| Other releases | |
 | The Mist Stephen King's stories tend to lose something on the way to the big screen, but Frank Darabont (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption) has been one of a handful of directors to endear King adaptations to both audiences and critics. Until now, that is, judging from lackluster box office and reviews in the US. In John Carpenter's The Fog and its remake, poor weather brings undead mariners to a seaside town to wreak vengeance. In The Mist, the aggressors are strange reptiles and insects that trap the townsfolk inside a supermarket. Clunky metaphors on the state of civilization abound. |
 | My Enemy's Enemy From Kevin Macdonald, the Oscar-winning director of One Day in September and The Last King of Scotland, this is an incendiary documentary about Nazi monster Klaus Barbie, whose alleged postwar protection by Washington in particular and travels in Europe and South America come under the microscope. The first "enemy" of the title is the Communist bloc, which Western powers considered such a threat that people of Barbie's ilk and their knowledge could be useful and remain at large - and continue to cause havoc. |
 | Le Grand Chef This is a crowd-pleasing South Korean film about a supreme culinary contest between a Good Chef (with boy band looks and described in the trailer as "the humanist who cooks with heart") and an Evil Chef. Based on a very successful Korean manga and unafraid to mimic the split screen/cell jumping of that medium, Le Grand Chef is the kind of movie that will torment audiences if they haven't eaten yet. |
 | Angel This handsome European production seems to have suffered a fate similar to Klimt, which was released here two months ago, in that director Francois Ozon apparently failed to transcend linguistic distance from his source, leading to strange-sounding dialogue. Variety magazine also blasted what it called the miscasting of Romola Garai as Angel, a self-obsessed woman who becomes a popular novelist in the early 20th century. Based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor (the author, not the actress), the film also stars Sam Neill as a canny publisher. |
 | The Black Swindler Here's a story a lot of Taiwanese will warm to, given the number of con artists and gangs in circulation. Japanese boy Kurosaki, whose family is ruined by swindlers, grows into the persona of the "black swindler" Kurosagi, nemesis of scam artists everywhere. Originally a manga and then a TV series, this feature film version is being released in Taiwan straight after Japan. Possibly contains even more shots of brooding young men than the Death Note films. Japanese title: Eiga: Kurosagi. |
 | See You After School With a title like this you know a movie has to be about bullies. This South Korean comedy from 2006 features a mistreated high school student who returns from therapy with a new tactic: bluff his way through school by acting tough. Naturally, without realizing it, he ends up challenging the worst bully in his new school, which sets a train of comic events in motion. There's also a love interest, a wacko sidekick and a sinister visitor from the past. Screening at the Baixue theater in Ximending. |
 | The Secret of Loch Nes Family entertainment made for German TV, this contemporary take on the Scottish monster starts with a boy seeing a photograph on the Internet of a man who resembles his late father. He tracks him down to Scotland to discover it really is his dad. The boy also happens upon a creature that looks like the love child of E.T. and Gollum - and who knows what lies under the loch. Screening at the Caesar theater in Ximending and the Hsingfu second-run theater in Sanchong. German title: Das Wunder von Loch Ness. |
It is dangerous to engage in business in China now, and those considering engaging with it should pay close attention to the example Taiwanese businesspeople are setting. Though way down from the heady days of Taiwanese investments in China two decades ago, a few hundred thousand Taiwanese continue to live, work and study there, but the numbers have been declining fast. As President William Lai (賴清德) pointed out approvingly to a visiting American Senate delegation, China accounted for 80 percent of the total overseas investment in 2011, but was reduced to just 11.4 percent last year. That is a big drop.
Last week, the government rejected a petition to amend the law that would allow permanent residents a path to citizenship. This was widely expected, but it came amid a flurry of negative trends about the future of the nation’s labor force. There was much ironic commentary on the juxtaposition of that decision with its idiotic, abusive reasoning with the urgent demand for labor across a wide range of fields. This demand was highlighted by the government’s plans for five NT$10 billion (US$307.6 million) funds to promote development in key fields, including artificial intelligence (AI), “smart” healthcare and green growth announced
Supplements are no cottage industry. Hawked by the likes of the Kardashian-Jenner clan, vitamin gummies have in recent years found popularity among millennials and zoomers, who are more receptive to supplements in the form of “powders, liquids and gummies” than older generations. Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop — no stranger to dubious health trends — sells its own line of such supplements. On TikTok, influencers who shill multivitamin gummies — and more recently, vitamin patches resembling cutesy, colorful stickers or fine line tattoos — promise glowing skin, lush locks, energy boosts and better sleep. But if it’s real health benefits you’re after, you’re
About half of working women reported feeling stressed “a lot of the day,” compared to about 4 in 10 men, according to a Gallup report published this week. The report suggests that competing demands of work and home comprise part of the problem: working women who are parents or guardians are more likely than men who are parents to say they have declined or delayed a promotion at work because of personal or family obligations, and mothers are more likely than fathers to “strongly agree” that they are the default responders for unexpected child care issues. And 17 percent of women overall
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