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Tag: Karena Lam

Podcast On Fire Network Bonus Episode 50: Claustrophobia & Break Up 100

An unofficial episode of The Ekin Hour, Kenny B and Phil G talk the reverse/flashback drama Claustrophobia from 2008 and Ekin opens a café and breaks up with his girlfriend a lot in Break Up 100 from 2014.

Click to play in web-browser (to download right click and save)

Running times:
00m 00s – Intro/Ivy Ho biography/Claustrophobia background
7m 45s – Claustrophobia review
41m 13s – Lawrence Cheng biography
45m 42s – Break Up 100 review

Ivy Ho’s Directorial Debut Launches Film Season UK Autumn Tour

Claustrophobia 7

Cornerhouse have sent out a Press Release about Visible Secrets going on tour;

A new Cornerhouse touring film season Visible Secrets, is set to celebrate and highlight Hong Kong’s female film directors in major cities across the UK this autumn. Launching this celebration is Ivy Ho’s directorial debut Claustrophobia, starring Hong Kong megastars Karena Lam and Ekin Cheng.

Claustrophobia, will launch the UK wide tour of Visible Secrets with a special gala screening at Curzon, Mayfair in London on Monday 02 November.

Visible Secrets: Hong Kong’s Women Filmmakers will tour to venues across the UK including: New Park Chichester, Eden Court Inverness, Pictureville Bradford, Showroom Sheffield, Broadway Nottingham, Watershed Bristol, QUAD Derby, Chapter Cardiff and Barn Dartington.

POF 57 guest Paul Loudon has done a terrific job bringing us several excellent reviews, which we will do a final post with all the highlights and a very special interview.

VS: Anna & Anna (2007)

Anna n Anna 2

Shown as part of the Visible Secrets season at the Manchester Cornerhouse, Anna & Anna is a movie about what happens when Anna played by Karina Lam crosses paths with an alternate version of herself.

In the leaflet that I picked up about this season of movies, it mentioned that Karena Lam features more than any other performer. Well they were not wrong; she is in three of the four movies which I have the honour of reviewing. In each movie the impression I get is that the film crew absolutely adore Karina, the camera is more often than not, right in her face for long sultry-eyed shots where she gets away with barely saying a word. Not content with one Karena to drool over this movie features two of them with longer, lengthier silences which seem to last an age. Someone please yell cut for god’s sake! Anyway I digress, the point I would like to make here is that her omnipresence must mean that she is something of a star. Whilst watching this movie I had the tenuous thought that all stars at some point make a movie in which there are two of them (or more if you count Michael Keaton in the shite that was Multiplicity). Usually it is action guys like Jean Claude, Arnie and Jackie Chan that get to do the whole twin thing. But for its slow, considered, artfully shot shenanigans can Anna & Anna offer us anything more to think about than the slap-fest Twin Dragons? Read on to find out. (For those of you with less time to spare the answer is no.) Read More

VS: Claustrophobia (2008)

Claustrophobia 1

Claustrophobia is not like the overwhelming majority of Hong Kong movies that I have seen. Where in your typical Hong Kong flick characters state implicitly and clearly what they are feeling so that the entire world and his dog can get behind it, in Claustrophobia our cast of bedraggled yet always immaculately dressed office staff keep their emotions a tightly guarded secret. As an audience the trick throughout this movie is to read between the lines, to catch a glimpse of human frailty lest you spend the entire movie wondering what the point of it all is.

The movie begins with Tom (Ekin Cheng) dropping his closest co-workers home at the end of a shift. They are essentially a motley crew of typicals; the old grumpy one, the office bimbo and the nervy geek. And then there is Pearl (Karina Lam) who is last to arrive home. Whilst sat in the car, Tom takes this opportunity to tell Pearl that she is a great employee and deserves a better job working for someone else. What he is really saying here is that she should take a hike because the mutual office flirting could screw his marriage up; Pearl doesn’t take too kindly to this. Read More

VS: July Rhapsody (2002)

Still from July Rhapsody (Credit: Cornerhouse)Jackie Cheung plays Lam, a literature teacher who has a lustful admirer in the form of his pupil Wu, played by Karina Lam. Despite his own understandable misgivings, Lam concedes that he has also developed a thing for Wu. Meanwhile it turns out that Lam’s wife, played by Anita Mui (also mother to their three sons) has a dark secret which is dragged to the surface when her school old teacher becomes ill with cancer. Read More

Ah Sou (2005)

Plot: Triad Gang Boss – Gent (Eric Tsang) and his three buddies, Whacko (Anthony Wong), Chance (Simon Yam) and Buddy (Alex Fong). Gent is confronted by a dying man – Shade (Dick Liu), he had foolishly killed the husband of gang boss – Nova (Karena Lam), in retaliation Nova has killed off all of his family, except from his young daughter – Phoebe. Shade pleas for Gent to take Phoebe as his own, saving her from Nova.

Gent agrees and warns Nova that when Phoebe is 18, he will marry her and Nova mustn’t dare attempt to kill his future wife, or else!

Fast forward ten years, Phoebe (Annie Lui) has returned from studying in USA with her personal bodyguard Pilot (Liu Yu). She’s developed a close father/daughter bond with Gent and treats Whacko and the rest as uncles. After some unfortunate circumstances she finds herself taking over the triads from Gent and with Nova returning to the scene, things can only get worse… Read More