Killshot
Shot a few years ago, this was barely released in the US last year, despite stars Diane Lane and Mickey Rourke, director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, Mrs Brown) and source material by Elmore Leonard. Rourke is a hitman who takes an obnoxious apprentice (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), but the pair are spotted as they go about their business by Lane and her husband (Thomas Jane). Thus the hunt begins to erase the inadvertent witnesses. Like Rourke, Lane is enjoying a late career surge, but this film won’t help much — unless the DVD takes off.
Whatever Lola Wants
Rule of thumb: If a movie is about dancing, it will be screened in Taiwan. Whatever Lola Wants is a more interesting example of the dance flick because it transports a lovesick American woman to Egypt to “find herself”; to be precise, she finds herself belly dancing and competing with the locals. Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch is enthusiastic about the possibilities of the story and has made a film that is friendly to all comers. North African tourism ministers should jump on this one.
Fit Lover (愛情左右)
Not a sex film despite the title, this Chinese romantic comedy about a reality TV show host sifting through a dozen young men with different zodiac signs has a regional cast: lead actress Karena Lam (林嘉欣, Claustrophobia) has Taiwanese connections, and her possible suitors are a mix of Chinese, Taiwanese and a Japanese. It’s all very naive and jolly; stronger material with this theme can be found in the older Taiwanese feature The Personals (徵婚啟事) starring Rene Liu (劉若英). The full Chinese title — not used for the Taiwan release — says that this is a sequel to 2007’s Call for Love (愛情呼叫轉移), but viewers won’t need to have seen it.
Partners
The movie version of the popular, sophisticated Japanese TV series pits underutilized and underpromoted ace detective Yutaka Mizutani and his youthful partner against a deadly foe who targets the Tokyo marathon after leaving a string of bodies around the capital. Like a lot of serial killers, this one leaves a code behind that challenges the cops to identify him. Fun for fans of detective stories, and helped immeasurably by the rapport between the lead sleuths.
Ghost Mother
In Asia, if you see a female specter with black hair hanging over her face and wearing a white sheet, then you would run like hell — if you don’t suffer cardiac arrest first. In the case of the 2007 Thai horror flick Ghost Mother, however, the ghost is a matronly young woman who channels her undead energies into bloody vengeance against the drug-dealing tormentors targeting her family. One central conceit borrows from The Sixth Sense. Sounds like a good ghost to have on your side.
The Best Romance
A young reporter accidentally stabs a young policeman at a South Korean night market with a wooden skewer; naturally the cop has a terrible fear of sharp implements and faints, while she milks the incident for all a journalist’s worth. What else but romance could follow (eventually)? The subplot includes drug-dealing baddies, but the main draw is the two stars, who came from almost nowhere and made a good impression with Korean audiences. This 2007 feature is also known as The Perfect Couple. Starts tomorrow at Ximending’s Baixue grindhouse.
Taiwan, once relegated to the backwaters of international news media and viewed as a subset topic of “greater China,” is now a hot topic. Words associated with Taiwan include “invasion,” “contingency” and, on the more cheerful side, “semiconductors” and “tourism.” It is worth noting that while Taiwanese companies play important roles in the semiconductor industry, there is no such thing as a “Taiwan semiconductor” or a “Taiwan chip.” If crucial suppliers are included, the supply chain is in the thousands and spans the globe. Both of the variants of the so-called “silicon shield” are pure fantasy. There are four primary drivers
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
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