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.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built