When moviemakers successfully use a location’s history and environment to tell a story that attracts interest in that area, everyone’s a winner. Think Cape No. 7 (海角七號) and the waves of tourists it brought to Hengchun (恆春).
Shot in Kinmen, Our Island, Our Dreams (星月無盡) is a light-hearted romance that dwells on the island’s photogenic features to the detriment of an absorbing tale.
The story centers on three best friends who grow up together in Kinmen. As Xin Jun (Chen Yi-han, 陳意涵) becomes a pretty young woman, A-wu (Matt Wu, 吳中天) and A-jin (Chen Cheng-wei, 陳正偉) find their feelings for their childhood buddy changing. They hide this new affection in order to protect their friendship.
Along comes Han Wei (Huang Shih-yuen, 黃世元), a young soldier from the main island who rocks the boat by wooing Xin Jun despite her repeated rejections. She succumbs to his advances, a happenstance that triggers memories of her elder sister De Yue’s (Yang Kuei-mei, 楊貴媚) fate after falling in love with an officer who was transferred and never returned.
Director Peter Tamg’s (唐振瑜) myopic filmmaking casts Kinmen in the central role. A-wu, a local cultural worker, is a convenient vehicle to introduce audiences to the island’s landscapes, its traditions and history. The temple, ancient houses and underground fort are all pleasant enough to look at, but instead of being an integral part of the narrative, they are little more than travel guide illustrations.
College students-turned-TV personalities, brought to the public’s attention after appearing in the variety show University (大學生了沒), were cast as soldiers in flashback sequences that recreate life in the 1970s. Anecdotes about how tens of thousands of enlisted men during that era competed to chase some local skirt are intended to bring comic relief, but the humor feels tired and the novice actors lack on-screen charisma.
While Cape No. 7 shows how a successful movie can boost local tourism, films like Our Island, Our Dreams, which is undermined by a dull script, unimaginative filmmaking and flat acting, risk being relegated to the “glorified tourism advertisement” genre.
Japan is celebrated for its exceptional levels of customer service. But the behavior of a growing number of customers and clients leaves a lot to be desired. The rise of the abusive consumer has prompted authorities in Tokyo to introduce the country’s first ordinance — a locally approved regulation — to protect service industry staff from kasuhara — the Japanese abbreviated form of “customer harassment.” While the Tokyo ordinance, which will go into effect in April, does not carry penalties, experts hope the move will highlight a growing social problem and, perhaps, encourage people to think twice before taking out their frustrations
Two years ago my wife and I went to Orchid Island off Taitung for a few days vacation. We were shocked to realize that for what it cost us, we could have done a bike vacation in Borneo for a week or two, or taken another trip to the Philippines. Indeed, most of the places we could have gone for that vacation in neighboring countries offer a much better experience than Taiwan at a much lower price. Hence, the recent news showing that tourist visits to Pingtung County’s Kenting, long in decline, reached a 27 year low this summer came
From a Brooklyn studio that looks like a cross between a ransacked Toys R Us and a serial killer’s lair, the artist David Henry Nobody Jr is planning the first survey of his career. Held by a headless dummy strung by its heels from the ceiling are a set of photographs from the turn of the century of a then 30-year-old Nobody with the former president of the US. The snapshots are all signed by Donald Trump in gold pen (Nobody supplied the pen). They will be a central piece of the New York artist’s upcoming survey in New York. This
Oct. 7 to Oct. 13 The Great Dragon Flags were so lavish and intricate that it’s said to have exhausted the supplies of three embroidery shops. Others say that the material cost was so high that three shops quit during production and it was finished by a fourth. Using threads with pure gold, the final price to create the twin banners was enough to buy three houses in the 1920s. Weighing 30kg each and measuring 454cm by 535cm by 673cm, the triangular flags were the pride of the Flying Dragons (飛龍團), a dragon dance troupe that performed for Chaotian
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