Open to ridicule ... The Hills Have Eyes 2. They've also got one hell of a cheek, forcing this nonsense on us again: a sequel to last year's remake of the 1978 Wes Craven original. Once again, we are out in the middle of nowhere. It's an eerie, isolated stretch of New Mexico desert where nuclear testing half a century ago created a feral gang of mutant hillbillies hiding out in their own underground network of tunnels, killing innocent incomers and raping the womenfolk to perpetuate their deplorable race.
Now a group of US National Guardspersons, an elite group of the very best looking young men and women, are sent out there to accompany some civilian scientists: they arrive to find the brainiacs all dead and soon they too are being picked off, one by one. One of the group is pigheaded; another is a total babe; another has a temper; another is a bit of an anti-war pinko who thinks the president "lied" — leaving us to wonder who will turn out to have the most gutsy resourcefulness and military grit. The satirical content is more or less forgotten. Pure genre-pic boredom.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF FOX
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
March 2 to March 8 Gunfire rang out along the shore of the frontline island of Lieyu (烈嶼) on a foggy afternoon on March 7, 1987. By the time it was over, about 20 unarmed Vietnamese refugees — men, women, elderly and children — were dead. They were hastily buried, followed by decades of silence. Months later, opposition politicians and journalists tried to uncover what had happened, but conflicting accounts only deepened the confusion. One version suggested that government troops had mistakenly killed their own operatives attempting to return home from Vietnam. The military maintained that the
Jacques Poissant’s suffering stopped the day he asked his daughter if it would be “cowardly to ask to be helped to die.” The retired Canadian insurance adviser was 93, and “was wasting away” after a long battle with prostate cancer. “He no longer had any zest for life,” Josee Poissant said. Last year her mother made the same choice at 96 when she realized she would not be getting out of hospital. She died surrounded by her children and their partners listening to the music she loved. “She was at peace. She sang until she went to sleep.” Josee Poissant remembers it as a beautiful
Before the last section of the round-the-island railway was electrified, one old blue train still chugged back and forth between Pingtung County’s Fangliao (枋寮) and Taitung (台東) stations once a day. It was so slow, was so hot (it had no air conditioning) and covered such a short distance, that the low fare still failed to attract many riders. This relic of the past was finally retired when the South Link Line was fully electrified on Dec. 23, 2020. A wave of nostalgia surrounded the termination of the Ordinary Train service, as these train carriages had been in use for decades
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