Astro Wah Lai Toi Drama Awards
Saturday, January 08, 2005
The Astro Wah Lai Toi Drama Awards is on now, as I'm blogging. Being a fan of TVB's drama series myself, I find the program rather... entertaining. "Entertain" is very subjective - let's see what made me burst out laughing, and what truly earned my admiration. As of *this* sentence, Flora Chan is belting out a tune - live telecast from Wisma MCA, Jalan Ampang. By the way, I always compose offline before I log into Blogger's servers.
The program kicked off with the introduction of several Hong Kong stars, plus our local beauty queen (crowned 2004 Miss Chinese Universe), 19-year old (20 this year, I suppose) Kepongian (or Kepongite, for that matter) Li Shiqi. Among the stars were Nancy Sit, Flora Chan, Jessica Hester Hsuan and Roger Kwok. They formed a line (about 8 of them, I forgot how many were there), and I immediately exclaimed, "Hah?! So few of them only ah?!".
The whole show (as far as I've noticed) wasn't spectacular. Firstly, the venue. I'd expected it to be held in the Arena of Stars in Genting, where Astro has organised numerous events there. This time around, I guess they were not expecting a huge turn-out. As the camera captured images of the hall, I noticed many empty seats. Having a not-so-big hall was bad enough, and the empty seats? They certainly could've done more to publicize this event. But then again, with the poor attendance of the stars... Maybe it's worth watching it from TV.
With each award (well, almost), the winner is announced by dancers, who held up a placard, where the winner's name is written on it. The dancers would dance for a coupla seconds, 10 seconds the most, before showing what's written on the placard to the audience. It made Astro such a cheapskate - the placards are easily done with cardboards and, the characters are, at most, printed using a laser jet printer (at most!). When the dancers first appeared, I thought, "Whaddahell?" Well, something different, you might say. Creativity, right?
Next, the awards. Remember the Oscar Statue? A coveted gold statuette man standing with a sword between his legs (hey, I'm not kidding!)? FYI, each of the statues were made up of tin, copper and antimony - and some other "secret" ingredients. The Astro's Wah Lai Toi Drama Awards were absolutely funny-looking. They seemed to be made out of cheap plastic, bulky, not to mention the weird design. Picture a sphere, slightly smaller than a sepak takraw, with four legs. On top of it, a pair of antennae sticked out - with a sphere (like a pingpong ball) at the end of each antenna. The colour? Transparent, blue - yes, you can see through. Picture a transparent Nokia casing - something like that.
In the show, I admired the stars greatly. Roger Kwok, Jessica Hester Hsuan and Nancy Sit performed a sketch on stage, it was hilarious - yet good. They were reenacting scenes from the ever-so-touching Square Pegs, in which Jessica and Roger starred. They were really good, but you might not be able to appreciate the sketch if you hadn't watched Square Pegs. It's brilliant - it won Roger the best male actor in 2003. Also noted was Charmaine Sheh's appearance. Charmaine Sheh? OMG...
*Drools...*
She was not in the stars line-up at the beginning of the show, and her sudden appearance was unexpected (at least by me). There were also performances by the local singers (former participants of Astro Talent Quest), singing to the soundtracks of the various drama series. Among the award presenters was Siti Nurhaliza, who did a very good job on her part. Despite not understanding the language, she spoke with confidence in Malay, English, and Chinese too. She also sang a Chinese song, Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xin (the moon represents my heart), which was credible.
By the way, as the show is approaching an end, I noticed that Flora Chan had bagged quite a number of awards - I hope she doesn't mind the bulky, ugly awards. Of course, to any performer, it's always an honour to be awarded - the prize doesn't matter, I suppose. Many award recipients couldn't come, so the awards had to be "kept" by a representative. The show hasn't ended, and I couldn't hold myself from posting this entry. Gee.
Did you watch the Astro Wah Lai Toi Drama Awards?
By the way...
Pitt and Aniston Announce Split
In a joint statement issued by Pitt's publicist, the two actors said they had decided to formally separate after seven years together. (Story here.)
Syndicate this site
