Rated PG, directed by Rob Pritts, with Chris Kattan (Corky Romano), Vinessa Shaw (Agent Kate Russo), Peter Falk (Pops Romano), Peter Berg (Paulie Romano), Chris Penn (Peter Romano), Fred Ward (Leo Corrigan) and Richard Roundtree (Howard Shuster), running time: 85 minutes.
Saturday Night Live stooge Chris Kattan is Corky Romano, the dandy son of a Mafia boss who, at his family's behest, goes undercover as an FBI agent in order to snatch information that incriminates his recently indicted father in a life of crime. Once inside, Corky falls for a beautiful, no-nonsense agent played by Vinessa Shaw, while he scrambles to steal the evidence the FBI has on his dad. Kattan's performance recalls the zaniness of a Jerry Lewis comedy or the pratfall humor of a Rowan Atkinson movie. Peter Falk, Peter Berg and Chris Penn as Corky's Mafia family help make the movie worth watching.
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
Aug. 4 to Aug. 10 When Coca-Cola finally pushed its way into Taiwan’s market in 1968, it allegedly vowed to wipe out its major domestic rival Hey Song within five years. But Hey Song, which began as a manual operation in a family cow shed in 1925, had proven its resilience, surviving numerous setbacks — including the loss of autonomy and nearly all its assets due to the Japanese colonial government’s wartime economic policy. By the 1960s, Hey Song had risen to the top of Taiwan’s beverage industry. This success was driven not only by president Chang Wen-chi’s
Last week, on the heels of the recall election that turned out so badly for Taiwan, came the news that US President Donald Trump had blocked the transit of President William Lai (賴清德) through the US on his way to Latin America. A few days later the international media reported that in June a scheduled visit by Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) for high level meetings was canceled by the US after China’s President Xi Jinping (習近平) asked Trump to curb US engagement with Taiwan during a June phone call. The cancellation of Lai’s transit was a gaudy
The centuries-old fiery Chinese spirit baijiu (白酒), long associated with business dinners, is being reshaped to appeal to younger generations as its makers adapt to changing times. Mostly distilled from sorghum, the clear but pungent liquor contains as much as 60 percent alcohol. It’s the usual choice for toasts of gan bei (乾杯), the Chinese expression for bottoms up, and raucous drinking games. “If you like to drink spirits and you’ve never had baijiu, it’s kind of like eating noodles but you’ve never had spaghetti,” said Jim Boyce, a Canadian writer and wine expert who founded World Baijiu Day a decade
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