Norwegian Wood
The cinematic adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s book of the same title. While critics have been almost unanimous in praising the beauty of the film, an unwillingness to disrupt the languorous mood of the movie has deprived it of the rumbustious humor that is such an integral part of the book’s appeal. Vietnam-born director Anh Hung Tran (The Scent of Green Papaya) presents a lyrical film about longing, loss and sexual curiosity in 1960s Japan. Cinematographer Mark Lee (李屏賓), who has worked on most of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s (侯孝賢) films, gives the picture a delicate visual artistry that complements Tran’s skills with the cast. There are a number of strong performances, not least from Rinko Kikuchi, who plays a beautiful but deeply disturbed young woman who bewitches the film’s central character. For all its beauty, the film seems too immersed in its pensive mood, swooning aimlessly for long periods of its 133 minutes.
3 Idiots
Hindi buddy movie that tells the story of three students at the Imperial College of Engineering (modeled after the famed Indian Institute of Technology) who, in the manner of such movies, discover that there is more to life than good grades. They get into all sorts of trouble, such as crashing a wedding and causing a funeral to spin out of control. In the end they learn from their experience of life, as we expected they would all along. Upbeat and life affirming, 3 Idiots wants to tells us that it is better to learn through doing than to have knowledge rammed down your throat, and has earned considerable praise for its fine acting and light touch.
Rough Cut (Yeong-hwa-neun yeong-hwa-da)
South Korean film by first-time director Jang Hun, a protege of the multi-award-winning art house director Kim Ki-duk. The Korean title of the film translates as A Film Is a Film, and it makes a sophisticated if not particularly deep play on the nexus of tough guy cinema actors and the actual criminals they portray. Su-ta (Kang Ji-hwan) is an aggressive, arrogant star who naturally ends up playing violent, gangster-like roles. He gets involved with Gang-pae (So Ji-sub), a real-life gangster with cinematic ambitions. Although their personalities put them at odds, circumstances force the pair to collaborate to achieve their own ends. An engaging film with some fine performances and understated intellectual aspirations.
Rail Truck
A Japanese movie with part of its action taking place in Taiwan, Rail Truck tells the story of a Japanese mother and her two young children who come to Taiwan after the death of their Taiwanese father. It is a journey of discovery for the children as they find some relics of Japan’s colonial past and tackle issues of their mixed cultural identity. Cinematography by Mark Lee (李屏賓), who takes a look at his home country through foreign eyes and emerges with an idyllic picture of what Taiwan’s tourism authorities would dearly love this country to look like.
Blood Creek
Slasher movie by Joel Schumacher in a return to the vampire/undead horror genre. Unfortunately not a return to the form he showed in the 1987 classic The Lost Boys. Blood Creek has plenty of interesting ideas, but shows little restraint, cramming in Norse rune stones, demonic horses, and a Nazi-era experiment gone wrong. Playing off the occult interests of senior Third Reich figures makes for a promising backstory, but the necromantic theme is muddied by an over-elaborate plot. For all that, Schumacher’s commitment to baroque horror can still be enjoyed in this B-movie feature.
Lily Sometimes (Pieds nus sur les limaces)
Good acting by talented actresses Diane Kruger and Ludivine Sagnier camouflages the more egregious aspects of Fabienne Berthaud’s facile comedy about a woman taking care of her schizophrenic sister. Sagnier plays against type as Lily, a girl who gets a little wild after her mother dies, but whose wildness can also be seen as a fresh, innocent response to the stuffy ways of French bourgeois life. The lack of any real urgency in a film that deals with mental illness has led many critics to regard it as an exercise is vapid self-indulgence, while others see the lack of a social agenda as one of the film’s strengths.
The Summit: A Chronicle of the Stones of Serenity (Tsurugidake: Ten no Ki)
Based on a novel by Jiro Nitta, The Summit: A Chronicle of the Stones of Serenity tells the story of Japanese explorers who in 1907 penetrated deep into the Hida Mountains to map the last unexplored area of Japan. The directorial debut of veteran cinematographer Daisaku Kimura, the film features spectacular images of the vastness of the Hida Mountains and tells a moving story of explorers risking their lives in an endeavor to survey an area that had resisted the efforts of cartographers.
Beck
A manga-based teen rock ’n’ roll movie from Japanese director Yukihiko Tsutsumi. Similar to the popular Japanese film Nana, also based on manga, but featuring a boy rather than a girl band. The usual mixture of laughter and tears set to an upbeat soundtrack of catchy J-pop, the story revolves around a band that works its way to the brink of success. But buried secrets of its lead guitarist are revealed, sparking a feud that threatens to ruin everything. Will the band survive the pressure of success? That’s less important to the target audience than the Japanese teen idols who feature in the film.
A Boy and His Samurai
A Japanese take on the Kate & Leopold concept, A Boy and His Samurai tells the story of an embattled single mother who runs a small restaurant. One day she meets a samurai warrior from two centuries ago. She allows him to help around the house, and he turns out to be a great male role model for her son, bringing traditional discipline to the wayward boy. The samurai, played by singer Ryo Nishikido in his first movie role, discovers a vocation for making cakes, and there are many scenes featuring complicated confections, giving the film additional appeal for foodies.
Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works
Anime movie from a scenario that has made the transition from a video game to a wide variety of media. The movie brings together most of the production team and cast from the successful television series released in 2006. A young boy is orphaned after a terrible natural disaster, gets taken up by a wizard, then trains to become one himself. Moving through time and space, he becomes embroiled in a battle to obtain a sacred cup in order to prevent the tragedy that led to him being orphaned in the first place.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s