The Sparkle in the Dark (黑道之無悔今生)
Set in Taiwan but largely a Hong Kong production, The Sparkle in the Dark tells the story of an orphan whose tragic and grisly loss and inability to adapt to subsequent home life leave him marooned in a world of hatred and drug abuse. Eventually he gets involved with gang members, among whom he finds support, animosity, romance and — judging by the trailer — no shortage of machete violence. Most of the songsters starring in this effort hail from Hong Kong, which isn’t likely to lend the movie any verisimilitude. That’s possibly the reason why this downbeat flick is being released in only one theater in Taipei (Vieshow Xinyi).
Eagle Eye
The big-budget release for this week is a chase film in which the pursued (Shia LeBeouf and Michelle Monaghan) are caught up in a plot involving government security forces, terrorism, a renegade supercomputer with a female voice and an FBI interrogator (Billy Bob Thornton). Eagle Eye has Steven Spielberg as executive producer, but that doesn’t necessarily lend it the trenchant worldview that marks his later films, such as Minority Report and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Expect big explosions, crashing trucks and disposable paranoia instead. Also screening in IMAX format.
Igor
Produced by a French animation company, this US coproduction is a film for kids that explores the world of the title character who, like his fellow Igors, works for mad and bad scientists. Our Igor (John Cusack), however, makes the leap to mad scientist himself, creating new creatures for sinister ends — but with results that don’t quite live up to expectations. As usual for bigger budget animated features, Igor has a noteworthy cast of voice talent (Christian Slater, John Cleese, Steve Buscemi, Jay Leno, Arsenio Hall), but this time around the script and animation have resulted in a “mirthless,” “underimagined” and “strenuously unfunny” movie, according to Variety.
Fear Factors (恐懼元素)
Two short thrillers combine for this feature-length outing from Hong Kong — which the Hong Kong Movie DataBase’s review claims was shot on the cheap in unfinished Chinese office blocks. In the first yarn, a dying man and his female abductor are confined in a room as flashbacks paint a more complicated picture. The second has a meat vendor come upon an inheritance in the form of a factory — if he can survive an encounter with a knife-wielding lady wearing the obligatory white sheet. Perhaps released in Taiwan to take a bite out of 4bia’s slice of the box office pie, this undistinguished pairing might even struggle to make money on DVD, let alone in its limited theatrical release.
Three Monkeys
A real downer awaits audiences with this Turkish entry. A fatal accident prompts a politician to convince his driver to take the rap, but the reward he promises once the latter leaves jail doesn’t save anyone involved from deteriorating relationships with spouses, children and lovers. The title seems to refer to the act of shunning responsibility, and the moral of the tale leaves no way out, while some suggest that the scenario is a metaphor for Turkey as a whole. For this film, Nuri Bilge Caylan won the Best Director award at this year’s Cannes film festival.
Vow of Death
A couple of months ago the Thai film The Coffin taught us that lying in coffins when you’re not dead is an overrated tradition that can shorten one’s lifespan. In Vow of Death, also from Thailand, a bunch of teenagers clearly suffering from excessive parental expectations discover that a supernatural tree, which they hoped would help them with exams, has been ripped from the ground and wants them dead. More than a year-and-a-half since its home release, this one is entering theaters here with virtually no fanfare.
June 9 to June 15 A photo of two men riding trendy high-wheel Penny-Farthing bicycles past a Qing Dynasty gate aptly captures the essence of Taipei in 1897 — a newly colonized city on the cusp of great change. The Japanese began making significant modifications to the cityscape in 1899, tearing down Qing-era structures, widening boulevards and installing Western-style infrastructure and buildings. The photographer, Minosuke Imamura, only spent a year in Taiwan as a cartographer for the governor-general’s office, but he left behind a treasure trove of 130 images showing life at the onset of Japanese rule, spanning July 1897 to
One of the most important gripes that Taiwanese have about the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is that it has failed to deliver concretely on higher wages, housing prices and other bread-and-butter issues. The parallel complaint is that the DPP cares only about glamor issues, such as removing markers of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) colonialism by renaming them, or what the KMT codes as “de-Sinification.” Once again, as a critical election looms, the DPP is presenting evidence for that charge. The KMT was quick to jump on the recent proposal of the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) to rename roads that symbolize
On the evening of June 1, Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) apologized and resigned in disgrace. His crime was instructing his driver to use a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon. The Control Yuan is the government branch that investigates, audits and impeaches government officials for, among other things, misuse of government funds, so his misuse of a government vehicle was highly inappropriate. If this story were told to anyone living in the golden era of swaggering gangsters, flashy nouveau riche businessmen, and corrupt “black gold” politics of the 1980s and 1990s, they would have laughed.
In an interview posted online by United Daily News (UDN) on May 26, current Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) was asked about Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) replacing him as party chair. Though not yet officially running, by the customs of Taiwan politics, Lu has been signalling she is both running for party chair and to be the party’s 2028 presidential candidate. She told an international media outlet that she was considering a run. She also gave a speech in Keelung on national priorities and foreign affairs. For details, see the May 23 edition of this column,
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