Fast & Furious 6
The Fast and the Furious franchise goes all the way back to 2001. Minus the definite article and with a sexy ampersand in the title, Fast & Furious 6 proudly proclaims that this silly bit of gearhead fluff has matured into one of the most exuberant and tightly composed pieces of action filmmaking ever. It’s directed by Justin Lin, who has directed all the films of the franchise since the third, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and has become an unrivaled master of automotive mayhem. Picking up action from the previous installment, Fast Five, Dwayne Johnson’s Agent Luke Hobbs teams up with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew of mavericks to take down a rogue special ops agent. The plot, as far as it goes, is perfectly adequate to support a string of top-notch automotive stunts that are done old school, using long shots rather than making do with choppy editing and CGI assistance.
Christmas Rose (聖誕玫瑰)
Written and directed by Charlie Yeung (楊采妮), probably best-known to Western audiences from her co-starring role in the Pang Brother’s action film Bangkok Dangerous with Nicolas Cage. Christmas Rose is a courtroom drama that deals with issues of sexual harassment and medical malpractice in a serious if rather melodramatic fashion. The cast is led by Aaron Kwok (郭富城) as a fearless lawyer who represents a paraplegic piano teacher played by Kwai Lun-mei (桂綸鎂) against a doctor she believes sexually assaulted her in the course of an examination. The defense is led by a fast-talking legal wunderkind played by Ha Yu (夏雨). The strong cast and tense courtroom scenes ensure that the moral complexities of sexual harassment and courtroom ethics don’t become too ponderous.
After Lucia
Schoolyard drama from Mexican writer/director Michel Franco who targets the hot button issue of bullying in a slow burn of a movie that builds to powerful effect. After the death of her mother, Ale (Tessa Ia) and her father Roberto (Hernan Mendoza) try to make a new start. A single misstep leads to a falling out between Ale and her new school friends that degenerates into bullying and the edges of criminality. Ale, who wants to be a support rather than a burden to her father, finds herself pushed to the edge. The director does not provide the audience with easy emotional cues and lets the actors do their job. Ia is particularly fine in a difficult role, and there is good support from a bevy of non-professionals who play her tormentors.
Barfi!
The Indian film industry once again showing the world that it can do much more than standard Bollywood. Barfi! does not so much tell a story as create a cinematic montage around its title character, a young deaf-mute who wanders through a kaleidoscope of romance and adventure. Starring Ranbir Kapoor, and featuring the very considerable talents of newcomer Ileana D’Cruz and former Miss Universe Priyanka Chopra, the film is so full of good humor that its slight infelicities are easily overlooked. There are echoes of Amelie in its magical imaginings, and a touch of The Artist in the homage to the power of silent film, though in the case of Barfi!, it is only the lead actor who remains silent. There is a splendid score by Pritam Chakraborty, often jokingly performed by a trio of instrumentalists popping up in odd corners of the screen.
Great Expectations
It is a commonplace of the cinema that literary adaptations are dangerous ground, and when the work is a great, and massive, classic, as is Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, the challenge is even greater. Director Mike Newell’s (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) work has a splendid supporting cast, with Helena Bonham Carter amping up the Bellatrix Lestrange-like witchiness as Miss Havisham, Robbie Coltrane terrific as the wily, manipulative Jaggers and a bravura piece from Ralph Fiennes as Magwitch. Newell finds himself somewhere between the hyperrealism of Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights and the stagy theatricality of Joe Wright’s recent Anna Karenina, and while it may not please fans of the book, there is plenty to enjoy.
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