End of the Spear
The Taipei Times ran a review for this on Sept. 14 just as the local distributor postponed its release. It finally opens today. Most critics were unimpressed by the underlying message in this drama, in which missionaries set about pacifying a ferocious tribe in Ecuador responsible for killing their colleagues. The Village Voice called it "coy crypto-Christian claptrap masquerading as feel-good ethnography" and a "Bush-era evangelical screed." Just the ticket during a campaign.
The Last Mistress
Veteran director Catherine Breillat bounces back from a stroke she had three years ago with this sumptuous tale of 19th-century aristocrats in France and the pleasures of a mistress' flesh that distract a man after he marries. Breillat recently directed feminist missiles such as Anatomy of Hell, Romance (1999) and Fat Girl that pushed audiences to the limit, but this one is her take on a more conventional art house scenario. Former Variety critic David Stratton calls it her best film in a 30-year career.
Wonder Women
This will go down in Hong Kong film history as the movie that Beijing promoted during 10-year celebrations of Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule. Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) stars as a professional woman beset by post-handover historical events. She makes an impression, but the film has been attacked by its detractors as materialistic and suffering from amnesia - but you guessed that already. Director Barbara Wong's (黃真真) pseudo-feminist postcard to product placement is screening exclusively at the Baixue grindhouse in Ximending, which, ironically yet appropriately, is usually a porn theater.
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
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
RSS