Scholar cinema closes
It’s never good news if a theater closes, even if it doesn’t have the best reputation. The Scholar multiplex on Changchun Street in Taipei was one such place, its owner apparently deciding that China offers better business. No one will miss the cramped interiors or sullen staff, but Scholar did show fringe and low-budget product no one else would touch. How else would we have seen Wolf Creek and Five Across the Eyes in cinemas? A moment’s silence ... and on to this week’s other titles:
The Lucky Ones
Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams (The Time Traveler’s Wife) and Michael Pena (Nicolas Cage’s co-survivor in World Trade Center) are US soldiers home from Iraq with various personal problems — sexual, financial, familial — who share a car trip across the US. This road movie with a difference scored mixed reviews, but few were left cold by the three leads, who might make this one worthwhile for audiences who are feeling lucky.
Gamer
If you loved the Crank films, which were generously off the wall for anyone who could stay the distance, then you might find something to admire in this chaotic movie from the same writer-directors. Gerard Butler (300) is a death row prisoner of the future and participant in a video game in which he and his fellows are manipulated by paying players. He’s about to win yet another bout and secure his release, perhaps to liberate his child and wife, who is in a vile sexual game environment of her own, but he might know too much about the people who run the show. After all these years, Tron still seems to rise above the pack of video-game movies — without cuss words, sex or nasty violence.
Let the Right One In
An award-winning Swedish horror film with a sense of humor and a willingness to play in the dark (though not as much as the book on which the film is based, according to Variety), this is possibly the strongest release of the week. A bullied young boy makes the acquaintance of a strange girl of the same age whose apparent father figure runs strange errands for the pallid-looking creature. Just when you thought vampirism had nowhere left to go ...
Tsunami
The timing is unfortunate, or perhaps fortunate from the distributor’s point of view, but this first-ever South Korean disaster epic was scheduled for release before the Samoan tsunami occurred. So audiences can watch this odd mixture of Irwin Allen and Korean character ensemble with a clear-ish conscience. An ensemble of wave fodder — including the obligatory character with a tragic past — take up a good part of the running time before Mother Nature sends one crashing home. From Yun Je-gyun, the formerly lowbrow director of Sex Is Zero and Crazy Assassins. Korean title: Haeundae, which is where the movie is set.
Time Lost, Time Found
As heartrending plots go, this one rends with the best of them. A Japanese first-time mother-to-be in her late 30s is diagnosed with cancer and must make the impossible choice of starting treatment and losing her baby or keeping the child and likely condemning herself to the grave. Expect bawling audiences with this one (i.e., the same people that went to see terminal illness weepie April Bride last month), but if you don’t want to know the ending, for goodness’ sake don’t look at the poster. Features a song called Get a Life ~Again~. If only Takashi Miike had been the director ...
Tear This Heart Out
Sprawling yarn covers a subject little touched on by Hollywood: lust and political intrigue in early-to-mid-20th-century Mexico. A teenager beds and weds an ambitious general in some detail (hence the restricted rating) before the relationship between the two develops into a political asset — and an emotional liability. Largely a love story and a melodramatic study of a woman’s travails in Mexico’s always stormy history, those interested in slightly more nuanced treatments of gender relations in Mexico might be better off renting Frida with Salma Hayek. Spanish title: Arrancame La Vida.
Sappho
The first of two DVD promotional releases this week is a curio. A Ukrainian production set in Greece with a British director, American leads and many other nationalities in the cast, its successful release in its home country was accompanied by inexplicably angry protests by local Christians who objected to homosexual scenes between a newly married American woman and a Russian. But this is not a sex film, as such, even if it is showing at the Baixue theater in Ximending. Starts tomorrow.
Necessary Evil
Two of the grimmest-looking and hardest-working actors anywhere, Lance Henriksen (Aliens) and Danny Trejo (Desperado), star in a demonic tale involving a pregnant woman researcher, her lethal doctor and lots of mumbo jumbo (not to mention shades of The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby). This went straight to DVD in the US. Starts tomorrow.
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
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
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