VIEW THIS PAGE After his powerful study of alienation and skinhead culture in This is England, Shane Meadows’ Somers Town might come as a bit of a letdown. It’s shot in black and white, runs for a mere 75 minutes, and is not really about anything at all. Just two lads in London, one a runaway from the Midlands, the other the son of a Polish construction worker, getting up to some high jinks because they have nothing better to do.
Despite it being a comparatively slight work, Somers Town reflects Meadows’ deep understanding of youth set adrift in a world that has no obvious place for them. According to Variety magazine, the film was financed by Eurostar, and the London-Paris service and the new terminal at St Pancras are prominent both physically and as a narrative backdrop to the story. There are brief moments when the director’s responsibilities to his sponsors intrude ever so slightly, but Meadows has too clear a conception of what he wants to allow Somers Town to descend into a piece of extended product placement.
Thomas Turgoose, who made a stunning debut in This Is England, is back as Tomo, a runaway from the Midlands who is trying his luck in London. He is far from being a likable scalawag, and is clearly a grifter to his bones, never missing an opportunity to see what he can get out of even the most casual of contacts. He meets up with Marek, who is in London to spend time with his father, a worker on the new Eurostar terminal. Marek too is at a loose end, as his father works days and drinks away the night with mates.
The relationship between the boys is never quite easy, even though Tomo talks his way into bunking in Marek’s room without his father’s knowledge. The relationship is enlivened by Graham, a shady businessman who is constantly sorting through his garage filled with assorted goods of unclear provenance, and Maria (Elisa Lasowski), a French woman working in London who becomes the object of a romantic fantasy for the two lads.
The surface lightness hovers over a darker world that is acknowledged but then generally ignored. Instead of drifting into the world of street violence, as Turgoose’s character did in This is England, the lads are allowed to create an ephemeral paradise amid the rough streets of inner city London. Short as it is, Somers Town has plenty to enjoy, not least Meadow’s outstanding ability to capture the elusive mood shifts and listless enthusiasms of his two young leads. VIEW THIS PAGE
Nothing like the spectacular, dramatic unraveling of a political party in Taiwan has unfolded before as has hit the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) over recent weeks. The meltdown of the New Power Party (NPP) and the self-implosion of the New Party (NP) were nothing compared to the drama playing out now involving the TPP. This ongoing saga is so interesting, this is the fifth straight column on the subject. To catch up on this train wreck of a story up to Aug. 20, search for “Donovan’s Deep Dives Ko Wen-je” in a search engine. ANN KAO SENTENCED TO PRISON YET AGAIN,
Despite her well-paying tech job, Li Daijing didn’t hesitate when her cousin asked for help running a restaurant in Mexico City. She packed up and left China for the Mexican capital last year, with dreams of a new adventure. The 30-year-old woman from Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital, hopes one day to start an online business importing furniture from her home country. “I want more,” Li said. “I want to be a strong woman. I want independence.” Li is among a new wave of Chinese migrants who are leaving their country in search of opportunities, more freedom or better financial prospects at a
When the Dutch began interacting with the indigenous people of Taiwan, they found that their hunters classified deer hide quality for trade using the Portuguese terms for “head,” “belly,” and “foot.” The Portuguese must have stopped here more than once to trade, but those visits have all been lost to history. They already had a colony on Macao, and did not need Taiwan to gain access to southern China or to the trade corridor that connected Japan with Manila. They were, however, the last to look at Taiwan that way. The geostrategic relationship between Taiwan and the Philippines was established
Sept. 9 to Sept. 15 The upgrading of sugarcane processing equipment at Ciaozaitou Sugar Factory (橋仔頭) in 1904 had an unintended but long-lasting impact on Taiwan’s transportation and rural development. The newly imported press machine more than doubled production, leading to an expansion of the factory’s fields beyond what its original handcarts and oxcarts could handle. In 1905, factory manager Tejiro Yamamoto headed to Hawaii to observe how sugarcane transportation was handled there. They had trouble finding something suitable for Taiwan until they discovered a 762mm-gauge “miniature” railroad at a small refinery in the island of Maui. On
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