The 33
Antonio Banderas stars in this film based on the 2010 Chilean mining incident, where 33 miners were trapped underground for more than two months. Banderas is “Super” Mario Sepulveda, the miner who was the face of daily video logs sent to the surface to update the billions of people following the event about their condition. It should be noted that despite becoming media sensations after the event — even playing soccer with the Chilean president and appearing on the CNN show Heroes — the men reportedly were never officially compensated for the ordeal, and many live in poverty and suffer from PTSD while the mine owners were never charged. The production company has promised the miners a cut of the box office sales, however, nine of the miners have filed a lawsuit against their lawyers, claiming that they were cheated out of their movie money with a misleading contract. Life hasn’t been easy for these miners despite their fame, and as Sepulveda put it in an interview, “We’re not heroes, we’re victims.”
Point Break
The original version of this 1991 classic surfer crime thriller starred American actors (led by Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze) and was mostly filmed in the US. The remake is like an extreme international version: co-produced by Chinese and American companies but featuring no well-known American actors (the two leads are now Australian and Venezuelan), it was filmed in 11 countries over three years and cost NT$5 billion to make. It features all kinds of extreme sports instead of just surfing and instead of regular robberies, the crimes here are epic, cross-nation ones that could devastate the global economy. The screenwriter behind all of this is Kurt Wimmer, whose last project was also a remake of an early-90s film, 2012’s Total Recall. Sure, the visuals and action sequences are great, but looking at the trailer, it seems to have completely ditched the slightly-offbeat qualities that made the original such a cult favorite.
Tale of Tales
This film is based on three stories from the collection of Neapolitan fairy tales by Giambattista Basile published in the 1630s: The Flea, The Enchanted Doe and The Flayed Lady. The original collection, which contained the earliest versions of beloved stories such as Cinderella and Rapunzel, was titled to be meant for children despite being full of sex and violence and more disturbing things. This adaptation by Matteo Garrone of Gommorah fame, takes it a step further into the grotesque and gory, featuring the morally corrupt and twisted rulers of three kingdoms. It’s weird, surreal, very dark comedy that seems to come with social and moral criticism, showing that human nature simply hasn’t changed much over 500 years.
Slow West
Scottish indie musician-turned-filmmaker John Maclean had the idea to make a Western flick through his post-college gig of delivering cars by driving them across America. The film somewhat mirrors his experience as a young Scot (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, the kid from The Road) who travels to 18th century America looking for a lost love and enlists an outlaw (Michael Fassbender) as his guide through Civil War-era Wild West. This is Maclean’s third collaboration with Fassbender, who starred in two of Maclean’s short films (including the BAFTA-winning Pitch Black Heist) and also produced Slow West. Despite being set in southern Colorado, the film was shot in New Zealand, but that hardly matters at all with critics mostly praising the film that won the World Cinema Jury Prize: Dramatic Winner at Sundance.
Sweet Home
No, it’s not a remake of the 1989 Japanese horror classic. This Spanish horror-slasher film — shot in English — takes place in a similar setting as the 2007 flick from the same producers, Rec: a creepy apartment complex. The similarities end there, as there are no zombies but masked men hired by the landlord to forcefully evict its tenants by killing them. It could be a thinly-veiled social commentary, as reports earlier this year show that about 100 people are evicted in Spain every day. But this is pure terror here. The protagonist is a real estate agent who comes to check out the apartments and for whatever reason decides to set up a romantic getaway (with Japanese food) with her boyfriend in one of the abandoned flats while the killer is still there — and hell ensues.
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
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
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