Filmmakers take on the rich and powerful

A full-page advertisement for crime thriller Overheard 3 in the Hong Kong Economic Times was cleverly designed to be barely distinguishable from an IPO ad, using the name of a company that features in the movie. Observant readers will have noticed that among the eight mugshots in the advert, titled 'Congratulations to N.T. Land Group's new share launch', were actors Sean Lau Ching-wan and Alex Fong Chung-Sun. Yet the blurring of fiction and reality did not stop there. The portrait of Lau, wearing sunglasses, bore an uncanny resemblance to Heu ng Yee Kuk's Sheung Shui rural leader Hau Chi-keung. Meanwhile, Fong's bob haircut was reminiscent of the signature style of businessman and former triad leader Kwok Wing-hung, aka Shanghai Boy, who once caused a stir by attending a dinner involving aides of Leung Chun-ying before CY's election as chief executive in 2012. Filmmakers have been criticised for their efforts to avoid upsetting the rich and powerful. We can only wait and see whether the advertisement was a brave attempt to prove their critics wrong …or if it was just another gimmick.

With three years to go before the 2017 chief executive election, political figures tend to be reluctant to speak their mind on who might - or might not - make a good leader. Not so for former civil servant Rachel Cartland, who made it clear she felt New People's Party leader Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee was not suitable. Ip was the security minister who spearheaded the ill-fated national security legislation effort; she resigned in 2003 after 500,000 people took to the streets and forced the government to shelve the bill. At the Foreign Correspondents' Club on Tuesday, Cartland was asked to comment on Ip's prospects. "Although I believe in forgiveness as a principle in personal life, I have to say I think it's a dictum for governments and so on, if people have failed, it's not a frightfully good idea to then give them too many other chances," Cartland said. "There are other names of people who've failed really quite significantly in the post-handover years, and yet for strange reasons keep getting resurrected, talked up as potential chief executives and so on. I think that's a basic mistake that we shouldn't allow."