The Pink Panther 2
Enough people saw and enjoyed the Pink Panther remake featuring Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau for this sequel to be financed, but it’s hard to imagine another one being made. The upside is that it’s got a good cast: John Cleese, Jeremy Irons, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina and Martin’s All of Me co-star Lily Tomlin, to name a few, though some critics lamented the waste of talent — not to mention a gratuitous CNN cameo (guess who). In Part 2, the Pink Panther diamond is targeted by a legendary thief, and Clouseau must foil him. Peter Sellers fans are advised to hire the old DVDs.
The Unborn
Now we’ve seen everything: an Exorcist-style movie steeped in Jewish religious lore and Nazi scientific atrocities. For the rest of the horror crowd not into such themes, there’s also hot babes, creepy children and a catalog of shocks. Odette Yustman (Cloverfield) plays a young woman whose link to experiments at a World War II concentration camp turns her life into a supernatural nightmare. Also stars Gary Oldman (as a rabbi) and Jane Alexander. Director David S. Goyer is a prolific action/fantasy writer-producer; he played a big role in Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. But his work here has not passed muster among those with little tolerance for the genre.
Personal Effects
A casualty of a nervous (or passionless?) US film industry amid the economic gloom, this Michelle Pfeiffer film had lone screenings in New York and Los Angeles before being dumped on the DVD market. Taiwanese audiences, however, are lucky because some of the many straight-to-DVD-in-the-US features screened here are worth the price of a ticket. Pfeiffer is the mother of a deaf child and, because of a murder, recently bereaved; she meets a man (Ashton Kutcher, from That ’70s Show) in a support group and a bond develops between them. Also stars Kathy Bates.
Thomas & Friends: The Great Discovery
Fans of the long-running (25 years!) British TV show for kids about a friendly, hard-working locomotive, his engine friends and their controller will be delighted to see this up on the big screen. Thomas’ “discovery” is an old mountain town on a little-used stretch of track. For the TV show, Ringo Starr and the late George Carlin were among the narrators for the UK and US markets respectively; for the movie, Pierce Brosnan steps into the sound-proof booth. Screening at the Vieshow complex in Xinyi District.
A Frozen Flower
South Koreans took to this sensual, bloody costume drama in record numbers — for an adults-only film. Set around 1,000 years ago, a homosexual emperor asks his lover/bodyguard to impregnate his wife and sire a son to avoid a clash over succession ... but allegiance to the emperor can only go so far. Handsomely mounted, beautifully filmed and featuring a gorgeous cast, this lengthy saga has sex scenes that fully earn its restricted rating.
Shakariki!
Some might argue that the Japanese film industry is an offshoot of that country’s manga market, and here is yet more grim evidence of it. Selected members of the curious male acting ensemble known as D-BOYS star in this trifling story based on a dated manga of a high school bicycle racing team that must overcome assorted challenges to prevail. The film may score points for its enthusiasm, but this is no Breaking Away, sad to say.
The Bridge
A remake of a pioneering German film from the late 1950s that attempted to make sense of World War II, this is a made-for-TV production that will be quickly forgotten. A bunch of high school students find themselves called up to the army as US forces approach; their token job is to defend a bridge of no strategic value, but disaster looms anyway. Stars Franka Potente (Marie in The Bourne Identity) and a bunch of young male actors unknown outside Germany. Screening at the Scholar multiplex in Taipei and Wonderful Cinemas in Taichung.
Highway Star
The Baixue theater in Ximending is hosting more hiChannel promotional screenings, this time for Highway Star, a South Korean comedy from 2007 about an up-and-coming heavy metal singer who signs up to perform the dreaded form of music known as “Trot,” which the atmovies Web site helpfully likens to Taiwanese pop songs — the ones with interchangeable melodies, plagal cadences and warbling saxophones beloved of variety shows. Stars Cha Tae-hyun from the hugely successful My Sassy Girl. Starts tomorrow.
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
Aug. 4 to Aug. 10 When Coca-Cola finally pushed its way into Taiwan’s market in 1968, it allegedly vowed to wipe out its major domestic rival Hey Song within five years. But Hey Song, which began as a manual operation in a family cow shed in 1925, had proven its resilience, surviving numerous setbacks — including the loss of autonomy and nearly all its assets due to the Japanese colonial government’s wartime economic policy. By the 1960s, Hey Song had risen to the top of Taiwan’s beverage industry. This success was driven not only by president Chang Wen-chi’s
Last week, on the heels of the recall election that turned out so badly for Taiwan, came the news that US President Donald Trump had blocked the transit of President William Lai (賴清德) through the US on his way to Latin America. A few days later the international media reported that in June a scheduled visit by Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) for high level meetings was canceled by the US after China’s President Xi Jinping (習近平) asked Trump to curb US engagement with Taiwan during a June phone call. The cancellation of Lai’s transit was a gaudy
The centuries-old fiery Chinese spirit baijiu (白酒), long associated with business dinners, is being reshaped to appeal to younger generations as its makers adapt to changing times. Mostly distilled from sorghum, the clear but pungent liquor contains as much as 60 percent alcohol. It’s the usual choice for toasts of gan bei (乾杯), the Chinese expression for bottoms up, and raucous drinking games. “If you like to drink spirits and you’ve never had baijiu, it’s kind of like eating noodles but you’ve never had spaghetti,” said Jim Boyce, a Canadian writer and wine expert who founded World Baijiu Day a decade
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