Sean Akizuki's East Asian Drama and Movie Blog

You can never kill heroisms, and not all heroes/heroines are martyred. For Filipinos, the first person to come to their minds is Jose Rizal. For Chinoys, perhaps they also think of both Rizal and Anita Mui. Such is the case of the late Anita, who died from cervical cancer complications on December 30, 2003. Anita was only 40 years old when she died. However, Anita's legacy lives on. It's so sad how four years after she died, the BS biopic called Anita Mui Fei was released. Thankfully, I didn't get the chance to watch Anita Mui Fei,  especially with how it portrayed that Anita died on stage in Andy Lau's arms. THAT. NEVER. HAPPENED. The Anita (2021) film was released. What was sanitized was the reality of Anita's bitter childhood . I read through the biographies of both the late Teresa Teng (who died in 1995) and Regine Velasquez-Alcasid -- both of whom came from poor families but had supportive mothers. Anita's mother was actually a CHRONIC GAMBLER.  Anita didn...

I remember watching Anita   (2021) on Disney+ . I had my complaints about how Louise Wong's impersonations of Anita's concert scenes were BLAH ! I discovered a real Mainland China production that was even worse -- it was called Mei Yan Fang Fei in 2007. Anita (2021) created a fictionalized relationship for the late Anita Mui named Goto Yuki. The other one presented a scene where she and Andy Lau supposedly had a romance. However, that's far from reality! Both projects made me wish for a near perfect Anita biopic -- making me imagine if Mei Yan Fang Fei ,   last 2007, was a Taiwanese production. It would've probably tried to stay true like Le Grande Chaumierre Violette  -- perhaps even take notes of Anita's interview about her toxic mother and brothers. I reimagined what if Anita Mui Fei wasn't a Mainland production but a Taiwanese production. They might reduce the budget or the number of episodes. I imagined this what-if scenario, where a faithful retelling of...

It was more than 20 years ago that she died at only 40 years old -- on December 30, 2023. I was looking into the CHALLENGE Of making biopics . After doing some research, it turned out that there were two media based on Anita's life story namely Mei Yan Fang Fei (which was spoken in Mandarin) and Anita (2021) . It turned out that were too many creative liberties. I gave some Louisse Wong from Hong Kong while watching the mini-series on Disney+. Those scenes made me wish that Jolin Cai played the role of Anita ! It turns out that the Anita (2021) film had a lot of creative liberties -- such as creating the fictional character Goto Yuki as Anita's boyfriend. IRL, Anita's two known failed romances are Masahiko Kondo and Vincent Zhao. As I looked into the film, there have been issues like: The creation of the fictional Goto Yuki. Seriously, why are we adding a fictional character to a BIOPIC? The scene where Anita goes to the doctor, who tells her to have some surgery to remove ...

Today Online I wrote about how I wanted Jolin Tsai to play the late actress Anita Mui . Was it because Jolin didn't speak fluent Cantonese that she couldn't be used? I only got more familiar with Anita's music after she died. Now, I recall I heard Anita's name when she already had cervical cancer. It was in 2000 when Anita's sister Ann died. Jolin also has a sister, referred to as Jo Tsai (Tsai Minmen), who almost looks like Ann herself -- although I doubt that's her real name. A sad reality is that the circumstances of the Mui sisters and the Tsai sisters were too different. The Anita film had one emotional scene. Ann was seen talking about her diagnosis with cervical cancer. Even worse, Anita lost contact with her nephews -- Pan Wenhao and Pan Jinhao. Both were seven and five when their mother Ann died. However, Ann's husband Pan Lide (Lap Tak Poon in Cantonese) took the children to Canada. Sadly, Anita died without being able to see her nephews. I feel li...

What I found weird was that F4 led me to listen to the music of the late Teresa Teng. F4 was also the reason why I became a fan of Jolin Tsai -- once dubbed the Britney of Taiwan though I prefer to call her Madonna of Taiwan. Take note that I have nothing against Louise Wong and she still did the part well. However, I felt that someone else could've played the late actress. That actress is Taiwanese actress Jolin Tsai.  It was because of Jolin Tsai that I learned to appreciate Anita Mui's music. I only listened to Anita's songs after she died on December 30, 2023. It was my time to appreciate more of the Cantonese language and its songs.  Before that, I saw Jolin Tsai perform the song "Love Love Love" on MYX -- which is a cover of "Stop Stop Stop" by Nu Virgo. It was easy to see why Jolin was compared to Britney. However, the more I saw her, the more I thought about Madonna instead. There were several other songs, but her song "Love Love Love" ...