Just came back from watching the musical Duck and Dive, performed by the I Theatre group. It was a really enjoyable performance… my first musical in Singapore. I was a bit hesitant and doubtful at first, because I wasn’t sure of the quality of Singapore’s talent (compared to watching Les Miserables on Broadway, NY), and I was wondering how I would react to humans acting as animals. I came away pleasantly surprised. Duck and Dive was a charming show… not entirely perfect, but the strengths were many and the weaknesses were relatively few.

The story is a family-friendly tale that weaves together the story of the Ugly Duckling and the Frog Prince becoming best friends as they travel in search of the answers to their problems together. While the beginning was a bit jarring – the opening court scene with the Prince and Princess fighting amidst their guardians planning for a royal wedding seemed rather affected and unrealistic (not to mention reminiscent of The Swan Princess animated film) – the real meat of the story starts to shine once the animals get involved.

The costume designs for all of the creatures were very well done, especially the ducklings, heron, weasels and the hedgehog. It was also aided by the superb acting of the cast members in those roles… it’s true that some characters can really bring costumes to life. Speaking of acting, I was extremely impressed by the two leads – Isabella Chiam as the Ugly Duckling Cygna, and Tan Shou Chen as the Frog Prince Anura. Their body language was really well acted out – Chiam had the goofy overgrown duckling role down pat, and her sense of comic timing and facial expression was impeccable.  Tan was highly-detailed in his performance – I remember watching his hands remaining splayed-out as a frog throughout most of the show, and he also managed to incorporate a costume malfunction (his webbed foot fell off) into part of the routine. It’s the little things that count.

I was also incredibly impressed by three of the supporting cast that had multiple roles to play. Candice de Rozario was a standout figure in both acting and singing – she was the only one in the opening court scene which I felt was believable, and her voice work in her song solos as well as the mother of the Ugly Duckling was wonderful. Dwayne Lau played the human regent of the Frog Prince, an oracular peacock-guardian of the Ugly Duckling, and the villainous heron out to eat our heroes. While he still could improve further (the regent character seemed underdeveloped and the vocal style and characterization could have varied further between the disparate roles to further differentiate them), his acting was still dramatic and engaging. Hang Qian Chou was one of my favourites throughout the whole show – he was cast as a variety of comic figures throughout the musical, and he played each of them distinctively and with gusto. Rayann Condy, who played Erin the hedgehog, also deserves mention for the delightful character she brought to life with her superb acting.

The other actors and actresses weren’t as strong as the ones I mentioned above, I felt… some had more visible weaknesses than others. Hatta Said and Trey Ho both had problems with clear diction and pronunciation at times, while Pamela Chong and Renee Chua had issues with overacting their characters (Renee Chua’s cat was good… but her witch character was terrible). Daphne Ong put in a solid performance as a swan and princess, but nothing really stood out positively or negatively. I was a bit mystified by the puppeteers wandering around stage animating flying insects, but hey, whatever works. Surprisingly, I was much more convinced of the animals than I was of the human characters.

Set design and choreography was excellent, and I felt that the ensemble really managed to take advantage of that. Multiple actors acting separately in the background, a few focal points on stage, and some nice intricate dancing occasionally (the dance with the frogs was especially enjoyable). Lighting and special effects were good, especially for the witch’s magics, but the transition was a bit jarring sometimes (which may have been the point… I don’t know). The music flowed excellently throughout, and while not all the songs were memorable (with the possible exception of the “Waddle, waddle, quack, quack” song). The writing was great, with numerous little in-jokes and references to other shows, Singaporean culture, and puns that adults who were accompanying their kids would appreciate. The humor was abundant throughout the play… vocabulary and the rapid speed of dialogue may have been a little advanced for some of the children that filled half the theatre, but considering that this is Singapore, it might have been okay. The only flaw I see with the script is that I can’t really tell how the Frog Prince has changed his character… maybe a bit too sudden, and too much tell, not enough show.

Overall, while the flaws in this show are apparent, there’s also a quirky, delightful charm to the whole production that brings me back to my early days with Disney. It still manages to transport me back into a fairy-tale world of talking animals, and reminds me once again what it’s like to be a child. A delight for the whole family.

Ratings:

Story: A-
Acting: B+
Music: A
Songs: B-
Choreography: A-
Set Design and Lighting: B+
Costumes: A-

Cross Game, a manga (Japanese comic) created by my favourite manga author, Mitsuru Adachi, has been turned into an anime and is airing this season! The first episode has just been aired and subbed, and it already outshines the other 30 or so series premiering this season. Cross Game is simply a masterpiece of slice-of-life romantic drama, with some sports action thrown in.

Summary: Cross Game follows the story of Koh Kitamura, only son of the Kitamura Sports equipment store, and his relationship with the four sisters of the Tsukishima family, who run the neighbourhood batting cage and Clover cafe. The second sister, Wakaba, was born on the same day at the same hospital as Koh, and they have been closely linked since their earliest days. This causes Koh to be the target of quite a bit of jealousy among his other male classmates, as well as from Wakaba’s younger sister Aoba. In the meantime, Koh’s friends and rivals all are interested in baseball, and try to drag him into their world. Since he’s been swinging a bat since young at the Tsukishima batting cages, Koh’s naturally a good batter, but his fielding skills are awful. However, just as he decides baseball is rather cool, a life-changing event occurs.

Thoughts: It’s always difficult to write a summary for Cross Game, because the story is separated into two parts – a prologue set in primary school, and the main story set in high school. Episode 1 covers the prologue. I watched it the moment it came onto the Net, even though there were no subtitles yet and it was just in Japanese. The animation studio did a wonderful job of adapting it and still keeping true to the manga’s original storyline. I was in tears by the end of the episode, even though I knew what was coming. For all anime lovers out there, you simply must watch it. Reviews across all major anime sites, blogs and forums have been excellent, with many people calling it the masterpiece of the season, and the manga also just won the Best Shounen series in the Shokugakukan awards last year.

You can watch Episode 1 with subtitles streamed on Veoh, or download the torrent here, or direct HTTP download here.

Anime/Manga: The new anime season is starting from this week. A bunch of interesting shows that I’m thinking about watching…  Cross Game (the latest story by my favourite mangaka, Adachi Mitsuru), K-on (another KyoAni product, in a similar vein to Lucky Star), Tears to Tiara (fantasy adventure), and Winter Sonata (yes, the classic Korean drama is being turned into an anime. Goodness knows what it’s going to be like). I’ll probably post more in-depth thoughts on these another day.

Books: I’m kind of oscillating between a couple of books at the moment – David Drake’s When the Tide Rises (the 6th book in the RCN series that I’ve been buying regularly from Webscriptions), and Rhys Bowen’s series of Constable Evans Mysteries, which are a bunch of mystery novels set in rural Wales around the early 1990s. Kinda light reading.

Christianity: The search for a Senior Pastor for our church (since the last one left to become a missonary a year ago) has finally borne some results – a Rev. George Butron was unanimously recommended by the committee to be the top candidate for Senior Pastor. He’s scheduled to preach for 3 Sundays before a vote will be taken by the congregation whether to accept him or not. So far, he seems like a nice guy and an engaging speaker, based on his sermon today. Lots of anecdotes and managed to share his own testimony while putting out an altar call. As a speaker and preacher, I think he might be okay, though there were a few careless errors here and there with regards to Scripture referencing. I haven’t had a chance to see how well he operates as a teacher or pastor yet, but there’s still two more Sundays (and Easter) to go.

Games: Playing Baldur’s Gate a lot this week. Actually, I’ve been playing a lot of games this week – Hourglass of Summer (the other visual novel that I went to great effort to get), Baldur’s Gate, and dabbling in a bunch of other games. But mostly Baldur’s Gate. I had bought the entire set (Baldur’s Gate, BG II, and both expansions) some time ago for a really bargain price, but never got around to playing them seriously until now. Now I’m planning to finish them before I lose interest again.

K-Pop: Nothing much. Watching a little bit of everything – following SNSD in variety shows, a little bit of Family Outing, a little bit of We Got Married, and a little bit of Coffee Prince.

Shows: Have decided not to go for Cats. Must save money. However, my cell and I are planning to watch a movie this Good Friday holiday. Finally, I can use that free movie ticket that I’ve been hoarding up for  nearly a year now. It expires this month, so I’d better use it fast. There’s supposedly a new Jackie Chan movie coming out…

Anime/Manga: Toradora anime has officially ended! (Well, the first season, at least…) And it was a good, well-executed ending, too. Being based on a light novel, the issues that were dealt with in the penultimate and final episodes were a lot more serious than I had expected out of a romantic comedy, and yet it pulled it off well. This ending sort of makes me want to read the light novels now. Also, it looks like the Natsu arc of the Skip Beat! manga has finally come to a successful close. Natsu-sama FTW… but man, she’s harsh. And yet another member joins the Love Me section! Interesting times ahead…

But the biggest highlight of this week has been the manga known as Liar Game. I just read it out of the blue when it was featured on one of the sites I visit often, but boy is it engaging! Essentially, a naive and honest girl gets sucked into a very weird game where participants are each given a lump sum of money and pitted against each other to con, trick or steal each other’s cash. Whoever loses ends up owing the company the amount they lost, and whoever wins gets to keep the extra prize money for themselves. So how’s a poor, innocent, totally-honest girl supposed to survive in this game? By hiring one of the best swindlers in town, of course! A very interesting psychological drama, full of mental battles, tricks and calculation of odds. Plus some philosophical issues raised about greed, fair play, and the natural inclinations of humanity towards either of these. The third round of the Liar Game just ended, and the stakes just keep getting higher and higher…

Books: The best times for reading are when I’m taking public transport on the way to and from work. I can usually get through a couple of chapters each trip. After finishing The Phoenix Guards last week, I’m now naturally going through all the books written by the same author, Steven Brust. His style really is a copy of Alexander Dumas. Except that he knows it. What I find really interesting is the narrator’s voice in his stories. Brust pretends to be a translator of a history academic, Paarfi of Roundwood, who himself is an author of historical romance, writing novelizations of the life major characters in the history of Paarfi’s world. Really interesting when Paarfi’s pompous and loquacious style is poked fun at by the “translator”, Steve Brust. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to write in a similar manner?

Christianity: Sometimes, I wonder what the role of a cell leader is supposed to be. How far should I go in caring for my cell members? I’m naturally introverted and reserved, so I don’t expect much contact with them outside of church activities. And yet, should I make efforts to meet up with them more often, and encourage them to do so as well? How far do we take the concept that the Church is a family? Should we be integrated into each other’s lives fully? How can I find the reserves to care for each one of my cell members, when I don’t have that much depth of feeling in me? I know that the world will recognise us by the love we have for each other, but I really wonder – can I love this way?

Games: I tried playing Piece of Wonder this week. It’s one of the English-translated Japanese visual novels that I went to so much trouble to get. Really like it, but for some reason it doesn’t work too well on my machine. The novel parts are fine, but the battle gameplay (which plays like a console turn-based tactical RPG) doesn’t seem to respond well to mouse controls. It got stuck on Windows XP, and is totally unplayable in Windows Vista. Eh… I should find a way out of this. I really want to know what happens next.

K-Pop: So, I’m moving to tracking another musical group now… it’s amazing how interconnected the Korean entertainment industry is. By just tracking music artistes to variety shows, and then investigating variety shows to find new music artistes, you can get to recognise quite a number of celebrities. This time, I followed YoonA from SNSD to Family Outing, then watched several episodes of Family Outing until I got interested in Big Bang, and now I’m tracking Big Bang. Big Bang is a 5-member boy band specializing in a fusion of hip hop, rap and pop music. What I really like about them is their music video choreography. Three of their biggest hits: Lies, Last Farewell, and Haru Haru (This Day) all have a surprise twist at the end which makes you reinterpret the meaning of the song and the scenes that occured during the MV. Really good. And the themes expressed in these songs are pretty good too. Plus they actually compose and produce their own songs, too, which speaks well of their passion and talent.

Shows: The Cats musical is coming to Singapore! I’m so tempted to get a ticket and go to watch it… How often will I get a chance to see a world-famous musical like this being performed without going overseas? But the cheapest tickets I can get are $70, whereas the good seats cost $140, double the price. Still… it’s Cats. It’s really worth it, especially with an international cast. *sigh* Still have 10 more days to decide before it opens…

1) Shin ae is getting married. To someone other than Alex. Within 6 months of dating him. In June 2009. Ah, a pleasant dream goes poof. No matter how entertaining or realistic it may seem, a show like “We Got Married” never can really lead to lasting romantic relationships. Just because Alex and Shin Ae made one of the best romances it has ever been my pleasure to follow doesn’t mean it would eventually bear fruit, even in a reality TV show that pairs together celebrities into married couples.

2) Jang Ja-Yeon committed suicide, revealing in her letter that she was forced to sleep with and play escort hostess to several high-ups in the Korean media industry. A list that supposedly contains the names of the people involved has been suppressed by the Korean government, but is supposedly floating around the internet somewhere. The average age of the people on that list is around 50 years old, apparently. To make things worse, there have been rumors that the rash of other actress suicides earlier this year may also have been due to the same reasons, but covered up as due to “depression”.

Wow. Conspiracy theories abound.

Anime / Manga: Ako kissed Negi! Huh, can’t believe Akamatsu actually allowed it to happen. Naruto finally met his father! Cool. Also, Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game has returned to publication! Time for more youthful sports romance drama! Yay!

Books: Just finished reading Steven Brust’s “The Phoenix Guards”, a fantasy adventure novel written in the French Romantic style. Great technique, there. Lots of humour too. Haven’t encountered French Romance since reading The D’Artagnan Chronicles by Alexander Dumas back in secondary school. The Phoenix Guards really remind me of The Three Musketeers (as it was supposed to, I guess…)

Christianity: Did you know that the last parts of the Gospel of Mark are widely considered by Biblical scholars as not to have been written by the author of Mark’s Gospel? The oldest manuscripts end off at v. 8, which means the passage about the Great Commission, the post-Resurrection appearances and the accompanying of signs and wonders to the message being preached by the disciples were not included in the original Gospel. Some scholars theorise that this passage was added as a footnote by a scribe in the second century, based off the Acts of the Apostles. Lee Strobel’s “The Case for the Real Jesus” is very interesting.

Games: Just added Saboteur and Munchkin to my personal board game collection! Now if only I can interest enough people in getting together to play them… Also, next week is the Game Developer’s Conference, where the Independent Games Festival competition results will be announced. Hope CarneyVale: Showtime wins the Grand Prize.

Shows: You know, no matter how many times I watch them, I just find it really hard to believe Taeyeon and Hyungdon acting like a couple in We Got Married. Maybe I’m biased because I see SNSD a lot elsewhere, or maybe their behaviour on screen or the editing process really is trying to keep things light rather than developing, because they’re scared of all the anti-fans. But there’s absolutely no chemistry between this couple. It feels more like a big brother being run roughshod over by his little sister and her pack of friends. That one Kangin-Taeyeon moment in episode 47 had more sizzle and spice than the entire Taeyeon-Hyungdon relationship so far. *sigh* I miss the original couples of We Got Married. Especially Alex and Shin Ae.

Misc.: I really should start building this website up more and put up my portfolio as well as my fanfiction pieces… been kind of lazy to do it.

Then along comes a video like this, which I think is very interesting… it succinctly captures the very different approaches that the two girl groups took towards fame.

But what I find really interesting, after being exposed to about 5 months of Korean pop culture, is how the Korean media industry is structured. It really is unlike a lot of the other media industries in the West, as James Turnbull explains here. What I find strange and sad is how vicious the life of a celebrity is in Korea. Fans haunt them constantly, there are death threats if they do something that’s even remotely unpopular, and all this fame is fickle and transitory. Half the stars I remember watching on variety shows two or three years ago no longer appear. But not just that. The Korean public seems to be in such a craze over these celebrities that new celebrities are now… “manufactured” is perhaps the best word I can think of… by media companies specifically to take advantage of the public’s interest and appetite for more and more titillating entertainment. Sort of like the Roman circus, except the violence and blood of the gladiators are now substituted for beauty and sex appeal of celebrity idols.

…

I have a lot of thoughts about the Korean media industry and Korean culture, but I can’t seem to put them into words coherently. But there are far better bloggers than I who are blogging regularly about Korean culture, with a critical eye. Those blogs are worth reading. I just wonder… the Korean media and culture craze, known as the “Hallyu” wave, is spreading all over South-East Asia, and across the rest of the world, thanks to the Internet. Some of the professors in my department are studying it. Even my brother and sister are caught up in it. And I wonder… is it wise to let them absorb cultural values through Korean media without turning a critical eye on what that media is portraying?

Akane-Iro ni Somaru Saka

Earl and Fairy

Hyakko

Kannagi

Kemeko Deluxe

Skip Beat!

To Aru Majutsu no Index

Toradora

Tytania

Yozakura Quartet

Well, I’ve finally gotten around to cataloguing the immense number of anime series I’m watching this fall season. It’s lucky that I’ve got holidays now, because the sheer number of good shows available this season boggles the mind. There are over 30 series premiering this season, and I’m following about 10 of them regularly.

]]> http://dizzcity.com/2008/11/15/fall-2008-anime/feed/ 0 http://dizzcity.com/2008/10/02/mamma-mia-the-movie/ http://dizzcity.com/2008/10/02/mamma-mia-the-movie/#comments Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:54:53 +0000 Joshua http://dizzcity.com/?p=118

I just watched the Mamma Mia! Movie yesterday, alone as usual. Couldn’t convince anyone else to go, but I thought it was a worthwhile watch.

Hmmm.

To put it frankly, I wasn’t too impressed. Mamma Mia! the Movie is not something I would like to watch again. I have mixed feelings about this show. On the one hand, I do know that it’s a hit musical, and based off a hit band, so I wonder whether it’s just me. On the other hand, I was really hoping for something better than this. Now, I hadn’t seen the musical or known much about it prior to this, and I’ve heard of ABBA but wasn’t too familiar with their songs. So I went in to the cinema essentially with a blank slate, but prepared to be entertained.

It started off well… the opening song of “I have a dream” and the catchy “Honey honey” song still ring in my head today. The young lead actress, Amanda Seyfried, can sing. Not as attractive as, say, Amy Adams (of Disney’s Enchanted fame), but she can sing. And the premise sounded interesting – three possible fathers, all invited to the daughter’s wedding in hopes of finding out who’s the real Dad. And sometimes, I really liked the direction and scene composition, like when the daughter’s greeting of her two best friends is parodied a short while later by the mother’s greeting of her two best friends. (Talk about a generation gap!)

But that’s about it.

I found the whole girly-girl thing with the greetings a little childish, but I could accept that. What I didn’t like were the theme of the show and the earthiness of the characters. The whole show belongs to a liberal culture of sex, drugs and disco… and yet, I realised that this is part of modern British culture now. In fact, it reminded me very much of London’s presentation at the end of the Beijing Olympics. Crude, earthy and vulgar – very different from the refined image of sober British citizenry that I still persist in clinging onto. The mother’s a self-admitted slut, the daughter eventually treats not getting married as a perfectly legitimate alternative, there’s rampant sexual themes being displayed here and there (particularly in the male-female performances), and one of the fathers is homosexual.

So I wondered… is it possible I’m misjudging this, based on the movie? Perhaps the movie adaptation is just not that good compared to the musical. The issue with me watching the movie is that it’s a 4th-degree transfer of information. I view the movie, the movie is based on the musical, the musical places a story around the ABBA songs, the songs themselves were written to reflect the culture of their times. So for me to experience such profound dissonance, it’s possible that something was lost in translation during one or more of those steps.

I mean, Pierce Brosnan can’t sing well, and Meryl Streep just looks too old and unattractive. And the use of the ensemble dances just look weird in a movie, where you have all these random people creeping up out of nowhere to join in the dance for no reason. (The Dancing Queen sequence, for example, ends up with a parade of women throughout the island… WHY?)

But then again, that could also be a problem with the musical itself… after all, the musical was written as a jukebox musical, to feature the songs of ABBA. If you try to wrap your writing around a bunch of songs with different themes and subjects, you’re bound to create a very stretched and farfetched story to cover the situation. Instead of the songs smoothly flowing into the story, with a reason behind everything, to make a concerted whole, you have this unholy mess with a scattered plot and people breaking out into song even when the situation doesn’t call for it. The emotional narrative of the story narrative and the songs are not in sync.

And then, you go back further, and you think… okay, maybe the transition to movie screwed it up, and the transition to musical screwed it up, but what about transition from pop culture into song? Surely that must have been okay, considering the popularity of ABBA worldwide? And there I’m of two minds. ABBA was clearly a disco-generation band. And if you consider similar musicals set around that time (including Grease, which I also didn’t like), you notice a trend… sex and disco dancing. I believe ABBA caught the spirit of their times well. I just don’t like that spirit. It’s a cultural clash on a most fundamental level. I belong to an older, more conservative culture, one in which God was still important, and the human soul – rather than the human body – was the thing to treasure.

Contrast Mamma Mia! with Les Miserables to see the difference. The latter talks about the salvation and penitence of the soul, one man’s quest to redeem himself from past mistakes, sacrifice for clashing principles. The former also has past mistakes… but how does it treat them? The characters are selfish and self-centered, trying to manipulate each other to fill their own desperate needs… the daughter sets up the entire wedding scheme just to look for her father, and the mother uses the daughter to assuage her own loneliness. And in the end, it’s just all wrapped up neatly, with everyone having a happy ending, with no change of character! Mamma Mia’s message seems to be “You can be happy just the way you are, you don’t have to bother becoming better. Just forget and ignore the past, since it hurts. Live life so that YOU can be happy.” Les Miserables, on the other hand, says “You have made mistakes in the past, but you have been redeemed. The past will still haunt you, but work out your salvation and be a blessing to others, in order to present yourself worthy to God. There are things in life worth living and dying for, beyond yourself.”

Both speak to the human condition, but what a difference.

In this, I see the eternal clash of culture between theism (belief in God) and humanism (focus on man). Mamma Mia, though it talks about the human condition (in fact, more so than Les Miserables), offers no real solution except a very contrived happy ending. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

And yet, what I’m starting to realise is that I’m in a distinct minority. In fact, I do believe that the majority of the world today views Mamma Mia with pleasure and shares in its worldview. I may be the only one experiencing cultural dissonance. How else would you explain the popularity of shows like Grease and Mamma Mia? The world has turned its focus to wholly revolve around the satisfaction of and preoccupation with self. There is no cause worth living for except making yourself happy. I’ve seen this and I’ve heard this in my interactions with many people, including my colleagues and friends. In fact, it’s come to the point where God Himself is on trial. “If God does not make me happy, I will not believe in Him.”

How spoilt we have become.

If there’s one thing good I can say about Mamma Mia!, it is that it has opened my eyes to the immense strength of world culture that I’m preparing to fight against, in my Christian Values Media. It’s not going to be an easy task.