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.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated