Mark James Russell

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Category: Singapore

Wednesday Morning Links

September 4, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Well, it’s barely morning anymore — thanks in part to the always-fun combination of an Internet problem and support staff who have no idea how Apple hardware works. Nice guys, but a depressing problem to have in 2013. Anyhow…

  • Japan’s Rakuten is buying Singapore’s Viki for $200 million (AllThingsD). Viki being an online video service (like Hulu) that started off featuring Korean TV dramas. Meng over at the Joyful Frog Digital Incubator has a great essay on what the buy means for Singapore — required reading for anyone in Korea working on Park Geun-hye’s “creative economy” ideas.
  • Coincidentally (or perhaps, “ironically,” depending on your point of view), police in Korea announced yesterday they had busted up a major TV piracy group that had made nearly $9 million since 2006, mostly selling TV dramas they did not own to overseas Koreans. (Korea JoongAng Daily)
  • Good look at Park Chan-kyung (Park Chan-wook’s brother) and his MANSHIN project, a documentary about shaman Kim Keum-hwa. (Korea JoongAng Daily)
  • An exhibition of works by 84-year-old Kim Tschang-yeul is going on at Gallery Hyundai (by Gyeongbok Palace) until Sept. 25 (Korea JoongAng Daily)

Asian Indie – It’s a Big Place

November 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

As much as I love Korea’s indie music scene, it is always good to be reminded just how much other great music is being made all over Asia. And I don’t just mean Japan and China. Southeast Asia seems to be flourishing culturally these days, thanks in part to its continued economic growth.

If you are interested in Southeast Asia’s rock music, there is a great blog called Sea Indie (SEA Indie?), which features music from Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, etc. Along with news and reviews, Sea Indie puts out Soundcloud compilations, year-end best-ofs and other good packages for finding the best music of the region. For example, here is their article about the best songs of 2011. Did you know Indonesia had a great folk-rock band called Bangkutaman? Well they do, and the band is quite good.

Here is Sea Indie’s first compilation, featuring rock from Indonesia:

You can download their Filipino collection here and their Malaysian compilation here. But I quite like this regional collection.

The website kind of gets at one of my points in POP GOES KOREA — that Korea’s great musical accomplishments aren’t just because Korea is so special, but they are in part a sign of how the world is changing thanks to the continued effects of globalization. Korea did it first in Asia, but young people around the region are traveling more and growing more wealthy, and as they do, they want to participate in modern pop culture. Sometimes that will be very mainstream culture, but other times it will be more indie and ground-up. And that is a very good thing.

Oh, it is worth noting that this is not just a new thing either. Here is a fun blog post at Tofu Magazine with plenty of music links featuring some great Hong Kong and Singapore rock-pop from the 1960s. I quite liked this album by Teddy Robin & the Playboys:

Here is their version of “A Little Bit of Me, A Little Bit of You“.

More Asian Film Markets?

May 14, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Strange news today out of Singapore, as the Media Development Authority is announcing plans to start a new film market there in June 2011.

I say strange because Asia already has Filmart in Hong Kong in March, the Asian Film Market in Busan in October, and TIFFCOM in Tokyo, a couple of weeks after Busan. AFM and TIFFCOM are both rather quiet, and others have tried and failed to launch film markets in the past (most notably Bangkok, which used to have a market in February in the mid-2000s).

Singapore’s MDA says that it hopes to use the June slot, a month after Cannes, to focus on Southeast Asian countries and to launch Hollywood films in China.

Of course I wish them well (especially if they want to fly me over to participate). Certainly the MDA has the resources and the ambition to give it a good shot. But it is hard to imagine Asia needed another film market at this point. Especially one at that time of year — half of the big summer films launch in May and June, so really they are left with July and late releases.

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