We have witnessed a welcomed diversity both of form and content in Taiwanese cinema over the past year as young commercial directors and emerging auteurs handed in new works catering to moviegoers of different tastes. At the commercial end of the spectrum was Jay Chou's (周杰倫) box-office success Secret (不能說的祕密) featuring the Mando-pop king himself. Exit No. 6 (六號出口) by up-and-coming filmmaker Lin Yu-hsien (林育賢) spiced up the commercial cinema with its genre-mixing storytelling about the adventure of a group of young people living in Taipei's Ximending district. Further down the line were Spider Lilies (刺青), a melodrama about lesbian love by Zero Chou (周美玲), which picked up an award in Berlin, and Lin Jing-jie's (林靖傑) Venice-winning directorial debut The Most Distant Course (最遙遠的距離). At the art house end of the spectrum was director Tsai Ming-liang's (蔡明亮) ninth film, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (黑眼圈), an ambitious work which made it into the Taipei Times' top five films of the year, despite being slammed by last year's Golden Horse jury as self-indulgent.
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone may well be Tsai's most accessible feature to date with the return of most of his trademark motifs - the impossibility of uprooted individuals connecting with each other and their yearnings for companionship and reciprocation - blended with his personal commentary on the social underclass in a time of social unrest. The work is filled with a pronounced sense of tenderness and uncanny poetry.
Lavish colors, a bold use of light and shade, the emphasis on small gestures and evocative scenes prolonged to achieve a hypnotic effect reveal Tsai to be a consummate visual artist as well as a cinematic humanist.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF DISTRIBUTOR
Cinematographer Yao Hung-i (姚宏易), a Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) protege, made his directorial debut feature Reflections (愛麗絲的鏡子), a visually polished attempt to capture the anomic life of the young in contemporary Taipei. It is based on the real-life story of actress and photographer Oy Gin, who used to publish a frank blog about her bisexual affairs and eccentricities - Oy is also the inspiration behind segment three of Hou's Three Times (最好的時光, 2005). The film's elaborate compositions, moody lighting, meticulous art direction and color-saturated scenes are visually arresting, although the emphasis on technical proficiency may distract from the all-too-familiar theme of the aimlessness of youth.
Screenwriter Zheng Fen-fen's (鄭芬芬) feature debut Keeping Watch (沉睡的青春) is one of the few local productions of the past year that tells a story in a simple, straightforward and engaging way. Targeting teens with the use of pop idol Joseph Chang (張孝全) and a love story with a twist, the commercial flick secured a place on the top five for its well-constructed narrative, lyric visual vocabulary, and well chosen locations, such as the secluded Pinghsi (菁桐) railway line (平溪), the old wooden train station in Chintung and the Lo Sheng Sanatorium (樂生療養院), which all play important roles in the film.
One of the reasons why the well-crafted puppy-love flick Secret puts Jay Chou on the list is the slick cinemato-graphy and atmospheric production design of its audience-wooing sugarcoated romance sequences. The other reason lies in its effective use of international investments, high production values, big-name stars and local sets. The skillful combination of these elements is rare in the marketing of Taiwan's predominantly small-budget films, and Secret should serve as a model for how to conquer Chinese-speaking markets for future productions.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF DISTRIBUTOR
Amour-Legende (松鼠自殺事件) by emerging auteur Wu Mi-sen (吳米森) is possibly the most underrated film of the year as distributors shied away from the marketing nightmare - art house movie tricked up as a commercial flick. Featuring Japanese pop idol Yowusuke Kubozuka and Hong Kong beauty Rachel Ngan (顏穎思), the polyglot film shows many of Wu's trademarks along with a serious attempt to reach a larger audience. It's fragmented reality, blurred identities and dreamlike sequences make for a fascinating composition that reflects on the deceptiveness of relationships and the nature of both personal and national identity.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF DISTRIBUTOR
PHOTO: COURTESY OF DISTRIBUTOR
PHOTO: COURTESY OF DISTRIBUTOR
One of the most important gripes that Taiwanese have about the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is that it has failed to deliver concretely on higher wages, housing prices and other bread-and-butter issues. The parallel complaint is that the DPP cares only about glamor issues, such as removing markers of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) colonialism by renaming them, or what the KMT codes as “de-Sinification.” Once again, as a critical election looms, the DPP is presenting evidence for that charge. The KMT was quick to jump on the recent proposal of the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) to rename roads that symbolize
On the evening of June 1, Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) apologized and resigned in disgrace. His crime was instructing his driver to use a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon. The Control Yuan is the government branch that investigates, audits and impeaches government officials for, among other things, misuse of government funds, so his misuse of a government vehicle was highly inappropriate. If this story were told to anyone living in the golden era of swaggering gangsters, flashy nouveau riche businessmen, and corrupt “black gold” politics of the 1980s and 1990s, they would have laughed.
It was just before 6am on a sunny November morning and I could hardly contain my excitement as I arrived at the wharf where I would catch the boat to one of Penghu’s most difficult-to-access islands, a trip that had been on my list for nearly a decade. Little did I know, my dream would soon be crushed. Unsure about which boat was heading to Huayu (花嶼), I found someone who appeared to be a local and asked if this was the right place to wait. “Oh, the boat to Huayu’s been canceled today,” she told me. I couldn’t believe my ears. Surely,
Imagine being able to visit a museum and examine up close thousand-year-old pottery, revel alone in jewelry from centuries past, or peer inside a Versace bag. Now London’s V&A has launched a revolutionary new exhibition space, where visitors can choose from some 250,000 objects, order something they want to spend time looking at and have it delivered to a room for a private viewing. Most museums have thousands of precious and historic items hidden away in their stores, which the public never gets to see or enjoy. But the V&A Storehouse, which opened on May 31 in a converted warehouse, has come up
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