Sick Nurses How does a movie live up to a title like this? Good news: It comes very close. A doctor and several nurses at a Thai hospital run a side business in corpse recycling, but one nurse, the doctor’s spurned girlfriend, is killed to conceal the scam and comes back to annihilate her former colleagues in painfully, gorily apt ways. Bloody, sleazy, sexy and fun all the way, this clever, well-above-average Thai horror/ghost flick is getting plenty of support from genre fans and festival attention. | |
Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone Fans of Japanese manga and anime will need no convincing to see this. The first in a four-part re-imagining of the acclaimed original anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, episode 1.0 pits a number of huge biomechanical vehicles operated by troubled, even traumatized, teens against monstrous invaders after a cataclysm has killed most of the world’s population. The original anime’s director, Hideaki Anno, is at the helm of the four new films, whose pungent mixture of epic combat and aberrant psychology is bound to attract a new generation of admirers. | |
Animals in Love The title might raise a few eyebrows, but yes, it is a documentary about the animal kingdom, although one has to ask how the concept can sell tickets when perfectly good stuff is available on cable TV. One might also wonder if this French-produced family fare has been sanitized considering how brutal — and lethal — courtship in the wild can be. Unreleased as yet in English-language markets, this is one film where you are unlikely to need English subtitles. Directed by the photographer of the excellent Winged Migration and with music by Philip Glass. French title: Les Animaux Amoureux. | |
Riding the Metro A bitter young Japanese man estranged from his father finds himself and his girlfriend being whisked to and from the past in an underground train. There he finds his father in different stages of his life, leading to a change in the son’s understanding of his family and himself. The few Western reviewers that have watched this film agree that deep inside the family drama and maturation of character is a desire to romanticize a nation’s compromised past and honor paternal authority. Japanese nationalists and other conservatives might therefore be expected to get into this one. Made in 2006. |
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and