Summer Times
(夏天協奏曲)
A squeaky-clean love story filmed on Kinmen and subsidized by the Kinmen County Government? Buyer beware. A local lad (Bryant Chang, 張睿家) meets a pretty young pianist (Shara Lin, 林逸欣) on holiday — not just any budding young pianist, mind you, but a contest blitzer — and falls in love like any number of besotted puppies. Pity for him that she doesn’t live there. What’s remarkable about this scenario is that despite the travelogue opportunities, a chunk of time is apparently spent on our lovebirds using e-mail, instant messaging, cellphone cameras and other IT applications. Could subsidies also have come from communications firms in exchange for distracting product placement? Plonk down your money and find out.
Case 39
Renee Zellweger is a family services officer who gets way too close to the subject of “Case 39” — a little girl apparently at grave risk of harm from her own parents. Now why would parents want to do such a thing? (Ask Gregory Peck). Zellweger, her colleagues and other clients end up on the receiving end of all sorts of supernatural violence and shock therapy. Finally enjoying worldwide theatrical release after an eternity in limbo, this feature is from the director of Pandorum, which opened here only a few weeks ago.
The Fourth Kind
A titular reference to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and some overlap with the vastly more successful Paranormal Activity (opening here in two weeks) seem to be trying to pull in at least two generations of moviegoers. Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil) is presumably meant to pull in all the rest of the fanboys. In this pseudo-documentary she plays a “real life” psychiatrist who revisits shielded memories to discover that something extra-terrestrial may have played havoc with her ill-fated loved ones. All hell then breaks loose when the forgotten visitors start visiting others in Jovovich’s professional clique (she obviously never saw Case 39). Few critics got into the spirit of this derivative effort.
Ninja Assassin
Korean heartthrob Rain has come a long way. A few years ago his face appeared in local convenience stores in advertisements for skin care products. Now, in Ninja Assassin, he would rather slice the skin from your face with pieces of sharp metal. He plays a trained ninja who comes to the rescue of a pesky investigator (Naomie Harris) targeted for termination by the criminal group she is probing — and which happens to be the same group that gave him his fighting skills. Body parts cover the screen as the plot develops. Gone are the days when Tom Savini might have received a special effects credit for such bloodletting; most of the slaughter comes courtesy of sterile computer effects. From the director of V for Vendetta and the producers of the Matrix trilogy.
No one saw it coming. Everyone — including the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — expected at least some of the recall campaigns against 24 of its lawmakers and Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) to succeed. Underground gamblers reportedly expected between five and eight lawmakers to lose their jobs. All of this analysis made sense, but contained a fatal flaw. The record of the recall campaigns, the collapse of the KMT-led recalls, and polling data all pointed to enthusiastic high turnout in support of the recall campaigns, and that those against the recalls were unenthusiastic and far less likely to vote. That
Behind a car repair business on a nondescript Thai street are the cherished pets of a rising TikTok animal influencer: two lions and a 200-kilogram lion-tiger hybrid called “Big George.” Lion ownership is legal in Thailand, and Tharnuwarht Plengkemratch is an enthusiastic advocate, posting updates on his feline companions to nearly three million followers. “They’re playful and affectionate, just like dogs or cats,” he said from inside their cage complex at his home in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Thailand’s captive lion population has exploded in recent years, with nearly 500 registered in zoos, breeding farms, petting cafes and homes. Experts warn the
A couple of weeks ago the parties aligned with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), voted in the legislature to eliminate the subsidy that enables Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) to keep up with its burgeoning debt, and instead pay for universal cash handouts worth NT$10,000. The subsidy would have been NT$100 billion, while the cash handout had a budget of NT$235 billion. The bill mandates that the cash payments must be completed by Oct. 31 of this year. The changes were part of the overall NT$545 billion budget approved
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
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