In his heyday Roland Joffe was an Oscar-nominated director feted for films like The Mission and The Killing Fields.
Today he is the helmsman of Captivity, a stupid, sexually exploitative slice of post-Saw sleaze which hit US headlines thanks to a leery ad campaign promoting the "Abduction," "Confinement," "Torture," and "Termination" of its glamorous young star.
What the hell happened?
PHOTO: COURTESY OF CMC
Presumably, after a string of clunkers such as The Scarlet Letter and Goodbye Lover, Joffe couldn't afford to turn down this grotty Russian-American co-production, in which a "heartless" model (Elisha Cuthbert) is kidnapped, imprisoned and forced to dress up in short skirts and stilettos by a madman who pumps liquidized eyeballs into her gagging mouth because of some residual problems with his mother.
"Captivity is both a thriller and a love story," offers Joffe gamely in his Director's Vision statement, which goes on to use words such as "erotic" and "sensual" to describe this dreary misogynist claptrap.
Admittedly, the finished film bears little resemblance to the Larry Cohen-scripted first cut, which was shot in Moscow in 2005 (and indeed screened at the Sitges Film Festival in 2006) before its American distributors demanded substantial gory re-shoots to cash in on the so-called "torture porn" zeitgeist.
The result is a genuinely loathsome car-crash of a movie, a misshapen, ill-wrought work of vulgar opportunism of which all involved should be deeply ashamed.
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
The Ministry of Education last month proposed a nationwide ban on mobile devices in schools, aiming to curb concerns over student phone addiction. Under the revised regulation, which will take effect in August, teachers and schools will be required to collect mobile devices — including phones, laptops and wearables devices — for safekeeping during school hours, unless they are being used for educational purposes. For Chang Fong-ching (張鳳琴), the ban will have a positive impact. “It’s a good move,” says the professor in the department of
On April 17, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) launched a bold campaign to revive and revitalize the KMT base by calling for an impromptu rally at the Taipei prosecutor’s offices to protest recent arrests of KMT recall campaigners over allegations of forgery and fraud involving signatures of dead voters. The protest had no time to apply for permits and was illegal, but that played into the sense of opposition grievance at alleged weaponization of the judiciary by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to “annihilate” the opposition parties. Blamed for faltering recall campaigns and faced with a KMT chair
Article 2 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China (中華民國憲法增修條文) stipulates that upon a vote of no confidence in the premier, the president can dissolve the legislature within 10 days. If the legislature is dissolved, a new legislative election must be held within 60 days, and the legislators’ terms will then be reckoned from that election. Two weeks ago Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) proposed that the legislature hold a vote of no confidence in the premier and dare the president to dissolve the legislature. The legislature is currently controlled
RSS