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Other releases | |
Lemon Tree
Israeli director Eran Riklis has made an audience-pleasing drama about a most downbeat subject: the Israeli security regime in the Palestinian territories and the effect it has on the lives of ordinary people. A Palestinian widow has her lemon tree plot taken from her as a security measure after Israel’s defense minister moves in on the other side of the partition. A court challenge ensues, as well as a romantic entanglement between the woman and her lawyer. There is much more emotion and complexity to the story than a synopsis can provide; judging from early reviews it’s a film that deserves an eager audience. | |
[Rec]
This film opened last Friday for a full week of “previews” in various theaters, but the official season starts today. It’s a Spanish zombie movie, shot through a video camera accompanying a TV reporter. The woman and her cameraman record their subjects (firemen) on a call to a building where bloody disaster waits in the shadows — and there’s no way out. Wildly mixed reviews preceded this flick’s arrival in Taiwan, and although some have compared it to Diary of the Dead and Cloverfield, it better resembles a shaky-cam remake of the opening half hour of the original Dawn of the Dead. An American remake entitled Quarantine is already in the can. |
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