Rock On! (實習大明星)
Sentimentality, catchy tunes and local color come together in this Taiwanese musical coming-of-age flick starring young wannabe actors and a has-been entertainer down on his luck. Directed by Hong Kong’s Lawrence Ah Mon (劉國昌) and featuring aging celebrity Franky Gao (高凌風), as well as a gaggle of TV soap opera idols such as Shao Hsin (邵昕) and Hsiang Yu-jie (向語潔), the production’s message is that hope is all you need to achieve your dreams.
Ocean Heaven (海洋天堂)
Serious, sincere and sentimental, this Jet Li (李連杰) nonaction debut does great credit to the star’s acting abilities, but is too earnest for its own good. Li plays a terminally ill single parent of an autistic son, but if you can stand the mawkish premise, then in other respects the film is well made.
The portrayal of Li’s character, who discovers he has liver cancer, and the exploration of the huge difficulties faced by those who fall through the gaps of society’s welfare system, is thoughtful and affecting. The film boasts a distinguished production crew, which includes cinematographer Christopher Doyle and Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi (Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo).
Penguins in the Sky — Asahiyama Zoo
A fictional film set against the background of the once troubled Asahiyama Zoo in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost zoo. In Penguins in the Sky, the zoo faces financial problems born of its isolated location and competition from more commercially savvy theme parks. Enter Yoshida (Yasuhi Nakamura), a young zookeeper who is dedicated to saving the zoo from closure. New forms of interactive exhibits are developed, which led to a massive increase in visitor numbers. The film features many of the zoo’s actual attractions, including the Polar Bear Aquatic Park and the “Walk-Through” Penguin Aquarium. The film is based on a novel by Masao Kosuge, a chief manager at the zoo who was instrumental in pushing through many of these new developments. On the brink of closure in the early 1990s, Asahiyama Zoo is now one of the country’s most visited zoos.
The Switch
Yet another zany romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston, The Switch is likely to polarize audiences between those easily able to suspend disbelief and those who find the premise utterly ridiculous and unworthy. The latter are likely to be the losers, as Aniston and Jason Bateman, who serves as narrator and male lead, put in strong performances, and the child star of the film, Thomas Robinson, elevates the cliched role of precocious kid caught in the middle of adult relationship muddles to something worth watching. The movie is based on a short story by Pulitzer-winning writer Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides), but the rom-com treatment has ensured that the original is all but unrecognizable.
The Last Exorcism
A low-budget horror film that goes the handheld route in the manner of The Blair Witch Project. This device, apart from being annoying, has been overused in the past few years. The story is that of an itinerant preacher in the American south who has an attack of conscience and decides to give a documentary team an inside look at his exorcisms. Suffice to say, both he and the team end up getting much more than they bargained for. Some solid acting by relative unknowns, good use of atmosphere and a “shock” ending that has been almost universally derided as an absolute stinker.
Piranha 3D
Summer break. Babes in bikinis. Toned dudes. Babes taking off bikinis. And babes having their limbs torn off by ravenous fish and drowning in an ocean of blood. In the interests of gender balance, there is also a penis being torn off and devoured by said ravenous fish. In Piranha 3D, we have state-of-the-art 3D technology used to revisit the hokey effects of 1970 horror-comedy; it is a film that dives right in at the trashy end of the B-movie spectrum, and has a thoroughly good time with its vastly over-qualified cast, which includes Elisabeth Shue, Adam Scott and Ving Rhames, as well as a cameo from Richard Dreyfuss. Laugh as you barf.
Lourdes
Blurring the line between fiction and documentary, Lourdes is a film firstly about the famous Catholic pilgrimage site in the Pyrenees mountains, and secondly about a woman who visits it with a half-hope that the magic of the place will bring her some relief from the multiple sclerosis that confines her to a wheelchair. Directed by Jessica Hausner, the film moves forward at a leisurely pace, letting Lourdes and its characters, including the shysters hawking cheap salvation found there, and a real concern for Christian ministry and the working of faith, tell their own stories. Hausner avoids any easy explanations, and though the film is too fair-minded to be dramatic, it has many other compensations in its thoughtful approach to religion.
Avatar: Special Edition
As if Avatar, which ran 162 minutes, wasn’t exhausting enough, it is now back with eight extra minutes that had originally been relegated to the editing room floor. The story remains unchanged and the additions provide no new insight, nor spectacle. Strictly for fans who want to spend a few more precious moments in James Cameron’s finely crafted if slightly gaudy alternate reality.
Crayon Shin-chan: Super-Dimension! The Storm Called My Bride
A massively popular children’s manga character who began life in 1990 in
a serial appearing in a Japanese
weekly magazine.
Crayone Shin-chan, with his inability to understand what the adults around him actually want, is constantly
getting into scrapes that have been brought to life in comic, television,
book and cinematic form over the past two decades.
Starting out from a simple domestic setting when first conceived, this latest offering has Crayon Shin-chin engaged in time travel and other exotic activities.
For fans and small children.
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
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