Resident Evil: Extinction
Milla Jovovich returns as post-apocalyptic ubervixen Alice in the third big-screen spinoff of the best-selling video game. Less claustrophobic than the first two slaughterfests, this time the zombies are stalking the ruins of Las Vegas.
Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad
It's the season for illnesses in the Japanese family. Last week gave us Alzheimer's disease in Memories of Tomorrow; now we have this filial piety-cum-terminal illness flick for which the Taiwanese distributor is putting up a decent advertising campaign. An author reminisces about life as a child with his mother in the country after walking out on his father, then as an adult looking after his mother as she succumbs to cancer. The title refers to the famous city landmark, and it plays an important symbolic role. Based on a bestselling autobiography, the film also did well in Japan.
One Piece The Movie: The Giant Mechanical Soldier of Karakuri Castle
Released in Japan last year, this is the seventh of eight (and counting) animated features that retell sequences from the popular manga/anime series One Piece about a band of pirates. Those who are not fans of the series may struggle to catch up with the characters and the context of the story, but by all accounts the quality of animation is good and promises an entertaining entry point for One Piece neophytes. Great for kids, though two female pirate characters (one an archeologist and the other a teenage navigator) are accompanied by sound effects for their large, bouncing breasts.
The King Maker
A Thai production from 2005 whose only familiar face to most local filmgoers would be that of John Rhys-Davies, who played the dwarf Gimli in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. The epic story of court intrigue set in the 16th century stars former English boxer Gary Stretch and involves expensive battle scenes, plush scenes of romance and apparently very bad acting. It's not clear which of these earned Taiwan's restricted rating.
Tazza: War of Flowers
An unusual film, this: a Korean saga of cutthroat professional gamblers. Variety magazine praised its "involving characters and devil-may-care tone" and particularly Kim Hye-su (who had a part in horror omnibus Three five years ago) for "looking every voluptuous inch a legendary femme fatale." A popular, invigorating and stylish film based on a Korean manga, this would be worth seeing to remind one of just how awful most of those Hong Kong gambling pics really were. Opens next Wednesday in limited release.
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