Friday, February 22, 2013

Review: TVB Golden Viva Spectacular

Only two weeks late for the New Year! But still just in the nick of time before we call things off for the celebration. Anyway, here’s a little review I did of some New Year programming that I happened to catch, performances headed under the country or city that they were held in. In the past, variety shows and special New Year programming was something to look forward to. I guess that is kind of changing though. You can watch the whole 4 hour event here. Relatively few highlights this year but there was at least one good performance from TVB’s side (ahem, ahem, George Lam). I hope you enjoy something from this! :D

HK

Opening performance with Joey Yung and 80’s – 90’s group, Grasshopper. Though I do like Grasshopper, I’ve never liked that new song sung by Joey Yung. And I never did care for her dancing either. 

The magic act with the current Miss HKs and Wayne Lai was really quite boring.

Fast forward to this performance.




George Lam was THE MAN. Being able to pull off a performance with his moustache at his age was definitely no easy feat. I doubt that many singers could have the vocal chops and stamina to get through even the first half. This is what the New Year should be all about – absolutely no sad, slow songs and 100% fun, upbeat songs. Of course they could always just turn those slow catchy songs into upbeat arrangements and jam them into an epic medley. After all, there are so many songs to choose from. Haha, I like how George gets Alan into singing his own song and how he wants to continue singing. Looks like the Principal’s still got the skills. George was also what I consider to be one of the early or first pioneers of rap. Yes, rap. Cantonese rhyming and fast talking to a beat. Dude’s still got it, yo. It always makes me happy to listen to these 10 minutes and want to get up and dance, while singing along.


Taiwan 

I switched channels a couple of times to watch another New Year's programme "2013 Super Star Red White Artist Awards" (here and here to watch)  and there were a couple of performances that caught my attention. Of course, they had way too much talking involved, like in a lot of Taiwanese-hosted programs.

Here's something I found after the whole family affair videos. I wasn't really digging Sally's vocal gymnastics (I thought she was going to sprain something) and the slow-downed version of <"A Dashing Life">. But somehow it's forgivable with Sally being a terribly charismatic Queen and all.


Father & Son


Ah Lam and son. Big Lam and Little Lam. Father and son. Alex, is pretty much like a younger, more handsome version of his father. Little Lam’s also got the moustache thing going down. Heheh.His voice is good, but not as strong as his father's. The English lyrics are somewhat suiting (LOL - pay the bet? Who did the subtitle?), but they just don't have the impact of Cantonese lyrics; which are colloquial, silly, sweet and heartbreaking at the same time. And why did Canon in D start randomly playing in the background? It doesn't quite fit, in my opinion. But good performance.

Husband & Wife



And naturally, you can't not bring your wife to the event. Because that would be awkward. Especially if your wife is someone who likes to sing and can do it as well as you can or even better. And it's this song "Choice", that they sung. Of course they have aged and their singing voices now won't be anything like they used to be back then but they both sounded great. And looked great too. I almost forgot how alluring Sally could be when she took the stage. It was really nice seeing and hearing them as a couple again. And it was sweet too. 


HK (Again)

Eric Tsang and his gang from the <”I Love HK 2013”> movie, with returning actress Veronica Yip, Alan Tam etc. As I was watching this, I couldn’t help but notice how this little skit put on was reminiscent of these boring skits that no one gets or enjoys at those Mainland Chinese spring festivals.

As for Virginia Lok’s star boy pupil singer-songwriter Jonathan Wong, a talented violinist and musician but, unfortunately a pretty bad singer. And not bad as in good, just bad. Another perfect example of this is, of course, Taiwanese-American singer-songwriter, Wang Lee-Hom. Good-looking in a boyish way, able to compose and play multiple instruments such as the violin and piano well but the singing leaves a lot to be desired. Or maybe a better example would be Jay Chou – just minus the good looks and more polished compositions and ditto as a musician. But again, horrible singing voice – it’s like he’s a baby eating mushy peas with no teeth with all that slurring he’s doing. So really just because you’re s talented musician doesn’t mean you’ll be a gifted singer. They don’t always translate over. 

Bouncing back and forth between different locations, everything kind of turned into a blur with the climax already reached because of moustache man George Lam’s performance. I know they had some performances from Fiona Sit and GEM, but to be honest, I don’t really remember that much. What I do remember is commenting on Fiona’s rather long neck and relatively large head size. And GEM’s unusual half shaved head.

The legendary “jade girl” – Vivian Chow came back in a suitably white dress singing a song about togetherness and “Most Beloved”, of course. She’s still remarkably likeable, even though she’s been married for some time now and first debuted as an artist like over 20 years ago. It’s not surprising that she still has many loyal fans. As for her vocals, pretty much the same as she sounded about 15 or so years ago. 


Singapore and Malaysia

Back to Singapore and Malaysia, Olivia Ong – a songbird, yes, but her music will only appeal to a certain group of people, since it’s acoustic based and is kind of like background music. As for Gin Lee, who is from Malaysia and has just recently broken into the HK music market and appeared as an overseas guest competitor on <The Voice>. Now this gal’s got a pretty smooth, singing voice – controlled with a sweet tone. That and she sing a Cantonese song, which is a refreshing change to Malaysian/Singaporean singers choosing to sing in Mandarin only. Ron Ng and Kenneth Ma got an easy song with Aaron Kwok’s <”Excitement”>. 

Bosco’s rendition of the late Anita Mui’s <“Break The Iceberg”>, I found to be really…well, try-hard. Obviously I’m going to find anything he sings try-hard, even though the arrangement was supposed to be a darker, grizzly, gravely rock one. Too bad it didn’t work. Nancy Wu and Edwin Siu did okay. Not great, but not bad either. 


Seoul, Korea

Ah, Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. You could really see the difference between the hosting abilities of Kevin (of ZE:A) and his HK co-host Astrid Chan. But to be fair, Kevin isn't a professional MC, he's a performer. Still, he sounded much too over-rehearsed and over-scripted, looking at his cue cards everytime he had to speak (but can't blame him about being able to pick up a cue - seeing that he doesn't understand Cantonese). I referred to this as a 'Saturday morning' voice - better for announcing, since his script made him lose the sincerity and natural quality that comes with impromptu hosting. Now I know that Alex of Korean boyband U-Kiss is fluent in Cantonese. It would have maybe, possibly, probably been more appropriate for him to co-host or even send a greeting.

For the K-Poppers out there, you can watch the performances here. Though to be honest, I only watched SISTAR’s performance of their song <”Alone”>. Two words: booty dance. And f(x) fans – over to this side.

I don't really know on what basis of talent you would send candidates like Raymond Lam, Linda Chung, Myolie Wu and Kevin Cheng to Korea to represent HK. Actually, the same goes for Bosco Wong being sent to Malaysia (okay, I get that they didn't want to send Myolie and Bosco to the same place because that would just be awkward but you know).

Myolie Wu’s rendition of <“I Have A Dream”>. My goodness. After watching Susan Boyle and Anne Hathaway…I suppose this may have been meant for a particular ex-boyfriend, rather than a performance for the audience. Ditto for Linda Chung’s performance. Raymond Lam’s <”Nice”> performance was not very nice at all.

Kevin Cheng’s voice to me is kind of like Hacken Lee’s voice. In saying that, I mean it lacks a lot of color and emotional texture. Choosing a song like Sandy Lam’s <”At Least I Still Have You”> was bound to be aural genocide a aural suicide very boring choice. Even good looks won’t make up for that, Kevin.


My Last Two Cents

I know they were aiming for a spectacular event but putting on a 4-hour event isn’t exactly a smart thing to do. I know y’all want to push the artists to get exposure but having them perform at 10pm at night til about midnight is a little harsh. I’m all for entertainment, not enslavement. Many of the so-called performances could be done without (ahem, ahem, the magic act). 

Yeah, it was a spectacle alright, but just not the type I was hoping for.