Horror movies are still hip? At least the three directors in Three -- Experiences (三更二), the sequel of well-sold Three (三更) try to believe so. The three segments may not be so scary for those looking for terror sensations. But each tries to be a sophisticated story, rather than a hyper-gory picture.
Box, by Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike, is a visually beautiful story about love and jealousy. Kyoko Hasegawa is a sick, beautiful novelist who obviously carries with her a deep fear about a past of tragedy, which reflects in her constant nightmares of being suffocated with a plastic bag.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MATA ENTERRTAINMENT
Back in her childhood, she and the sister were acrobats in a local circus in northern Japan. The climax of their performances is when the two skinny little girls crouch in two small boxes and their stepfather -- the lead performer -- shoots darts at the boxes.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MATA ENTERRTAINMENT
But whenever the show finishes, the father compliments one sister only, leaving Kyoko in despair.
Dumpling by Fruit Chan (陳果) continues Chan's sarcasm about the poverty gap in Hong Kong society. In the sequence it is darker than his previous films.
Mrs. Lee (Miriam Yeung, 楊千嬅) is a bored housewife of a rich businessman. She finds in the back alleys of Kowloon the most expensive dumpling in Hong Kong.
This segment features the excellent acting of Bai Ling (白靈), the dumpling seller from Shenzhen, China, and the sophisticated cinematography illustrates the delicacy and the interesting process of making the dumplings. But the story behind rejuvenation is too scary and a bit far-fetched.
The South Korean sequence, Cut, features one of the most exaggerated performances among the three. The story is a Catch-22 situation, in which a rich and successful film director and his wife are kidnapped. He is strapped in the corner of the house and she is tied by the piano. The terrorist gives him two choices: to strangle an innocent young stranger the terrorist brings, or to watch his wife have her fingers cut off one by one.
The thrill of the story of course focuses on his choice, also the moments the beautiful wife becomes fingerless.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist