Three Pictures X’mas Party (3P聖誕ALL夜)
A glimpse at the alternative edge of Hong Kong cinema for a sexy Christmas viewing experience, the Three Pictures X’mas Party showcases the work of three young Hong Kong-based directors. The three movie mini-festival, which runs today, tomorrow and Sunday, is screening Innocent (只愛陌生人), End of Love (愛到盡) and The People I Have Slept With (姣妹日記). The three films share a common interest in steamy sex, both gay and straight (only the last of the three is specifically straight), and promiscuous living in general, as well as a moderate level of festival circuit exposure. They aim for the racy end of the European art house spectrum, and for those who want to get into a sexy mood with someone special, you could do worse. The films will show at in89 Digital Cinema (in89豪華數位影院), 89, Wuchang St Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市武昌街二段89號). Tickets are available at the venue for NT$160 per screening and NT$499 for a set of three. Detailed information about the films can be found at mypaper.pchome.com.tw/3pxmas.
Love and Other Drugs
Taiwan’s film distributors clearly believe that this is the season for sex, and the recently released Love and Other Drugs fits the bill perfectly. It stars two very beautiful people, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, who spend a large segment of the film’s 113 minutes getting naked. That would seem a good enough reason to see the film, but there is even more to recommend it. Director Edward Zwick has packed the film with sharp dialogue, a critique of the pharmaceutical trade, and a disease-of-the-day tearjerker. While a hasty assessment would suggest that the film could fall apart under its own weight, an old-fashioned sense of theatrical good humor holds it together, making it an ideal date movie for those who don’t think getting blown away by the special effects of Tron: Legacy 3D is all that romantic.
Anything for Her (Pour Elle)
This 2008 French movie served as the model for the recently released The Next Three Days, and for anyone who wants to watch this rather improbable thriller, the substitution of Vincent Lindon for Russell Crowe can only be a good thing. A married couple’s life is turned upside down when the wife is arrested for murder. Her husband, with no legal recourse, learns to become a criminal in order to bust his wife out of prison. Inevitably, he gets caught up in the dark side of humanity. The film received strong reviews for its solid acting and the tension created by director Fred Cavaye.
Home for Christmas (Hjem til Jul)
Based on a series of short stories by award-winning Norwegian writer Levi Henriksen, Home for Christmas manages to weave its separate elements into an organic whole. Beautiful to look at and with a hint of darkness that occasionally cuts through the feel-good festive surface, the film might serve as a welcome antidote to the more aggressively saccharine Christmas features offered by the big US studios. The movie tells a number of interlinked stories of people trying desperately to reconnect with family and friends, or indeed anyone who will listen. An excellent feel-good option for those who don’t want the sentiment laid on too thick.
Ohoku
Also distributed under the more expressive title The Lady Shogun and Her Men, Ohoku is an historical costume comedy that derives most of its humor from role reversal. In 16th-century Edo, a population decimated by disease sees women rise up the political structure, and female shogun Yoshimune (Kou Shibasaki) finds herself at the head of a harem of 3,000 men, all vying for her favor. The film has been a great hit with Japanese audiences, but Variety magazine, though lauding its production values, does not believe the plays on various gender stereotypes will draw many laughs from non-Japanese audiences.
Naruto: The Movie 7
The seventh feature movie in the ongoing Naruto franchise, the film has also, confusingly, been released as Naruto Shippuden 4: The Lost Tower. The Naruto manga tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, an adolescent ninja who constantly searches for recognition and aspires for high status through participation in various missions. The story mixes fight and comedy elements and has proved a successful export to North America and other Western markets.
La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet
The film follows the productions of seven ballets at the famed Opera House in Paris, giving viewers an inside look at the dancers, the choreographers, the rehearsals and performances, as well as the costumers and other backstage crew members. Among the ballets included are those by modern-dance choreographers Wayne McGregor and Emmanuel Gat, who both have appeared in Taipei as part of the Novel Hall Dance series, and Angelin Preljocaj, whose company has appeared at the National Theater. The film is in French, with Chinese and English subtitles.
If one asks Taiwanese why house prices are so high or why the nation is so built up or why certain policies cannot be carried out, one common answer is that “Taiwan is too small.” This is actually true, though not in the way people think. The National Property Administration (NPA), responsible for tracking and managing the government’s real estate assets, maintains statistics on how much land the government owns. As of the end of last year, land for official use constituted 293,655 hectares, for public use 1,732,513 hectares, for non-public use 216,972 hectares and for state enterprises 34 hectares, yielding
The small platform at Duoliang Train Station in Taitung County’s Taimali Township (太麻里) served villagers from 1992 to 2006, but was eventually shut down due to lack of use. Just 10 years later, the abandoned train station had become widely known as the most beautiful station in Taiwan, and visitors were so frequent that the village had to start restricting traffic. Nowadays, Duoliang Village (多良) is known as a bit of a tourist trap, with a mandatory, albeit modest, admission fee of NT$10 giving access to a crowded lane of vendors with a mediocre view of the ocean and the trains
Traditionally, indigenous people in Taiwan’s mountains practice swidden cultivation, or “slash and burn” agriculture, a practice common in human history. According to a 2016 research article in the International Journal of Environmental Sustainability, among the Atayal people, this began with a search for suitable forested slopeland. The trees are burnt for fertilizer and the land cleared of stones. The stones and wood are then piled up to make fences, while both dead and standing trees are retained on the plot. The fences are used to grow climbing crops like squash and beans. The plot itself supports farming for three years.
President William Lai (賴清德) on Nov. 25 last year announced in a Washington Post op-ed that “my government will introduce a historic US$40 billion supplementary defense budget, an investment that underscores our commitment to defending Taiwan’s democracy.” Lai promised “significant new arms acquisitions from the United States” and to “invest in cutting-edge technologies and expand Taiwan’s defense industrial base,” to “bolster deterrence by inserting greater costs and uncertainties into Beijing’s decision-making on the use of force.” Announcing it in the Washington Post was a strategic gamble, both geopolitically and domestically, with Taiwan’s international credibility at stake. But Lai’s message was exactly
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