The Bank Job
Jason Statham gets around as a leading man. In this heist flick he’s back on home territory in 1970s London, leading a raid on a bank at the behest of the British secret service, which wants a file from the vault that incriminates an allegedly randy royal. Not all of those involved know, however, as the theft of cash and other items attracts the attention of another criminal who has a very good reason to hunt down the gang. Based on a real incident, and directed by Kiwi/Aussie veteran Roger Donaldson (Dante’s Peak). |
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Gabriel’s Voice
Barely released outside Spain, Gabriel’s Voice is about a psychologically stunted, virtually mute young man with considerable musical ability whose mother died and whose father was imprisoned when he was very young. His preoccupation as an adult is playing with wooden toys, but this changes after he meets a feisty (and attractive, of course) female violinist who uses music to reach him. Then Gabriel’s father complicates the picture after getting out of prison. Fine, emotional fare for young musicians who may be wondering what all the practice is for. | |
Detective Conan: Full Score of Fear
This is entry No. 12 in the Case Closed series of animated features from Japan sourced from the popular manga about a young super sleuth transformed into a child by criminals. The shrinkage luckily doesn’t take away Conan Edogawa’s ability to crack cases that no one else can. As with Gabriel’s Voice, music is key in this episode, but for more sinister reasons: Conan must investigate a series of mysterious deaths at a music academy, a case made even stranger by the presence of flutes at the crime scene. | |
Sands’ Chronicle
More manga-sourced Japanese melodrama as Ann, an energetic schoolgirl, moves to the country and attracts the attention of the local boys, only for her divorced mother to kill herself, eventually forcing the unhappy girl back to Tokyo with her father. The threads of romance and guilt culminate in what the Japan Times calls a radical break from the standard structure of such dramas: It frequently jumps to the suffering of the adult Ann who can’t deal with her trauma. Japanese title: Suna Dokei. | |
Five Across the Eyes
Taiwanese cinema patrons are frequently fed straight-to-DVD junk from the US, but occasionally experimental and low budget films of merit slip through as well. Five Across the Eyes is a no-budget horror flick that played a few specialist festivals before going to rental stateside. Even so, it picked up a few encouraging reviews, and may impress fans of the shakycam school of filmmaking. Five young women on the way home one night from a football game in Tennessee get lost in countryside known as “The Eyes” before being set upon by one thoroughly nasty individual. It’s the kind of film that a young, passionate Sam Raimi might have made before getting bogged down in the overblown Spider-Man trilogy. Starts tomorrow. |
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