Tuesday, September 25, 2012

CTI New Series Press Conference (9/25/2012) – 開腦儆探 (Brain Opening Detective)

Here's the information on the 7th CTI series that was announced today.  Details are from the press release that came out along with the press conference event.

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Today, CTI held a press conference to announce the 7th series that the company is currently filming: 開腦儆探 Brain Opening Detective [TN: English name is direct translation of Chinese name]

Led by Creative Director (Scriptwriter) Lau Choi Wan [former TVB scriptwriter who brought us Ghetto Justice] and Main Director Lau Shun On [former TVB director who brought us A Step Into the Past], the cast and crew of the series will join together to create an unfathomable, supernatural detective series that will attempt to get to the bottom of various mysterious and unusual cases.

Brain Opening Detective stars Felix Wong, Sam Lee, Grace Huang, Adrian Wong, Kelvin Kwan, Kathy Yuen, etc. and filming already started at the beginning of September. Today, at the press conference, eac h of the artists went onstage and introduced their character in the series and also revealed their ‘costumes’ for the first time. Afterwards, CTI chairman Ricky Wong (王維基), Managing Director To Wai Bing (杜惠冰), creative director Lau Choi Wan, and director Lau Shun On led everyone present in a toast in the hopes that the filming process for the series will be smooth.

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Brain Opening Detective (開腦儆探)

Creative Director (Scriptwriter): Lau Choi Wan (劉彩雲)
Main Director: Lau Shun On (劉順安)

Filming Dates: September 2012

Length: 20 episodes


Cast:  Felix Wong (黃日華), Grace Huang (黃芝琪), Sam Lee (李璨琛), Buzz Chung (鍾紹圖), Kelvin Kwan (關楚耀), Adrian Wong (黄芷晴), Crystal Leung (粱寶琪), Lo Hoi Pang (盧海鵬), Lo Hei Lai, Anita Chan (陳穎妍), Carlos Koo (古天祥), Dominic Lam (林嘉華), Fu Chor Yan, Kathy Yuen (湯怡), Lam Lei (林利), Bond Chan (陳少邦), Janice Ting (丁樂鍶), Bryant Mak (麥子樂), Cherry Pau (鮑康兒), etc.

Plot Summary:
Brain Opening Detective is a supernatural-themed detective series – however the ‘supernatural’ won’t be the traditional ghosts and spirits-theme that audiences are used to seeing. Rather, it will utilize ‘super’ scientific concepts as well as realistic methods to investigate a variety of mysterious, unusual cases. The series will revolve around the main character Hung Gei Yuen (Felix Wong) -- a former high-ranking police inspector who, after being traumatized by the mysterious death of his son, acquires the hidden ability to capture and enter other people’s subconscious, as he deeply believes that his son was actually murdered in the ‘inner confines of the subconscious’! At the same time, he starts to display signs of having a split personality and works hard to study about the ‘hidden subconscious’ in the hopes of one day finding his son’s killer.

Each main character in this series will have some sort of ‘hidden ability’ that makes them different from other people. Even though each of them will have a ‘regrettable flaw’ and perhaps even be viewed by society as being ‘abnormal’ or ‘weird’, this does not affect their self-esteem. In fact, they are able to turn this ‘regrettable flaw’ into a ‘hidden ability’ and use it to help them solve many mysterious cases.



5 comments:

  1. out of all the series announced, this is the one I'm looking most forward to!

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  2. @huama: Me too! I've been looking forward to this series ever since Felix revealed on his Weibo that he was filming it. I would have still watched the series because of him anyway (love Felix!), but it's good to see now after reading the plot summary that the storyline itself actually sounds quite interesting too. Can't wait!

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  3. thanks for keeping us update on CTI series LL, your blog is probably the only one that's doing that :)
    but wow, this is nice, i always like supernatural theme detective series. however after reading the plot summary, the series kinda remind me of X-files or Fringe. anyway beside Felix, i also like Sam Lee, remember him from movies lol. anyway, crossing my fingers hoping that this series will succeed lol, for the sake of Felix and for the sake of a future healthy competition in HK television industry lol.

    but i still can't believe and pretty much will complaint all the way til that "idol" HK drama starting that Taiwanese actor Danson Tang air LOL, i mean what were Ricky Wong thinking, of all the handsome and better actors in China and Taiwan and he chose to collaborate w/ the feminine and not so good of an actor Danson lol..gosh, saking my head lol....and uhhhh, no offense to Danson's fans lol
    i'm also not sure about Noel Leung LL, there was a reason why she was in so much ancient drama at that time instead of modern drama, it like she could only "shine" in ancient costumes lol, though i adored Noel Leung very much, i still think that she could only played one type of character, the weak and typical traditional chinese woman...sigh...well, let wait and see if she can act as multiple personality person in cti series.

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    1. @kk: You're very welcome! With CTI still being so new and not having their license yet, I'm not surprised that people don't pay much attention to them....lucky for us there's Weibo, so it helps us to at least keep up with it (well, it helps me at least...LOL).

      Yup, the series definitely does sound interesting based on the plot summary -- I'm actually glad because this is one of the series that I've been looking forward to since the beginning (haha, can't help it...it's Felix we're talking about!) and even though I would probably watch it anyway just because I miss Felix, I was hoping that the plot would at least be decent so I don't have to regret my choice...haha!

      I actually don't watch American TV series / movies anymore, so can't really comment on whether it's similar to those 2 series or not....but the part about each of the main characters having a 'special power' type thing does sort of remind me of the movie X-Men....only difference is that this is a detective series and not a superhero-type series....Sam Lee is a good actor as well and it will be interesting to see his collaboration with Felix. Honestly though, I was surprised to see him at CTI because he had been filming series for TVB the last 2 years (Ghetto Justice 1 and 2). I read today that his per series contract with TVB just expired a few days ago, so now he's officially a free artist...so it makes more sense now why he's at CTI.

      Like you, I'm also hoping that this series will turn out well...in fact, I'm hoping that all 3 new stations (mostly CTI and nowTV for me though) will succeed in their free-tv thing because the HK television industry really does need the competition in order to remain healthy....so hopefully this will trigger a 'revival' and we can get back to the days when the industry was actually flourishing (i.e. the 80s/90s).

      LOL...I actually have no clue who Danson Tang is (the first time I heard of him was that CTI series), so I can't comment on that piece. I stopped following Taiwan entertainment years ago, so I pretty much don't know any of the 'newbies' (aka current generation) Taiwanese artists....the artists I know are mostly the older ones, like ones from the 90s and very early 2000s (I think the most recent 'generation' that I'm still familiar with include the likes of Ruby Lin, Alec Su, Nicky Wu, etc., plus a few others because of their 'connection' to HK entertainment -- such as Bowie Tsang for instance). I'm actually not planning on watching that series anyway because I absolutely hate idol dramas (huge waste of time) -- plus out of all 7 series so far, I'm least familiar with the cast for that series.

      As for Noelle Leung -- well, I think she's a nice person and all, but I'm not sure how I feel about her as an actress. I mean, her acting isn't bad, but her problem is that she's very inconsistent -- her acting can be extremely good in one series and then suck big time in the next....drives me crazy! Maybe it IS because, like you said, her acting is very one-dimensional so she is only capable of playing the same types of roles over and over again -- and I definitely agree that her ancient series roles are way better than her modern series ones (though to be honest, I can't really recall too many modern series that she was in....I can only think of 2 off the top of my head...). I feel that her best work to date is as Ching Ching in "Against the Blade of Honour" with Louis Koo, though she was also good in "Once Upon a Time in Shanghai" (the 1996 pseudo-remake of The Bund with Sunny Chan and Gordon Lam). We'll see how she does in the CTI horror series....maybe what she needed was a 'challenging' role like that one to really bring out her acting?

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  4. I like sci-fi series and there's a serious lack of those types of drama in HK. I remember ATV did quite well with theri Sci-Fi series due to have Chan13 as their scriptwriter. The production team sounds very promising with the A Step into The Past director and Ghetto Justice scriptwriter! I hope CTI will film another SciFi "x-men" like series with the young singers such as Endy etc Actually I've always wanted HK to create drama versions of Japanese Anime like Taiwan but they never do it. Whenever I watched XXXHolic about spirts and supernatural, I can't help but feel Khalil would fit the main character perfectly.

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