Tsai Ming-liang (
Prior to the film's departure for Venice, Homegreen Films, Tsai's own production company, has decided to open a one-week screening in Taipei from today until next Thursday, with screening each day at 7pm at Galaxy Cinema. The film will be officially released in Taiwan at the end of the year.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn makes use of many of Tsai's favorite actors such as Lee Kang-sheng (
PHOTO COURTESY OF HOMEGREEN FILMS
The story of Goodbye, Dragon Inn take place in an old movie theater, a few hours before it is destined to close for good. On this very last day the theater plays a martial arts classic, King Hu's (
Two old men appear at the theater, shocking the Japanese man, for they are Miao Tien and Shih Chun (
Tsai, with his dark sense of humor, pays tribute to the old movie theaters that were part of his childhood days. "When I heard that the Fuho Theater [in Taipei] was to close, I had an impulse to shoot a film about it. Now I look back, it was actually the theater calling to me, saying `come and film me!'" Tsai said. The theater makes an appearance in Tsai's What Time is It There?
London-based film critic and scholar Tony Ryans describes the film as "what may be Tsai's most brilliant metaphor yet." "A lament for the death of feelings framed as a valediction to an entire era of Chinese cinema and an obituary to film-going in general.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn will be Tsai's second entry in the Venice Film Festival. The last time Tsai joined the event was with his second film Vive L'Amour (
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
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
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s