The Game Plan
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays a quarterback upended by an eight-year-old girl claiming to be his offspring. This set-up sounds terribly familiar, but even the sternest critics couldn't help admitting that The Rock brings a lot of charisma to his films, including this one. If you're a sucker for movies where beefy tough guys get domesticated by cute kids (think Arnie in Kindergarten Cop and Vin Diesel in The Pacifier), then you'll probably get clucky and weepy over this one, too.
Everyone's Hero
This animated baseball feature for children was co-directed by Christopher Reeve and co-voiced by his wife, Dana Reeve, before both passed away. However, the selling point in Taiwan - for all those Wang Chien-ming fans, at any rate - is the New York Yankees connection. "Everyone's Hero" is Yankee Irving, a youngster who sets off to recover a bat stolen from Babe Ruth and ends up helping his namesake team win the World Series. The movie features a big name cast (Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker and spurned Yankees coach Joe Torre), but most critics thought it struck out.
Rise: Blood Hunter
Lucy Liu stars as a reporter-turned-vampire in a sexed-up horror effort with toothless box office in the US. Reminiscent of the Blade series, she then exacts revenge on her own kind, but not before copious coupling. It's notable for Liu's no-holds-barred performance, cameos from the likes of Marilyn Manson, and for being a B movie with an A crew - Oscar winner John Toll (Braveheart, The Last Samurai) was cinematographer.
Singapore Dreaming
This film's distributor is not doing itself any favors by releasing this breezy drama with comic touches in a week packed with new titles. That's a shame, because this multilingual tale of an unhappy middle class family and their travails in an all-too-materialistic "5Cs" society could strike a chord with many here. It was produced by plastic surgeon, 10-pin bowler, snooker player, painter and actor Woffles Wu.
Bleach: Memories of Nobody
First the bestselling manga, then the anime TV series, now the film. Bleach is the tale of a Japanese schoolboy who can see apparitions and a female death spirit who befriends him. In Memories of Nobody, our heroes are beset by sinister creatures that lack the capacity for memory. This film could further unnerve Taiwanese educators rattled by Japan's Death Note films, which were also aimed at adolescents. The second Bleach feature opens in Japan next month.
Crazy Assassins
This is a 2003 action-comedy-period piece from South Korea's budding answer to lowbrow movie icon Lloyd Kaufman, Yun Je-gyun, who made the gross-out farce Sex is Zero, also released here. The inept "assassins" of the title are charged with finding an AWOL concubine, only to get themselves tied up with some female ghosts. The Kung Fu Cinema Web site says the film "makes Dumb and Dumberer look smart." Screening at the Baixue grind house in Ximending.
L'Amour Retrospective
Taipei's Spot theater is offering a romantic two-week program of films by acclaimed husband-and-wife directors Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda. The titles are Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Le Bonheur, and two films by Varda about Demy: Jacquot de Nantes and L'Univers de Jacques Demy.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not