VIEW THIS PAGE The Friday the 13th films were never high art. Most of them, in fact, are awful. Driven by a senseless killing machine whose motives had long-since lapsed, they are basically vehicles for little more than gratuitous nudity, gory violence and maybe a few cheap scares.
The series reboot is much the same, but it’s easily the most effective — and scary — entrant in the franchise. The familiar elements are there — the flesh-baring teens, the rampant drug use, and yes, that hockey mask-wearing psycho named Jason — but director Marcus Nispel, who also helmed 2003’s brutally efficient Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, delivers the goods while cutting back on the campiness that turned the franchise into a winking parody of itself. (He also lets Jason run this time, and it turns out a speedy Jason is far more menacing than one who could be outrun by a couch potato.)
By now, you know the drill: A group of teens go into the woods to have sex and smoke weed, and their plans are ruined by a goalie with a chip on his shoulder. They’re picked off one by one — usually in order of who disrobes or dopes up first — leading to a showdown between the most virtuous teens and Jason himself. You can set your watch by it.
But this Friday the 13th brings the tone back to that of an actual scary movie, and doesn’t soften Jason by offering him a sympathetic backstory. It swiftly boils down the action of the first three films (fun fact: Jason never donned his iconic hockey mask until the series’ third film) into a lean 97 minutes, and wraps up before overstaying its welcome.
Like its predecessors, no one will confuse Friday the 13th with Masterpiece Theatre. But for pure, bloody escapism, it’s a slice to the jugular. VIEW THIS PAGE
Nine Taiwanese nervously stand on an observation platform at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. It’s 9:20am on March 27, 1968, and they are awaiting the arrival of Liu Wen-ching (柳文卿), who is about to be deported back to Taiwan where he faces possible execution for his independence activities. As he is removed from a minibus, a tenth activist, Dai Tian-chao (戴天昭), jumps out of his hiding place and attacks the immigration officials — the nine other activists in tow — while urging Liu to make a run for it. But he’s pinned to the ground. Amid the commotion, Liu tries to
The slashing of the government’s proposed budget by the two China-aligned parties in the legislature, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), has apparently resulted in blowback from the US. On the recent junket to US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, KMT legislators reported that they were confronted by US officials and congressmen angered at the cuts to the defense budget. The United Daily News (UDN), the longtime KMT party paper, now KMT-aligned media, responded to US anger by blaming the foreign media. Its regular column, the Cold Eye Collection (冷眼集), attacked the international media last month in
A pig’s head sits atop a shelf, tufts of blonde hair sprouting from its taut scalp. Opposite, its chalky, wrinkled heart glows red in a bubbling vat of liquid, locks of thick dark hair and teeth scattered below. A giant screen shows the pig draped in a hospital gown. Is it dead? A surgeon inserts human teeth implants, then hair implants — beautifying the horrifyingly human-like animal. Chang Chen-shen (張辰申) calls Incarnation Project: Deviation Lovers “a satirical self-criticism, a critique on the fact that throughout our lives we’ve been instilled with ideas and things that don’t belong to us.” Chang
Feb. 10 to Feb. 16 More than three decades after penning the iconic High Green Mountains (高山青), a frail Teng Yu-ping (鄧禹平) finally visited the verdant peaks and blue streams of Alishan described in the lyrics. Often mistaken as an indigenous folk song, it was actually created in 1949 by Chinese filmmakers while shooting a scene for the movie Happenings in Alishan (阿里山風雲) in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投), recounts director Chang Ying (張英) in the 1999 book, Chang Ying’s Contributions to Taiwanese Cinema and Theater (打鑼三響包得行: 張英對台灣影劇的貢獻). The team was meant to return to China after filming, but