Frankie Lam and Kenix Kwok’s Daughter Is A Natural Performer
The upcoming film The Merger <我們停戰吧！>, starring Frankie Lam (林文龍), Rachel Lam (林熹瞳), and Patrick Tam (譚耀文), held its red carpet premiere this weekend. The movie is produced by Global Saga, a new movie company founded by Tony Wong (黃玉郎) and Rachel Lam.
Frankie, one of the investors in the film, brought his wife Kenix Kwok (郭可盈) and their five-year-old daughter Tania with him to the premiere. Kenix said they did not want Tania to attend as she had school the following day, but Tania insisted to go to support her father. Surprisingly, Tania appeared confident and cheerful when facing the reporters on the red carpet. She even walked up to her father and kissed him.
Kenix’s last acting project before retiring was the 2009 TVB drama Born Rich <富貴門>. Asking if she would consider making a comeback for Frankie, Kenix admitted, “Yes, as long as I come across a good script.” Will Frankie try to convince his wife to make a comeback? Frankie laughed and said, “She does not need me to convince her.”
Considering that his daughter did not show any signs of public anxiety during the premiere, would Frankie allow his daughter to enter the industry? Frankie said, “Definitely not now. At least wait until she’s finished school.” Commenting that many children of former actors are making their debuts, Frankie said, “But they are all much older!”
Kenix said Tania is a natural performer, sharing that she was able to recite all of Frankie’s dialogue in his acting performances. Although Tania has not talked about wanting to act, sheadmitted that Tania would be quite talented in that department.
Speaking about The Merger, is Frankie confident about the box office? He said, “We can’t predict that, but I am very happy that the film has won so many awards. There were positive responses from the pre-release audiences; some said they would buy another ticket to watch it again.”
What about winning Best Picture at the Hong Kong Film Awards? Frankie said, “There is strong competition. We’ll still be very happy if we just receive a nomination.” Kenix added, “Having good word-of-mouth is the best encouragement.”
Source: On.cc
This article is written by Addy for JayneStars.com.
Yeah! Good to see that the mainstream media (i.e. on.cc) is finally reporting on The Merger (though sadly the focus is more on gossip about the artists than on the movie itself). And honestly, stop asking about box office receipts already — with the movie being a small budget independent film that HK distributors wouldn’t even give the time of day to until it racked up 27 major awards at international film festivals, I’m sure the cast and crew are already happy that the movie actually gets to open in HK now. Also, with all the good word of mouth and positive reviews that the movie has gotten already, how it does at the box office is really secondary at this point.
I for one will continue to support the movie and the cast. It’s refreshing to see a newbie screenwriter (Rachel Lam) get recognition for writing a good script and a new-to-the-movies director (Jimmy Luk, who is a TV series director but never directed a movie before) also get recognition for his work. Definitely looking forward to this movie — been waiting to watch it for months already, especially after reading the story behind how the movie came about plus its indirect ‘connection’ to HKTV….
i have seen rachel lam’s hktv drama hidden face and night shift,two best hktv drama in my opinion. espesially night shift i like the style and the storyline,its really a special one. all the actors and acteresses did it well in their. although rachel’s role is limited i see her acting is very good for a newcomer,i didnt know she is also a scriptwriter. now i will go to see if this movie is worth for 27 awards,lol.
@kolo I don’t feel that Hidden Faces and Night Shift were ‘the best’ HKTV dramas, as other dramas were better in my opinion (my choices of ‘the best’ HKTV series would be The Menu, To Be or Not To Be, and The Election). With that said however, even though I didn’t think those 2 were ‘the best’, they still absolutely deserve a spot amongst the top in terms of favorite HKTV series out of the 16 they aired.
If you liked Night Shift, good news for you is that the production crew and director are the same ones who made that series (director Jimmy Luk was the creative director – aka producer — for Night Shift as well as To Be or Not To Be) and some of the cast is the same too (Frankie Lam, Rachel Lam, Kathy Yuen, Samuel Kwok).
Actually, Rachel wasn’t a scriptwriter prior to this — The Merger is her first script. After she wrote the script, she and Frankie happened to be filming Hidden Faces together and hearing that he was interested in starting his own production company, she asked him if he would be willing to invest in her script. He was reluctant at first but after reading the script, he agreed. And since they were working for HKTV at the time, they decided to invite HKTV people to participate in the series (out of the main cast, the only 2 artists not affiliated with HKTV are Patrick Tam and Pinky Cheung). It was definitely a gamble from the beginning and the path from preparation to filming to distribution was difficult due to all the obstacles they encountered — but it’s paying off now, which I’m happy to see.
By the way, the official release of the movie in HK theaters for general audiences is on September 17th.
@llwy12 thank you for your inside information,i hope this movie will be a succes. hk movie-world needs more creative talented ppl. they should stop to milk a succcesfull movie/drama again and again and produce big budget garbage with big stars.
@kolo I agree. That’s why I’m happy to see the success that the movie has gotten so far, since it’s one of the rare 100% local HK productions that has absolutely no big names associated with it whatsoever (no big name artists in front of the screen, no big name director/production people, no big name investors/backing), yet was still able to garner accolades and international awards (which, in my opinion, no matter how small the film festival is, getting international recognition is better than getting a biased HK award). I’m not even expecting for the movie to get big box office or even get any type of nomination at HKFA (since HKFA is really not that good at recognizing independent ‘arthouse’ type films)—just being able to beat the odds and come this far in terms of recognition and open to a larger audience at home in HK, that’s already reason enough to celebrate.
Big fan of Patrick Tam, too bad I can’t catch it here in Canada. Hopefully it will be available on torrent soon. 🙂
@anon Yup, I’m hoping it will be available here in the U.S. too! 🙂
Oh, also, Patrick won a Best Actor award from one of the international Film Festivals for this movie (even though his screen time is technically more supporting actor) — his first BA, I believe, and at an international level too! Definitely happy for him as well as the rest of the cast and crew, since they received a few other ‘major’ awards too out of the 27 — including Best Actor (Frankie got one as well), Best Actress (Rachel), Best Supporting Actor (Patrick), Best Screenplay (Rachel), Best Director (Jimmy), Best Picture, etc.
@llwy12
Thanks for the info.
Is there more info. on this movie?
Miss seeing Kenix in a TVB series. She was such a good actress!
@happybi Not sure if there was specific info you were looking for. There’s actually quite a bit of info on the movie that came out over the past couple months, it’s just scattered all over the place (most of the details about the movie are mentioned throughout random interviews with the cast on other stuff). Let me go dig up the preview trailers for it – there are a few versions out there, plus an interview clip with the main leads. There are also a bunch of articles and interviews as well as critic’s reviews (from industry people as well as ordinary citizens) that the artists reposted to their Weibo and/or Facebook. Oh, also, the MV for the movie’s theme song was released last week – the lyrics for the song were written by Rachel Lam and she sings the song too (musical arrangement was by Kong Fai, whom most will probably recognize as one of the musical choreographers for HKTV’s series). Rachel also has a pretty detailed post on her blog explaining how the theme song came about and why she ended up singing it.
Also, just to clarify in case there was any confusion – Kenix is actually NOT in the movie. She attended the premiere to support her husband (who is one of the movie’s investors/executive producers as well as the male lead) and also has been helping him promote the movie on Weibo.
@happybi Here’s some more info about the film: http://llsmusings.blogspot.com/2015/09/info-on-new-hk-independent-film-merger.html
Also, here’s the link to Global Saga’s Youtube page. There’s some great stuff on here, including trailers, “making of” clips, video of various events including the start of filming and also celebratory dinners. Oh and there are also “fun” clips where various artists (Catherine Chau, Zac Koo, Noelle Leung, Shek Sau, Alan Luk, Leung Kin Ping, etc. plus non-HKTV artists) give their thoughts on the movie as well as have some fun with the movie’s Chinese title.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFzBZ5bIRivXLpt6MpunxhQ
Kenix looks really good for her age. 😀
I miss actresses like Anita Yuen, Kenix & Ada Choi.