Touch of the Light (逆光飛翔)
Inspirational film from director Chang Rong-ji (張榮吉) who made a splash with his 2006 debut My Football Summer (奇蹟的夏天). Touch of the Light is built around the story of Huang Yu-hsiang (黃裕翔), the first blind person to graduate as a piano major from the National Taiwan University of Arts (台灣藝術大學). He has been the focus of two film shorts by Chang, which have now been expanded, with eye candy provided in the shape of Sandrine Pinna (張榕容), who came to prominence in the award-winning 2009 film Yang Yang (陽陽). Predictable and more than a little hackneyed, much of the film’s appeal comes from a natural performance by Huang, and the very real nature of his achievement in overcoming disability.
The Expatriate
Olga Kurylenko’s career after starring opposite Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace in 2008 has gone nowhere fast, and her role in the vastly sub-par film The Expatriate is not going to do her any favors. Action films borrow from one another, but this tale of a CIA operative (Aaron Eckhart) who finds himself overseas with his estranged daughter when the agency disowns him as part of an international conspiracy is so derivative that every action sequence and line of dialogue seems to be a pale echo from another film.
Stolen
Nicolas Cage is back in yet another film in which he needs to run about and shout a lot. This tale of a former thief who needs to draw on all his expertise to save his kidnapped daughter, played by Sami Gayle, shows that mindless against-the-clock chase movies can make anyone, no matter how pretty or talented, look dumb. Fortunately for Gayle, she is also currently in Detachment with Adrien Brody, where she proves that she deserves much better than to be stuck in the boot of a taxi while Josh Lucas mugs up as an almost cartoonish villain.
Margin Call
Margin Call is a perfectly adequate drama of high finance and inequitable dealing that sports a talented cast, a perfectly serviceable plot, and some good character sketches. Despite the presence of such hugely talented actors as Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons and Simon Baker, along with its setting against a key moment in the financial crisis, the film never quite manages to capture the zeitgeist in the way Wall Street did. What it does not do is insult your intelligence in the way that both the other two major Hollywood releases this week do.
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
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
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
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless