Ten Nights of Dreams
Back in 1990 the late Akira Kurosawa made a film called Dreams, a compilation of good dreams and nightmares the director had had over the years. This film has the same idea - a bunch of dreams tagged together - but uses different directors for each of the 10 entries. Contributors include Takashi Shimizu (director of the Grudge series) and veteran Kon Ichikawa.
Vengeance
Get your grindhouse fix with this 2006 flick from Thailand, screening in tandem with its DVD release. A cop and his team hunt a prison escapee in a forest teeming with dangerous and strange creatures and unknown evil forces. Could this be a metaphor for the Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand? Either way, the basic set-up and the location are in debt to Predator and maybe Jurassic Park, with some mysticism thrown into the pot.
Purple Ribbon Film Festival
You could be forgiven for feeling worn out by all the film festivals at the moment. This one, however, deserves a late mention. The Purple Ribbon Film Festival in Taipei County is again promoting dialogue
on how to deal with domestic violence and child abuse and includes some fine titles. Still to be screened are Cristina Comencini's Don't Tell, Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin, Pedro Almodovar's Volver, Ghyslaine Cote's The Five of Us and Kay Pollak's As It Is in Heaven. Screening at Aletheia (Tamsui campus), Shih Hsin and Fu Jen Catholic universities from Tuesday to Thursday next week, then concluding at Tamkang University from Oct. 22 to Oct. 24 and the National Taiwan University of Arts on Oct. 23. Web site: blog.yam.com/purpleribbon.
China has begun recruiting for a planetary defense force after risk assessments determined that an asteroid could conceivably hit Earth in 2032. Job ads posted online by China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) this week, sought young loyal graduates focused on aerospace engineering, international cooperation and asteroid detection. The recruitment drive comes amid increasing focus on an asteroid with a low — but growing — likelihood of hitting earth in seven years. The 2024 YR4 asteroid is at the top of the European and US space agencies’ risk lists, and last week analysts increased their probability
On a misty evening in August 1990, two men hiking on the moors surrounding Calvine, a pretty hamlet in Perth and Kinross, claimed to have seen a giant diamond-shaped aircraft flying above them. It apparently had no clear means of propulsion and left no smoke plume; it was silent and static, as if frozen in time. Terrified, they hit the ground and scrambled for cover behind a tree. Then a Harrier fighter jet roared into view, circling the diamond as if sizing it up for a scuffle. One of the men snapped a series of photographs just before the bizarre
Power struggles are never pretty. Fortunately, Taiwan is a democracy so there is no blood in the streets, but there are volunteers collecting signatures to recall nearly half of the legislature. With the exceptions of the “September Strife” in 2013 and the Sunflower movement occupation of the Legislative Yuan and the aftermath in 2014, for 16 years the legislative and executive branches of government were relatively at peace because the ruling party also controlled the legislature. Now they are at war. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) holds the presidency and the Executive Yuan and the pan-blue coalition led by the
For decades, Taiwan Railway trains were built and serviced at the Taipei Railway Workshop, originally built on a flat piece of land far from the city center. As the city grew up around it, however, space became limited, flooding became more commonplace and the noise and air pollution from the workshop started to affect more and more people. Between 2011 and 2013, the workshop was moved to Taoyuan and the Taipei location was retired. Work on preserving this cultural asset began immediately and we now have a unique opportunity to see the birth of a museum. The Preparatory Office of National