VIEW THIS PAGE Known for his phenomenally successful tough-guy action fare, Hong Kong’s Andrew Lau (劉偉強) returns to the big screen with Look for a Star (游龍戲鳳), a romantic comedy film about a business tycoon and a cabaret dancer.
Though locked and loaded with a stellar cast that includes Andy Lau (劉德華) and Shu Qi (舒淇), the blockbuster director fails to establish his name in the chick-flick sphere with this effort, because he is unable to save the formulaic story line from making a, well, formulaic film.
In Look, Andy Lau plays the handsome, charming billionaire named Sam, while Shu plays the perky Milan, who works as a cabaret dancer and croupier to make ends meet. The two quickly fall in love after a chance encounter in a Macanese casino.
However, Milan, a romanticist who longs for love rather than fame and fortune, begins to have doubts when she uncovers Sam’s true identity.
The prenuptial agreement forced upon Milan by Sam’s mother, and his connivance in the accord, leaves the bride heartbroken.
Besides the main story focusing on how Sam and Milan overcome the odds, two subplots, which involve Sam’s secretary Jo (Denise Ho, 何韻詩) and Lin Jiu (Zhang Hanyu, 張涵予), an honest worker from Shandong Province as well as Sam’s chauffeur (Dominic Lam, 林嘉華) and single mother Shannon (Zhang Xinyi, 張歆藝), are introduced as variations on the rich-guy-marries-poor-girl drama.
Director Lau ingeniously sets the film mainly in Macau, whose Portuguese-style churches, cobbled streets and grand casinos provide a fanciful feel.
But the footage of Shu and Andy Lau scooting around the city’s enchanting vistas isn’t enough to lift the film from mediocrity. Crosscutting three plots, the narration feels messy and is at times incoherent, while plot devices such as a televised confession of love and the appearance of a cockhorse in a park appear tired and contrived. VIEW THIS PAGE
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your