Being Vulgar in Hong Kong

Vulgaria ... sounds like a typical garden-variety Hongkie movie ... all weird, childish, silly, immature jokes with a nonsensical plot.

I've taken note of this movie only because of the novel names ... naturally.

Hiro Hayama, Susan Shaw Yin-yin, Dada Chen and Matt Chow Hoi-kwong

Reference

Vulgaria (SCMP; paywall)

 MOVIE REVIEW
Lau Kit-wai
Aug 09, 2012    

Starring: Chapman To Man-chat, Ronald Cheng Chung-kei, Dada Chen
Director: Edmond Pang Ho-cheung
Category: III (Cantonese and Putonghua)
★☆☆☆☆

With Vulgaria, director Edmond Pang Ho-cheung further builds on his reputation as the raunchiest filmmaker of post-handover Hong Kong cinema.

The film stars Chapman To Man-chat as divorced B-movie producer To Wai-cheung, who will do anything to secure funding for his films while fighting with his ex-wife (Kristal Tin Yui-nei, the actor's real-life spouse) for access to his young daughter.

The story, written by Pang, veteran screenwriter Lam Chiu-wing and writer Luk Yee-sum, begins with To at a filmmaking class where he compares the role of film producer to that of pubic hair. The joke sets the tone of the movie, which only heads lower as To recounts his sacrifices while remaking the sexploitation classic Confession of a Concubine.

To's misadventures begin with his meeting a triad boss, played by Ronald Cheng Chung-kei, who has an attraction to animals. The boss agrees to fund To's project on the condition that veteran actress Susan Shaw Yin-yin - star of the original Confession over 30 years ago - appear in steamy sex scenes. The producer decides that by hiring upcoming starlet Popping Candy (Dada Chen) and using computer generated imagery, they will have a body double for Shaw.

Even before it hit the screens, the buzz on Vulgaria was that it might leave a bad taste - a clever ploy for getting people into cinemas. Audiences who enjoy below-the-waist jokes find countless gags about bestiality, oral sex, anal sex and masturbation.

The obscenity is mostly verbal, yet is no less shocking than hard-core pornography. While sensible viewers may dismiss the movie as crude, its obscenity goes deeper. Pang has devised a world where only fellatio seems to matter, and he expects us to see this as funny and hip.

To is mediocre here and Chen is nothing more than a sex object. The cameos by Shaw (pictured, second left with Hiro Hayama, Chen and Matt Chow Hoi-kwong), singer-actor Fiona Sit Hoi-kei and Simon Lui Yu-yeung fail to bring anything to the paper-thin plot.

Given the favourable response from audiences at the premiere, comedy has clearly moved on since Michael Hui Koon-man retired and Stephen Chow Sing-chi crossed the border for greener pastures. Vulgarity is now the chosen flavour of moviegoers.

1059 HKSAR Name of the Day

Pablo Chan Pak-hoe, found guilty of insider trading, Hong Kong

About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Rare; Phonetic-based?

1058 HKSAR Name of the Day

Wellington KK Chan, professor of humanities and professor of history at Occidental College, Los Angeles, United States of America; syndicated article in the SCMP July 2010

About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Geography-based; Rare

1057 HKSAR Name of the Day

Kyran Sze, architect, Hong Kong (letters SCMP, 16 July 2010)

About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Rare

1056 HKSAR Name of the Day

Kaster Lam Ka-kit, Ngau Chi Wan, Hong Kong (letters SCMP, 26 July 2010)

About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Creation

1055 HKSAR Name of the Day

Koey Young, Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong (letters SCMP, 27 July 2010)
see 0618 HKSAR Name of the Day

About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Creation; Substitution

Selling Sex via Ball Control

China's Zhang Xi shows skin and ball control during [London 2012 Olympics] women's beach volleyball preliminary phase pool B match against Switzerland. Pic AFP.

Related Posts
Butt Cheeks from Chile
Butt Cheeks from Japan


Reference

Sex sells at the Parade as fans flock to cheer and ogle (SCMP; paywall)

The lure of beach volleyball is not only about athletic ability but also about the scantily clad women who scamper around on the sand
 RUNNING COMMENTARY
Alvin Sallay
Aug 01, 2012    

Even Nelson perched high above Trafalgar Square would have found it hard to turn a blind eye to all the hype and hoopla going on at Horse Guards Parade. Bikinis and Bermuda shorts was on show at the Olympic sport which draws the most amount of sexual innuendo. And like many thousands of others, it was enough to attract Kevin O'Connor to make the trip to London with his buddies to watch athletic, bronzed bodies throw themselves all over the sun-baked paddock.

"To be honest there is a lot of enthusiasm from us Brits about sports which we know nothing about and what better way to spend a Monday morning than out here in the sun and with a beer in my hand," smiled Kevin, who hails from Gloucester. He was also honest about the fact he and his mates preferred to watch the "girls" rather than the men. Every move of the Chinese pair Zhang Xi and Xue Chun, Beijing bronze medallists as they defeated a pair of Swiss missies, were lustily cheered by Kevin and company, all decked in Union Flag shirts.

When Queen Victoria found no one on duty at the Horse Guards gate one afternoon, she ordered the Household Cavalry - the soldiers who have provided protection for the monarch since 1660 - to parade at 4pm every day for 100 years. The order still stands and the tradition continues. But that parade of horseflesh has been put on hold until the beach volleyball ends, and instead there is another parade on show with 96 athletes - beefcakes and models who could grace the pages of Sports Illustrated's swimwear edition - competing on a beach made of 4,386 tonnes of high-grade sand specially quarried in Surrey.

And the mood at the venue in the heart of London was electric. It is used to pomp and pageantry every afternoon but this was way different. An announcer spurred the crowds on to clap and dance in the aisles much to the horror of Kevin, who suggested that the prancing presenter was probably in love with his voice and the mic. But the crowd responded. Every time there was a break between sets or if a team took a timeout, out came a group of scantily clad girls, of course in bikinis, with a couple of token, bare-bodied guys thrown in who did the Conga and shook their derrieres to tune.

Sexual innuendo? Forget it, this is in-your-face sex highlighted by the sun and sand. You can feel yourself being transported to some idyllic island in the tropics where everyone looks like Raquel Welch walking out of the surf, or in the case of the women fans, a hunk with six-pack abs and straight out of Baywatch.

The closest thing to a well-defined six-pack I witnessed were the glistening, cold beers in the hands of Kevin and his mates. Unlike the women, the male beach volleyball players are covered up, almost to the point of being indecently clad for the beach.

It raised the question if female spectators were hard done by. While the men had their fill gawking over the sweaty, tanned limbs of the girls, the men wore T-shirts or singlets and long Bermuda shorts. So do women watching beach volleyball find it as sexy as their husbands or boyfriends?

For all their grunting the Norwegian and Canadian men hardly stroked the imagination. It seems the sport is sexually biased. The FIVB, the world governing body for volleyball, has all but put its eggs in one basket - believing sex sells and it is the women who should carry the burden. Among its regulations are that for women, there should be "no more than six centimetres of cloth at the hip". But men can wear anything as long as it is not a tuxedo or tights.

Is this sexual discrimination?

1054 HKSAR Name of the Day

Winsome Au, assistant director general of trade and industry, Hong Kong

About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Creation