"Rated PG-13, directed by Michael Lehmann, with Josh Harnett (Matt Sullivan), Shannyn Sossman (Erica Sutton), Paulo Costanzo (Ryan), Adam Trese (John Sullivan), running time: 94 minutes.
Matt Sullivan is a 20-something dot-commer recovering from a devastating breakup. Still missing his girlfriend, he swears off any and all sexual activity for the 40 days of Lent in order to clear his mind. Now, playing second-guess the screenwriter, if you think what follows is 90 minutes of boner jokes, temptations from beautiful women, ribbing from frat-house friends followed by the mushy-gushy discovery of true love, you should put pen to paper and write a better story than Michael Lehmann has filmed here. The problem with 40 Days and 40 Nights is that a good looking guy, who has droves of beautiful women begging to have sex with him and the woman of his dreams falling in love with him is supposed to elicit our sympathy because he's vowed not to touch any of them for a little more than a month. Please!
PHOTO COURTESY OF UIP
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and