Pathology Horror fans and devotees of Naomi Watts miffed by this week’s canceled release of Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s scene-for-scene American remake of his brutal Austrian film from 1997, will have to make do with Pathology. The good news is that it’s getting a few good notices. Like the loopy Thai flick Sick Nurses, which opened here a few weeks ago, this gory story is set in a hospital and features a cabal of nasty medicos. This time, however, it’s in Washington, where the dissolute doctors challenge each other to identify the cause of death of the latest morgue delivery — after they’ve found someone to kill. In the middle of it all is a newly arrived doctor who plays the game but remembers his Hippocratic oath before it’s too late | |
Happily Ever After Here’s another Japanese film that takes a downbeat subject (domestic violence) and turns the tone upside down and inside out. Miki Nakatani (Ringu, Silk) stars as a woman who cheerily makes the best of things while surrounded by low-life men. Yet another manga adaptation, which partly explains its surprising approach. From the director of Memories of Tomorrow, a much more sober film that impressed audiences here last year. | |
Savage Grace Poor press is presumably the reason why this is being released in Taiwan before the US. It’s based on the true story of socialite Barbara Baekeland (Julianne Moore), a woman who married into a wealthy family empire built on the plastics industry and who was killed by her mistreated son Tony (Eddie Redmayne) amid a lifestyle of opulence and emptiness. Alternately described as melodramatic and unmelodramatic by critics, the film looks like a worthy contender to dethrone Mommie Dearest as a camp classic of child abuse, notwithstanding some brave performances. | |
What Happens in Vegas … A wild night in Las Vegas ends up with two strangers (Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher) wedded and bedded. The pair’s hangovers are alleviated somewhat when they discover that one of them hit the jackpot the previous night. Cue a vicious struggle for the loot and inevitable realization that fate may not have dealt the couple an ill-planned love connection after all. |
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