Movie lovers, rejoice!

Though the period between summer blockbusters and year-end blockbusters is traditionally a lull period, it's a great time for film festivals in Singapore. Tickets are already on sale for the 20th Israeli Film Festival, and I'm happy to say there's a LGBT interest film, The Secrets (trailer), in its lineup.

For this week though, our pick is Magic Mike where Channing Tatum leads a host of hunks in a male striptease and lapdance act. We hear that Tatum (who produced this film) was a real-life stripper before he became an actor, which might explain why its sequences and costumes seem so real...

The Silent War is a nitty-gritty spy-vs-spy thriller set in the post-civil war period where the Generalissimo was feared as a man with a plan for taking back China. Tony Leung stars as a espionage prodigy on whom China's future rests. The question though is whether the PRC-produced film will better the Taiwanese-USA spy thriller Lust, Caution which also starred Tony Leung.

Till next week,

Vernon Chan