Murderer (殺人犯)
A Hong Kong cop (Aaron Kwok, 郭富城) finds himself injured and suffering amnesia at the scene of a brutal crime involving a drill and an involuntary high dive. The more he investigates the murderer’s rampage, the more the clues snap at his heels and possibly finger him as an unwitting serial killer. Is this a Cantonese Angel Heart? It’s certainly got the production values: Key members of Ang Lee’s (李安) crew for Lust, Caution feature prominently. Problem is, reviews from Hong Kong and first notices from the US wail about the twist near the end of this violent thriller. It’s so ludicrous, they say, that audiences may never forget it or forgive those responsible. But that’s got to be better than a bad film you struggle to remember only a week after seeing it (take a bow, 02’20’’).
Carriers
Variety wondered if this shelved US virus contamination pic finally found a small release stateside this month because of the presence of Chris Pine (Star Trek) in the cast. Maybe swine flu also had a role to play? Either way, this modest end-of-the-world drama set in rural America should intrigue fans of the genre, though it doesn’t break new ground the way 28 Days Later and its sequel did. More cerebral than horrific, and as with 28 Weeks Later, there’s a Spanish connection: Co-director brothers Alex and David Pastor hail from there.
The Rebound
Like Carriers, this Catherine Zeta-Jones romcom, made last year, has been struggling to secure theater bookings in English-language markets — it doesn’t open in the UK and Australia until next year, for example. Zeta-Jones is a lonely single mother in the Big Apple who gets it on with a rather young man (Justin Bartha, from The Hangover). C’mon ... like age difference is a credible plot hook if Catherine Zeta-Jones is the prize? Speaking of casting oddities, Art Garfunkel makes his first big screen appearance in more than a decade.
Ladies Film Festival
Not to be confused with this year’s Women Make Waves Film Festival, which starts next month, this mini-fest at selected Taipei theaters offers three features with “ladies” as the theme. Agathe Clery is a droll French sort-of musical starring Valerie Lemercier as a bigoted cosmetics executive who turns black and has her comfy white world turned upside down. Romantic comedy I Hate Valentine’s Day has Nia Vardalos, star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, find that her bizarre philosophy of dating eventually doesn’t pass muster. In the more sober The Headless Woman, a female dentist in Argentina flees from a car accident that will come back to haunt her.
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would