This was my most anticipated series of 2009, as I absolutely love the cast (both lead and supporting) and hadn't seen most of the leads (Ray, Jamie, Kenix, Gallen, Anita) as well as supporting artists (Benz, Ming Sir, etc.) in series in a long time, so was looking forward to their 'comeback' performances.....despite the lack of promotion from TVB's side (because as well all know, all of the promotion went to BTROC instead), I still was hopeful that it would be good. Even after the series aired in HK last year and there were tons of negative feedback on it, I was still a little optimistic and wanted to at least watch it for myself to see if it truly sucked as much as people said it did.
After finally watching this series, all I can say is: boy, was I hugely disappointed!!!
The script for the series absolutely sucked!!! Most of the storyline made no sense and was very hard to follow. I had actually missed quite a few episodes here and there, but didn't bother re-watching because I felt as though nothing of significance occurred in those episodes to warrant my going back and 'catching up'. Also, alot of the parts dragged out way too much (like the whole love triangle thing between Ray, Jamie, and Kenix), and ended up being boring.
For me, I felt like TVB just took a bunch of talented artists and threw them all together in a series for the heck of it, with no decent storyline or plot to carry the series -- sort of like one of those Taiwanese Idol dramas but except all the 'idols' are middle-aged or older and can truly act. And I realize now what made the storyline so hard to follow was that there were too many sub-storylines going on at the same time, some of which weren't really related to each other (kind of like a 'hodge-podge' of storylines mixed together). I mean, was it really necessary to have all those complicated relationships in there? If you really take apart each character, all of them had more than 1 relationship, whether it was a family relationship or a romantic one, however most of the relationships were under-developed (probably because there wasn't enough time or room in the script to develop them with so much stuff in there).
For example:
Gallen -- family relationship with Kenneth (his real brother), Ray (his 'fake' brother), Anita (his 'fake' sister), Nancy (his 'fake' step-mother); and romantic relationship with Anita (who is not truly his sister, but only he knows that and of course she doesn't, which tortures her throughout the series) as well as Sharon (who is pretty much a 'stand-in' for Anita, since he doesn't love her at all).
Ray -- family relationship with Gallen (his 'fake' brother), Anita (real sister), Nancy (mother), his kids; and romantic relationship with Jamie (his wife) and Kenix (extra-marital affair that turns into actual relationship after he and Jamie end up divorcing).
Anita -- family relationship with Ray, Nancy, Jamie, Gallen and romantic relationship with Gallen (whom she truly loves but can't be with) and Joe (whom I still can't tell whether she truly loves or not).
And THAT'S just scratching the surface! All the other characters have very similar complicated relationships....
Bottom line is that the writers and producer tried TOO HARD to cram as much material as they could into the series and it ended up backfiring on them, since it made the series way too confusing and difficult to follow (I got confused just trying to list out the above 3 relationships for this post!!!)
Watching this series made me get really pissed off at TVB for wasting such a great cast -- I mean, both the main leads as well as the supporting cast (with the exception of a few people) are awesome actors / actresses in their own right and have many great performances / series to their credit. Plus, like I said earlier, I really loved the cast because I grew up watching most of their series and know how much potential these artists have -- so it made it extremely painful for me to watch them put 100% effort in such a poorly written drama (it was so poorly written / put together that even the awesome acting of the artists couldn't save it!!)
I don't think I've ever watched a series with such a true waste of talent! I mean, many of the characters had like NO PURPOSE and were JUST THERE for the sake of being there! For example, Paul Chun (his character would show up every once in a while, but I had no clue what he was there for), Benz Hui and Angelina Lo (I know that they are Sharon's parents in the series, but other than that, they don't have much other significance), Lee Sing Cheung (all I know is that he works for Ray's family and shows up every once in awhile in a few episodes here and there).....I could name a bunch more, but you get the picture....
As if that weren't enough, most of the lead characters were very poorly written as well -- there wasn't much depth to the characters for one, and two, there was nothing about the characters that made them memorable to the audiences....pretty much anyone could have played those characters and it would have probably still come out the same way because the script was so poor (so again, why did they waste those talents???).
Here's my take on a few of the main characters:
Ray's character (Cheuk Yat Yuen / Marcus) -- if ever there were a poorly written character, this one is definitely it! I mean, the poor guy is all over the place -- first he is insistent on finding his long lost brother and getting Nancy to accept him, then when she does, he sort of resents it because Gallen starts to threaten his position in the company (and this is even before he finds out that Gallen is a fake). And he supposedly has the 'perfect' family with a loving wife and smart kids, but then he has an affair with Kenix (whom he supposedly dated prior to being married) and ends up destroying his perfect family and losing his powerful position in the company just so he could be with her. And what about his constant power struggle with Joe? I didn't understand that piece at all because I thought he considered Joe his 'right hand man' -- but then why does he resent the fact that his sister is dating him and tries to ruin their engagement party? It's almost like Ray's character is pulled in a hundred different directions and ends up going nowhere....
Gallen's character (Cheuk Yat Ming / Sa Fu Loi) -- his character in this series really confused me....it seemed to me as though his character is supposed to be both tragic and comedic in a way, but mixed together very poorly. There were several scenes were I saw elements of his comedic "Old Time Buddy" character, but then the rest of the time, he is mostly scheming for money and power. And the whole triangular relationship thing with Sharon and Anita as well as his hatred / jealousy of Joe was sort of ridiculous. But I do have to hand it to Gallen because despite his badly written character, he pulled off the acting piece without a problem -- with his facial expressions and gestures, etc., and the way he is able to show his character's 'evilness masked in goodness' -- very natural and convincing.
Kenix’s character (Tung Ling Chi / Angie) – Kenix is one of my favorite actresses, but her character in this series totally sucked -- her acting was a bit forced at certain points too (though I don't know if it was because the character was so poorly written or she was dealing with issues in her personal life that may have affected her acting). I really felt that the part where her character tries to ‘seduce’ Ray by pretending to be heartbroken over breaking up with her boyfriend, then talking her way into moving in with the Cheuk family was extremely cheesy (not to mention that it didn’t make any sense whatsoever). And I hated her physical appearance -- I've always thought of Kenix as pretty, but she looked really scary in this series...way too skinny to the point of being skeletal and the makeup didn't help any either.
Anita’s character (Cheuk Yat Sum / Rene) – to be honest, Anita’s character in this series was very bland – nothing special, nothing interesting, nothing memorable. I was actually a bit disappointed with Anita’s performance in this series because to be honest, I really expected more from her – after all, she IS the film industry’s Best Actress winner (multiple times)….though I do attribute a lot of it to the poorly written character, I still think that she could have put a little more effort. I do like Anita as a person (and as a movie actress), however I just feel that she made the wrong move by going back to television – she was way better off in the film industry, where she excelled.
Jamie’s character (Hor Tseuk Nin / Connie) – amazingly, my feelings are neutral towards Jamie’s character, but I think that’s because I really did not pay a whole lot of attention to her character, since it was another one of those typical ‘strong woman’ roles. Or it could be that I got so confused with all the rest of the intermixing storylines that I did not have the energy anymore to pick apart her character or performance. All I really remember is that – like Anita’s character – Jamie’s character was not that memorable either.
Though there are probably a lot more things to say about this series, I don’t feel it is necessary to go more into it, since the rest of my feedback is pretty much the same as what I expressed above.
Overall, this was a very disappointing series that I probably would not watch again, no matter how much I like the cast – it was enough torture sitting through this series the first time…I definitely don’t need to go through it a second time!
LL's Musings 小賢角落
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Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 30, 2010
My Thoughts on “Beyond the Realm of Conscience 宮心計”
I finally got around to watching this series, but only because it happened to come on TV -- for the longest time, I refused to watch this series because I hated how TVB overpromoted it (it totally turns me off when they do stupid stuff like that), plus I had also said that I would not watch this series until after I watched "Rosy Business" and "Born Rich" (and I've finally watched both series, so I guess the timing was perfect).
Anyway, I must say that I totally do not understand the hype over BTROC at all -- it's way overrated and is pretty much all stuff that I've seen before (goes to show that this is yet another example of TVB running out of ideas and overhyping this series solely because all of their favorite sons and daughters are in it).
Since this series has probably been analyzed to death already (by netizens and audiences alike, no doubt), I don't see the point of wasting my team with an in-depth review -- so I am just going to state my opinion on certain parts (mostly the dislikes) and then move on....
Ok, so back when this series aired in 2009, the biggest 'hype' with the series was the supposed 'stellar' ensemble cast and also Tavia's 'breakthrough' performance as a villain. I'll talk about Tavia's performance later....but first, the cast -- the biggest selling point of the series was supposedly the story surrounding the main leads Charmaine, Moses, Kevin, and Tavia (and of course TVB had no qualms about sticking this point in our -- the audience -- faces...or should I say, ramming it down our throats?). Anyway, I personally was not impressed by any of the main leads' performances because to me, it was the same old stuff: Moses in his Emperor role again trying to outsmart the evil generals who are constantly trying to usurp his power; Charmaine in her 'goody-two-shoes' role again who is unrealistically nice to everyone and everything and let's people walk all over her without a word of complaint; Kevin in another typical 'nice guy' role that honestly, put me to sleep; and Tavia in her first evil villain role that really was not convincing at all (to put it less midly, she came across very fake to me).
So first, let's look at Moses and Charmaine's characters in the series. To be honest, I found it really weird watching this series and seeing Charmaine as Moses' love interest (though it's mostly one-sided, since Charmaine is paired with Kevin) because I had just finished re-watching "Perish in the Name of Love" not too long ago and the 2 of them were father and daughter in that series (true, that series was made like 7 years ago, but still....). Luckily, Moses and Charmaine weren't really a couple in this series because that would have just totally grossed me out (sorry, but I'm a bit slow when it comes to switching relationships like that). But actually, there's another reason why I bring up the series PITNOL -- because I really felt that both Moses and Charmaine's characters in BTROC (Charmaine's especially) reminded me of their characters in PITNOL, a series that I absolutely HATED with a passion because almost all the characters (except Steven's) were so utterly stupid (I mean, come on now, how many times does someone have to "hurt" you before you 'wake up' and stop continuing to 'believe in' that person??). I think this is why I absolutely hated Charmaine's character in this series because just like in PITNOL, she kept forgiving her friend/sister for doing bad things and kept believing her when she said she would change, but actually don't (though I have to say that Charmaine's character in PITNOL was 10x worse). I mean, come on, no normal person is like THAT DENSE in real life (even in the imperial days)! Personally, I think that the writers didn't develop Charmaine's character on purpose because remember that TVB's whole point for this series was to push Tavia for TV Queen, so of course the focus should be on her rather than Charmaine (plus Charmaine had another popular series in contention that year anyway, so it didn't really matter -- she would make it in either way). For Charmaine, playing the role of Lau Sam Ho was probably a piece of cake, since she's constantly playing those types of roles anyway....As for Moses, well I don't have much else to say about his character except that it's another 'typical' role, one that he's done before, so it totally lacked creativity....
On to Kevin's character....in my opinion, Kevin was really boring in this series -- I honestly was wondering what the point of his character was except as a love interest for Charmaine. Yes, his job was supposed to be protecting the emperor, but hey, there weren't very many action/fighting scenes in the series anyway (why would there be when the focus is supposed to be on the evil schemes of the women in the inner palace?). His character (and to some extent, his performance) was so boring that it pretty much put me to sleep. And I'm sorry, but I did not sense any chemistry at all between Kevin and Charmaine in this series (in constrast, as much as I hated PITNOL, I was really able to feel the chemistry between Steven and Charmaine there) -- I'm actually starting to think whether it's Kevin's problem because I noticed that in most of the series that I've watched with Kevin in it, I always feel like there is zero chemistry between him and his female co-stars (at least on screen).
And finally, Tavia -- who is supposed to be the central figure in this series. My personal opinon is that Tavia does not do 'evil' or 'villainess' very well at all -- she came across as very fake and forced to me...pretty much, I think she tried too hard (especially with her supposed 'evil' stare and laugh). I've heard arguments from people (Tavia fans no doubt) that we should cut her some slack because it's her first time as a villain so there are bound to be flaws -- well, my response to that argument is that 1) I never said she had to be perfect in her role, but she has to be at least CONVINCING and 2) there are many artists in the past who did convincingly awesome jobs in their first villain roles, to the point where they were able to completely turn their 'good boy/girl' image around (Michelle Yim and Susanna Kwan come to mind on the female side and Gallen Lo as well as Deric Wan for the males -- though there are undoubtedly many more). I think this just goes to show that Tavia doesn't have enough depth as an actress yet to be able to pull off these types of difficult villain characters with success -- she definitely needs more work in this area....
Ok, now that I've vented my frustrations with the main leads, was there anything that I actually liked about this series? Yes, of course -- I really liked the supporting cast in this series and totally feel like they stole the show. Lee Kwok Lun was downright evil as General Ma (I've watched his series since the 80s and he is an absolutely awesome actor -- and terribly underrated), Michelle Yim and Susanna Kwan were great in their roles as heads of their respective departments, and I absolutely loved Ram Tseung in his eunuch role (another one of my favorite supporting actors who is so totally underrated). Oh, and of course, I have to mention Susan Tse and Mary Hon in the Empress Dowager roles, which were very fitting for them and the acting was superb. Even KK Cheung was great, even though he only had a small role in the series. For some odd reason, I actually felt that the storyline surrounding these supporting characters had way more depth and was alot more interesting than the main one involving the 4 leads. The supporting cast and the storyline surrounding them was definitely the primary motivating factor that made me continue to watch -- otherwise, I probably would have given up on the series a long time ago.
Anyway, I must say that I totally do not understand the hype over BTROC at all -- it's way overrated and is pretty much all stuff that I've seen before (goes to show that this is yet another example of TVB running out of ideas and overhyping this series solely because all of their favorite sons and daughters are in it).
Since this series has probably been analyzed to death already (by netizens and audiences alike, no doubt), I don't see the point of wasting my team with an in-depth review -- so I am just going to state my opinion on certain parts (mostly the dislikes) and then move on....
Ok, so back when this series aired in 2009, the biggest 'hype' with the series was the supposed 'stellar' ensemble cast and also Tavia's 'breakthrough' performance as a villain. I'll talk about Tavia's performance later....but first, the cast -- the biggest selling point of the series was supposedly the story surrounding the main leads Charmaine, Moses, Kevin, and Tavia (and of course TVB had no qualms about sticking this point in our -- the audience -- faces...or should I say, ramming it down our throats?). Anyway, I personally was not impressed by any of the main leads' performances because to me, it was the same old stuff: Moses in his Emperor role again trying to outsmart the evil generals who are constantly trying to usurp his power; Charmaine in her 'goody-two-shoes' role again who is unrealistically nice to everyone and everything and let's people walk all over her without a word of complaint; Kevin in another typical 'nice guy' role that honestly, put me to sleep; and Tavia in her first evil villain role that really was not convincing at all (to put it less midly, she came across very fake to me).
So first, let's look at Moses and Charmaine's characters in the series. To be honest, I found it really weird watching this series and seeing Charmaine as Moses' love interest (though it's mostly one-sided, since Charmaine is paired with Kevin) because I had just finished re-watching "Perish in the Name of Love" not too long ago and the 2 of them were father and daughter in that series (true, that series was made like 7 years ago, but still....). Luckily, Moses and Charmaine weren't really a couple in this series because that would have just totally grossed me out (sorry, but I'm a bit slow when it comes to switching relationships like that). But actually, there's another reason why I bring up the series PITNOL -- because I really felt that both Moses and Charmaine's characters in BTROC (Charmaine's especially) reminded me of their characters in PITNOL, a series that I absolutely HATED with a passion because almost all the characters (except Steven's) were so utterly stupid (I mean, come on now, how many times does someone have to "hurt" you before you 'wake up' and stop continuing to 'believe in' that person??). I think this is why I absolutely hated Charmaine's character in this series because just like in PITNOL, she kept forgiving her friend/sister for doing bad things and kept believing her when she said she would change, but actually don't (though I have to say that Charmaine's character in PITNOL was 10x worse). I mean, come on, no normal person is like THAT DENSE in real life (even in the imperial days)! Personally, I think that the writers didn't develop Charmaine's character on purpose because remember that TVB's whole point for this series was to push Tavia for TV Queen, so of course the focus should be on her rather than Charmaine (plus Charmaine had another popular series in contention that year anyway, so it didn't really matter -- she would make it in either way). For Charmaine, playing the role of Lau Sam Ho was probably a piece of cake, since she's constantly playing those types of roles anyway....As for Moses, well I don't have much else to say about his character except that it's another 'typical' role, one that he's done before, so it totally lacked creativity....
On to Kevin's character....in my opinion, Kevin was really boring in this series -- I honestly was wondering what the point of his character was except as a love interest for Charmaine. Yes, his job was supposed to be protecting the emperor, but hey, there weren't very many action/fighting scenes in the series anyway (why would there be when the focus is supposed to be on the evil schemes of the women in the inner palace?). His character (and to some extent, his performance) was so boring that it pretty much put me to sleep. And I'm sorry, but I did not sense any chemistry at all between Kevin and Charmaine in this series (in constrast, as much as I hated PITNOL, I was really able to feel the chemistry between Steven and Charmaine there) -- I'm actually starting to think whether it's Kevin's problem because I noticed that in most of the series that I've watched with Kevin in it, I always feel like there is zero chemistry between him and his female co-stars (at least on screen).
And finally, Tavia -- who is supposed to be the central figure in this series. My personal opinon is that Tavia does not do 'evil' or 'villainess' very well at all -- she came across as very fake and forced to me...pretty much, I think she tried too hard (especially with her supposed 'evil' stare and laugh). I've heard arguments from people (Tavia fans no doubt) that we should cut her some slack because it's her first time as a villain so there are bound to be flaws -- well, my response to that argument is that 1) I never said she had to be perfect in her role, but she has to be at least CONVINCING and 2) there are many artists in the past who did convincingly awesome jobs in their first villain roles, to the point where they were able to completely turn their 'good boy/girl' image around (Michelle Yim and Susanna Kwan come to mind on the female side and Gallen Lo as well as Deric Wan for the males -- though there are undoubtedly many more). I think this just goes to show that Tavia doesn't have enough depth as an actress yet to be able to pull off these types of difficult villain characters with success -- she definitely needs more work in this area....
Ok, now that I've vented my frustrations with the main leads, was there anything that I actually liked about this series? Yes, of course -- I really liked the supporting cast in this series and totally feel like they stole the show. Lee Kwok Lun was downright evil as General Ma (I've watched his series since the 80s and he is an absolutely awesome actor -- and terribly underrated), Michelle Yim and Susanna Kwan were great in their roles as heads of their respective departments, and I absolutely loved Ram Tseung in his eunuch role (another one of my favorite supporting actors who is so totally underrated). Oh, and of course, I have to mention Susan Tse and Mary Hon in the Empress Dowager roles, which were very fitting for them and the acting was superb. Even KK Cheung was great, even though he only had a small role in the series. For some odd reason, I actually felt that the storyline surrounding these supporting characters had way more depth and was alot more interesting than the main one involving the 4 leads. The supporting cast and the storyline surrounding them was definitely the primary motivating factor that made me continue to watch -- otherwise, I probably would have given up on the series a long time ago.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Jacky’s new Mandarin single: {{ 三分拍 }}
I am soo excited!!! Jacky’s new Mandarin single 三分拍 has just been released to various radio stations in HK! I actually just found out about this ‘hot off the press’ news while “stalking” on Weibo last night and so couldn’t wait to get the information out to everyone as soon as possible!
I just finished listening to the song not too long ago and even though I’m still trying to get used to the lyrics and the music, I definitely like the song so far. My opinion of the song is that it is a very ‘playful’ piece that may not sound like a traditional love ballad in terms of music or lyrics, but still tells a love story at heart. Jacky has definitely taken his music to the next level with this song, as it has the same sophisticated and classical, yet light-hearted, ‘feel-good’ nature as his new Cantonese album “Private Corner” did. This is another song that absolutely won’t go ‘mainstream’ and may not even become popular, but that’s okay because that really is not the intent of the song – by now, after 25 years in the HK music industry, Jacky’s purpose in making music is not to sell albums or earn a lot of money and it’s definitely not to gain popularity or create any particular image because frankly, he is already a very established singer with awesome skills (in other words, he does not need to ‘prove’ anything). Rather, the main intent is to make high quality music that Jacky also enjoys and give his fans a truly excellent listening experience.
Note: I’m actually not quite sure how to translate the name of the song into English…since the song is supposed to ‘mimic’ a waltz, I know that 三分拍 refers to the “triple meter” (or ¾ beat) melody that waltz music is usually in. So I guess the best literal translation of the song title is ‘Three Quarter Beat’ then? Well, that’s the translation I’ll be using for the purposes of my blog post. If something more ‘official’ comes out, then I’ll update based on that.
Here’s a brief description of the song that pretty much summarizes it, courtesy of Baidu:
《三分拍》是一首蕴含着华尔滋节奏的歌曲，轻快典雅的三分拍旋律，让人听了忍不住想翩然起舞。歌词意境更以跳双人舞来描述男女之间的情感关系；爱情的微妙就像跳双人舞必需两个人相互配合，节奏快慢脚步前后都要迁就对方，才能让这只双人舞完美和谐的跳下去，而双人舞少了舞伴再好的舞者都无法独自完成。
Translation: 三分拍 is a song that flows to the rhythm of a Waltz, incorporating a light, quick, and elegant ‘triple meter’ melody typical of waltz music. When one listens to the song, they cannot help but feel like getting up and dancing. The artistic concept behind the lyrics is to utilize the idea of a couple dancing the waltz to describe the feelings and relationship between a man and a woman. The subtlety of love is similar to dancing as a pair – it’s absolutely necessary for the 2 people to be mutually compatible and coordinate closely with each other…whether the tempo is fast or slow, the steps in front or in back, it is necessary to accommodate the other in order for the dance to be completed in harmony and perfectly. It also emphasizes that in a two-person dance, if one partner is missing, it is impossible for the other to finish the dance alone.
Here are the lyrics to the song (Courtesy of Youtube and KKbox):
作曲：彭海桐
填詞：李淩
編曲：杜自持
監製：杜自持
歌詞
﹡站在旋轉舞臺聽著音樂節拍要我陪你跳舞逃不開
你的一切安排一舉一動等待快了慢了錯了都重來
我想我們大概不合拍你說不如分開到痛快
可是見不到你思念氾濫成災
1 23 45 6向左向右向後迷失方向的我沒醒來
忘了你的眼睛忘了幸福表情被你發現罵我不應該
我想我們大概不合拍你說不如分開到痛快
如果見不到你我也無法存在
轉啊轉啊轉啊轉回來愛情跳不出這三拍
男人要自由女人要依賴想離開又回來
轉啊轉啊轉啊三分拍和你一起跳到未來
現在才明白你有多可愛一輩子由你安排
﹡REPEAT
轉啊轉啊轉啊轉回來愛情跳不出這三拍
男人要自由女人要依賴想離開又回來
轉啊轉啊轉啊三分拍和你一起跳到未來
現在才明白你有多可愛離不開你就是愛
1 23 45 6向左向右向後迷戀你的方向不醒來
看著你的眼睛看著幸福表情每一步的愛情都精彩
我想我們永遠不分開你說白頭到老真愉快
貼近我的胸口一起跳到未來
啦啦啦
Friday, December 17, 2010
Review of "Gambling on Life 賭霸天下"
This is an 'old' series from 1993 that came on TV a couple weeks ago, so I decided to watch it (while multi-tasking of course....lol). To be honest, I had never heard of the series before -- which means it was probably a low-budget series with not alot of hype, since I was pretty actively following HK entertainment in the 90s, so I probably would have at least heard about the series if it were a 'big production'. And the cast wasn't exactly 'all-star' (male lead was Eddie Kwan and female lead was Fiona Leung, with Vincent Lam playing the role of the villain -- the supporting cast was comprised of elders such as Felix Lok, Lau Siu Ming, Lo Lan, Kong Hon, etc.), plus there were some parts of the storyline that were flawed and confusing. Yet, surprisingly, I actually liked the series and even stopped 'multi-tasking' during the later half of the series so I could concentrate on watching it (those of you who know me know that it is rare of me to do this). In fact, I preferred watching this series over most of the TVB series that were made this year (which already tells you something) and it brought back for me the "chasing series" feeling (the 'I can't wait to watch the next episode to see what happens next' feeling) that I haven't felt for a TVB series in a LONG time.
Needless to say, based on the title, the theme of the series is gambling -- which doesn't surprise me one bit because during that era, the industry was saturated with tons of gambling-themed movies and TV series. This is partly the reason why I say that I'm surprised that I liked the series because I originally thought it was going to be another one of those 'run-of-the-mill' gambling series (a theme which I am already bored to death with because it has been overused so many times). Plus the first few episodes of the series were sort of boring and some parts dragged on way too long. Things started to really move along in terms of action in the second half of the series and the focus shifted from Vincent (who was dominant in the first half) to Eddie and Lau Siu Ming, Lo Lan, etc. (dominant in the second half), with Fiona dominant throughout both parts.
So with the slow start and draggy parts, what made me continue to watch the series? Well, I was definitely impressed with the awesome performances from the cast -- of course, with the seasoned veteran artists in the series, I knew I wouldn't be disappointed with the acting, even if they were only supporting cast and didn't have a whole lot of screen time. However, I was also definitely surprised with Eddie’s performance in the series. I've always been ok with Eddie as an actor (neutral -- don't like or dislike), but I've always felt that he was never able to mimic the short-lived success he had in the 80s with the "Police Cadet" and "The Battle Among the Clans" series -- plus the roles he got when he made his comeback in the 2000s were quite lame. As for Fiona, well, I’ve always liked her, but I could tell from the opening theme video that her character would be paired up with Vincent Lam, whom I was not fond of at all (I watched his first series “Romance Beyond” and hated his performance in it, though I liked everyone else) – plus this was only Vincent’s second series (yet he was already second male lead – though some could argue that he was actually first lead, since he had more screen time than Eddie, it seems) and his acting is too exaggerated and unnatural for my tastes. Therefore, going into this series, I didn’t have very high expectations at all. However, it turns out that Fiona plays two characters in this series and the first character (who was Vincent’s love interest) is not really the ‘main’ one, as she dies halfway through the series (which I was fine with since I didn’t like the character that much anyway). Her second character is paired with Eddie, which is what I was rooting for all along, and the storyline started getting more interesting, so that’s when I really started getting more ‘into’ the series.
Here are a few highlights in terms of the artists and their performances:
Eddie’s portrayal of the ‘useless’ little brother who becomes a disappointment to his ‘Gambler King’ father because all he knows how to do is play around all day was quite interesting, especially when we see how his character transforms into a mature young man set on avenging his father’s death later on in the series. I think that the most challenging part for Eddie was in the middle of the series when his older brother (played by Vincent) tried to kill him and he wound up in a mental institution after suffering brain damage. Eddie actually did those mental health patient scenes quite well, despite not having much dialogue during those parts. And even though his pairing with Fiona in the second half of the series (her second character is a worker at the mental institution) was quite predictable, I rooted for them because frankly, I prefer her with Eddie way more than Vincent.
Talking about Fiona, well, I don’t have too much to say because her 2 characters were not extremely complicated, though both had different personalities. But as I said earlier, I’ve always liked Fiona and have confidence in her acting, so no matter what type of character she plays, I would probably still watch. I definitely feel that when she was with TVB, she was very underrated, despite being a good actress – she was the lead in many series, though career-wise, she never made it to the ‘first rate fadan’ level (perhaps because there was too much competition back then in the 80s/90s and she was not the type who wanted to ‘fight’ for things). She is one of the few artists who came out of a contest (“Super New Talent Contest” in the 80s, which ironically was only held for 1 season and was axed) and didn’t get formal training whom I actually like because of her acting.
Another highlight of the series was Ming Sir’s (Lau Siu Ming) performance, which was absolutely brilliant and convincing. He played Vincent’s biological father and was the TRUE undefeated ‘Gambler King’ until he lost to Eddie’s father in a secret matchup, attempted to commit suicide, then went crazy. Of course, he winds up living at the mental institution, since his intelligence is that of a little kid now (the parts where the workers kept trying to bribe him with chocolate were hilarious) – despite going crazy however, he still retained all of the ‘special powers’ that he had when he was Gambler King, which eventually come to the surface as the series progresses. Ming Sir was absolutely convincing as a kid-like mental patient with special powers – the acting was very natural, which is a difficult feat for most artists, since a lot of them can’t play that type of role without making it look cheesy. This goes to show how superb Ming Sir’s acting truly is (especially given all the villain and tough father roles that he usually plays). Ming Sir has always been one of my favorites in terms of elderly ‘green leaf’ actors and continues to be, even now, though he doesn’t do too much acting anymore (not in series, at least).
Even though I don’t know what the purpose was of Felix Lok’s character (a bit pointless if you ask me), I actually did like the character he portrayed – way better than Vincent’s character. I like how Felix’s character was still very righteous and a man of his word, even though he was obsessed with being Gambler King and did some bad things as a result. I definitely would NOT describe his character as evil, because he wasn’t (at least he didn’t kill anyone like Vincent’s character did) – he was just a very self-confident man obsessed with being Gambler King (because of his love of gambling), even if it means sacrificing himself. What happened to his character in the end was quite tragic (though predictable) – however, as always, Felix did a great job with his role. He is another one of the veteran supporting artists who is on my ‘favorites’ list because of his awesome acting skills. And I like his personality as well – I read an interview about him a while back ago and he’s actually a very quiet person in real life. He doesn’t like to socialize and hates all of that political and ‘game-playing’ stuff that goes on, so he pretty much keeps to himself. The amazing thing about him is that when the cameras roll, he is 100% absorbed in his character and is able to portray whatever role he is given absolutely well, but once the cameras stop rolling, he’s a completely different person. And like many great talented actors, he takes his acting very seriously and actually studies each of his characters in depth before portraying them. (Ah, I miss those days when artists actually took their jobs seriously!!)
Lastly, I just wanted to mention how much I hated Vincent Lam’s character. And no, this is NOT one of those instances where hating the character means that the artist did a good job portraying the character (I call it characters we ‘love’ to hate). In fact, this one was quite opposite – first of all, his character itself was lame to the nth degree! It was stupid how he was always so obsessed with Fiona, to the point of trying to her force her 2nd character to marry him, even though she made it known that she hated him. And then when he started acting like a madman and killing people left and right just because they opposed his whim – the best way to describe it is that he came across to me like a gangster boss-wannabe in overdrive! Add to that the fact that Vincent’s acting in this series was absolutely horrible all the way through…for the first half of the series, before his character ‘turned bad’, his acting was like a piece of wood – very fake and forced. In the second half, as the ‘villain’, his acting still came across as forced, but now, instead of being wooden, it was very exaggerated (100 times worse than Alex Man, who is known for exaggerated acting – but at least Alex’s exaggeration looks natural) – to the point that I actually cringed every time I saw him on the screen (I just wanted to say “shut up already with your mad rants and get off my TV screen!”). Needless to say, it took A LOT of self-control on my part to avoid picking up the remote and fast-forwarding through all his scenes!
Needless to say, based on the title, the theme of the series is gambling -- which doesn't surprise me one bit because during that era, the industry was saturated with tons of gambling-themed movies and TV series. This is partly the reason why I say that I'm surprised that I liked the series because I originally thought it was going to be another one of those 'run-of-the-mill' gambling series (a theme which I am already bored to death with because it has been overused so many times). Plus the first few episodes of the series were sort of boring and some parts dragged on way too long. Things started to really move along in terms of action in the second half of the series and the focus shifted from Vincent (who was dominant in the first half) to Eddie and Lau Siu Ming, Lo Lan, etc. (dominant in the second half), with Fiona dominant throughout both parts.
So with the slow start and draggy parts, what made me continue to watch the series? Well, I was definitely impressed with the awesome performances from the cast -- of course, with the seasoned veteran artists in the series, I knew I wouldn't be disappointed with the acting, even if they were only supporting cast and didn't have a whole lot of screen time. However, I was also definitely surprised with Eddie’s performance in the series. I've always been ok with Eddie as an actor (neutral -- don't like or dislike), but I've always felt that he was never able to mimic the short-lived success he had in the 80s with the "Police Cadet" and "The Battle Among the Clans" series -- plus the roles he got when he made his comeback in the 2000s were quite lame. As for Fiona, well, I’ve always liked her, but I could tell from the opening theme video that her character would be paired up with Vincent Lam, whom I was not fond of at all (I watched his first series “Romance Beyond” and hated his performance in it, though I liked everyone else) – plus this was only Vincent’s second series (yet he was already second male lead – though some could argue that he was actually first lead, since he had more screen time than Eddie, it seems) and his acting is too exaggerated and unnatural for my tastes. Therefore, going into this series, I didn’t have very high expectations at all. However, it turns out that Fiona plays two characters in this series and the first character (who was Vincent’s love interest) is not really the ‘main’ one, as she dies halfway through the series (which I was fine with since I didn’t like the character that much anyway). Her second character is paired with Eddie, which is what I was rooting for all along, and the storyline started getting more interesting, so that’s when I really started getting more ‘into’ the series.
Here are a few highlights in terms of the artists and their performances:
Eddie’s portrayal of the ‘useless’ little brother who becomes a disappointment to his ‘Gambler King’ father because all he knows how to do is play around all day was quite interesting, especially when we see how his character transforms into a mature young man set on avenging his father’s death later on in the series. I think that the most challenging part for Eddie was in the middle of the series when his older brother (played by Vincent) tried to kill him and he wound up in a mental institution after suffering brain damage. Eddie actually did those mental health patient scenes quite well, despite not having much dialogue during those parts. And even though his pairing with Fiona in the second half of the series (her second character is a worker at the mental institution) was quite predictable, I rooted for them because frankly, I prefer her with Eddie way more than Vincent.
Talking about Fiona, well, I don’t have too much to say because her 2 characters were not extremely complicated, though both had different personalities. But as I said earlier, I’ve always liked Fiona and have confidence in her acting, so no matter what type of character she plays, I would probably still watch. I definitely feel that when she was with TVB, she was very underrated, despite being a good actress – she was the lead in many series, though career-wise, she never made it to the ‘first rate fadan’ level (perhaps because there was too much competition back then in the 80s/90s and she was not the type who wanted to ‘fight’ for things). She is one of the few artists who came out of a contest (“Super New Talent Contest” in the 80s, which ironically was only held for 1 season and was axed) and didn’t get formal training whom I actually like because of her acting.
Another highlight of the series was Ming Sir’s (Lau Siu Ming) performance, which was absolutely brilliant and convincing. He played Vincent’s biological father and was the TRUE undefeated ‘Gambler King’ until he lost to Eddie’s father in a secret matchup, attempted to commit suicide, then went crazy. Of course, he winds up living at the mental institution, since his intelligence is that of a little kid now (the parts where the workers kept trying to bribe him with chocolate were hilarious) – despite going crazy however, he still retained all of the ‘special powers’ that he had when he was Gambler King, which eventually come to the surface as the series progresses. Ming Sir was absolutely convincing as a kid-like mental patient with special powers – the acting was very natural, which is a difficult feat for most artists, since a lot of them can’t play that type of role without making it look cheesy. This goes to show how superb Ming Sir’s acting truly is (especially given all the villain and tough father roles that he usually plays). Ming Sir has always been one of my favorites in terms of elderly ‘green leaf’ actors and continues to be, even now, though he doesn’t do too much acting anymore (not in series, at least).
Even though I don’t know what the purpose was of Felix Lok’s character (a bit pointless if you ask me), I actually did like the character he portrayed – way better than Vincent’s character. I like how Felix’s character was still very righteous and a man of his word, even though he was obsessed with being Gambler King and did some bad things as a result. I definitely would NOT describe his character as evil, because he wasn’t (at least he didn’t kill anyone like Vincent’s character did) – he was just a very self-confident man obsessed with being Gambler King (because of his love of gambling), even if it means sacrificing himself. What happened to his character in the end was quite tragic (though predictable) – however, as always, Felix did a great job with his role. He is another one of the veteran supporting artists who is on my ‘favorites’ list because of his awesome acting skills. And I like his personality as well – I read an interview about him a while back ago and he’s actually a very quiet person in real life. He doesn’t like to socialize and hates all of that political and ‘game-playing’ stuff that goes on, so he pretty much keeps to himself. The amazing thing about him is that when the cameras roll, he is 100% absorbed in his character and is able to portray whatever role he is given absolutely well, but once the cameras stop rolling, he’s a completely different person. And like many great talented actors, he takes his acting very seriously and actually studies each of his characters in depth before portraying them. (Ah, I miss those days when artists actually took their jobs seriously!!)
Lastly, I just wanted to mention how much I hated Vincent Lam’s character. And no, this is NOT one of those instances where hating the character means that the artist did a good job portraying the character (I call it characters we ‘love’ to hate). In fact, this one was quite opposite – first of all, his character itself was lame to the nth degree! It was stupid how he was always so obsessed with Fiona, to the point of trying to her force her 2nd character to marry him, even though she made it known that she hated him. And then when he started acting like a madman and killing people left and right just because they opposed his whim – the best way to describe it is that he came across to me like a gangster boss-wannabe in overdrive! Add to that the fact that Vincent’s acting in this series was absolutely horrible all the way through…for the first half of the series, before his character ‘turned bad’, his acting was like a piece of wood – very fake and forced. In the second half, as the ‘villain’, his acting still came across as forced, but now, instead of being wooden, it was very exaggerated (100 times worse than Alex Man, who is known for exaggerated acting – but at least Alex’s exaggeration looks natural) – to the point that I actually cringed every time I saw him on the screen (I just wanted to say “shut up already with your mad rants and get off my TV screen!”). Needless to say, it took A LOT of self-control on my part to avoid picking up the remote and fast-forwarding through all his scenes!
Monday, December 6, 2010
TVB Anniversary Awards 2010 (萬千星輝頒獎典禮2010)
Since I watched the Anniversary Awards, figured I would blog about it – but I have to make clear that I watched it because I wanted to have something to write about, not because I particularly care about who was going to win. The last couple years especially, I watch mostly because I want to see who the presenters are and the ‘funny’ or ‘clever’ dialogue that they usually give.
So before I go any further, I have to make the following disclaimer: the TVB Anniversary Awards from the past 5 years or so don’t mean anything to me because personally, I feel that TVB rigs them to benefit their own – we already know that TVB uses the awards to promote / showcase their own biological sons/daughters and the criteria is pretty much NOT based on acting skills or who gave the best performance, so there is NO CREDIBILITY whatsoever to the awards they give out.
With that said, below is the list of winners, my reaction to the results, as well as general comments and highlights from the ceremony (in my opinion):
TVB.COM Popular Artist: Raymond Lam
.> Of course, I’m not surprised that Raymond got this award, since he has such a huge fan base. In my opinion, this award is absolutely worthless because it doesn’t mean anything at all – it merely is an indication of how much on-line support the artist who wins it has…and I’m sure all of us (as well as Raymond himself) already know how many fans Raymond has – he doesn’t need a ‘stupid’ award to tell him that! Plus, if I remember correctly, he’s gotten this award several times in the past already (except for last year, but that’s because he didn’t have any series in the running last year) – pretty much every year that Raymond has a series in contention, he will continue to get this award.
Most ‘Enjoyable’ Program (aka Program Most Worth Watching): HK ARTchitecture
.> Since I didn’t watch any of the nominated programs in this category except for “The Voice”, not really going to comment (especially since I didn’t even know those other programs existed).
Best Variety Show: The Voice 2
I didn’t like any of the nominees in this category, so personally I don’t really care who won. Though I would have to say that as long as Super Trio didn’t win, then I’m fine with it – I used to love Super Trio, but the past couple years, the show has gotten very stupid and the games have been extremely lame. So I’m glad they didn’t win. I wasn’t too keen on the other nominee “Fun with Liza and the Gods” (as I’ve always said, I feel that watching that show makes me feel ‘dumb and dumber’) and the other 2 nominees I never even heard of, so I guess the logical choice would have been “The Voice 2”.
Most Improved Actress: Natalie Tong
.> Unlike most people in the forums, I actually don’t have much of an opinion on who deserved to win in this category because personally, I’m not too keen on any of the actresses who were nominated. I guess if I had to choose, I would probably prefer Selena more as an actress, as I can’t stand the majority of Natalie’s roles / performances. But as someone said in one of the forums, the reason why Selena probably didn’t get the award was because she’s pretty much already an established actress compared to Natalie so there wasn’t a lot to “improve” persay (which makes sense). But again, I don’t really care who wins this one (in fact, I can’t even remember who I voted for anymore in this category – goes to show how much I don’t care about it).
Most Improved Actor: Raymond Wong
.> Ok, I must say that this one was expected and very well-deserving. Raymond definitely did a good job this year and for me personally, I don’t mind watching his series. I don’t like very many of the newer generation TVB artists, but he’s definitely one that I enjoy watching. I feel that Raymond is deserving because I’ve also seen his improvement from his first few series to “When Lanes Merge” and “No Regrets”, so I can understand why he won. And I also give kudos to Raymond for giving one of the best speeches of the night. It was obvious he was well-prepared, as he had written down people he wanted to thank on a piece of paper and was able to get through the entire list. And even though he is sort of ‘new’ to TVB, he’s not new to the industry (13 years in the industry and 3.5 years in TVB) – he mentioned that this is his first award. He was very calm and extremely well-spoken, which really impressed me. Oh, and I loved the last part of his speech where he thanks his wife for sticking with him even during the lowest point in his life, then says that she will be giving him “a little life” very soon (meaning that she’s pregnant). Everyone was applauding and screaming when he made that announcement, which was so cute! Congrats to Raymond on his win and also on soon becoming a father!
Favorite Female Character: Charmaine Sheh
.> I actually am ok with Charmaine getting this award because out of the top 5 finalists (Charmaine’s princess from CBML, Sheren’s Miss 9 from NR, Linda’s character from CBML, Teresa’s character from Some Day, Tavia’s character from MOL), both Charmaine’s and Sheren’s characters were quite memorable and well-liked by audiences. It was pretty obvious though when Charmaine’s name was announced that Sheren would be TV Queen and this would be Charmaine’s consolation prize (because no matter how much TVB loves Charmaine, they would not risk the huge backlash from the audiences by giving her both Character and Actress awards again). Also, I’ve always looked at this award as a consolation prize for TV Queen for one, and two, it’s more about the ‘character’ in the series than the actor or actress, so again it doesn’t really mean anything in terms of the artists themselves (the artist could have so-so acting skills, but if the character is well-written, she could still win this award).
Favorite Male Character: Raymond Lam
.> Ok, this one was so obviously RIGGED!!! Raymond’s character in MOL was SO BORING and not even memorable. I mean, since this award was consolation for TV King, they could have given the award to Kenneth or Steven instead – they deserved it WAY more than Raymond did (if they didn’t want to give it to Wayne again because he was already going to get the Actor award). Though I don’t think that Moses deserves this award either because his character in CBML was annoying, but I don’t think I would have as much problem if he had gotten this award (probably cuz I was already expecting him to win it, since TVB was pushing him so much). I was actually rooting for Kenneth in this category (because his character stood out so much and AFOS was a great series with barely any recognition), but I would have been fine with any of the other 3 winning. But Raymond????? TVB was obviously trying to play favorites here!
Best Television Program Host: Liza Wang, Louis Yuen, Wong Cho Lam, Johnson Lee
.> This one was predictable – in fact, I would probably be surprised if they “didn’t” get this one…though I will say that I didn’t vote for them (I voted for Steven Ma). But oh well, it is what it is…not too much comment about this one (again, another category I didn’t really care about).
Best Professional Performance: Moses Chan
.> This was that stupid ‘pork’ award (the one Tavia got last year) that TVB made up in order to please certain people. Pretty much, it means nothing (most people can’t even explain what the purpose of the award is because frankly, it has no purpose) and does absolutely nothing for the artist who receives it. Last year, TVB gave it to Tavia because they didn’t want to waste all the investment they made with her in BTROC and this year, they are giving it to Moses because they chose Raymond over him for Favorite Character and there is no way that they could give him TV King without major backlash. Basically, this is a lame award that TVB should just get rid of instead of ‘embarrassing’ the artist who ends up receiving it! (But I do have to give credit to Moses for trying to make the most of the win by injecting a little bit of humor in his acceptance speech and trying to lighten up the atmosphere).
Best Supporting Actress: Fala Chen
.> Sorry, but there is no way I can support Fala getting this award with all of the veteran actresses nominated who were WAY better than her. I mean, they’ve got Elena Kong, Kara Hui, and Susanna Kwan nominated in this category (along with Nancy Wu) and they give the award to Fala for her character in NR that wasn’t even her best performance? I voted for Elena Kong because her performance was absolutely awesome in “Beauty Knows No Pain”. And absolutely how could a 7-time Best Actress in Film (Kara Hui) lose to Fala? Kara’s performance in AFOS was also way better. The winner of this category definitely was not determined based on acting skill!
Best Supporting Actor: Evergreen Mak
.> For me, this was the hardest category to pick the winner, as I liked almost all of the performances in this category. From the beginning, the race was really between Pierre Ngo, Evergreen Mak, and Dominic Lam (though Raymond Wong and Ron Ng were nominated as well, but they already knew they didn’t have a chance). I remember it took me so long to decide who to vote for in this category, as all three are good actors…in the end, it really came down to a choice between Dominic and Evergreen for me (though I would have been fine with Pierre getting the award as well). Evergreen ended up winning, which is still well-deserved in my opinion, as his Fei Fan Gor was very well-done and memorable. Also, his win was the most emotional one of the night, as I could tell that he was really surprised that he won. His win was pretty much reminiscent of the time back in 2008 when Wayne Lai won for the same award – all of his colleagues stood up and hugged him and applauded him. Same thing happened for Evergreen (though I actually think there were more hugs for Evergreen because he has always been a very amicable actor with tons of friends), plus all of his female colleagues stood up and hugged / kissed him as well (it took him forever to get up on the stage…LOL….also, people kept rubbing his bald head, which was kind of cute!). I also thought it was sweet of him to go over and especially give Elena (his wife in NR) a bear hug, partially sweeping her off her feet (awww)!
And his speech, which he gave through tears (his voice kept breaking at certain parts) was very heartfelt and very humbling – I almost cried at the part where he said that there are so many artists who are better than him at TVB and for the audience to applaud for them. This was probably the only win that I was extremely happy for all night.
Best Actress (TV Queen): Sheren Tang
.> Of course I’m not surprised that Sheren won and no complaints here, since her win was well-deserved. In the forums, there are many people who say her character was not at as ‘popular’ as Fourth Mistress in “Rosy Business”, but to me, that doesn’t really matter, since it’s really about her acting rather than the popularity of the character (plus Cheng Gau Mui was a really intense character anyway, one that was not easy to portray and definitely takes someone with Sheren’s skills to do). And it was already obvious when Charmaine won Favorite Character earlier that Sheren would win TV Queen. One thing that I have to say though – just because TVB gave TV Queen to Sheren, it DOES NOT mean that they are being “fair” – they are giving the award to her again because they have no choice, since she has tremendous audience backing and they wouldn’t be able to justify giving it to Charmaine after all the backlash they got from the horrendous ‘bad decisions’ they made before.
Best Actor (TV King): Wayne Lai
.> Again, no surprise here…this was totally expected (especially after they gave Moses and Raymond awards already). I’m happy for Wayne and am totally fine with him getting the award, though my opinion of why TVB gave him the award is the same as why I think they gave it to Sheren (to appease the audiences and lessen the backlash – plus they know that the audiences nowadays aren’t as ‘naïve’ as they were back in 2006, so pulling a Kevin Cheng-type win again would definitely have gotten them in serious trouble!). I will admit thought that I would much rather the award have gone to Steven – not because Wayne isn’t good because he is definitely absolutely awesome and no one can compare with him in terms of acting skill (he’s definitely the master), but Steven is also a very high quality actor and doesn’t get enough recognition, plus his PSL as well as AWT roles were very well-done and well-deserving of an award (I actually voted for Steven, despite Wayne being one of my favorite actors).
Oh, and Sandra Ng's speech (she was the presenter for the TV King award) was funny too and in a sense, it indirectly 'referred' to TVB's politics as well -- when she announced Wayne as the winner without even opening the envelope (supposedly), then saying "we all know how TVB works already", she definitely hit it on the spot as well...my first reaction was "Absolutely right -- we sure do!!!!" She knows just as well as everyone else (both artist and audience alike) that Wayne would be the TV King because Moses and Raymond got their 'consolation prizes' already...that’s TVB politics and is obvious to everyone!
Best Drama Series: Can’t Buy Me Love
.> This was definitely the category where I was like WTH???? No way was CBML better than NR in terms of script / plot or acting – in fact, CBML was pretty much just a bunch of nonsense! It was so obvious that this category was rigged – TVB was just trying to ‘satisfy’ the CBML group (and upper management, since the series has most of their favorite biological sons and daughters in it).
Also, the finalists for this category were a big huge joke…I mean, how did “A Chip Off the Old Block”, “Every Move You Make”, and “Mysteries of Love” make it into this category when there were so many better made series that deserved to be in those spots (i.e.: “Ghostwriter”, “A Fistful of Stances”, and how about ‘anniversary series’ “Gun Metal Grey”?????).
The presenter of this award was famous director / producer Johnnie To. I love the comments that he made right before opening the envelope: 「咁明顯, 應該係佢喇, 應該無做馬啦, 係咪呀? ~~~ 咦, 又唔係喎, 咁至衰喎」. (Since the above is in Cantonese, here’s the translation: “It’s so obvious, it should be them [“No Regrets”], the applause is different….shouldn’t be rigged, right? “ (he looks back at the artists when he says this). He then opens the envelope and states: “Oh, errr, it’s not them…that’s the bad thing.”
Ok, I know it’s not just me who thinks that the above comments by Johnnie were an indirect ‘diss’ on TVB -- there are very few artists who would be brave enough to do that and Johnnie is definitely one of them (notice how he also mentioned how great his life has been since he left TVB?). And since Johnnie used to work for TVB and was responsible for bringing us a lot of the most respected series in TVB history (along with his teacher Wong Tin Lam), his words have a lot of clout (people can't claim that he is an 'outsider' who doesn't know how it works). That was one of the other highlights of the entire show for me.
In terms of the Best Series award itself, well, again another example of TVB politics at work. I'm pretty sure that TVB was already intending for CBML to win big at the awards ceremony (by win big, I mean either TV King/Queen and/or Series) from the beginning when they took it out of the anniversary series timeslot (which they might as well have kept it there with the way they've been treating its replacement GMG!) and with so many audiences behind Wayne and Sheren, there only option was to give CBML the Best Series consolation prize. Pretty much as long as CBML and NR were in the top 5 for that category, it doesn't matter what other series were in there because doesn't mean anything anyways.
Concluding Comments:
Overall, the awards ceremony was lackluster and disappointing as usual – true, there were some very deserving wins, but there were also quite a few that left me scratching my head and asking “What the hell were they thinking?” With that said though, I don’t get ‘upset’ anymore over the results of the awards ceremony because frankly, I don’t give a damn about those awards – they don’t mean a thing to me and won’t cause me to like an artist that I already dislike or hate an artist that I’ve always liked. In fact, I’m already used to TVB’s STUPIDITIES after so many years following HK entertainment!
Even so, I do want to mention what I felt were the biggest SNUBS (disappointments) of the night:
.>> Kenneth and Steven losing to Raymond in the Favorite Male Character award – as I said above, both were SO MUCH MORE deserving of the award than Raymond. I don’t really care too much that TVB sacrificed Moses in this category (I didn’t vote for him anyway), but with Ma Ming and Steven’s awesome performances, it was just plain sad that they fell victim to TVB’s stupid politics!
.>> “Gun Metal Grey” not being in the top 5 for Best Series. Sure, TVB can (and probably will) argue that because GMG has not finished airing, that’s why it was at a disadvantage for the awards (which I can totally refute because both Felix and Nancy were in top 5 in their respective categories!)…BUT whose fault is it that GMG is airing so late and didn’t finish in time for the awards? TVB’s fault of course, since they were the ones who decided to remove CBML from the anniversary series timeslot (to give it better advantage at the awards ceremony) and make GMG into a replacement!
.>> I’m also sad that Steven didn’t win ANYTHING, not even a consolation prize, despite being better in terms of acting than some of those who actually won an award (and many of those who were nominated). Goes to show how much TVB DOESN’T care about him (yup, might as well put him into the same boat as Wong Hei, Sunny Chan, and all those other talented artists whom TVB loves to throw by the wayside). Well, in the long run, it doesn’t matter because we all know TVB’s awards are rigged anyway – Steven’s fans will continue to support him, no matter what happens (and I was happy to see what a great sport he was at the ceremony).
Overall, I still feel that the awards were rigged…TVB knows what they are doing -- they are very CLEVER when it comes to this kind of stuff and knows how far to push it before they will get 'caught' so to speak. Why do you think Raymond, Moses, and Charmaine as well as CBML were still awarded even though there were a lot of much more deserving candidates? TVB made sure that they still went with the audiences to some extent (hence Wayne and Sheren won) but still wanted to make sure they get their own biological children in there to satisfy their upper management.
No matter who they end up "awarding" and how much those won deserved or didn't deserve the awards, I will never associate the word "fair" with TVB's Anniversary Awards -- because no matter what, it will always be a reflection of TVB's politics (every year, it's pretty much just a matter of which category TVB decides to "rig")
Also, with regard to the ‘audience voting’ nonsense (some ignorant fans’ assertion that the awards were based on audience voting and so people who weren’t satisfied with the results should have voted) – well, sorry to burst your bubble, but the audience's vote really doesn't mean much at the end of the day because TVB will give the awards to whomever they want, since it's all about the politics really...they mostly just look at the audience vote to give them an 'idea' of how much backlash they will or won't get and how best to 'divide the pork' so that everyone is somewhat happy. So basically, whether we vote or not really doesn’t matter, since TVB will still rig it to benefit them (without making it seem too obvious of course).
LASTLY…..after this awards ceremony, it's even more obvious that FAVORITISM is rampant in TVB....so next time, if I hear again anyone from TVB claim that 'no favoritism exists in their company' (the message they continue to push out to the media), I'm just going to laugh at anyone who is naive enough to believe that!
So before I go any further, I have to make the following disclaimer: the TVB Anniversary Awards from the past 5 years or so don’t mean anything to me because personally, I feel that TVB rigs them to benefit their own – we already know that TVB uses the awards to promote / showcase their own biological sons/daughters and the criteria is pretty much NOT based on acting skills or who gave the best performance, so there is NO CREDIBILITY whatsoever to the awards they give out.
With that said, below is the list of winners, my reaction to the results, as well as general comments and highlights from the ceremony (in my opinion):
TVB.COM Popular Artist: Raymond Lam
.> Of course, I’m not surprised that Raymond got this award, since he has such a huge fan base. In my opinion, this award is absolutely worthless because it doesn’t mean anything at all – it merely is an indication of how much on-line support the artist who wins it has…and I’m sure all of us (as well as Raymond himself) already know how many fans Raymond has – he doesn’t need a ‘stupid’ award to tell him that! Plus, if I remember correctly, he’s gotten this award several times in the past already (except for last year, but that’s because he didn’t have any series in the running last year) – pretty much every year that Raymond has a series in contention, he will continue to get this award.
Most ‘Enjoyable’ Program (aka Program Most Worth Watching): HK ARTchitecture
.> Since I didn’t watch any of the nominated programs in this category except for “The Voice”, not really going to comment (especially since I didn’t even know those other programs existed).
Best Variety Show: The Voice 2
I didn’t like any of the nominees in this category, so personally I don’t really care who won. Though I would have to say that as long as Super Trio didn’t win, then I’m fine with it – I used to love Super Trio, but the past couple years, the show has gotten very stupid and the games have been extremely lame. So I’m glad they didn’t win. I wasn’t too keen on the other nominee “Fun with Liza and the Gods” (as I’ve always said, I feel that watching that show makes me feel ‘dumb and dumber’) and the other 2 nominees I never even heard of, so I guess the logical choice would have been “The Voice 2”.
Most Improved Actress: Natalie Tong
.> Unlike most people in the forums, I actually don’t have much of an opinion on who deserved to win in this category because personally, I’m not too keen on any of the actresses who were nominated. I guess if I had to choose, I would probably prefer Selena more as an actress, as I can’t stand the majority of Natalie’s roles / performances. But as someone said in one of the forums, the reason why Selena probably didn’t get the award was because she’s pretty much already an established actress compared to Natalie so there wasn’t a lot to “improve” persay (which makes sense). But again, I don’t really care who wins this one (in fact, I can’t even remember who I voted for anymore in this category – goes to show how much I don’t care about it).
Most Improved Actor: Raymond Wong
.> Ok, I must say that this one was expected and very well-deserving. Raymond definitely did a good job this year and for me personally, I don’t mind watching his series. I don’t like very many of the newer generation TVB artists, but he’s definitely one that I enjoy watching. I feel that Raymond is deserving because I’ve also seen his improvement from his first few series to “When Lanes Merge” and “No Regrets”, so I can understand why he won. And I also give kudos to Raymond for giving one of the best speeches of the night. It was obvious he was well-prepared, as he had written down people he wanted to thank on a piece of paper and was able to get through the entire list. And even though he is sort of ‘new’ to TVB, he’s not new to the industry (13 years in the industry and 3.5 years in TVB) – he mentioned that this is his first award. He was very calm and extremely well-spoken, which really impressed me. Oh, and I loved the last part of his speech where he thanks his wife for sticking with him even during the lowest point in his life, then says that she will be giving him “a little life” very soon (meaning that she’s pregnant). Everyone was applauding and screaming when he made that announcement, which was so cute! Congrats to Raymond on his win and also on soon becoming a father!
Favorite Female Character: Charmaine Sheh
.> I actually am ok with Charmaine getting this award because out of the top 5 finalists (Charmaine’s princess from CBML, Sheren’s Miss 9 from NR, Linda’s character from CBML, Teresa’s character from Some Day, Tavia’s character from MOL), both Charmaine’s and Sheren’s characters were quite memorable and well-liked by audiences. It was pretty obvious though when Charmaine’s name was announced that Sheren would be TV Queen and this would be Charmaine’s consolation prize (because no matter how much TVB loves Charmaine, they would not risk the huge backlash from the audiences by giving her both Character and Actress awards again). Also, I’ve always looked at this award as a consolation prize for TV Queen for one, and two, it’s more about the ‘character’ in the series than the actor or actress, so again it doesn’t really mean anything in terms of the artists themselves (the artist could have so-so acting skills, but if the character is well-written, she could still win this award).
Favorite Male Character: Raymond Lam
.> Ok, this one was so obviously RIGGED!!! Raymond’s character in MOL was SO BORING and not even memorable. I mean, since this award was consolation for TV King, they could have given the award to Kenneth or Steven instead – they deserved it WAY more than Raymond did (if they didn’t want to give it to Wayne again because he was already going to get the Actor award). Though I don’t think that Moses deserves this award either because his character in CBML was annoying, but I don’t think I would have as much problem if he had gotten this award (probably cuz I was already expecting him to win it, since TVB was pushing him so much). I was actually rooting for Kenneth in this category (because his character stood out so much and AFOS was a great series with barely any recognition), but I would have been fine with any of the other 3 winning. But Raymond????? TVB was obviously trying to play favorites here!
Best Television Program Host: Liza Wang, Louis Yuen, Wong Cho Lam, Johnson Lee
.> This one was predictable – in fact, I would probably be surprised if they “didn’t” get this one…though I will say that I didn’t vote for them (I voted for Steven Ma). But oh well, it is what it is…not too much comment about this one (again, another category I didn’t really care about).
Best Professional Performance: Moses Chan
.> This was that stupid ‘pork’ award (the one Tavia got last year) that TVB made up in order to please certain people. Pretty much, it means nothing (most people can’t even explain what the purpose of the award is because frankly, it has no purpose) and does absolutely nothing for the artist who receives it. Last year, TVB gave it to Tavia because they didn’t want to waste all the investment they made with her in BTROC and this year, they are giving it to Moses because they chose Raymond over him for Favorite Character and there is no way that they could give him TV King without major backlash. Basically, this is a lame award that TVB should just get rid of instead of ‘embarrassing’ the artist who ends up receiving it! (But I do have to give credit to Moses for trying to make the most of the win by injecting a little bit of humor in his acceptance speech and trying to lighten up the atmosphere).
Best Supporting Actress: Fala Chen
.> Sorry, but there is no way I can support Fala getting this award with all of the veteran actresses nominated who were WAY better than her. I mean, they’ve got Elena Kong, Kara Hui, and Susanna Kwan nominated in this category (along with Nancy Wu) and they give the award to Fala for her character in NR that wasn’t even her best performance? I voted for Elena Kong because her performance was absolutely awesome in “Beauty Knows No Pain”. And absolutely how could a 7-time Best Actress in Film (Kara Hui) lose to Fala? Kara’s performance in AFOS was also way better. The winner of this category definitely was not determined based on acting skill!
Best Supporting Actor: Evergreen Mak
.> For me, this was the hardest category to pick the winner, as I liked almost all of the performances in this category. From the beginning, the race was really between Pierre Ngo, Evergreen Mak, and Dominic Lam (though Raymond Wong and Ron Ng were nominated as well, but they already knew they didn’t have a chance). I remember it took me so long to decide who to vote for in this category, as all three are good actors…in the end, it really came down to a choice between Dominic and Evergreen for me (though I would have been fine with Pierre getting the award as well). Evergreen ended up winning, which is still well-deserved in my opinion, as his Fei Fan Gor was very well-done and memorable. Also, his win was the most emotional one of the night, as I could tell that he was really surprised that he won. His win was pretty much reminiscent of the time back in 2008 when Wayne Lai won for the same award – all of his colleagues stood up and hugged him and applauded him. Same thing happened for Evergreen (though I actually think there were more hugs for Evergreen because he has always been a very amicable actor with tons of friends), plus all of his female colleagues stood up and hugged / kissed him as well (it took him forever to get up on the stage…LOL….also, people kept rubbing his bald head, which was kind of cute!). I also thought it was sweet of him to go over and especially give Elena (his wife in NR) a bear hug, partially sweeping her off her feet (awww)!
And his speech, which he gave through tears (his voice kept breaking at certain parts) was very heartfelt and very humbling – I almost cried at the part where he said that there are so many artists who are better than him at TVB and for the audience to applaud for them. This was probably the only win that I was extremely happy for all night.
Best Actress (TV Queen): Sheren Tang
.> Of course I’m not surprised that Sheren won and no complaints here, since her win was well-deserved. In the forums, there are many people who say her character was not at as ‘popular’ as Fourth Mistress in “Rosy Business”, but to me, that doesn’t really matter, since it’s really about her acting rather than the popularity of the character (plus Cheng Gau Mui was a really intense character anyway, one that was not easy to portray and definitely takes someone with Sheren’s skills to do). And it was already obvious when Charmaine won Favorite Character earlier that Sheren would win TV Queen. One thing that I have to say though – just because TVB gave TV Queen to Sheren, it DOES NOT mean that they are being “fair” – they are giving the award to her again because they have no choice, since she has tremendous audience backing and they wouldn’t be able to justify giving it to Charmaine after all the backlash they got from the horrendous ‘bad decisions’ they made before.
Best Actor (TV King): Wayne Lai
.> Again, no surprise here…this was totally expected (especially after they gave Moses and Raymond awards already). I’m happy for Wayne and am totally fine with him getting the award, though my opinion of why TVB gave him the award is the same as why I think they gave it to Sheren (to appease the audiences and lessen the backlash – plus they know that the audiences nowadays aren’t as ‘naïve’ as they were back in 2006, so pulling a Kevin Cheng-type win again would definitely have gotten them in serious trouble!). I will admit thought that I would much rather the award have gone to Steven – not because Wayne isn’t good because he is definitely absolutely awesome and no one can compare with him in terms of acting skill (he’s definitely the master), but Steven is also a very high quality actor and doesn’t get enough recognition, plus his PSL as well as AWT roles were very well-done and well-deserving of an award (I actually voted for Steven, despite Wayne being one of my favorite actors).
Oh, and Sandra Ng's speech (she was the presenter for the TV King award) was funny too and in a sense, it indirectly 'referred' to TVB's politics as well -- when she announced Wayne as the winner without even opening the envelope (supposedly), then saying "we all know how TVB works already", she definitely hit it on the spot as well...my first reaction was "Absolutely right -- we sure do!!!!" She knows just as well as everyone else (both artist and audience alike) that Wayne would be the TV King because Moses and Raymond got their 'consolation prizes' already...that’s TVB politics and is obvious to everyone!
Best Drama Series: Can’t Buy Me Love
.> This was definitely the category where I was like WTH???? No way was CBML better than NR in terms of script / plot or acting – in fact, CBML was pretty much just a bunch of nonsense! It was so obvious that this category was rigged – TVB was just trying to ‘satisfy’ the CBML group (and upper management, since the series has most of their favorite biological sons and daughters in it).
Also, the finalists for this category were a big huge joke…I mean, how did “A Chip Off the Old Block”, “Every Move You Make”, and “Mysteries of Love” make it into this category when there were so many better made series that deserved to be in those spots (i.e.: “Ghostwriter”, “A Fistful of Stances”, and how about ‘anniversary series’ “Gun Metal Grey”?????).
The presenter of this award was famous director / producer Johnnie To. I love the comments that he made right before opening the envelope: 「咁明顯, 應該係佢喇, 應該無做馬啦, 係咪呀? ~~~ 咦, 又唔係喎, 咁至衰喎」. (Since the above is in Cantonese, here’s the translation: “It’s so obvious, it should be them [“No Regrets”], the applause is different….shouldn’t be rigged, right? “ (he looks back at the artists when he says this). He then opens the envelope and states: “Oh, errr, it’s not them…that’s the bad thing.”
Ok, I know it’s not just me who thinks that the above comments by Johnnie were an indirect ‘diss’ on TVB -- there are very few artists who would be brave enough to do that and Johnnie is definitely one of them (notice how he also mentioned how great his life has been since he left TVB?). And since Johnnie used to work for TVB and was responsible for bringing us a lot of the most respected series in TVB history (along with his teacher Wong Tin Lam), his words have a lot of clout (people can't claim that he is an 'outsider' who doesn't know how it works). That was one of the other highlights of the entire show for me.
In terms of the Best Series award itself, well, again another example of TVB politics at work. I'm pretty sure that TVB was already intending for CBML to win big at the awards ceremony (by win big, I mean either TV King/Queen and/or Series) from the beginning when they took it out of the anniversary series timeslot (which they might as well have kept it there with the way they've been treating its replacement GMG!) and with so many audiences behind Wayne and Sheren, there only option was to give CBML the Best Series consolation prize. Pretty much as long as CBML and NR were in the top 5 for that category, it doesn't matter what other series were in there because doesn't mean anything anyways.
Concluding Comments:
Overall, the awards ceremony was lackluster and disappointing as usual – true, there were some very deserving wins, but there were also quite a few that left me scratching my head and asking “What the hell were they thinking?” With that said though, I don’t get ‘upset’ anymore over the results of the awards ceremony because frankly, I don’t give a damn about those awards – they don’t mean a thing to me and won’t cause me to like an artist that I already dislike or hate an artist that I’ve always liked. In fact, I’m already used to TVB’s STUPIDITIES after so many years following HK entertainment!
Even so, I do want to mention what I felt were the biggest SNUBS (disappointments) of the night:
.>> Kenneth and Steven losing to Raymond in the Favorite Male Character award – as I said above, both were SO MUCH MORE deserving of the award than Raymond. I don’t really care too much that TVB sacrificed Moses in this category (I didn’t vote for him anyway), but with Ma Ming and Steven’s awesome performances, it was just plain sad that they fell victim to TVB’s stupid politics!
.>> “Gun Metal Grey” not being in the top 5 for Best Series. Sure, TVB can (and probably will) argue that because GMG has not finished airing, that’s why it was at a disadvantage for the awards (which I can totally refute because both Felix and Nancy were in top 5 in their respective categories!)…BUT whose fault is it that GMG is airing so late and didn’t finish in time for the awards? TVB’s fault of course, since they were the ones who decided to remove CBML from the anniversary series timeslot (to give it better advantage at the awards ceremony) and make GMG into a replacement!
.>> I’m also sad that Steven didn’t win ANYTHING, not even a consolation prize, despite being better in terms of acting than some of those who actually won an award (and many of those who were nominated). Goes to show how much TVB DOESN’T care about him (yup, might as well put him into the same boat as Wong Hei, Sunny Chan, and all those other talented artists whom TVB loves to throw by the wayside). Well, in the long run, it doesn’t matter because we all know TVB’s awards are rigged anyway – Steven’s fans will continue to support him, no matter what happens (and I was happy to see what a great sport he was at the ceremony).
Overall, I still feel that the awards were rigged…TVB knows what they are doing -- they are very CLEVER when it comes to this kind of stuff and knows how far to push it before they will get 'caught' so to speak. Why do you think Raymond, Moses, and Charmaine as well as CBML were still awarded even though there were a lot of much more deserving candidates? TVB made sure that they still went with the audiences to some extent (hence Wayne and Sheren won) but still wanted to make sure they get their own biological children in there to satisfy their upper management.
No matter who they end up "awarding" and how much those won deserved or didn't deserve the awards, I will never associate the word "fair" with TVB's Anniversary Awards -- because no matter what, it will always be a reflection of TVB's politics (every year, it's pretty much just a matter of which category TVB decides to "rig")
Also, with regard to the ‘audience voting’ nonsense (some ignorant fans’ assertion that the awards were based on audience voting and so people who weren’t satisfied with the results should have voted) – well, sorry to burst your bubble, but the audience's vote really doesn't mean much at the end of the day because TVB will give the awards to whomever they want, since it's all about the politics really...they mostly just look at the audience vote to give them an 'idea' of how much backlash they will or won't get and how best to 'divide the pork' so that everyone is somewhat happy. So basically, whether we vote or not really doesn’t matter, since TVB will still rig it to benefit them (without making it seem too obvious of course).
LASTLY…..after this awards ceremony, it's even more obvious that FAVORITISM is rampant in TVB....so next time, if I hear again anyone from TVB claim that 'no favoritism exists in their company' (the message they continue to push out to the media), I'm just going to laugh at anyone who is naive enough to believe that!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Book review: 從零開始 (Now and Then) -- post #1 (in a series)
I'm currently reading a book called 從零開始 (literally translated: "Starting From Zero") and figured I would share some thoughts about it on my blog.
As a means of introduction, the book 從零開始 is actually a special publication from MingPao Weekly, which is one of HK's premier entertainment / celebrity / fashion news magazines . I've been a long time fan of MingPao Weekly magazine, as the entertainment news reporting is quite professional and does not take the same approach as those trashy gossip / tabloid magazines that are rampant in HK. Mingpao Weekly does a lot of features on celebrities and famous people, but its method is primarily through one on one interviews with the celebrities themselves, rather than making up stuff based on their own speculation -- this is one of the unique aspects of the magazine (and one of the primary reasons why I like reading it, since it's a first hand account from the celebrities themselves).
Ok, so back to the book itself....it actually is comprised of 3 volumes, all released at different times (volume 1 was published back in 2008, volume 2 came out in 2009, and volume 3 just came out this year, in 2010). The book consists of a compilation of celebrity interviews as well as short biographical accounts of the celebrities (i.e. how they started, the highlights and lowlights of their careers, some details about their personal lives and relationships, etc.). Each volume features different celebrities and the interviews are done by Huang Li Ling, a well-known entertainment reporter/writer in HK who has worked for Mingpao magazine for many years. And the celebrities featured in the book are not the 'average joe' -- any long-time follower of HK entertainment (or a HK entertainment fanatic like me) is sure to recognize every single celebrity featured in each of the books (just to give you an idea -- some of the famous names in Volume 1: Leslie Cheung, Jacky Cheung, Sammi Cheng, Carina Lau, Jackie Chan, etc. and Volume 2: Tony Leung, Anita Mui, Andy Lau, Faye Wong, etc., and Volume 3: Lydia Shum, Eason Chan, Cecilia Cheung, Josephine Hsiao, etc.)
I actually read Volume 1 already back in 2008 when the book first came out and currently I'm reading Volume 2 (yes, I'm behind, since volume 2 came out last year and volume 3 is already out, which I haven't gotten to yet). However, since the book is a compilation of interviews that are not inter-connected and does not go in any particular order, I am going to re-read parts of Volume 1 and share my thoughts on celebrities from both volumes 1 and 2 (I'll write about volume 3 once I get around to reading it).
So here goes the first feature: my idol, Jacky Cheung (yup, you guessed it...lol!)
First of all, I have to make it clear that Jacky is a very private, low-key person who does not like to reveal a lot about his personal life -- of course, he has done seemingly countless interviews in the 25 years that he has been in the entertainment industry (and some details do come out about his family and stuff, though rare), but in comparisons to most HK entertainers, the number of interviews he actually does is few and far between (plus he is quite selective about who he agrees to interview with, especially if it's an in-depth interview that touches on personal life). With that said, I'm sure you can imagine my excitement (me being a dedicated, long-time Jacky fan) at getting the chance to read about him (a lot of it in his own words) in this book.
Though most of the information about him in the book is stuff I already knew (hey, I'm not a 20 year Jacky fan for nothing!), I still thoroughly enjoyed reading the account. The part about how the infamous scar under Jacky's right eye came about was quite amusing -- I loved the way he described it (though I must say that the response he gave to a reporter during an interview one time was way more hilarious -- it wasn't the true account of course -- he was just joking that time). For those of you who are curious though, I'll give you the short version of how his scar came about (btw, it's a little-known story that even some die-hard Jacky fans may not be aware of): basically, it was the result of his cousin accidentally slashing him with a meat cleaver (they both loved to watch TV when they were kids and one day, they were pretending to re-enact one of the scenes from the old "One-Armed Swordsman" movie -- except with real knives as 'swords'!). So I guess you could say that he got the scar from being a mischievous little rascal (at least that's the way Jacky puts it....hahaha!).
Another interesting section was the part that talked about the lowest point in Jacky’s career and life – the time back in 1987/1988 when he almost lost everything that he cared about (his career, family, friends, fans, etc.) because of alcoholism. Jacky has actually talked about this point in his life in several interviews in the past and even though I’ve heard it many times (I could probably recite it by now), I never tire of it because the story is so poignant and encouraging (in my opinion, that is). It’s a story that I would actually like to save and share some other time when I can dedicate an entire blog post to it and do it justice.
The last highlight (I’m only touching on a few things, since you know I could go on forever about Jacky) from the book is the section on his relationship with his wife May Lo as well as his many friends in the entertainment industry (Eric Tsang, Anita Mui, Tony Leung, Leslie Cheung, etc.). I loved reading the funny stories and the tidbits about their various gatherings and parties.
Of course, there was a lot more stuff about Jacky in the book that I didn’t cover in this post. So I definitely encourage those who want to know more (both fans and non-fans alike) and who can read Chinese to get the book and read it – there’s also a lot of great stuff about the HK entertainment industry in there.
As a means of introduction, the book 從零開始 is actually a special publication from MingPao Weekly, which is one of HK's premier entertainment / celebrity / fashion news magazines . I've been a long time fan of MingPao Weekly magazine, as the entertainment news reporting is quite professional and does not take the same approach as those trashy gossip / tabloid magazines that are rampant in HK. Mingpao Weekly does a lot of features on celebrities and famous people, but its method is primarily through one on one interviews with the celebrities themselves, rather than making up stuff based on their own speculation -- this is one of the unique aspects of the magazine (and one of the primary reasons why I like reading it, since it's a first hand account from the celebrities themselves).
Ok, so back to the book itself....it actually is comprised of 3 volumes, all released at different times (volume 1 was published back in 2008, volume 2 came out in 2009, and volume 3 just came out this year, in 2010). The book consists of a compilation of celebrity interviews as well as short biographical accounts of the celebrities (i.e. how they started, the highlights and lowlights of their careers, some details about their personal lives and relationships, etc.). Each volume features different celebrities and the interviews are done by Huang Li Ling, a well-known entertainment reporter/writer in HK who has worked for Mingpao magazine for many years. And the celebrities featured in the book are not the 'average joe' -- any long-time follower of HK entertainment (or a HK entertainment fanatic like me) is sure to recognize every single celebrity featured in each of the books (just to give you an idea -- some of the famous names in Volume 1: Leslie Cheung, Jacky Cheung, Sammi Cheng, Carina Lau, Jackie Chan, etc. and Volume 2: Tony Leung, Anita Mui, Andy Lau, Faye Wong, etc., and Volume 3: Lydia Shum, Eason Chan, Cecilia Cheung, Josephine Hsiao, etc.)
I actually read Volume 1 already back in 2008 when the book first came out and currently I'm reading Volume 2 (yes, I'm behind, since volume 2 came out last year and volume 3 is already out, which I haven't gotten to yet). However, since the book is a compilation of interviews that are not inter-connected and does not go in any particular order, I am going to re-read parts of Volume 1 and share my thoughts on celebrities from both volumes 1 and 2 (I'll write about volume 3 once I get around to reading it).
So here goes the first feature: my idol, Jacky Cheung (yup, you guessed it...lol!)
First of all, I have to make it clear that Jacky is a very private, low-key person who does not like to reveal a lot about his personal life -- of course, he has done seemingly countless interviews in the 25 years that he has been in the entertainment industry (and some details do come out about his family and stuff, though rare), but in comparisons to most HK entertainers, the number of interviews he actually does is few and far between (plus he is quite selective about who he agrees to interview with, especially if it's an in-depth interview that touches on personal life). With that said, I'm sure you can imagine my excitement (me being a dedicated, long-time Jacky fan) at getting the chance to read about him (a lot of it in his own words) in this book.
Though most of the information about him in the book is stuff I already knew (hey, I'm not a 20 year Jacky fan for nothing!), I still thoroughly enjoyed reading the account. The part about how the infamous scar under Jacky's right eye came about was quite amusing -- I loved the way he described it (though I must say that the response he gave to a reporter during an interview one time was way more hilarious -- it wasn't the true account of course -- he was just joking that time). For those of you who are curious though, I'll give you the short version of how his scar came about (btw, it's a little-known story that even some die-hard Jacky fans may not be aware of): basically, it was the result of his cousin accidentally slashing him with a meat cleaver (they both loved to watch TV when they were kids and one day, they were pretending to re-enact one of the scenes from the old "One-Armed Swordsman" movie -- except with real knives as 'swords'!). So I guess you could say that he got the scar from being a mischievous little rascal (at least that's the way Jacky puts it....hahaha!).
Another interesting section was the part that talked about the lowest point in Jacky’s career and life – the time back in 1987/1988 when he almost lost everything that he cared about (his career, family, friends, fans, etc.) because of alcoholism. Jacky has actually talked about this point in his life in several interviews in the past and even though I’ve heard it many times (I could probably recite it by now), I never tire of it because the story is so poignant and encouraging (in my opinion, that is). It’s a story that I would actually like to save and share some other time when I can dedicate an entire blog post to it and do it justice.
The last highlight (I’m only touching on a few things, since you know I could go on forever about Jacky) from the book is the section on his relationship with his wife May Lo as well as his many friends in the entertainment industry (Eric Tsang, Anita Mui, Tony Leung, Leslie Cheung, etc.). I loved reading the funny stories and the tidbits about their various gatherings and parties.
Of course, there was a lot more stuff about Jacky in the book that I didn’t cover in this post. So I definitely encourage those who want to know more (both fans and non-fans alike) and who can read Chinese to get the book and read it – there’s also a lot of great stuff about the HK entertainment industry in there.
Monday, November 29, 2010
2011 TVB Sales Presentation
Year 2011 TVB Series & TVB Sales Presentation - AsianFanatics Forum - Page 2
Source for clips: Asianfanatics
***
As I was writing up a response to DTLCT’s sales presentation post, I figured I might as well do my own blog post on it as well, since I have so much material written up already.
Ok, after watching the clips, here are my comments (for links to the actual clips themselves, go the above thread in AF):
Back to the Three Kingdoms 回到三國 -- I WAS looking forward to this one, but now after watching the clip, I'm starting to have doubts. First, the comedic elements part was a bit lame -- I hope they don't try to incorporate that because it would be dumb. Second, it seems to me like another 'recycled idea' -- pretty much a remake of "A Step into the Past" theme but with different artists and with a comedic element added. I still hope they actually make this one, but not in the way that they presented it in the clip.
Colorful World of Sister Fa 花花世界花家姐 – I’m sorry, but this one looks beyond lame to me. Like I said before, it’s pretty much a remake of “Life Made Simple” except the female version. And Charmaine really does NOT look convincing to me in the clip – it seems to me like she was trying way too hard to be a mentally challenged person and it just didn’t fly with me. Plus I’m not too keen on the cast either (I pretty much don’t like anyone in the cast)….though I will say that the series will definitely do well in the ratings because both Raymond and Charmaine have a lot of fans, so they will tune in just to watch them (doesn’t really matter how the script turns out).
Yes Sir, No Sir 點解阿Sir係阿Sir – Don’t like this one either….the cast doesn’t impress me first of all and the whole “school” thing has been recycled way too many times already…I think I would be able to endure the recycled theme if the series actually had a cast I liked (i.e. “Shine on You” which was also the recycled ‘school’ theme but it at least had a cast that I liked – even if the script was so-so, just watching the fine actors do their magic was a treat in itself). Let’s see if things end up changing – if not, then it will probably be a “no” in my book.
The Boxing King 拳王– Ok, one question: is this supposed to be a tragedy or a comedy? They certainly didn’t do the clip too well because the last few seconds were extremely lame. Again, I’m not too keen on the cast, but that’s not the reason why I don’t want to watch it – the reason is because I absolutely hate sports-themed series / movies because they bore the hell out of me (yes, I’ve tried watching quite a few and never got through the first half of the series/movies). So this one is a definite “no” for me.
King of Ten Thousand Phoenixes 萬凰之王– I think I’ve commented on this one before and even after watching the clip, my opinion has not changed. I love Sunny and ok with Jessica too and was looking forward to another collaboration with the two – BUT TVB had to go and add Myolie into the series…and not only that, it seems that Myolie will have more screen time than Jessica (well, that’s the impression I’m getting because in every single thing I’ve read from TVB introducing the series, Myolie’s name is listed first, before Jessica’s and sometimes even before Sunny’s). Everyone knows how much I hate watching Myolie’s series because I absolutely just cannot stand her (and for sure there will be crying scenes in this series, which means TORTURE) – plus I’m still bitter (at TVB) for pairing Myolie with Sunny in “War and Destiny”, which is a series I would have liked a lot if it weren’t for Myolie and also that upcoming “Flying Fish” series where she is paired with Julian (lover) and Damian (father). Oh and of course that joke of a series with Gallen (the Cat and Dog one). Ughh!!! (Note to TVB: STOP PAIRING MYOLIE WITH MY FAVORITE ACTORS!!!!!). I think I’m going to protest this series just because of Myolie – plus I’m quite sick of the whole Qing dynasty theme too (another recycled idea…please don’t tell me that this is another “War and Beauty” wannabee!!!!).
The Truth 真相 -- finally, a series that actually looks promising! Just like DTLCT said, I’m not too keen on the female cast either, but the male cast looks interesting….plus, it looks like there will be a lot of guest stars in this one, which is another thing to look forward too (oooh, Kenneth Ma looks like he will be playing a baddie, which will surely be interesting to watch!). I read some stuff about this series earlier and it looks like it’s going to be one of those “Files of Justice” type series, which I’m ok with because there is so much material that can be done with lawyer series (unlike other themes, lawyer and doctor themes are more easily recycled without seeming too lame). So far, this looks like a keeper….
The Gods.com 福祿壽.COM– so WHAT is the point of this show, may I ask? Just to spoof the various series and get a good laugh? Sorry, but I can get a good laugh from watching a good comedy, so don’t need this junk for that. I’ve actually never liked the whole parody / spoofing / imitation stuff because I just think it’s lame (that’s why I’m not interested in watching the ‘three gods’ perform). I’m definitely skipping this one, as I have a feeling that watching this show will make me feel ‘dumb’…
Relic of Emissary 洪武三十二 – I didn’t recognize the English title at first, but then when I watched the clip, I realized that this is the ‘Hongwu 32’ series that was originally touted as the ancient version of “The Academy” (since it had similar cast). Even back before the clip came out (when they were showing all the cast pictures and behind-the-scenes filming stuff), this was already a ‘skip’ in my book, as I’m completely turned off by the cast (I don’t like anyone in the series – well, none of the main leads at least). After watching the clip, I’ve reaffirmed my ‘skip’ decision even more because the series just looks extremely boring and lame.
Psychological Warfare 心戰– Um, ok…looks way too intense for my liking (some of the stuff shown in the clip looked like it was borderline horror)…plus I’ve never been too keen on Adam Cheng, though I’m not opposed to watching his series if the script/storyline is good. And so far, this is the only series with a female lead that I actually like (Maggie) – hmmm…the sales clip actually plays out like a movie, which I think may be a disadvantage because the series probably will not be able to deliver in terms of the horror / suspense piece (there are certain limitations / restrictions in the TV world that are not there in the movie world). This one may be better off scrapped and made into a movie instead….
Mahjong Flying Southeast 麻雀東南飛 – Oh, so THIS is the series I was reading about on Weibo (when I saw the pictures, I was wondering what series they belonged to). Finally, a cast that I like (Raymond, Kenneth, Ruco, Crystal, etc.) and a comedy at that – plus, based on the clip, it looks like this is going to be one of those ‘clever comedic’ pieces where the jokes are actually funny and not the lame type where one feels ‘stupid’ after watching it. Looking forward to this one (so far)….hopefully it actually happens though because based on what I read on weibo, it sounded like a ‘maybe’ in terms of moving forward with filming.
Only You 只有您 – don’t know enough about this one to make a decision on whether it will be a keeper or not (the clip was way too short and I couldn’t really figure out who the leads were supposed to be). I guess I’ll have to read up on this one more before I decide.
The Great Eunuch 大太監– first of all, Bosco as emperor? Really? Hmmm….ok, we’ll see. Though intense, this one actually looks promising to me – plus this is the only series out of the 12 showcased where nearly the entire cast is talented in terms of acting and can really give each other a ‘run for the money’ in terms of acting skill (well, except for Bosco and Tavia, both of whom I wouldn’t classify as ‘talented’ but at least they’re ‘tolerable’ in my book – depending on their characters that is). The others – Wayne Lai, Michelle Yim, John Chiang, Elliot Ngok, King sir, Susanna Kwan – are already proven talents…this sounds like it will be a high quality series…a keeper so far (unless TVB makes major changes to the cast).
Source for clips: Asianfanatics
***
As I was writing up a response to DTLCT’s sales presentation post, I figured I might as well do my own blog post on it as well, since I have so much material written up already.
Ok, after watching the clips, here are my comments (for links to the actual clips themselves, go the above thread in AF):
Back to the Three Kingdoms 回到三國 -- I WAS looking forward to this one, but now after watching the clip, I'm starting to have doubts. First, the comedic elements part was a bit lame -- I hope they don't try to incorporate that because it would be dumb. Second, it seems to me like another 'recycled idea' -- pretty much a remake of "A Step into the Past" theme but with different artists and with a comedic element added. I still hope they actually make this one, but not in the way that they presented it in the clip.
Colorful World of Sister Fa 花花世界花家姐 – I’m sorry, but this one looks beyond lame to me. Like I said before, it’s pretty much a remake of “Life Made Simple” except the female version. And Charmaine really does NOT look convincing to me in the clip – it seems to me like she was trying way too hard to be a mentally challenged person and it just didn’t fly with me. Plus I’m not too keen on the cast either (I pretty much don’t like anyone in the cast)….though I will say that the series will definitely do well in the ratings because both Raymond and Charmaine have a lot of fans, so they will tune in just to watch them (doesn’t really matter how the script turns out).
Yes Sir, No Sir 點解阿Sir係阿Sir – Don’t like this one either….the cast doesn’t impress me first of all and the whole “school” thing has been recycled way too many times already…I think I would be able to endure the recycled theme if the series actually had a cast I liked (i.e. “Shine on You” which was also the recycled ‘school’ theme but it at least had a cast that I liked – even if the script was so-so, just watching the fine actors do their magic was a treat in itself). Let’s see if things end up changing – if not, then it will probably be a “no” in my book.
The Boxing King 拳王– Ok, one question: is this supposed to be a tragedy or a comedy? They certainly didn’t do the clip too well because the last few seconds were extremely lame. Again, I’m not too keen on the cast, but that’s not the reason why I don’t want to watch it – the reason is because I absolutely hate sports-themed series / movies because they bore the hell out of me (yes, I’ve tried watching quite a few and never got through the first half of the series/movies). So this one is a definite “no” for me.
King of Ten Thousand Phoenixes 萬凰之王– I think I’ve commented on this one before and even after watching the clip, my opinion has not changed. I love Sunny and ok with Jessica too and was looking forward to another collaboration with the two – BUT TVB had to go and add Myolie into the series…and not only that, it seems that Myolie will have more screen time than Jessica (well, that’s the impression I’m getting because in every single thing I’ve read from TVB introducing the series, Myolie’s name is listed first, before Jessica’s and sometimes even before Sunny’s). Everyone knows how much I hate watching Myolie’s series because I absolutely just cannot stand her (and for sure there will be crying scenes in this series, which means TORTURE) – plus I’m still bitter (at TVB) for pairing Myolie with Sunny in “War and Destiny”, which is a series I would have liked a lot if it weren’t for Myolie and also that upcoming “Flying Fish” series where she is paired with Julian (lover) and Damian (father). Oh and of course that joke of a series with Gallen (the Cat and Dog one). Ughh!!! (Note to TVB: STOP PAIRING MYOLIE WITH MY FAVORITE ACTORS!!!!!). I think I’m going to protest this series just because of Myolie – plus I’m quite sick of the whole Qing dynasty theme too (another recycled idea…please don’t tell me that this is another “War and Beauty” wannabee!!!!).
The Truth 真相 -- finally, a series that actually looks promising! Just like DTLCT said, I’m not too keen on the female cast either, but the male cast looks interesting….plus, it looks like there will be a lot of guest stars in this one, which is another thing to look forward too (oooh, Kenneth Ma looks like he will be playing a baddie, which will surely be interesting to watch!). I read some stuff about this series earlier and it looks like it’s going to be one of those “Files of Justice” type series, which I’m ok with because there is so much material that can be done with lawyer series (unlike other themes, lawyer and doctor themes are more easily recycled without seeming too lame). So far, this looks like a keeper….
The Gods.com 福祿壽.COM– so WHAT is the point of this show, may I ask? Just to spoof the various series and get a good laugh? Sorry, but I can get a good laugh from watching a good comedy, so don’t need this junk for that. I’ve actually never liked the whole parody / spoofing / imitation stuff because I just think it’s lame (that’s why I’m not interested in watching the ‘three gods’ perform). I’m definitely skipping this one, as I have a feeling that watching this show will make me feel ‘dumb’…
Relic of Emissary 洪武三十二 – I didn’t recognize the English title at first, but then when I watched the clip, I realized that this is the ‘Hongwu 32’ series that was originally touted as the ancient version of “The Academy” (since it had similar cast). Even back before the clip came out (when they were showing all the cast pictures and behind-the-scenes filming stuff), this was already a ‘skip’ in my book, as I’m completely turned off by the cast (I don’t like anyone in the series – well, none of the main leads at least). After watching the clip, I’ve reaffirmed my ‘skip’ decision even more because the series just looks extremely boring and lame.
Psychological Warfare 心戰– Um, ok…looks way too intense for my liking (some of the stuff shown in the clip looked like it was borderline horror)…plus I’ve never been too keen on Adam Cheng, though I’m not opposed to watching his series if the script/storyline is good. And so far, this is the only series with a female lead that I actually like (Maggie) – hmmm…the sales clip actually plays out like a movie, which I think may be a disadvantage because the series probably will not be able to deliver in terms of the horror / suspense piece (there are certain limitations / restrictions in the TV world that are not there in the movie world). This one may be better off scrapped and made into a movie instead….
Mahjong Flying Southeast 麻雀東南飛 – Oh, so THIS is the series I was reading about on Weibo (when I saw the pictures, I was wondering what series they belonged to). Finally, a cast that I like (Raymond, Kenneth, Ruco, Crystal, etc.) and a comedy at that – plus, based on the clip, it looks like this is going to be one of those ‘clever comedic’ pieces where the jokes are actually funny and not the lame type where one feels ‘stupid’ after watching it. Looking forward to this one (so far)….hopefully it actually happens though because based on what I read on weibo, it sounded like a ‘maybe’ in terms of moving forward with filming.
Only You 只有您 – don’t know enough about this one to make a decision on whether it will be a keeper or not (the clip was way too short and I couldn’t really figure out who the leads were supposed to be). I guess I’ll have to read up on this one more before I decide.
The Great Eunuch 大太監– first of all, Bosco as emperor? Really? Hmmm….ok, we’ll see. Though intense, this one actually looks promising to me – plus this is the only series out of the 12 showcased where nearly the entire cast is talented in terms of acting and can really give each other a ‘run for the money’ in terms of acting skill (well, except for Bosco and Tavia, both of whom I wouldn’t classify as ‘talented’ but at least they’re ‘tolerable’ in my book – depending on their characters that is). The others – Wayne Lai, Michelle Yim, John Chiang, Elliot Ngok, King sir, Susanna Kwan – are already proven talents…this sounds like it will be a high quality series…a keeper so far (unless TVB makes major changes to the cast).
Saturday, November 27, 2010
"A Journey Called Life 金石良緣"
I just finished watching this series for the 3rd time (again, not intentionally, but because it happened to come on TV, so I decided to watch again). I’m actually quite glad I did because again, it reaffirmed for me what great actors both Steven and Kent are and how much I enjoy watching their series.
I’ve heard many good things about this series and in my opinion, all the accolades that it has gotten are absolutely well-deserved – this series is one of those rare gems that has a very well-written script, great cast, good chemistry, and just overall brilliant performances from the artists. The fact that I took the time to re-watch this series not twice but three times shows how good it is, as I’m the type of person who has very little patience with badly made series and can barely finish watching bad series even once, let alone more than that (I can truthfully say that I’ve struggled through most of the series from this year, finishing only a handful of them) – so when a series like AJCL comes along (though it’s from a couple years ago), it’s definitely very refreshing!
This is also another one of those rare series that does a good job with balancing dramatic elements with comedic ones, bringing both together to come up with a great story that is tragic, yet not without humor. The story itself is both heartwarming and heart-wrenching, making the audience laugh one minute (i.e. Kent’s banter with Steven and his relationship with his wife and Halina, Steven/Linda constantly teasing Kent, etc.) and cry the next (i.e.: the birthing scene, the death scenes, etc.). Not all series are able to incorporate both elements so well without making the series turn out awfully cheesy, so I definitely applaud the writers as well as the cast and crew of AJCL for doing such a great job.
There is so much good stuff to talk about with this series, it was sort of difficult for me to decide what to include in this post. So instead of doing an in-depth analysis, I decided to focus only on a few things that stuck out for me (pretty much the first things that came to my mind regarding this series).
So here goes…
.>> Steven / Linda relationship – I have to say that I was quite impressed with Linda’s performance in this series. I for one am not too keen on Linda and am one of those who feels that she can’t really act (sorry, but HOG and MR totally ruined my impression of her), but for some reason, I’ve actually been able to tolerate her performance in a few series – this being one of them. But I also have to say that it’s not completely Linda’s own merit because I also feel that depending on who her male co-star is, he has the ability of bringing out the best in her. This is definitely the case with her performance in AJCL – I feel that Steven complemented Linda and helped bring out one of her better performances.
The best way to describe Steven’s and Linda’s relationship in the series is pretty much ‘opposites attract’. I mean, you’ve got the typical ‘good boy’ (good personality, loves his family and friends, hardworking, doesn’t fool around, etc. etc.) paired with the ‘bad girl’ (the ‘wet girl’ who leads a ‘colorful’ and sexually promiscuous life) who eventually is reformed and becomes a ‘good girl.’ Although Linda’s performance can’t exactly be characterized as ‘stellar’, she did much better than in her previous series – during her scenes with Steven, especially the poignant ones (for example, the scene where she tells Steven that she can’t have children, their ‘breakup’ and ‘makeup’ scenes, the birthing scene, etc.), I could really sense the emotion of the scenes and therefore was thoroughly moved by their performances. I also feel that they had great chemistry in the series, though I will admit that so far, in all of Steven’s series that I’ve seen, I’ve felt that he had good chemistry with all his female co-stars, not just with Linda (i.e.: Charmaine, Ada, Fala, Bernice, etc.).
.>> Chemistry between Steven / Kent (and Linda) – Ok, I will have to admit that Steven and Kent were really the ones who ‘sold’ me in terms of wanting to watch this series at first, as both of them are truly fine actors and I’ve liked most of their individual works thus far. This was the first time that they collaborated in a series and I was amazed at how great the chemistry was! Though their relationship was technically that of boss/employee, their friendship really exceeded beyond that, resulting in an almost father/son like relationship. In my opinion, their ‘friendly banter’ throughout the series was very sweet and it was partly what made the series so enjoyable for me (I love that type of ‘light comedy-esque’ banter that injects a little bit of humor in an otherwise serious and tragic story, yet not going overboard to the point of sounding cheesy). The ‘Kent-isms’ throughout the series were very endearing and also made it memorable for me (i.e.: Kent’s nickname for Steven’s character is “On Boy”, his own son Raymond is “Bad Boy”, and he’s always saying “So Bad!”whenever something bad occurs….). Of course, the parts where Steven and Kent tease each other (or better yet, when Steven and Linda ‘gang up’ to tease Kent) are especially hilarious (and sweet).
.>> Storyline / script – As I said earlier, this series is very well-written…it wasn’t too overboard with its plot nor did it rely on repetitious scenes throughout the series (compared to a series like MR for instance, which had arguing scene after arguing scene and got to the point where I just felt like asking “can’t everyone just get along?”). And even though there were a lot of emotionally-charged scenes in the series, there wasn’t an overwhelming number of ‘crying’ scenes (again, unlike HOG and MR, which went overboard in that area) – also, the ‘crying’ scenes that did exist were done quite well and brought out just the right amount of emotion….most importantly though, I didn’t ‘cringe’ through any of the crying scenes (which is always a good sign, since the crying scenes in many of TVB’s series lately have been ‘cringe-worthy’ for me).
Overall, this was a great series, one of the few from this decade that I would put in the ‘high quality’ and ‘like’ categories (those of you who know my history with TVB know that my lists for these 2 categories are very short when it comes to series from the past 10 years). I like the storytelling that goes on in the series as well as the various lessons that are learned. Most of all though, I like that it brings forth a message of love and hope in the face of adversity, but does so in a way that is realistic and believable rather than cheesy and ‘over the top’. A definite ‘recommend’ for those who have not seen this series yet (or those who feel like re-watching).
Lastly, I need to put in a ‘plug’ for the themesong “A Little Story” sung by Steven Ma and Linda Chung. The themesong complements the series perfectly and the lyrics are very moving. I’ve always enjoyed Steven’s vocal skills (I’ve got quite a few of his songs in my ipod), but never been a fan of Linda’s – this song, however, is excellent and will definitely be a keeper for me.
I’ve heard many good things about this series and in my opinion, all the accolades that it has gotten are absolutely well-deserved – this series is one of those rare gems that has a very well-written script, great cast, good chemistry, and just overall brilliant performances from the artists. The fact that I took the time to re-watch this series not twice but three times shows how good it is, as I’m the type of person who has very little patience with badly made series and can barely finish watching bad series even once, let alone more than that (I can truthfully say that I’ve struggled through most of the series from this year, finishing only a handful of them) – so when a series like AJCL comes along (though it’s from a couple years ago), it’s definitely very refreshing!
This is also another one of those rare series that does a good job with balancing dramatic elements with comedic ones, bringing both together to come up with a great story that is tragic, yet not without humor. The story itself is both heartwarming and heart-wrenching, making the audience laugh one minute (i.e. Kent’s banter with Steven and his relationship with his wife and Halina, Steven/Linda constantly teasing Kent, etc.) and cry the next (i.e.: the birthing scene, the death scenes, etc.). Not all series are able to incorporate both elements so well without making the series turn out awfully cheesy, so I definitely applaud the writers as well as the cast and crew of AJCL for doing such a great job.
There is so much good stuff to talk about with this series, it was sort of difficult for me to decide what to include in this post. So instead of doing an in-depth analysis, I decided to focus only on a few things that stuck out for me (pretty much the first things that came to my mind regarding this series).
So here goes…
.>> Steven / Linda relationship – I have to say that I was quite impressed with Linda’s performance in this series. I for one am not too keen on Linda and am one of those who feels that she can’t really act (sorry, but HOG and MR totally ruined my impression of her), but for some reason, I’ve actually been able to tolerate her performance in a few series – this being one of them. But I also have to say that it’s not completely Linda’s own merit because I also feel that depending on who her male co-star is, he has the ability of bringing out the best in her. This is definitely the case with her performance in AJCL – I feel that Steven complemented Linda and helped bring out one of her better performances.
The best way to describe Steven’s and Linda’s relationship in the series is pretty much ‘opposites attract’. I mean, you’ve got the typical ‘good boy’ (good personality, loves his family and friends, hardworking, doesn’t fool around, etc. etc.) paired with the ‘bad girl’ (the ‘wet girl’ who leads a ‘colorful’ and sexually promiscuous life) who eventually is reformed and becomes a ‘good girl.’ Although Linda’s performance can’t exactly be characterized as ‘stellar’, she did much better than in her previous series – during her scenes with Steven, especially the poignant ones (for example, the scene where she tells Steven that she can’t have children, their ‘breakup’ and ‘makeup’ scenes, the birthing scene, etc.), I could really sense the emotion of the scenes and therefore was thoroughly moved by their performances. I also feel that they had great chemistry in the series, though I will admit that so far, in all of Steven’s series that I’ve seen, I’ve felt that he had good chemistry with all his female co-stars, not just with Linda (i.e.: Charmaine, Ada, Fala, Bernice, etc.).
.>> Chemistry between Steven / Kent (and Linda) – Ok, I will have to admit that Steven and Kent were really the ones who ‘sold’ me in terms of wanting to watch this series at first, as both of them are truly fine actors and I’ve liked most of their individual works thus far. This was the first time that they collaborated in a series and I was amazed at how great the chemistry was! Though their relationship was technically that of boss/employee, their friendship really exceeded beyond that, resulting in an almost father/son like relationship. In my opinion, their ‘friendly banter’ throughout the series was very sweet and it was partly what made the series so enjoyable for me (I love that type of ‘light comedy-esque’ banter that injects a little bit of humor in an otherwise serious and tragic story, yet not going overboard to the point of sounding cheesy). The ‘Kent-isms’ throughout the series were very endearing and also made it memorable for me (i.e.: Kent’s nickname for Steven’s character is “On Boy”, his own son Raymond is “Bad Boy”, and he’s always saying “So Bad!”whenever something bad occurs….). Of course, the parts where Steven and Kent tease each other (or better yet, when Steven and Linda ‘gang up’ to tease Kent) are especially hilarious (and sweet).
.>> Storyline / script – As I said earlier, this series is very well-written…it wasn’t too overboard with its plot nor did it rely on repetitious scenes throughout the series (compared to a series like MR for instance, which had arguing scene after arguing scene and got to the point where I just felt like asking “can’t everyone just get along?”). And even though there were a lot of emotionally-charged scenes in the series, there wasn’t an overwhelming number of ‘crying’ scenes (again, unlike HOG and MR, which went overboard in that area) – also, the ‘crying’ scenes that did exist were done quite well and brought out just the right amount of emotion….most importantly though, I didn’t ‘cringe’ through any of the crying scenes (which is always a good sign, since the crying scenes in many of TVB’s series lately have been ‘cringe-worthy’ for me).
Overall, this was a great series, one of the few from this decade that I would put in the ‘high quality’ and ‘like’ categories (those of you who know my history with TVB know that my lists for these 2 categories are very short when it comes to series from the past 10 years). I like the storytelling that goes on in the series as well as the various lessons that are learned. Most of all though, I like that it brings forth a message of love and hope in the face of adversity, but does so in a way that is realistic and believable rather than cheesy and ‘over the top’. A definite ‘recommend’ for those who have not seen this series yet (or those who feel like re-watching).
Lastly, I need to put in a ‘plug’ for the themesong “A Little Story” sung by Steven Ma and Linda Chung. The themesong complements the series perfectly and the lyrics are very moving. I’ve always enjoyed Steven’s vocal skills (I’ve got quite a few of his songs in my ipod), but never been a fan of Linda’s – this song, however, is excellent and will definitely be a keeper for me.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
My ‘TVB Rant’ #6: Another LAME-O decision by TVB!!!
"Gun Metal Grey" neglected at TVB Anniversary Gala, Michael Miu & Felix Wong bursts in anger at TVB - AsianFanatics Forum
Felix Wong anger continues: Don't rape the public; TVB tries to 'put out fire' - AsianFanatics Forum
Source: Asianfanatics.net
***
Once again, TVB makes a stupid move and successfully pisses off one of its former artists as well as legions of fans and audiences / netizens! When will TVB ever learn their lesson? (Never mind – that’s a rhetorical question….)
I can't believe there was barely any mention of GMG at the anniversary gala -- in fact, it was in the news that the cast of GMG was not even invited to the gala (the supporting cast who were there -- I.e. Nancy, Grace, Oscar) were there only because they were performing in other segments not related to the series.
After watching the show, it was obvious to me that CBML and NR dominated -- NR I can understand since it's an anniversary series, but CBML? Obviously they're playing favorites...
I can totally understand why Felix is mad and goes off on TVB – they are definitely acting stupid again by blatantly showing their favoritism through complete neglect of GMG….extremely DISRESPECTFUL to say the least!
To make things worse, TVB once again responds STUPIDLY to the situation. Talk about lame!!! TVB once again puts their stupid foot in their mouths!!! They now claim that they didn't include GMG in the anniversary gala because it's a cop series and needs to be taken seriously so they can't parody it? Must I remind them that NR is also a "serious" series (in fact, the scenes and theme are probably way more intense than GMG) and it's also about cops? Or did they "conveniently" forget that just so they could cover themselves for neglecting GMG? What kind of a BS lame excuse is that?
And for the stupid producer of the anniversary gala to ‘blame’ the GMG cast by saying that they didn’t show up to rehearsal and so that’s why they weren’t invited? Really? WHAT REHEARSAL? The GMG cast WASN’T EVEN SLATED TO PERFORM!!!! What, was TVB expecting Felix / Michael / Jessica to show up and practice standing around waiting for them to draw names for the raffle prizes? That’s SO STUPID!!!!
Oh, and then for Mr. Ho Lai Chuen to say that there was no favoritism and TVB would invite the GMG cast to the awards ceremony….come on, dude – that’s another lame response and proves that Ho Lai Chuen as well as TVB are “out of touch” with the true situation! Felix DOES NOT CARE about the awards – he is upset that both himself as well as the cast of GMG was disrespected at the anniversary gala….why even mention the awards ceremony????
I am totally with Felix on this one and kudos to him for speaking out! TVB went too far this time and they continue to add insult to injury by deflecting blame and running around in circles with their responses. Why don’t they just simply apologize and move on? Oh, I know why – because that would mean they are wrong and God forbid that they’re ever wrong….they are THE PREMIERE TV station in HK and the biggest and most powerful – they can never do anything wrong!!!!! UGH!!!!!
I could go on for longer since I’m so worked up about this issue, but I think I’m going to stop here before I say something that I’ll probably regret….so I’ll end it with a few last words for TVB: The days of the audiences being stupid and naïve are OVER!!!! So don’t you dare try to ‘play’ us by trying to pull the wool over our eyes…IT’S NOT GOING TO WORK ANYMORE!!!!!
Felix Wong anger continues: Don't rape the public; TVB tries to 'put out fire' - AsianFanatics Forum
Source: Asianfanatics.net
***
Once again, TVB makes a stupid move and successfully pisses off one of its former artists as well as legions of fans and audiences / netizens! When will TVB ever learn their lesson? (Never mind – that’s a rhetorical question….)
I can't believe there was barely any mention of GMG at the anniversary gala -- in fact, it was in the news that the cast of GMG was not even invited to the gala (the supporting cast who were there -- I.e. Nancy, Grace, Oscar) were there only because they were performing in other segments not related to the series.
After watching the show, it was obvious to me that CBML and NR dominated -- NR I can understand since it's an anniversary series, but CBML? Obviously they're playing favorites...
I can totally understand why Felix is mad and goes off on TVB – they are definitely acting stupid again by blatantly showing their favoritism through complete neglect of GMG….extremely DISRESPECTFUL to say the least!
To make things worse, TVB once again responds STUPIDLY to the situation. Talk about lame!!! TVB once again puts their stupid foot in their mouths!!! They now claim that they didn't include GMG in the anniversary gala because it's a cop series and needs to be taken seriously so they can't parody it? Must I remind them that NR is also a "serious" series (in fact, the scenes and theme are probably way more intense than GMG) and it's also about cops? Or did they "conveniently" forget that just so they could cover themselves for neglecting GMG? What kind of a BS lame excuse is that?
And for the stupid producer of the anniversary gala to ‘blame’ the GMG cast by saying that they didn’t show up to rehearsal and so that’s why they weren’t invited? Really? WHAT REHEARSAL? The GMG cast WASN’T EVEN SLATED TO PERFORM!!!! What, was TVB expecting Felix / Michael / Jessica to show up and practice standing around waiting for them to draw names for the raffle prizes? That’s SO STUPID!!!!
Oh, and then for Mr. Ho Lai Chuen to say that there was no favoritism and TVB would invite the GMG cast to the awards ceremony….come on, dude – that’s another lame response and proves that Ho Lai Chuen as well as TVB are “out of touch” with the true situation! Felix DOES NOT CARE about the awards – he is upset that both himself as well as the cast of GMG was disrespected at the anniversary gala….why even mention the awards ceremony????
I am totally with Felix on this one and kudos to him for speaking out! TVB went too far this time and they continue to add insult to injury by deflecting blame and running around in circles with their responses. Why don’t they just simply apologize and move on? Oh, I know why – because that would mean they are wrong and God forbid that they’re ever wrong….they are THE PREMIERE TV station in HK and the biggest and most powerful – they can never do anything wrong!!!!! UGH!!!!!
I could go on for longer since I’m so worked up about this issue, but I think I’m going to stop here before I say something that I’ll probably regret….so I’ll end it with a few last words for TVB: The days of the audiences being stupid and naïve are OVER!!!! So don’t you dare try to ‘play’ us by trying to pull the wool over our eyes…IT’S NOT GOING TO WORK ANYMORE!!!!!
Saturday, November 20, 2010
TVB 43rd Anniversary Gala (萬千星輝賀台慶2010)
TVB’s annual anniversary “birthday party” occurred today (yesterday in HK) – it was a bit lackluster compared to years past (well, it’s actually been lackluster for the past decade and can’t compare at all to the ones from the 80s and 90s)….
Anyway, here are some of the highlights from this year’s anniversary gala that I felt were worth mentioning (good or bad):
.> It was obvious that Moses and Wayne were the biggest ‘stars’ of the anniversary gala show, as they were probably the biggest names there in the ‘fa dans & siu sangs’ category. Many of the other ‘big names’ and TVB’s current ‘favorites’ (i.e.: Charmaine, Sheren, Raymond, Steven, Myolie, Bosco, etc.) were all no shows . There was also barely any representation from anniversary series GMG (well, the 3 main leads didn’t show up at least) – it was pretty much the NR / CBML anniversary gala if you ask me (the cast from both series were the focus and pretty much overshadowed everyone else).
*** SIDENOTE: Found out some more information about the GMG thing, but gonna save it for my next post, which will be another one in my “TVB Rant” series….
.> TVB pretty much recycled some of the same ideas from last year’s anniversary gala this time around – namely having artists who are not known for singing partner up and perform songs, having the veteran green-leaf artists (the 50+ year old crowd) do a song and dance number, doing the whole ‘wet dance’ thing, etc….the only difference is that TVB shuffled things around in terms of order and also they had different artists perform in those segments from the ones who did so last year.
.> I must say that the anniversary skit that they did this time around was one of the funnier ones from this decade (though not as funny compared to the ones from the ‘old days’) – it was pretty clever how Eric Tsang did a parody of Virginia Lok and TVB’s infamous internal politics (I was cracking up because a lot of it was so true and he would irreverently poke fun at it). Oh, and for once, they didn’t make a huge mess and ‘torture’ artists with whipped cream, water, etc. (though I did feel sorry for Moses, who was pretty much the only one who ‘fell victim’ to Eric’s shenanigans….).
.> The ‘3 Gods Award Ceremony’ was interesting – I was actually expecting it to be funny, but it wasn’t really. The only thing I liked about that segment was the first part when they showed pictures of a few artists when they were young – the Kiki ones were nice and the Evergreen part was hilarious (the Evergreen / Raymond Lam pictures were quite clever –hey, who would’ve thought that Evergreen as a teenager would resemble Raymond Lam?
.> The last segment where TVB artists whom we are not used to seeing them sing were paired up with the Voice contestants for a ‘sing-off’….the 4 artists who sang were King Kong, Evergreen, Kiki, and Eric Tsang. All 4 of them did pretty good jobs, but I was most impressed with Kiki and Eric’s performances: Kiki sang like a pro – the way she carried her pitch and tone…wow, she sounded like a real singer! And Eric – well, I’ve always known that he’s a good singer because I’ve heard him several times, but he definitely did an awesome job (hey, in my opinion, he sang way better than his partner Mag Lam!!!) Evergreen was ok, but I think he could have done better – probably because his Mandarin pronunciation wasn’t that great, so it distracted me a bit from actually concentrating on his singing. As for King Kong, well, he did good, but I’m actually not surprised because I thought I had heard of him before back when I was following Taiwan entertainment in the late 90s / early 00s and if my memory serves me correctly, I think that he was a professional singer? I could be wrong, but his name just sounds familiar.
Overall, the show was a disappointment – though of course, not too surprising given TVB’s lack of star power in the past few years. My assessment: if you didn’t get to watch it, don’t worry – you didn’t miss anything!
Anyway, here are some of the highlights from this year’s anniversary gala that I felt were worth mentioning (good or bad):
.> It was obvious that Moses and Wayne were the biggest ‘stars’ of the anniversary gala show, as they were probably the biggest names there in the ‘fa dans & siu sangs’ category. Many of the other ‘big names’ and TVB’s current ‘favorites’ (i.e.: Charmaine, Sheren, Raymond, Steven, Myolie, Bosco, etc.) were all no shows . There was also barely any representation from anniversary series GMG (well, the 3 main leads didn’t show up at least) – it was pretty much the NR / CBML anniversary gala if you ask me (the cast from both series were the focus and pretty much overshadowed everyone else).
*** SIDENOTE: Found out some more information about the GMG thing, but gonna save it for my next post, which will be another one in my “TVB Rant” series….
.> TVB pretty much recycled some of the same ideas from last year’s anniversary gala this time around – namely having artists who are not known for singing partner up and perform songs, having the veteran green-leaf artists (the 50+ year old crowd) do a song and dance number, doing the whole ‘wet dance’ thing, etc….the only difference is that TVB shuffled things around in terms of order and also they had different artists perform in those segments from the ones who did so last year.
.> I must say that the anniversary skit that they did this time around was one of the funnier ones from this decade (though not as funny compared to the ones from the ‘old days’) – it was pretty clever how Eric Tsang did a parody of Virginia Lok and TVB’s infamous internal politics (I was cracking up because a lot of it was so true and he would irreverently poke fun at it). Oh, and for once, they didn’t make a huge mess and ‘torture’ artists with whipped cream, water, etc. (though I did feel sorry for Moses, who was pretty much the only one who ‘fell victim’ to Eric’s shenanigans….).
.> The ‘3 Gods Award Ceremony’ was interesting – I was actually expecting it to be funny, but it wasn’t really. The only thing I liked about that segment was the first part when they showed pictures of a few artists when they were young – the Kiki ones were nice and the Evergreen part was hilarious (the Evergreen / Raymond Lam pictures were quite clever –hey, who would’ve thought that Evergreen as a teenager would resemble Raymond Lam?
.> The last segment where TVB artists whom we are not used to seeing them sing were paired up with the Voice contestants for a ‘sing-off’….the 4 artists who sang were King Kong, Evergreen, Kiki, and Eric Tsang. All 4 of them did pretty good jobs, but I was most impressed with Kiki and Eric’s performances: Kiki sang like a pro – the way she carried her pitch and tone…wow, she sounded like a real singer! And Eric – well, I’ve always known that he’s a good singer because I’ve heard him several times, but he definitely did an awesome job (hey, in my opinion, he sang way better than his partner Mag Lam!!!) Evergreen was ok, but I think he could have done better – probably because his Mandarin pronunciation wasn’t that great, so it distracted me a bit from actually concentrating on his singing. As for King Kong, well, he did good, but I’m actually not surprised because I thought I had heard of him before back when I was following Taiwan entertainment in the late 90s / early 00s and if my memory serves me correctly, I think that he was a professional singer? I could be wrong, but his name just sounds familiar.
Overall, the show was a disappointment – though of course, not too surprising given TVB’s lack of star power in the past few years. My assessment: if you didn’t get to watch it, don’t worry – you didn’t miss anything!
Sunday, November 7, 2010
The Green Room (今日VIP): Interview with Michael Miu and Felix Wong – PART 2
In part 2 of the Green Room interview, the focus was more Michael and Felix’s personal lives rather than on work. Also, I like how this part talks more about ‘the good ole days’ (the 80s).
Here are the highlights:
.> When Carlo asked Felix how he felt about coming back to film GMG, Felix said that he rediscovered the feelings from when he collaborated with Michael back in the 80s – the good times they had hanging out with each other, working together, eating together, etc.
.> Michael actually was really desperate to have Felix film GMG and so was willing to make any accommodations needed in order for it to happen. For example, Felix is not too keen on doing the early morning shooting scenes since he sleeps late, whereas Michael sleeps early so he gets up early as well, so he agreed to take on all the early morning shifts and give Felix the later shifts so that he can sleep in.
.> Felix hadn’t been back to TVB in 9 years, so Carlo asked him from that period until now, what differences has he noticed stepping back into TVB City. Felix jokingly replied that when he watched the video playbacks of his scenes, he noticed the dark circles under his eyes.
.> Michael mentioned again why Felix doesn’t have to film series nowadays and why he is able to live such a comfortable, leisurely life for the past 10 years: his Condor Heroes Trilogy from the 80s still continues to be popular all over the world and has an especially huge following in mainland China…so Felix is invited to do various performances on stage all over China and Asia (one performance is actually quite lucrative)….plus all the royalties from the trilogy repeatedly airing everywhere is enough to last him a lifetime.
.> Felix says that he has gotten into singing and doing karaoke recently, so he’s been doing a lot of ‘Fai Wong’ (輝黃) c oncerts in China with his buddy Eddie Cheung (the ‘fai’ is Eddie and ‘wong’ is Felix).
.> Of course, at some point during the interview, Carlo asked the 24 thousand dollar question: Will Felix do another series any time soon if at all?
Felix’s response: Leave it up to fate – he doesn’t want to ‘shut the door’ immediately by saying that he never will, as no one knows what may happen in the future. Felix also emphasized that during the filming of GMG, he was able to ‘rekindle’ those feelings from the 80s when he would collaborate with his buddies and it made him want to work with them again (though he also said that realistically, it wasn’t going to happen – more on this later).
.> They also talked about their fellow Tiger buddy Andy Lau. Michael said that Andy had promised that if the 2 of them (Michael and Felix) did a series, he would do a cameo or be an ‘extra’ in the series – however he didn’t honor his promise (there’s a story behind it actually – more on that later)…Felix chimed in that Andy at least did come to visit them on set (though Michael claimed that the reason why Andy came was because Felix was known for being a bit temperamental on set in the olden days and so Andy came to see if he was going to ‘flare up’ like in the past….LOL!)
.> Felix said that Andy caused a huge commotion in TVB when he visited because he was walking around all over the place saying hi to people – everyone (especially the newbies who idolized him) went wild and wanted to take pictures with him. (Well, we know Nancy Wu was one of those ‘crazy’ ones because she talked about it on Weibo and also uploaded the picture she took with Andy, Michael, Felix, and Jessica).
.> The other big question that everyone wanted to know was whether Andy would ever go back to film another series for TVB. They said that Andy actually really wants to do a series, but realistically, it's not going to happen because of his tremendously busy schedule -- but he is open to doing cameos and such....in fact, he almost did a cameo for GMG -- he had visited the set while they were filming and when he was in the TVB canteen chatting with Michael and Felix, they had to shoot the next scene...Andy kept sitting there and didn't want to leave, so Michael asked him if he wanted to be in the scene...Andy said "sure" and continued to sit there....in the end, Michael and Felix decided not to let him do the scene because it would be wasted, since the focus would be on Andy (Michael said that even if Andy sat in a far corner with his back to the cameras, everyone would know it's him, since he's easily recognizable) -- they jokingly said that they didn't want Andy to steal their thunder so they kicked him out -- plus he had already caused such a disruption on set already just by showing up (LOL!).
.> Felix did say that he is open to doing another series if the right opportunity presents itself, but it’s not something that he actively seeks (especially since he does not like the crazy lifestyle of the television industry). Felix did mention that he is interested in doing a comedy – he said that people think he is too ‘upright’ (people always have that ‘hero’ type view of him from his character in Condor Heroes and also from all the ancient series he had done) and wonder at his comedic abilities, so he wanted to prove to people that he is capable of comedy (as a side note, Michael interrupted and said that he was just about to mention this about Felix, but was afraid to, so glad that Felix brought it up himself…hahaha).
.> A funny part was when Carlo mixed up Felix’s Kwok Jing character with Andy’s Yang Guo character (Carlo accidently said ‘Shun Diao’ instead of ‘Sheh Diao’)…Michael and Felix pretended to be shocked (like how dare he mix them up…LOL!) and then corrected him.
.> After this, the conversation turned to Michael and Felix’s 30 year friendship and also 80s Acting Class stuff…
.> Michael and Felix actually met back on September 1st, 1979 as part of TVB’s 9th Acting Class…when asked about their classmates from that class, they said that most of them are no longer in the industry.
.> They also described how the Acting Classes in those days worked and how different it is from today. Pretty much the acting classes during that time lasted 1 year and were separated into 4 quarters of 3 months each. There would be a total of 5000 to 6000 people who would apply and only 60 would get accepted; those 60 would then do through classes and various tests – those who didn’t pass the tests would get eliminated…by the end of the year, there would usually only be about 20 people (at least that was the case with their class) who get to graduate. Once they graduate, they get a chance to sign with TVB to become part of the drama department, but of course not everyone signs in the end (so realistically speaking, it’s actually only a handful who go through the entire course, pass all the tests, graduate, and sign with the company).
.> I really liked the part where Michael and Felix talked about their 30 year friendship: they described how they went through thick and thin together and almost all of life’s milestones together (marriage, children, etc.). Also, they love playing soccer (that’s one of their common interests – bowling is another one)…Felix said that they’ve been through so much together that they’ve even seen each other in their underwear! (hahaha). Michael quickly clarified that what Felix meant by ‘underwear’ are the soccer shorts that they used to wear to play (shorts so short that they could almost see each other’s underwear….lol!)
.> Asked if they ever fought in their 30 year friendship, both Michael and Felix confidently said “No” – not even verbal arguments! They said part of the reason for this is because the 2 of them have always been especially close – they play all types of ‘ball’s ports together (soccer, bowling, etc.) and since they live so close to each other and know each other’s families, they also have family gatherings together a lot, so they have a pretty deep relationship.
.> We know that Michael and Felix have a close relationship, but how about the rest of the Tigers? Michael was about to respond and Felix jumped in to tell Michael to be careful what he said (hahaha)…Michael expressed that the 5 of them are definitely good friends due to being colleagues for so long and seeing each other a lot during the 80s because of work. However, in terms of personal life, Tony is more shy and quiet and has fewer common interests with the other 4, so they didn’t hang out as much outside of work.
.> How about the possibility of a 5 Tiger reunion (aka the 5 Tigers getting together in another series or film)?
Michael’s response: Never say never – again, let’s leave it up to fate. He also said that realistically speaking, it would be very hard due to their schedules. Michael said that the closest they came to a reunion was when they did the movie ‘Brothers’ back in 2007 – Andy had actually suggested them getting back together, but unfortunately Tony was too busy and wasn’t able to do it. Michael added that the opportunity for a reunion – though highly unlikely – is still open as long as there’s still ‘heart’ to do so.
.> Felix chimed in by saying that it would be so great if the 5 of them would be able to get together and do a ‘world tour’ of sorts (pretty much travel all over the world to perform)…when he said this, Felix put his head on Michael’s shoulder and sighed (hahahaha…that was a funny moment – it was like they were a couple or something….teeheehee…)
.> Next, Carlo asked if it was possible that Felix’s wife would make a comeback (since both Michael and Jamie as well as Felix already did). Felix pretty much said no, there is not much opportunity for that, since she is tremendously busy (she’s an insurance agent) and has no interest whatsoever in the entertainment industry anymore.
.> Both Michael and Felix stated that their next goal is to get Andy to come back and do a cameo in a series (he wouldn’t have time to do an entire series, but a cameo would be nice)
.> Near the end of the interview, Carlo asked about Michael’s and Felix’s family, especially their kids. Now that all of their kids are grown, does this mean they are more free now to do their own thing? Carlo was really interested in Michael and Felix’s interaction with their children because he has 3(?) children of his own and so wanted to get some pointers. Both guys are good friends with Carlo and hang out with him a lot as well: they said that Carlo is actually a very good father – when he plays bowling with them, he is always looking at his watch and when time comes to pick up his kids, he leaves no matter what happens (he puts his wife and kids above ‘playing’ with his buddies)….they kept praising how Carlo is such a good father and husband.
.> Michael said that back in the 90s, when he immigrated overseas, he did so because of his kids, but now that they are grown (his son is 17 and his daughter is almost 20), he and Jamie don’t need to ‘take care’ of them anymore.
.> As for Felix, he stated that in terms of interacting with his daughter, it’s not as much about the physical strength as it is about mental energy and spirit. Michael interrupted and teased Felix, revealing that the other reason why Felix doesn’t have time to film series is because he has to do ‘chauffeur’ duties (drive his daughter and wife around).
.> Both guys have been successful in raising their children, so how do they interact with their kids – like friends or parents?
Michael didn’t really answer the question (though he’s said before that he treats them like friends). However he teased Felix again by revealing that Felix’s daughter is very pretty and looks almost exactly like his wife, so when he communicates with his daughter, it’s reminiscent of when he was courting his wife (hahaha…how does Michael know?). Michael also said that Felix is like ‘putty’ when it comes to his daughter (hinting that he is ‘afraid’ of her and waits on her hand and foot…LOL) – he says that Felix buys everything for his daughter and if she says that he is wrong about something, then he’s wrong – but then Michael added that he is like that with his daughter as well (ahahahaha!!).
That was pretty much the end of the interview (definitely a great one)!!
Here are the highlights:
.> When Carlo asked Felix how he felt about coming back to film GMG, Felix said that he rediscovered the feelings from when he collaborated with Michael back in the 80s – the good times they had hanging out with each other, working together, eating together, etc.
.> Michael actually was really desperate to have Felix film GMG and so was willing to make any accommodations needed in order for it to happen. For example, Felix is not too keen on doing the early morning shooting scenes since he sleeps late, whereas Michael sleeps early so he gets up early as well, so he agreed to take on all the early morning shifts and give Felix the later shifts so that he can sleep in.
.> Felix hadn’t been back to TVB in 9 years, so Carlo asked him from that period until now, what differences has he noticed stepping back into TVB City. Felix jokingly replied that when he watched the video playbacks of his scenes, he noticed the dark circles under his eyes.
.> Michael mentioned again why Felix doesn’t have to film series nowadays and why he is able to live such a comfortable, leisurely life for the past 10 years: his Condor Heroes Trilogy from the 80s still continues to be popular all over the world and has an especially huge following in mainland China…so Felix is invited to do various performances on stage all over China and Asia (one performance is actually quite lucrative)….plus all the royalties from the trilogy repeatedly airing everywhere is enough to last him a lifetime.
.> Felix says that he has gotten into singing and doing karaoke recently, so he’s been doing a lot of ‘Fai Wong’ (輝黃) c oncerts in China with his buddy Eddie Cheung (the ‘fai’ is Eddie and ‘wong’ is Felix).
.> Of course, at some point during the interview, Carlo asked the 24 thousand dollar question: Will Felix do another series any time soon if at all?
Felix’s response: Leave it up to fate – he doesn’t want to ‘shut the door’ immediately by saying that he never will, as no one knows what may happen in the future. Felix also emphasized that during the filming of GMG, he was able to ‘rekindle’ those feelings from the 80s when he would collaborate with his buddies and it made him want to work with them again (though he also said that realistically, it wasn’t going to happen – more on this later).
.> They also talked about their fellow Tiger buddy Andy Lau. Michael said that Andy had promised that if the 2 of them (Michael and Felix) did a series, he would do a cameo or be an ‘extra’ in the series – however he didn’t honor his promise (there’s a story behind it actually – more on that later)…Felix chimed in that Andy at least did come to visit them on set (though Michael claimed that the reason why Andy came was because Felix was known for being a bit temperamental on set in the olden days and so Andy came to see if he was going to ‘flare up’ like in the past….LOL!)
.> Felix said that Andy caused a huge commotion in TVB when he visited because he was walking around all over the place saying hi to people – everyone (especially the newbies who idolized him) went wild and wanted to take pictures with him. (Well, we know Nancy Wu was one of those ‘crazy’ ones because she talked about it on Weibo and also uploaded the picture she took with Andy, Michael, Felix, and Jessica).
.> The other big question that everyone wanted to know was whether Andy would ever go back to film another series for TVB. They said that Andy actually really wants to do a series, but realistically, it's not going to happen because of his tremendously busy schedule -- but he is open to doing cameos and such....in fact, he almost did a cameo for GMG -- he had visited the set while they were filming and when he was in the TVB canteen chatting with Michael and Felix, they had to shoot the next scene...Andy kept sitting there and didn't want to leave, so Michael asked him if he wanted to be in the scene...Andy said "sure" and continued to sit there....in the end, Michael and Felix decided not to let him do the scene because it would be wasted, since the focus would be on Andy (Michael said that even if Andy sat in a far corner with his back to the cameras, everyone would know it's him, since he's easily recognizable) -- they jokingly said that they didn't want Andy to steal their thunder so they kicked him out -- plus he had already caused such a disruption on set already just by showing up (LOL!).
.> Felix did say that he is open to doing another series if the right opportunity presents itself, but it’s not something that he actively seeks (especially since he does not like the crazy lifestyle of the television industry). Felix did mention that he is interested in doing a comedy – he said that people think he is too ‘upright’ (people always have that ‘hero’ type view of him from his character in Condor Heroes and also from all the ancient series he had done) and wonder at his comedic abilities, so he wanted to prove to people that he is capable of comedy (as a side note, Michael interrupted and said that he was just about to mention this about Felix, but was afraid to, so glad that Felix brought it up himself…hahaha).
.> A funny part was when Carlo mixed up Felix’s Kwok Jing character with Andy’s Yang Guo character (Carlo accidently said ‘Shun Diao’ instead of ‘Sheh Diao’)…Michael and Felix pretended to be shocked (like how dare he mix them up…LOL!) and then corrected him.
.> After this, the conversation turned to Michael and Felix’s 30 year friendship and also 80s Acting Class stuff…
.> Michael and Felix actually met back on September 1st, 1979 as part of TVB’s 9th Acting Class…when asked about their classmates from that class, they said that most of them are no longer in the industry.
.> They also described how the Acting Classes in those days worked and how different it is from today. Pretty much the acting classes during that time lasted 1 year and were separated into 4 quarters of 3 months each. There would be a total of 5000 to 6000 people who would apply and only 60 would get accepted; those 60 would then do through classes and various tests – those who didn’t pass the tests would get eliminated…by the end of the year, there would usually only be about 20 people (at least that was the case with their class) who get to graduate. Once they graduate, they get a chance to sign with TVB to become part of the drama department, but of course not everyone signs in the end (so realistically speaking, it’s actually only a handful who go through the entire course, pass all the tests, graduate, and sign with the company).
.> I really liked the part where Michael and Felix talked about their 30 year friendship: they described how they went through thick and thin together and almost all of life’s milestones together (marriage, children, etc.). Also, they love playing soccer (that’s one of their common interests – bowling is another one)…Felix said that they’ve been through so much together that they’ve even seen each other in their underwear! (hahaha). Michael quickly clarified that what Felix meant by ‘underwear’ are the soccer shorts that they used to wear to play (shorts so short that they could almost see each other’s underwear….lol!)
.> Asked if they ever fought in their 30 year friendship, both Michael and Felix confidently said “No” – not even verbal arguments! They said part of the reason for this is because the 2 of them have always been especially close – they play all types of ‘ball’s ports together (soccer, bowling, etc.) and since they live so close to each other and know each other’s families, they also have family gatherings together a lot, so they have a pretty deep relationship.
.> We know that Michael and Felix have a close relationship, but how about the rest of the Tigers? Michael was about to respond and Felix jumped in to tell Michael to be careful what he said (hahaha)…Michael expressed that the 5 of them are definitely good friends due to being colleagues for so long and seeing each other a lot during the 80s because of work. However, in terms of personal life, Tony is more shy and quiet and has fewer common interests with the other 4, so they didn’t hang out as much outside of work.
.> How about the possibility of a 5 Tiger reunion (aka the 5 Tigers getting together in another series or film)?
Michael’s response: Never say never – again, let’s leave it up to fate. He also said that realistically speaking, it would be very hard due to their schedules. Michael said that the closest they came to a reunion was when they did the movie ‘Brothers’ back in 2007 – Andy had actually suggested them getting back together, but unfortunately Tony was too busy and wasn’t able to do it. Michael added that the opportunity for a reunion – though highly unlikely – is still open as long as there’s still ‘heart’ to do so.
.> Felix chimed in by saying that it would be so great if the 5 of them would be able to get together and do a ‘world tour’ of sorts (pretty much travel all over the world to perform)…when he said this, Felix put his head on Michael’s shoulder and sighed (hahahaha…that was a funny moment – it was like they were a couple or something….teeheehee…)
.> Next, Carlo asked if it was possible that Felix’s wife would make a comeback (since both Michael and Jamie as well as Felix already did). Felix pretty much said no, there is not much opportunity for that, since she is tremendously busy (she’s an insurance agent) and has no interest whatsoever in the entertainment industry anymore.
.> Both Michael and Felix stated that their next goal is to get Andy to come back and do a cameo in a series (he wouldn’t have time to do an entire series, but a cameo would be nice)
.> Near the end of the interview, Carlo asked about Michael’s and Felix’s family, especially their kids. Now that all of their kids are grown, does this mean they are more free now to do their own thing? Carlo was really interested in Michael and Felix’s interaction with their children because he has 3(?) children of his own and so wanted to get some pointers. Both guys are good friends with Carlo and hang out with him a lot as well: they said that Carlo is actually a very good father – when he plays bowling with them, he is always looking at his watch and when time comes to pick up his kids, he leaves no matter what happens (he puts his wife and kids above ‘playing’ with his buddies)….they kept praising how Carlo is such a good father and husband.
.> Michael said that back in the 90s, when he immigrated overseas, he did so because of his kids, but now that they are grown (his son is 17 and his daughter is almost 20), he and Jamie don’t need to ‘take care’ of them anymore.
.> As for Felix, he stated that in terms of interacting with his daughter, it’s not as much about the physical strength as it is about mental energy and spirit. Michael interrupted and teased Felix, revealing that the other reason why Felix doesn’t have time to film series is because he has to do ‘chauffeur’ duties (drive his daughter and wife around).
.> Both guys have been successful in raising their children, so how do they interact with their kids – like friends or parents?
Michael didn’t really answer the question (though he’s said before that he treats them like friends). However he teased Felix again by revealing that Felix’s daughter is very pretty and looks almost exactly like his wife, so when he communicates with his daughter, it’s reminiscent of when he was courting his wife (hahaha…how does Michael know?). Michael also said that Felix is like ‘putty’ when it comes to his daughter (hinting that he is ‘afraid’ of her and waits on her hand and foot…LOL) – he says that Felix buys everything for his daughter and if she says that he is wrong about something, then he’s wrong – but then Michael added that he is like that with his daughter as well (ahahahaha!!).
That was pretty much the end of the interview (definitely a great one)!!
Friday, November 5, 2010
The Green Room (今日VIP): Interview with Michael Miu and Felix Wong – PART 1
Just finished watching the episode of The Green Room where Carlo Ng Kar Lok interviews Michael Miu and Felix Wong a few days before “Gun Metal Grey” is slated to air.
Since I’m an 80s girl and a 5 Tigers fan (plus I love interview shows), I definitely paid attention to the interview so I could absorb what Felix and Michael had to say about their experiences filming GMG.
Some highlights from the episode:
.> I love Michael and Felix’s chemistry – it’s obvious that they have a long-time friendship (30 years!) and get together often in their personal lives, as they are very comfortable around each other. It was funny how they were able to finish each other’s sentences at certain points during the interview – in fact, it didn’t feel like a formal interview at all…instead, it felt like 3 friends (they’re good friends with Carlo as well) hanging out and talking.
.> Felix started off by recounting the story of how he came about agreeing to film GMG after 9 years away from the small screen. I was cracking up big time during this part because it was hilarious how Felix kept getting interrupted by Michael and how they kept joking with each other when telling the story. The story of how it occurred is quite funny!
.> As the story goes, Michael actually really wanted Felix to film GMG with him, but he knew that if he personally asked, Felix wouldn’t do it (Felix jokingly told the story of how Michael would always win his money whenever they played snooker and so Felix would pretend to get mad and out of ‘revenge’, refuse to do anything for him…lol!!). Therefore, Michael asked his wife Jamie (also good friends with Felix) to go talk to him and persuade him. So one day, Jamie went over to Felix’s house (apparently, Michael and Felix are ‘neighbors’ as well, since they live very close to each other), put on a very serious expression, and told him that she really needs his help. Felix thought at first that she needed help in terms of money or some other favor (the part where he says he doesn’t have any money was hilarious!), but it turns out she wanted him to consider filming a series with Michael.
.> As Felix was recounting the story, Michael interrupted at certain points to clarify some parts (like when Felix said there were 2 cop characters and he ended up portraying Stone Sir – Michael reminded him that he LET him choose which character he wanted to be because he so desperately wanted him to do the series – it was funny how Michael pulled out all the stops and agreed to do anything Felix wanted as long as he agreed to film the series).
.> When Felix was recounting the story of how Michael/Jamie convinced him to film GMG, he was saying how Jamie started off by saying "Hey, Baldie....", then Michael interrupts and tells him to tell everyone where that nickname came from (another funny moment!). Felix said that he got that nickname because back in the days, he filmed alot of ancient series and for almost every single one, he had to shave his head (practically the only ones he didn't have to shave his head for were the modern ones....lol!)....so Michael and Jamie took to calling him "Baldie" from that time on.
.> Michael kept teasing Felix on how he has such an 'easy, leisurely' life now (drinks tea, cuts the grass, takes care of rabbits, etc.)....hahahaha....cute!
.> During the interview, Michael revealed a "secret" behind how Felix came about returning to the small screen. Those of us who have raved on and on about how much we love Felix and enjoy seeing him on the small screen again (I'm one of them!!) can actually thank veteran actor (and the 2nd of my two idols) Chow Yun Fat!! Fat Gor is very good friends with Michael and Felix and get together quite often to 'drink tea' and go for walks in the mountains (Michael teased Felix that he is actually living that type of leisurely life right now). One day, after they went for a long walk in the mountains, Fat Gor told Felix that he should consider filming series again, since he's good at it and it's been so long....Michael jokingly recounted how Fat Gor pretty much told Felix that if he doesn't put those acting skills to use again and film another series, he will disown him as a friend (hahaha -- actually, Fat Gor didn't say that last part -- Michael was actually just kidding -- but Fat Gor did tell Felix that he should do another series). So when Michael heard this (he was there I assume), that's when he quickly got to work figuring out how he was going to convince his buddy to film another series.
.> Michael also revealed that when Felix films series (or anything for that matter), he never brings the script with him -- in fact, he leaves the script at home. Yet, as soon as the cameras roll, Felix has no problems doing his lines (except for this one time when the script changed and Felix wasn't aware). Michael kept saying how amazed he was that Felix is able to do that. Felix said that it goes back to his acting class days, as that was the way he was trained and that's actually the way alot of the veteran artists did things. He also said that it was actually Dodo (Carol) Cheng who opened his eyes to that because she always did it when filming series -- back in the early 80s when they filmed "The Lonely Hunter" together (he was a newbie back then), she told him that they are not allowed to have scripts on set and so took his script and threw it out of the studio. Since then, he's trained himself to memorize all his lines at home and not bring his script to work with him. (I actually already knew about this 'trait' of Felix's through weibo -- but it was awesome to hear him recount the story again -- plus I didn't know the part about Dodo).
.> Felix kept referring to himself as a "Newbie" to TVB (lol)....newbie or not, as Michael pointed out, the newer generation artists definitely have alot of respect for him -- especially those he worked with in GMG (i.e.: Oscar Leung, Grace Wong, Nancy Wu, etc.)
.> It was so cute how Michael would be the 'big brother' (though technically Felix entered the industry before Michael) for Felix during the filming of GMG. Michael said that he had promised Felix that he would 'take good care of him' (it was also one of the reasons why Felix agreed to comeback).....therefore, whenever Felix came across an issue while filming, he would let Michael know and Michael would work it out for him (not because Felix was afraid to say anything, but because he hasn't been back to TVB in 9 years and so was less familiar with things -- plus he didn't want to impose on others)
.> With GMG being a cop series, there are bound to be dangerous scenes chase scenes, so host Carlo asked Michael and Felix about the most dangerous scenes they had to film for the series and whether stunt doubles were used. Felix described this one scene where he had to jump off a building in order to chase a crook -- the way he described the shooting of that scene was absolutely hilarious!!! I won't go into detail about it here, since I wouldn't be able to do justice to it (gotta hear him describe it himself)...
.> All in all, the interview was a trip down memory lane for me because Felix and Michael also recounted how things were like during their generation (the senior artists / elders would teach the newbies how to act / give them pointers whereas now people pretty much do their own thing, etc.)
To be Continued (the interview is a two-parter)…..
Since I’m an 80s girl and a 5 Tigers fan (plus I love interview shows), I definitely paid attention to the interview so I could absorb what Felix and Michael had to say about their experiences filming GMG.
Some highlights from the episode:
.> I love Michael and Felix’s chemistry – it’s obvious that they have a long-time friendship (30 years!) and get together often in their personal lives, as they are very comfortable around each other. It was funny how they were able to finish each other’s sentences at certain points during the interview – in fact, it didn’t feel like a formal interview at all…instead, it felt like 3 friends (they’re good friends with Carlo as well) hanging out and talking.
.> Felix started off by recounting the story of how he came about agreeing to film GMG after 9 years away from the small screen. I was cracking up big time during this part because it was hilarious how Felix kept getting interrupted by Michael and how they kept joking with each other when telling the story. The story of how it occurred is quite funny!
.> As the story goes, Michael actually really wanted Felix to film GMG with him, but he knew that if he personally asked, Felix wouldn’t do it (Felix jokingly told the story of how Michael would always win his money whenever they played snooker and so Felix would pretend to get mad and out of ‘revenge’, refuse to do anything for him…lol!!). Therefore, Michael asked his wife Jamie (also good friends with Felix) to go talk to him and persuade him. So one day, Jamie went over to Felix’s house (apparently, Michael and Felix are ‘neighbors’ as well, since they live very close to each other), put on a very serious expression, and told him that she really needs his help. Felix thought at first that she needed help in terms of money or some other favor (the part where he says he doesn’t have any money was hilarious!), but it turns out she wanted him to consider filming a series with Michael.
.> As Felix was recounting the story, Michael interrupted at certain points to clarify some parts (like when Felix said there were 2 cop characters and he ended up portraying Stone Sir – Michael reminded him that he LET him choose which character he wanted to be because he so desperately wanted him to do the series – it was funny how Michael pulled out all the stops and agreed to do anything Felix wanted as long as he agreed to film the series).
.> When Felix was recounting the story of how Michael/Jamie convinced him to film GMG, he was saying how Jamie started off by saying "Hey, Baldie....", then Michael interrupts and tells him to tell everyone where that nickname came from (another funny moment!). Felix said that he got that nickname because back in the days, he filmed alot of ancient series and for almost every single one, he had to shave his head (practically the only ones he didn't have to shave his head for were the modern ones....lol!)....so Michael and Jamie took to calling him "Baldie" from that time on.
.> Michael kept teasing Felix on how he has such an 'easy, leisurely' life now (drinks tea, cuts the grass, takes care of rabbits, etc.)....hahahaha....cute!
.> During the interview, Michael revealed a "secret" behind how Felix came about returning to the small screen. Those of us who have raved on and on about how much we love Felix and enjoy seeing him on the small screen again (I'm one of them!!) can actually thank veteran actor (and the 2nd of my two idols) Chow Yun Fat!! Fat Gor is very good friends with Michael and Felix and get together quite often to 'drink tea' and go for walks in the mountains (Michael teased Felix that he is actually living that type of leisurely life right now). One day, after they went for a long walk in the mountains, Fat Gor told Felix that he should consider filming series again, since he's good at it and it's been so long....Michael jokingly recounted how Fat Gor pretty much told Felix that if he doesn't put those acting skills to use again and film another series, he will disown him as a friend (hahaha -- actually, Fat Gor didn't say that last part -- Michael was actually just kidding -- but Fat Gor did tell Felix that he should do another series). So when Michael heard this (he was there I assume), that's when he quickly got to work figuring out how he was going to convince his buddy to film another series.
.> Michael also revealed that when Felix films series (or anything for that matter), he never brings the script with him -- in fact, he leaves the script at home. Yet, as soon as the cameras roll, Felix has no problems doing his lines (except for this one time when the script changed and Felix wasn't aware). Michael kept saying how amazed he was that Felix is able to do that. Felix said that it goes back to his acting class days, as that was the way he was trained and that's actually the way alot of the veteran artists did things. He also said that it was actually Dodo (Carol) Cheng who opened his eyes to that because she always did it when filming series -- back in the early 80s when they filmed "The Lonely Hunter" together (he was a newbie back then), she told him that they are not allowed to have scripts on set and so took his script and threw it out of the studio. Since then, he's trained himself to memorize all his lines at home and not bring his script to work with him. (I actually already knew about this 'trait' of Felix's through weibo -- but it was awesome to hear him recount the story again -- plus I didn't know the part about Dodo).
.> Felix kept referring to himself as a "Newbie" to TVB (lol)....newbie or not, as Michael pointed out, the newer generation artists definitely have alot of respect for him -- especially those he worked with in GMG (i.e.: Oscar Leung, Grace Wong, Nancy Wu, etc.)
.> It was so cute how Michael would be the 'big brother' (though technically Felix entered the industry before Michael) for Felix during the filming of GMG. Michael said that he had promised Felix that he would 'take good care of him' (it was also one of the reasons why Felix agreed to comeback).....therefore, whenever Felix came across an issue while filming, he would let Michael know and Michael would work it out for him (not because Felix was afraid to say anything, but because he hasn't been back to TVB in 9 years and so was less familiar with things -- plus he didn't want to impose on others)
.> With GMG being a cop series, there are bound to be dangerous scenes chase scenes, so host Carlo asked Michael and Felix about the most dangerous scenes they had to film for the series and whether stunt doubles were used. Felix described this one scene where he had to jump off a building in order to chase a crook -- the way he described the shooting of that scene was absolutely hilarious!!! I won't go into detail about it here, since I wouldn't be able to do justice to it (gotta hear him describe it himself)...
.> All in all, the interview was a trip down memory lane for me because Felix and Michael also recounted how things were like during their generation (the senior artists / elders would teach the newbies how to act / give them pointers whereas now people pretty much do their own thing, etc.)
To be Continued (the interview is a two-parter)…..