The Pink Panther 2
Enough people saw and enjoyed the Pink Panther remake featuring Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau for this sequel to be financed, but it’s hard to imagine another one being made. The upside is that it’s got a good cast: John Cleese, Jeremy Irons, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina and Martin’s All of Me co-star Lily Tomlin, to name a few, though some critics lamented the waste of talent — not to mention a gratuitous CNN cameo (guess who). In Part 2, the Pink Panther diamond is targeted by a legendary thief, and Clouseau must foil him. Peter Sellers fans are advised to hire the old DVDs.
The Unborn
Now we’ve seen everything: an Exorcist-style movie steeped in Jewish religious lore and Nazi scientific atrocities. For the rest of the horror crowd not into such themes, there’s also hot babes, creepy children and a catalog of shocks. Odette Yustman (Cloverfield) plays a young woman whose link to experiments at a World War II concentration camp turns her life into a supernatural nightmare. Also stars Gary Oldman (as a rabbi) and Jane Alexander. Director David S. Goyer is a prolific action/fantasy writer-producer; he played a big role in Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. But his work here has not passed muster among those with little tolerance for the genre.
Personal Effects
A casualty of a nervous (or passionless?) US film industry amid the economic gloom, this Michelle Pfeiffer film had lone screenings in New York and Los Angeles before being dumped on the DVD market. Taiwanese audiences, however, are lucky because some of the many straight-to-DVD-in-the-US features screened here are worth the price of a ticket. Pfeiffer is the mother of a deaf child and, because of a murder, recently bereaved; she meets a man (Ashton Kutcher, from That ’70s Show) in a support group and a bond develops between them. Also stars Kathy Bates.
Thomas & Friends: The Great Discovery
Fans of the long-running (25 years!) British TV show for kids about a friendly, hard-working locomotive, his engine friends and their controller will be delighted to see this up on the big screen. Thomas’ “discovery” is an old mountain town on a little-used stretch of track. For the TV show, Ringo Starr and the late George Carlin were among the narrators for the UK and US markets respectively; for the movie, Pierce Brosnan steps into the sound-proof booth. Screening at the Vieshow complex in Xinyi District.
A Frozen Flower
South Koreans took to this sensual, bloody costume drama in record numbers — for an adults-only film. Set around 1,000 years ago, a homosexual emperor asks his lover/bodyguard to impregnate his wife and sire a son to avoid a clash over succession ... but allegiance to the emperor can only go so far. Handsomely mounted, beautifully filmed and featuring a gorgeous cast, this lengthy saga has sex scenes that fully earn its restricted rating.
Shakariki!
Some might argue that the Japanese film industry is an offshoot of that country’s manga market, and here is yet more grim evidence of it. Selected members of the curious male acting ensemble known as D-BOYS star in this trifling story based on a dated manga of a high school bicycle racing team that must overcome assorted challenges to prevail. The film may score points for its enthusiasm, but this is no Breaking Away, sad to say.
The Bridge
A remake of a pioneering German film from the late 1950s that attempted to make sense of World War II, this is a made-for-TV production that will be quickly forgotten. A bunch of high school students find themselves called up to the army as US forces approach; their token job is to defend a bridge of no strategic value, but disaster looms anyway. Stars Franka Potente (Marie in The Bourne Identity) and a bunch of young male actors unknown outside Germany. Screening at the Scholar multiplex in Taipei and Wonderful Cinemas in Taichung.
Highway Star
The Baixue theater in Ximending is hosting more hiChannel promotional screenings, this time for Highway Star, a South Korean comedy from 2007 about an up-and-coming heavy metal singer who signs up to perform the dreaded form of music known as “Trot,” which the atmovies Web site helpfully likens to Taiwanese pop songs — the ones with interchangeable melodies, plagal cadences and warbling saxophones beloved of variety shows. Stars Cha Tae-hyun from the hugely successful My Sassy Girl. Starts tomorrow.
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and