“Lost and Found” is an exhibition about nature and art.So is “Ex Libris”, an exhibition of paintings by Australian artist James McGrath which is showing at Cat Street Gallery until 29th January. In 2010, James was given access to an ancient library in Prague that holds over 125,000 volumes of the world’s finest philosophical and religious texts. As a result he created the series called “Ex Libris”, in which centuries-old books and manuscripts form a backdrop for images from nature.

Pedro Almodovar’s “The Skin I Live In” is a departure for the Spanish director in the sense that it combines his usual obsessions with elements of a horror or sci-fi film. Antonio Banderas works with the director for the first time in 21 years to play a mad-scientist protagonist who has been trying to create a new and tougher human skin. He’s been experimenting on a young captive woman, Vera (Elena Anaya), who he is moulding to fit his requirements. For much of the film, Vera wears a skin-coloured body stocking that looks like a second skin, and practises yoga to maintain her sanity. And then, one day, a man in a tiger costume breaks into the house. Well, it all sounds at least a little offbeat. Gary Pollard reviews it.

For the past month the local video and new media art collective Videotage has been presenting the One World Exposition, which ends on the coming Sunday. Curated by Isaac Leung and Li Zhenhua, it’s an umbrella project that brings together artists from Hong Kong and the mainland for symposia, exhibitions, artist’s talks, performances and screenings of Chinese media art.

And we end this week’s show with the Japanese art of Noh theatre. It’s full of stylised movement and music, and – of course – those famous masks. For some of us though, it’s not so easy to understand what’s going on. Last summer, two theatre groups, the Oshima Noh Theatre and the international Theatre Nohgaku, joined forces to give non-Japanese speakers in Hong Kong a better chance to understand the art form.

In today’s show we’retaking a look back at some of the highlights. And we’ll begin with one of the stranger ones. A musical instrument that you can play without even touching it. It’s the theremin, as played by Lydia Kavina, a maestro who learned it from the instrument’s inventor Léon Theremin.

It’s hardly possible to get a greater contrast to that than the guest who visited our studio in April. He’s the legendary clarinettist Richard Stoltzman. Richard was in Hong Kong for “The Intimacy of Creativity”, an annual two-week series of events devoted to promoting a dialogue between composers of new pieces and their performers. For us he played a composition by the man who initiated the two-week workshop, Bright Sheng.

In February last year, the young pianist Shen Wenyu came to our studio. Eight years ago, he was the youngest ever winner of the Queen Elizabeth International Piano Competition. At 24, he has already performed with over 30 orchestras worldwide. And this despite coming from a Wenzhou, a town in China that didn’t – when he was a child – have one piano.

Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla revolutionised the music of the tango, and there are lovers of the more traditional music who hate him for it. But musicians, ranging from classical to jazz, have found much to inspire them in his work. And many of those who come to The Works studio want to play their own interpretations. Last year, Timothy Sun and Jacqueline Leung gave us a Hong Kong interpretation of one of his pieces, while bandoneonist Carel Kraayenhof and violinist Karen Gomyo, who were in town for a performance with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, brought us more traditional versions.

Tango music is, of course, song music. Even more importantly it’s dance music. And dance is a big area of interest to The Works and its viewers. Our studio isn’t the biggest of studios. But despite that we did manage to squeeze two highly impressive dance troupes in here when they came to Hong Kong to give shows. STOMP showed us that you don’t always need music to dance. While Riverdance took us to the mist-covered hills of Ireland.

Happy New Year from all at The Works

To celebrate the season, we have excerpts from the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong’s “The Snowman” and “The Bear”, Artem Konstantinov plays a cello solo from Bach, Ng Yin and HolicK deliver an a capella version of “Santa Claus is coming to Town” and there are the Christmas carols: “Silent Night” and John Rutter’s beautiful “Candlelight Carol” by the Cecilian Singers in St. John’s Cathedral.

From all at The Works and 藝坊星期天, Merry Christmas. 

The movie “Sarah’s Key” is set in two time periods. In the past, during the Second World War, it’s about the collaborationist Vichy government in France doing the Nazis’ dirty work and rounding up the people they had identified as Jews, including the ten-year-old Sarah. That story is intercut with a modern day story about American-born journalist Julia Jarmond, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, who is working on a magazine story about the roundup and deportations of the Jewish families, and dealing with very contemporary domestic issues. Gary Pollard reviews it for us.

After premiering at the Hong Kong Arts Festival in 2010, Frederic Mao’s “The Liaisons”, which merges Cantonese Opera with contemporary romance, then went on to represent Hong Kong at the Shanghai Expo. It’s also been performed in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.Despite being in Cantonese, it was very well received in mainland China. Now Hong Kong audiences are going to have another chance to see it.“The Liaisons” is back for an eight-show rerun at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts from 6th to 14th January. Director Fredric Mao talks to us about his production.

In our Arts Diary this week, Fabrik Contemporary Art is presenting the first solo exhibition of 21 sculptural works by Manila-born artist Daniel dela Cruz until January .21st. The show’s called “Ms.Interpretation” and in it Daniel takes a lighthearted look at his favourite subject; women.

And in our studio we have a guest who will, this weekend, be performing in a concert called “The Fusion” with the Chung Brothers. He’s local guitarist Jacky Lau, who began as a classical guitarist, but has now developed a finger-picking style with which he performs many kinds of music., He talks to us about his new CD and the upcoming show, as well as giving us a sample.

Aardman Animations’ “Arthur Christmas” is a Santa Claus movie for a more knowing age, beginning with a little girl writing a letter to Santa in which she asks how he manages to give toys to 600 million children in one night. Even if he took only ten seconds in each house, there simply isn’t enough time. And why can’t she see Santa’s home on Google maps? The movie explains all this, and also introduces us to the Santa Clause lineage, and the thousands of elves that make Christmas possible. It also tells us how determined “Arthur Christmas” is that not on child shall be disappointed on Christmas morning. Gary Pollard reviews it.

Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design (HKAoD) is a non-profit organisation and registered charity founded in 2006. Each year, at around the same time as the Design Centre organises the Business of Design Week, the organisation arranges DETOUR, which is currently running until 11th December. Aiming to highlight the impact of irresponsible consumerism, DETOUR 2011 is showcasing creative works by artists and design students, juxtaposing the ecologically sound and the wasteful.

There’s another chance to see the work of a German artist at the Art Statements gallery in Aberdeen until 28th January. He’s Stephan Balkenhol. While many artists are no longer interested in making sculptures of human figures, he continues to do so. And he’s particularly interested not in presenting the famous or powerful, but in the subject of the ordinary individual.

And we end The Works this week with the art of Japanese painter Saori Kanda. Saori’s known not only for her paintings themselves, but also for giving live painting performances, often accompanied by live music. In November, Saori gave a live painting performance in Hong Kong. An exhibition of her paintings runs at the Red Square gallery until January 20th.

“The Adventures of Tintin” is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist Georges Rémi under the pen name of Hergé. It’s one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, with more than 350 million copies of the books sold. The series, about the boy reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy (or Milou in the original) first appeared in French in 1929. The final story was published in 1986, three years after Herge had died. Now it’s been turned into a 3D, motion capture, CGI film by Stephen Spielberg. Gary Pollard reviews it.

American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein was born in 1923 in New York, and died there in 1997. He’s particularly famous for his images during the 1960s based on comic books and advertising material. For some later works he also drew inspiration from traditional Chinese painting, in particular from the Song Dynasty. Until 22nd December the Gagosian gallery is featuring an exhibition of his art called ” Landscapes in the Chinese Style”.

 
At the Upper Station photo gallery until 15th December there’s a look at nature from a quite different perspective. In his works Hisun Wong captures images of flowers and leaves, which he then enhances electronically. The exhibition’s called “Intimate Impression series 2”.

 
Finally this week, even people who haven’t heard, or paid attention to, any other classical pianist have quite likely heard of today’s guest, Maksim. He was born in Croatia, took up piano lessons at nine, and at 28, in 2003 released “The Piano Player”, which has achieved Gold status in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and China, Platinum in Taiwan and Croatia and Double Platinum in Hong Kong, where he has a particularly enthusiastic fan base. This week, he’s playing in The Works studio.

On Wednesday of next week there’s an auction of art by the disabled in Hong Kong. It’s arranged by the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals and Treasure Auctioneers. Funds raised will help to give more people with disabilities access to the arts and to creativity.

French photographer Gerard Rancinan regards himself as a “witness of the metamorphoses of humanity”. Through his photographs he wants to show how society is, and to draw connections between classic art and contemporary reality. Although Rancinan’s journalistic images earned him plenty of recognition, including four prestigious World Press Awards, he has now decided to pursue fine art photography.

To close the recent World Cultures Festival, Enchanting Arts of Asia, last weekend Britain-based dancer Akram Khan treated Hong Kong to the Asian premier of his solo dance “Desh”. In the dance he examines his relationship with the culture of his parents and ancestors in Bangladesh.

We end this week’s show with the work of Tilo Kaiser, a Frankfurt -born artist who currently lives in London. The exhibition “Poetry in Motion” is on show at the Sin Sin Fine Art gallery until the 2nd December.

The six films are about six of Taiwan’s most famous contemporary writers including poet Yang Mu, Yu Guang-zhong, Wang Wen-xin, Chou Meng-tieh, and Cheng Chou-yu, as well as one female writer, Lin Hai-yin.

We interview all five of the directors, plus three of the writers.

Last Sunday, carnival artists Paul McLaren and Sharon George from the UK, were takng part in a parade on Tsim Sha Tsui’s Avenue of Stars and in the Mong Kok Pedestrian district. Their giant puppet, made of metal wires and plastic sheets was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Sunday’s event was a prelude to the Standard Chartered Arts in the Park Mardi Gras 2011, to be held next weekend in Victoria Park. It’s organized by the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation with the support of the Standard Chartered Bank. It’s part of an annual 6-month youth arts programme.

In our Arts Diary, there’s still plenty coming up in the World Cultures Festival including “Celestial Songs”, “Splendour of Korea”, the Shanghai Yue Ju Opera House, and dancer Akram Khan. And, through this week, the Hong Kong Dance Company is presenting “Two Swallows, Ode to Wu Guanzhong” based on the paintings of the late master. In visual art, at the Sundaram Tagore gallery, there’s another touch of Asian art in the work of Korean artist Kim Joon. In his latest series Kim focuses on ideas of fragility, seduction and imperfection, using 3D computer graphics to create landscapes of porcelain-like human bodies tattooed in brand imagery.

“Tower Heist” is about what happens when a group of workers in a luxury residential building decide to steal their money back from a Bernie Madoff type con-man who lives in the penthouse of their building and has swindled them out of their life savings. It was originally planned by star Eddie Murphy to be an all-black “Oceans Eleven”, but became more multicultural as filming went on. It now also stars Ben Stiller, Michael Pena and Alan Alda among others. Gary Pollard tells us more.

At the end of last month, a man some consider the world’s greatest violinist came to Hong Kong to perform. Itzhak Perlman has been called a superstar of the violin, and “the king of fiddlers”. We spoke to him while he was here.

Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)

It can be interesting how things develop in Hollywood. About six years ago, Eddie Murphy came up with an idea. “Why not make an all-black “Ocean’s Eleven”?” Director Brett Ratner and producer Brian Grazer got into the idea quite early and then started looking around for actors who could appear in such a film with Eddie Murphy. Among those considered were Jamie Foxx, Martin Lawrence, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan and Chris Tucker.

Well, maybe the studios got a little nervous that an all-back “Ocean’s Eleven” would have a bit of a niche audience, mostly African Americans in the United States and not a huge reach overseas, and so they decided to broaden the demographic. Stars Ben Stiller, Casey Affleck and Matthew Broderick were brought on board, the whole thing was made a bit more multi-cultural, and the resulting movie “Tower Heist” is in local cinemas this week.

Well, it is true that “Tower Heist” probably gains from having a mixed cast. For one thing, its story is now about the staff in a luxury apartment block who turn the tables on a slimy Ponzi scheme operator Arthur Shaw (played by Alan Alda). Shaw lives at the top of a tower, which is actually Trump Tower in New York, and the movie opens with a shot of a $100 bill that turns out to be the bottom of a huge penthouse swimming pool. Shaw swims across it. This is his kingdom, and it’s a kingdom he can afford basically by cheating the little man.

On the surface everything is going well in the best of all possible worlds. The staff in the building, led by general manager Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller), do everything to uphold the sense of luxury on which the tenants of the building rely. Shaw pretends to be egalitarian and appreciative of their efforts, but we know immediately that this charm is only in effect as long as they know how to keep their place. They are part of a world that’s full of sheep to be shorn.

Later in the movie, when the gloves are off, Shaw snarls at Josh: “You people are working stiffs, clock-punchers. Easily replaced.” There’s a world of class division here that is entirely authentic and that belies the US illusion of classlessness, even though Shaw is supposed to have come up from the same neighbourhood as Josh.

Josh, we see immediately, has no resentment at the difference in their situations. He believes this is a meritocracy, and he has succeeded in that meritocracy by doing his job as a general manager well. He keeps the tower running smoothly, provides the personal touches, advises guests what wine to serve with what cheese, monitors a varied mix of employees. In the opening minutes of the film, he’s interviewing an enthusiastic job applicant Enrique (Michael Pena), trying to persuade once-successful but now penniless stockbroker Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick) to leave the building voluntarily, and covering up for his brother in law and front-desk clerk Charlie (Casey Affleck), whose wife is about to have a child.

Josh also receives news from Lester (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a veteran doorman who announces he’ll be hanging up his uniform in a year’s time, and beginning to live for himself for once rather than open and close doors for others.

But it isn’t that simple. Josh has made one big mistake. He has invested the employees’ pension funds with Shaw. His loyalty to, and belief in, Shaw is such that when he sees the tenant apparently being kidnapped he will risk his own life to save him. But Shaw is not being kidnapped. He is actually about to be arrested by the FBI, led by Special Agent Claire Denham (Tea Leoni), and charged with securities fraud.

Josh has to tell the staff that their savings are wiped out, even though Shaw is still living it up under house arrest in his apartment.  He believes he can persuade the former billionaire to put things right, which is when he realizes the full extent of the man’s indifference to his effect on the lives of others.

Enraged, Josh  takes a golf club to Shaw’s cherry-red Ferrari, once owned by Steve McQueen, and lovingly assembled up here on the top floor of the building,  and promptly gets himself, and a couple of the other staff fired.

This could have been a very serious and dark movie, even a horror movie, and there’s a hint of the darkness at the root of it when doorman Lester, realizing he has worked his whole life for nothing, tries to step under a subway train. But Ratner and screenwriters Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson are after all essentially using the subject to make a light-hearted caper movie, so Lester survives and after learning from the tipsy FBI agent that at least some $20 million of the money must be hidden in Shaw’s apartment, decides to put a heist together and get it back.

Some of the other staff, and particularly his brother in law, think he is mad. They are not career criminals. But Josh thinks he knows someone who is. That’s Slide (Eddie Murphy), who might be a real criminal but is hardly himself in a class to help pull off a stunt like this. Josh also recruits the now-broke stockbroker Fitzhugh to advise them.

Before he will help them though, Slide sets them a few tests, including asking each to steal $50 worth of goods from a shopping mall, and using a lock pick to get off a freezing New York rooftop.

A movie like this can easily be reduced to a series of interchangeable cookie-cut characters, but the strength here is that the individuals are given very specific styles and characteristics. They’re also, particularly Eddie Murphy, given a fair bit of sassy dialogue. It isn’t just an action movie.

That said, the caper itself turns out to be both gripping and funny, although it is tough going for people like me who are easily affected by vertiginous heights in movies. People dangling off the top floor of a building by a cable that could snap at any moment, is not necessarily my idea of relaxed viewing.

Ratner isn’t the most subtle of directors, but he is fine at this kind of thing, and he does give the actors plenty of leeway to develop their characters. The cast tends to separate into the A-line actors, mostly Stiller, Murphy, and Alda, and the B-line actors, most everyone else. Murphy’s films tend to be wildly variable, but this thankfully isn’t one that appeals to the lowest common denominator in his audience  I didn’t catch a single flatulence joke. Gabourey Sidibe from “Precious” has a nice cameo as a hotel maid with a secret skill in safe cracking.

Dante Spinotti’s cinematography gleams where it should, and Christophe Beck’s score keeps things moving. “Tower Heist” isn’t as deep a film as it might have been. It’s mostly feel good entertainment capitalising on public resentments of the massive financial frauds of recent years, but as not too demanding escapism: comedy with a few thrills thrown in, it does just fine.