Having worked as second- and third-unit director on the Matrix trilogy and Dark City, Bruce Hunt is no stranger to inspired and
stylish productions. But whereas those films managed to inject new life into tired territory, The Cave, his first effort as director, fails to generate anything resembling innovation.
A group of ace cave-divers are flown in to investigate an intricate maze system discovered beneath the ruins of an ancient Romanian abbey. Without much explanation the gung-ho team -- and two scientists -- are lowered uncomfortably deep into the earth. It doesn't take long to learn that they are not alone, and are soon being preyed upon by what look like cheap creature rejects from the Alien films, except these demonlike mutations can fly and use sonar to see in the dark.
What is left of the plot amounts to guessing who will be killed off next out of the token Asian and African-American guys, the girl in the skimpy outfit, the sexy female scientist with an English accent and the testosterone-pumped combative brothers. Not that it matters much -- the characters are so colorless and underdeveloped that their deaths certainly won't be mourned.
As utterly formulaic as the film may be, the elements for an edge-of-the-seat crowd-pleaser are, in theory, all present: a closed-off environment ideal for creating no-one-can-hear-you-scream suspense; stimulating underwater and wall-climbing action; exotic settings, shot on location in Bucharest and the Yucatan; and bloodthirsty villains.
It's a shame, a travesty even, that the filmmakers seem to have forgotten that in order to keep viewers from contemplating the absurdity of what they are watching the action must move at a pace that doesn't allow for it. But not only is the film dreadfully dull -- every time something potentially exciting does occur -- the scenes are so muddled and chaotic that it is impossible to make out what is happening.
As the vaunted leader of the expedition, Cole Hauser attempts his best Vin Diesel impersonation but fails to deliver even at this rudimentary level.
The rest of the actors turn in performances right out of the casting room, as if they were reading the lines from the appallingly bad script for the very first time, embarrassed to
discover that it's all been done before. And will indeed be done again. Let's just hope it won't be in a Cave sequel, a possibility the film's ending distressingly leaves open.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated