1. BEFORE SUNSET/SIDEWAYS: Superb writing and acting, unobtrusive but expert direction and, above all, unflagging intelligence made these two observant, romantic misadventures the best films of the year. Imagine that working; Hollywood usually doesn't.
2. CONTROL ROOM: In the flood of political documentaries, this was the only one that encouraged us to question messages from all sides, including whichever side we like to believe. ... And, crucially, to suspect parts of "Control Room" itself. Neither Michael Moore nor Bill O'Reilly will ever understand that kind of honesty, the rest of us need to.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF WARNER MOIVES
3. BAD EDUCATION/KINSEY/THE MOTHER: In this red state nightmare trifecta, badly behaving gays, sex researchers with murky motives and a granny who refuses to be a proper bereaved widow powerfully proved that to deny desire is to undervalue one's own, and everybody else's, humanity. And if these ingenious films are any indication, being naughty can also lead to great art.
4. I (HEART) HUCKABEES: The search for spiritual peace in our corrupt modern world is funny, people! Or can be, if it doesn't leave you too traumatized. Just like we all do when we seek to know what it's all about, Davd Russell's one-of-a-kind riff on life's great cosmic joke danced on the edge of profundity and inanity. Only more gracefully.
5. DOGVILLE/THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS: Lars von Trier is Europe's most provocative mad movie scientist. These two films -- a three-hour, bare-stage critique of provincialism and power (with Nicole Kidman's best-ever film performance), and a playfully sadistic "making of" documentary like no other -- broke down everything we take for granted at the movies, then built their own unique forms out of the rubble.
6. MILLION DOLLAR BABY: Clint Eastwood delivers another masterpiece. This is not news anymore. Oh, it's a lady boxer movie. Well, that's, uh, unexpected. It also contains Clint's best acting and directing work to date. And it's an unparalleled example of lighting and tonal control. OK, then; media duly alerted.
7. THE BLIND SWORDSMAN (ZATOICHI)/HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS/KILL BILL -- VOL. 2: Martial-arts movies got taken in all kinds of imaginative directions this year by Japanese (Takeshi Kitano), Chinese (Zhang Yimou) and American (Quentin Tarantino) directors with limited experience in the genre. It showed, beautifully, in an exhilarating explosion of new ideas and broken tired rules.
8. RAY: Jamie Foxx's channeling of soul legend Charles was nothing short of phenomenal, but the presentation of music, cultural history and the blind genius' understandably darker qualities made for a rocking movie that never missed a high note -- and man, were there plenty of them.
9. GOOD BYE LENIN!/NOTRE MUSIQUE: One thing that we should acknowledge Europeans know: No matter how much the world progresses, man's propensity for self-delusion and violence will always prevent paradise on Earth. Two totally different filmmakers, young German ironist Wolfgang Becker and grizzled French New Waver Jean-Luc Godard, got to the core of this matter with a post-communist family comedy and a hyper-aestheticized philosophical essay. The real connection? Both films still have hope.
10. THE INCREDIBLES: The first big, computer-animated feature that expressed its director's personal worldview, Brad Bird's superhero satire was also faster, funnier and more visually distinctive than anything the still-young format has seen before. Fight mediocrity, heck yeah!
Feb. 9 to Feb.15 Growing up in the 1980s, Pan Wen-li (潘文立) was repeatedly told in elementary school that his family could not have originated in Taipei. At the time, there was a lack of understanding of Pingpu (plains Indigenous) peoples, who had mostly assimilated to Han-Taiwanese society and had no official recognition. Students were required to list their ancestral homes then, and when Pan wrote “Taipei,” his teacher rejected it as impossible. His father, an elder of the Ketagalan-founded Independence Presbyterian Church in Xinbeitou (自立長老會新北投教會), insisted that their family had always lived in the area. But under postwar
In 2012, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) heroically seized residences belonging to the family of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “purchased with the proceeds of alleged bribes,” the DOJ announcement said. “Alleged” was enough. Strangely, the DOJ remains unmoved by the any of the extensive illegality of the two Leninist authoritarian parties that held power in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan. If only Chen had run a one-party state that imprisoned, tortured and murdered its opponents, his property would have been completely safe from DOJ action. I must also note two things in the interests of completeness.
Taiwan is especially vulnerable to climate change. The surrounding seas are rising at twice the global rate, extreme heat is becoming a serious problem in the country’s cities, and typhoons are growing less frequent (resulting in droughts) but more destructive. Yet young Taiwanese, according to interviewees who often discuss such issues with this demographic, seldom show signs of climate anxiety, despite their teachers being convinced that humanity has a great deal to worry about. Climate anxiety or eco-anxiety isn’t a psychological disorder recognized by diagnostic manuals, but that doesn’t make it any less real to those who have a chronic and
When Bilahari Kausikan defines Singapore as a small country “whose ability to influence events outside its borders is always limited but never completely non-existent,” we wish we could say the same about Taiwan. In a little book called The Myth of the Asian Century, he demolishes a number of preconceived ideas that shackle Taiwan’s self-confidence in its own agency. Kausikan worked for almost 40 years at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reaching the position of permanent secretary: saying that he knows what he is talking about is an understatement. He was in charge of foreign affairs in a pivotal place in
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