THOMAS PODVIN’S FREELANCE WORK
Freelance writer - translator - Editor

Los Angeles-born Anna May Wong (1905-1961) was the most prominent Chinese-American actress during the silent era, though her career extended to the early 60s. From 1919 to 1960, she played in more than fifty US and European movies (The Thief of Baghdad, 1924; Shanghai Express, 1932) with stars such as Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Marlene Dietrich. More celebrated in Europe and Japan than in the US or China, Wong, despite her many roles, still suffered from racial typecasting. At the time, the Hollywood system cast whites in Chinese roles, while ‘real’ Chinese were relegated to (often demeaning) supporting parts. In addition, mixed race romance was forbidden on the screen. As a result, Wong’s enormous potential as an actress was never truly given reign, though decades after her death she was given a star on the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame. In this compelling biography, professor of history Graham Hodges provides copious accounts of the glamour, and the prejudice, that was the fate of many an actor of Chinese descent in the first half of the twentieth century.
Palgrave Macmillan

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
June 2006 issue

(c) that's PRD
PRD Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
June 2006 issue

Since the early 17th century, Westerners have been intrigued with that decorative fairyland known as Chinoiserie. That said, Chinese interior design has been constantly reinterpreted over the centuries, in both the West and in Asia, and China Style presents a fascinating look at how decorators from Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, London and Minneapolis have used this fanciful and elegant style in personal and commercial interiors. Illustrated with photographs by Michael Freeman, this 208-page coffee table book examines Chinese design influences from five periods: the Ming and Qing dynasties; Chinoiserie Old and New, the new Shanghai style, and China Modern. As evidenced in 36 settings ranging from a scholar’s garden to an opium den, and from the imperial palace to a rural home. Such is the sumptuous sheen of Freeman’s work that the text, written by Sharon Leece, the former editor-in-chief of Elle Decoration magazine, is almost superfluous, though she does offers tips on how to achieve the art of Chinese style.
Periplus Editions/available in foreign book stores and at https://peripluspublishinggroup.com/periplus/

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
June 2006 issue

(c) that's PRD
PRD Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
June 2006 issue

In a nation where anyone can carry a gun, it's not easy to distance oneself from violence. At least according to Canadian-born director David Cronenberg (The Fly, Dead Ringers). In this, the director's twentieth film, partially based on the eponymous graphic novel by John Wagner, Cronenberg focuses on the family, whereas Wagner focused on the mob. The film relates the story of the small town owner of a diner, who's thrust into the spotlight after killing (in self-defense) two thugs. In no time, his quiet home life becomes a cycle of ever-more-vicious ultra-violence. With the director posing the question (among others): how much carnage is necessary to protect one's family from harm? Though made with a relatively small budget, History is a prime example of Cronenberg's cinematic audacity and intelligence; he demonstrates the ease with which "normal" people can fall into a spiral of violence, and how it provides an all too easy answer to life's complications. The film itself is full of violence–excessive, quick and intimate, though never exploitative. This straight-forward modern tale, supported by a superb cast (Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, William Hurt), won several awards, from NY to LA, and the 63-year-old director's hometown (2005 Toronto Film Critics Association Awards for Best Director and Best Picture and Best Canadian Film).
New Line Cinema

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
May 2006 issue

(c) that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
May 2006 issue

Chinese electronic-music artist Zhu Jianhui (aka Double Fish), 25, is fond of contemporary global culture, hacker aesthetics, art, breakcore and IDM (intelligent dance music). In early 2002, he released his first experimental music single enclosed in the magazine I Love Rock ‘n Roll. In June 2004, he founded the independent-label Reconfiguration Records in Guangzhou, the aim of which is to promote avant-garde, independent and experimental arts, and provide a platform for artist collaborations. Since then, Zhu has released a series of EPs and LPs and organized a number of musical events to promote this unusual scene. In August 2004, he launched a conceptual electronic-music collection by artists from Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland and Poland called “The Sound of Silence Project”. In 2005, Zhu, who knows no boundaries, released the EP Hackers on the Polish label Audiotong Records, and participated in several compilations released under his own label (Hey!!! Let’s break, V.A landscape 2). On Inter Net, Zhu, uses virtual drum machine, synth, effect processors and sound loops, to create a piece of relaxing, atmospherical downtempo music timed precisely at 20:05-minute (the year of its release, 2005). With samples reminiscent of early 1990s videogames’ sound effects, Inter Net is a strangely easy-listening piece of avant-garde-ish electronica.
Reconfiguration Records/Bedzoo/available at www.reconfiguration-records.com

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
May 2006 issue

(c) that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
May 2006 issue

At 48, Madonna Ciccone has returned to her first love: catchy, uncontroversial dance numbers, the sort she might have heard early in her career as a dancer with French Disco King Patrick Hernandez. Confessions samples disco classics (“Hung” samples ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”) and with the help of a number of talented collaborators, attempts to create what may just be some future classic pop-disco dance numbers. On her tenth studio album, Madonna has enrolled the services of France’s DJ Stuart Price and multi-talented electronic-music artist Mirwais Ahmadzai, as well as Sweden’s pop-music producers Bloodshy & Avant and Bagge & Peer. The result is surprisingly good: “Get Together”, “Hung” and “Sorry” are brilliant. And we’re not sorry Madonna has given up the pompous, political pose and prose of her previous album American Life. The CD’s facile lyrics are easy to remember, even for non-English speakers (“I Like New York”). What’s more, Madonna seems to have rediscovered her sense of humor. On “Like it or Not” she sings: ‘You can love me or leave me cause I never gonna stop.’ Yes, the Material Girl is back. And still fit. She literally and figuratively does the splits: from retro to neo, from disco’s glory days to futuristic electronica/pop music.
WEA international

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
May 2006 issue

(c) that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
May 2006 issue

During the 1972 Munich Olympic Games in Germany, eleven Israeli athletes were taken hostage by the terrorist group Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government unofficially recruited agents to execute the Black September operatives. Munich is a 165-minute edge-of-your-seat movie experience that examines the emotional and ethical toll upon the members of the Israeli task force sent to execute the terrorists. The film opens with a recreation of the fedayeen abducting and executing the Israeli athletes, followed by the Israelis exacting vengeance, spilling blood for blood. At the time, the Palestinian terrorists were viewed as heroes by their compatriots. The Israeli undercover assassins, employing terrorist methods, were also seen as heroes in Israel. Hero or terrorist? Merely a matter of perspective. This USD 75 million thriller raises some thought-provoking questions, questions that have yet to be answered thirty years later as the tit-for-tat cycle of violence in the Middle East continues. Munich received five Oscar nominations and a Directors Guild of America nomination. That said, the film performed better worldwide than in the US.
DreamWorks

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Chief editor: Steven Crane
April 2006 issue

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Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
April 2006 issue

In Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist, the central character is a paragon of stoic endurance. No matter what happens to the kid, he takes it with a smile. Actually, just a barely perceptible shrug of the shoulders. Twist is the center around which all the characters revolve, but he’s the least quirky, exciting, poignant, and human of them all. He’s the one to whom everything happens, but about whom audiences couldn’t care less. After his success with the 2003 Academy-Award-winning The Pianist, Polanski has made one of those rare films where supporting actors are the real stars. Of course, no Twist, no movie. But Oliver, on his own, is rather a boring young lad, devoid of excitement and personality. Reportedly, Paris-born actor/producer/director Polanski made this version of the Dickens’ classic for his children, unlike most of his previous works (including Hook and Repulsion) which children shouldn’t see unless they wish to be afflicted with life-long trauma. Which is not to suggest that Twist is children’s fare. By making Oliver a near-mute cipher, Polanski allows us to focus on his masterly use of the cinematic language, without contrived emotions to distract. In short, a triumph of compassion over sentiment.
SPHE

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
April 2006 issue

(c) that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
April 2006 issue

Following Shanghai Story, a subtle, semi-autobiographical, family drama set in post- “cultural revolution” Shanghai, local director Peng Xiaolian has changed course. Her latest film, Shanghai Rumba, is a multi-layered romance set in the late 1940s. The film is drenched in the cinema milieu. An unhappily-married young woman dreams of genuine love. Later, she joins a leftist film production company, where she meets Ah Chuan, a popular actor. Shanghai Rhumba was released on St. Valentine’s Day this year, a fitting date for this love story which features two real-life lovers in the cast: actors Xia Yu (Waiting Alone, 2004) and Yuan Quan (the stage play Amber, 2005). Peng exploits this element of reality in the film, including subtle references to the romance, on-screen and off. Adding yet another level to the plot, the film was inspired by a 70-year-old, legendary love affair between the ‘Prince of Film’ Zhao Dan (Crossroads, 1936) and actress Huang Zongying. If that’s not enough sentiment for you, Shanghai Rumba’s exquisite production values offer a gorgeous representation of the city as it was (or is remembered by romantics) in its ‘golden years’. With stunning cinematography, gorgeous costumes and old-fashioned music-score, this is one film that lovers anywhere can’t afford to miss.
Shanghai Film Studio

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Chief editor: Steven Crane
April 2006 issue

(c) that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
April 2006 issue

If Duplex were a real-estate property, Miramax producers might have thought twice before investing in a project built on such a shaky foundation. Produced in 2003, this 89-minute-long comedy only reached Chinese theaters this year. Likely to produce forced smiles than real laughs, this film is mercifully short, for which thanks is due to director Danny de Vito. The two-level apartment story lacks both a clear blueprint and quality material. A young, New York-based professional couple, played by Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore, finds their dream home in the form of the downstairs half of a Brooklyn duplex. Unfortunately, their neighbor is a nightmare. Unlike de Vito’s The War of the Roses (1989), Duplex ignores the fact that good comedy is anchored by truth. Instead of offering believable characters in exaggerated circumstance, it relies on a plot twist that rings false. De Vito tries (and fails) to plaster over the holes in the plot with cheap filler. The flick flopped in the US, and Barrymore (deservedly) won the 2004 Worst Actress Razzie Awards for her tasteless performance. Miramax

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
April 2006 issue

(c) that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
April 2006 issue

Coldcut’s Sound Mirrors has nothing to do with shards of glass, or sliced, assorted cold meats. Rather, it’s a cut-and-paste sound montage. DJs Matt Black and Jonathon Moore’s seventh album offers twelve eclectic tracks arranged in a polymorphic musical collage. The British duo, established in the mid-1980s, shift without blinking from mellow, pop folk tracks “Man in a Garage” to bizarre techno/jungle/post-punk cuts “Sound Mirrors”. But the pair’s penchant for diversity isn’t limited to musical styles, this release features a range of guest artists, including the Blues Explosion’s Jon Spencer; DJ Robert Owens; Mpho Skeef, to name but a few. While the wide choice of artists and genres seems to offer something for everyone, the overall effect is a lack of theme. In art, the inharmonious incoherence of avant-garde collages sometimes works, but here the patchwork of styles and rhythms clashes on the ear. Still, this approach is Coldcut’s trademark; they’ve been cutting and pasting beats for twenty years. Long-time fans will likely appreciate more of the same. Coldcut is famous for establishing the independent label, Ninja Tune, and signing acts such as Roots Manuva, Kid Koala and DJ Food (who performed in Shanghai last March and will return for an encore in the near future). If that weren’t enough, Sound Mirrors has won critical acclaim in the British press; NME describes it as “a master-class in beat science from start to finish”. Anyone for a slice of bologna?
Ninja Tune

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
April 2006 issue

(c)that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
April 2006 issue

More than an accomplished jazz vocalist with a silken voice, Alexia Gardner is a true entertainer. This live recording suitably titled Jammin' from the Shanghai JC Mandarin Hotel in March 2005, showcases Gardner's rapport with the audience and her command of the stage. This British singer, with Jamaican roots, began her career touring cabarets and clubs in England and Wales with her sister Paula in a sophisticated, a capella act. After going solo, she spent five years singing in various posh venues from Hong Kong to Jakarta, before arriving in Shanghai in late 2001. Since then, her groove-laden, funkified brand of jazz has done much to enliven the local scene. In short, Gardner is a stage veteran and her experience shows; she has developed an undeniable jazzy rapport with her band, and a genuine interaction with the audience. She literally jams with listeners and musicians on this release, and transforms a selection of rock, reggae and pop classics into jazzy, rhythm and blues-influenced gems (Marley's Jammin' ; Clapton's Change the World; Lennon's Fool on a Hill). Then there's a brilliant rendition of another classic, the Chinese number "The Moon Shines on my Heart." Buy this disc, or better still, catch Gardner live around town.
Available at www.alexiajazz.com

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
April 2006 issue

(c)that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
April 2006 issue

Unlike her fresh and innovative debut, Playing My Game – which went platinum from Norway to Italy – Lene Marlin’s highly-anticipated third album is only half brilliant; the other half is uninspired mainstream pop. The Norwegian singer/songwriter wrote and engineered this CD, without the knowledge, or help, of her record company. When the 26-year-old Marlin delivered the finished product to her producer, he is said to have listened to it in awe. In awe of what, we’re not quite sure. The CD opens with the sexy rock ballad “My Lucky Day” featuring electric guitar bursts and emotional vocals. Then there’s the radio-friendly, catchy numbers such as “Wish I could” and “What If”. So far, so good. Unfortunately, most of the remaining tracks are inferior. Marlin’s creativity seems to have hit a wall, the hooks have dried up and the listener is left with nothing to hum, never mind sing. Some cuts are ruined by inane lyrics; in addition, Marlin is beginning to sound too much like the gloomy Dido, or put another way, an anemic Avril Lavigne. In short, Marlin appears to be suffering an identity crisis. Unlike her previous efforts, this record lacks distinction and, in fact, most of the qualities – adventure and imagination – which won her acclaim in the first place. Lost in a Moment is just that – lost.
EMI

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
April 2006 issue

(c)that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
April 2006 issue

After a two-year hiatus, the five Irish lads are back. Well, four actually. Westlife’s one short of a quintet since Bryan McFadden left the group. Not that a 20 per cent loss of vocal power has affected the band’s international success – as evidenced by their packed Shanghai promotional showcase last March. Indeed, this chart-topping Irish (members hail from Dublin and Sligo) band sounds better than ever. And with a wide range of musical styles, they’ve expanded their fan base from teenage girls to grown-up girls (and boys). “She’s Back”, with its pulsating beat, recalls Michael Jackson at his best (“Billie Jean”); the pop ballad “When You Tell Me That You Love Me” featuring Diana Ross surpasses the overrated Secret Garden’s cover “You Raise Me Up”; the Eagles’ cover, “Desperado”, is a soulful cut with plaintive, husky vocals that could have appeared on a CD by Jon Bon Jovi or Brian Adams; and “Color My World” is a prime vehicle for Westlife’s new, larger vocal range. Finally, don’t miss the exhilarating and sexy piece of electronica “Hit You with the Real Thing”, which by rights should lead off the playlist. Westlife, co-managed by Boyzone’s Ronan Keating, has ruled the UK charts since 1999 with thirteen UK number one singles. Reportedly, their goal is to chalk up a total of twenty one. With this release, they may just succeed.
Sony-BMG

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
April 2006 issue

(c)that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
April 2006 issue

Established fifteen years ago, Jogoya remains one of the most fashionable restaurants in Taiwan. Customers can enjoy elegant fusion cuisine in an unusual setting that combines hi-tech and the traditional. Their new menu offers just the sort of thing you’d expect to find in these surroundings: polished, groove heavy relaxing fare with an Oriental flavor. This two CD release (the second disc remixes the first), Jogoya assembles a 14 course bill – a mish-mash of Indian vocals, Europeans beats and Thai and Chinese sounds. This sounds like a recipe for indigestion, and as one might expect the quality varies. For starters, Karunes’s "Solitude" makes for a pleasant Indian dish, while Phak Rattap Khan’s "Hari Hara" is more a sickly downtempo appetizer. The Shakamunyi’s "Tantra" is altogether delicious and Edson X & MA3’s "Rhada Krishna" makes a delightful main course with traditional Indian flute with drums. Atman’s "Distant Voices" is just another Indian groove cut and as such too much to swallow. At this stage, the listener needs a strong liqueur before tasting the remaining courses; unfortunately, a digestive is not on offer.
High Note Records

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
March 2006 issue

(c)that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
March 2006 issue

Purity of sound is not in fashion these days; most bands prefer a musical stew. And Luxia is no exception with their eclectic blend of electronica, vocals, jazz and bossa nova. The project combines the talents of Jon Kingsley Hall and Peter George Stewart with co-production credit to Australian DJ Steve Hill and Mat Cook and vocals by Tiffany Nan Brace. It was conceived when Brace met with producer Hall at a music therapy workshop, and she proved that her powerful voice could compete with Hall’s beats. Indeed, her very emotional vocals are the most attractive features of Luxia’s sound (more compelling than Alexis Hart’s or Tom Ecologist’s). Though soulful, she can hardly be called melodramatic; the sound is much livelier than Portishead and less narcissistic than Bjork, for instance. Stewart and Hill’s production skills add a certain slickness, the lineage of which can be traced back to synth-pop Brit act, Kissing the Pink, Swedish/Danish DJ Stonebridge and French electronic artist St Germain. Like St Germain, Luxia’s beats provide the foundation upon which musical textures can grow, which make this music more suitable for the lounge, than the dance floor. Especially “Cool Mountain” and, “I Feel So Good” with their Nu/Soul jazz, trip hop, Bossa Nova sound; this is mellow, urban music at its best.
High Note Records

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
March 2006 issue

(c)that's Guangzhou
Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
March 2006 issue