Queen of Queens
Miss Ko

Make It Real!
GBOYSWAG

The title of Miss Ko’s new album sounds like typical rapper braggadocio.
Then again, she does have something to boast about as she was the first hip-hop artist to win the Golden Melody Award for Best New Artist for her debut Knock Out (2012).
But it also points to her roots as the Taiwanese-American grew up in Queens, New York.
Her third album finds her in fine form and ready to reclaim her throne. Her comeback to naysayers who nitpick over her Mandarin: “Did win a prize, wrote a song for A-mei/I’m not your idol, I’m your idol’s idol”. She then raps smoothly in English on Started From Scratch: “Never settin limits/representin for da women”.
There is a less combative side of this queen as well.
She rails against an inferior offering on Pizza, but also waxes lyrical about the perfect pie. Athletic Shoes Centipede finds her in a playful mood as she raps about her beloved sneakers. Everybody Ride gets into the groove with a piano riff and an invitation to hang out and chill.
It is a more varied album compared with the party-hearty vibe of GBOYSWAG’s album. This is the debut of Taiwanese outfit Magic Power’s DJ Gu Gu and it does not stray far from the dance-floor and radio-friendly electro-pop formula of the group.
He raps in English as well and on Make It Real, he offers to: “Talk n talk n share them thoughts/Maybe chill out for a while.” But I would rather listen to Miss Ko.
(ST)

Sleepless
Baran bo Odar
The story: Las Vegas vice cops Vincent Downs (Jamie Foxx) and Sean Cass (T.I.) rob a shipment of cocaine belonging to casino boss Stanley Rubino (Dermot Mulroney), who has promised it to the vicious mobster Rob Novak (Scoot McNairy). Vincent has to return the drugs when his son gets abducted. Meanwhile, internal affairs agents Jennifer Bryant (Michelle Monaghan) and Doug Dennison (David Harbour) are on his case. A remake of the French film Sleepless Night (2011).

It has been more than two years since Oscar-winning actor Foxx’s last film, the family-friendly musical Annie (2014). Too bad his return to the big screen is this snoozefest that left out the thrill from crime thriller.
Is Vincent a dirty cop or an undercover cop? Somehow, the question is not very interesting when clearly, he is a super one who can run, jump and fight on despite getting knifed – the occasional wince is all he seems to suffer.
There is a mole thrown into the proceedings as well though the identity of the snitch is unlikely to surprise anyone.
As is the case for too many generic crime flicks, the police are shockingly inept and Monaghan’s (Source Code, 2011) character is both annoying and ineffectual.
The ludicrous final act manages to rope in Vincent’s ex-wife (Gabrielle Union) before things are neatly resolved.
The French-Belgian-Luxembourg original premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was well received. Did something get lost in translation?
(ST)

Collide
Eran Creevey
The story: Americans Casey (Nicholas Hoult) and Juliette (Felicity Jones) meet and fall in love in Cologne, Germany. He swears off crime to win her over, but decides to do one last job for Geran (Ben Kingsley) to pay for her medical expenses. This pits Casey against the dangerous drug kingpin Hagen Kahl (Anthony Hopkins).

This romance in the guise of an action thriller works in both respects, thanks to the casting and director and co-writer Eran Creevy’s (Welcome To The Punch, 2013) sly sense of humour.
In a running joke, as Casey gets into one car chase after another, he gets his hands on a sweeter and swifter ride every time he totals his current vehicle.
Neither cop nor superhero, he is an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances because of love. This makes him a sympathetic character the audience roots for as he relies only on wits and reflexes to fend off squads of killers equipped with a barrage of firepower.
Hoult makes a convincing action leading man here after outings in superhero flicks (X-Men: Apocalypse, 2016) and romances (Equals, 2015). He has an easy-on-the-eye physicality and he makes all the running, dodging and high-octane sequences believable and exciting.
Jones has much less to do here beyond adding to her chameleonic credentials after having enjoyed both critical (The Theory Of Everything, 2014) and box-office successes (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, 2016). But she has a great reaction shot in a scene where she expresses her incredulity that no woman before her has said “I love you” to blue-eyed hottie Casey.
And as seasoned scenery-chewers are wont to, Oscar winners Kingsley (Gandhi, 1982) and Hopkins (The Silence Of The Lambs, 1991) have fun here, the former as a Turkish mobster whose brains have been fried by drugs and the latter as a ruthless criminal cloaked in a veneer of respectability.
(ST)

Love Contractually
Liu Guonan
The story: Katrina (Sammi Cheng) is a nitpicking taskmaster of a boss who has issues such as claustrophobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Xiao Bo (Joseph Chang) is a former paratrooper turned courier who ends up as her assistant because of the attractive salary. He later learns that he was picked to be her sperm donor.

Perhaps the best thing dating couples could do during this Valentine’s season is to avoid this rom-com, which contains neither genuine romance nor comedy.
There is only plenty of nothing between Hong Kong singer-actress Cheng (Blind Detective, 2013) and Taiwanese actor Chang (Eternal Summer, 2006) to sustain this annoying debut feature by Chinese director Liu Guonan, which turns maudlin in the last stretch.
At 44, Cheng looks good enough to pass for a 35-year-old. Unfortunately, her character is a cold and cheerless creation that audiences will find hard to warm up to, even when she gets saddled with a sob story of a backstory that is meant to evoke some smidgen of sympathy.
The sunny Chang is the lone bright spot, but his character is just ridiculously perfect – man enough to save Katrina from a crazed employee and good-hearted to the point of being self-sacrificing.
And yes, he has also experienced tragedy in his past – essentially an excuse for him to have something in common with Katrina and also to set up the over-the-top ending.
Nothing else sticks here. Not the lacklustre storytelling, not the desperate use of France as a scenic backdrop and, above all, not the forced romance between Katrina and Xiao Bo.
(ST)

Humorous Life
Kenji Wu
Never mind that Taiwanese singer- actor Kenji Wu is no A-list star – 17 years after his debut, he is a seasoned singer-songwriter who still has fun with music, but it no longer comes across as gimmicky.
This is a far cry from his earlier records such as First Creative Album (2004) and The Kenji Show (2005), in which it seemed as though he was trying a little too hard (on the song Wu Ke Qun, for example, he imitated a gamut of singers, from Jay Chou to A-do).
Aptly, he sings in the title track: “Life is full of ups and downs/It’s perfection to experience it yourself.” It is a collaboration with Chinese singer LaceDoll incorporating jazz and rap as they contemplate the vicissitudes of life.
Another breezy number is Shandong Lass, which has the feel of a folk ditty as Wu sketches a portrait of a rural girl who discovers that city life can be lonely.
Among the handful of radio- friendly ballads here, Losing Speed stands out for its memorable melody and lyrics, which liken his state of mind to driving in the night: “Braking suddenly/Memories shimmering on the streets/I crash head-on into loneliness.”
The closer, Pulling Radishes, is a poignant collaboration with Taiwanese indie musician Yorke Tsai that ponders what happens after happily-ever-after: “Is the prince still doing well, how is the princess faring/If you’re not a prince, how do you live?”
Is it a reflection on his own status in the scene? He might not be pop royalty, but he can still put out music worth listening to.
(ST)

The Lego Batman Movie
Chris McKay
The story: Stung by the realisation that Batman (Will Arnett) does not regard him as his greatest foe, the Joker (Zach Galifianakis) hatches a devious ploy that will unleash a plethora of notorious villains and monsters on Gotham City. In order to defeat them, Batman needs to learn to work with others, including Robin (Michael Cera), police commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) and his butler Alfred Pennyworth (Ralph Fiennes).

This new animated feature should appease movie fans who loved the animated flick The Lego Movie (2014) and are impatient for its sequel scheduled to be released in 2019.
It is chock-full of that familiarly irreverent tone, non-stop wisecracks and, of course, the inventive use of the humble Lego brick to conjure up buildings, monsters, explosions and everything in between.
The jokes start early with Batman critiquing the opening film logo sequences – and never stop coming.
It helps that the self-aware film-makers are happy to take aim at themselves and others. There is even a dig taken at the much-reviled Suicide Squad (2016) in which villains are recruited to fight other villains.
The line-up of monsters is a hoot, a who’s who of top cinematic nasties including Voldemort from the Harry Potter films, Eye of Sauron from The Lord Of The Rings and flying monkeys from The Wizard Of Oz. It is always cool to see what characters can be achieved simply by using Lego bricks.
Arnett, best known for the television comedy Arrested Development (2003-2013), reprises his brief role as Batman in The Lego Movie and his deadpan, growly delivery remains spot on.
The buoyant cast includes Cera, yet another Arrested Development alumnus, as the irrepressibly cheerful orphan unwittingly adopted by Batman/Bruce Wayne; Galifianakis as a villain with an identity crisis; and Fiennes as the loyal and wise butler/friend.
For all the silliness and mayhem, this is a movie that asks smart, pointed questions about the superhero genre: What is a superhero without his nemesis? In the case of Batman, a lonely man with attachment issues, shunned even by the rest of the Justice League.
Also, given that he has been at his job for such a long time, why does Gotham City remain crime-ridden? A most valid observation.
The Lego Batman Movie gleefully sticks a pin into the self-inflated pomposity of tortured superheroes and overblown superhero flicks and then tops it off with a sublimely ridiculous ending.
(ST)

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Dionysus Contemporary Theatre/ Huayi 2017
Esplanade Theatre Last Saturday
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play that tackles some rather weighty themes, including the nature of reality and illusion, and the arbitrariness of attraction.
But it does so with a light touch and a cloak of fantasy and comedy. However one chooses to interpret the play, it is one trippy adventure.
Director Olivia Yan of Hong Kong’s Dionysus Contemporary Theatre taps into that playful, surreal essence for this adaptation.
Story-wise, she sticks quite closely to the Bard’s version.
The Fairy King Oberon (Anthony Wong) and Queen Titania (Candice Yu) are squabbling over who should have a young boy.
In a fit of pique, he casts a spell on her that leads her to fall head over heels for the first creature she sees on waking up.
That turns out to be Bottom (Franky Mcnugget), an actor who has been stuck with the head of a donkey.
The mischievous sprite Puck (Huen Tin Yeung) uses the same potion to meddle in the affairs of four young lovers: Lysander (Alex Lam) and Hermia (Kate Yeung), who long to be together against her father’s wishes; and Demetrius (Angus Chan), who wants to marry Hermia; and Helena (Rosa Maria Velasco), who is besotted with Demetrius.
The use of Cantonese dialogue, while generally retaining the English names, immediately gives the production an exotic feel.
The lines switch between formal and colloquial Cantonese, so it feels both comfortingly familiar and detached at different times.
In one memorable scene, Helena and Hermia descend into a catfight in which they hurl insults about each other’s bust size and it plays out like an exaggerated Hong Kong comedy film.
The stage is kept uncluttered, with a few pieces of props, such as a large rock and a ramp, to delineate the space. It means the costumes, lighting and sound are key to transporting one to a realm of magic and fantasy.
Costume designer Tsang Man Tung must have had a field day coming up with the diverse looks, from neon-coloured-circus-acrobat Puck to the skivvies the four lovers run about in to the regally ostentatious raiments of Oberon and Titania.
Wong is feathered and cocky as the Fairy King while Yu has an imperious presence as the Queen and also as Hippolyta, who is marrying Duke Theseus (also played by Wong) in yet another strand of the tale.
Kudos to Huen for a lithe and limber performance and to Mcnugget for a fearless one, wearing a pair of underpants with an obscenely large bulge as the transformed Bottom.
But it is Velasco who leaves the deepest impression as she makes one really feel the desperation of Helena’s situation.
Her Helena is funny and sympathetic instead of merely being an object of ridicule or pity.
In a story filled with fairies, magic and outsized drama, she keeps things real.
(ST)

Huayi 2017: Yoga Lin Live
Esplanade Concert Hall/Last Friday
After waiting more than four years for Taiwan's Yoga Lin to return here for a concert, his fans were impatient to hear him live again. There was clearly much expectations, not to mention pent-up emotions - tickets for the 1,600-seat Esplanade Concert Hall gig sold out quickly.
Lin sure lived up to expectations in a thoroughly enjoyable show that hit all the right notes, proving that his one year away from show business to serve his mandatory military stint had done nothing to diminish his fine instrument of a voice.
Over the course of a close to two-hour-long concert, he rocked out, crooned and glided into his falsetto range effortlessly. He had his fans spellbound with silence one moment and then roaring with approval and up on their feet the next.
His latest record, Sell Like Hot Cakes (2016), was his fifth studio album of original material. Rather than focusing on that, he drew substantially from his discography - Fiction (2012), Perfect Life (2011), Senses Around (2009) and even his debut Mystery Guest (2008).
Even though the lyrics were not displayed as they usually are on monitors, fans chorused along and even chimed in perfectly on the last line of Wake Up: "I've been sleeping really badly, it's best if you move in."
One of the most moving moments came when Lin sang the ballad The Early Sunset, originally written for a fan who had died after a car accident. Accompanied by the plaintive strain of a cello, he conveyed a palpable sense of loss and devastation: "I didn't give you wings, why do you want to fly."
He could have just ticked off his sizable number of hits and his fans would have been satisfied. Instead, he chose to cover songs by others as well, demonstrating his chameleonic musicality and leaving his inimitable stamp on them all.
Rene Liu's Cheng Quan (Step Aside) took on an elegiac quality and built up to an emotionally overflowing finale. He also had fun with British band Blur's cheeky headbanger Song 2 - he strummed on an acoustic guitar to launch into the tune before blowing the track wide open with a full band accompaniment.
Given the time constraint - the concert was billed as 90-minute long - Lin did not spend too much time talking. When he did, his offbeat sense of humour came through. Noting that he could see everyone clearly when the house lights came on, he added: "I can tell that everybody washes their face well."
And when he found out that only a handful of fans had started listening to his music only in the past year, he quipped: "I guess that means I've been pretty popular."
He might have meant it ironically, but there was no doubt he was indeed popular. After the show, it took him an hour to autograph CDs for the line of about 500 fans which snaked about the venue.
(ST)

Between
Sun Shengxi
This is supposed to be the album sandwiched between Chinese-Korean singer-songwriter Sun Shengxi’s debut Girls (2014) and the upcoming Women.
It is no mere placeholder though. There is an au courant R&B vibe to Moving On and a welcome spunk in songs such as He Isn’t Worth It.
She works with a wide range of collaborators, from author Four One and photographer Avril Hsiao on the lyrics, to reggae musician Matzka on the duet Lost On The Way. Yet, the record feels cohesive.
A highlight is Don’t Panic, which delivers a gentle exhortation over a breezy melody: “Don’t panic, please don’t panic/Just relax a little/Don’t panic, please don’t panic/Give yourself a break.”
She makes sure listeners are too busy grooving to the track to freak out.
(ST)

Journey To The West: The Demons Strike Back
The story: The monk Tang Sanzang (Kris Wu) is on a journey to India to obtain sutras. He is accompanied by three disciples – Monkey (Lin Gengxin), Piggy (Yang Yiwei) and Sandy (Mengke Bateer). Along the way, they encounter a nest of vicious spider demons, a petulant king (Bao Bei-er) and his minister (Yao Chen), who has a dangerous belief in doing as he pleases.

This is billed as the sequel to Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons (2013), but there are actually quite a few changes from the earlier film.
Hong Kong’s Stephen Chow only writes and produces here, and leaves the directing to Tsui Hark (Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame, 2010) instead.
The tone of the film is a tad less silly, but there are still comic elements that are signature Chow, such as the exaggeratedly drooly Piggy and old women who are supposed to be exhausted 16-year-olds.
More jarring is the overhauled cast.
Idol singer-actor Kris Wu makes for a better-looking Tang, but Wen Zhang was more affecting in the earlier film. Monkey, Piggy and Sandy are also played by different actors, though the impact is less marked in their case as their faces are hidden under heavy make-up.
The source material – the classic Chinese novel Journey To The West – merely serves as inspiration here and the film-makers take lots of liberty with the story.
That is not necessarily a bad thing, though Tang behaves in a rather inconsistent manner, particularly in his relationship with Monkey.
What makes the film entertaining is the inventive use of computer- generated imagery (CGI).
Tsui piles on the effects and, more importantly, lets his imagination run riot in conjuring up landscapes, creatures and battles.
There is a forest of deformed and menacing trees, a crazily colourful kingdom run by a child-like monarch and an epic showdown involving four buddhas, a giant Monkey and a demon who looks like a mechanical toy. Oh, and a poisoned Sandy gets transformed into a giant fish the gang have to lug around and keep wet.
There is a wild and joyous abandon to the film-making that calls to mind Tsui’s early work, Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain (1983), which memorably featured flying stone elephants. He has not lost his touch when it comes to making fantasy take flight.
(ST)

Power Station 20th
Power Station

Flow
Winnie Hsin

In their earlier days, Taiwanese duo Power Station were known for rock ballads filled with angst and soaring vocals in hits such as Heartless Love Letters, which is found on this new two-disc album. Two decades on, the pair have matured and their most memorable new songs are the more measured mid-tempo tracks.
The opener Mi Tang (Potion) possesses a tenderness in lines such as “She uses warmth to heat up a bowl of potion for me, how fragrant”.
Despite its title, Zha Yao (Dynamite) starts gently and even the chorus is unhurried: “You are the dynamite deep in my heart/Why are these memories so overbearing/Don’t know when they will explode/ And blow everything apart.”
That said, Power Station have not lost their explosiveness and edge. They still have plenty of energy, judging from songs such as the Minnan-Mandarin track Next Station. They remain a relevant music force and that is no mean feat after 20 years.
Taiwanese singer Winnie Hsin has been around even longer and yet the 54-year-old’s crystalline soprano pipes have not diminished since her debut album, Lonely Winter, was released in 1986.
The album’s Mandarin title, Ming Bai (Understand), seems to hark back to her best-known work Ling Wu (Epiphany, 1994), but she has no intention of resting on her laurels.
If her awakening in Epiphany was a bitter one (“Ah painful realisation that you were my everything”), the parting shot in the title track here is a more empowering manifesto: “I can afford to love/I can let it go.”
First single My Dear You, which has been scaling radio charts, mixes lush strings with her deftly modulating voice: “My dear you, missing you/I wish you were here with me/You have to walk part of the way to realise that being safe and sound is the greatest happiness.”
It feels as though one is hearing from a good friend after a long absence.
(ST)

It is time for the annual Chinese New Year sweepstakes – the winner could walk away with millions of dollars, whether in the Toto draw or at the box office, where there are four festive titles in battle.
Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan is a regular fixture of the season. In action-comedy Kung Fu Yoga, his latest attempt to claim the holiday crown, he and director Stanley Tong pull out all the stops to appeal to just about everyone.
It highlights exotic and glamorous locations around the world, from the ice-and-snow landscape of Iceland to the over-the-top luxury on display in Dubai.
The diverse cast includes Bollywood beauties Disha Patani and Amyra Dastur, yoga goddess Mu Qimiya, dashing Aarif Rahman and singer-dancer Lay Zhang from South Korean boy band Exo.
In order to tie all these disparate elements together, the story is something of a stretch.
Chan plays archaeology professor Jack, who is keen to track down the lost treasure of the Indian kingdom of Magadha.
However, the lengthy exposition of an ancient battle plays out like a none-too-involving computer game and the references to Indo-Sino friendship feel too much like pandering to a potentially large Indian audience.
Missing is the appeal of Chan as the scrappy underdog who triumphs against the odds – nowadays, he tends to be treated respectfully as the undisputed top dog.
But even a top dog will grimace and cower when he finds himself next to the king of beasts – a highlight of Kung Fu Yoga sees him stuck in a car during a high-octane chase scene with an actual, not CGI, lion. Chan is a hoot as he tries to gingerly placate the pi**ed-off cat.
A joyous Bollywood dance extravaganza aptly wraps up the proceedings. It might not be part of Chinese tradition, but it is celebratory.
The most ostensibly festive entry is The Fortune Handbook. Mark Lee plays a fortune god-in-training who meddles in the affairs of lazy Soh Hock (Christopher Lee) and his industrious brother-in-law Hao Xing (Li Nanxing).
Prosperity, the importance of family and bak kwa are key themes of this holiday season and they are all here in this work from director Kelvin Sng (Taxi! Taxi!, 2013), but the end result is far from savoury.
Bak kwa gets quite a bit of play because Christopher Lee is the ambassador for a certain brand – and so does green tea, which Vivian Lai even breaks from her character as Soh Hock’s wife to promote.
While product placements in a film might be a necessary evil, a film-maker knows his work is in trouble when his characters laugh more than the audience – hearing laughter on the screen is not the same thing as watching a funny film.
The most entertaining thing in the movie is Christopher Lee’s performance as the vain, hairspray-toting Soh Hock, which at least feels a little fresh and different.
At first glance, the other local festive film, Take 2, seems to be a rather curious offering, given that ex-cons trying to move on is not exactly the most obvious Chinese New Year topic. But the theme of starting afresh does fit in with the notion of new beginnings.
It is a pity that debutant director Ivan Ho, who was scriptwriter for Ah Boys To Men 3: Frogmen (2015), cannot quite decide if he wants to do a drama or a comedy.
Ryan Lian (Long Long Time Ago, 2016) has potential as a brooding leading man in what could have been a moving story of how a jailbird father redeems himself in his estranged son’s eyes.
But he is surrounded here by discordant notes, from Dennis Chew in a number of cross-dressing roles to Chen Tianwen as a crazily flamboyant nemesis to a bizarre soundtrack of European songs.
There is yet another contender for the Chinese New Year box- office crown and that is Journey To The West: The Demons Strike Back, which opens on Saturday.
The final festive offering is from Hong Kong funnyman Stephen Chow, a proven box-office magnet here like Chan is.
The prints will be arriving just in time for its sneak previews on Friday and opening on Saturday, but the movie likely will not need good reviews to boost its takings.
Its predecessor, Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons (2013), was a hit even though Chow did not act in it – he co-wrote, produced and directed it.
He has even less involvement this time around – only a producing credit. Yet his name is still prominently featured in the trailer.
Now that is star power.
(ST)

Dear Paranoia
Andrew Tan
Make-up artist-turned-singer Andrew Tan remains best known for the hit ballad Queen, the title track off his 2010 debut album.
It is a pity – the Malaysian has a rich and sonorous set of pipes, which you might even call a handsome voice.
Dear Paranoia is a concerted effort to improve his fortunes with radio-friendly material about being in and out of love that showcases his vocals.
His falsetto is effortless in Internecine (Ju Shang), which features a brooding piano melody and a soaring chorus. Blue Love Theme (Hao Ai Hao San) plays to his strength as an emotive singer.
Taken as a whole, though, the album relies too much on love ballads.
It could do with more numbers such as the title track, which revs up the tempo in a welcome change of pace.
The dance-tinged Dear Paranoia blossoms into a surprisingly joyous refrain as he declares: “I insist on continuing to sing/Until the end of time.”
Tan might wish to note that perseverance is not enough. The choice of songs is crucial as well.
(ST)

Centrifugal Force
Faith Yang
Taiwan’s Faith Yang can often come across as cold, but the ice queen seems to be melting quite a bit on her sixth studio album.
Reportedly inspired by the astronomical concept of the Roche limit – the minimum distance to which a large satellite can approach its primary body without being torn apart by tidal forces – Centrifugal Force pulls you in inexorably.
Over a gentle piano accompaniment, she issues an invitation on the title track: “Come closer another inch/And I’ll believe you”. The vulnerability is devastating when she sings: “Don’t embrace, you musn’t kiss/I’ll shatter, never be whole again”.
Musically, there are some surprises here.
Zhuan Shen (Turn Around) is an electro track which flirts with the spoken word, while Fen Bi Zuo De Shou (Hands Made Of Chalk) is an unabashed EDM number. And Yan Yu (An Affair) seems to take place in some romantic European location, given the orchestral arrangement.
Fittingly, the album ends with the poignant Tui Kai Shi Jie De Men (Push Open The Doors Of The World). It sounds like an epiphany, suggesting Yang is ready to open up like never before.
(ST)

The Wasted Times
Cheng Er
The story: Lu (Ge You) is an influential and ruthless mobster in 1930s Shanghai on the eve of the Japanese invasion. His Japanese brother-in-law Watabe (Tadanobu Asano) has lived in the city for years and is practically Shanghainese. The wife of Lu’s boss is Xiaoliu (Zhang Ziyi), a woman prone to indiscreet affairs. Their lives intersect time and again as war upends the city.

The one word that best describes this film is Tarantino-esque.
Chinese writer-director Cheng Er (Lethal Hostage, 2012) is clearly a fan of American film-maker Quentin Tarantino’s distinctive bravura style, particularly as seen in the Palme d’Or-winning non-linear black comedy crime flick, Pulp Fiction (1994).
The Wasted Times does not proceed linearly, instead it moves back and forth in time, changing viewers’ understanding of characters and situations each time it does so.
Scenes that seem to make little sense the first time you watch them are repeated in a fuller context and are suddenly flooded with meaning and emotion.
While Tarantino has his characters riffing on pop culture, often in the most unlikely of situations, Cheng has two young men nonchalantly joshing about the younger guy’s virginity in a car – before he unveils what it is exactly they are on their way to.
Perhaps an English-language film in this style would have seemed overly derivative. In a Chinese work, it still feels fresh and intriguing.
Moreover, Cheng is not paying homage blindly. His style is in service to the story, reflecting the topsy-turvy upheaval of life during wartime.
Like Tarantino, who revived the career of actor John Travolta with Pulp Fiction, Cheng also seems to have a way with actors – the ensemble cast here is top-notch, from the quietly menacing Ge You to the vivacious Zhang Ziyi to Tadanobu Asano, whose surface calm belies a dark heart.
Even the smaller roles make their mark, including Yan Ni as the formidable housekeeper Wang Ma and Du Jiang, who brings a mix of naivete and viciousness to his part as a junior henchman.
This movie is no wasted effort.
(ST)

Trace Of Time In Love
Rainie Yang
On her 10th album, Rainie Yang is confident enough to stick to ballads and mid-tempo numbers throughout, without the need to mix things up just for the sake of it.
The best song is Audience, a ballad she interprets sensitively as she contemplates a distant lover: “Some people love like an audience/Don’t understand the simplest emotional scene.”
It was penned for her by China’s Li Ronghao, one of the hottest singer-songwriters of the moment. The 31-year-old has a way with both words and music, effectively exploring emotional states through the use of sustained metaphors.
The song benefits from their romance – they are dating and he is able to tailor a song to her exact strengths as a singer.
At this point, Yang, 32, is firmly into her second phase as a crooner of sophisticated grown-up tracks about love and life, leaving behind her cutesy and grating pop.
On the title track, she ponders the passage of time and the changes it has wrought. The changing of the seasons can be cruel and relentless, but time has been good to her as a singer.
(ST)

Farewell, 2016, year of loss and upheavals.
Who knows what 2017 will bring, but to start things on a bright note, there are several events I look forward to on the music front, from album releases to a living legend’s new musical.
Hong Kong’s Eason Chan is a great singer in top form and he has released at least one album or EP a year since 2005. He is adventurous when it comes to his music outings – from his collaboration with Singapore singer-songwriter JJ Lin for Mandarin album Rice & Shine (2014) to a trio of edgy Cantonese EPs released in 2010 and 2011.
Last year was an exception as he did not drop a new disc. There are rumours that he has been working on new material in the recording studio and that the album will be followed by a world tour. Hopefully, this is not just wishful thinking of fans hankering after a record from him.
Here’s also hoping that his new gig as a mentor on TV show Sing! China will not suck up too much of his time – as entertaining as his comments on the show could be given his shoot-from-the-hip tendencies, they’d be mere distractions to the kind of music he can produce.
It so happens that Taiwanese dancing diva Jolin Tsai sat out last year as well, after releasing Myself in 2010, Muse in 2012 and Play in 2014. (Did she get the same memo as Chan?)
She has been having fun playing around with Mando-dance-pop, stretching the genre and proving it can be more than throwaway fluff. In the process, The Great Artist from Muse was named Best Song of the Year at the Golden Melody Awards in 2013 and Play won Best Mandarin Album at the same event a year later.
At a concert in China last month, she promised to release a new album this year. The question is whether she will continue in the same musical vein or whether her break-up with model Vivian Dawson after six years will make its way into the music.
If Myself was any indication, Tsai seems unlikely to be baring her soul on disc. Maybe she will just dance away her troubles.
What is bound to be far more personal is 50 Song Memoir from American indie pop group The Magnetic Fields, due out on March 3. The concept here is an autobiographical album with one track for each year of frontman and songwriter Stephin Merritt’s life.
The band had previously struck gold with another concept record 69 Love Songs (1999). In one song, he memorably described his heart as “running ’round like a chicken with its head cut off” and on the album, he explored a diverse array of genres from country to jazz to synth pop.
Other idiosyncratic projects of his have included i (2004) – every song title begins with the letter I – and the contrasting pair of albums, noise pop on Distortion (2008), followed by the acoustic folk of Realism (2010).
In each case, Merritt’s droll lyrics and musical versatility made for a winning combination.
When it comes to penning words set to music, theatre giant Stephen Sondheim is in a class of his own. Producer Cameron Mackintosh once hailed him as “possibly the greatest lyricist ever”. From dissecting relationships in Company (1970) in contemporary New York to limning a murderous barber in Sweeney Todd (1979) in Victorian-era London, Sondheim has vividly brought to life diverse worlds and the spectrum of human experience.
Remarkably, he continues to be active at the age of 86 and there is the wonderful prospect of a new musical from him, eight years after Road Show – about a pair of brothers in the freewheeling, get-rich-quick America of the early 1900s – made its off-Broadway premiere.
The new work, tentatively titled Bunuel, is a collaboration with playwright David Ives (All In The Timing, 1993) and could possibly be staged this year. It is inspired by two films by Spanish director Luis Bunuel – The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (1972) and The Exterminating Angel (1962), both involving surreal dinner parties. It sounds deliciously intriguing.
If this list does not excite you, no matter. Do the same exercise yourself and jot down the things that you are looking forward to. Before you know it, the year is already looking up.
(ST)

Railroad Tigers
Ding Sheng
The story: Ma Yuan (Jackie Chan) is the head of a group of railroad workers who regularly steals supplies from the Japanese military in east China in 1941. Tipped off by a Chinese soldier (Darren Wang), they get a shot at accomplishing something big – blow up a bridge to disrupt a key enemy supply route. Ma’s crew also includes noodle-seller/ sharpshooter Fan Chuan (Wang Kai) and tailor Dahai (former Exo member Huang Zitao).

Action star Jackie Chan and his son Jaycee provide some of the more amusing moments in this middling film.
Although Jaycee is missing from promotional material and even from online write-ups, he plays a member of Ma’s crew. Some have speculated that this is Chan’s way of giving his son a leg-up after the latter’s show-business freeze because of his marijuana-related jail stint.
Whatever the reason, father and son are pretty entertaining to watch.
In one scene, after being captured, they happily trade insults over each other’s looks instead of being worried – Jaycee even scores a big hit with a jibe at his father’s bulbous nose.
And during an attempt to steal explosives from a Japanese warehouse, they end up on two ends of a rope thrown over a metal beam – like two ends of a human pulley system – yo-yoing up and down as soldiers prowl the premises.
The key hook of the film – which reunites Chan with Ding Sheng, his director for crime thriller Police Story 2013 and period action flick Little Big Soldier (2010) – is how a motley crew with few resources go about destroying a bridge.
It has promise, but Ding takes too long to kick things into gear, burdened as it is with too much unnecessary cargo, from the superfluous framing device to the sprawling cast of characters.
Xu Fan is wasted in the role of a hawker who is sweet on Ma and Zhang Yishang barely registers as Ma’s daughter. At least Wang Kai (Nirvana In Fire, 2015) leaves an impression as the cool sharpshooter Fan.
The finale, which is predictable, needs better computer-generated imagery for the flick to end with a roar.
(ST)

Run! Frantic Flowers!
Waa Wei
The first thing that grabs your attention is the unusual- looking title.
Interestingly enough, the Chinese phrase Mo Lu Kuang Hua is also the translation used for the American movie title Thelma & Louise (1991). That road movie about two women breaking free of their mundane lives turns out to be a signpost of sorts for Taiwanese singer-songwriter Waa Wei’s fifth album.
The title track is an electro-rock number on which Wei proclaims with a snarl: “The ordinary is my enemy.” Then, she coos in her higher register on the chorus: “I’m a more dangerous kind of flower/The elegance at the end of the road/The confidence of the lowly/Frantic flowers in the gale/Bloom wherever they land.”
And yes, her creativity is in full bloom here.
Her sly sense of humour emerges on the electro track Snow Girl as she laments: “The heat of passion that others want will kill me.” And she wistfully imagines on the gentle Little Fish: “If I were a mountain, you couldn’t come and go as you please.”
Wei dips into a variety of genres here from the gently jazzy Crooked to the breezy pop of I Will Be Fine to the guitar ballad You You.
On the last, she sings in Mandarin and Minnan and also scats to convey her tender state of being in love and pain.
On the album’s dreamy, perky synth-pop closer Monroe, she draws inspiration from the icon and bombshell Marilyn Monroe.
When it comes to music, Wei is no shrinking violet either.
(ST)

Assassin's Creed
Justin Kurzel
The story: Sentenced to death by lethal injection, criminal Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender) wakes up instead and finds himself in a facility run by scientist Sofia Rikkin (Marion Cotillard) and her father Alan (Jeremy Irons) of Abstergo Industries, the modern-day incarnation of the Templar Order. They are after the Apple of Eden, a powerful object last handled in 15th-century Spain by assassin Aguilar de Nerha (Fassbender) – whose memories can be accessed by Callum. Based on the video game franchise of the same name, in which the Assassins fight for peace with free will and the Templars want peace through control.

There is something interesting going on here.
The names for this project read like a dream combination for an indie arthouse flick.
Indeed, director Justin Kurzel had just worked with actors Fassbender and Cotillard on a well-received adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (2015).
And then we have Oscar winner Irons, Emmy winner Brendan Gleeson and film festival favourite Charlotte Rampling.
But wait, this is a video game adaptation.
Despite an attempt to give this lightweight movie a heavyweight makeover, Assassin’s Creed ends up being a failed experiment.
It is both unnecessarily complicated and ridiculously simplified at the same time.
For all the powerful technology that Abstergo Industries has at its disposal, it is unable to fast forward to the exact moment when Aguilar last had possession of the Apple. Instead, the key moments of his life – which are now Callum’s memories – are helpfully converted into a technicolour film we can all watch.
It is also necessary for Callum to be strapped into a machine so that he can act out each gesture in his past life as he recalls it. Can the film be more literal?
Then there are the protracted speeches about the nature of free will and the relationship between genetics and the propensity for murder, which are not only tedious, but also mostly sound like hogwash.
What a waste of the killer line-up assembled.
(ST)