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

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

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

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

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

Listen To Jane Z Live
Jane Zhang

2020
By2

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

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

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

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

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

Someone Is Waiting
William Wei

Same Species #2
Nylon Chen

Awkward
Kit Teo

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

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

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

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

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

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

(ST)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Orange
Orange Tan Hui Tien

Uncontrolled
Namie Amuro

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

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

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

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

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