Based on short stories penned by director Pang Ho-cheung (彭浩翔), Trivial Matters (破事兒) is a series of vignettes on love, sex, friendship and as the title suggests, all the Trivial Matters in life. Entertaining, witty and sometimes downright absurd, the seven segments assemble several of Hong Kong's pop idols, who seem - from the delivery of the project - to be having a big, A-list ball.
A video recording of a couple talking about their sex life opens the film with Hong Kong entertainer Jan Lam (林海峰) starring as an off-screen therapist. The reenactment of the couple's bedroom activities by two other actors adds a comic punch to the otherwise "she says, he says" routine.
In the wake of Edison Chen's (陳冠希) sex photo scandal (in which hundreds of images featuring female Hong Kong stars in erotic poses with Chen were posted on the Internet), the segment offers a poignant comparison with real life: The star plays a dandy picking up girls at a nightclub.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF GROUP POWER
Ah Wai - The Big Head, one of the most developed segments, stars Gillian Chung (鍾欣桐) and her real-life boyfriend Juno Mak (麥浚龍). It portrays friendship not as an expression of loyalty and love but as a hodgepodge of selfishness, pride and carelessness.
The subject of love is affectionately tackled in Recharge starring Chapman To (杜汶澤) as an actor who is addicted to paid sex. Junior, on the other hand, is a charming example of director Pang's absurd humor that stars Chinese director Feng Xiaogang (馮小剛) as a PR representative from an assassination firm and Shawn Yue (余文樂) as a hitman-in-training who enjoys smoking pot with his target.
The vignettes fluctuate between engaging viewers and drifting off, but still show Pang as a rising star who dares to produce something different from Hong Kong cinema's mainstream fare.
The canonical shot of an East Asian city is a night skyline studded with towering apartment and office buildings, bright with neon and plastic signage, a landscape of energy and modernity. Another classic image is the same city seen from above, in which identical apartment towers march across the city, spilling out over nearby geography, like stylized soldiers colonizing new territory in a board game. Densely populated dynamic conurbations of money, technological innovation and convenience, it is hard to see the cities of East Asia as what they truly are: necropolises. Why is this? The East Asian development model, with
Desperate dads meet in car parks to exchange packets; exhausted parents slip it into their kids’ drinks; families wait months for prescriptions buy it “off label.” But is it worth the risk? “The first time I gave him a gummy, I thought, ‘Oh my God, have I killed him?’ He just passed out in front of the TV. That never happens.” Jen remembers giving her son, David, six, melatonin to help him sleep. She got them from a friend, a pediatrician who gave them to her own child. “It was sort of hilarious. She had half a tub of gummies,
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There is an old British curse, “may you live in interesting times,” passed off as ancient Chinese wisdom to make it sound more exotic and profound. We are living in interesting times. From US President Donald Trump’s decision on American tariffs, to how the recalls will play out, to uncertainty about how events are evolving in China, we can do nothing more than wait with bated breath. At the cusp of potentially momentous change, it is a good time to take stock of the current state of Taiwan’s political parties. As things stand, all three major parties are struggling. For our examination of the
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