Forget You Not
The first of a large number of non-English language releases this week is a rich ensemble piece about a group of nine pregnant women who spend time with one another while undergoing treatment in a hospital in postwar Italy. Yet to see a release in English-language markets, this interesting title offers a tale of hope, love and privation in the ruins of a defeated country. It was directed and written by the daughter and son, respectively, of veteran Italian director Pupi Avati.
Love Songs
If you missed the Jacques Demy/Agnes Varda retrospective at the Spot theater and you want to reclaim your impression (or build one) of Parisians as creatively romantic creatures for whom love is all or nothing, then here's a contemporary tune-filled musical with a happy threesome, tragic death, mournful wandering, a spurned crush and so on. Reviews are divided on the quality of the songs, which occupy much of the running time. But overall it's an attractive package that only the French could make with a straight face - and turn a profit.
Undisputed II: Last Man Standing
This is a sequel to a solid but little seen 2002 prison boxing flick by veteran action helmer Walter Hill. The original starred Wesley Snipes and Ving Rhames, but none of these big names return this time around. In part two, framed Michael Jae White (Exit Wounds) does time and ends up having to fight a very nasty Russian (played by real-life martial artist Scott Adkins, an Englishman). Went straight to DVD in the US, though it has a respectable reputation for its fight scenes. And it's surely no accident that the subtitle is the name of another Walter Hill movie.
The Pye-Dog (野良犬)
A pye-dog is a pooch that hangs around human settlements. Described as a film in the mold of Akira Kurosawa - the title is borrowed from his 1949 morality tale Nora Inu - this work by debuting director Derek Kwok Tse-kin (郭子健) eschews the crassness and emptiness that afflicts so many Hong Kong films. Kwok focuses on the foibles of vulnerable people: a triad goon played by Eason Chan (陳奕迅) on assignment to locate the child of a rival boss, the mute child who he befriends, and the female teacher that joins them. Fresh from its belated release in Hong Kong, The Pye-Dog also stars Eric Tsang (曾志偉) as a triad boss and George Lam (林子祥) as the rival leader.
Brothers (兄弟)
Eason Chan also stars in this, a crime flick directed by Derek Chiu (趙崇基) that reunites veteran Hong Kong TV actors. The spirit of the Bard and the Godfather films seem to infuse this story as the children of a crime boss turn on each other following a murder attempt on their father. Lovehkfilm.com gave this effort an almighty serve for pandering to the alleged product placement interests of supporting actor Andy Lau (劉德華).
Hidden Floor
This is one of a quartet of loosely linked horror films released in South Korea last year. Ringu deja vu abounds as a single mother and her daughter move into a new apartment block, only to be subjected to strange noises and worse. Before long there is death and suspense as the mystery of the hidden floor - the fourth floor, of course - threatens to destroy our heroines. One question: How did Sadako get a Korean visa? Screening at the Baixue theater in Ximending.
Colic
The posters for this Thai baby-in-peril film are far more impactful than anything the reviews reveal. The Taiwanese poster shows a ghostly woman looking over a screaming tot with a handprint buried in its torso. Elsewhere in Asia the poster has a baby with its left hand bloodily amputated sitting next to a blender full of red mush. Colic is a term for excessive and sustained crying by an infant, and in this unusual horror effort, the ear-splitting baby in question turns out to have a very good supernatural reason to be unhappy. Unlike Forget You Not, this is not recommended for expectant mothers.
The Wicked Dolls
Another horror confection from Thailand, this time a much lower-budget variation on the Ringu theme, right down to the spare bedsheet worn by the vengeful female. The gimmick here is that lovers are tormented by apparitions after breaking an oath of fidelity sworn before dolls crammed in vials. Judging from the trailer (blog.udn.com/dodobear/1307016), your nephews and nieces have shot more convincing horror tableaux on their mobile phones. Showing at Ximending's Caesar grindhouse, beloved of fans of bad Thai movies everywhere.
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would