Entertainment Newsreel #5: Mostly movies and a little bit of TV news...

Lots of movie news this past week due to the start of FILMART + HK Film Festival and also award show season with the Asian Film Awards and Director's Guild Awards, so the focus this time will be on movie industry news.  There is some TV industry news too, but not as much compared to the recent happenings in the film world.

Also, FILMART actually just started yesterday but I didn't want to wait until the end of the week to do this post, since there is so much info already, so if need be, I'll do a follow up later in the week to cover whatever may emerge from there, whether movies or television (I actually have a feeling the news we are waiting for on OCTB will be announced at FILMART – just a hunch, no inside info or anything….anyway, I'll post something up once I hear further).

Movie industry news

ASIAN FILM AWARDS & DIRECTORS GUILD AWARDS

-          The big news coming out of the HK film world this week (aside from Leon's news but I'll get to that later) has to do with one of this generation's most prolific movie actors – Louis Koo.   This year's Asian Film Awards and Director's Guild Awards were held within days of each other and Louis won Best Actor at both award ceremonies (for his role in the movie Paradox, the much touted second installment in the SPL franchise).   As Louis himself said during his acceptance speech at the Asian Film Awards (which was held first), this is his first ever movie-related award so of course it means a lot to him.  I'm glad to hear him say this because in my opinion, being able to win at the Asian Film Awards is more "prestigious" than winning in one of HK's awards shows because the artists are going up against other artists / movies from across Asia – to be able to defeat other talented actors outside of Hong Kong is quite an accomplishment!  Congrats to Louis!!

-          Personally, I've never been a fan of Louis' acting, whether back when he was at TVB or after entering the movie world and filming boatloads of movies (honestly, the word "prolific" is an understatement – at one point, Louis seemed to be in every single movie out there, lol).  Don't ask me to explain why because I don't know – his acting just never appealed to me for some reason.  With that said though, I do have a lot of respect for Louis as a person and that respect has grown over the years after learning about his charity work (which he rarely talks about) as well as seeing his contributions to the film industry and his efforts at improving the industry as a whole.  [Sidenote: Louis was recently voted in as HKPAG (Hong Kong Performing Artists Guild) Chairman (taking over for previous Chairman Jackie Chan) and hearing his ideas on how he plans to support the industry was very encouraging!]  I'm happy for Louis with both his wins and I'm sure this is a boost of confidence for him heading into the HK Film Awards next month – he's up against some tough competition though so even though he is the "hot favorite" to take him the award there too, the results are hard to predict so let's see what happens.

-          At the Director's Guild Awards, the highlight of Louis' win is that people kept playfully teasing him about going up on stage and gracing the audience with his singing again.  This was actually a reference to Louis attending the annual HK Film Workers' Spring Dinner event last week  where he was pulled on stage during one of the performances and invited to sing a few lines from one of his songs with them.  Louis actually obliged (and was very gracious about it) – the video of him singing was uploaded online and of course it took the internet by storm, since it's very rare nowadays for Louis to be willing to open his "golden mouth" to sing.  So now, at every event, his colleagues as well as the reporters "tease" him about going on stage and singing for them – of course, Louis politely turns everyone down, but I love that he is so good-humored about it, even playing along with them in some instances and "pretending" to leave when the word "singing" is mentioned, lol.  It's rare for us to see Louis' playful side (he always looks so cool and serious) so I can definitely see why everyone is taking the opportunity to "tease" him while it lasts.  My respect for Louis actually went up a few notches this past week after seeing how he handled the whole "singing" thing….

-          On the Best Actress front – Sylvia Chang took home the Best Actress award at the Asian Film Awards for her performance in Love Education, which she also directed.  She wasn't able to repeat the win at the Directors Guild Award, however she did end up taking home the Best Director Award at that ceremony.

-          The winner(s) of the Best Actress award at the Directors Guild Awards ceremony were Teresa Mo for Tomorrow is Another Day and Stephy Tang for The Empty Hands.  Yes, you heard right – there were 2 winners for Best Actress because both actresses ended up in a tie and so the Guild decided to award both.  There's actually a funny story to this, which Teresa Mo told during her acceptance speech.  Teresa said that she threw away her husband Tony Au's voting form for these awards because he was away on a trip and she didn't feel it was right to vote on his behalf, even though she knew that he would've cast his vote for her in the Best Actress category anyway.  It turns out that 'one vote' mattered in this case, since it meant the difference between her winning the award and having to share it. 

-          The Best Actress race at the HK Film Awards next month will be interesting, as all three actresses -- Sylvia Chang, Teresa Mo, and Stephy Tang – are in contention for the coveted award (rounding out the category are Zhou Xun for Our Time Will Come and Chrissie Chau for 29+1).  The Directors Guild Awards is generally seen as a precursor to HKFA, as the winners there usually go in to win at the HKFA as well – true or not, I'm pretty sure they are not going to do another "shared win" thing at HKFA (can't remember the last time – if ever – that they had such a win at HKFA).  Personally, I'm rooting for Teresa (since she's an awesome actress and also one of my favorites) – this will be her 7^th time being nominated for HKFA Best Actress so it's about time she won, though in all honesty, doesn't really matter to me who wins since I haven't watched any of the nominated films this year so can't really complain.  From various reports, I know that Stephy has done a great job this year and has already won multiple Best Actress awards already at other awards shows, so she is definitely the "hot favorite" going into HKFA, however I think both Teresa and Sylvia will give her a run for her money.  I'm fine with whoever ends up winning in this category. 

OTHER MOVIE-RELATED NEWS

-          Speaking of Louis Koo – I'm sure Louis fans will be happy to know that there is finally more news on the movie version of his "classic" TVB series A Step into the Past.  Rumors have been circulating for several years already that Louis plans to do a movie version of the series and invite back the original cast to participate.  It was confirmed last year that Louis will indeed be producing the movie and starring in it, but beyond that, there weren't a whole lot of details available.  Well, yesterday at FILMART, they unveiled the official poster for the movie and provided some more details as follows:

o   The Chinese name of the movie will be the same as the series but the English name will now be called Back to the Past. 

o   Louis's own production company One Cool Film will be producing this, which I assume means that Louis will be given the Executive Producer title for the project (I didn't catch who the director will be though), however this will also be a co-production with Mainland company Huace Pictures.

o   Filming is scheduled to begin at the end of the year.

o   Confirmed "original" cast from the series are Louis, Raymond Lam, and Jessica Hsuan (this is actually not surprising, as it was already revealed earlier on that both Raymond and Jessica signed to Louis' management company, so it makes sense that they would re-unite for this film).  

o   The big question now is whether other "original" cast members will return as well.  There was no mention of additional cast at FILMART (at least not yet), so no doubt there will be further announcements and possibly press conference forthcoming in the next few months.  Current speculation though is that most likely the rest of the cast won't return, since majority of them have retired from the industry already or are have other filming obligations, plus the movie is a co-production with Mainland, which means that they have to save a few of the "top" roles for Mainland artists. 

-          My take – I was never a fan of ASITP the series so I'm indifferent toward the news of a movie version now being filmed, but I know a lot of people out there loved the series, so if those of you reading this are a fan of the series, I'm curious to hear your thoughts – please feel free to comment!  The way I see it, one good thing about this production is that Louis is producing it himself and with how involved he had been in the series (supposedly he had even written parts of the original script) and how much he cared about it, at least you know he will put in the effort to make it good and not butcher it like others would (I'm sure people still remember the previous movie remakes of TVB series that were done by different companies and ended up being horrible / un-watchable).     

-          The other "big" movie industry news (though technically not really specifically movie-related but since the artist is a film actor now, figured putting it here was more appropriate) this week – this one is "hot off the press"….Heavenly King Leon Lai finally confirmed that he will become a dad soon.  For those who were not aware (which is kind of impossible given how big this news has been, lol), media reports had surfaced last week that Leon and his assistant Wing (she works for his record label A-Music) were dating and that Wing was photographed with a bulging belly, which in the HK media world, meant that she is "most likely" pregnant.  So of course, rumors started flying that Leon will be a dad soon, though he had yet to confirm anything.  Leon had actually attended FILMART yesterday and refused to say anything when reporters asked him, but then a few hours later he posted a formal announcement on his Facebook page confirming the news that he and his girlfriend are indeed expecting (I'm sure all the media outlets – Chinese and English – will be re-posting his FB post so not going to bother posting it here).  With Leon joining the ranks of fatherhood now, he is the last of the 4 Heavenly Kings to settle down and start a family (though whether he will marry Wing or not remains to be seen – there was no mention of marriage in the post, only that he will become a father soon).  Congrats to Leon!  Even though I'm not a fan of his, I'm still happy for him, as having a child is a huge milestone and deserves to be recognized.

TV Industry news

HKTV

-          The big news in terms of HKTV is that they have sold the rights to their series to i-cable arm Fantastic Television, who will be airing their series on their free-to-air channel starting on April 17^th.  I won't go into detail here, since I already wrote up a  post on this a couple days ago and also stated my thoughts on this already.  Those that are interested can read that post here.

FOX ASIA

-          Fox Asia released a new extended trailer for their series Stain'd.  The trailer is 2 minutes, 12 seconds long and all 3 A-list leads – Anthony Wong, Kara Hui, Tse Kwan Ho – are featured.  This article from HK01 has a link to the trailer so you can watch it there, though I'm sure Fox Asia's webpage and also Youtube channel have it as well.  I actually haven't had a chance to watch it yet so can't really comment right now, but once I do get around to watching it, I'll definitely post something up about it.  Also, if I hear any news about when Fox Asia's series are scheduled to air, I'll make sure to post an update.

OTHER TV INDUSTRY NEWS

-          This one I'm actually excited about!!  If, like me, you're a fan of the TVB series Untraceable Evidence and have been "dying" for another Bowie Lam / Flora Chan collaboration (they did film Healing Hands together, but I wasn't a fan of that series / franchise so that doesn't really count, lol), rest assured that your (our) wish might be granted some time in the near future.  Bowie and Flora attended an event the other day (no, nothing related to entertainment stuff – it was an environmental / beach cleaning event that was sponsored by one of their mutual friends, former actress Sharon Kwok) and so reporters seized the opportunity to ask them when they are going to fulfill fans' wishes for them to collaborate again.  Bowie said that it's something he and Flora have talked about and that when they had their Untraceable Evidence cast reunion dinner a few weeks ago (I saw the pictures – ah, the memories!!!), he had already told Flora to save some room in her schedule for him.  Flora's answer was more of a "we'll see" response because she is currently working on her PhD in Education and so her schooling comes first (aside from her family of course).  She said that she had agreed to film that program about marriage for ViuTV because it fit her schedule for one, and two, they allowed her to produce the program and gave her free reign to do the program how she wanted, so she decided to add some educational elements to the show. 

-          Bowie opened his own production company recently and currently has a few scripts on hand that he is reading through (I wrote in my Entertainment Newsreel #4 about Bowie's plans to produce  and star in his own series – you can read the details here) – he said that from day one of opening his production company, he was already planning to invite Flora for another collaboration.  He said that there will definitely be another chance for them to collaborate again, but he can't confirm when that will be due to Flora's studies being her top priority right now.  Both of them are for it though, so it's just a matter of time. 

-          As a fan of the Bowie/Flora pairing in UE, I'm one of those waiting for them to collaborate again.  Now that Bowie has his own production company and the freedom to film whatever he wants, looks like we are closer than ever to seeing another collaboration between these two, the only thing is timing.  Flora did say during their joint interview that she also wants to collaborate with Bowie again, however she still has another 3 years to go in terms of her studies (for her PhD) so it will really depend on whether she is able to carve out some time in between.  I'm secretly praying that Flora will find the time in between her studies to take Bowie up on his offer.  PLEASE PLEASE Flora, please don't make us wait 3 years for another collaboration! 

TVB 28th Anniversary Gala (1995): The Top 10 Highest Rated Series of All Time (up to that point)

Retrotvb's post recapping TVB's 1997 Anniversary Gala (read it here) inspired me to write this post about a particular segment of the 1995 Anniversary Gala (though I will admit that I remembered the date wrong at first and thought it was the 1998 gala, but it was really the 1995 one – shame on me!).

The show itself was great, as up to that point (prior to the start of the awards thing in 1997), the galas were still grand, all-star events. (I echo retrotvb's sentiments regarding the pointlessness of the awards, which turned the anniversary galas into lackluster events, but that's another story). The true highlight of the entire show for me (and probably for other 80s/90s TVB series fanatics as well) was the segment near the end of the show when TVB did a 'countdown' of the 10 highest rated TVB series up to that point. Almost every single one of my favorites made the list and I would venture to say that all 10 series were deserving because they were classic, high quality, well-made series.

The most memorable moment for me in this entire segment was when the "winner" of the countdown -- meaning the series that made it to the top of the list as the #1 highest rated series of all time (up until that point) -- was announced. Not suprisingly, the series that came out on top was "Looking Back in Anger" from 1989. True classic and truly deserving of the #1 spot!!! But what really did it for me was when Felix Wong, Kathy Chow, Deric Wan, and Maggie Siu went up on stage and accepted the 'award’ on behalf of the entire cast (I wonder who got to keep it? LOL!). Even though they were only up there for a minute or two and didn't say anything really, it was just awesome to see that cast together again – especially Deric, since he had left TVB long ago and made a special appearance just for that moment. Of course, I wish that Carina would have been able to make it as well (because then the cast would truly be complete in terms of the main leads), but I guess it wasn't meant to be...

The countdown was prefaced with these amazing numbers: the 10 series combined garnered a total of over 2.2 billion viewers (households), with each series averaging over 80 million viewers (households). Those numbers may ‘pale’ in comparison to the numbers today, but considering the series were of a way higher quality back then (the ones nowadays pretty much suck), those numbers were definitely something to ‘rave’ about!

I loved the way the segment was done – after the number of viewers and the series was announced, they had singers perform parts of the theme song for each series on the list while clips from the series played on the screen (though the singers weren’t the original artists who performed the songs, I was ok with it because the songs themselves were such classics that they sounded good no matter who sang them).


Here’s the countdown:

10th place: Police Cadet ‘84 新紮師兄 (1984)
(88131000 viewers)

9th place: The Big Family 大家族 (1991)
(97,916,000 viewers)

8th place: The Two Most Honorable Knights 絕代雙驕 (1988)
(98,513,000 viewers)

7th place: The Challenge of Life 人在邊緣 (1990)
(106,987,000 viewers)

6th place: The Breaking Point 今生無悔 (1991)
(117,925,000 viewers)

5th place: Love and Passion 萬水千山總是情 (1982)
(233,674,000 viewers)

4th place: Blood of Good and Evil 我本善良 (1990)
(283,266,000 viewers)

3rd place: Legend of the Condor Heroes 射鵰英雄傳 (1983)
(356,163,000 viewers)

2nd place: The Feud of Two Brothers 流氓大亨 (1986)
(388,323,000 viewers)

1st place: Looking Back in Anger 義不容情 (1989)
(431,355,000 viewers)

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My ‘quick’ recap:

.>> Deric and Maggie are the big winners in this countdown, as both of them had 3 series a piece (happened to be the same series) that made it onto the list (not to mention being part of the #1 series).

.>> Felix came in a very close second with 2 series in the countdown -- though he does have an advantage in terms of ranking in that both of his series were in the top 3!

.>> Tony, Alex, and Leon did pretty well too, with 2 series a piece in the countdown.

.>> I think that the only one I would disagree with is “Love and Passion” – I’ve seen that series and even though it’s much better than many of today’s series, I really didn’t think it was all that great compared to the other series on the list. But maybe it made it on the list because it’s such a classic (it is the oldest one of the list)? But then again, there are many other series that would fall into the ‘classic’ category….

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For those who are interested, below is the link to the 2nd half of the 1995 Anniversary Gala – the countdown starts at 33:12.

TVB Anniversary Gala 1995 (part 2)

Feel free to comment on what you think of the countdown! :o)

2003 HKFA Awards Ceremony (第22屆香港電影金像獎颁獎典禮)

I just finished re-watching the 2003 HK Film Awards Ceremony and I’ve got to say that it brings back a lot of memories.

To be honest, I didn’t purposefully re-watch this show – I just happened to come across it again when I was searching for something in Tudou, so I decided to go ahead and re-watch.

The 2003 ceremony was very different from the previous ones in many ways. First of all, that was the year that SARS hit Hong Kong and the entire population was suffering from the epidemic. It had gotten so bad that there were advisories put out by the government suggesting that non-HK citizens should not travel to HK and if they did, it would be at their own risk. The spirit and mood of the people were at an all-time low. Just when they thought things couldn’t get any worse, the HK entertainment industry is rocked by devastating news: music and film icon Leslie Cheung jumps from the 24th floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel – and within minutes, he was gone.

In less than 5 days from this tragic event, the 22nd annual HK Film Awards ceremony was scheduled to take place – given everything that happened, many wondered if they should move forward with the event as planned. In the end, they decided to proceed with the show as usual. The night of the ceremony, HKFA association chairman (and host of the event that night) Eric Tsang gave the opening speech (a very moving one) and in it, he reveals the reason why they decided to go on with the show. He said that after what happened, he didn’t want to do the show anymore – but then he saw something on TV that made him change his mind. There was a news report about how, at the peak of the SARS epidemic, a group of several dozen doctors were asked who amongst them would volunteer to ‘get in the trenches’ and go into the deepest hit areas to help out (and risk the possibility of losing their lives) – without any hesitation, every single of them raised their hands and volunteered to go. Eric was moved when he saw this and also felt motivated – he indicated that the entertainment industry should not let the events of the past several months beat them down…instead, they should show the same ‘fighting spirit’ as the doctors and do the jobs that they were meant to do – entertain the audiences, bring up people’s spirits, and help everyone – ordinary citizen and celebrity alike – temporarily forget their sorrow and pain for one night.

This particular awards ceremony was also unique and special because of 2 reasons:

Majority of the artists who were nominated in the various categories were not in attendance at the ceremony and even many of those who won did not attend. Now before we start blaming the artists, we have to understand the environment in HK during that time – as I said earlier, SARS was at its peak and so many people were sick that the entire region became a big hospital ward, it seemed. And as mentioned earlier, the government had issued advisories regarding travel to HK….also, the hosts Eric Tsang and John Shum did mention that most of the non-HK artists were advised not to come to HK, so it’s actually not too surprising that they did not attend. In fact, the only non-HK artist in attendance at the ceremony was Zhang Zhen, who presented one of the awards.

Second, despite the lack of non-HK artists and the ‘tense’ atmosphere, this was still one of the most memorable ceremonies in HKFA history because it showed how united the HK entertainment industry truly is. A few of HK’s biggest celebrities who had not attended the HK Film Awards in years were in attendance at this particular awards ceremony.…this may not seem like a big deal, but what makes this truly unique is that most of the ‘big name’ celebrities attended primarily to support HK and the industry – many of them were neither nominees nor presenters. And a few of them were actually out of the country, but purposefully flew back to HK just to support.

For example, film icon Chow Yun Fat and his wife Jasmine attended the ceremony to show their support, as did singer/actor Alan Tam (both had not attended the HKFA in years) – both Fat Gor and Alan were the special guests who gave a 4 minute monologue at the end of the ceremony -- a great speech that was filled with humor and jokes at each other’s expense, but was a great source of encouragement for everyone in HK. Stephen Chow also made a rare appearance prior to the presentation of the Best New Director award (which he was not the presenter for) to say a few words of encouragement to the people of HK. For me though, the biggest highlight of all was the extremely rare performance by of all 4 Cantopop Kings (Jacky, Andy, Leon, Aaron), who had not performed together since the late 90s – they did an acappella rendition of Leslie’s classic hit Dong Nin Ching (當年情) as a tribute to him. I definitely have to applaud Jacky for attending just to do the tribute, given his close relationship with Leslie and knowing that he was probably grieving during that time – plus he was not nominated for anything that year and wasn’t even a presenter (both Andy and Leon were nominated for Best Actor and Aaron was a presenter for the Best Actress award, so at least the other 3 had a reason to attend aside from the tribute).

Also, in the very last segment (after Fat Gor and Alan did their speech), the hosts invited everyone (all the presenters, nominees, and pretty much everyone else who wanted to go up there) on to the stage so that Hacken Lee (who was invited up after the speech) and Alan could lead the entire group in a song that represented HK’s fighting spirit. It was a pretty appropriate closing if you ask me.

A few thoughts on "The Challenge of Life 人在邊緣"

I was visiting retrotvb’s blog earlier and came across this review on one of my favorite series, The Challenge of Life – obviously, I couldn’t pass up the chance to comment on the series and in so doing, I guess I sort of ended up doing a ‘review’ of sorts.

I’ve seen this particular series many times and though I have not watched the series recently, I’ve seen it enough to remember almost everything that goes on in the series. So I decided to go ahead and compile the comments I made (with a few modifications) and create a blog post on it, as my feelings on the series come through in it – in terms of ‘official’ review, I will most likely do one later on when I actually get around to re-watching this series.

Note: Some of my comments are in response to retrotvb’s review of the series, so they might not make sense taken on their own – therefore, for those who are truly interested in watching this series and want more detail, I recommend reading retrotvb’s review prior to reading my comments.

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First off, thank you to retrotvb for writing a commentary / review on The Challenge of Life. Even though I've seen this series a gazillion times, I have yet to write a review on it because I just started my blog a couple months ago, so obviously it will take some time (if I had to write reviews on all of the 80s and 90s series I've seen, I would be glued to my laptop for years to come...lol!).

Before I get too far into things, I do want to mention about the friendship between Kitty Lai, Jacqueline Law, and Monica Chan. This is the only series that I know of (other than all the 5 Tiger ones) where the real-life actors continued to maintain a close relationship years after the series finished. Even today, 21 years later, Kitty, Jacqueline, and Monica are still the best of friends – in fact, just last week, Monica posted a picture of the three of them on her weibo – they were at Jacqueline’s house, hanging out together, as they usually do. When I saw the picture, I got a bit teary-eyed because frankly, I really miss Kitty and Jacqueline – 2 great actresses who (in my opinion at least) had successful careers, but now lead quiet, happily married lives. I’m definitely happy for them – but a bit saddened that the only way I get to see them is by watching old TVB series. Oh well….I can always reminisce!

Ok, now that I got that out of the way, on to my actual responses to retrotvb’s review….

I have to make mention of the songs that were used in this series, which I absolutely loved. I remember when I watched this series for the first time years ago, I fell in love with Stephen Bishop’s “It Might Be You” song and absolutely adored it to the point that I was hunting all over for the song….it took me years to find it, but when I finally did, I was so happy (obviously). And when I was actually watching the series, I actually wanted more scenes between Sean and Monica (even though I didn’t really like the pairing) just so I could hear the song again! Anyway, it is an absolutely great song and complemented the series extremely well!

As for the themesong and sub-theme song by Leon Lai – as I’ve said before, most of the songs that I like of his were from the early 90s when he was still with Polygram, plus all of the TV series themesongs. Not going to go into an in-depth analysis of the themesongs, but one thing I do want to mention…the sub-theme song to this series – “If This is Love” – was very popular back when the series aired and for years afterwards…the interesting thing about this song is that it was also used in both of Leon’s subsequent series (though not as a subtheme, since those series already had their own subtheme songs, but rather during a few of the scenes only): “The Breaking Point” from 1991 and “The Legendary Ranger” from 1993. Hmmm…I wonder if TVB was just being lazy and reused the song in the other series or if there was a particular purpose for doing so….guess I may never know!

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The cast of this series consisted of: Sean Lau, Kitty Lai, Monica Chan, Jacqueline Law, Leon Lai, Frankie Lam, Wayne Lai, Andy Dai, Fong Gong, Ng Yuen Yi, Liu Kai Chi (these were the main actors/actresses in the series).

Here are my comments on a few of the main characters / artists:

SEAN LAU – absolutely one of my all time favorite actors…I absolutely ADORE him – not just because of his acting, but because of how he is in real life (let me just say that Amy Kwok is extremely lucky to have a man like him!).

If you want my honest opinion, I feel that Sean’s performance was so successful in this series (and his character so endearing) partly because he is actually playing himself! I definitely see elements of his character in the series that are very similar to how he is in real life. He’s not good looking by any means, but he is cute and adorable and extremely nice, upright, responsible, friendly, and most of all, has an awesome sense of humor – pretty much the type of guy that any sensible girl would have a crush on!

I could go on forever about Sean because I have ‘followed’ him for a long time and he is one of the best actors this industry has (I cried so hard when he finally won the HKFA Best Actor award after so many years!) – but I don’t want to go too much off tangent, so I’ll stop here (for now).


KITTY LAI – another one of my favorites! She’s another actress that I loved back in the 80s (and early 90s) and one of the few who was actually very versatile -- she could play the meek, innocent characters such as her Ah Wah character in COL, yet do the 180 degree turn to play the strong, willful Chiu Man in HSDS (but that’s another long review altogether, so won’t go there).

Kitty’s character was very well-written in this series and she was given a great opportunity to shine as an actress – and shine, she did!! Her performance was absolutely awesome and perfect – as always, her acting is ‘just right’ and never over the top. This is why I love watching her series because I just feel so comfortable with her!

Her character was definitely tragic and I also kept wondering how so many bad things could happen to her, especially given what a good person she is. To be honest, I preferred her with Sean (instead of pairinig him with Monica), as I felt she was a better match for him over Monica, but then again, I could understand why things happened the way they did in the series.


LEON LAI – to be honest, Leon’s performance pales in comparisons to everyone else’s in this series (not just Sean and Frankie, but the females and also Wayne). But I was fine with his character and performance in this series because – as it was mentioned – it was a great role for him and he suited it well (and with this character being a precursor to his character in the The Breaking Point, I’m totally fine with him in here).

Is it just me, or was his ‘slur’ kind of strong in this series? I know Leon is not a native HKer and Cantonese is not his first language, so when he talks too fast, I’ve noticed that he slurs his speech sometimes – maybe I’m just being nit-picky, but in some scenes, I felt that it was hard to understand what he was saying.


JACQUELINE LAW – another great actress from the 80s era…I liked her as an actress (come to think of it, I liked almost all of the actors/actresses from the 80s) and her character in here was very endearing (funny at times, but serious when she needed to be) – I loved her character and enjoyed the fun and laughter that her character brought (remember that scene where she’s registering for night classes because she wants to please Leon and, pretending not to know English, let’s that dumb teacher put her down with her broken English, but then when Leon leaves the room, Jacqueline puts the teacher to shame by giving a bio of herself in fluent English? Absolutely hilarious and one of many funny scenes in the series!)

It’s such a shame that Jacqueline’s career was cut short after that bad diving accident (not to mention the damage it did to her physically) – that’s why I was glad to see her come back in 2006 to film LFD, even though her role was not hugely significant in that series.

I also felt that Leon and Jacqueline were a cute pairing, despite the whole ‘cousin’ thing. To be honest though, I was already used to their pairing because they also collaborated on “A Friend in Need” a couple years prior (in 1988). Definitely much better as a couple in this series though!


MONICA CHAN – not a whole lot to say about her, because quite honestly, I’m not really a fan of her acting. She’s okay though (WAY better than a lot of the MHKs today) and if you use today’s standards (with the lame MHK / pageant winner turned actresses currently saturating all the series in TVB currently), then I guess you could say she was REALLY good! (LOL!!!) Anyway, I think this was Monica’s first series (if I remember correctly, as I think she was MHK 1989?) and for a first series, she wasn’t all that bad.


FRANKIE LAM – hahaha…I’ve always felt that Sunny and Chilam and Frankie looked alike (that’s probably way all 3 of them are also on my ‘favorites’ list). Needless to say, he was awesome in this series – absolutely convincing as ‘the bad son’ yet not cheesy at all. He definitely played the villain role well (as a sidenote, after ‘falling in love’ with Frankie’s character in “Forensic Heroes”, I almost forgot that he was another one who always used to play villain roles – and excelled at them).

WAYNE LAI – saving the best for last, of course! Wayne absolutely overshadowed Leon in this series (and rightfully so, given the awesome actor that Wayne is – even back then, when he was a virtual unknown). This was actually the first series I watched where Wayne actually had a ‘meaty’ role (all his previous roles prior to this were so minor to the point that they were mostly forgettable) and he of course pulled it off well (no surprise there). Even back then, I thoroughly enjoyed Wayne’s performance (as I still do now) – so much so that I was bummed out at his character’s fate at the end of the series (and for awhile there, it made me hate Frankie)….And I have to stick this in here -- to this day, I’m still pissed at TVB for overlooking Wayne’s talents and waiting more than 20 years later to start recognizing him! (Damn TVB!!!)

ANDY DAI – just had to make a quick comment about Andy’s performance. He played one of his typical villain roles and to be honest, he played the part well! He was downright evil in this series – to the point that I applauded when his character died (demonstrates how well he played the part). I personally feel that Andy is one of the most underrated supporting actors – his acting is always right on par and usually very convincing.

Concluding thoughts:

.—Yes, I thought the ending was pretty lame as well….the church scene was so cheesy (though it’s funny that the scene where Leon pushes open the doors to the church was parodied later on in a couple other series – which is why I laugh now whenever I watch that part).

.—I totally felt that TVB didn’t do justice to Fong Gong in this series (he played Leon’s father) – he’s a pretty accomplished veteran actor and famous for playing villains (that’s probably why he has that ‘evil’ look…lol)...the first few episodes he was in was well done and brought out the ‘scariness’ of the character, but then, when he returned later on in the series, it’s almost like he lost all his ‘fire’ and wasn’t the evil / scary person that he was supposed to be. And yes, the way he died was ABSOLUTELY LAME!!!

.—Haha…glad to see that I wasn’t the only one who thought Monica looked weird in that fake-looking long-haired wig! What was the point? They should have just kept her hair short like it usually is – totally ruined it for me at the end!