Formosa Mambo (寶島漫波)
Phone fraudsters, kidnappers and an unemployed man are among the unfortunate types in the darkly comic feature debut by poet and television director Wang Chi-tsai (王啟在). The complicated film evolves into parallel story lines and subplots depicting different characters, but sensible editing makes it mercifully easy to follow. One of the lead characters is A-kang (Chu Chung-heng, 屈中恆), an unemployed insurance broker lured into working with a ring of con artists. Meanwhile across town, three desperate men decide to solve their economic woes by kidnapping a young boy. Wang helms the work with an obvious compassion for the deprived and the impoverished, using comedy as a vehicle to convey his rather biting commentaries on Taiwanese society. Unfortunately, stiff performances, dull pacing and a messy script prevent the movie from fulfilling its promising premise.
The Colors of the Mountain
The joys of childhood in a time of chaos. The Colors of the Mountain is a deceptively simple story about a young boy, Manuel, whose greatest wish is to become a soccer star. He takes the first step toward this ambition when his father gives him his first soccer ball. The ball gets kicked into a minefield, and the movie is about the boy’s efforts to enlist all and sundry to help him in the dangerous task of recovering his prize. In the background, rising tensions between the government and guerrillas threaten to engulf the whole region in civil war.
Rest on Your Shoulder (肩上蝶)
Ambitious romance/fairy tale from director Jacob Cheung (張之亮) that brings together a strong production team to create a splashy, idiosyncratic, sometimes touching, sometimes absurd romantic tale of forlorn lovers turning into butterflies and then having to flee from pest controllers. Beautiful locations, quality animation and a good score by composer Joe Hisaishi add to the charms of the cutie-pie cast, which includes Hong Kong’s Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) and Taiwan’s Kwai Lun-mei (桂綸鎂).
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (雪花與秘扇)
From the hand of director Wayne Wang (王穎), who was responsible for other humorless pieces of cross-cultural exotica such as The Joy Luck Club and Chinese Box, comes another work of luscious, lugubrious wallowing in the cruelty and longevity of Chinese traditions. Based on a novel by Lisa See, the film tries the difficult trick of following two stories that mirror each other, one in the past, and one in the present, with the same actresses, Li Bingbing (李冰冰) and Gianna Jun, holding down two roles apiece. The acting isn’t quite up to scratch for the leads, and most other characters are insufficiently written up to make much difference.
Ladda Land
Yet another Thai horror film based on “documented” supernatural events by Sophon Sakdaphisit, whose 4Bia (2008) achieved considerable applause in the Asian horror market. Lovely couple with two kids sink everything they have into the perfect house so that they can live their dream. Strange things start to happen that are at first ignored, but the family then begins to fall apart.
Crayon Shin-chan: Arashi o yobu ougon no supai daisakusen
Yet another installment in the Crayon Shin-chan manga franchise. Crayon Shin-chan, with his ability to misunderstand what the adults around him actually want, is constantly getting into scrapes that have been brought to life in comic, television, book and cinematic form for over two decades. Starting out from a simple domestic setting when first conceived, this latest offering has Crayon Shin-chan taking superhero lessons.
My Little Princess
A semi-autobiographical film by Eva Ionesco, who achieved notoriety at an early age after appearing nude in portraits taken by her mother, the provocative Parisian photographer Irina Ionesco. My Little Princess is very much in the monster-mommy vein of family drama, and tells the story of Violetta (Anamaria Vartolomei) and her relationship with her photographer mother Hanah (Isabelle Huppert), and the role her mother’s erotic games had in the daughter’s development. Lush costumes and set design and Huppert in one of her classic ice-queen roles all add to this film’s appeal.
Mr and Mrs Single (隱婚男女)
A film from the hand of Hong Kong director Patrick Kong (葉念琛), Mr and Mrs Single is set among China’s young, upwardly mobile, fashion-conscious urban professionals with an A-list cast led by Eason Chan (陳奕迅) and Rene Liu (劉若英). The story tells of the problems faced by Chan’s character when he hides the fact he is married in order to take up a demanding job that requires him to be on call 24-7. The subterfuge is so successful that he finds himself drawn into another romantic entanglement. Fun and games follow.
Little Voices (Pequenas voces)
An animated documentary in which drawings by and interviews with displaced children between the ages of 8 and 13 are used to tell the story of the decades-long civil war in Colombia. A powerful piece of social commentary that presents a child’s eye view of a vicious civil conflict.
St Trianian’s/St Trinian’s II: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold
A double offering of the St Trianan’s remakes with Rupert Everett in drag and lots of posh tottie is either your cup of gin or it isn’t. A cynical reworking of the much funnier The Belles of St Trinian’s made back in 1954, it has lost all of the innocent sense of fun in its headlong attempt at sexual innuendo in any shape for form.
Wasao
Another doggy movie from Japan applauding the virtues of man’s best friend, Wasao certainly does not shy away from pulling on the heart strings with a tale of a puppy that gets sent away after inadvertently causing a family tragedy, finds a new home with the owner of a grilled squid shop, gets caught up in the preparations for a big race through town, is reunited with its former owner and so on. It nevertheless manages to keep clear of the worst pitfalls of the manipulative tear-jerker. And Wasao, the title character, is just so cute!
Enter the Void
Another disturbing, experimentally filmed effort by Argentine director Gaspar Noe, Enter the Void (2009) looks and feels like a drug trip that slows but doesn’t stop for 161 long, dizzying minutes. Those who found some of the more discomforting scenes in Noe’s Irreversible (2002) hard to sit through will fare better with this film, though there are several scenes that aren’t for the squeamish. Revolves around the story of a Western pair of siblings living in Tokyo. Leave the kids at home.
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby