Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Snippets: "Love In Singapore"

I was looking through my old collection of VHS tapes that I had converted into digital format and I found this one "Love In Singapore" (戀戀獅城), a travel/love-story program that featured Jacky Cheung, Kevin Cheng, Grasshopper (yes, all 3! - brothers Remus and Calvin Choy along with friend Edmond So), Lawrence Cheng, Halina Tam, Shirley Kwan, Linda Wong and Vivian Lai. Thought I'd share this opening snippet and blooper reel just for old times sake. There's a rough translation (underneath each clip) of the dialogue and what goes on during the clips - enjoy!


-Video quality is something I am working on but it has a lot to do with Blogger compressing the videos; will see what I can do- 

Jacky Cheung: [getting manhandled by security and too busy trying to put his jacket on to say anything]

Vivian Lai: [ Some guy in background: "I thought you all would…"]

Linda Wong: [fan asking for autograph: "Can you please, Linda?"]

Calvin Choy (Grasshopper): "Aiyah!" 

Lawrence Cheng: [dancing around Karen] "Let's play." [Singing]: "Scared that we'll have to be face-to-face…"]
Karen Tong: [laughs]

Halina Tam: "Am I pretty?"

Kevin Cheng: [points at the camera]

Film Crew Member to Karen Tong: "Let's do another take, how about it?" 

Remus Choy (Grasshopper): "…I go to the gym-
Shirley Kwan: "I'm Shirley Kwan, this year I'm 15 years old!"

Edmond So (Grasshopper): [sitting on a ladder]

Vivian Lai: "Stop filming me, okay?!"

My 2¢ & Extra Notes: 
- LOLOLOL. Shirley is so cute! :D I think she said she was 15…though it could have been 12 (Note to self: go check my hearing). Well, whatever. Shirley's still so adorable :D
- And Vivian, ever so pretty and funny trying to be angry at the camera.
- Linda is very tall (and pretty). I actually saw her recently on TV as a special guest audience member /supporter at Vivian Chow's concert and she still looks just as pretty. On a side-note, William Chan butchered Vivian Chow's "A Fabricated Love in Your Head" (自作多情) as a duet. Why couldn't he just leave the song (and Vivian) alone?! I'd be much happier to see Linda sing solo or with Vivian.  
- And I think that lady standing in the dark was Karen…or was it?
- And even after all these years, Kevin is still an actor with TVB, being cast in B-grade dramas, with virtually no real standout roles and no improvement in his singing. He basically has no color to his voice - I can see (well more like hear) why he failed as a singer.


Lawrence: [Slurred] Whatever you do, don't give that back to me.

Jacky: He knew that our financial circumstances at home weren't really that good but still paid for us.
Karen: Oh...so he's actually your savior. Have you repaid him for his help yet?
Jacky: I haven't even finished talking yet...
Karen: [Pause]...You haven't finished yet?!

Jacky: ...couldn't do anything - Let's start over.

Karen [to Lawrence]: Hey bro, this isn't a tea-house, if you want to go drink tea you need to go to a proper tea house and do a police search...tea [cracks up]

Linda: Singapore has one hotel that's 73* storeys high. Talking about hotels, it's the tallest one in the world.
Lawrence: [making fun of Linda] Yes, it's 73 storeys high.

Vivian: I'm going to go outside and arrange the flowers first...[all the girls burst into laughter] Just looking at her...

Vivian: Really?
Linda: Always crying like a ???..and scared of [Vivian starts laughing then all the girls do]

Crew member: Can't do it...[laughs]

My 2¢ & Extra Notes:
- It's funny because everyone just laughs and leaves poor Lawrence by himself.
- Haha, I like how Karen pauses for sometime before asking Jacky that question even though she didn't wait for him to finish his lines.
- Jacky's little dance at the end.
- Karen's so cute. She took her lines too fast and ended up saying the wrong thing. Tea-house for a police search? LOL.
- * Linda messed up when she said '73', saying the '10' part really quite strangely. And Lawrence mocks Linda by mimicking her exxagerating her mistake to the '3' as well. LOL. Linda resorts to chopstick hitting Lawrence. 

- I like Vivian's look, nudge, nudge, look again at Linda and run-away before everyone just gives into the laughter.
- Actually, I have no idea what Linda was trying to say here. Crying like a perverted devil? (Guys, I need some help here. I tried finding this scene in the actual show but I couldn't find it - maybe a cut scene? Who knows. So I really don't know whether it's just Linda saying something strange or my translation skills going downhill, or both). But I like how Linda always just starts laughing and starts hitting things when she has an NG take.
- Remus trying to carry Shirley? And he said he goes to the gym. 

Video credits: taqfiles.blogspot.com

11 comments:

  1. Hahahaha!! Aww, these blooper clips are awesome! Though it's sort of hard to make out the dialogue (wow, good job to you for being able to translate so much - I had to watch a few times in order to hear certain parts), just watching them laugh and stuff made me crack up too!

    Awww, loved Jacky's little dance too! He was soooo cute!!!

    I could figure out what Linda was saying either -- it went too fast...I'll listen to it a few more times and if I figure it out, I'll let you know.

    Thanks again for the great vids and translations! :o)

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  2. Thanks for posting these clips. They're funny by themselves but once I read your translations, it was even better. Love Shirley in the first vid. So cute!

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  3. @llwy12 Yeah, the video quality overall isn't very good so I think that might be why the sound isn't very clear either. I think I'll have to re-work these vids and see if I can get them to a decent, if not good quality.

    Yes, Jacky's dance while Karen laughs and walks away. Hehe. :D

    But yes, thank you. I still don't really know what Linda said or was trying to say, so any help would be appreciated :)

    @retrotvb I'm glad the translations helped enhanced your viewing experience :)

    This is pretty much something that hyn5 does at her blog (http://hyn5-hyn5.blogspot.com) but much of it is focused on new TVB dramas/trailers now. She is however, an excellent translator and obviously has been around since the golden era of HK entertainment.

    And yes! Shirley's so adorable - I didn't expect her to pop out something like that because she always had a very 'mature' look. She took Remus by surprise too :D

    I'm glad that y'all enjoyed these clips, thanks for watching!

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  4. Speaking of Shirley and unexpected adorableness, do you remember a comedy/variety show called Summer Holiday? It was one of those goofy fun shows with Hacken, Louis Yuen, Dicky Cheung, Joey Leung, etc. Shirley was a part of the cast and I remember her doing some funny skits.

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  5. @retrotvb - Thought I should re-work my comment. Blogger doesn't let you edit comments so I had to trash my last one and re-post. I've always got something to say!

    I don't actually recall seeing any part of that show and the only thing that I remember about Joey Leung is that whole cheating scandal he had with a former Miss HK contestant, Queenie Chu. But in the past, they definitely used to have better variety shows and better guests. I wonder if some Shirley fansite (or for any other artist that featured in the show) has access to that particular variety show? Oh well, it's probably out there somewhere - I'm sure Shirley would've been quite cute and funny in those skits even though I don't think I've actually seen that program.

    Shirley was like Sally for me during the JSG 2010 awards - I pretty much only watched it because I knew she was performing. I mean there were other people like David Lui, Anthony Lun, Vivian Chow and Leo Ku who also attended but I can't really say I remember a whole lot from the 'awards' show. Actually, Shirley performing and the guests from the 'golden era' were the only parts I do remember.

    Found a clip of Shirley's performance here on the best video site in the world (ahem), YT :

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB60TZ_c1i8

    And must I say, some of those people do not deserve any of those awards, let alone the nominations. I'm not sure why Leon Lai is so intent on pushing artists like J.W. on his label who are not really fluent (or at least they don't sound fluent) in Cantonese in the HK music industry. I mean, it's okay not being fluent, the ability to sing well and carry the message through is more important. But I believe that truly great singers have the ability to get over language barriers and still sound great even in languages they aren't fully competent in. Sally Yeh, as we know, only having elementary knowledge of reading Chinese characters was still able to not let that get in the way and sing like a pro.

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  6. Joey had a cheating scandal? When did that happen? I must not have been paying attention. I thought he dated Margaret Chung or May Kwong or someone like that. All the HK gossip in my brain only goes up to 1999 or so.

    Thanks again for these links. I'm grateful for these clips. Especially since they edit out all the people that I don't care about. (J.W. WHO?)

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  7. @retrotvb - Yes, apparently the two were having some kind of make-out session in a car. This was around 2005 or so and he was supposedly still going out with Margaret Chung at the time, so it caused a bit of a stir. I don't blame you, I'm not even a fan of HK gossip and I only caught that little piece of tabloid news when I was looking through some old Miss HK stuff and it was somehow linked. The Miss HKs of the past were certainly more deserving of their titles and actually went on to have successful careers (like Amy Kwok and Ada Choi). Mr HK, on the other hand is just a (horribly) desperate bid by TVB to boost ratings.

    You're welcome! Sharing is caring. And I don't really care for many of the 'artists' today so I will not ever have to share things about them :D They're not worth my time and effort. Well, unless I'm ranting about them. Speaking of clips, I'm still trying to find an outlet for my videos since Blogger just compresses things way too much and it doesn't really have much to do with how I edit the videos. I'm wondering if I should just upload to Tudou and just use the embed codes. But I've seen a few copyright notices appearing on a few Tudou videos quite recently and I sure do miss the video quality that YT offers.

    I pretty much just died while waiting for Shirley to perform so yes, like you, I am thankful for all that video editing so I don't have to sit around again watching all these 'singers' today that do nothing but damage the fallen HK music industry even more. It's just simple garbage in, garbage out. That being said, a considerable amount of the current HK audience still don't even know what real talent is. So that's what's fueling all this nonsense.

    Yeah, tell me about it. I didn't even know she existed until they announced she won an award. Obviously rigged, but a lot of that has to do with lack of singers in the industry, so everyone gets an award. I really don't get the point of having an awards show if you're just going to hand things out like food samples to people. And especially undeserving ones. I mean those same awards 20-25 years ago went to real artists like Anita Mui, Sally Yeh, Priscilla Chan, Faye Wong, Danny Chan, Roman Tam, Jacky Cheung and Beyond and you're giving it to someone who only gets praised on their looks? I just find that too hard to stomach.

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  8. @The Archival Queen: Hey there! I meant to comment yesterday, but got sidetracked.

    Anyway, agree totally with everything you said (especially the part about the current artists not being worth the time -- haha, did you read my mind??)

    The whole language barrier thing definitely annoys me to no end. My take on it is that the singers nowadays are just plain lazy -- they want everything handed to them on a silver platter and don't want to work for any of it (actually, I remember Maria Cordero said something similar when she was complaining about some younger generation singer who pretty much disrespected her and all the crew who worked with the singer)....I mean, if pop queen Sally Yeh could sound so professional with barely any understanding of Chinese and go out of her way to pinyin every single song she sang, why the hell do the younger, less talented artists have to be so arrogant and think that they can just 'wing' it without putting any effort in whatsoever??? Ughhhh...can't stand their damn attitudes nowadays!!!

    Yup, basically the HK awards shows nowadays (especially the music ones and the TVB ones) are such a huge JOKE, it's embarrassing! I actually "laugh" now whenever any HK artists brags about receiving any type of HK music or TV award because we all know better than anyone that most of the awards are rigged or only handed out as political 'favors' for one thing or another -- very few of the artists receive the awards based on their own merit nowadays!

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  9. @retrotvb: Oh, you didn't hear about Joey's scandal? Well, actually I probably would not have paid attention either, but because of my affinity for DIF3 (which you read about in my review), that piece of news definitely caught my eye back in the day. Of course, I didn't realize the 'other woman' involved in the scandal was Queenie Chu until like a year or so ago (goes to show I only paid attention to the parts involving people I knew and pretty much ignored those I don't...plus I stopped following the MHK programs in the mid-90s, so totally did not know who she was anyway).

    Like I said in my review, I totally hated Joey after that scandal because he was just so stupid for doing what he did -- I'm sort of glad now that Margaret didn't end up with Joey because she is so much happier now with her hubby and new baby.

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  10. To both of you: Well that sucks. I don't want to hate Joey. I'm going back to my 80's-90's corner. LOL.

    Mr. HK? That sounds like a joke.

    Even though I find a lot of classic clips on Tudou, I'd be wary of uploading anything there too.

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  11. @llwy12 - No problem! I get sidetracked all the time mainly just from daydreaming about my past idols and watching old celebration (anniversaries, galas etc.) videos. :D

    Haha, I not only rant, I'm a great mind-reader too! Great minds think alike (goes for retrotvb too) :D

    It's not just singers as well though I do wonder who that whippersnapper Mario Cordero was talking about. It's actors too. Yeah, this whole language barrier thing didn't only concern Sally as well. Our other singing queen, Faye Wong, also had to start from scratch when she moved from the Mainland to HK because she didn't really know how to speak Cantonese at the time. You can really see how hard she's worked. And you're right, those new artists don't even have the right attitude towards things. So, it's not only that they're less talented but they have attitude problems as well. It's totally unprofessional.

    In other jobs, you would get fired because of your crappy performance (say meeting sales quota). But at TVB, they just continue to throw out and support artists that you know aren't doing their jobs properly. They're in the entertainment industry, right? And they get paid for entertaining. Yet, I don't find them entertaining.

    @retrotvb: Well I've taken a little bit of a gamble with Tudou - I'm not sure that the video quality is that much better but you'll notice my future posts making use of those embed codes. I think they try to blur out any logos of course and they put their whole Tudou watermark on it but it's okay. Just trying to get the old stuffs out there. But I may be moving around to other places if Tudou (well actually, TVB) decides to go all awol on the videos again.

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