Good Will Evil 凶魅
This strangely titled Taiwanese chiller has nothing to do with Good Will Hunting. A rising politician can’t raise a family because his nightmare-prone wife won’t agree; eventually they agree to adopt because it will benefit his career, but the strange child they pick from an orphanage has a thing for dismembering dolls and other sinister behavior. Like most horror flicks with disturbed children and flawed adults, there’s a horrible secret awaiting to surface. There’s also the requisite red ball bouncing down the stairs in slow motion, though not as slowly as the release for this film (it was made last year).
Be Kind Rewind
Jack Black gets too close to a power station and his magnetic body ends up wiping clean the videos in a rental store where his friend (Mos Def) works. To save the situation before the boss returns, the enterprising lads recreate the library by shooting their own goofy versions of movies that were lost. Critics couldn’t help asking: Have these people never heard of DVDs, or buying ex-rentals online? Taking a break from her Darfur activism, Mia Farrow plays a customer who can’t tell the faked movies from the originals. From Michel Gondry, music video heavyweight and director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers
Offbeat, charming Japanese production features Juri Ueno as a housewife whose absent husband and admiration for her self-assured best friend (Yu Aoi) prompt her, True Lies-style, to seek adventure as a spy. But this is no action film; it’s more a character study and a philosophy of life dressed as quirky comedy. Turtles may be fast underwater, but the movie has taken time to build an audience — and three years to get a Taiwanese release. It screens first in Taipei before swimming to other centers on the west coast.
South Taiwan Film & Video Festival
For movie lovers who despair at the Golden Horse film festival and competition’s political agenda, here’s the perfect alternative. The South Taiwan Film & Video Festival is chock full of exciting Taiwanese and international product that would never get the Horse’s nod, ranging from celluloid features to animation and video productions. This year’s retrospectives include Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖), whose debut feature Cape No. 7 (海角七號) has become a bona fide Taiwanese phenomenon, Lin Shu-yu (林書宇), director of Winds of September (九降風), and Hsu Hui-ju (許慧如). The festival is screening at the Ambassador complex in Tainan until Nov. 20, then at the Kaohsiung Film Archive from Nov. 29 to Dec. 7. Chiayi Performing Arts Center will also screen a selection of titles on Dec. 6 and Dec. 7. Some films have English subtitles and there are free screenings. More details are at www.south.org.tw/south2008.
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