Cesium Fallout Review: Disaster with a Touch of Tong Yao

#TongYao #童瑶 #HongKongCinema #FilmReview #CesiumFallout #焚城 #AndyLau #劉德華 #BaiYu #白宇 #KarenMok #莫文蔚

I’ll admit, my main reason for watching Cesium Fallout was Tong Yao—I’m working through her entire filmography. A friend who reviewed the movie warned me that her screen time would be limited. Even before his warning, I suspected as much when I saw her credited as a guest star in a disaster film. That usually signals a brief but pivotal role.

Hong Kong movie: Cesium Fallout 焚城 release announcement

 #TongYao #HongKongCinema #CesiumFallout #焚城 #AndyLau #BaiYu #KarenMok

Tong Yao’s management officially announced via Weibo today that she will be making a guest-starring appearance in the film.

The trailer actually looks more than decent, which makes me hopeful that it might be a fun movie to watch. I’m likely to watch this in the cinema simply because Tong Yao is in it. She hasn’t appeared in a film in years, and there is no clear indication that she’ll make a return to it. So I wouldn’t want to pass on an opportunity to see her on the big screen.

Review ~ Fearless (2006) #霍元甲 (#孙俪 #SunLi)

This is #SunLi 's debut film, although by the time she did this film, she's already had a few drama series under her belt.

I actually watched Fearless back in 2006 when it first screened which is why my memory of Fearless was a little hazy till I recently re-watched this for Sun Li's sake.  I thought that I liked this film enough but after watching it a second time, I realized that I probably didn't like it as much as I remembered which is why it's one of the few Jet Li films I have never watched again till recently.  This has nothing to do with Sun Li or even Jet Li.  I think I just didn't like the story that much.

I get what this pretty inaccurate biopic of Huo Yuanjia (霍元甲) is trying to do and say but I don't know if it really works that well.  The fighting scenes were cool but maybe I'm tired of the "man makes massive error → falls into depression and self destructs → only to have his soul saved after he is physically saved by native tribe / simple kindhearted girl / simpler way of living etc → thus finds redemption by the end of the film" type of story-line.  I think the story is pretty simple and kind of cliche to the point that I'm not really bothered about possibly giving any spoilers away because I don't think it's that hard to guess what would happen next. 

Kalafina ~ far on the water - HK only live goods

Hello, it's been a while.  Super busy and tired but I really wanna try and squeeze this in before I go off to work.

So Kalafina just recently concluded the Hong Kong leg of their far on the water tour over the weekend.  Let me just take a short moment to shed a few tears that their tour did not include Singapore. :'( :'( :'(   I could not afford the time or the money to go since I already planned to be in Japan for the fotw special tour lives that end the tour so even though HK is nearer and cheaper than Japan and there are autograph opportunities....  sigh.... no go for me. :(

STILL.... some friends of mine went. :)  And they helped me to get the HK only live good which is this Thermo mug.  So I decided to take a couple photos and share it with anyone else who's interested. :)

Not the best photos but I was in a real hurry this morning, so these will have to do.  Oh... I also asked my friend to buy me a wristband but that's not a HK only good.  I'll do that in another post tonight, along with the Yuki Kajiura vol.12 pamphlet someone else asked me about. :)

Fate/Zero Blu-ray Vol.1 (w/ Kajiura OST) & Kalafina (Animate promo)

EDIT: 10th Nov 2011 - I didn't realise that this blu-ray release comes with ENGLISH SUBS!!!!  Which kind of makes it a better purchase than the Mahou Shoujo Madoka Jpn limited edition releases which had no English subs.

Link to the PRE-ORDER for the blu-ray set at CDJapan .
Fate / Zero Blu-ray Disc Box I [5Blu-ray + 2CD]

Oh man... I just knew they were going to do this. Once again they have packaged the anime with Kajiura Yuki's OST for the series... just like they did for Mahou Shoujo Madoka. The price for this set won't be pretty.  The price at CDJapan is 38000yen... you'll get 1140 points (3% of total cost) which works out to be 1140yen discount on a future purchase. 

Yikes... that's not a cheap set at all... but that said, this is the type of pricing one gets with blu-ray releases of anime releases in Japan.  They only come in cheaper when you pick them up much, much later when they re-release budget sets etc.

This set is likely to be a relatively nice set for fans with money to spend.  Although it's only half the series, so you'll only get ep1-13 on 5 blu-rays... you'll also get 2 additional cds.  One of those cds will be Kajiura Yuki's OST, the other will be a drama CD.  The set will also come with a Production Note and other extras.  I'm not sure what this Production Note will look like... but it'll likely have interviews and art-work etc.  It's unlikely to be as nice as a stand-alone artbook release like the Mahou Shojo Madoka Production Note release but it should be relatively decent.

Hence, in the end, it works out to be of somewhat the same value as the Mahou Shoujo Madoka limited edition blu-ray releases.... except that this will only be half the series since Fate/Zero is a 26 ep series.  I'm hesitant to get this set even though I would really like to get Kajiura's OST but sigh.... I'm not sure if I like Fate/Zero the anime as much as I LOVED Mahou Shoujo Madoka yet.  I partly decided to get the Mahou Shoujo set for Kajiura and partly because I loved the anime.

It's cheaper to get the set at Amazon Japan though.  Amazon Japan is giving a 26% discount and the set will weigh in at 29526yen which is loads cheaper than CDJapan but Amazon Japan gives the buyer lesser options with regards to shipping.  I'll have to think long and hard about it but I'm leaning towards not getting the set and hoping that a few years from now... we may get a stand-alone OST featuring some of the signature tracks from the anime.

One of singles I don't own yet.

ALSO... aside from hosting Kalafina Museum in several of the Animate stores in Japan, Animate will also be holding a separate promotion for several anisong artists.  Kalafina will be one of them.  If I read the post from Sony correctly, if you buy a cd / dvd / bd from Kalafina (and other featured artists) from an Animate store during the promotion period from 8th Nov to 11th Dec, you'll get an artist card.  I don't know what an artist card is but it seems this is the 4th time that Animate has held the Anime Artist Fair (アニメイトアーティストフェア) event so maybe they have given out artist cards before and those who have them know what they are.  

I will be in Japan during that period and plan on paying a visit to Animate.  I'm still missing 2 or 3 singles in my Kalafina collection so if they have something I want, I may get it and hopefully get the artist card too.

Lastly, before I go... for those who can read Japanese, Vol. 7 of Lisani! features the Fate/Zero anime.  There is also a joint interview with Kajiura and Gen Urobuchi about Kajiura's music.  I've ordered the magazine. :)

Lisani! (Listen Anime!) Vol.7 [Cover & Top Feature] Fate/Zero / Sony Magazines

That's all from me for now... I need to get ready for lunch... it's my mum's birthday celebration today. :)  Later y'all. :)

Hong Kong's celebrities sing to raise funds for Japan's disaster

Been horribly busy, tired and frustrated by some stuff... hence, not blogging lately cuz I just don't have the energy.

But I really want to post this youtube video up.  The Japanese accent is of course off, but you can't take away the sincerity. :)  Two thumbs up from me. :)

Hope you guys enjoy the song.  :)

Oh and here is the link to the article.

I need to go now... lots of stuff to do.  Have a good week guys. :)

cheers

p.s. Here is the Mandarin version and Cantonese version.  :)  Not surprisingly, the Cantonese version sounds the nicest but unfortunately, I don't really have time to find the full Cantonese version.  When I have time, I'll see if I can find it and post it. up.  K... really got to go. :)

良いお年を！

Hello!!!!!  This will be the last post I write for 2010.  How has everyone's year been?  Mine has been fabulous for the most part. :)

National Museum, S'pore (Pompeii Exhibit)

Japanese Creative Centre, Spore (manga exhibit)

I've completed a one year diploma course in 3D Animation and Visual Effects, got a job within 2 weeks of completing my final project, visited Hong Kong and Japan, attended my first concert in approximately ten years, got myself a new obsession, began new projects, finished old projects, made new friends, strengthen old relationships,visited lots of museums in Singapore, took lots of fun photos, ate lots of great and interesting food,

Paradise Dynasty - multi-flavoured Xiao Long Bao

 learnt lots of cool stuff.... (video - zbrush modelling project for school)

Yeah... it was a good year. :)

Victoria Habour, Hong Kong

 Due to the heavy workload in the first half of my diploma course, I found it near impossible to do anything meaningful on this blog at all in the first half of 2010 and it is with some regret that I did not manage to document any of my trip to Hong Kong.  I did shoot lots of photos of food though and ate my favourite roast pigeon in Hong Kong.

Roast Pigeon, Hong Kong

I only wished that I knew that my pay-per-use roaming had been turned off before I left Singapore so that I could have turned it on and updated via mobile blog at least once a day.

So just to commemorate my trip to Hong Kong so that I do not forget about it in the years to come, here is a quick and short write up. :)  I visited Hong Kong from the 12th - 15th July 2010.  I went there with 11 other classmates from my diploma class during our term break before we began our specialization term.

While in Hong Kong, I visited Victoria Peak and Ocean Park for the very first time.

Victoria Peak, Hong Kong

Ocean Park, Hong Kong

My previous other trip to Hong Kong was more than 10 years ago when I was an obsessed HK film fan and that trip was mostly concentrated around eating, shopping for HK films and TVB dramas and a visit to an old a dear friend who was then stationed in HK for work purposes.  On this trip, I met YTSL a fellow blogger and Asia film fan, whom I had not met for years and years and years.  We had dinner and watched a really funny HK film called La Comedie Humaine.  It was cool. :)

wanton noodles, Hong Kong

Aside from eating lots of Hong Kong food like awesome wanton noodles, Hong Kong will also need to be remembered for making me obsessed with going to Japan to catch Kalafina in concert. :)

While in Hong Kong, while we were making our way about the city using the subway system, I saw an ad for a Kalafina concert to be held in Hong Kong.  Now at that time, I was just becoming quite obssessed with Kajiura Yuki's music again.

Kalafina HK concert Ad, subway, HK

 After watching Noir in 2002, I had began to fall in love with Kajiura's music and that was further cemented by my love of her work in the .hack series and the Mai Hime series and sequels.  However, the lack of availability and the prohibitive cost of Japanese soundtrack cds in Singapore lead me to lose touch with her music and I listening to mostly techno/electronica fusion classical music, bossa nova, folk, country, classical music, Chinese pop music etc for a while before I began studying the Japanese language about 2 years ago.

postcard received w/cd purchase at concert

I decided sometime late last year that since I would not have very much time to study the Japanese language due to the extremely heavy workload for the diploma course, that the best way for me to try and keep in touch with the language as much as possible was to immerse myself with as much Japanese entertainment as possible.  So aside from watching Japanese dramas only for a while, I also started to listen only to Japanese music and started first with my Zard obsession when all I was listening to was Zard, then mixed in with lots of Utada Hikaru and finally, I revisited Kajiura Yuki after listening to some Kalafina music namely Hikari no Senritsu, Storia and Iirica while looking for more music to listen to.  Hahahaha... so I am slow... for some reason, it didn't occur to me to look for more Kajiura music first because I had forgotten that she also writes open and end themes for anime, not just lyric-less soundtrack music.



cds purchased in HK

small card received at concert

To cut a long story short, I loved Hikari no Senritsu, Storia and Iirica and virtually everything that I could get my hands on that was Kalafina and FictionJunction and Kajiura Yuki. :)  Still, I never really thought about going to a concert till I saw that ad in Hong Kong.  It then dawned on me how close and yet how very far it was for me to attend that concert.  The concert was only a few weeks away in August 2010 but I was already in Hong Kong in the middle of July with no realistic hope of attending the concert in August.  It also dawned on me that the last concert I had attended was more than 10 years ago when I saw Faye Wong (one of my previous obsessions :) ) live in Las Vegas.  This crazy desire to go to Kalafina's concert in December began to take root in my head and by September, I think, I had already began concrete plans to attend the concert in December.  The trip was meant to be my present to myself and in order to make this present mean something to me, I worked damn hard at finishing my reel by my personal deadline so that this trip would really be a celebration of a good end to what had been a very tiring year in school.

concert program

scan fr. concert program

In the end, I am glad I was in Hong Kong and I am glad I saw that Kalafina ad because that ad put in place a series of events that led me to Japan again, a country I had not intended to visit till perhaps 2011.  Not only did I love the Kagayaku Sora no Shijima ni wa (輝く空の静寂には) concert, the preparation to go to this concert led to my meeting old classmates and friends from the US and from work.  My second trip to Japan was FANTASTIC.  There were some hic-cups and a few frustrations but in the end, all I can remember is going to the concert with a very dear friend (thank you Danielle), meeting up with friends that I had not seen in ten years (Itsuko and Teiji), ex-colleagues whom I had not seen in 5 years (Koji) and 2 years (Manami) and having a ball of a time with Danielle, SY, Darlene and Christel.

onigiri & other snacks fr Family Mart

fish sperm

I also ate some strange stuff like fish sperm, visited a Maid Cafe, learnt "moe moe magic",  fell in love with Umeshu Soda, consumed enough onigiri to feed a small country and took lots of goofy photos.  Hahahaha... it was a good trip and I want to go back to Japan again.  :)




I'm happy I now have a job again.  Now I can start to seriously save again so that I can put some money away for the future and also to fund my trips and other obsessions.  =)  I'm seriously glad that I took up this diploma course too.  Yes, I know a lot of people thought I was crazy to ditch a perfectly good job to go back to school for an entire year and switch careers mid-way though my life.  But you know what?  If I didn't take advantage of the recession and reduction in earnings from my freelance work, if I didn't take advantage of the increase in government spending on subsided education for those looking to upgrade and do a mid-career switch, I would be the greater fool.  It was a risk and I am very happy that by the end of 2010, it proved to be a risk worth taking.

2010 was a great year.  It may not in the end become the greatest year in my life, fact is, I hope it doesn't because I want greater years to come.  I am greedy that way. :)  But what is certain is that 2010 was a very memorable year and a year I would like to remember for a very long time. :)

Here's to a great 2011, more good times, more good food, more fun trips, more safe journeys, more concerts, more good music, more success, more good health and more happiness.  I wish all my family, my friends and all who chance upon this blog the very best next year.  I wish you all much happiness, good health and good times. 良いお年を!!!   :)  I am off to make myself some Umeshu Soda to welcome the new year. :)

TVB - Steps (舞動全城 )

I know I said I was going to write part 2 of my afterthoughts on my trip to Beijing but that'll have to wait as I now feel like writing a comment on the latest TVB series that I'm currently watching.

As usual, I won't go into details with the sypnosis of the series as you can read about it here in English and here in Chinese.

I must say that this really isn't a very good series at all and if I ever wondered just how little tolerance I have for fluffy romances, I think I've no doubts now that I have very little tolerance for TVB series that are light on drama and story. This series seems like a vehicle to promote the younger TVB fadans and I guess qualifies more like a typical idol series packed full of good looking people and virtually no story.


Bernice Liu dancing, unfortunately, the story is less about dancing and more about herbal tea... grrrr.

The series did start of well enough and I enjoyed the first two episodes and the series did setup most of the relationships and the potential conflicts well and I was genuinely interested in how some of it was going to play out. The English title isn't very elegant but unlike many of TVB's English title, this title actually makes some sense, although sadly not much else makes sense in this series. The series' Chinese title "舞動全城" can be loosely translated as "the whole city dances", hence "steps", as in dance steps. The opening MTV sequence is also entirely about dance, so forgive me if I sound somewhat annoyed when I say that the series is more about $&%*#@&*#@# herbal tea and dumb generic romances than it is about dancing of any kind at all. While I admit that I've not yet finished the series but I'm at ep13 which is more than half-way through the series and the dance portions are quite peripheral to the main story.

The characters are mostly stereotypical and painted in broad strokes of good and bad. The good guys are very good, forgiving, nice and gracious. The bad guys or the characters which aren't the main characters are spoilt, bratty, petty etc. and have few redeeming qualities. But that's not the worst of it. Aside from being shallow, these characters' basic nature seem to change whenever the script needs them to change.


Stephen Hyunh and Chen Fala

What made me mad enough to write this entry is what they did to Chen Fala's character, Ching Ka-man. Strangely enough, I actually found this minor character to be the most interesting of all the characters in this series and I think that's because all the main characters were so damn bland. The main characters, Ching Ka-tsun (Steven Ma), Li Sum-ying (Bernice Liu) and Yeung Sze-man (Kate Tsui) are nice, smart and almost flawless and therefore often boring and sometimes worse, good to the point of nauseating. In contrast, Ka-man is spoilt, angry and self-destructive. Her backstory also gives her even more depth. When she was rather young, her father died and her mother found herself unable to grief, work and care for her two young children all by herself. So she placed Ka-man in the care of the child's grand-mother and sent her son Ka-tsun to boarding school and the family barely saw each other, if at all, and certainly didn't live as a family till Ka-man was in high school. As a result she's deeply insecure, highly emotional, needy and resentful. She's a time-bomb, filled with anger, a sense of abandonment and a desperate need to feel loved, especially from her mother. Her brother, Ka-tsun, is apparently and unrealistically unaffected by this childhood trauma because he's not only older but also because he chose and forced his mother to send him away, unlike Ka-man who didn't have a choice.

At the beginning of the series, it seemed as though they were going to make Ka-man Sum-ying's main adversary. Ka-man takes an instant dislike to her and exhibits fits of jealous rage because she thinks that her mother likes Sum-ying more than herself and Ka-man would go out of her way to set Sum-ying up. While I wished that the script had made Ka-man's antics more intelligent, since the character didn't seem to be set up to be a stupid one, still I was glad that there was some conflict in the dance arena instead of in the herbal tea company.

Then suddenly, in the middle of the series, Ka-man in one of her drunken rages accidentally hurts someone and everyone rallies around her to try and help her out. Suddenly, in a blink of an eye, Ka-man becomes a docile, understanding, loving daughter and sister.

Oh boy.... I was sooooooo pissed. This was by far the most interesting character in the series till ep13 at least. I was hoping that they would develope her and her family a lot more because they have an unsusal and relationship which seemed always in danger of breaking up. But nooooooo..... because Chen Fala isn't one of the more important actresses in this series, they abruptly change her character so that they can drop her storyline midway and give us all the inane, boring and generic romantic blah-blah crap between Ka-tsun and Sum-ying, Sze-man and Dickson (Matthew Ko), Li Lik-keung (Sum-ying's brother, played by Wayne Lai) and Yao Lum-lum (Claire Yiu). Dancing was also abandoned and the herbal tea company's business conflicts took centre-stage.


Pix 1: Wayne Lai, Steven Ma, Pix 2: Bernice Liu, Kate Tsui, Pix 3: Matthew Ko, Wu Fung

Thankfully the performances in general are okay and Steven Ma and Bernice Liu are very watchable. Wayne Lai maintains his usual standard even though his character makes an abrupt and annoying change in the second quarter of the series. Regular B-lister Claire Yiu is also fine. Kate Tsui isn't fantastic but she's not terrible although I do find the quality of her voice to be lacking. I'm also still decidedly unimpressed with Stephen Wong, his horrible enunciation and his slightly wooden acting.


Chen Fala with Steven Hyunh in pix 1. Chen Fala in the centre, Bernice Liu on the right.

The person I actually found myself liking, surprisingly enough, is Chen Fala. For an inexperienced actress, I think she acquitted herself well enough and even though she was saddled with a very unlikeable character, she played her well enough that I found this character less annoying than sad and troubled and hence, sympathetic. It helps too that I do find Chen Fala rather good-looking and like her smile. :)


Pix 1: Steven Ma with the some of the support cast and on his left is the unfortunately Akina Hong Wah who gets yet another thankless role. Pix 2: Bernice Liu and Steven Ma with Claire Yiu who gets one of her rare more important roles in a TVB series.

Bottomline is, don't rent this series unless you really like the stars and I mean REALLY like them or unless you like fluffy romances which don't stimulate the mind. If you like drama and if you like your characters and plot to progress logically, then save your money and go rent something else. Unless a major miracle happens from ep13 till ep20, I'm unlikely to change my assessment of this series.

PART 2 - added 29th Oct 2007

Okay, I've just finished this series and it's official, this series is absolute trash and if it wasn't because I was working and wanted some tv on and if it wasn't because I actually wanted to know what happens to Ka-man, I would have dropped this series at ep13. There was no miracle, there was only disaster as all the characters, especially the so called good guys, managed to become even more unbearable than before.

All I can say is, no wonder Ka-man turned out so screwed up. Not only did she have a really horrid childhood, she got a mother who really didn't know how to help her obviously troubled daughter and a brother who's idea of showing concern is to think that things will work out by themselves and a future sister-in-law who's such a good person she's probably not even homo sapien, no wonder Ka-man turned to the first person who pays her some real attention. Never mind that this woman is so obviously nasty. Ka-man is so desperate for anyone to be the mother she never knew that even this totally I'm-so-bad-it-is-oozing-out-of-my-pores woman would do. It helped poor Ka-man even less that the script also decided to screw her over by abruptly changing her into turn-over-new-leaf daughter just so as to abruptly change her yet again into vengeful, hate-filled, self-destructive daughter. Really, it would have made so much more sense and taken just as little amount of effort to show that Ka-man hasn't exorcised the demons from her childhood. Seriously, I can't really blame her either, her family continues to pay her as little attention when she's good as when she was bad and hey, since it's more fun being bad, can anyone blame Ka-man for becoming bad again?!?!?!? I certainly can't. Fact is, she's simply the most comprehensible character in this series. From the very beginning till the end, Ka-man has always been a lost little girl who's self-destructive tendencies were really her way of crying out for help and all this stems from her feelings of abandonment and loneliness. I really did feel for this character in the end because her mother really did treat Sum-ying better, you never get the feeling any time in the series, except for when Ka-man got into trouble, that her mother even cared about her. Guess that explains why Ka-man got into so much trouble, even though I doubt if the script-writers intended it to be this deep given how shallow the rest of the script and characters are.

Seriously, the script should have shifted the focus of this series to Ka-man and her family. They would have been so much more fascinating, what a bloody waste. Another advantage of making the Ching family the focus of the story would be that the dance would be at the centre of this series as it should have been from the very beginning.

And really, one must give newcomer Chen Fala a ton of credit. She really did play this character relatively well because she is one of the reasons this character worked for me in spite of the inconsistent scripting.

Okay, that's enough ranting from me. I've wasted enough time and brain cells over this pointless and lazily scripted series. =(

A Change of Destiny 天機算 (TVB) - review

copyright TVB

Before I left for Vietnam, I finished A Change of Destiny. I'll try and keep this review relatively short as the truth is there is virtually nothing good to say about this disastrous 20-episode series. TVB's track record this year has been pretty dismal. And although I've yet to see all the series released, I have seen the majority of them and most of them have been frustratingly below par.

So back to this series. This is probably as bad as Devil's Disciples in its aimlessness. The script lacked focus and showed a lack of ideas, research and worst... effort.

It's a real pity as I felt that this series had some potential but far too much time was spent on setting up the relationships and the personalities of each of the major characters. While this is important, it really doesn't take more than half the series to set up the protagonists' personalities and history with each other. Seriously, I don't think I need to see 15 episodes of the two main male characters Yip Yeung (Benny Chan Ho Man who was horribly annoying and really over-acting in this series) and Yuen Hei (Steven Ma Jun Wai 馬浚偉) being idiotically juvenile for me to know that they are immature and that Yip Yeung is a bratty rich kid while Yuen Hei is a poor kid who wants more.

This series also suffers from a very common TVB series failing and that is the over emphasis on the romance in the series. Now if this was a romance or romantic comedy or a typical idol series, the concentration on the trials and tribulations suffered by the various couples would not only be fine but warranted. But A Change of Destiny isn't a romance and by placing so much emphasis on the silly romance and worse, the more juvenile aspects of romance, it only makes this series seem either devoid of ideas or lazily scripted.

The characters in this series are also terribly badly written and they change at will depending on where the writer feels he wants the story to go. With 20 episodes to play with, it is appalling that the writers/producers of this series didn't make better use of it to focus on character development so as to better illustrate the theme of this series. It just won't do to have characters like Yip Yeung and Yuen Hei flip-flop without any proper explanation as to how or why their characters change the way they do, or how their relationship with each other can change so drastically. They go from enemies to friends in the space of one scene. Just giving the viewers one scene to say that they are in a similar predicament and hence, begin to feel sympathy for each other after episodes on end of them hating each others guts just doesn't cut it. It is difficult for the viewer to figure out just how and why they would begin helping each other out.

Yip Yeung and Yuen Hei's characters are horribly contradictory and while I know the writer hopes to show that these are imperfect characters, his decision to place too much emphasis on their juvenile and immature antics and rivalry for a good part of the series gives them so much imperfection that it is difficult to reconcile the better parts of these men's characters with their worse halves. And in the end, they come across more ridiculous than imperfect.

It doesn't make it easier when the series introduces unrealistic and inconsistent characters like Princess Fei Fung (Mimi Lo) and her maid Sum Yi (Selena Li Sze Wan 李詩韻). While they do try and setup the fact that Princess Fei Fung is an atypical princess, she has so little princess in her character that she's more like just a girl from a rich family which lends little credibility to her character. Her maid Sum Yi doesn't fare much better. She is at times too streetwise to be a palace maid and at times so naive and pure that she seems like the typical cloistered maid of the imperial palace. Sum Yi, like the rest of this series, makes very little sense.

In the end, the only characters I feel favorably for are Fok Yi Na (Shirley Yeung Si Kei 楊思琦), Li Sing Tin (Yuen Wah 元華) and Yuen Zi Yan (Rebecca Chan Sau Chu 陳秀珠). Although, I usually find Yuen Wah more annoying than effective in most TVB series, his Li Sing Tin is a good person and his actions are relatively well explained and can be easily understood. The same goes for Fok Yi Na and Yuen Zi Yan's characters. But these characters aren't the focus in this series and they aren't even that memorable and hence, aren't able to add too much to this dismal series at all.

It is a real pity that the executive producer of this series didn't exercise better control of this series. It really did have the potential to explore the greater themes of fate, destiny and free will. It is also the perfect opportunity to introduce audiences to one of China's lesser known mystical books, the Tui Bei Tu (推背圖), loosely translated as "Back Pushing Diagrams". Click here and here for more info.

The series begins by detailing the historical backdrop for the series and introducing the audience to a lesser known Chinese book of divination and prophecy called the Tui Bei Tu. The reason why I call it a lesser known book is because the book that most people know is the I Ching. The easiest way to describe the Tui Bei Tu is to say that it is like a Chinese version of a book written by Nostradamus. It is a book about prophecy and it is as open to interpretation as the prophecies written by Nostradamus.

The basic question this series asks is if one can use these traditional Chinese methods of divination to try and predict the future and to change one's fate. Several characters are obsessed with trying to change their fate by either predicting the future using the existing signs or trying to manipulate things and people so as to swing things in their favour.

So the series begins the story in the Tang Dynasty and first introduces to audiences the joint creators of the Tui Bei Tu, Li Chun Feng 李淳風 and Yuen Tian Gang 袁天罡. The series then briefly talks about how these two men became bitter rivals and how the Tui Bei Tu was then divided between the men and passed on to their descendants. The Li family held on to the diagrams while the Yuen family held on to the inscriptions for each of the 60 diagrams. Without the pairing of the two parts, it would be impossible to decipher the prophecies. With that, the Li family and the Yuen family parted ways and they also agreed that their two families will have nothing to do with each other in the future. Now as we all know, in any story, this wouldn't do and so naturally, their descendents do meet and everyone from Song Emperor Zhao Guang Yin to Yip Yeung would like a piece of it.

Now in the series, Li Shing Tin holds the diagrams and Yuen Zi Yan holds the inscriptions and the key to unlocking the secret of the Tui Bui Tu. While looking for his long-lost wife and daughter, Li Shing Tin will take on Yuen Hei as his disciple and he will also meet Yip Yueng. What is interesting about Yuen Hei and Yip Yeung is that the two young men are born on the exact same day and at the exact same time. Yuen Hei is thus puzzled and dissatisfied that he should be an orphan and poor while Yip Yeung is a rich and spoilt young man. The question that Yuen Hei wants the answer to is if Yip Yeung and him have the exact same horoscopes, then how is it that he doesn't live a better life. Yuen Hei wants Li Shing Tin to help him to change his destiny. Meanwhile, Yip Yeung will face several trials later in the series and he too will want to change his destiny.

So the stage is set for the opportunity to discuss more interesting issues like whether a man's life and future is beholden to powers beyond him or if a man's destiny lies in his own hands. The series makes a few feeble attempts to answer the various interesting questions they bring up but all these attempts are quickly squashed under the weight of poor scripting, characterization and plot progression. And while the series does try and reach for a more powerful ending by suggesting that Yip Yueng and Yuen Hei's destinies lie in the decisions they make, still it is too little too late as these more important plot points come far too late in the series and they are surrounded by too much inconsistency in the plot and the characters for the series to make any significant statements about the questions it asks.

What a pity, what a waste. In short, do not rent this series. It's certainly not worth the money nor perhaps the amount of time I took to write this longer than expected review. =)

Devil's Disciples 强剑 (TVB) - Review

The poster and the main cast, minus the veterans.

As always... a spoiler free review.

I was really looking forward to this series and have a favourable view towards most of the cast members so it pains me somewhat to say that this has to be one of the worst TVB series produced this year. Right now, I can't decide if this is as bad or worse than The Brink of Law and the only thing that's majorly in its favour right now is that Devil's Disciples is only 20 episodes long.

This is very disappointing work from Lau Kar Ho (刘家豪) who's The Gentle Crackdown was quite a good watch and is in my opinion one of TVB's best series in the last couple of years. Lau's When Rules Turn Loose was a bit of an iffy watch but benefited from sterling performances from the veterans and very good performances from Patricia Lau Cheuk Kei 劉綽琪 (sadly, no longer with TVB) and Wayne Lai Yiu Cheung 黎耀祥. Although Devil's Disciples included both Patricia Lau and Wayne Lai, poor Patricia's role was so minuscule that even if she was as brilliant as she was in When Rules Turn Loose, she could not save this series.

It is doubly disappointing that Lau wasted a cast which not only boasts the talents of Patricia Lau and the ever reliable Wayne Lai but also included Law Koon Lan 羅冠蘭 and some of TVB's more prominent young talents like Bosco Wong Chung Chak 黃宗澤, Bernice Liu Bik Yi 廖碧兒, Kevin Cheng Ka Wing 鄭嘉穎, Shirley Yeung Sze Kei 楊思琦 and Sharon Chan Man Chi 陳敏之. Terrible scripting, poor direction, flat characterization and bad casting doomed this series almost from the very beginning.

As usual, I won't really go into the synopsis of this series. If you want to read the English synopsis, please click here. There really isn't much of a story in this series. It's pretty much genre stuff and nothing is too hard to guess anyway. Fact is, they pretty much revealed who the main bad guy is in the very first scene anyway so no suspense there and the stupid opening song pretty much reveals who the couples are too. I'm not even one of those people who believes that every series must have surprises and be different and fresh. Just take a look at the very enjoyable Face to Fate. Now Face to Fate doesn't have a storyline that is all that different from other wuxia series but where it does succeed is that its story is tightly told, well paced and the leads are well cast and it is precisely all these things that Devil's Disciples lacks.

Devil's Disciples actually began reasonable well and gave us a few quirky characters who had the potential to be relatively likeable by the end. But by the end of the series, your patience with Mrs Shing (Law Koon Lan) and Shing Kung (Johnson Lee Sze Jit 李思捷), the hero Shing Fung's (Bosco Wong) mother and older brother have probably run quite thin. Initially, I thought that the humour was quite well placed and that this series aspired to be like The Gentle Crackdown in some ways until I figured out that one of the biggest problem with this series is that, unlike The Gentle Crackdown which is a comedy, Devil's Disciples has a lot of serious drama in the series and the physical humour, the cheers and the musical song and dance bits sit very, very, very uncomfortably with the serious portions. Beside the pointless script, it is this uneven tone throughout this series that is one of the series' big failings.


Bosco Wong and Kevin Cheng

It didn't help too that aside from the meandering storytelling and the ill placed comic moments, the executives at TVB decided to cast Kevin Cheng (plays King Lui) and Bernice Liu (plays Pak Tong Chi Lung) in this series. I'll admit right off the bat that I'm not the greatest admirer of Kevin Cheng's acting abilities. Now that is not to say that I don't like him or that he sucks but to me Kevin Cheng is not a versatile actor. He is very good in lighter series and happier roles like the ones he played in Yummy Yummy and Under the Canopy of Love but serious, brooding wuxia hero he is not. Kevin Cheng seemed a little ill at ease in the role and he also didn't seem able to grasp the type of movement and speech patterns required for wuxia series.


Bernice Liu

The lack of understanding of the required movement and speech patterns for the wuxia series is definitely the biggest reason why Bernice Liu is completely inadequate to play the role of the Second Senior Disciple of the Sacred Sword Clan and the daughter of Pak Tong Ngo, master of the Sacred Sword Clan (played by experience wuxia series veteran Eddy Ko Hung 高雄). She lacks the bearing of a proud, confident and powerful heroine who is an important member of the Wulin's most righteous, prominent and influential clan. Let's not talk about the veterans of wuxia like Ada Choi Siu Fun 蔡少芬, Brigitte Lin Qingxia 林青霞, Cheng Pei Pei 鄭佩佩, Sheren Tang Cui Man 鄧萃雯 etc, simply compare Bernice's acting to peers like Tavia Yeung Yee 楊怡 in Face to Fate and Twin of Brothers or Nancy Wu Ding Yan 胡定欣 in the same two series and the difference should be immediately obvious. Bernice Liu is not experienced enough in the wuxia series, or perhaps she's just too Westernise, to grasp the differences required in wuxia, period and modern series. It didn't help too that Bernice Liu was brought up overseas and her Cantonese isn't very strong. She definitely had trouble articulating the more difficult period and wuxia terms in Cantonese which added to her appearing less than capable in this role. Don't get me wrong, I like Bernice Liu and have liked her from as far back as Virtues of Harmony (the period version) and Survivor's Law but there is no denying that she was wrongly cast in this series because currently she just doesn't have enough experience to lead a wuxia series.

I hung on as long as I could before I skipped to the end and then returning to fast forward though episodes 16-18. I jumped to the end thinking that this being a wuxia series about the epic battle between good and evil, that there would be a mother of all battles at the climax of the series but boy was I wrong. Instead, we get an ending which rivals the moronic ending for Square Pegs. The ending was once again a hark back to Lau Kar Ho's more successful series The Gentle Crackdown and we get a lot of silly comedy which grated as what transpired before that was a serious discussion about the merits of letting go of hatred and the death of a major character in the series. In fact, the death of the major character was dealt with as though it was simply an unimportant side-note and it made me mad that the series didn't even end with a big fight and more emotion to justify this death. I felt sorry that this character was needlessly sacrificed since if Lau Kar Ho was going to end this series in such a comic fashion, then it made no sense to have any of the more important characters die or be sad so near the end of this series. It all the more clearly shows just how amateurish Lau Kar Ho's attempt at mixing tones and genres is.

What is also quite unforgiveably bad about this series is the over reliance on computer graphics. Instead of nicely choreographed fights we get CG, CG and more CG and it isn't even great CG. I know CG is expensive and they certainly can't afford CG like the kind we see in Stromriders but that said, the fights scenes use very little real movement and not even a lot of wire-fu. Some credit has to got to Eddy Ko Hung, Wayne Lai and Sharon Chan for making at the very least their fight scenes a little bit more interesting in spite of all the lousy CG in the series.


Sharon Chan

Perhaps the only saving grace in this series is Sharon Chan. I've liked this support actress for quite some time and am glad to see that TVB is giving her B-List roles like the role of Mok Man in this series. She, like Nancy Wu, Leila Tong Ning 唐寧 and to some extent Tavia Yeung really need way more support from TVB. These are most certainly some of their stronger and more versatile actresses and it is a pity that of this lot, not even Tavia Yeung and Leila Tong can say that they've truly led any series.

Sharon Chan is extremely good as Mok Man, the tormented hate-filled leader of the Blood Shadow Clan. Her clan was exterminated years ago by Pak Tong Ngo who lead the "good" clans of the wulin on a crusade to eradicate evil but who actually had an ulterior motive to steal a treasure from the Blood Shadow Clan. Sharon Chan's performance as Mok Man had traces of the brilliance Ada Choi showed as the temperamental and sometimes cruel Bride with White Hair in TVB's The Romance of the White Haired Maiden and if you know me, you'll know that that is one of the highest compliments I can pay to a TVB actress. Sharon Chan's Mok Man was tempestuous, temperamental, proud, cruel and powerful but yet underneath her hate and anger, her Mok Man exhibited pain, sadness and a sense of lost, subtly but surely in her eyes and gestures. It was Mok Man that kept me watching to to the bitter end for without Mok Man, I would have ditched this series by about episode 9 or 10.

In short =) , don't rent this series. Wait for it to be telecast on tv, it's not worth your hard earned money and precious time. And while I felt Sharon Chan was fabulous and the veterans were good as usual, all those reasons are not reason enough to waste both time and money on this series.

The Brink of Law 突圍行動 (TVB) - Review

this poster and all other series related photos courtesy of TVB

I've just finished watching The Brink of Law, a 25 episode series from TVB and I must say that it really isn't very good at all and in fact, it is doubly disappointing since I usually have a good opinion of Mui Siu Ching's series. This series is without a doubt one of her misses and is quite possibly one of the worst series she's ever produced. What a pity, since Mui Siu Ching has produced some classics like Where the Legend Begins (aka Lok Sun 洛神) and The Breaking Point (今生無悔) and other really good series like Colourful Life (錦繡良緣) and The Family Man (絕世好爸).

Perhaps Mui Siu Ching is losing her touch or maybe she's just not moving with the times or perhaps she is just not a suitable producer for this kind of epic family dramas. After all, this is more Chik Kei Yi's territory than Mui Siu Ching. Chik Kei Yi excels in epic struggles of good versus bad, Mui Siu Ching excels in detailing relationships and very often her characters are less flat and her inter-personal dynamics more intimate, more moving and more realistic than Chik Kei Yi's who often sacrifices that for action, suspense and effect. Unfortunately, except for the beginning when Tong Chi Ko's (Steven Ma Jun Wai) family seems quite interesting, we don't even get the usual high quality relationship drama from Mui Siu Ching in The Brink of Law.

As usual, I won't write a synopsis of the series but here are a few links for you to read about it in English. Click here and here.

The characters in this series are relatively flat and are painted in broad strokes of either good or bad and no gray at all, with the exception of Chi Ko's father Tong Tai Hoi who is played rather well by Ha Yu. The rest of the characters like Tong Chi Ko and his friend Tung Yat Jun (Ron Ng Cheuk Hei) are either such good people, they come across as almost unreal, or so evil that you know that they deserve a place in hell. And as in any old fashion good vs bad TVB series, the good guys will win and the bad guys will lose and so no suspense at all.


Shirley Yeung Si Kei (Sung Ka Yee) and Michelle Yim aka Mai Shuet (Sung Kam Chi) are delightfully evil in this series.

The main women characters in this series are also quite colourless with the exception of Sung Ka Yee (played quite despicably well by Shirley Yeung Si Kei) and Sung Kam Chi (played with devilish delight by Michelle Yim aka Mai Shuet). Unfortunately for Bernice Liu, whom I actually rather like, she is saddled with a rather boring character and her Tsui Wing only really becomes more pro-active and involved in the series much later on but than since the men are the heroes in this series, Tsui Wing will get sidelined again towards the end. Kate Tsui comes across the worst amongst the leads as she not only got the most boring role in the series, she also played her Yan Heung Ching so poorly that this character couldn't even be liked simply for being a good and simple girl.

The plot twists in the series actually seems quite amateurish too as I guessed most of them quite early in the series. Part of the reason why some of them seem amateurish is because sudden personality changes will give them away. Watch for Tsui Wing's sudden change in attitude towards Tong Chi Ko in the middle of the and tell me that you can't guess instantly what Tsui Wing's secret is. One of the twists is quite well hidden but if you're a veteran viewer of TVB series and this kinds of dramas, you should be able to guess quite early on too that a particular character isn't as good as he/she seems. In fact, the characters seem to change at will just simply to move the often illogical and unrealistic storyline.


Mai Shuet and Yueh Hua (Tung Jin Lung) - the veterans outshine the younger generation.

There is virtually no character development in this series, hence all the characters come across as caricatures. The only thing that prevents some of them from becoming unwatchable is the performances. The veterans performed very well. Mai Shuet plays against type here and is fun to watch. She also has quite a bit of chemistry with Yueh Hua who plays her character's husband Tung Jin Lung. It's been a while since I've seen Yueh Hua and I must say he still has it in him. He carries himself with so much assurance and authority that even when his character doesn't do much or doesn't seem to be that important to the story, you are still quite captivated by his screen presence.


Another fine performance from the often unappreciated Ha Yu (Tong Tai Hoi).

Ha Yu deserves a special mention as he is wonderful in this series. His Tong Tai Hoi may quite possibly be the character you feel for the most in this series. It's not the first time that Ha Yu has played an outwardly boisterous and almost buffoonish man who is actually using his laughter and clownishness as a veneer to cover up his more vulnerable true self. And perhaps it is because Ha Yu is so adept at it that he plays Tong Tai Hoi with so much ease, yet that is not to say that Ha Yu seems to be breezing though his performance. He is a true professional. Even though I've seen Ha Yu play half a dozen of these kinds of roles, yet he's always managed to reach out and move you each and every single time.


Steven Ma (Tong Chi Ko), Ron Ng (Tung Yat Jun), Kenneth Ma (Yan Heung Ming)

The younger generation of stars don't fare quite as well. Steven Ma is decent and perhaps the most watchable of the younger men in this series. He is unfortunately hampered with a bad script and I just don't find his character that engaging. Kenneth Ma Kwok Ming who plays Yan Heung Ming, Tong Chi Ko's best friend and Yan Heung Ching's older brother isn't spectacular. I have to admit though that I don't particularly like Kenneth Ma as I generally don't find him to be a very good actor and his voice and the way he speaks is terribly annoying which means that at least for me, his voice acting is a complete failure. And as for Ron Ng, saying his performance is banal is already pretty generous of me. Okay, so he is probably not helped by the fact that he is given the most goody-two-shoes character in this series, so much so that this character comes across almost devoid of any common sense it would seem but that said, Ron was still quite unable to give this character at least a modicum of personality and he will have to shoulder the blame for that.


The young female leads - Bernice Liu (Tsui Wing), Kate Tsui (Yan Heung Ching), Shirley Yeung (picture left)


The supporting cast includes Stephen Wong (seated, Tung Yat Lung), Vin Choi (Tung Yat Chiu) and Yoyo Chen (Tong Chi Man). Both Vin Choi and Yoyo Chen acquitted themselves quite well with Yoyo Chen even more watchable than lead Kate Tsui. Stephen Wong once again proves just what a wooden actor he can be.

The younger women actors don't have it much better than the men with the exception of Shirley Yeung who, although gets a pretty stereotypical character and who doesn't quite turn in a classic performace, plays her character with so much enthusiasm that she had me rooting for her. Shirley Yeung's Sung Ka Yee's arch nemesis in this series is the insipid Yan Heung Ching. Sung Ka Yee actually had me agreeing out loud when she raged at Yan Heung Ching at one point in the series, asking her "Are you brainless or simply retarded?" Okay, that was probably loosely translated but the sentiment is there and I wholeheartedly agree with it. Yan Heung Ching is so boring it is hard to see how a person like her, a person who doesn't seem to have any strong opinions, a person who prefers to let her boyfriend run her life, can actually be a fashion designer of so much talent that she can go from junior designer to head of a huge project in a matter of months. No wonder Sung Ka Yee is pissed at her. It doesn't help that Kate Tsui plays Yan Heung Ching so poorly that I can't see why even the almost equally colourless Tung Yat Jun would be interested in her. It doesn't help too that Kate Tsui and Ron Ng have so little chemistry and that their romance often felt quite pointless and a waste of precious and expensive on-air time and everytime they cut to their scenes, the pacing of the series would suffer.


The romances among the younger generation include the triangle between Tung Yat Jun, Yan Heung Ching and Sung Ka Yee. All I can say is it's a pity the script doesn't have Sung Ka Yee come to the realization that Tung Yat Jun and Yan Heung Ching should be left to bore each other to death. The other romance is the much thwarted love affair between Tsui Wing and Tong Chi Ko and although this affair won't set any fires burning, it was still more interesting than the Tung Yat Jun and Yan Heung Ching one because Steven Ma and Bernice Liu are simply better actors and just have more chemistry together.

The plot in this series really feels like it's stuck in the 80s and early 90s. The scenarios are so typical of an epic family drama of that time and parts of the story seem equally fantastical that it doesn't seem to gel with the more realistic and more rounded plotting and characterization from the late 90s onwards. For example, Tung Yat Jun goes from vet in one episode to a very capable businessman in a fashion industry in the next episode. That's ridiculous.

It also really doesn't help that this series suffers from a serious case of misrepresentation. The series is called The Brink of Law in English and seriously, no one really works on the brink of law in this series. They are all either clearly on the good side or clearly on the bad side. There is no brink, no edge and no gray in this series. The Chinese title is even more guilty of misrepresentation. "突圍行動" could be quite literally translated as "Sudden Surround Movement/Action/Operation" and even if my translation didn't make that much sense, you can still get the sense that the title really denotes action and actually implies more specifically police action because of the term "行動" which can be translated as "operation". Now this series has a lawyer in Steven Ma's Tung Chi Ko but he's not seen practising law that often and the law in this series isn't the main focus. There are several policemen and women in this series but the series isn't about them either and they don't really launch that many operations in the series and even if they do, they feel more like they are peripheral to the main plot. But with a title like that, one can be forgiven for thinking that you've rented a police procedural or a series that is about lawyers and court cases etc. That added false expectation can only contribute to a greater sense of dissatisfaction when it is revealed that this is essentially an old-fashion family drama and worse, not even a very good one.



The ever reliable unsung heroes of TVB dramas are the support cast. This support cast boast the talents of Lee Kwok Lun, June Chan Kei, Lo Lok Lam, Yvonne Lam Yi Kei, Mary Hon Ma Li.

In short, I do not recommend renting The Brink of Law at all. Go rent The Price of Greed (千謊百計). That was not only a much better series, it is actually a rather good series and Kate Tsui's performance there is actually far more watchable than her performance in The Brink of Law. And if one has already seen The Price of Greed and is bored beyond words, then rent Dicey Business (賭場風雲). Even though the second half of Dicey Business is really not very good at all, at the very least you'll get more colourful and sympathetic characters and then there is the added pleasure of seen Tavia Yeung Yee (楊怡) putting in another very fine performance in a very different role from the ones she's normally given.


photo courtesy of Buttercrab

Finally, a little pressie for my TVB fans friends. =) Here's a photo of Kevin Cheng Ka Wing (鄭嘉穎). This was taken when he visited Singapore and attended an event at Vivocity. This photo was shot by a friend who goes by the nickname of Buttercrab. If you wish to take a look at the rest of the photos please visit her blogspot. But before I give you a link, please don't post these photos anywhere else, instead direct people to her webbie and also tell those you direct to the site to do the same. Buttercrab is new to the world of blogging and hasn't taken the precaution of watermarking her photos. I know she's worried folks would just philfer her work so please don't scare her off from blogging. Thanks. Right, here's the link.

enjoy =)