The shameless marketing of Hollywood schlock reaches a new low in the print advertisements for Pulse, which feature a blurb declaring it “unlike any horror film you've seen before or will ever see!” Leaving aside the abundant precedent for such barrel-bottom junk, and the fact that you'll surely see more of its kind, the film is a remake — a remake! — of the 2001 cult hit Kairo by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
It is true that this new Pulse is nothing like the original, although it does mimic the plot fundamentals (ghosts seep through the Internet; teenagers freak out; the world comes to an end) and several visual ideas (spooky streaming video; bright red tape used to ward off spirits). Gone, however, are any traces of Kurosawa's creepy minimalism and conceptual rigor, the combination of which suggested any movie Michelangelo Antonioni might have made were he reincarnated as a Japanese horror maestro with an AOL account.
The essential mystery of Pulse has nothing to do with diabolical text messaging and what Mattie (Kristen Bell), our bimbo heroine, can do to stop it, but rather what took this remake so long. Bob and Harvey Weinstein acquired Kairo when its technophobic premise still felt timely, and then suppressed its theatrical release so that Wes Craven could make a remake. (Last year Magnolia Pictures acquired the rights to the original and released it.)
PHOTOS COURTESY OF APPLAUSE
Craven (now credited as co-writer) has since dropped out, replaced by an unknown named Jim Sonzero, whose witless direction feels understandably exhausted, given the circumstances. Perhaps the delay was the result of the producers' working up the nerve to demand that posters of their other movies (Chicago, Sin City) be prominently displayed in the production design.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50