Amphetamine (安非他命)
Director Scud’s (雲翔) interests were prominently on display in Permanent Residence (2009, 永久居留), with its self-indulgent homoerotic musings that span sexual awakening, unrequited love and musings on love and death. His mastery of the visual medium may have taken a step forward with Amphetamine, but so has the self-indulgence, which was described as “unbridled” in a Taipei Times review of Permanent Residence. In this newest work, the director makes references his previous work in a manner that clearly signal his aspirations as an auteur. The story of a successful finance executive (Thomas Price) and his passionate, doomed, infatuation with an drug addicted swimming instructor (Byron Pang), skirts the borders of gay porn, but had sufficient assurance to earn a nomination in the Panorama category of the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. Extensive English-language material about the film is available at www.amphetaminemovie.com.
Close to You (近在咫尺)
A new film by Cheng Hsiao-tse (程孝澤), who scored a minor success with Miao Miao (渺渺) in 2008, Close to You takes the Asian romantic melodrama to new levels of improbability and contrived heartache. The cast of pretty-boy Eddie Peng (彭于晏) and Ming Dow (明道), pretending to be serious boxers, and a romantic interest involving a beautiful violinist, played by singer Amber Kuo (郭采潔), are sufficiently off-the-wall — even before you get involved in the narrative, which brings in amnesia, and prizefights set up to fulfill obligations to dying grandparents. Close to You is being touted as a box office rival to Love You 10,000 Years (愛你一萬年) released last week, but the fact that the two leading males glisten with sweat and wear boxing shorts while showing off their work at the gym is likely to constitute this film’s main attraction.
Women Without Men (Zanan-e Bedun-e Mardan)
A visually sumptuous film by Shrin Neshat, a photographer making her debut as a filmmaker, Women Without Men looks at the interwoven lives of four women living in Iran against the backdrop of the CIA-backed coup of 1953. The film picked up the Silver Bear at the Venice Film Festival last year despite a general critical consensus that the much of the dialogue is too heavily didactic, but there has been almost universal acclaim for a filmmaking style that had directors such and Ang Lee (李安) lavishing praise on its acting and visual appeal. A story about women whose lives are made profoundly unhappy by men, Women Without Men has a strong feminist sensibility, but its powerful conceptual and visual appeal overcomes many narrative infelicities. In Persian with Chinese subtitles, but with enough visual appeal even to overcome this obstacle. Further information at www.womenwithoutmenfilm.com.
On the Path (Na Putu)
A film from Bosnia and Herzegovina by director Jasmila Zbanic, who came to prominence after winning the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2006 for Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams. On the Path tells the story of airline cabin attendant Luna (Zrinka Cvitesic) and boyfriend Amar (Leon Lucev), whose relationship comes under strain when Amar begins to drift into the hold of Wahhabi Islam. Set in Sarajevo, On the Path portrays a society at the crossroads of Western secularism and Islamic fundamentalism, enriching its conventional romantic melodrama with many issues of faith, freedom and identity.
Solanin
Carrying on from her roles in Nana (2000) and Brass Knuckle Boys (2008), Aoi Miyazaki is back as yet another cute-yet-feisty young Japanese woman who finds liberation for the daily grind, and a glimpse of true love, by joining a rock ’n’ roll band. The story, based on a best-selling manga by Inio Asano, has good-looking leads, catchy tunes and the promise that our dreams do come true to give it appeal outside of a strictly Japanese audience. Solidly put together according to a tried-and-tested formula, Solanin offers no surprises, but is a perfectly fine example of its type.
Still (Taai Hong)
Portmanteau horror flick from Thailand made up of four stories taken from actual news events and turned into supernatural shorts. The death of 61 in a nightclub, a ghost in a maximum security prison that supposedly led to a number of suicides, a body found in a water tank in a apartment building, and corpses hidden under the bed at a motel, are events that featured in the back pages of Thailand’s press over the last few years. These have been worked into stories and loosely tied together, providing a showcase of current cliches of Thai horror. The topical references will probably be lost on non-Thai audiences, giving this film limited international appeal. Lots of blood, decomposing bodies and bug-eyed faces looming out of the darkness.
Step Up 3D
The venerable Step Up franchise, which got started back in 2006, is being brought to the silver screen in all its 3D glory in yet another story of good-looking guys and gals who love to dance. If you liked the recently released UK film Street Dance 3D, then Step Up 3D is likely to get your foot tapping, since it also features attractive bodies and slick dance sequences. Its use of 3D is said to be more effective than the British production. Walt Disney publicity material describes the film as: “the world’s best hip-hop dancers in a high-stakes showdown that will change their lives forever.” The cliches don’t end there. But clunky acting and a script that may possible be the “worst in history,” according to one reviewer, don’t really get in the way of the enjoyment, ’cause it’s really all about the dance.
Morning Rock (盛夏的晨間搖滾 — 盧廣仲電影音樂會)
A behind-the-scenes look at the story behind the creation of Crowd Lu’s (盧廣仲) hugely successful release of Seven Days (七天) followed by an actual concert with Lu in all his live 3D glory. This combined film and performance will take place at 10am today, tomorrow and Sunday at the IN89 (豪華) cinema at 89, Wuchang St, Taipei City (台北市武昌街89號). Tickets cost NT$499. The event will run for 90 minutes, with the film running 50 minutes and the concert 40 minutes.
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