The Legend is Born — Ip Man
It’s back to the beginning of the Ip Man saga with this third installment, a prequel that tells the story of how Ip came to his martial arts prowess. Many of the same performers are back, though the lead role has been taken over from Donnie Yen (甄子丹) by Dennis To
(杜宇航), an award-winning martial artist turned actor who starred as a minor character in the first two Ip Man films. Unfortunately, The Legend Is Born often forsakes realism for fancy wirework, removing the film into a world of outright fantasy. There are many well-choreographed fight sequences, which go a long way to making up for the lack of any real emotional core.
Shanghai
Big-budget period drama that boasts a cross-cultural lineup of stars, including John Cusack, David Morse, Ken Watanabe, Chow Yun-fat (周潤發) and Gong Li
(鞏俐). Cusack is in China on the eve of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese are up to no good, and the Chinese are as inscrutable as ever. With lush costumes, breathy dialogue and complex intrigue, Shanghai plays for maximum exoticism.
My Queen Karo
A story of growing up during the 1970s amid a group of squatters finding their way through a maze of free love, communistic ideals and communal living in an Amsterdam squat. At the center of My Queen Karo is Karo, a little girl of 10 who watches the foibles of her parents and their companions. She gradually comes to realize that this carefree life is actually full of cares, as her mother weeps away her days while daddy sleeps with any young lovely that comes his way. Balancing between an idolized father and a mother she loves as their world falls apart is not that easy.
Doraemon the Movie: Nobita’s Mermaid Legend
As sequels go, this is something special. It is the 30th Doraemon movie and it celebrates the 40th anniversary of this much-loved Japanese cartoon character. This time around, Nobita Nobi finds himself in an underwater world populated by all kinds of unusual water folk, not all of them friendly. Doraemon’s magical tricks naturally get everyone out of danger and they all live happily until the next big adventure. Strictly for fans of the blue robotic cat.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and