A number of questions spring to mind when considering The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Can the movies possibly get any faster or more furious? What exactly is the Tokyo Drift? And does Al Gore know what we can do to stop it?
Drifting, as it turns out, is the ancient Japanese art of gunning your hot rod through hairpin turns in such a manner that it rockets sideways while heavy metal music thunders on the soundtrack. In the film it is practiced by a gang of aspiring yakuza gearheads who hang out in parking structures taking mobile phone pictures of their custom paint jobs.
Tokyo Drift is about all of the rapid, peevish things that happen when the American bad boy Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) arrives on their scene. As in the previous two installments of the Fast and Furious franchise, this largely consists of macho tantrums, vying for the girl, intense vehicular mayhem and high-octane homoeroticism.
The director, Justin Lin, proves that his overrated indie debut Better Luck Tomorrow was a Hollywood calling card, while the writer, Chris Morgan, delivers none of the B-movie kicks that made Cellular such a gas. The rapper Bow Wow co-stars with product placements by Nissan.
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