Chris Chong Chan Fui Director of the Movie "Karaoke"
Clocking in at 75 minutes, the Malaysian film “Karaoke” is scheduled to be screened at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival this month. It’s directed by Chris Chong Chan Fui and this is his first full length film.
Best we can tell, the plot runs something like this:
The lead character is Betik. He snubbed his dad’s funeral a few years back which of course did not sit well with his mother. She felt betrayed by has absence. Betik decides he wants to turn his life around and build a future back home with his mother.
Betik takes on a day job shooting karaoke videos. At night, he tries to help his mother at the family’s karaoke bar downstairs. This is a karaoke hotspot where the local Indian estate workers, their families, and the Malay Muslim villagers next door gather and sing. It’s here that Betik meets a girl who seduces him with a future that he had dreamed about.
But nobody is as naïve as they seem and everybody wants something.
A story of love, betrayal, manipulation, deception and redemption. What more could you ask for in a movie about karaoke? Uhhh…maybe some karaoke? Have no idea if there is much singing, and since this is a Malaysian film, chances are they are not singing “Rhinestone Cowboy”. But we guess it’s another example of the continued popularity of karaoke throughout the world.
If you were a KJ in the Georgia hamlet of Lilburn two years ago, you were flat out of luck. The city government banned karaoke in any place that sold alcohol. Because they felt like karaoke increased crime, the city fathers wanted no part of it and gave karaoke the boot. Even though booze and karaoke go together like hot sauce and chicken wings, bar owners were forced to drop karaoke from their establishments.
Now, two years later, it’s back. “Lilburn has matured, and we want to keep it vibrant,” Mayor Diana Preston told The Atlanta Journal Constitution. “Our focus is keeping our business community strong and that means a diversity of businesses.”
So sing your heart out, Lilburn. A two year karaoke ban is enough to make anyone appreciate your newly won freedom to belt down a drink and belt out a song.
Two Vietnamese karaoke singers trying to stop themselves from dancing
In a move that has a lot of citizens of Vietnam scratching their heads, the government is proposing to ban dancing in karaoke clubs. Karaoke is enormously popular in Vietnam, but so are prostitution and drug use. By stopping the dancing, the government hopes to - yup, you guessed it - cut down on prostitution and drug use.
The governmental thinking seems to go something like this: people who take the designer drug ‘ecstasy’ like to dance and hang out with prostitutes so by banning dancing the problem should be solved.
“Karaoke parlors are for singing, not for dancing,” the newspaper Thanh Nien (Young People) quoted Le Anh Tuyen, a ministry official, as saying.
This has led some skeptical observers to wonder exactly what would constitute dancing, and who would monitor it. Can you imagine singing karaoke standing ramrod straight without moving around a bit? Violators would be fined, although the amount is not yet specified.
The proposed regulations would also extend the hours of karaoke parlors and dance clubs from midnight until 2 a.m. - but only those located in luxury hotels. That provision appears to be intended to attract more foreign tourists in the face of the global economic downturn. Maybe they’re hoping to encourage foreign tourists to support the local economy by spending money on drugs and prostitutes.
Kyle Drinkwine's Police Photo
In what surely must take the cake for supreme irony, a man named Kyle Drinkwine has been ordered not to consume alcohol as part of his probation for beating up a karaoke singer. Drinkwine, a 24 year old from Wisconsin, was also sentenced to 60 days in jail and 3 years of probation.
The short story, which is really just about another drunk doing his thing, is that Drinkwine criticized the karaoke singing of the patron of a bar, who was belting out “Holy Diver,” the title cut on Dio’s 1983 debut album (Dio is fronted by Ronnie James Dio, the former lead singer for Black Sabbath). Drinkwine then followed the singer to another bar and attacked him.
If you are really into the whole “America’s Most Wanted” thing, the Smoking Gun has the police report on Drinkwine here along with more information about his arrest last November.
Joko Kendil Karaoke Train
The state owned railway company in Jakarta, India, has just announced it is going to refurbish a train called the “Joko Kendil”. It was built in 1938 and was named after a boy who probably got a lot of teasing in middle school because his body was shaped like a casserole pot. We’re having a hard time imagining that.
Anyway, if you have a spare $5,000 you can rent this tricked out train and sing karaoke all the way from Jakarta to the town of Surabaya. It’s going to have all the modern conveniences, including sofas and LCD screens for singing karaoke to the clickety-clack of the train wheels. “Chattanooga Chu-Chu” anyone?