Roll the credit
Cinema, with its big budget blockbusters, once ruled the entertainment world, but actors - and audiences - are increasingly favouring the small screen. Mathew Scott meets the cast of HBO Asia's latest offering, Grace
It turns out the revolution is being televised, after all.
The past decade has seen a shift in the entertainment world's creative paradigm. Television was once seen as a place where those who had failed to reach the promised land of cinema were condemned to work in relative obscurity. These days, by contrast, a whole host of award-winners, box-office champions and art-house darlings are fine-tuning their skills on shows crafted for what was once rather unfairly labelled the "idiot box".
Led by Oscar winners Kevin Spacey (star of TV series ) and Matthew McConaughey (one of the two leads in ), and Academy Award nominees Clive Owen ( ), Woody Harrelson (the other ) and Jane Campion (who was behind the New Zealand-set series ) - and backed by "non-traditional" broadcasters such as HBO and, more recently, Netflix - television productions are increasingly becoming the moving pictures everyone is talking about. And who wouldn't want to immerse themselves in hours of plot development when cinemas are dominated by comic-inspired actioners with wafer-thin plotlines and cardboard-cutout characters who come and go in 90 minutes?
It has taken a little longer for the penny to drop in Asia but the possibilities modern television offers are slowly but surely being explored. Last year saw the film noirish 10-parter launched as "HBO Asia's first original series". A Singapore-Australia co-production, it collected talent from across the region, casting the ever-reliable Joan Chen ( alongside Australian Don Hany (previously seen in award-winning drama/comedy TV series ) and scene-stealing Singaporean Chin Han, and placed them slap bang in the middle of the tumult of the Lion City in the 1960s.
The reviews, however, were mixed. Maybe the HBO series we are used to watching - groundbreakers such as and - have spoilt us for choice, because despite fabulous costuming and art direction, leaves something to be desired when it comes to what really matters: the drama.
Even , a state-run newspaper not noted for criticism of anything remotely Singaporean, was left wondering "what if?"
