Skyfall
James Bond, Agent 007, is back in form. After the flabby mess that was Quantum of Solace, Sam Mendes has brought Daniel Craig’s Bond raging back in a film that is almost as good as Casino Royale. This time the girl to watch is Dame Judi Dench as M, the formidable head of MI6, normally a cameo, but who this time plays front and center in a riveting tale of how this puppet master of the intelligence community finds her dark past catching up with her. She might not have the curves, but she has the dramatic chops to lift this action thriller to stratospheric heights, and there is always Naomie Harris and Berenice Marlohe, among others, to provide the eye candy. Mendes has not been afraid to play around with the franchise’s cliches, with some bold casting choices such as Ben Whishaw as Q, Bond’s quartermaster, and Javier Bardem, once again proving what a superlative performer he is as the story’s villain. Bond has rarely been this good.
Barbara
This period film by German director Christian Petzold has picked up numerous awards on the festival circuit for its subtle exploration of the claustrophobia and paranoia created by the police state in East Germany during the 1980s. Starring Nina Hoss, a Petzold regular, the pace of the film about a nurse from Berlin exiled to a small, rural hospital as punishment for seeking an exit visa, is measured, even slow. Nevertheless, Petzold maintains the atmosphere of suffocating control, momentarily dispelled by moments of unexpected emotional release, with such assurance that Barbara never loses its grip on the audience. The film won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year.
Mr Nobody
In 1991, director Jaco Van Dormael scored a major hit with Toto the Hero, and with Mr Nobody he has taken the device of multiple lives and, well, multiplied it, over and over, into a complicated mess of a film. The film starts in the year 2092, when 180-year-old Nemo recounts his life story to a reporter. He gets a little confused, and flits across various alternative life paths, in which he is with different women and in different circumstances, in the course of which the viewer is likely to become utterly confused. “So long as you don’t choose, everything remains possible,” one youthful version of Nemo tells the audience. Dormael seems happy to remain in this flux of unresolved potentiality through the 141 minutes of the film, but viewers might simply wish that they had chosen not to waste their time and money.
Chronicle of My Mother
Adapted from Japanese author Yasushi Inoue’s 1960s-set autobiographical novels about his relationship with his aging mom, Chronicle of My Mother is a thoughtful, though ultimately upbeat portrait of caring for an aged and increasingly senile woman. Director Masato Hamada splits the point-of-view between Inoue and his sister, weakening the intensity of the tale, but does not shy away from taking some risks with this difficult topic, allowing a degree of whimsy, even comedy, to creep in, using this to flesh out a back story and make Inoue’s mother much more than an object of pity.
The Collector
Yet another bloody horror from the pen of Marcus Dunstan, the creative force being the interminable continuation of the Saw franchise well beyond its sell-by date. Arkin, (Josh Stewart) ventures into a house of horrors to pay off his debt to an ex-wife, only to be faced with a series of boobietraps set up by “The Collector,” whose greatest satisfaction is to watch people like Arkin die in horrible ways. This first episode is from 2009, and the sequel The Collection, which provides more of the same, is soon to be released.
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
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