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.
The Taipei Times last week reported that the rising share of seniors in the population is reshaping the nation’s housing markets. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, about 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident. H&B Realty chief researcher Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨), quoted in the article, said that there is rising demand for elderly-friendly housing, including units with elevators, barrier-free layouts and proximity to healthcare services. Hsu and others cited in the article highlighted the changing family residential dynamics, as children no longer live with parents,
It is jarring how differently Taiwan’s politics is portrayed in the international press compared to the local Chinese-language press. Viewed from abroad, Taiwan is seen as a geopolitical hotspot, or “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth,” as the Economist once blazoned across their cover. Meanwhile, tasked with facing down those existential threats, Taiwan’s leaders are dying their hair pink. These include former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), among others. They are demonstrating what big fans they are of South Korean K-pop sensations Blackpink ahead of their concerts this weekend in Kaohsiung.
Taiwan is one of the world’s greatest per-capita consumers of seafood. Whereas the average human is thought to eat around 20kg of seafood per year, each Taiwanese gets through 27kg to 35kg of ocean delicacies annually, depending on which source you find most credible. Given the ubiquity of dishes like oyster omelet (蚵仔煎) and milkfish soup (虱目魚湯), the higher estimate may well be correct. By global standards, let alone local consumption patterns, I’m not much of a seafood fan. It’s not just a matter of taste, although that’s part of it. What I’ve read about the environmental impact of the
Oct 20 to Oct 26 After a day of fighting, the Japanese Army’s Second Division was resting when a curious delegation of two Scotsmen and 19 Taiwanese approached their camp. It was Oct. 20, 1895, and the troops had reached Taiye Village (太爺庄) in today’s Hunei District (湖內), Kaohsiung, just 10km away from their final target of Tainan. Led by Presbyterian missionaries Thomas Barclay and Duncan Ferguson, the group informed the Japanese that resistance leader Liu Yung-fu (劉永福) had fled to China the previous night, leaving his Black Flag Army fighters behind and the city in chaos. On behalf of the
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