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.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50