Her costumes glittered but it was A*mei herself who shone the brightest at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on Saturday night.
This was the encore performance of the Taiwanese singer's Star tour, which came to Singapore in November last year, and it could just as well have been titled High High High.
The live wire delivered her dance hits with crackling energy and belted out her ballads with aplomb, moving from one to the other with effortless ease. She also rapped, covered Alicia Keys' If I Ain't Got You and surprised the audience with a new Japanese song.
She commanded the four-sided stage and had the capacity crowd of 10,000 enthralled throughout the three-hour show.
In turn, she was visibly moved by the enthusiastic fans who screamed, danced and sang along with gusto.
'I think the rest of the shows should all be held in Singapore,' said an appreciative A*mei. She praised the fans several times but there was no mistaking who the star of the show was.
(ST)

Stir-fried And Not Shaken
By Terry Tan

Monsoon Books/ Paperback/256 pages and eight pages of photos/$23.50 before GST/Major bookstores
This is a fun and funny look at life in Singapore from the 1940s to the 1970s. There is no narrative arc as such. Instead, it is a collection of episodic anecdotes, each affectionately recounted in an easily digestible couple of pages.
Food writer and television chef Terry Tan, who was born in Singapore in 1942 and later moved to London in 1983, makes clear early on that this is not a chronicle of 'the horrors of war or its aftermath' but an idiosyncratic and deeply personal jaunt down memory lane.
'I prefer to perpetuate happier memories instead.'
Even his accounts of the Japanese soldiers are not about their cruelty but include an almost comic look at their propensity for bathing in public in loincloths.
Not surprisingly, a lot of his memories have to do with food, from his grandmother's flying fox curries to vanishing hawker fare such as keropok ubi (tapioca crisps) and tang hu lu (rock sugar bottle gourd).
Tan peppers his memoirs with a large assortment of mischievous cousins, colourful aunts and one very feisty grandmother. In his vignettes, they get into trouble, go on dates, gamble and battle with thieving neighbours, all to amusing effect.
There are also nuggets of trivia scattered throughout the book. I had always thought that lau pok car meant crappy old car, but found out from this book that Piak and Pok were actually the corrupted forms of Fiat and Ford.
Tan also offers glimpses into his own Peranakan heritage, Malay culture, the hard lives of samsui women and what it meant to live in a British colony.
Reading the memoir, you get a sense of the massive transformations that have taken place in Singapore in the past few decades, leaving you both heartened and with an inexplicable sense of loss.


If you like this, read: Sweet Mandarin by Helen Tse (2008, $21.03 without GST, major bookstores). Tse recounts her family history from life in a poor Chinese village to bustling Hong Kong to Britain, and how it is deeply intertwined with food.
(ST)

Big Stan
Rob Schneider


Imagine The Shawshank Redemption filtered through a raunchy, comic sensibility and you have Big Stan - a feel-good prison comedy.
Stan Minton (Saturday Night Live alumnus Rob Schneider) is a two-bit conman who wins a six-month reprieve from jail by hiring a shyster lawyer. He spends this period training under The Master (a chain-smoking, deadpanning David Carradine) in order to protect himself in prison.
By the time he enters jail, the skilled Stan uses his power for good, outlawing rape, sexist rap music and other violent entertainment. But he lets himself be talked into a deal with the prison warden, which threatens to undermine everything he has accomplished.
While the mix of physical comedy and vulgar jokes do not always hit the mark, there are a couple of laughs here for those who are not too thin-skinned.
But then Schneider, star of films such as The Animal (2001) and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), has already shown more restraint as a rookie director than one might expect.
(ST)

The Black Swindler
Yasuharu Ishii

Pop and drama idol Tomohisa Yamashita reprises the role he played in the TV-series adaptation of the best-selling manga Kurosagi, which looks at the world of swindlers.
White swindlers (shirosagi) scam victims for their money while red swindlers (akasagi) steal your heart. Kurosaki (Yamashita) is a black swindler, or kurosagi, who preys on other swindlers.
He does this because his family was wiped out by cheats in a plot masterminded by Katsuragi (Tsutomu Yamazaki), whom he now depends upon for information about other swindlers.
Needless to say, theirs is a complicated relationship.
Yamashita's blank-faced pretty-boy looks are put to good use since he has to adopt various identities as a con artist, but the set-up for the final scam takes way too long and lacks the wow factor, after films such as Hollywood's Ocean's Eleven series.
The cast of characters is also not drawn well and some of the relationships between the characters are not clearly delineated.
Also, repeatedly pinning the blame for Japan's long-lingering economic malaise on bankruptcy fraud perpetrated by swindlers is just too far-fetched and jarring.
You begin to wonder what scam the film-makers are pulling.
(ST)

A Guide to the Birds of East Africa
Nicholas Drayson


On first introduction, Mr Malik is a gentlemanly retiree who spends his time bird-watching. Pleasant enough, but perhaps not the most exciting prospect for Rose Mbikwa, the widowed guide of the weekly bird walks in Nairobi, Kenya.
When a flamboyant schoolmate, Harry Khan, turns up from Mr Malik’s past, the stage is set for a contest between the two. Whoever identifies the greatest number of bird species in a week will earn the privilege of asking Rose to the Nairobi Hunt Club Ball.
This book’s unassuming charm grows on the reader, rather like Mr Malik. Decency and goodness are not the most flashy qualities, but as the contest progresses, Drayson has you rooting firmly for the “short, round and balding” underdog.
The story appears somewhat slight at first, but there is more to bird-watching than meets the eye. It is a hobby, but it can also be a lesson about the virtues of paying attention to one’s surroundings and discovering the richness around us.
A bird’s-eye view can be instructive as the avian world can be read as an allegory for the shenanigans taking place in Kenyan politics.
Drayson does not shy away from the darker side of life in Nairobi. Besides talking about corruption, he also touches on crime, the devastation caused by Aids and the abduction of young men to be sold as soldiers in nearby countries.
A seemingly trifling premise opens up into a far more bountiful world.


If you like this, read: Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
This genteel tale of crime-solving is set in Gaborone, Botswana.
(ST)

Boys Over Flowers The Movie
Yasuharu Ishii

The story: Tsukasa Domyoji, the rich young head of a business conglomerate, announces that he will be marrying Tsukushi Makino in the spring. But the engagement gift of a bejewelled tiara, a Domyoji heirloom, is stolen. In order not to jeopardise the wedding, the two decide to recover it on their own.
Boys Over Flowers is the best-selling shojo (young girl) manga of all time in Japan. It has been the source material for various adaptations, including the Taiwanese version Meteor Garden, which launched the career of the F4 pop idols.
A little background here as the movie picks up where the second season of the Japanese live-action TV series left off, with the cast reprising their roles on the big screen.
Tsukushi Makino (TV actress Mao Inoue) attends a high school for the privileged and finds herself a fish out of water given her lower-class background.
Worse, she crosses the path of F4, the ruling clique of four guys who can make life hell for anyone they choose. But she eventually falls for Tsukasa Domyoji (Jun Matsumoto, member of popular boyband Arashi), the leader of F4, and at the end of Season 2, says yes when he proposes.
There was talk at first of a third season but the producers chose to wrap up the series with a movie instead.
The problem, as with such jumps from the small screen to the big, is how to tell a story that would engage new fans as well as satisfy old ones. Unfortunately, there is little here for the former and only slightly more for the latter.
The contrived story has Makino and Domyoji searching for a stolen tiara so that they can learn about the true meaning of love. The plot is simply an excuse to move them to exotic locations such as Las Vegas, Hong Kong and an island supposedly in the South Seas, to fill up the two-hour-plus running time.
Matsumoto as the arrogant and hot-headed Domyoji and Inoue as the plucky yet vulnerable Makino share some chemistry, but the bickering grows tedious and the lessons learnt are too pat. The issue of class differences is raised and then dismissed in throwaway lines.
To be sure, one is not expecting a serious dissection of social issues here, but perhaps this would have worked better as a two-part TV series finale instead.
Released in Japan in June, distributor Toho expects the film to gross over 10 billion yen (S$130 million), which would make it one of the top-grossing domestic movies of the year.
I guess Boys still rule in Japan.
(ST)

Cyborg She

Directed by Korean Kwak Jae Young who helmed the hit romantic comedy My Sassy Girl (2001), this Japanese film plays like My Sassy Cyborg.
The set-up is a familiar one to fans of manga and anime - a young geeky guy suddenly gets the girl of his dreams.
But there is a catch. In Chobits, the lovely lass is an android; in Oh My Goddess!, she is a deity; and here, she is a robot, or cyborg, as she prefers to be called.
Jiro (Keisuke Koide) is celebrating his birthday alone again at a restaurant when a girl (Haruka Ayase) plonks herself down at his table.
After a memorable night out together, she vanishes from his life only to reappear a year later. That is when Jiro learns that she has been sent from the future by himself.
Ayase is all rough mannerisms and brute strength as the cyborg while Koide is sweetly nerdy.
The love story is a predictable one, although the final 30 minutes unexpectedly offers a visually spectacular disaster.
Kwak, who also wrote the script, drags out the ending but does provide one final poignant twist in this time- travel romance.
(ST)

To Kill A Mockingbird
Jubilee Hall
Last Thursday


Stories are rooted in a particular time and place, and it is that very specificity that makes them universal. The more detailed a setting is, the more authentic the work feels and the greater the connection with the audience.
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is set in the American South in the 1930s. It was a time when defending a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman was either the act of a courageous man or a fool.
Lawyer Atticus Finch was no fool but a man of uncommon decency and we see events unfold through the eyes of his daughter, six-year-old Scout.
This two-hour-15-minute production takes the gamble of unmooring the story from its social context with its minimalist staging and costume choices.
There were ramps on both sides of the stage and in the centre, a flight of stairs leading to a platform, all in black.
The costumes were not meant to evoke 1930s American South, but functioned as shorthand characterisation – Scout was a tomboy as she was in overalls and Atticus was a gentleman as he wore a blazer.
The multitude of accents sported by the cast also contributed to the amorphous setting.
This meant that those not familiar with the story would have to work much harder to come to grips with it.
It also meant that a lot was riding on the performances of the actors.
Mockingbird is essentially about Scout’s journey and loss of innocence. In this crucial role, Malaysian Lum Kay Li, 23, performing in Singapore for the first time, did a fine job with a natural and convincing portrayal of a spunky girl.
Less successful was Kun Wai Kit as Jem, Scout’s 10-year-old brother. He mistook exaggerated twitching and petulance for youth, making it seem as though Jem was Scout’s little brother.
Veteran actor Gerald Chew’s Atticus was appropriately paternal if a little distant. He also lacked the moral gravitas of Gregory Peck in his Oscar-winning turn in the 1962 film, although Peck admittedly set a very high bar.
The use of an older Scout (Yeo Yann Yann) reflecting on the past was a device that helped to compress the novel into a more streamlined structure.
The result, however, was a play that seemed to be preachier than the book, concerned with Lessons To Learn about empathy and doing the right thing. Important lessons, no doubt, but ones that would have made a stronger impression with a defter touch.
Ultimately, this Bird managed to take flight, but did not soar.
(ST)

Death Cab for Cutie

Esplanade Concert Hall

Tuesday

All hail Death Cab.

From the first notes of majestic opener Bixby Canyon Bridge off the band’s latest album Narrow Stairs (2008), the packed hall of more than 1,500 fans were on their feet.

These lucky devotees, who had snapped up tickets to the show within a day of sales opening, stayed on their feet and rewarded the band with noisy affection.

On the song, lead singer Ben Gibbard’s plaintive, aching tenor searched in vain for some deeper truth.For the audience though, the 100- minute set was a revelation.

After the mid-tempo build-up, the foursome tore through the next few numbers with a fierce intensity.

It was as bassist Nick Harmer had told Life! in an earlier interview: “Our live shows are more high-energy than our albums would suggest.”

The band, which also includes guitarist Chris Walla and drummer Jason McGerr, infused the show with a sense of urgency and purpose, and simply let the songs speak for themselves.

They dug deep into their catalogue, performing Your Bruise from their first album Something About Airplanes (1998), and the summery Photobooth from the Forbidden Love EP (2000).

Cheers and whoops greeted the beginning of almost every song, with tracks from Narrow Stairs and the critically beloved Transatlanticism (2003) making up half the set.

The lengthy eight-minute-plus I Will Possess Your Heart raised eyebrows when it was released as the first single off Stairs but has since proven to be the right decision as it helped to propel the album to No. 1 in the United States.

When Gibbard sang “You gotta spend some time with me/And I know that you’ll find love/I will possess your heart”, it was a declaration of intent. It was also a statement of fact.

The laconic vocalist tossed out a few thank-you-very-much and how-are-you-doing in-between songs, but the little else he did say hinted at a wryly humorous personality.

“Sorry it took us so long to get here, we got lost along the way,” he deadpanned.

During the encore, he also thanked their non-existent opening band, Dead Air.

The final elegiac number Transatlanticism began with Gibbard singing over a keyboard accompaniment. Then the guitars joined in and as he crooned “I need you so much closer”, white lights flared, the music soared and McGerr flailed away on the drums.

It was over all too soon. Fans left bereft can only hang on to Gibbard’s parting words: “We’ll see you again very soon. We promise.”

(ST)

Fate

Kim Hae Gon

The poster of the two bare-bodied Korean hunks, Song Seung Hun and Kwon Sang Woo, spells out the selling point of the movie.
This is also heart-throb Song's highly anticipated acting comeback after his compulsory military service stint which took him away from showbusiness for two years.
Too bad he has to look pained and heroic for most of the movie, while Kwon gets more of a chance to shine as he brings heart and humour to the role of a bad- tempered ruffian.
All this is in service to a Korean melodrama about betrayal and loyalty among a group of gangsters. This is full of overwrought scenes but little genuine emotion.
While Kwon might have the acting edge, Song has the sharper cheekbones. Let's call it a draw for these two leading men.

(ST)

The Midnight Meat Train

Ryuhei Kitamura

Destination: cult favourite status.

Bradley Cooper (Kitchen Confidential, 2005-2006) plays a photographer who accidentally captures on film evidence that a creepy butcher (Vinnie Jones from 1998's Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels) is linked to a young model's disappearance.
He begins to tail the meat-carver and discovers a more disturbing and sinister conspiracy taking place on the late-night trains.
Based on a short story by Clive Barker (whose The Hellbound Heart was filmed as the 1987 horror classic Hellraiser), this is a blood- drenched, tension-soaked ride which takes a detour into unexpected territory.
The climactic confrontation in a train carriage filled with trussed-up human bodies is a sight you will not forget in a hurry.
Known for his fighting scenes and action sequences in films such as Azumi (2003) and Sky High (2003), it would appear that Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura's sensibility remains happily intact in the crossover to Hollywood.
(ST)

The Love Guru
Marco Schnabel

The whiff of controversy surrounding this film cannot quite mask the fact that it is a stinker.
Hindu groups in India and the United States had protested against the comedy, contending that it lampooned Hinduism. It was passed with a rating of NC16 by the Board of Film Censors here for its raunchy humour and not for religious sensitivities.
The Love Guru’s greatest sin is that it is not funny.
Mike Myers (voice of Shrek and star of the Austin Powers spy spoofs) is Guru Pitka, the world’s No. 2 self-help guru, stuck behind Deepak Chopra, real-life guru to the stars.
Pitka is hired by an ice hockey team owner (Jessica Alba) to reconcile the team’s star player (Romany Malco) with his estranged wife (Meagan Good). Success would mean getting a spot on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show (which is plugged ad nauseam) and a chance at unseating Chopra.
The film’s idea of sophisticated humour is the use of actress Mariska Hargitay’s name as a spiritual greeting, and then have Hargitay actually cameo.
Most of the time though, Guru aims lower. Much lower.
No joke is too lame to repeat and one is forced to endure recurring gags about a male chastity belt, corny self-help book titles and the increasingly desperate sight of Myers mugging away for the camera.
Note to director Marco Schnabel: Just because a character laughs at something on screen does not make it funny.
Guru also contains the least sexy seduction scene ever. An elaborately dolled-up Myers, complete with jewellery in his hair, makes a play for Alba with phallic-looking dishes and more dead-on-arrival jokes.
In a violation of all the possible laws of attraction, Alba’s character actually falls for him.
The film attracted protests from religious groups but the people who should be crying foul are duped audiences.
(ST)

Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Eric Brevig


Which came first? The movie or the theme park attraction?
Back in the old days, the ride followed the flick. Then the worldwide blockbuster Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, based on an existing attraction, came along in 2003 and changed the rules.
Nowadays, it is probably an integrated marketing decision from the get-go. Watch the movie, preview the ride.
And while not exactly a top-of-the-line heart-stopping spin, this solidly B-grade sci-fi adventure offered some decent thrills and spills.
Brendan Fraser, in his second summer movie outing after The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor, is geologist Prof Trevor Anderson.
His brother Max vanished while tracking unusual volcanic activity, leaving behind a wife and son, Sean (Josh Hutcherson).
Ten years later, aided by Icelandic mountain guide Hannah (Anita Briem), Trevor and Sean undertake a journey to the centre of the earth, with Max’s note-filled copy of Jules Verne’s novel of the same name serving as a guide.
They find a world filled with beautiful and terrifying flora and fauna and also discover what happened to Max.
The film took a while to kick into gear as the various pieces were put into place - a sullen pre-teen in need of a father figure, the mystery of a missing brother/father and the question of whether Verne’s novel was fact or fiction.
The set-pieces included two bone-jolting rides, one through an abandoned mine (Big Thunder Mountain anyone?) and the other in a dinosaur skull (coming soon to a theme park near you).
The special effects were serviceable though the forest of giant mushrooms looked decidedly plasticky. Perhaps you needed to smoke them for the scene to look more realistic.
The ending pointed to a sequel set in the mythical land of Atlantis. Whether that project gets greenlighted could well depend on the takings from the amusement rides, oops, movie.
(ST)

A Case Of Exploding Mangoes
Mohammed Hanif


The point of departure for this debut novel is historical fact.
On Aug 17, 1988, a military plane carrying Pakistan's ruling dictator General Zia ul-Haq crashed under mysterious circumstances. He was killed along with several of his top generals and the American ambassador.
In the author's imagination, General Zia's death becomes an overdetermined event. He is paranoid for a good reason - everyone is out to get him.
There is General Akhtar, chafing under the label of the country's second most powerful man and plotting to seize the reins of control.
Blind Zainab, unjustly sentenced to death after being raped, unleashes a curse that finds its way to a winged harbinger of doom, a crow.
And officer cadet Ali Shigri plans an act of vengeance over the death of his colonel father.
The Pakistan-born Mohammed has fun skewering the buffoonish dictator and uses dark humour to convey the ludicrousness of life under a religious zealot.
He also works in unexpected sexual tension and romantic tenderness in the story of Ali, the character the novel focuses on.
Even as the various strands of story converge and the novel marches towards a pre-ordained conclusion, the writer manages to ratchet up the suspense and sustain one's interest.
But the ending falls short of being the explosive finale implicit in the build-up and promised in the title.


If you like this, read: Animal Farm by George Orwell
This political allegory is a classic study of how power corrupts.
(ST)

Eason's Moving On Stage 11
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Last Saturday

King Of Karaoke Songs was one of Eason Chan's biggest hits, and he showed why he fully deserves that title with a highlight-packed concert.
For more than 2 1/2 hours, the Hong Kong singer entertained the near-capacity crowd of over 7,000 with his repertoire of Cantonese, Mandarin and English numbers, aided by memorable costumes and energetic dancing.
The showman emerged as a veiled, ruffled and twinkling mysterious presence with Red Rose and then revealed with a flourish his smart get-up of a black suit paired with sneakers.
The affable and playful Chan, sporting hair reminiscent of Krusty the Clown’s, had an easy rapport with the crowd, chatting with them in Cantonese, Mandarin and English.
He was equally versatile with his material.
He sang the jazz standard What A Wonderful World and his first English language single, Aren't You Glad, from his latest album, Don't Want To Let Go.
On the slinky and funky Love Is Suspicion, the British-educated singer even pulled off a verse or two of rap.
It was in the ballads though, that he truly shone.
In lesser hands, tracks such as Brother And Sister and An Urge To Cry would merely be above average hits, but in his rapt renditions, one could hear the sound of heartbreak.
He impressed with the majestic Under Mount Fuji though the quietly devastating Let's Not Meet worked better with the hushed, defeated delivery on the record.
Chan also showed off his moves, including on King Of Karaoke Songs, given a fresh spin with a ballroom dance remix. He tackled the waltz, the tango and the cha-cha-cha, which had his fans laughing in merriment.
On the electro-rock track Flash, he writhed around gamely with both male and female dancers. And for the finale, he burst on stage like a hip-hop pimp in a maroon tracksuit and twiddling a walking cane.
The singer, who turned 34 yesterday, was in a great mood, bolstered by the entire stadium singing him Happy Birthday.
His exuberance was endearing and during the encore, he took requests from the floor. The audience included his wife Hilary Tsui and daughter Constance; and Hong Kong celebrities such as actress Josie Ho, actor-singer Jaycee Chan and singer Edmond Leung.
One particular image of Chan stands out.
He is wearing a black cloak and a panel above his forehead, which is printed with a pair of eyes. When he stretches his arms to the side, the underside is revealed as a ruffled explosion of colour.
Chan is that rara avis in Chinese entertainment, a rare and precious songbird who delivers genuinely moving music - in the guise of karaoke hits.
(ST)

Strange Wilderness
Fred Wolf

Turkey.
The low point, or highlight, depending on your predilection, is when wildlife show host Peter Gaulke (Steve Zahn wearing out his slacker persona’s thin charm) gets his private parts stuck in a turkey’s throat.
The situation is ludicrous enough to raise a smile, but it is played out for too long.
Another contender for low point/highlight is when Gus Hayden (The X-Files’ Robert Patrick), a trekker who can supposedly lead Gaulke’s gang of misfits to Bigfoot, drops his trousers to reveal some bizarre-looking genitalia after a story about getting his testicles ravaged.
By this point, it should be clear whether this movie is for you or not.
(ST)

Gary Chaw Welcome To My World
Asia Live Tour 2008
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Last Saturday

The king cut a dashing figure in black as he crooned from his prop throne.
It was an apt seat for Gary Chaw, the newly crowned Best Male Singer at Taiwan's Golden Melody Awards. And he delivered a 21/2-hour show that kept things interesting for the most part.
The 29-year-old Malaysian shone during the ballads and he started the concert with a fan favourite, the R&B hit Superwoman.
The near-capacity crowd of 7,500 roared its approval when he fell to his knees and his voice soared on the karaoke favourite, Betrayal.
His sonorous pipes were shown to their best effect when he was accompanied by just a piano on various slow songs. He was by turns tender, aching and dramatic.
Melancholic ballads aside, Chaw was cheekily endearing. When he fumbled on the pitch, he said: 'Oops, the king of pop has gone off-key again. Everyone just pretend he didn't hear that.'
That facet of his personality worked well on the livelier numbers such as 3-7-20-1 and the retro-sounding The Wake Up Song.
Some thought had clearly gone into the staging of the songs as well.
The brooding Singular was performed against a stunning backdrop of a V-shaped sculpture entwined with fairy lights while Chaw playfully channelled gongfu superstar Bruce Lee and fought off a motley crew of baddies during Superman.
There was also an English song segment but Chaw could not quite swing the jazz standards Moon River and Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.
He got points for trying, although his rendition of My Way, which saw him switching back and forth between his lower register and his falsetto, probably had original crooner Frank Sinatra turning in his grave.
But the concert seemed to run out of steam towards the end. Perhaps it was due to the fact that Chaw has only three albums worth of material.
Four, if you count the first album that he released in Malaysia in 2001, though, he confessed frankly during the concert, 'it died a horrible death'.
Fellow Malaysian singer- songwriter Jet Yi and a shrill Genie Chuo showed up as guest stars but it was white-hot singer Aska Yang who caused the greatest stir when the crowd realised that he was in the audience.
Though Yang's version of Betrayal had previously eclipsed Chaw's in the popularity stakes, there was no question who wore the crown last Saturday night.
(ST)

Help Me Eros

This could conceivably be subtitled The Joys Of Drugs And Sex.
Ah Jie (Taiwanese actor-director Lee Kang-sheng) has lost everything in the stock market crash and dulls his pain with home-grown marijuana.
He becomes obsessed with hotline counsellor Chyi (Jane Liao) and also tumbles into a relationship with betel nut beauty Shin (Ivy Yi, right).
But Ah Jie is not the only one crying out for help as Chyi and Shin are also mired in their own predicaments.
Lee has mixed in song-and-dance sequences, acrobatic sex and sensual images of food and animals, but the film ends up being too scattered for its own good.
(ST)

Snuff
Chuck Palahniuk


Cassie Wright, an adult movie actress, is planning to go down in history by having sex with 600 men on film.
The story unfolds from the points of view of Mr 72, Mr 137, Mr 600 and Sheila, the set manager as well as the person responsible for putting the project together.
It eventually emerges that she is doing the film for the sake of her child, accidentally fathered by a fellow professional on a shoot and later given up for adoption.
There is a possibility she could die making it, hence the title of the book. That would, however, result in phenomenal sales and life insurance policy payouts, thus securing her child’s future.
Best known for the nihilistic Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk here takes the dysfunctional family drama and gives it a twist by setting it within another American institution – the porn industry.
Palahniuk also trots out the rationalisation of porn as female empowerment but it is clear from the book that the women, from Annabel Chong to Cassie Wright, are very much victims as well.
Chong is the real-life Singaporean porn star who set a record in 1995 by reportedly having sex with 251 men. Her exploit is both referenced and analysed in Snuff.
A brooding fatalism underscores much of the novel and the ever-present link between sex and death is made explicit here.
The climax, when it finally arrives, strikes a deliciously demented note. Too bad he couldn't keep it up throughout.

If you like this, read: Damage by Josephine Hart (1996, US$13.50 or S$18.41, amazon.com) Another dark aspect of sex is explored in this tale of an obsessive love between a man and his son’s fiancee.
(ST)

The Strangers
Bryan Bertino

Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman play a couple stranded in a house in the middle of nowhere. For reasons never made clear, they become the targets of three masked assailants.
Despite the generic set-up, this was a taut and effective creepy little thriller executed with some visual flair and unusual pacing.
Pity about the bland title.
(ST)