With his coal-black comedy The Art of Negative Thinking, Norwegian director Bard Breien gleefully eviscerates the phony-baloney, "feel good" psychoanalytic babble that is so often hurled thoughtlessly at the severely disabled. Breien's main character, National Health Psychologist Tori (Kjersti Holmen), embodies this approach. All optimistic saccharine on the surface, but a steamroller underneath, she refuses to tolerate any pessimism, cynicism, depression or anxiety from her patients. The latter include: gorgeous Marta, a mountain climber almost completely paralyzed from a fall; her troubled paramour Gard (Henrik Mestad), grappling with guilt thanks to his direct responsibility for the accident; Lillemor (Kari Simonsen), a shrill and obnoxious, sexagenarian divorcee saddled with a neck brace and constantly tossed the "shit bag" in therapy - a tea cozy used as a means of disposal for her complaints; and Asbjorn (Per Schaaning), a stroke victim. All of these patients can deal with Tori's positivism - more or less. But not so with Geirr (Fridtjov Saheim), a paraplegic from an accident who spends his days drowning himself in booze, chain-smoking cigarettes, and listening to depressing Johnny Cash ballads. When Geirr's wife learns of Tori's methods and decides to bring the good doctor to the house to help rehabilitate her husband, it sets the stage for a battle of positive versus negative thinking, that threatens to explode into full-scale cataclysm.
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A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and