Rio
Given a special promotional screening last weekend, Rio will hit the cinemas officially this week. Created by the team that put together the highly successful Ice Age franchise, Rio turns its attention to other idiosyncratic aspects of evolution with its story of birds that fly and birds that don’t set against the musically and visually inspiring town of Rio de Janeiro. The association with Ice Age gives the show a big promotional advantage, but it just seems like more of the same, transferred to a warmer clime. Forgettable entertainment for all the family.
Limitless
Speaking of forgettable entertainment, Limitless offers much the same kind of trip, with lots of lad-mag satisfaction thrown in, for a slightly older audience. Although the film touts its credentials with an appearance by Robert De Niro, his screen time does not warrant his star billing. We are left with Bradley Cooper, of Hangover fame, playing a mean-spirited loser who discovers a drug that makes him financially successful and appealing to women. Laddish wish fulfillment is a very large part of the film’s appeal, though there are hints of good ideas for viewers who can be bothered to notice.
Shelter
Rather paranoid thriller about a psychiatrist trying to work her way through the maze of a schizophrenic mind before she becomes a victim. Julianne Moore has been associated with some of the finest works of cinema, but also has a talent for picking some real turkeys. Sad to say that Shelter, in which she co-stars with the Jonathan Rhys Meyers, allows her to do much of the work without getting much of the very small amount of credit going round for this film. While far from being a disaster, Shelter never really make its way out of the fetal huddle of physiological thriller cliches.
Against the Current
There’s often a good reason for a festival movie waiting in line for nearly two years before it is shown: namely that it is not very good, or at least not very appealing. Aiming to deal with love, death and long-distance swimming, Against the Current has all manner of art house aspirations. The film has some strong performances, but also a number of rather poor ones.
The Big Gay Musical
This is a movie that will struggle hard to venture much beyond its target gay male audience, despite its amusing concept of an off-Broadway musical of a gay version of Genesis. Songs with lines such as “To hell with romance, just drop your pants, I want to be a slut,” fail to be either clever or endearing, and the struggle of the main characters to discover their real sexual identity is all candy floss and not much substance. If you felt there were simply too many girls in High School Musical, then you may get something out of this film.
Exorcismus
Also released under the title of La Posesion de Emma Evans, Exorcismus was made by the team that created the Rec movies. It also focuses on the stylistic device of the handycam, though this time brings it squarely into the horror genre. A family that allows the exorcism of their daughter to be secretly filmed finds itself in all kinds of ectoplasm when things inevitably go awry. There is a more than adequate performance from Sophie Vavasseur as the girl possessed, but director Manuel Carballo fights his way through genre cliches with limited success.
Everyman’s War
A straight-to-DVD effort that tells the “true story” of Don Smith, a member of the 94th Infantry that was engaged in the Battle of the Bulge. Based on a screenplay by family member Craig Smith and directed by Thad Smith. This is a well-worn genre played perfectly straight, right out of a studio war-movie how-to manual from the 1970s. With plenty of heroism, sacrifice and love, Everyman’s War has been described as Band of Brothers-lite.
G-Rangers 新世紀高潮戰隊3G
G-Rangers, with its stylistic influences from the Mighty Morphine Power Rangers franchise, is a live action drama with a retro style, though it plays at contemporary relevance by dealing with the issue of terrorism. The forces of right wear aerodynamic headgear and micro-minis, and this, we can suppose, is sufficient to defeat the forces of darkness.
A Lone Scalpel
Medical drama from Japan that takes the dilemmas of life and death to a melodramatic limit with forbidden operations that test the boundaries of accepted morality. The fact that the presiding doctor over these advanced and ethically dubious procedures is model Hiroki Narimiya, who is supported by an almost as good-looking cast of doctors and patients, places A Lone Scalpel firmly within the matinee genre of medical thriller.
Natali 3D
Billed as the first 3D Asian erotic movie, this feature from South Korea is a soft-porn fetishist’s dream-cum-true. There are visual references to nude sculpture and dance to give the erotic longings the trappings of taste. The promotional material states that the 3D technology puts you right in there with the protagonists, but the self-absorption of the actors makes one feel that three might be a crowd.
The Inspired Island: Series of Eminent Writers from Taiwan 文學大師系列影展
A series of six films by six directors about six prominent Taiwanese authors, this mini film festival is a must for anyone interested in Taiwanese literature. Authors covered include Lin Hai-yin (林海音), author of the iconic My Memories of Old Beijing, poets Chou Meng-tieh (周夢蝶), Yu Kuang-chung (余光中), Cheng Chou-yu (鄭愁予) and Yang Mu (楊牧) and novelist Wang Wen-hsing (王文興). The festival opens tomorrow and runs through May 6, with screenings at The Ambassador Theatre (國賓影城) at Spring Center (長春廣場), 176 Changchun Rd, Taipei City (台北市長春路176號).
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
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