an action thriller pitting humans against aliens. At the same time, it dealt with issues of xenophobia and social segregation. His follow-up Elysium (2013) had movie star Matt Damon strapped into a powerful exoskeleton suit while contemplating issues of justice, immigration and health care.

In Chappie, he again delivers a flick that touches and thrills the heart and engages the mind.

It seems like an update of RoboCop (1987) early on, except that humans are not even needed to physically control the machines here. The efficacy of the Scouts are demonstrated in a shoot-out with a gang of criminals as they leap about, scan for movement and take bullet shots in their stride.

Soon, the film ventures into very different territory as the creation of Chappie raises questions about what it means to have consciousness and to be mortal. At one juncture, he asks pointedly of Deon: "You're my maker, why did you make me so I could die?"

In a heart-racing finale which merges Blomkamp's strengths, the question of whether a soul can be isolated from a physical body will determine the life or death of some major characters.

The sci-fi actioner Automata (2014) by Spanish film-maker Gabe Ibanez covered similar thematic ground with its sentient humanoid robots. While it was satisfying in its own right, it took a different approach with a darker, noirish tone.

In Chappie, there are plenty of light moments, thanks to scenes of a robot going through the stages of human development. He progresses from a blank slate of a child to a petulant teenager, from repeating single words to mouthing profanity, in the space of a few days. His helplessness even triggers the maternal instinct of one of the baddies, Yolandi (Yolandi Visser).

Copley, who also starred in District 9 and Elysium, voices the robot as well as creates its movements and gestures, producing an unforgettable character who steals scenes from Patel (Slumdog Millionaire, 2008) and Jackman (The Wolverine, 2013), sporting a redneck mullet haircut.

Think of this as Transformers with heart - and soul.

(ST)

House Of Cards 3
In Season 1, Democratic congressman Frank Underwood plots and schemes his way to becoming vice-president of the United States. The next season, he climbs the final rung on the power ladder and ascends to the office of the presidency.
What now in Season 3? The first episode sets up key story arcs for the season.
For Underwood (Kevin Spacey), the stakes are to win re-election as president so that he is not merely seen as a placeholder after the previous one was impeached. His wife Claire (Robin Wright) reveals that she has political ambitions of her own as she eyes the ambassadorship to the United Nations.
Meanwhile, Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) – Underwood’s go-to hatchet man – emerges from a coma after he was attacked at the end of the previous season by Rachel Posner (Rachel Borsnahan), a prostitute who possesses information that is a threat to Underwood if exposed.
Stamper turns into a wild card over the course of the series, leaving the viewer to guess where his loyalties lie. Is he, for some unfathomable reason, still dedicated to Underwood? Or is he genuinely helping solicitor general Heather Dunbar (Elizabeth Marvel) in her bid to win the Democratic presidential nomination?
What made the first two seasons so riveting was the fact that Underwood was taking on more powerful adversaries and had to outflank, out-connive and out-manoeuvre them. There was the influential billionaire businessman Raymond Tusk (Gerald McRaney) and former president Garrett Walker (Michael Gill), who had the weight of the office behind him even if he was not particularly effective.
Once Underwood himself grasps the presidency, the levers of power are now available to him. While he still faces opposition from the Republicans and his own party, who want him to step down after his caretaker term, he bulldozes onwards anyway, ramming his jobs creation programme, America Works, down everyone’s throats.
In other words, the stakes just do not seem to be as absorbing this time around.
The introduction of the tough and wily Russian president Viktor Petrov (Lars Mikkelsen) is an attempt – albeit an unsatisfying one – to give Underwood a formidable opponent.
The drama in its third year also fails to give viewers new things to learn about the protagonist. Even the inclusion of a writer Tom Yates (Paul Sparks) digging around for an officially sanctioned book fails to unearth much.
Given that the viewer already knows the depths Underwood will stoop to, nothing that he does can really surprise anymore: In the intense second season, there were oh-my-god moments such as when he shoved journalist Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) off the train platform and when he and his wife had a threesome with their bodyguard Edward Meechum (Nathan Darrow).
A saving grace for the new season could be the shake-up of Underwood and Claire’s rock-solid relationship, as it is hinted in the trailers. As her own ambitions come to the fore, what happens when their agendas clash? Is their marriage merely one of mutual convenience? Where does love fit in?
In fact, Claire is the more interesting character as she shows signs of change and growth.
If what eventually happens in the Season 3 finale had taken place much earlier, it could have sent the show in a different, and less expected, direction.
Instead, House Of Cards, which remains a beautifully shot, well-acted drama with some resonance in contemporary American politics, feels very much like a show in transition at the moment.
(ST)

La Valse
Peggy Hsu
The album is exquisitely packaged to resemble a music box though its colour scheme of pink, purple and glitter seems tailored for little girls. But thankfully, Taiwanese singer-songwriter Peggy Hsu’s latest concept album has greater appeal than that.
The lyrics for La Valse, which means The Waltz, come bound in a lovingly illustrated booklet and it all unfolds like a fairy tale, one which begins with a pair of magical dancing shoes.
All the songs here are set to the three-beat rhythm which characterises the waltz. And Hsu manages to evoke a child-like sense of wonder, whimsy and innocence on tracks such as If Everything I See Was Mine and Sleep Together. Count To 3 has a humorous riposte: “Go to her, you’re pitifully silly, she can’t even count to three.”
There are darker themes lurking though. On the duet Love Is... with Tizzy Bac singer Chen Hui-ting, there is a line which goes: “What should I give you, a poisoned apple.”
Hsu has come up with stronger concept albums such as the winter-themed Snowman (2009) but you can still enjoy a twirl with La Valse.
(ST)

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water
Paul Tibbitt/Mike Mitchell
The story: When sneaky Plankton (Mr Lawrence) goes after the secret formula for the beloved Krabby burger patty, things go terribly wrong for the whole of Bikini Bottom. It is up to SpongeBob SquarePants (Tom Kenny) to save the day – while teaming up with Plankton.

For those who know nothing about SpongeBob SquarePants – have you been hiding under a rock? – here is a quick introduction.
He is an eternally cheerful sponge who lives in a pineapple in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. He works as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab restaurant and his best friend is starfish Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke).
Ostensibly a children’s programme, the show has plenty of adult fans as well for its humour, some of which probably sails right over the heads of younger viewers.
The movie made an impressive US$55 million (S$75 million) in its first weekend early last month and has hit US$140 million in total domestic takings thus far.
Compare this with The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004), which managed to make the same amount for its total worldwide box office.
SpongeBob himself is a big part of the show’s appeal. He is kind of square, both in shape and character, but his sunny optimism and cheerful earnestness in the face of all adversity is irresistible.
The regular television cast reprise their roles from the series and, as in the first movie, the final act presents the characters in computer animated form in a live-action setting.
It is a pity, though, that we do not get best buds SpongeBob and Patrick pairing up here. Instead, SpongeBob joins hands with Plankton and there is a learning moment about teamwork, or tee-am work, as the latter insists on calling it.
Still, there is enough humour to buoy this movie, from literal jokes to cheesily bad puns.
“Hold the mayo,” is one instruction hollered during a food fight with Plankton. Watch what Patrick does.
Plus, we get to peek inside SpongeBob’s brain. Now that is one trippy scene to absorb.
(ST)

Lang Tong
Sam Loh
The story: Zack (William Lawandi) is a womaniser. He charms them, beds them, scams them and then dumps them. Liling (Vivienne Tseng) is his latest target, but he is unable to resist the temptation that is Liling’s younger sister, Li’er (Angeline Yap), who draws him into a murderous scheme.

When Lang Tong was screened at the Singapore International Film Festival last December, tickets were quickly snapped up, thanks to a trailer which promised steamy sex scenes. But selling out one screening is one thing, mounting a profitable run in cinemas is something else altogether.
Indeed, there are quite a few sex scenes with the horny and devious Zack making out with several women (though three minutes of the explicit scenes have been cut from the film festival version).
Not to be outdone, Li’er makes out with men and women and actress Yap is seen topless. If that is enough to make Lang Tong – which means nice soup in Cantonese – your kind of brew, slurp away.
If you prefer a story to go along with the sauciness, though, the broth is lacking. It is easy to see what writer-director Sam Loh is going for as he makes his references clear in the film.
There is an homage to Takashi Miike’s psychological horror flick Audition (1999) and he also seems to have been inspired by certain Hong Kong titles.
But it is hard to top the shock value of those earlier works. Even if you had not watched these films, Lang Tong undermines itself by aggressively signposting its shocker.
The opening shot is of Zack screaming in agony and scenes of Liling making bak kut teh (pork rib soup) and Zack tucking into a bowl of it are loudly and ominously scored.
It also does not help that the Mandarin dialogue sounds unnaturally stilted – as though it was translated from English by Google – and some of the acting is unconvincingly wooden.
Still, Loh is at least trying to do something different with this unabashedly trashy flick and he piles on the twistedness as Lang Tong hurtles towards its sickening end. It is not enough, though, to turn it into a satisfying dish.
(ST)

Song One
Kate Barker-Froyland
The story: Feeling helpless and guilt-stricken after her musician brother is knocked down by a car and lies in a coma, Franny (Anne Hathaway) decides to retrace his steps. She goes to his favourite haunts and listens to his favourite acts. In the course of doing so, she meets singer-songwriter James Forester (Johnny Flynn), who offers her music and emotional comfort.

There has been a run of pretty spot-on movies about music including Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) and Begin Again (2013). Add to that list Song One. If there is one thing that these films share, it is that they are serious about music.
Grammy-winning roots rocker T Bone Burnett produced the 1960s folk soundtrack for Inside Llewyn Davis, while Gregg Alexander, best known as the frontman of the alt-rock band New Radicals, was responsible for the music on Begin Again.
The contemporary indie music scene in New York City is the backdrop for Song One and its soundtrack is courtesy of Jenny & Johnny – the indie rock duo comprising Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis and singer-songwriter Johnathan Rice.
In other words, the movie comes furnished with impeccable indie pedigree.
It is clear that writer-director Kate Barker-Froyland, who makes her feature debut here, has great affection for the Big Apple scene.
She works in a weird and wonderful tour of what the city has to offer, from a bearded guy singing in Portuguese in a cafe to an electro-music rave.
Much of the music is of the guitardriven, troubadour variety and Flynn is perfectly cast as the sensitive singer-songwriter, given that James draws admirers as much for his shaggy locks and scruffy looks as for his songs. It probably helps that in real life, Flynn fronts a folk rock band, Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit.
While Hathaway had previously sung onscreen in the musical Les Miserables (2012), her turn as Franny is not a singing one.
Her focus is on anchoring the film with the drama of her romance with James,which blossoms under emotionally trying circumstances – how Franny feels about James is tangled up with her worries over her brother.
To Barker-Froyland’s credit, the relationship feels unforced as it unfolds in a believable manner.
She finds the sweet little moments that nudge them together such as how James makes Franny smile when he turns up at the hospital in an ill-fitting tuxedo.
It might well make you smile too.
(ST)