Life Style

Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans burst onto the action scene with The Raid (2011) and The Raid 2 (2014), a bone-crushing brace of visceral Indonesian martial arts films that propelled its leading men to international stardom.His new film, Havoc, stars Tom Hardy and trades the sweaty streets of Jakarta for a gritty unnamed city on the United States’ east coast in the midst of a blood-soaked gang war.Shooting the film in the UK was a gruelling process stalled by the Covid-19 pandemic, union strikes and clashing schedules.But Havoc arrives on Netflix on April 25, with an international cast including Timothy Olyphant, Jessie Mei Li, Sunny Pang and Yeo Yann Yann.Speaking to the Post, Evans says Havoc is his love letter to the so-called heroic bloodshed film genre – which came out of Hong Kong and o...

According to research firm Statista, Instagram has more than 2 billion monthly active users. Upon scrolling the app, it is clear that Instagrammers are wild about food, food, food.Instagram users eat with their eyes, and many foodies who post videos and photos know one thing: social media does not demand perfection – when it comes to food, at least.Instead, the focus is on authenticity, on getting a glimpse of real life, and there is no such thing as perfection when it comes to photographing things like pasta, burgers and salads.Nevertheless, a certain amount of planning is involved in creating food content. This can be split into two parts: the cooking of a dish, and the staging of it for the camera. Finally, with a view to future social media posts, there should be some running theme or ...

Christiaan Stoop, the executive chef of three-Michelin-star Taian Table Shanghai, takes over the Mandarin Bar + Grill in the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong hotel for three days from April 24.The Dutch chef is known for serving tasting menus that blend French technique with global influences, such as pairing Hokkaido scallops with Iberico pork, and infusing delicate desserts with Chinese teas. He was awarded two knives, signifying “world class” status, at The Best Chef Awards in 2024.On the tasting menu (HK$2,888/US$370) in Hong Kong will be signature dishes such as sea urchin on sourdough with brown butter; torched Carabinero prawns with sea asparagus and kumquat kosho, a Japanese seasoning; as well as confit toothfish with scampi and wild fennel in bouillabaisse sauce.It is a menu that spea...

Chinatowns are often portrayed as gritty underworlds riddled with prostitution, gambling and drug trafficking. Some of this is rooted in truth, but that unfair depiction is largely the result of rampant xenophobia and cultural ignorance, especially in the West.In a series of articles, the Post explores the historical and social significance of major Chinatowns around the world and the communities that shape them.New York has such an established Chinese population that the city is home to multiple Chinatowns.The original, in Lower Manhattan, is one of the oldest and biggest Chinese enclaves in the United States.Pell Street in Lower Manhattan Chinatown in 1979. Photo: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesThe neighbourhood’s population was estimated to be more than 100,000 at its peak in the s...

Carolina Lasso’s first panic attack came at a company-wide meeting, right before her scheduled presentation. She had given many similar talks about her marketing team’s accomplishments. When her name was called this time, she could not speak.“I felt a knot in my throat,” she says. “My head, it felt like it was inside a bubble. I could not hear, I could not see, and it felt like an eternity. It was just a few seconds, but it was so profound, and in a way, earth-shattering to me.”Lasso was struggling after a cross-country move followed by a divorce. Her boss suggested mental health leave, a possibility she did not know existed.She worried whether taking time off would affect how her team viewed her or cost her a future promotion, but in the end she took it.“I’m thankful for that opportunity ...

3/5 starsIt is all doom and gloom for the first-time mother at the heart of Montages of a Modern Motherhood, a meticulously observed and wonderfully acted drama but one that may not connect with a wider audience because of its unusual, and almost perverse, resolve to paint new parenthood as a completely joyless experience.It marks the much anticipated return of writer-director Oliver Chan Siu-kuen, whose 2019 hit Still Human is regarded by many as one of the best first features by a Hong Kong filmmaker in the past decade. Yet the new film could not be more different in tone than her heartwarming debut.Chan, who has a five-year-old son herself, has expressed the hope that viewers will develop a better understanding of the postnatal struggles of women through her film. Ironically, Montages o...

With the long public holiday in the rear view, the weather has now progressed from pleasantly warm to bordering on sweltering. This weekend is the perfect time to get out and get healthy, so grab a cold one as Eaton Hong Kong celebrates seven years of its craft bar Flower Years, or celebrate Mostly Harmless’ new zero-alcohol approach to round out the weekend. In between, there’s still time have a proper drink as Jakarta’s Carrots visits The Opposites.Friday, April 25Flower Years 7th Anniversary of Fame Beer PartyFlower Years is the craft beer destination at Eaton Hong Kong. Photo: HandoutWhat: Eaton Hong Kong is looking to celebrate the seventh birthday of its craft beer outpost Flower Years with a bang! As the weather warms, there might be nothing better than starting your weekend with fr...

Classical pianist Igor Levit takes to a London stage this week for an epic musical endurance test directed by performance artist Marina Abramovic.Levit is aiming to be the first person to solo play Vexations, a single sheet of music repeated 840 times, in a public performance expected to last at least 16 hours.The audience at central London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall will witness “silence, endurance, immobility and contemplation, where time ceases to exist”, according to Abramovic on the venue’s website.Written by Erik Satie in 1893, Vexations” is described as “one of classical music’s most simple, yet arduous and demanding works”.Pianist Igor Levit. He has live-streamed a solo performance of Eirk Satie’s Vexations but will be the first person to do so on a concert stage when he plays it in Lo...

“The bread is phenom. The meat packs a punch and the sauce is crazy good.”When the influencer Can F Kennedy gives his ratings for kebab shops on TikTok, it is short and sweet.For more than a year, the 42-year-old has been eating his way through Berlin’s kebab shops, known there as doner stands.“I test all the kebabs in or right next to U-Bahn [underground train] stations all over Berlin,” he tells the camera.TikTok, YouTube and other platforms are home to countless German food critics – some of whom have large followings. Those on the lookout for the best kebabs travel across Germany and further afield.

Daria Van Tyne did not expect to see changes in a population of bacteria taken from her hospital in Pennsylvania, in the United States.Her hunch was wrong, but the results of her recent study point to a potential solution for antibiotic resistance.Bacteria are ancient organisms that have learned advanced evolutionary behaviours over billions of years.The particular strain Van Tyne was studying, Enterococcus faecium, exists in the guts of humans and many animals and is hard to kill.Results of a recent study overseen by Daria Van Tyne point to a potential solution for antibiotic resistance. Photo: researchgate.net“As a researcher, I’m very interested in how the bacteria that make people sick in the hospital are evolving and changing over time,” says Van Tyne, an associate professor of medici...