Butterfly on a Wheel
This thriller barely got released in the US before going to cable (under the name Shattered), but Pierce Brosnan completists might get a kick out of seeing him abduct a couple's daughter and subject all three to various torments.
Ghost of Mae Nak
A British cinematographer helms this Thai ghost story set in present-day and early 20th century Bangkok. A man lies comatose after an accident, and his wife must dig deep (literally) to uncover the secret of the ghost that protects and threatens their lives. Film Threat magazine likens the death scenes to those in the Final Destination series.
Doraemon: The Movie 2007
This, the latest in the decades-old series of animated films for kids featuring our best blue friend, involves a dinosaur egg. Released last year in Japan as Doraemon: The Movie 2006.
Memories of Tomorrow
Ken Watanabe of The Last Samurai fame was the driving force behind this Japanese drama. He stars as an advertising executive who succumbs to Alzheimer's disease as his family struggle to adjust. A weepie, to be sure, but by most accounts very well done.
Nightmare Detective
The most brutal entry for the week comes from director/cinematographer Shinya Tsukamoto, perhaps best known for Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Pop star Hitomi is a detective probing a series of suicides; with the help of a mysterious man who analyzes dreams, she faces her own demons and the demonic killer. Variety describes the film's style as "recalling David Lynch at his most perverse." A sequel is in production.
Photo Album of the Village
This Japanese drama from 2004 is set in a mountainous town threatened by construction for a dam. An aging photographer calls his son back from the city to help him make a record of the people of the community before it is destroyed. In so doing, their troubled relationship changes.
The US war on Iran has illuminated the deep interdependence of Asia on flows of oil and related items as raw materials that become the basis of modern human civilization. Australians and New Zealanders had a wake up call. The crisis also emphasizes how the Philippines is a swatch of islands linked by jet fuel. These revelations have deep implications for an invasion of Taiwan. Much of the commentary on the Taiwan scenario has looked at the disruptions to world trade, which will be in the trillions. However, the Iran war offers additional specific lessons for a Taiwan scenario. An insightful
The problem with Marx’s famous remark that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce, is that the first time is usually farce as well. This week Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made a pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “to confer, converse and otherwise hob-nob” with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. The visit was an instant international media hit, with major media reporting almost entirely shorn of context. “Taiwan’s main opposition leader landed in China Tuesday for a rare visit aimed at cross-strait ‘peace’”, crowed Agence-France Presse (AFP) from Shanghai. Rare!
April 6 to April 13 Few expected a Japanese manga adaptation featuring four tall, long-haired heartthrobs and a plucky heroine to transform Taiwan’s television industry. But Meteor Garden (流星花園) took the nation by storm after premiering on April 12, 2001, single-handedly creating the “idol drama” (偶像劇) craze that captivated young viewers across Asia. The show was so successful that Japan produced its own remake in 2005, followed by South Korea, China and Thailand. Other channels quickly followed suit, with more than 50 such shows appearing over the following two years. Departing from the melodramatic
Sunflower movement superstar Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) once quipped that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could nominate a watermelon to run for Tainan mayor and win. Conversely, the DPP could run a living saint for mayor in Taipei and still lose. In 2022, the DPP ran with the closest thing to a living saint they could find: former Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中). During the pandemic, his polling was astronomically high, with the approval of his performance reaching as high as 91 percent in one TVBS poll. He was such a phenomenon that people printed out pop-up cartoon
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