'Overheard' trailer

Get ready, kiddies! Overheard (竊聽風雲) is coming out in a couple weeks and I am ex-i-ted! They just released the trailer, so take a look. Alex Fong gets a couple lines of dialogue. Not bad considering he gets about 4th billing.

A Great Way to Care

A Great Way to Care (仁心解碼, previously 杏林心處) was just released this Monday but only overseas. Hopefully it will be well-received and get an airing date in Hong Kong. It's the latest from Alex Fong (方中信) and Kate Tsui (徐子珊), and yes, I too am skeptical about this inevitable romance. They could play father-daughter in another show, so we shall see. It's about the lives and loves of a psychiatric unit at Yan Wo Hospital that includes doctors (Alex Fong, Cheung Chi Kwong 蔣志光), nurses (Raymond Wong 黃浩然, Charles Szeto 司徒瑞祈), and residents (Timmy Hung 洪天明). Kate Tsui's character, meanwhile, works for the serious crime unit in the police department. Paths cross and love ignites.

It looks to develop in the tradition of Forensic Heroes, CIB, Healing Hands, et al in that the show moves from one case to the next all the while exploring the personal lives of the main characters and the professional development of a few green apprentices. Aside from my excitement at another Alex Fong series, I'm interested in TVB's exploration of psychological problems and mental illness, conditions that definitely warrant more attention. However, judging from the previews and the first episode, I don't know if a show like this ends up hurting or helping the cause more. Vivien Yeo (楊秀惠), for example, plays an obese girl with an eating disorder. Both obesity and eating disorders are serious health issues, but I'm afraid that the novelty for TVB will be Vivien Yeo in a fat suit. Caricatures such as this are too easy and almost mock the whole situation rather than treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Also, the first episode, which is the only one I've seen thus far, centers around a young woman (Natalie Tong 唐詩詠) who is haunted by a suicide jump she witnessed years back. However, she also suppresses the memory of the man almost raping her, and her mother (Mary Hon 韓馬利) is eager to protect her daughter, even if it means that she will continue to freak out and possibly jump to her own death. Dr. Alex saves the day though with his detective work and reasoned, compassionate approach, and after a quick visit to the original scene of the crime, things look decidedly up for Natalie's character.

The problem is that mental illnesses are not so easily cured, and I object to the tidiness of it all. I understand that it's a television show and that corners are cut for the sake of expediency, but there's a special responsibility I feel when it comes to mental health versus something like a crime investigation. When we watch cop dramas, since they are so pervasive and often so exaggerated with shootouts galore, they can exist in the fantasy realm. We can read the papers and see officers on patrol and get stopped for an ID check and there is a tangible experience that helps us divide drama from reality. But this is not so with mental health. It gets scant media coverage and even in private, people are often reluctant to discuss their mental health issues because of the stigma attached. I do have more faith in TVB and this show in dampening that stigma, however. If there's one thing TVB does well, it's in making blindingly obvious that everyone should get a fair shake and we shouldn't rush to judgment. That said, I'll continue watching the rest of the series.

Here's a youtube video with a few clips and the theme video. The song is sung by the inestimable Juno Mak. Watch it before TVB pulls it down!

COP UNBOWED

Cop Unbowed (誓不低頭)

I’m usually wary of any Hong Kong movie that features more than two major TVB stars at a time, so I should have avoided this one with its quintuple threat of Alex Fong, Yoyo Mung, Michael Tse, Sam Chan, and Leila Tong. But what can I say, I like to live dangerously. The movie has a promising start. Cop Lam Long (Fong) rides in on a motorcycle one dark, rainy night wielding a long-ass sword, and a baseball cap. He’s greeted by a mob boss Mr. Dick (Ko) and buddy Fung (Tse) who have his wife Ka Wai (Mung) bound and dangling from a clothesline. Fung accuses Long of killing his boss’s very young girlfriend (Tong) to cover his own crime, and after much bloodshed and slow-mo swordplay, Long kills Fung, rescues his wife, and speeds away. Bad ass.

But then the movie actually begins. Fast forward 10 years and Long is running a small seaside restaurant. He and his wife share a warm but quiet relationship; each remains haunted by the past (she also suffered a miscarriage) and tries to insulate him/herself. Long’s disinterest is countered by his energetic friend Curry (Chin Ka Lok) who works at the restaurant along with his younger cousin Yuki (Yu Chiu). Curry spends an inordinate amount of time getting into fights, one of which prompts a teenage punk hyperactive enough for a Twins movie to pester Long into recognize him as a godson. The ubiquitous Lam Suet also pops in and out as Long’s police buddy for no reason except that Lam Suet is in every movie. When Hau (Sam Chan) finally enters as the restaurant’s new hire, the stage is set for some truly intense moments of revenge, betrayal, and maybe even more sword fights. But then the movie is left to mold for the next 40 minutes. We get glimpses of Mr. Dick who still wants Long’s head, an innocuous romance between Yuki and Hau, and some questionable fish metaphors but nothing in the way of plotting that drives the story to an inevitable climax. Instead, the characters remain largely static before rushing headlong into a predictable and poorly executed ending.

Sam Chan bears some fault for this. He has potential, as evidenced by later scenes, but he’s still a television lightweight and in no position to have entire plots pivoting around his characters. Hau is supposed to be one of Long’s primary antagonists and it would have been exciting to comb through the generational and cultural rifts (Hau was raised and educated in the West) between the two. Excepting a few scowls though, nothing Sam Chan does indicates any tension in that relationship; he seems more like a quiet kid who frowns a lot rather than someone with an agenda and enough resentment to fuel it. Likewise, Yoyo Mung wastes what little she’s given to work with. She’s a fair actress but lacks charisma, especially the kind that should sustain her through a 90 minute film. She comes off better on the small screen where she has the luxury of 20 episodes to develop a character. Chin Ka Lok, on the other hand, overcompensates with antics that are amusing but a little too overwrought for this film. This seems to be the case with Yu Chiu as well, who seems well-suited for comedies. As with too many female characters in Hong Kong cinema, hers exists just to look cute and to pine after the new guy, a role she easily fills. The strongest performance here belongs to Alex Fong, and not just because I like to see him sport the wife beater. He does his trademark brooding act, something he always manages with sincerity. The man deserves so much better than the B movies he’s usually propping up. When he gets a compelling script, he can center a film (One Nite in Mongkok) and when opposite top actors, he always holds his own (Lifeline, Your Place or Mine).

Nevertheless, the main shortcoming is choppy storytelling. There’s some good camerawork that hints at something better but even average mob dramas need a plot worth the hour and a half. Half the film is spent in dull anticipation, with an over-reliance on angled close-ups of a ticking clock, silent dinners between Long and Ka Wai, and Hau looking like a sullen schoolboy, while the comedic presence of some of the minor characters disrupts more than lightens the mood. Nice try, but better luck tomorrow.

HOME SWEET HOME

Home Sweet Home (怪物)

Add this to the list of movies that make you want to jump out the window; it's that depressing. Not exactly a horror film, it starts as a thriller and bleeds into a drama. Regardless, it still challenges, exhausts, and profoundly disturbs. The young and picturesque Cheng family has just moved into their new flat, but things soon sour. Their son (Tam Chan Ho) sees something that sets him wailing and his mother, May (Shu Qi) spies a dark figure through the air vents. They manage, however, to pass a peaceful night. When they are invited to a neighbor's birthday party the next day, the shy and solitary May reluctantly accepts. But in the chaos of a flash storm, her son disappears, and thus begins a physical and mental chase that leaves everyone wishing they’d just had a better real estate agent.

Unsure at first what to make of the disappearance, the police, led by Lam Suet, think that May might be slightly left of sane, and their suspicions only increase when she starts crawling through the air ducts in search of her son. May insists that someone is scrabbling the dark of the complex with her kid in tow but there's little proof. She finally manages to get a finger, literally, on some evidence, but this doesn't ease the mounting skepticism of her mental state. The police do offer up a suspect though, Yan Hong (Karena Lam), and we learn that she and her family were once squatters where the apartment now stands. After her husband died in an accident, she and her son disappeared from the records.

The movie shifts here from a couple of crazy women giving chase to a kind of deconstruction of madness, at least an earnest attempt at one. Yan Hong is, of course, the woman lurching around with May's son whom she takes as her own, and while she previously had just been someone in serious need of a bath and new clothes, her story pushes forward a larger critique of society. Or again, it tries to. Both women might do well to learn how to win friends and influence people, but their faults hardly merit the cynicism and inattention that envelopes them. After losing family members or facing eviction, they are left even more isolated, their misery compounded by a wholesale breakdown of society, at least for them. The ineffectiveness of all social safeguards - government, neighbors, family - only hastens their flight to the margins and, in the case of Yan Hong, brands her a monster which is the Chinese title for this film.

The moralizing is not too heavy handed and makes this a somewhat effective piece. At the very least, an actual plot and functional characters are in place - though on the latter point I think May's characterization would have been strengthened by greater interaction with her husband (Alex Fong in little more than a cameo). Maybe because of his small role, however, we have two challenging female characters reinforcing each other, always a cause for celebration in Hong Kong cinema. Even in her distress, May evinces some sympathy for Yan Hong, a feeling reciprocated later on, however briefly. Where the film suffers though is in the emotional avalanche that it unleashes as May's desperation, fueled by the general incompetence and indifference of those around her, comes to a head. It rightly asks much from its audience but is unable to provide a disciplined response. If the movie imagines itself a vehicle for examining social responsibilities, injustice, and even mental health, it cannot succeed by simply releasing a torrent of misery. Both characters are pushed to such extremes that by the end, there is little left for us to grasp and reshape; the final effect is that the audience becomes just as consumed despair as Yan Hong and May.

THE DEATH CURSE

(Looks like someone had to sit through his/her own movie.)

The Death Curse (古宅心慌慌)!

A "horror" movie, possibly because Twins and Boy'z share a double billing. I imagine the movie gods over at EEG and Co are running out of ways to stuff multiple stars in a film so they've come up with this delicious slice of stupid. Charlene Choi plays sassy (read: bitchy) Ding Si who regularly lashes out at the adoring mail man (Laurence Chou) who regularly reads her mail. They find that her father whom she has never met has summoned her to a family reunion. On arriving at his massive estate out in the boondocks, she discovers a gaggle of her brothers and sisters (you guessed it, the other Twin, Boy'z, plus Raymond Wong and others) previously unknown to her. Unfortunately, the happiness is cut short because their father has just died. This hardly affects Ah Si, however, who is just angling for her inheritance. Enter Lawyer Cheung played by Alex Fong - as in his first name is Lawyer - who's executing the will. He informs the brood that Papa Ding left them oodles of money, the estate, and some fruit trees but that they must partake in a few crazy rituals before anyone gets their share, namely gathering at midnight for the next seven days to light incense and then hugging each other. Yes, hugging each other. This pleases some of the lot, like Ding Bat (Steven Cheung) and Ding Ling (Gillian Chung), who just want everyone to get along. Hothead Ding Lik (Raymond Wong) meanwhile is the male answer to Ah Si; he would rather bond with his father’s money than with his siblings. Then there is the other Boy('z), Ah Mo (Kenny Kwan), whose main purpose is to throw in some cracks about an unintentionally incestuous relationship between him and Ah Si a few summers back.

The movie quickly vaults into juvenile horror that mostly involves hallucinations and Papa Ding's dead body, which for some reason is propped in a chair in what appears to be an air conditioned cabin. Nothing happens in the way of plot much less characterization for the next hour. No one seems to give a rip about their dead daddy, and they instead tumble from one creepy hijinks to another. The scares are pretty generic and inconsequential and could have been shuffled or replaced entirely. The only thing that saved this movie was a somewhat predictable ending done with such cheeky relish that I couldn't help cracking a few smiles. The last twenty minutes delivered on the promise of an intriguing albeit ridiculous premise of a family reunion between pubescent strangers. Alright, delivered might be a bit strong, but the climax goes the distance with some of the movie's absurdities. At one point, the guys find themselves literally going crazy in a locked cage. A somewhat incapacitated Si has the antidote - honey - but is just out of reach. She nevertheless manages to dip her foot in it which means, yes, a couple of rabid boys must lick honey off Charlene Choi's toes. Also, the requisite feel-good popstar ending is achieved and mostly palatable because the mush factor dissipates quickly. Still, the movie straddles spoof and pseudo-seriousness without settling on either or on a consistent middle ground. That probably suits the EEG crowd but means this horror-comedy on training wheels is passable fare for the rest.

The day before the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen

The obsession continues.......At least the tv show that started my Alex Fong episode (浴火鳳凰 or Phoenix of the Ashes) is finished with his storyline. I think his character got blown up in a train. Pity. I think Shawn Yue kind of takes over from there. My life was already a certifiable mess when I was just interested in Richard Armitage, but now I have to toggle between the two.

Speaking of.....Over the weekend I caught the latest Robin Hood. Sometimes the show actually impresses. Something to do with expectations? I've concluded that this would be great to watch with the kids, if I had any. But it's still miserable to sit through on occasion. I think this season's suffered because of the change in cast; it's trying to reorient itself without a leading character while still maintaining continuity between this and the previous two seasons. I thought series one segued well into series two but the third has been lacking direction. Also we might attribute this to my watching solely for actors rather than any perceptible story, but again, because there's less story to watch for. The first two seasons had a good combination of sheer plot and action combined with some really intriguing characters. The ambiguity of Guy and Allan balanced the moral absolutism of most of the other characters. And their shifting loyalties were well-integrated with the plot. Guy is definitely less interesting this time around and Allan and most of the gang are all but invisible. Isabella has been a bright spot but I think the writers jerk her around from one extreme to the other so much that she loses a lot of nuance. I was looking forward to Friar Tuck as well, but he's disappointed so far, through no fault of David Harewood.

In any case, I write this because I thought that last weekend's episode returned to some of the emotional sophistication of the last two seasons. (Did I just use the word sophistication with Robin Hood?) It was nice seeing hints of goodness in Guy, and this is where Richard Armitage gets to show off that LAMDA training, or talent, whichever route you want to go. Being a baddie can be fun - see Toby Stephens who has been deliciously evil throughout his run. But the show has been lacking emotional traction since Guy's descent, so his relationship with Meg, a fellow prisoner played by Holliday Grainger, was refreshing. Actually, the interaction between Guy, Meg, and Isabella was challenging in that it gave substance to the whole sibling squabble. Previous episodes saw a duplicitous Isabella trying to stick it to her bastard brother, but their exchanges often felt like a ping pong match with nothing to really ground each other's accusations. The unexpected arrival of Isabella's husband and the ensuing chaos, however, gives new life to this relationship, particularly as Isabella is confronted with Guy's sympathies towards Meg, who tries to spring him from the dungeon after he demonstrates civility, even kindness, to her. (Side note: I thoroughly enjoyed Holliday Grainger's performance and hope to see more of her in the future. Which will probably happen because she's appeared in everything, including Merlin and Demons. I didn't particularly care for her in those roles but she was quite affecting as a headstrong but somewhat innocent girl here.) I'm at last looking forward to the next few episodes where it is revealed that Bobbin and Guy are brothers in one way or another. There will be some flashback sequences next week, so this should again give some emotional complexity to season, however belated.

Since I started the night obsessed about Alex Fong, I should end there too. His new movie comes out end of July, I believe. It's called 竊聽風雲 (Overheard) and also stars Lau Ching Wan, Daniel Wu, and Louis Koo. I'm excited about at least one of those actors. The movie's about stock traders and corruption, both things near and dear to Hong Kong. Presser the other day. The question everyone's asking: Why is Louis Koo in shorts? Or why such a flat title? Or why don't they make awesome thrillers with strong female characters in Hong Kong?

This looks like an unhealthy amount of testosterone.

Love and Again

I just finished watching 駁命老公追老婆 (Love and Again) and it was so absolutely romantic and caught me completely by surprise. I wasn't looking for a romantic series, certainly not a TVB show, but this had everything I needed - except a thesis which I delayed in order to watch this 20 part series. The unfortunate thing is that I have been sucked back into HK entertainment land with no time to spare. A lengthy review to come, but the rundown is that I like it partly because the story is fresh, as far as TVB goes. Fresh in that it isn't about falling in love but about keeping it even in death. I got into a discussion about this and 天幕下的戀人 (Under the Canopy of Love) with my favorite TVB partner who chastised me for even comparing the two. Both are excellent, and I even admit that UTCOL is superior in casting, acting, writing, and story, but they really are two different shows as far as the love theme goes. Anyway, I'm also in love with Alex Fong Chung Sun, something I avoided successfully for many years. But his super nice guy role was too overwhelming and I succumbed. (Also buttressed by his super brooding cop role in One Nite in Mongkok, his super charming mob boss role in Drink Drank Drunk, and his super underrated architect role in Building Blocks of Life. I'm a sucker.)

And a video for fun. This is Miriam Yeung's theme song from Drink Drank Drunk called My Drunk Love (我的醉愛).