Seediq Bale 2 (賽德克‧巴萊 (下)
The legend of Sediq leader Mouna Rudo and his clans continues as the second part of Wei Te-sheng’s (魏德聖) epic hits theaters today. With the first part having filled in the necessary social and historical background, the second half concentrates on ingeniously staged action sequences and is interspersed with poignant moments, such as the scene where a group of tribeswomen hang themselves rather than be a burden to their fighting men. The English subtitled versions of both parts are showing at Showtime’s Shin-shin branch (欣欣秀泰影城), 247 Linsen N Rd, Taipei City (台北市林森北路247號), tel: (02) 2537-1889.
The Change-Up
It’s not surprising that The Change-Up has some major similarities to The Hangover. It was written by the same guys, and clearly they had used up whatever ideas they had in the first movie. The Change-Up is just a sequel to The Hangover with a stale body-swap angle. Remember Freaky Friday? Well, just add in references to body functions, sex games and lots and lots of swearing. Men drink too much, and then they revert to little boys. That said, the two boys, Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds, do a fine job with the second-rate material given to them, lifting the film out of the gutter for some good laughs, even when you’ve heard the joke before.
Womb
A film that tells the story of Rebecca (Eve Green), who falls in love with Tommy (Matt Smith) only to lose him in a random car accident. She then decides to give birth to his clone. It’s an intriguing premise, but it is handled with such self-conscious languor that even the gorgeous scenery of the North Sea coast and the beauty and talent of Green are not sufficient to hold the audience. This is the first English-language film by young Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf, who has been much feted on the European festival circuit. Womb degenerates into a rather ordinary mother/son drama, leaving behind its more fantastic and exciting conceptual elements.
Apollo 18
High-concept space drama that fails to deliver. Decades-old footage of NASA’s abandoned Apollo 18 project provides suggestions of why the US dropped out of the space race. The conceit — laboriously established in the film’s publicity — that this is a documentary providing a factual insight into historical events fails to carry through effectively into the film, which is just a space-station horror flick with one or two good scares. Shades of The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield and a host of other films are just too obvious to ignore, and the jumpy, hand-held camera work not only fails to create any sustained sense of dread, it is just downright annoying. Despite some carefully crafted moments of suspense, the film collapses under the weight of its pretensions. Showing at Vieshow Cinemas (Xinyi) (威秀影城信義), Showtime Cinemas (Today) (秀泰影城今日), Showtime Cinemas (Shin-shin) (秀泰影城欣欣) and CINEMA7 (Spring Cinema Galaxy) (絕色影城). (Theater information on page 17.)
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
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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