Inception
The big release for this week is not to be taken lightly, for director Christopher Nolan has come up with a film that is not only stupendous to look at, but also puts audiences through their paces with a heist movie that essentially takes place in the subconscious. Memento, made in 2000, had Nolan playing around with amnesia. Inception takes as its premise a technology that allows a person to enter the subconscious world of others. Having made mega bucks with The Dark Knight (2008), Nolan seems to have been given a license to play complex mind games once again, though this time on a much bigger budget. The risk has paid off, for in addition to highly regarded performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, who has well and truly shed his pretty-boy image, and Ellen Page, who has come a long way since Juno, the word on the street is that you’ll want to walk right back into the theater after the credits roll to work out exactly what happened.
I Killed My Mother (J’ai Tue Ma Mere)
This angst-ridden gay coming-of-age drama by first-time director Xavier Dolan has picked up a slew of awards (including three at Cannes) for a remarkable debut feature. The script, also by Dolan, has a raw power that wowed critics, though Dolan’s visual style and his presence front of the camera in the leading role have received less uniform praise. The semi-autobiographical work focuses on the relationship between Hubert, a young man struggling with the realization of his sexuality, and an impatient and emotionally detached mother. The film wears its cinematic influences, which range from Jean-Luc Godard to Wong Kar-wai (王家衛), on its sleeve, but the moments of remarkable realism overcome the art-student posturing and make Dolan a young director worth watching.
Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite)
More gritty art house filmmaking can be found in Elite Squad, a Brazilian film about slum clearance by death squad that picked up the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2008. A film influenced by City of God, Elite Squad trawls the grimy depths of Rio de Janeiro’s slums and the dark world of the Special Police Operation Battalion (BOPE), a heavily armed, law-unto-itself unit that is charged with tidying up the city in the run-up to a visit by the pope. The relationship between two idealistic young recruits and a jaded and cynical captain form the center of the narrative, and brutal violence between the drug cartels and the police serve as the shocking backdrop. With a script co-written by BOPE officer Rodrigo Pimentel, the film contains some interesting thoughts about violence breeding violence buried within its shameless exploitation format.
Piecing Me Back Together (Mataaki)
Based on a best-selling novel by romance author Ren Kawahara, Piecing Me Back Together tells a story of young love interrupted by the terrible consequences of a traffic accident. Izumi and Junichi look forward to a happy life together. Izumi is killed and although Junichi survives, she discovers that she has lost all memory of the event. Lawyer Makiko comes along and decides that she will help rebuild that memory and launches an investigation into the accident. The film features established names in the leading roles, and for those in search of a good weepy melodrama, Piecing Me Back Together will probably fit the bill.
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
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