Archive
Best Scores of 2014 – Asia
The first installment in my series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world concentrates on music from films from Asia: specifically, the far eastern nations of China, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. Already in 2014 I have reviewed Christopher Young’s magnificent score for the Chinese epic fantasy adventure The Monkey King, and Jo-Yeong Wook’s score for the revisionist samurai action film Kundo: Age of the Rampant. In this article, I’m taking a deeper look at some other excellent works, ranging from anime movies and TV series from Japan, baseball dramas from Taiwan, and two of the highest-grossing films from Vietnam.
You can read my review of The Monkey King here, my review of Kundo: Age of the Rampant here.
SCANDAL: HÀO QUANG TRO LAI – Christopher Wong
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Scandal: Hao Quang Tro Lai is a Vietnamese drama-thriller, directed by Victor Vu, a follow-up to his own film Scandal from 2012. The film stars Nhung Trang as Bella, a beautiful but aging actress who is passed over for Vietnam’s version of the Academy Awards in favor of a younger, but less talented rival. Convinced that her failure is a direct result of her fading looks, Bella secretly visits Dr. Quan (Bao Chi), a plastic surgeon, in a desperate attempt to make herself appear younger. Shockingly, Bella dies on the operating table, and in an attempt to save his own career Quan disposes of the body and covers up the death; for a while, everything seems fine, and Quan soon becomes a famous ‘celebrity surgeon’ – until a woman who bears an astonishing resemblance to Bella appears, threatening to unearth Quan’s scandalous secret. Read more…
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