This was a really funny letter that our 'Single in The City' Blogger received about why guys in Hong Kong are jerks.

http://www.hiphongkong.com/content/why_are_men_hong_kong_such_wankers

Jeez......

I Shot Hong Kong started in 2005 with just a few films screening in an underground venue. Now, three festivals later, I Shot Hong Kong has turned into a legitimate film festival with 40 submissions of a high grade quality, decent funding from big sponsors, celebrity backing and a huge premiere and wrap party at the W hotel. There was even a red carpet in front of the Grand Cinema where the movies were showing! Well, it was more of a ‘red rug’ than a red carpet but it still gave everyone an excuse to dress up.

I got to the Grand Cinema a few minutes early. Everyone was so decked out, I almost didn’t recognize some friends as they had transformed from looking ‘cute’ to looking ‘hyper-glam’. Craig Leeson and Lindsay Robertson, the founders of the film festival, had a few words to say before the press, the participants and the fans entered the theater for the screening.

2 Hours worth of short-listed films were screened one after the other. No film was longer than 15 minutes. First up was the artist series where a few Hong Kong celebrities were asked to make a 5 minute film in 48 hours. My favorite film from that selection was the one starring  Josie Ho and Simon Yin directed by Jason Tobin. In the film, Josie plays herself and kidnaps and tortures a reporter. There’s a ‘dark humor’ surprise ending. 

There was a strange pixelated effect on the corner of the screen during the interrogation scene. Originally, I had thought the effect was caused by the lighting challenges of using the red cam (as people had mentioned at the press conference when asked about the technical usage of the cameras), but the producer said something unexpected happened during the recompression of the movie. (Compression is something I've been frustrated with myself in the past making movies for the web) In any case, cinematography and post production is so important on the big screen (moreso than on an internet interface) and oftentimes people don't see all the work which goes behind creating a film.  In any case, the acting and the plot was what made this movie fun to watch. Who cares about a few pixels.

I’d have to say the dramatic films did not fare too well with the audience. Drama seems to be very hard to pull off unless you have a longer film length and perhaps years of experience. There were a few ‘visual-only’ movies which did not have any dialogue nor a proper plot and while beautiful to look at, those were not as well received either. At the end of the day, most audiences have no imagination. Most want a fast-paced comedic action story that has a plot.

This is a list of my personal faves:

-There was a hilarious music video by the CB Fresh crew called 'Where do we go- Where is home?’ It was about video game-playing slackers who were trying to decide what neighborhood to live in- Lan Kwai or Wanchai. Easily one of the biggest crowd pleasers!

-There was also another comedy in Cantonese directed by Lawrence Gray called ‘Gong Neui’ which poked fun at two stereotypes of Hong Kong women: the ‘princess’ and the ‘weak submissive girl’. It was entertaining and culturally eye-opening at the same time.

- 'Isle Be Damned- was a morbid comedy based on old zombie cult movies. Lamma Island is infested with the un-dead and gets nuked at the end of the film. Camp-cool.

-'Fin’ was easily the most professionally made film in the lot. It was a moving documentary about the murder of sharks around the world so people in Hong Kong and China can eat the prestigious shark’s fin soup at their weddings and celebrations. It demonstrated why sharks were necessary to keep the ecosystem of the ocean in balance. It also showed the ignorance of people selling shark’s fin and why Chinese people eat shark’s fin soup in the first place. The message was compelling and the movie got its point across beautifully.

-Another interesting music video- 'Love Song-Sing it' was created by director Lawrence Wong. In a ‘Nylon Mag meets Terri Richardson’ series of fast moving images, a girl (played by Shan Chen) fantasizes about murdering her boyfriend repeatedly. The chilling last shot is of her and him in the living room. He is dead and she snuggles happily up next to him. The ending loosely reminded me of macabre poet Edgar Allen Poe’s poem ‘Annabel Lee’. In this poem, he lays down next to his dead wife night after night. Apparently there was a lot of post production involved in this video. Thousands of photos were taken and put together to make up the sequence. Bravo! Very original.

While I prefer praise over criticism, in the interest of fairness, I will publish these comments I heard from others:

“We had to clap to get the guy that was snoring to wake up.”

“If the triads were not going to kill that guy (a character in one movie) I would have killed him myself. His character was so annoying.”

“I thought some of the movies were very film school.”

“A lonely girl commits suicide because she can’t find a man? WTF?! That’s sending out the wrong message to women.”

Anyhoo, the wrap party at the W Hotel on Friday will be really awesome! Come down and see the movies and hear R&B songstress Shairah sing at the wrap event. CB Fresh will also be performing their song from the video! Can’t wait to see that!
 


LOVED Joyce Hu's (one of the organizers) outfit! She was like a living Golden Globe statue from the '30s. The shorts were from Joyce and she built the rest of the outfit starting from the shorts.

On a typical Friday night, I make the rounds for hiphongkong. I was going to swing by the MO Bar to have a cocktail at the Mixology event that we endorsed. There were special guest bartenders that flew in from New York and Sydney especially for the event. These liquid magicians are the future of cocktails. I went on the first night and was amazed by the cutting-edge concoctions being served up by the master mixologists. Who knew there were so many innovative new ways to get drunk?! I even ate a tequila-infused marshmallow and cosmopolitan caviar!

There were a few ex-restaurant owners, DJ’s, singers, bar owners (like Benedict Ku-owner of Volar) and a lot of media friends like Angie Wong (food writer) and Johannes Pong (catty columnist extraordinare). We were all united in the search for the perfectly crafted cocktail that tastes great, gets you buzzed doesn’t leave you with a bad hangover.

Hopefully we can start an awareness trend in Hong Kong bars so owners will realize the importance of a really well-made cocktail. Lotus gets my vote for the best margarita and Executive Bar wins for the best martini and scotch in town!

I headed out instead to the 72 Hours event. It was a 3-day pop-up shop held in the UFO Gallery in conjunction with Kanchan Couture. They were having an art/fashion happening called ‘White Night.’

Everyone had to come in white t-shirts and we drew and painted on each other just like we were blank canvases. We even got to spray-paint each other in neon colors! Kanch was bravely wearing these AMAZING shoes that she got at On Pedder. Hopefully she didn’t get any paint on them!

Afterwards, I headed over to Cliq for the Casio G-shock party. I love G-shock watches and I knew it would be a groovy event since local homies 24 Herbs were performing and the PR was being handled by A-Vibe. The place was packed despite the rain and I was stoked to discover a great new act! Around midnight- people started pushing toward the DJ booth as a performance was about to take place. I angled my way toward the front and as I arrived, I saw a female drummer dressed in neo-hippie regalia and a guy with black wayfarers who was the spitting image of Daniel Wu (well at least with the glasses on). The band’s name is Quan and the singer is Quan Yeomans, a Eurasian guy from Down Under that’s been living in Hong Kong. Quan was formerly of the Brisbane based band called ‘Regurgitator’. Anyway, I didn’t know what to expect but by the end of the set, I was Woot Wooting, jumping up and down, head banging and dancing away- and so was the rest of the crowd!

 

The energy of the performance was infectious. The music was a cross between spoken word, gangsta free-style rap, hardcore, R&B, 80’s and electro-dance. How it’s possible to mix all those genres is beyond me but the music was catchy, danceable and really fresh! During the performance, someone from Casio realized Quan was not wearing a watch (Horror!) So he came up and slapped a cool red G-shock watch onto Quan's wrist.Then at one point Quan yelled “Do you guys want to dance?- Just because you’re in Hong Kong it doesn’t mean you can’t dance!!” Personally, I'm sick of Hong Kong audiences that are completely non-responsive- So Hell ya! Amen brother!

See all the party photos here:
http://www.hiphongkong.com/galleries/party_photos/casio_g_shock_shock_world_tour

More Quan videos on Vimeo. Shout out to Awon and Hannah. Hahaha! Love it!

I caught up with some other people who happened to be in Wanchai afterwards. I can’t stand Wanchai, but it was late and I said-Why not? We ended up at Spicy Fingers where a middle-aged Filipino guy was belting out ‘Give it away’ by the Chili Peppers. There were girls with blinking bunny ears, a troupe of female Swedish tourists, hordes of older men with pants that were too high-waisted for their wide, flat butts and me- playing air guitar and channeling the spirit of Angus Young from AC/DC. Well come on, after all we were in Wanchai and isn’t this where you can let your hair down with no one passing any judgement on you?

A far cry from Quan and the uber-cool crowd!

The next morning, I woke up feeling like I had a massive workout and a mild case of whiplash on my neck from all the dancing, head-banging and air-guitar. Good thing there are all these cheap massage places everywhere and my masseuse managed to knead the kinks straight out of my neck! Ahhhhh….

The cause of my whiplash...
 
Click here to see how the Shanghai White Vodka Launch Party was!!

Hello Alivenotdead artists!!

The new hiphongkong.com will be online tommorrow! One of the biggest new changes besides the new look will be events information, blogs and videos.

If you would like to promote your events, shows, performances or art exhibits- please send me an email at hiphongkong@yahoo.com. Try to send the event info at least two weeks before hand if possible.

If you would like to contribute any short videos about Hong Kong or write for us, please send all inquiries as well to the above address.

:)

Adidas is one of my favorite brands. Back when I lived in Korea, they use to throw the most awesome branding parties with all the right celebs and musicians in attendance. For the 60th anniversary, the company really splashed out! They threw a global party celebrating six decades of sports and sneaker style. Here in Honkers, they rented a massive loft space in Aberdeen called The Factory. The space was painted entirely by renowned comic book artist Mauro Marchesi and it was exactly the edgy kind of venue needed for such a huge event. 

I had quite a number of events to attend that night- a couple for luxury brands and one for Lucky Jeans- so I decided to ditch the high-end appearances and just go to the photography exhibit at Lucky Jeans. Everyone was making fun of me because I was wearing this one piece Adidas jumpsuit with a huge logo that went right across my mid-section. People were like "Hey you're at the wrong party!" or "Are you working at the Adidas party tonite?" Well in the end my over the top outfit worked to my advantage...

I was on the the 24 Herbs list (Thanks GS!) but I was with an enormous posse many of whom were not on the the list. When we arrived at the factory, the queue was TITANIC. The line practically stretched around the block in both directions. We walked past this Adidas ice-cream truck which was parked right at the front.  I went straight into the ice-cream truck bit of a 'photo op' session since my outfit actually matched!
The old dude working inside the truck didn't seem to mind. I'm sure at that point he was used to the happily drunk people.

We squeezed past the pleb line and angled our way towards the entrance. There was a big crush to get in but we couldn't locate the person with the guestlist. In any case we just melded past security with some of the model clan. Everyone was waiting in line again to get into the lift but I kind of scooted around the side and the entourage followed suite. I'm quite sure security thought I was working there and I needed to get inside to do something.

The lifts were crammed with people and it was a bit claustrophobic but once inside the venue, we were delighted by the fabulous set-up!  The set deisgners and brand managers really managed to create a festive carnival-like atmosphere. In addition, they managed to make it homey and cozy despite the venue being so large. There was a pool table, fuzball, a mock swimming pool full of plastic balls in the blue and white Adidas theme colors. There was cotton candy, balloon-like seats that bounced up and down and several art installations which looked like rooms in a house- all plastered with Adidas paraphenalia. In fact, the Adidas logo was absolutely everywhere. There were big projectors projecting Adidas signs on the walls and huge Adidas balloons on all the corners of the roof.

24 Herbs performed, models danced around on stage and there was a cake cutting ceremony with actress Shu Qi, some other local celebs and 70's tennis star Stan Smith who Adidas fashioned a line of tennis shoes after. Then DJ Steve Aoki took to the decks and a big heaving crowd gathered around him. Everyone was taking photos, putting their hands up in the air like they just didn't care and Steve himself put on quite a good show.

The energy of the crowd was amazing! Everyone was decked out in the three stripes or their streetwear best and everyone was in a good mood- possibly due to the heavy-handed free-flow at the bar. When I got to the bar, I poured a can of red-bull into this jumbo plastic cup and the bartender poured about three shots of vodka in my drink- thus emptying the rest of his bottle. He went on to open another bottle and poured about 4 more shots in my cup. Needless to say, that was the only drink I needed for the rest of the night.

There was pandemonium everywhere. Up at the roof, people were dancing their hearts out (including myself). Some were breakdancing, some were line dancing and some guys were stealing balloons and pretending they were breasts. The entire rooftop played volleyball with one of the oversized balloons which we set free. In the main room, people were dancing around in the pit of plastic balls and some were playing tennis with the balls and their purses. I fell into the mock swimming pool at one point and people began bombarding me with balls. I managed to snap this very cool pic as the balls were coming at me.

I ran into about 20 of my new facebook friends who I had not yet met in real life. It's nice to know that cyber buddies actually do exist in real life!  The only bad thing about the party was that it ended too early. I don't know what time it was when we descended what seemed like 80 flight of stairs to get out of there but all I know was that I did not want to leave. The next day,  facebook was saturated with Adidas party photos. You could not pay for that kind of publicity and endorsement. It must have cost them a fair bit of money, but for marketing and branding purposes, they did everything right. Not only did they do it right, but it was a righteously fun party as well!

See all the party photos here:

http://www.hiphongkong.com/party-photos/hong-kong/adidas_house_party_6009.htm