Thor: The Dark World
Thor was an Avengers story that had huge potential to go horribly wrong. An arrogant Norse god finds himself in the battle with his half-brother Loki, saves the world and makes good things happen with Natalie Portman. Kenneth Branagh managed to hold the balance between heroics and silliness, and it was hard not to be drawn in by the mixture of high camp and fantasy. The sequel, Thor: The Dark World sees Alan Taylor from Game of Thrones in the director’s chair. The film has acquired a darker hue, and the shadow boxing between the forthright Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the devious Loki (Tom Hiddleston) reaches new levels. But the key to Thor: The Dark World is Hemsworth, who plays the title role with commitment, and an ever-so-slight wink of amusement. This is a B-movie fantasy played with top-shelf production values and acting talent.
Just Like a Woman
Multi-cultural Thelma and Louise with belly dancing. Directed by Rachid Bouchareb, Just Like a Woman is lovely to watch, but cannot be but a disappointment to anyone familiar with the director’s other work, particularly his 2006 feature Days of Glory about North African’s fighting in the French army against Nazi oppression. Marilyn (Sienna Miller) and Mona (Golshifteh Farahani) both have problems at home, one with a husband with a wandering eye and the other with her mother-in-law. They hit the road, carrying with them their hopes, fears and secrets, and as their friendship grows, so does the realization of the consequences of their actions. But for all the social commentary about Arabs living in America, and the heavy dose of feminist rant at a patriarchal society, Just Like a Woman is bland, and the echoes of Thelma and Louise highlight at every point its lack of real dramatic power. This is an inauspicious start to what Bouchareb has said will be a trilogy about changing relations between the US and the Arab world.
100 Days (真愛100天)
Directed by Henry Chan (陳發中), a US-based director who won an Emmy back in 1987 for multi-camera production for The Cosby Show. For his feature film debut, Chan has returned to Taiwan, and located his story in the exotic location of Matsu Island. 100 Days is the story of an arrogant communications executive who is forced to return to his remote island home for the funeral of his estranged mother, and while stranded there by a storm, discovers things about his home, his family and himself that he never knew before. The film stars Johnny Lu (路斯明) as Bo Dan, and Tracy Chou (周采詩) as his first girlfriend who still lives on the island and is about to get married. There is plenty of comic schtick of the city slicker dealing with rural life, and romance inevitably springs up between the two lead characters. The settings have a certain cinematic grandeur, but the style is more TV rom-com, and the unfailingly derivative plot development means that 100 Days is not likely to raise the bar on local filmmaking.
Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above (看見台灣)
Created from the master of aerial cinematography Chi Po-lin (齊柏林), Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above is exactly what its title describes it to be. The 93 minutes of aerial photography presented in the film show an often unseen side of Taiwan, and were taken from over 400 hours of film that covers Taiwan from its pristine mountains to images of vast depredation resulting from the island’s rapid development. Many of the images are awe-inspiring in their beauty, often revealing unexpected insights into the island due to the unusual perspective. With a voice-over by Wu Nien-chen (吳念真) and music by award-winning composer Ricky Ho (何國杰), Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above celebrates the beauty of Taiwan and laments the ugliness, all the while expressing a powerful sentimental commitment to the island, its people and its history.
Shield of Straw
Director Takashi Miike is wildly prolific, and he jumps genres constantly. He has made many outstanding films, and has proved he is not afraid to challenge convention, but working at such a pace, it is not surprising that his resume is also littered with duds. Shield of Straw is a typical effort that sports and innovative concept, but has been made too quickly (though with an ample budget) for him to really develop its potential. A team of cops is tasked with protecting a prime suspect of the murder of a young girl, whose father has put out a massive bounty for his death. This situation leads to plenty of violence and a high body count, and the police, led by an idealistic cop (Takao Osawa), wonder at the price of protecting someone who is probably guilty of a terrible crime. Shield of Strawis a good enough action thriller, but is a long way from being ranked among Miike’s best work.
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