Crazy Stone 瘋狂的石頭
Directed by Ning Hao (寧浩)
Hailed as China's answer to Hollywood's Ocean's Seven, Crazy Stone, directed by 29-year-old director Ning Hao, is a fast-paced black comedy that is part of Andy Lau's (劉德華) First First Cuts project aimed to cultivating a new generation of filmmakers in Asia. The film begins with a group of handicraft workers in Chongqing discovering a piece of precious jade at their factory, which is about to go out of business. In trying to sell the jade to raise money, the factory finds itself the target of thieves and a complex battle over the jade ensues.
Exiled 放逐
Directed by Johnnie To (杜琪鋒)
Two-time Golden Horse winner Jonnie To returns with the highly entertaining, action-packed gangster flick that mixes tragedy and deadpan comedy into To's visually eloquent and stylized storytelling. Set on the eve of Macau's handover to China in 1999, the film sees a number of hitmen entangled in gangland's complex codes of honor and chivalry, the result of which is a climatic blood-letting in a hotel lobby.
Silk 詭絲
Directed by Su Chao-pin (蘇照彬)
Taiwan's only representative in the major award category, Silk is an international collaboration sci-fi and ghost by story by the local up-and-coming filmmaker Su Chao-pin. The movie begins with an international team of scientists, led by Hashimoto, using a special device called a "Menger Sponge" to capture a boy ghost in a rundown Taipei apartment. To solve the mystery of the child's identity and how he became a ghost, Hashimoto recruits local police force special agent Ye Chi-tung (Chang Chen, 張震), who accepts the mission to learn more about the afterlife. Meanwhile, Hashimoto quietly carries out his own secret plan to achieve immortality, and in so doing, inadvertently unleashes a malevolent spirit that is determined to hunt down everyone involved in the project.
Perhaps Love 如果,愛
Directed by Peter Chan Ho-sun (陳可辛)
Perhaps Love is a musical filled with spectacular Broadway-style numbers and a return to director Chan's favorite subject: love. It's a love triangle wrapped in a movie within a movie punctuated by affecting music and love songs. Hong Kong actor Lin Jian-dong (Takeshi Kaneshiro, 金城武) arrives in Shanghai to star in a musical by director Nie Wen (Jacky Cheung, 張學友) and finds out the film's leading lady Sun Na (Zhou Xun, 周迅) was his childhood love in Beijing a decade previously and left him in order to seek fame and fortune. Old passions are rekindled, providing an opportunity for high-jinks and reflection.
After This Our Exile 父子
Directed by Tam Ka-ming (譚家明)
Returning to the director's chair after 17 years, veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Tam walked away with top honors at this year's Tokyo International Film Festival for After This Our Exile, which also made Aaron Kwok (郭富城) a nominee for best leading male actor award and the nine-year-old actor Goum Ian Iskandar (吳景滔) for best supporting actor and best new performer honors at the Golden Horse. The film revolves around a gambler father whose hot temper and violent outbursts make his wife run away from home, leaving their son in the hands of the troubled dad. Forced by the father to become a petty thief to pay off gambling debts, the kid eventually ends up in a juvenile detention center. Ten years later, the now grown-up son returns to his hometown, and renews his connection with his father.
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