Horror movies are still hip? At least the three directors in Three -- Experiences (三更二), the sequel of well-sold Three (三更) try to believe so. The three segments may not be so scary for those looking for terror sensations. But each tries to be a sophisticated story, rather than a hyper-gory picture.
Box, by Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike, is a visually beautiful story about love and jealousy. Kyoko Hasegawa is a sick, beautiful novelist who obviously carries with her a deep fear about a past of tragedy, which reflects in her constant nightmares of being suffocated with a plastic bag.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MATA ENTERRTAINMENT
Back in her childhood, she and the sister were acrobats in a local circus in northern Japan. The climax of their performances is when the two skinny little girls crouch in two small boxes and their stepfather -- the lead performer -- shoots darts at the boxes.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MATA ENTERRTAINMENT
But whenever the show finishes, the father compliments one sister only, leaving Kyoko in despair.
Dumpling by Fruit Chan (陳果) continues Chan's sarcasm about the poverty gap in Hong Kong society. In the sequence it is darker than his previous films.
Mrs. Lee (Miriam Yeung, 楊千嬅) is a bored housewife of a rich businessman. She finds in the back alleys of Kowloon the most expensive dumpling in Hong Kong.
This segment features the excellent acting of Bai Ling (白靈), the dumpling seller from Shenzhen, China, and the sophisticated cinematography illustrates the delicacy and the interesting process of making the dumplings. But the story behind rejuvenation is too scary and a bit far-fetched.
The South Korean sequence, Cut, features one of the most exaggerated performances among the three. The story is a Catch-22 situation, in which a rich and successful film director and his wife are kidnapped. He is strapped in the corner of the house and she is tied by the piano. The terrorist gives him two choices: to strangle an innocent young stranger the terrorist brings, or to watch his wife have her fingers cut off one by one.
The thrill of the story of course focuses on his choice, also the moments the beautiful wife becomes fingerless.
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
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