What happens when you have a merciless but superstitious gang leader, a group of religious fanatics and a street-smart gambling addict, who, in order to run away from debt collectors, makes up up a series of lies and jokes?
Normally, such elements might make for a decent black comedy story. But in the case of Comes the Black Dog (黑狗來了), the movie looks as if it has been made so hurriedly that it has killed off most of the good comedy.
Black Dog (Tsai Cheng-nan (蔡振南) is dumb gangster leader who is chasing Jih (Tai-bao (太保)) for a gambling debt. Jih makes up a story that he needs money for his father's funeral and Black Dog fall for it because Jih's father Da-de (Lee Bin-hui (李炳輝)) was a good friend and benefactor who once saved Black Dog's life.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CMPC
As a result of this situation, Jih has to make bigger lies just to keep Black Dog off his back. He even hires Taoist monks for the "funeral."
He also quickly sends his blind father to his younger brother Lih (Chen Mu-yi (陳慕義)) in the countryside, who is a policeman, but dreams of becoming a Taoist cult leader and owning his own temple. Lih's wife Bao-ju (Lin Mei-hsiu (林美秀)) owns a cheesy dance troupe that performs pole dances at local bars and funerals.
The film mocks contemporary Taiwanese lifestyles, such as local gangster culture, entertainers, Taoist freaks and their rituals, and betelnut girls. These images may serve to add color to the story, but in general they are not very funny and look cliched.
Among the actors, Jih is the most convincing and Tai-bao does well playing a habitual liar and irresponsible husband. Lin Mei-hsiu, who won a Golden Horse for Best Supporting Actress, is reasonably good as the non-stop nagger and her lines (in Taiwanese) are quite funny.
The biggest problem is that there are too many other storylines and none of them are handled particularly well. As a result, no-one actually cares happens what happens when Black Dog attends the absurd fake funeral.
War in the Taiwan Strait is currently a sexy topic, but it is not the only potential Chinese target. Taking the Russian Far East would alleviate or even solve a lot of China’s problems, including critical dependencies on fuel, key minerals, food, and most crucially, water. In a previous column (“Targeting Russian Asia,” Dec. 28, 2024, page 12) I noted that having following this topic for years, I consistently came to this conclusion: “It would simply be easier to buy what they need from the Russians, who also are nuclear-armed and useful partners in helping destabilize the American-led world order.
If you’ve lately been feeling that the “Jurassic Park” franchise has jumped an even more ancient creature — the shark — hold off any thoughts of extinction. Judging from the latest entry, there’s still life in this old dino series. Jurassic World Rebirth captures the awe and majesty of the overgrown lizards that’s been lacking for so many of the movies, which became just an endless cat-and-mouse in the dark between scared humans against T-Rexes or raptors. Jurassic World Rebirth lets in the daylight. Credit goes to screenwriter David Koepp, who penned the original Jurassic Park, and director Gareth Edwards, who knows
Last Thursday, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) detected 41 sorties of Chinese aircraft and nine navy vessels around Taiwan over a 24-hour period. “Thirty out of 41 sorties crossed the median line and entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern ADIZ (air defense identification zones),” it reported. Local media noted that the exercises coincided with the annual Han Kuang military exercises in Taiwan. During the visit of then-US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August 2022, the largest number of sorties was on Aug. 5, “involving a total of 47 fighter aircraft and two supporting reconnaissance/patrol aircraft.
July 7 to July 13 Even though the Japanese colonizers declared Taiwan “pacified” on Nov. 18, 1895, unrest was still brewing in Pingtung County. The Japanese had completed their march of conquest down the west coast of Taiwan, stamping out local resistance. But in their haste to conquer the Republic of Formosa’s last stronghold of Tainan, they largely ignored the highly-militarized Liudui (六堆, six garrisons) Hakka living by the foothills in Kaohsiung and Pingtung. They were organized as their name suggested, and commanders such as Chiu Feng-hsiang (邱鳳祥) and Chung Fa-chun (鍾發春) still wanted to fight. Clashes broke out in today’s