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Herbie Hancock: Possibilities

A feature-length documentary from last year on the recording sessions and musings of the US jazz legend ahead of a new album/DVD of the same title. It includes footage of Paul Simon, Sting, Annie Lennox, Carlos Santana, Brian Eno, Christina Aguilera and many other artists.

Love My Life

If you came away from the Taiwanese film I Saw a Beast feeling like you'd been beaten around the head with a patronizing lecture on the evils of lesbianism (complete with sex scenes), then this Japanese manga adaptation might just be the tonic you need: a family-friendly lesbian drama. There are no torrid couplings, bouts of hysteria or religious naysaying as two clean-cut college students try to keep their relationship afloat in the face of multiple challenges.

Noriko's Dinner Table

Another disturbing story of teenage alienation and manipulation from director Sion Sono, who made Suicide Club in 2002. Filmed in 2005 and not nearly as timely now as it was then, this effort sees teenager Noriko run away from home and link up with a sinister group she met online. It includes the mass suicide of teenage girls from the earlier film as a plot point.

Herbie Hancock: Possibilities

Second Kadokawa Film Festival

Rush to see five films from this Japanese production company. Adiantum Blue asks what you would do if your partner had a month to live. Veteran Kon Ichikawa's The Inugamis is a remake of his family drama from 1976. Tonari Machi Senso (The War Next Door) is a strange love story. Then there's A Hardest Night!! from 2005, (Japanese title: Nezu No Ban), a black and incredibly bawdy wake comedy that makes Frank Oz's Death at a Funeral seem terribly polite. Finally, Taiwan's legion of young baseballers should check out The Battery, an adaptation of a bestseller on kids growing up - with baseball helping them along the way. The films will show at the Spring Cinema Galaxy and the Changchun in Taipei until Oct. 18; then at the Vieshow in Hsinchu and the Shin Kong in Taichung until Nov. 1, then at the Ambassador in Tainan and the Vieshow in Kaohsiung until Nov. 15.

Love My Life

Noriko's Dinner Table

Web site: www.taipeiwalker.com.tw/pub/kadokawa2/mo2.htm.

Gitano

Already available on DVD, this exercise in "flamencorotica" from 2000 may be worth seeing on the DVD-projected big screen at the Caesar theater first. Gitano is the name for gypsies in Spain, and this restricted-category film noir about a Gitano excon combines dance, music, sex, revenge and murder. Just the ticket for audiences who fell asleep before the sex scenes in Lust, Caution.

Gitano

Dracula

Also getting a DVD promotional run at the Caesar theater, Roger Young's version of the Count's wicked exploits is an Italian-German TV production from 2002, and stars Patrick Bergin (Patriot Games) as the immortal neck-muncher and always watchable Giancarlo Giannini (Casino Royale, Hannibal) as Valenzi the vampire expert. Trivia: Bergin also played Frankenstein in a 1992 TV movie.

Second Kadokawa Film Festival

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