VIEW THIS PAGE Known for his phenomenally successful tough-guy action fare, Hong Kong’s Andrew Lau (劉偉強) returns to the big screen with Look for a Star (游龍戲鳳), a romantic comedy film about a business tycoon and a cabaret dancer.
Though locked and loaded with a stellar cast that includes Andy Lau (劉德華) and Shu Qi (舒淇), the blockbuster director fails to establish his name in the chick-flick sphere with this effort, because he is unable to save the formulaic story line from making a, well, formulaic film.
In Look, Andy Lau plays the handsome, charming billionaire named Sam, while Shu plays the perky Milan, who works as a cabaret dancer and croupier to make ends meet. The two quickly fall in love after a chance encounter in a Macanese casino.
However, Milan, a romanticist who longs for love rather than fame and fortune, begins to have doubts when she uncovers Sam’s true identity.
The prenuptial agreement forced upon Milan by Sam’s mother, and his connivance in the accord, leaves the bride heartbroken.
Besides the main story focusing on how Sam and Milan overcome the odds, two subplots, which involve Sam’s secretary Jo (Denise Ho, 何韻詩) and Lin Jiu (Zhang Hanyu, 張涵予), an honest worker from Shandong Province as well as Sam’s chauffeur (Dominic Lam, 林嘉華) and single mother Shannon (Zhang Xinyi, 張歆藝), are introduced as variations on the rich-guy-marries-poor-girl drama.
Director Lau ingeniously sets the film mainly in Macau, whose Portuguese-style churches, cobbled streets and grand casinos provide a fanciful feel.
But the footage of Shu and Andy Lau scooting around the city’s enchanting vistas isn’t enough to lift the film from mediocrity. Crosscutting three plots, the narration feels messy and is at times incoherent, while plot devices such as a televised confession of love and the appearance of a cockhorse in a park appear tired and contrived. VIEW THIS PAGE
The tropic of cancer bisects the city of Chiayi (嘉義). The morning heat is, predictably, intense. But the sky is blue and hued with promise. Travelers brave the heat to pose for photos outside the carriages lined up at the end of platform one. The pervasive excitement is understandable. HISTORIC RAILWAY The Alishan Forest Railway (阿里山森林鐵路) was engineered by the Japanese to carry timber from the interior to the coast. Construction began in 1906. In 1912, it opened to traffic, although the line has been lengthened several times since. As early as the 1930s, the line had developed a secondary function as
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July 22 to July 28 The Love River’s (愛河) four-decade run as the host of Kaohsiung’s annual dragon boat races came to an abrupt end in 1971 — the once pristine waterway had become too polluted. The 1970 event was infamous for the putrid stench permeating the air, exacerbated by contestants splashing water and sludge onto the shore and even the onlookers. The relocation of the festivities officially marked the “death” of the river, whose condition had rapidly deteriorated during the previous decade. The myriad factories upstream were only partly to blame; as Kaohsiung’s population boomed in the 1960s, all household