C'est La Vie, Mon Chéri

I just finished watching C’est La Vie, Mon Chéri 新不了情 (HK/Mainland collaboration, 29 episodes)…sigh…

C’est La Vie, Mo Chéri Synopsis: (written [badly] by me)
Kit, a talented composer with a temper but without luck and recognition is breaking up with pop star girlfriend Tracy. He moves to Temple Street and befriends with neighbor Mun and her family and slowly adapts to the simple life of that area. Friendship turns very fast to love for them. Mun is a bubbly and cheerful girl who was once diagnosed with bone cancer but miraculously survived now lives happily with her mother Oi, uncle Sang and Ling, Oi’s “see mui”. Just when everybody is happy, Mun’s rich businessman father Wan reappears again to complicate matters and when Kit is going to propose to Mun, she is once again diagnosed with bone cancer…

Cast:
Fiona Sit – Lau Mun
Aloys Chen – Cheung Siu Kit
Candice Yu – Lee Joi Oi
Hui Siu Hung – Lee Joi Sang
Alex Fong – Lau Ho Wan
Chen Xiao Yi – Hui Pui Fun
Zhao Rong – Pang Chui See (Tracy)
Lui Kit – Man Siu Ling
Elena Kong – Ada

My comments:
Man, choosing to watch C'est La Vie, Mon Chéri after work is not going to lift up your mood. I remember watching the movie version starring Lau Ching Wan and Anita Yuen 15 years ago and cried my eyes out back then. Now, the drama version for me was a sob fest, especially during the last 5 episodes. If you are a regular viewer of TVB dramas, you might think this drama is not fast-paced enough. However, I think what this drama stands out compared to the ones from TVB is that it really focuses on the details, dialogues and character development. Every character has their own little story and the minor characters are not just background boards. No one is evil here, even if they did annoying things, everyone changed for the better.

The thing that touched me the most is how the family relationship is portrayed. I cried mostly for the mother(s)-daughter relationship between Oi and Mun and Fun and Mun; you can see how both moms love her so dearly. Even the flashback scenes of their younger days showing their interactions made me finish a pack of tissues. The love between Kit and Mun is touching as well but I felt that the chemistry is not quite there probably because of Aloys’ dubbing (the dubbing is already not bad, I’ve seen worse). The tiny glitch about this drama is occasional dialogue spoofs, and the drama is sometime choppy and does not flow well. The acting is great from the cast, even Fiona managed to do well although I’m still a bit bothered by the way she talks. The ending, it is expected to end it that way but I felt that it was somehow incomplete. When the credit rolls at the end, I was like “That’s it?!”

* Themesong of the drama

CJ7

CJ7 Synopsis: (from Yesasia)
The latest comedy from Stephen Chow, CJ7 is a fantasy tale featuring state of the art visual effects. A poor laborer father (Chow) and his young son's lives are turned upside down when a fascinating and strange new pet enters their world. Amid the resulting comic mayhem, they ultimately learn a poignant lesson about the true nature of family and the things money can't buy.

My comments:
For a Stephen Chow, one might expect a lot more and expect to see him more in CJ7 as he’s basically a minor character. The film focused more on his son (those who are still unaware, Xu Jiao is actually a girl) and his school life. Like Chow’s previous movies, it talks about some ‘nobodies’ possessing extraordinary skills or encountering extraordinary events. This time, it involves a very cute ET pet, which they call CJ7 (I have to repeat again that it’s very CUTE!). The first quarter of the movie is actually boring showing how poor Chow and his son are but once this CJ7 appears, it gets better.

One thing that is surprising, can you associate (sort of) tearjerker with Stephen Chow? I swear that I never cried for any Stephen Chow films but I did for CJ7 but it’s really for the pet CJ7. What that little thing did was OMG touching although I don’t think that would exist in real life.

Behavior of a fan

I used to think that those fans who buy multiple versions of the same album a bit too obsessive and irrational. I never supported that because I think I should not spoil and approve the record companies’ method to rip off fans’ money. It’s basically the same songs in the CD maybe with an extra song, bonus MV DVD and some unnecessary goodies. Why bother? Hey, I did buy a third version of an album (didn’t buy the first nor the second version, thank God!) with milk candies as extra goodies (roll eyes~). But voila today, I’m eating my own words by buying Khalil Fong’s 2nd version of Wonderland, same CD with a bonus DVD including 3 MVs and 4 live performances in Taiwan. Why buying it when the clips can be found in Youtube as well? Hmmm…it’s my Taurus possessive nature, I want to own it…but I’m cussing at Warner inside my heart.

Proof that I do have 2 versions of the same album...

* Warner HK, I’ll forgive you if you will release Khalil’s concert in DVD, if not, ___ you!

Kung Fu Dunk

Kung Fu Dunk Synopsis: (from Yesasia)
Shi-Jie (Jay Chou) grows up in a martial arts school and he is well versed in kung-fu. With his skills and his good reflexes, Shi-Jie also excels in basketball, especially the slam dunk technique. On the pretext of helping Shi-Jie find his family, Wang-Li (Eric Tsang) invites him to join the university's basketball team in hopes of making money out of him.

There Shi-Jie faces new challenges on the basketball team, especially with team mates Ting-Wei (Bo-Lin Chen) and Xiao-Lan (Baron Chen). With the upcoming championship games and the appearance of Li-Li (Charlene Choi), the team must put aside their differences and personal emotions to face their common rivals.

My comments:
After finishing Kung Fu Dunk, my reaction is “OMG, are you kidding me?!” I’m sorry Jay, even though I’m your die-hard fan, I still have to question why did you accept this movie in the first place…it’s so childish and badly written that it’s not funny. Action wise, it’s acceptable and okay but the story really kills it. Jay is still very likeable but the movie suffers from poor character development and character relationship as well. It’s like they tried to develop something but end up going nowhere instead.

Ah Sa as the love interest, didn’t have much to do, all she did was putting a smiley face and a crying face. She had zero chemistry with Jay and I can’t blame her. The Jay and Eric Tsang relationship is even more head-scratching. Their mushy conversation at the end with the candlelight atmosphere makes me wonder if they are a couple instead. I really had goosebumps here…

Under The Canopy of Love …the novel

Yup, you read it right this is the novel version of the TVB drama 天幕下的戀人!

For the book summary, click here

My comments:
This novel version has a total of 330 pages and it’s written by Canny Leung (梁芷珊). Since I saw the drama 2 years ago, why am I reading the novel? Good question, I have no idea why but I’m bored when I’m taking the bus/metro so yeah…I finished it in 7 days though.

I find this experience quite interesting because I usually read the novel and then watch the movie/drama adaptation but rarely the other way around. Obviously, there are more things happening in the drama that wasn’t included in the novel (eg. Natalie Tong and Charles Szeto’s part, the elder sister and her boyfriend’s part and how she was toying with Bosco, etc.) It mainly focused on Kevin and Niki’s romance part and even Bosco seemed like a minor character. The whole novel is exactly like the drama, with the only exception on how the triangular relationship was resolved at the end. There are parts that I completely forgot it happened in the drama but reading it again, all the images came back. There are some parts that I had teary eyes in the novel but not so from the drama so does it mean that it was badly acted or is it too well written…hmmm…

Playlist of early April

- 迷宮 – Joanna Wang => I’m glad that there is [finally] someone producing jazz music in Chinese and this is pretty amazing for someone who is not 20 yet!

- 山水 – Shirley Kwan => This song, either you’ll like it or you’ll snooze. Surprisingly, I belong to the first category.

- 年年有今日 – Leo Ku feat. a bunch of Gold Label males artists => I was numb with Leo’s songs from the last 2 years as they are getting boring and repetitive. But this time, it’s a nice collaboration with his fellow colleagues although the beatbox can be a bit over.