An American Haunting is scary all right, but not for anyone in the audience. Nor does anything in it quake the boots of Rachel Hurd-Wood, who, in the role of Betsy Bell, pretends to be slapped around, moaned at and generally terrorized by an invisible ghost. No, the terror here is suffered exclusively by Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek; their participation can be explained only by some unfathomable deal with Satan.
It is possible, given his hairdo, makeup and costuming, that Sutherland simply wandered over on his lunch break from Pride and Prejudice” and was tricked into the role of John Bell Sr, patriarch of a beleaguered clan of 19th-century Tennesseans. After a land dispute with a neighbor ruins his reputation, John finds his house visited by a mysterious spirit with a penchant for pulling hair and knocking over furniture.
Lucy (Spacek), his wife, is powerless to stop this supernatural silliness until, in the surprise denouement, she isn't. At which point An American Haunting exchanges bottom-barrel metaphysics for even cheaper psychology.
Written and directed by Courtney Solomon, best unknown as the man who brought Dungeons and Dragons to the big screen, An American Haunting purports to be based on a documented event, although most of its inspiration has been drawn from the empty well of The Exorcist and its progeny.
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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