Childhoods
From France, this is a series of short films that creates scenes from the childhoods of famed filmmakers. Part of the gimmick is to leave the identification of the director to the end of the piece, which means that audiences can have fun trying to tease out clues on who the child really is. Interestingly, two of the six subjects themselves made classic films about children — unfortunately, however, neither of them is Francois Truffaut, though perhaps everyone balked at reshooting scenes from The 400 Blows. Screening exclusively at the Changchun theater in Taipei.
The Magic Hour
Koki Mitani is a sometime film director from the Japanese theater who has made a small number of highly successful comedies for the big screen and TV. The Magic Hour is his latest, a screwball comedy homage that sees a nightclub boss get caught having an affair with a crime lord’s dame. To save his life, he lies about knowing the whereabouts of a mysterious man the gang is looking for, and then has an actor impersonate him. It’s all lunacy and laughs from there. Happily, fans of Mitani and this kind of film will also have the chance to see his previous movie Suite Dreams, made in 2006, which opens next week in limited release.
Lovely Complex
This Japanese manga adaptation explores the outer reaches of cute as tallish freak girl meets shortish geek boy, spending the next 100 minutes or so pretending not to adore each other. Bright colors, music, basketball, larger than life performances, exaggerated facial expressions — just about enough to impress kids on their first date movie. This was made three years ago, which suggests local distributors are beginning to trawl through back catalogs of manga movies for stuff to throw at the market. Also known as Love.com.
The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines
From tomorrow, the Baixue theater in Ximending hosts another bunch of tie-in screenings of HiNet hiChannel product, this time an Indiana Jones-style TV movie sequel from 2006. Noah Wyle plays Flynn Carsen, curator of historical treasures and compulsive adventurer, who must rush to the title location to stop bad guys from gaining a magical book that can grant them power over time and space. Also stars Bob Newhart and Olympia Dukakis. A third in the series, the delicately titled The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice, was made this year. Parts 2 and 3 were directed by Jonathan Frakes, better known as Commander Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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
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,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
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