| Compiled by Martin Williams
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| 10,000 BC Few critics seem to have been granted previews for this delayed-release megabudget flick from Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow). This is usually the sign of a colossal turkey, but the trailers for 10,000 BC are visually impressive: lumbering mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, massive constructions by a despotic empire and a cast of thousands (of extras), all glued together by a melodrama of love, abduction and rescue. And at least it has Cliff Curtis — always good value — in a major role. It’s narrated by Omar Sharif, and if you are wondering, the humans at the dawn of civilization in this film also speak English. |  |
| Speed Master Japan’s frenetic answer to Initial D (which had Chinese, Hong Kongers and Taiwanese playing Japanese characters) and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (an American film), this “drift racing” movie and manga adaptation has all the cliches you associate with gorgeous youngsters with a thing for spoilers, runway fashions and dying fast. And you can pick the bad guy straight away: He’s the one who also has a thing for thick eyeliner.
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| La Vie en Rose This is the second re-release of this biopic of French legend Edith Piaf, this time cashing in on Marion Cotillard’s Best Actress Oscar. Cotillard’s silly comments about Sept. 11 that were dredged up this week may hurt the film’s post-Oscar DVD prospects in the US, but that’s unlikely to matter much here. Showing exclusively at the In89 theater (formerly the Hoover). |  |
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
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
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
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