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.
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