Amphetamine (安非他命)
Director Scud’s (雲翔) interests were prominently on display in Permanent Residence (2009, 永久居留), with its self-indulgent homoerotic musings that span sexual awakening, unrequited love and musings on love and death. His mastery of the visual medium may have taken a step forward with Amphetamine, but so has the self-indulgence, which was described as “unbridled” in a Taipei Times review of Permanent Residence. In this newest work, the director makes references his previous work in a manner that clearly signal his aspirations as an auteur. The story of a successful finance executive (Thomas Price) and his passionate, doomed, infatuation with an drug addicted swimming instructor (Byron Pang), skirts the borders of gay porn, but had sufficient assurance to earn a nomination in the Panorama category of the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. Extensive English-language material about the film is available at www.amphetaminemovie.com.
Close to You (近在咫尺)
A new film by Cheng Hsiao-tse (程孝澤), who scored a minor success with Miao Miao (渺渺) in 2008, Close to You takes the Asian romantic melodrama to new levels of improbability and contrived heartache. The cast of pretty-boy Eddie Peng (彭于晏) and Ming Dow (明道), pretending to be serious boxers, and a romantic interest involving a beautiful violinist, played by singer Amber Kuo (郭采潔), are sufficiently off-the-wall — even before you get involved in the narrative, which brings in amnesia, and prizefights set up to fulfill obligations to dying grandparents. Close to You is being touted as a box office rival to Love You 10,000 Years (愛你一萬年) released last week, but the fact that the two leading males glisten with sweat and wear boxing shorts while showing off their work at the gym is likely to constitute this film’s main attraction.
Women Without Men (Zanan-e Bedun-e Mardan)
A visually sumptuous film by Shrin Neshat, a photographer making her debut as a filmmaker, Women Without Men looks at the interwoven lives of four women living in Iran against the backdrop of the CIA-backed coup of 1953. The film picked up the Silver Bear at the Venice Film Festival last year despite a general critical consensus that the much of the dialogue is too heavily didactic, but there has been almost universal acclaim for a filmmaking style that had directors such and Ang Lee (李安) lavishing praise on its acting and visual appeal. A story about women whose lives are made profoundly unhappy by men, Women Without Men has a strong feminist sensibility, but its powerful conceptual and visual appeal overcomes many narrative infelicities. In Persian with Chinese subtitles, but with enough visual appeal even to overcome this obstacle. Further information at www.womenwithoutmenfilm.com.
On the Path (Na Putu)
A film from Bosnia and Herzegovina by director Jasmila Zbanic, who came to prominence after winning the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2006 for Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams. On the Path tells the story of airline cabin attendant Luna (Zrinka Cvitesic) and boyfriend Amar (Leon Lucev), whose relationship comes under strain when Amar begins to drift into the hold of Wahhabi Islam. Set in Sarajevo, On the Path portrays a society at the crossroads of Western secularism and Islamic fundamentalism, enriching its conventional romantic melodrama with many issues of faith, freedom and identity.
Solanin
Carrying on from her roles in Nana (2000) and Brass Knuckle Boys (2008), Aoi Miyazaki is back as yet another cute-yet-feisty young Japanese woman who finds liberation for the daily grind, and a glimpse of true love, by joining a rock ’n’ roll band. The story, based on a best-selling manga by Inio Asano, has good-looking leads, catchy tunes and the promise that our dreams do come true to give it appeal outside of a strictly Japanese audience. Solidly put together according to a tried-and-tested formula, Solanin offers no surprises, but is a perfectly fine example of its type.
Still (Taai Hong)
Portmanteau horror flick from Thailand made up of four stories taken from actual news events and turned into supernatural shorts. The death of 61 in a nightclub, a ghost in a maximum security prison that supposedly led to a number of suicides, a body found in a water tank in a apartment building, and corpses hidden under the bed at a motel, are events that featured in the back pages of Thailand’s press over the last few years. These have been worked into stories and loosely tied together, providing a showcase of current cliches of Thai horror. The topical references will probably be lost on non-Thai audiences, giving this film limited international appeal. Lots of blood, decomposing bodies and bug-eyed faces looming out of the darkness.
Step Up 3D
The venerable Step Up franchise, which got started back in 2006, is being brought to the silver screen in all its 3D glory in yet another story of good-looking guys and gals who love to dance. If you liked the recently released UK film Street Dance 3D, then Step Up 3D is likely to get your foot tapping, since it also features attractive bodies and slick dance sequences. Its use of 3D is said to be more effective than the British production. Walt Disney publicity material describes the film as: “the world’s best hip-hop dancers in a high-stakes showdown that will change their lives forever.” The cliches don’t end there. But clunky acting and a script that may possible be the “worst in history,” according to one reviewer, don’t really get in the way of the enjoyment, ’cause it’s really all about the dance.
Morning Rock (盛夏的晨間搖滾 — 盧廣仲電影音樂會)
A behind-the-scenes look at the story behind the creation of Crowd Lu’s (盧廣仲) hugely successful release of Seven Days (七天) followed by an actual concert with Lu in all his live 3D glory. This combined film and performance will take place at 10am today, tomorrow and Sunday at the IN89 (豪華) cinema at 89, Wuchang St, Taipei City (台北市武昌街89號). Tickets cost NT$499. The event will run for 90 minutes, with the film running 50 minutes and the concert 40 minutes.
In 2020, a labor attache from the Philippines in Taipei sent a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanding that a Filipina worker accused of “cyber-libel” against then-president Rodrigo Duterte be deported. A press release from the Philippines office from the attache accused the woman of “using several social media accounts” to “discredit and malign the President and destabilize the government.” The attache also claimed that the woman had broken Taiwan’s laws. The government responded that she had broken no laws, and that all foreign workers were treated the same as Taiwan citizens and that “their rights are protected,
March 16 to March 22 In just a year, Liu Ching-hsiang (劉清香) went from Taiwanese opera performer to arguably Taiwan’s first pop superstar, pumping out hits that captivated the Japanese colony under the moniker Chun-chun (純純). Last week’s Taiwan in Time explored how the Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) theme song for the Chinese silent movie The Peach Girl (桃花泣血記) unexpectedly became the first smash hit after the film’s Taipei premiere in March 1932, in part due to aggressive promotion on the streets. Seeing an opportunity, Columbia Records’ (affiliated with the US entity) Taiwan director Shojiro Kashino asked Liu, who had
The recent decline in average room rates is undoubtedly bad news for Taiwan’s hoteliers and homestay operators, but this downturn shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. According to statistics published by the Tourism Administration (TA) on March 3, the average cost of a one-night stay in a hotel last year was NT$2,960, down 1.17 percent compared to 2023. (At more than three quarters of Taiwan’s hotels, the average room rate is even lower, because high-end properties charging NT$10,000-plus skew the data.) Homestay guests paid an average of NT$2,405, a 4.15-percent drop year on year. The countrywide hotel occupancy rate fell from
In late December 1959, Taiwan dispatched a technical mission to the Republic of Vietnam. Comprising agriculturalists and fisheries experts, the team represented Taiwan’s foray into official development assistance (ODA), marking its transition from recipient to donor nation. For more than a decade prior — and indeed, far longer during Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule on the “mainland” — the Republic of China (ROC) had received ODA from the US, through agencies such as the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). More than a third of domestic investment came via such sources between 1951
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