i finally did it. i sat through the entirety of dragon heat! as far as avant garde hong kong cinema goes, eric kot was lucky to even make the film in 1999, as such an indulgent piece would be superfluous when fewer and fewer features are being made each year, and the dollar return means more.
after reading reviews online, i honestly thought i wasn’t even going to make it past the flickering opening credits. blink and you’ll miss their names, so i capped some of the cameos for your convenience, which are equally fleeting (ekin cheng, jacky cheung, stephen fung, shu qi, cheung chi lam, anita yuen etc)
most laughingly, the jackie chan cameo (not pictured here) is probably not one he agreed to, and is actually footage of him at a wedding! director kot is into crazy stuff like that…
the slight irritation to the film is just the switch between a regular shot to a shot of the same image on a video screen, to black and white, to a different resolution image, and back to colour again. but at least there’s a very silly saturated homage to wong kar wai. was i supposed to explain the plot to you? isn’t one really, and there’s an awful lot of repetition of everything.
but yet i don’t mind, and i still paid about ten dollars for a crappy ex-rental vcd of this film (understandably out of print). as an extended music video, i don’t mind the music either (mostly carl wong composed, with a soundtrack you can buy with lead actress “the me” singing).
okay, so what’s the real reason i bought this? a cameo from hoff dylan, who attempt to hold up a chinese place for all their char siu ramen. nice try…
and the favour goes both ways, as eric kot records a cantonese sort of ode to his hometown in the album version of hoff dylan’s to the world…
vague translation as eric rambles too fast: “everyone don’t run away, listen! …welcome to the paradise of the beauty and fashion city, hong kong! … remember to go on the star ferry across the sea to central! yi er san si wulong tea, for fighting there’s jacky chan, singing there’s jacky cheung. for a good looking man there’s andy lau, andy lau sa ii ne. japanese people say a u e i o, chinese people say buo puo muo fuo. … there’s still more! … dragon dumplings, swallow them whole, swallow them and be full. umai! yum cha, eat prawn dumplings, pork buns, wonton noodles… subarashii! so cheap! …hong kong is my hometown i hope you really like it … obviously i missed a bit of it as his mouth moves way too fast.
but the lyrics of the original song, written by komiyama yuhi, go:
hong kong to taipei to tokyo
going down to l.a. to mexico
all the world i’ve seen
all the world to see is next to you…
on another one of his trips to the u.s., posting images of food and streets, i can’t help but be bitten by the bug, and wish for travel.
just doing my daily youtube fill of crap (though i admit i have watched only one cute kitten video in the last four months) when i found this, which is a hardcore cover of softhard’s “chik chak jade solid gold”. the original is a pop tease when it comes to the lyrics (basically no talent no brainer idols) - this version makes the criticisms in the lyrics that much more potent. i’m also posting it because it’s from 1998, when i felt like the band scene was just bursting to move to the forefont of hong kong culture, instead of being the extremely underground thing it’s usually been. just look at that video work! rock music is usually presented as the opposite of the pop industry in hong kong, which is very shortsighted, but i suppose if you want to push an alternative, at least rock will inspire some real passion as opposed to feuding fans bitching over idols.
of that pack of bands that year, members of anodize and screw gave rise into lmf, whose notoriety was such that they even attracted some english media attention, nevermind not being privy to their cantonese cursing. a big band has many different directions from which to split, but they had the right attitude:
from an outsider’s perspective, it seemed the number of bands died down in the early part of the new century, but there appears to be a new enthusiasm that has surfaced. if we’re measuring in extremes, 2007’s lmf is probably qiu hong, the hardest well known band out there at the moment, and even the one on the mainstream charts has their guitars tuned to low d, and at times a much darker sound than charting bands before them (silverchair i meanzarahn).
have the “band boys” made progress? or is it just a brief period, because people’s dollars will always go to a pretty face?
the year is 1993, and two radio djs, jan lamb and eric kot as softhard release probably the first rap album in hong kong (referred to incorrectly in local lingo as “rap talk”). it’s fast and silly as hell, though not without some satirical humour…
Presenting flowers onstage, please marry me - their forced kisses really aren’t bad
Found my numbers, saying hello in the middle of the night
Beneath my flat, on my fence, not fearing the rain and the snow
Laughing in front of me, gossiping behind my back
Fans are our livelihood, buy my albums buy my pictures
Coming every time, always the same faces
judgemental kids we knew dismissed it as, “what the hell? chinese people trying to rap?!” this is of course a long time before people like lmf, chef, hanjin and, er, edison chen started their own hip hop thing in hong kong; mirroring the assimilation of black culture into larger global culture, beginning with the mainstream rap of the early nineties (young mc, de la soul, mc hammer etc) and continuing as kids around the world try to get as thugged out as their american counterparts.
but rap was just another vehicle for whatever softhard were trying to parody (in his post-softhard music, jan lamb would jump onto rock, indie, hip hop, rave, lounge music - often in the same album). softhard were the “mastermind”, but needed cy kong (probably the most imaginative cantopop producer in the 90s) to piece the music together. the result is an album and a reputation that has lasted them all the way from ‘93 to their reformation in 2006…
yes, in our minds, softhard have taken up superhuman abilities, to become graphic designers, act in and direct films, produce music… jan and eric are not just comedians, but extremely intelligent artists.
(if you want to read more background, i wrote a whole mini bio a while ago.)
the influence of softhard extends far, even to a couple of radio djs, collectively known as “i love you boy’z”, with their radio station trying to push them as “the new softhard”. at one time they were going by alter egos, luk ga-chun and choi hing-lun, real popstars fated to be forgotten in a matter of months, except for being quoted in softhard’s broadcast drive…
“kid wants (mother’s) milk” (which is a takeoff of this cantopop song, done shibuya-kei style)
their first cd, i want to buy a i love you boy’z cd, was mostly a bunch of bastardized cantopop songs given extremely silly lyrics, such as i, i ,i, i, i have a chest (original here):
since their first “album”, they signed to design/music conglomerate silly thing, and released an ep named silly king (download samples), while continuing radio duties. while they’re a lot of fun, it can be said that they’re no softhard, emphasising the “silly”…
and the favour goes both ways, as eric kot records a cantonese sort of ode to his hometown in the album version of hoff dylan’s to the world…
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