Leaving Gracefully (帶一片風景走)
Renowned Taiwanese entertainer and television host Peng Chia-chia (澎恰恰), real name Peng Chang-tsan (彭樟燦), makes a foray into filmmaking with Leaving Gracefully, a family drama inspired by a true story. In the film a husband keeps his promise to go on a cross-island walk with his sick wife, who afterwards dies from spinocerebellar ataxia, a genetic degenerative disease. Weighted down by wooden dialogue and stiff performances, Leaving Gracefully shows that Peng’s scriptwriting and directing skills have room for improvement. His directorial debut is, however, not without merit. Rene Hou (侯怡君), who plays the wife, proves that a Taiwanese soap opera actress is also capable of serious acting, Chou I-wen’s (周以文) sumptuous cinematography is simply a feast for the eyes, and Peng, 56, earns kudos as songwriter of the film’s catchy tunes.
The Green Lantern
More big-budget superhero action from the hand of Martin Campbell, a veteran action director who’s worked on such great TV mini-series projects as Minder, Reilly: Ace of Spies and Edge of Darkness, before creating what is arguably the best Bond film: Casino Royale. The good-looking leads, Ryan Reynolds (Green Lantern) and Blake Lively (Carol Ferris), are backed up by a solid supporting cast that includes Peter Sarsgaard and Mark Strong. The Green Lantern story is based on a DC Comics property that dates back to the early 1940s and the numerous clips that have been released to drum up publicity suggest a rather heavy moral tone, but the special effects and graphics look like they will certainly be worth looking at on the big screen.
Altitude
An uneven, low-budget excursion by first-time director and established comic book artist Kaare Andrews, Altitude takes as its point of departure a short story by horror/fantasy pioneer H.P. Lovecraft and turns it into a cliched, sloppy and pointless exercise in bitchiness. A flaccid script that has four people snipping at each other while the small aircraft they are in is caught in the grasp of a mysterious supernatural force is an unedifying lesson in padding out an idea that might have been great for a 30-minute episode of The Twilight Zone, but at nearly 100 minutes, sinks like a lead balloon.
Amazon Forever
A film written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux that was released in 2004 and which has avoided virtually any mainstream interest. It is the story of a French filmmaker who goes into the Amazon forest, falls in love with the daughter of a local chief, films the destruction of the forest by Portuguese loggers and tries to raise awareness about the plight of the rain forest and the people who live there. The film is notable for its portrayal of authentic daily life among the Indians in the forest, with many roles taken by local tribespeople.
A Beautiful Life (不再讓你孤單)
A deeply flawed film by brilliant director Andrew Lau (劉偉強), saved by top-notch performances by leads Shu Qi (舒淇) and Liu Ye (劉燁). Though they have had uneven careers, Lau elicits a deep emotional resonance from Shu, who plays a flirtatious gold digger from Hong Kong who falls for Zhendong, a principled and lonely policeman in Beijing. The first part of the film is a well-observed romantic drama, but when Zhendong contracts a fatal illness, the whole thing spirals into a manipulative tearjerker.
Robo-Geisha
Some serious madness in a kind of schlock slapstick of a movie by Iguchi Noboru, director of The Machine Girl. He has teamed up with cult director Nishimura Yoshihiro, the creator of Tokyo Gore Police and Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl, and has a slew of super sexy girls in outfits that change from demure kimono to sadomasochist leather, chopping up clients with chain saws or engaging in ninja-style battles (while wearing school girl uniforms) with rivals. The silliness defies description, but if this is your cup of tea, Robo-Geisha will not disappoint.
Runway Beat
More rock ’n’ roll, pseudo-rebellious anime-inspired romance from Kentaro Ohtani, who made the hugely popular Nana films. Once again Ohtani visits the world of high school students who want out from the drab tedium of class, and in Runway Beat they find it in the world of teenage fashion. Obviously many difficulties have to be overcome, and there are conflicts between love and friendship, but it all wraps up with a bitchin’ power anthem and hugs all round. Music by the Funky Monkey Babys.
Were the World Mine
A lighthearted high-school fantasy that could be seen as the gay world’s response to the High School Musical franchise. Timothy (Tanner Cohen), a persecuted gay student at a private boys’ school outside Chicago, somehow gets hold of an actual love potion while rehearsing for his role as Puck in the school production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He starts using it on many of the often homophobic members of his community, with comic results. There are some good songs, and a playfulness that lifts this film out of a strict gay interest niche.
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
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
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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