Legendary Amazons (楊門女將之軍令如山)
Frankie Chan (陳勳奇) is probably best known as the composer of the scores of Chungking Express (重慶森林) and Ashes of Time (東邪西毒), but as director of Legendary Amazons, he is not doing himself any favors. The inappropriateness of the English title alone suggests that the film is not really intended to go much beyond the Chinese-speaking world, and the presence of people like Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) pretending, without any tongue-in-cheek, to be hardened combat veterans of vicious desert campaigns, really just stretches credibility too far. There are some decent big battle set pieces, but the film does not go beyond the historical romances that have been coming out of Hong Kong for decades.
Magic to Win (開心魔法)
From Wilson Yip (葉偉信), director of the solid Ip Man (葉問) martial arts films, Magic to Win shows a lighter side to the director. Unfortunately, it also seems to highlight other less desirable qualities, including a slap-dash approach to narrative coherence and a propensity to cherry-pick ideas from recent Hollywood productions. His new film, with its mixture of the mundane and the supernatural, both equally unbelievable, requires a huge suspension of disbelief if you are to go along for the ride. If you do, the film is filled with energy and high spirits, and perfectly enjoyable, though it fails to achieve the innocent good humor of the Happy Ghost (開心鬼) franchise of the 1980s, which it is clearly trying to emulate. Forgettable entertainment, but with enough familiar faces, including Louis Koo (古天樂) and model-turned-actress Karena Ng (吳千語), to command some attention.
The Source (La source des femmes)
A film that tries to combine sexual comedy with social issues fails to do justice to either in a story that is all cliche and lazy exoticism. The story revolves around the women from a small village in North Africa banding together against their husbands in an attempt to get the men to help in the dangerous and burdensome task of fetching water from the spring. Led by Leila (Leila Bekhti), a young wife from a less conservative part of the country, the women decide to withhold all sexual favors until the men chip in with the domestic work, enduring both physical and psychological abuse for their efforts. The characters are all one dimensional, and director Radu Mihaileanu squanders a talented cast in a tale in which he works through a catalog of standard scenarios toward a predictable end.
Touching Home
Coming to the scene on the wake of the high-profile Moneyball, Touching Home, a based-on-real-life against-the-odds inspirational tale from the world of baseball, fails to distinguish itself. Released in 2008, it is also more than a little shopworn, and despite a solid performance by Ed Harris as an alcoholic father making amends with his twin sons by helping them pursue their dreams to make it in professional baseball, the story is all just a bit too formulaic to make an impression.
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
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not