The madcap gang of Running Man has lost a member, and the show seems to be losing its mojo.

At the start of Episode 324 of Running Man, an off-camera producer promises a “nasty break-up” with Gary, the rapper who is splitting from the madcap gang of the South Korean variety show after seven years.

But it delivers a little more than that. The break-up spills over into Episode 325, and by the end of the two-part send-off, I remember the reasons I liked the show, but also why I stopped following it.

In other words, the episodes feel like a microcosm of my split with the show.

Episode 324, which has many good moments, some silly and some moving, is the television equivalent of a photo album of an ex you can’t bear to toss out.

It begins with the other six members of the cast – comedian Yoo Jae Suk, singer Kim Jong Kook, rapper Haha, actor Lee Kwang Soo, comedian Jee Seok Jin and Gary’s soon-to-be former “Monday Girlfriend”, actress Song Ji Hyo – arriving at a cafe for a briefing on Gary’s departure.

Haha scores quickly, asking: “Then will the cameraman who’s in charge of Gary quit as well?” and the others join in the riff, commiserating with the cameraman.

This is classic Running Man, how well the members pick up a joke and run with it together.

It gets even better when Yoo and gang surprise Gary at his studio, where they start taping a string of farewell parlour games ahead of the schedule he was given.

Here, the comic highlight is the other members’ hidden mission, which is to steal a series of objects, each bigger than the one before, from Gary during the taping.

This becomes a hilarious arms race as the stars try with mounting desperation to move objects including a man-sized potted plant, a bicycle and a carpet unnoticed.

Then comes a bigger payoff, when Gary returns alone to the studio and finds that the members have not only returned the loot, but also left presents and letters. It’s a bittersweet note where the break- up special should have ended.

Instead, in Episode 325, the stars are sent on a mission to visit Gary’s neighbourhood on a shoestring and harass him like jilted exes from hell, calling him for help constantly and dropping by his studio without warning.

The concept is funny until it isn’t.

The set-up of Gary having to humour his former colleagues and answer quiz questions by telephone goes stale fast.

By the time Song, Jee and Lee return to Gary’s studio to steal a bicycle again, the show seems to have run out of comic steam.

It is possible that the episode is repetitive on purpose: It’s a bad break-up, get it? It’s the ex who won’t go away and won’t let Gary go, get it? Perhaps there is some winking self-parody here, some twinkling acknowledgement that the show itself is getting tired and may be outstaying its welcome.

At the end of the episode, the stars troop out of Gary’s studio again and he cleans up after them again, saying: “They don’t fail to amaze me.”

This remark doesn’t quite ring true, though. Because sometimes the show seems to be running out of surprises and just limping along.

What is Entourage, the Korean remake of the Hollywood buddy series, running on?

In the first place, was the original a show that needed to be remade and given a K-drama gloss finish?

The American Entourage (2004-2011) was an affable, sporadically amusing void of a series about four guys from Queens, New York City, lolling around the movie capital, Los Angeles.

It went by in half-hour episodes, before you could notice how empty it was.

By contrast, the hour-long episodes of the Korean Entourage feel as exhausting as marathons.

Horsing around in a bathhouse, waxing their bodies and leering at babes, the Korean bros (Seo Kang Joon, Lee Kwang Soo, Park Jung Min and Lee Dong Hwi) try so hard at dude humour that little of it is funny.

Time slows to a painful crawl, as I go on waiting for drama, meaning, something to materialise.

This article was first published on November 23, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

It is nice when local talents get recognition overseas, but Singaporeans should nurture them during their journey to stardom too Singer Nathan Hartono was already talented before his great run in Sing!

China led many Singaporeans to embrace him as a success story.

Ditto film-maker Anthony Chen, who got people to take notice of him only after his triumph at the Golden Horse Awards with the 2013 film Ilo Ilo.

In Singapore, results matter, a perhaps unfortunate fact we all seemed to have internalised since the Primary School Leaving Examinations.

One is considered successful only if you have the results to prove it.

Things are better if those results are given by a major international body.

That is certainly the reality that plagues the creative industries here – promising artists, musicians and film-makers alike go unrecognised by the mainstream community, unless and until a big foreign organisation gives them some credit first.

It happened with Chen, who wiped out his savings in his struggle to make his debut feature Ilo Ilo.

After his film took the Camera d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival, as well as four Golden Horse awards from Taiwan, including for Best Picture, he became the country’s golden boy overnight.

The 32-year-old now fronts TV commercials, can readily get the funding he needs to make his next film and sits on the jury of major film festivals.

Hartono, 25, did not break into the mainstream, despite having put  out albums over the last decade, until he came in second in the hit Chinese TV singing contest Sing! China, this year.

Today, even non-music fans are eager for a piece of him, turning up in droves to catch a glimpse of him at mall events.

All of this is understandable.

To be recognised by an organisation as prestigious as the Golden Horse Awards – seen as the Oscars of the Chinese-speaking world – or to get exposure from a show as popular as Sing! China – one of China’s most-watched reality TV series – indicates one is good enough to make it in the big leagues.

It is nice, to be sure, when a local actor receives a local award, but the talent pool in which he competes in is so much smaller.

This is why the hype over Christopher Lee’s Best Actor win at the Star Awards in 2012 was considerably less compared with that over the Best Actor trophy he received at Taiwan’s famous Golden Bell Awards just a year later.

There is nothing wrong with celebrating all of their overseas achievements; they have done well and we should be proud of them.

But Singaporeans should start showing support for their fellow countrymen before foreign entities do it.

How many individuals here have had to give up on their creative passions – and perhaps that potential next Golden Horse, for example – because it appears too lofty a dream?

We need to start watching more of their films, going to their gigs and reading their books. We need to get past the idea that creative talent is such a rare find here.

And we need to continue to put our money where our mouths are.

Sadly, even when Singaporeans hail the successes of other Singaporeans, it is often only lip service.

After Ilo Ilo’s international winning streak, Facebook was flooded with excited posts from people from all walks of life about how pleased they were about the film flying Singapore’s flag high on the global map.

That enthusiasm barely translated to box-office numbers, which means that many people did not bother to watch it in the cinemas.

After the film had a second run following the Golden Horse Awards, its total gross was $1.2 million – healthy for a local film, but far from the $12.6 million that Hollywood’s Iron Man 3 earned as the top-grossing film in Singapore that year.

It is not even close to the $7.9 million earned by Ah Boys To Men 2 (2013), the highest-grossing local film to date.

When Hartono releases the album he is working on, we hope everyone who wants a selfie with him now, will also want to buy the album.

Things are improving – the home-grown success of local music acts such as The Sam Willows and Gentle Bones is encouraging. Both have a strong following among local millennials.

Similarly, last year’s anthology film 7 Letters – which comprises seven stories from seven local directors – received good word-of-mouth and general hype online led to snaking ticket queues and multiple sold-out sessions.

Graphic novelist Sonny Liew’s The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye saw a massive spike in sales last year after controversy broke out online following the news that the National Arts Council revoked a $8,000 publishing grant over “sensitive content”.

Here is hoping that the trend towards supporting local talents becomes a habit.

As much as we should reward local talents for their results, we should strive to nurture and support them during their journey to stardom.

This article was first published on November 23, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

The Polynesian island of Motonui is starting to rot, but its people are afraid to venture out on the oceans to find a new land.

But Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho), daughter of the tribal chief, is eager to travel across the waters to find a mythical island with powers that can save her own from destruction.

Along the way, she befriends demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson).

This Disney princess has no prince and the film is all the better because of it.

Even though Walt Disney Animation Studios has been turning fairy- tale tropes on their heads for a while now, the titular Moana here is its strongest and most independent female role model yet.

The studio’s last princess movie, Frozen (2013), was about Anna and Elsa’s sisterly bond rather than their romantic happily-ever-afters.

But Anna was nonetheless distracted by two love interests – first Prince Hans and then iceman Kristoff.

Moana, in contrast, is her own person from start to end – each decision she makes is on her own accord and she answers for every one of them, even when they are wrong.

Disney certainly knows what it is doing here, reaching such comfortably self-aware status that it mocks its own history: In one scene, Maui tells a protesting Moana that if she “wears a dress and has an animal sidekick, you are a princess”.

That she may be – she indeed dons a Polynesian dress and has a silly chicken for a sidekick.

What she is not: a damsel-in- distress like the kind from Cinderella (1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959).

This one braves stormy oceans and battles scary monsters on her own.

Her new friend Maui aids her a little along the way, but this is still Moana’s solo journey of adventure and self-discovery, one rendered in stunning detail.

The glistening, ultra-realistic flowing waters come in all shades of blue and green, and Moana’s gloriously wavy strands of hair bounce independently of one another.

But while Disney breaks ground with a feisty female lead here, it plays much safer story-wise, giving viewers a standard voyage tale which just happens to feature some cute supporting characters (Christmas merchandising alert).

All this is scored to the earworm tune of How Far I’ll Go, which could just be the tune for Disney fans to Let It Go of their Frozen obsession.

This article was first published on November 23, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.