| Other releases | |
 | Secret Journey Based on a novel set in Ireland, this leisurely paced Italian mystery sets the action in Sicily. A psychiatrist returns to an old family home - the scene of his mother's shooting death - to establish the reasons why it is to be bought for his sister by her beau. Made in 2006, and still unreleased in major English-language markets, critics gave this feature a lukewarm reception. |
 | Body Award-winning special effects mark this, one of two Thai horror movies to open this week. A man suffers recurring nightmares of a woman being dismembered, but it only gets worse. The line between dreamscape and reality dissolves as he and his body become caught up in a campaign of vengeance from beyond the grave. The poster art wants to capitalize on the Saw franchise. Also known as Body #19. |
 | Train of the Dead Withering reviews accompanied the release of this ghosts-on-a-choo-choo flick, also from Thailand. Its release here points to a rule of marketing for local audiences in recent years: There's no such thing as an unsalvageable Thai horror movie. If a bunch of ill-fated bandits hitching a ride on a spooked caboose is your thing, then watch this, and be ready for cheap special effects and non sequitur motorbike races. |
Feb. 9 to Feb.15 Growing up in the 1980s, Pan Wen-li (潘文立) was repeatedly told in elementary school that his family could not have originated in Taipei. At the time, there was a lack of understanding of Pingpu (plains Indigenous) peoples, who had mostly assimilated to Han-Taiwanese society and had no official recognition. Students were required to list their ancestral homes then, and when Pan wrote “Taipei,” his teacher rejected it as impossible. His father, an elder of the Ketagalan-founded Independence Presbyterian Church in Xinbeitou (自立長老會新北投教會), insisted that their family had always lived in the area. But under postwar
The term “pirates” as used in Asia was a European term that, as scholar of Asian pirate history Robert J. Antony has observed, became globalized during the European colonial era. Indeed, European colonial administrators often contemptuously dismissed entire Asian peoples or polities as “pirates,” a term that in practice meant raiders not sanctioned by any European state. For example, an image of the American punitive action against the indigenous people in 1867 was styled in Harper’s Weekly as “Attack of United States Marines and Sailors on the pirates of the island of Formosa, East Indies.” The status of such raiders in
On paper, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) enters this year’s nine-in-one elections with almost nowhere to go but up. Yet, there are fears in the pan-green camp that they may not do much better then they did in 2022. Though the DPP did somewhat better at the city and county councillor level in 2022, at the “big six” municipality mayoral and county commissioner level, it was a disaster for the party. Then-president and party chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) made a string of serious strategic miscalculations that led to the party’s worst-ever result at the top executive level. That year, the party
As much as I’m a mountain person, I have to admit that the ocean has a singular power to clear my head. The rhythmic push and pull of the waves is profoundly restorative. I’ve found that fixing my gaze on the horizon quickly shifts my mental gearbox into neutral. I’m not alone in savoring this kind of natural therapy, of course. Several locations along Taiwan’s coast — Shalun Beach (沙崙海水浴場) near Tamsui and Cisingtan (七星潭) in Hualien are two of the most famous — regularly draw crowds of sightseers. If you want to contemplate the vastness of the ocean in true
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