Little Prince
One of the world’s best-selling books, this beloved novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupery has been interpreted into numerous operas, musical productions, television series and films in various formats and languages. Yet, this 3D stop motion and computer animation directed by the guy who helmed Kung Fu Panda is only the second full-length English-language film adaptation after the 1974 musical. Keep in mind that this is not a direct adaptation. Instead, we follow a little girl (Inside Out, anyone?) who is forced by her mother to spend her summer vacation studying for entrance exams to a prestigious school and preparing to be “a wonderful adult.” Her next door neighbor happens to be the aviator — the narrator in the actual novel. Over the course of the summer, he tells her the story of the Little Prince, whom he met in the desert when his plane crashed. This is when the stop-motion comes in, based on the author’s watercolor illustrations. There’s no doubt that the results are beautiful, but does the story-inside-a-story format work for a tale already with so many underlying nuances?
Black Mass
Also based on a book of the same name, Black Mass depicts the story of notorious Irish-American mobster Whitey Bulger (Johnny Depp, though it might take a minute to recognize him under all that makeup), who ran Boston’s Winter Hill Gang. The film chronicles how Bulger’s childhood friend-turned-FBI agent John Connolly enlisted him as an informant to take down the Italian mob, while Bulger gets away with murder and other criminal activities, eliminating his rivals and rising to the top. All goes well until Bulger’s activities get out of hand. In real life, Bulger went on the run in 1994, spending 12 years on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list until he was finally captured in 2011 and convicted of 11 murders among other crimes. Critics say that the film is fairly accurate to true events, and that it’s one of Depp’s best performances of late.
Strangerland
Nicole Kidman (in her first starring role in an independent Australian production since 1989) and Joseph Fiennes star as a couple who, seemingly recovering from some sort of past trauma, move their family into the Australian desert. On the eve of a massive orange dust storm, their flirtatious teenage daughter and younger son disappear, and the search begins while more about the family is revealed than they would like to. Kidman reportedly delivers a great performance as the mother’s mental state deteriorates. The trailer starts with the mother looking for the children, but things gradually become unhinged with brief cut scenes of sexuality, violence, anguish and other underlying emotions indicating that there’s much more to the film than the plot suggests.
Tales of Halloween
Cramming 10 segments into 90 minutes, Tales of Halloween is a low-budget anthology of interrelated stories that take place in a small American town that is terrorized by all sorts of scary things one Halloween night. Horror fans will definitely recognize some of the directors — including Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw series), Neil Marshall (The Descent) and Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider!) while enjoying cameos by the likes of John Landis (American Werewolf in London), Lin Shaye (Insidious) and Barry Bostwick (Rocky Horror Picture Show). The stories are strung together with the commentary of now 70-year-old Adrienne Barbeau, who reprises her radio DJ role from the 1980 film The Fog. We won’t reveal much of the plot since the segments are so short, but they should be fun and scary at the same time.
L’Oriana
This film, originally made for Italian TV, depicts the life of often controversial journalist Oriana Fallaci, who died in 2006. She was famous for her war and revolution coverage, and is known for interviews with world leaders such as Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), Indira Gandhi, Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger. Fallaci’s most famous interview probably was with Ayatollah Khomeini, where she took off her chador and called it a “stupid medieval rag.” The film also portrays Fallaci’s love affair with one of her subjects, Greek politician and poet Alexandros Panagoulis, who resisted the country’s dictatorship in the 1960s. The film does not cover her later years, where after the 9/11 attacks she wrote three books criticizing Islam.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50