Eat, Pray, Love
Based on a best-selling book that plugs directly into the hot button issue of what to do about soullessness of modern life, Eat, Pray, Love is one of those films that many people made up their minds about long before it was actually released. It deals with every cliche concerning “getting away from it all and finding your true self,” and with Julia Roberts in the leading role, it also embraces the slick big-money, celebrity culture it purports to criticize. Whatever one might think about the original book by Elizabeth Gilbert, there seems to be a wide consensus that the film, by Ryan Murphy (who also adapted and directed Augusten Burroughs’ Running With Scissors), is too glib and commercial for its own good. Beautiful to look at, but the formula of the Hollywood romantic drama obliterates any deeper issues.
The Town
Gangster drama directed by and starring Ben Affleck that might have worked better if Affleck had stayed either in front of or behind the camera. Flitting back and forth seems to have undermined his own work in what is otherwise a strong production with outstanding performances from the likes of Jeremy Renner, Chris Cooper and Pete Postlethwaite. The relationship between buddies in crime Doug MacRay and right-hand man Jem (Renner) starts to unravel when MacRay, for all his armed robbery tough-guy act, starts going soft on a hostage (Rebecca Hall), revealing his fundamental decency. Although Affleck’s character is less a personality than a catalogue of male virtues, his recreation of the Irish underworld of wrong-side-of-the-tracks Boston is widely praised as capturing the sounds and atmosphere of that milieu.
Let Me In
A Hollywood reboot of Swedish cult hit Let the Right One In has widely been hailed as one of the better remakes of a deeply cherished European film. Director Matt Reeves shifts the setting from post-war Stockholm to Reagan-era America and casts two outstanding child actors: Kodi Smit-McPhee, most recently from The Road (2009); and Chloe Moretz, who we last saw sporting purple hair as Hit Girl in Kick Ass (2010). Kodi is a kid who gets bullied at school and finds help from Moretz, who seems like a nice girl but is actually a vampire who feasts on human flesh. The contradictions involved in this complex romance of early adolescence are well handled, and while Let Me In may not generate quite the same cult devotion as the Swedish original, it will probably be seen by more people.
The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
Whatever else it may achieve, The Human Centipede has certainly got the horror movie fraternity talking. Tom Six’s film depicts the connecting of a hapless Japanese man and two American girls into a single multi-limed creature with a single digestive system by a mad German scientist. Critic Roger Ebert refused to give the film any stars at all, but grudgingly concedes that in Six “there stirs the soul of a dark artist.” Horror magazine Fangoria dismisses Six’s film as “the punchline for a 10-minute short [wrapped up] in a feature’s worth of ineffective genre tropes and cliches.” Certainly the concept behind the film is utterly gross, but whatever else Six may or may not have achieved, he has certainly pushed boundaries beyond what many people regard as acceptable, which is exactly what he set out to do.
The Experiment
A straight-to-DVD film with an unexpectedly strong lineup that includes Adrien Brody, Forest Whitaker and Ethan Cohn. A remake of the German movie Das Experiment (2001), the film is inspired by events surrounding the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment that took place at Stanford University in 1971. The experiment, conducted by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, sought to study how people would react when assigned to extended role-playing as prison guards and prisoners. The experiment was cut short because of violence and sadistic behavior by the “guards.” While the film creates a fictional narrative around the experiment, it plays with the same ideas. It is directed by Paul Scheuring, one of the creators of the highly regarded television series Prison Break (2005-2009).
Egg/Milk//Honey Trilogy
Three loosely linked films by Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu that take long, sensitive looks at various aspects of the life and identity of an aspiring poet called Yusuf. Not too everybody’s taste, though, with Variety magazine describing Egg (Yumurta, 2007) as a “faux metaphysical snoozeroo, centered on a poet returning to his village after his mother’s death, is pure fest fare for the long-take, minimalist crowd.” Milk (Sut, 2008), has the same poet protagonist, though it finds him at an earlier point in life striving to establish himself. The most recently released of the trilogy, Honey (Bal, 2010), may be the strongest of the three films, and has brought the trilogy to prominence by winning the Golden Bear for the director and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin Film Festival. This is art house social drama with good acting and high philosophical aspirations.
Encirclement
A film made in Canada by director Yuan Ye (原野) with an explicit pro Falun Gong (法輪功) agenda, Encirclement (圍剿) is supposedly based in part, according to an Epoch Times (大紀元) article, “on the experiences of senior Chinese diplomat Yonglin Chen (陳用林), who defected from his post in the Sydney Consulate in 2005 and asked for political asylum in Australia.” One of the grounds on which Chen sought asylum was his downplaying of activities by Falun Gong practitioners and other dissidents in the face of China’s harsh persecution. The acting and style of the film, if judged from the trailer released on YouTube, are those of a low-budget soap, and it takes less than a minute to realize that, whatever else it may be, Encirclement is propaganda of a fairly undiluted nature. One’s position on Falun Gong, rather than any cinematic or aesthetic considerations, will determine whether this film can be appreciated.
Imperium: Pompei
Not to be confused with Pompeii, the much-anticipated adaptation of Robert Harris’ book of the same name scheduled for release next year, Imperium: Pompei is an Italian mini-series released in 2007. The story is different from that of the Harris novel, but the backdrop of the imminent eruption of Vesuvius, which would bury one of the Roman Empire’s great cities, is the same. As befitting a mini-series with running time to burn, there are numerous strands to the story, including romance and political assassination. The series, which reportedly cost US$130 million to make, has high aspirations but occasionally hokey effects, but at 180 minutes it is value for money and a great way to kill an afternoon.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50