Rated G, directed by Simon Wells, with Guy Pearce (Professor Alexander Hartdegen), Samantha Mumba (Mara), Jeremy Irons (Uber Morlock), running time: 96 minutes.
Director Simon Wells is the great grandson of H.G. Wells, who wrote the book from which this film was adapted. Hollywood has a long history of butchering famous novels, but this is the first time in memory where the butchering was done by a family member. H.G. Well's Time Traveler is now named Alexander Hartdegen. We learn that he loses the woman he loves and, out of despair, travels to the future where he meets another woman of the Eloi race. The Eloi are threatened by the Morlocks, who find the Eloi to be quite tasty. This prompts our hero to find the leader of the Morlocks, but he is taken prisoner. Can Hartdegen escape in time to save the Eloi? What about his newfound love? What does all this have to do with H.G. Wells' original story?
PHOTO:WARNER BROTHERS
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
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