Taiwan Latino Film Festival 2011
For the newest installment of the POP Cinema mini-festivals, titled Taiwan Latino Film Festival 2011, Spot — Taipei Film House (光點—台北之家) has put together a top-notch lineup of 26 award-winning films, from 17 Latin American countries, that have never before been shown in Taiwan. Works on the lineup include The Tiniest Place, by director Tatiana Huezo, who in the film returns to her hometown where villagers are struggling to get on with life following the end of the Salvadoran civil war (1980 to 1992). Other highlights include Postcards From Leningrad, a biographic work that recalls director Mariana Rondon’s life as a little girl when her parents fought as guerrillas in Venezuela during the 1960s and 1970s, and Peruvian director Claudia Llosa’s feature debut Madeinusa, an imaginative tale about a 14-year-old girl living in a remote Andean village. Taiwan Latino Film Festival 2011 takes place today through Jan. 6, 2012, at Spot — Taipei Film House (光點—台北之家), 18, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市中山北路二段18號), and Dec. 30 to Jan. 5, 2012, at Kaohsiung Film Archive (高雄市電影館), 10 Hesi Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市河西路10號). Tickets are NT$200 per screening (NT$170 for SPOT members) in Taipei, and NT$80 in Kaohsiung, available through NTCH ticketing outlets or online at www.artsticket.com.tw. For more information, visit www.twfilm.org/taiwan-lation.
10+10
Initiated by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (金馬影展), this compilation of 20 short films is an ambitious joint effort by 10 established directors and 10 up-and-coming talents in Taiwan. Each contributor was invited to make a five-minute film that deals with what he or she thinks is unique to the country. The results are movies on diverse topics ranging from the themes of authoritarianism and rebellion in Yang Ye-che’s (楊雅?) The Singing Boy (唱歌男孩) and bullying in Chung Mong-hong’s (鍾孟宏) chilling Echo (回音), to the suffering caused by dementia in Old Man and Me (老人與我), by seasoned director Cheng Wen-tang (鄭文堂), and Cheng Yu-chieh’s (鄭有傑) Unwritten Rules (潛規則), an hilarious exposition on the dilemma local filmmakers face when they try to sell their films to China. The series ends with Hou Hsiao-hsien’s (侯孝賢) serene La Belle Epoque, in which a grandmother passes down family mementos to her young granddaughter. For more information, visit the film’s official blog at tenplusten.pixnet.net/blog.
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Does the world need another Alvin and the Chipmunks movie? With the festive season in full swing, the producers behind this third iteration, subtitled “Chip-wrecked,” clearly think that they are on to a sure thing; and they are probably right. The cast members, many who have stayed on from the previous film, have a nice rapport, and director Mike Mitchell has established a good balance between Chipmunk and human action in the film. The plot: Alvin and friends are accidentally marooned on a seemingly deserted island. (Of course it isn’t actually deserted.) While the story never manages to root itself in the imagination, there is plenty of innocent fun to be had, and there is also an unexceptional moral message. Attempts to cater to parents are not particularly successful, but the target audience will probably leave the movie theater satisfied.
Lovesick (戀愛恐慌症)
Written and directed by Taiwanese American Rocky Jo (龍毅), this debut feature by a director coming out of TV advertising does not seem to promise much in the way of originality, but the cast, led by Ariel Lin (林依晨) and Chen Bo-lin (陳柏霖), are likely to draw a starstruck audience. Lin is the beautiful and independent-minded Ruo Ching, who has vowed to never love again after having her heart broken, and Chen is the high-flying doctor Che Han, who she accidentally meets after falling over while visiting a hospital. Of course, the path of true love does not run smooth, and there are busybody relatives and a romantic rival to keep the story going. Also features versatile TV host and actor Ken Lin (better known as A-Ken, 林暐恆), who provides some comedy playing six different characters.
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