Horror Fever 2010 Film Festival (2010恐怖驚選影展)
Distributor CatchPlay is putting on a feast for horror and slasher fans with the Horror Fever 2010 Film Festival, which opens today and runs until Sept. 3. The festival is screening films from across the wide-ranging horror genre and pulls no punches, with movies such as French director Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs, which has sickened many a critic with its graphic brutality, the most recent George Romero film, Survival of the Dead, atmospheric horror such as Adam Green’s Frozen and a couple of spooky South Korean flicks. The festival’s lineup of 10 films have not yet had a major release in Taiwan, a fact that distinguishes this event from rehashes of limited or special-release films that often pass as film festivals. All screenings are at the Shin Kong Cineplex (台北新光影城), located at 36 Xining S Rd, Taipei City (台北市西寧南路36號). Individual tickets are NT$175 and a book of five tickets is NT$750. Information and screening times can be found at the festival’s Web site: www.catchplay.com/HorrorFever.
Aftershock (唐山大地震)
Set against the background of the Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976, this massive Chinese production by the highly acclaimed director Feng Xiaogang (馮小剛) tells of the trauma inflicted by life-and-death decisions forced on a mother of two children caught in the 23-second cataclysm. The earthquake and its aftermath are graphically rendered, making the most of IMAX treatment, but collapsing buildings and earth-shattering destruction provide only some of the draw for this film. The real aftershock is the emotional impact on survivors. Feng deals with issues of guilt, abandonment and redemption over an epic canvas that spans more than three decades following the actual temblor. This is big-budget melodrama, with strong performances from an experienced cast, and Zhang Ling (張翎), the director’s wife, in the leading role.
City Under Siege (全城戒備)
A relatively big-budget Hong Kong futuristic cop drama by Benny Chan (陳木勝), who brought us the dubious pleasures of the Gen-X Cops (特警新人類) franchise and also directed Jackie Chan (成龍) in the better-than-average New Police Story (新警察故事). The bizarre story line of City Under Siege, which features Aaron Kwok (郭富城) as a circus clown called Sunny, has a bunch of circus performers acquiring superhuman attributes after being accidentally exposed to biochemicals while engaged in a heist. The group members subsequently turn against each other, and their conflict provides the basis for some superhero action. Reporter Angel, played by Shu Qi (舒淇), follows the story, and predictably gets entangled in it.
Break Up Club (分手說愛你)
Starring Jaysee Chan (房祖名) and singer Fiona Sit (薛凱琪), Break Up Club’s premise is edgily urban and computer savvy, but the film never gets beyond the paint-by-numbers Hong Kong rom-com formula. The story centers on a Web site that allows users to win back their former boyfriend or girlfriend. The price: willingness to break up another happy couple. One of the causes of a breakup is the secret videotaping of a sexual encounter between lovers, which might pass for a topical reference, given the fondness of some local celebrities for leaking sex tapes to the media. The film is really just another excuse for beautiful young people to emote, flash fashion and gadgets at each other, get their kit off and pretend to be in love.
Vampires Suck
Utterly depressing spoof of vampire movies by the team that takes a humorous look at horror, romance and disaster movies and brought us the Scary Movie franchise, Date Movie, Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans. Vampires Suck is predictably aimed at the Twilight series of films, and takes the usual heavy-handed approach to squeezing humor out of material that many people might already regard as laughable. Vampires Suck will appeal to fans of the parody film duo Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, but probably to few others.
Soul Kitchen
An intelligent comedy by German-Turkish director Fatih Akin finds its setting in the multicultural tidal pools of wrong-side-of-the-tracks Hamburg where restaurant owner Zinos, who runs a popular local eatery, sees his life plunged into chaos when his brother gets out of prison, his girlfriend moves to Shanghai and he acquires a prima donna chef who alienates his regulars with fancy cooking. An incident-packed script juggles Marx Brothers’ craziness with deft character development and brings the large cast of eccentrics and oddballs that populate the film into sharp relief. Smart social comedy that doubles as a love letter to the underbelly of Hamburg life.
The Case of Unfaithful Klara (Il Caso Dell’Infedele Klara)
European co-production based on a novel by the best-selling Czech author Michal Viewegh, who has made a successful career writing humorous stories about modern romantic relationships. The Case of Unfaithful Klara is set in Prague and tells the story of a man who hires a detective to investigate the suspected infidelity of his girlfriend, Klara. This action sets off a series of events that spin out of control, ending up with final revelations taking place in Venice. Plentiful bedroom action and scenic backdrops fail to make up for pedestrian filmmaking.
The Hole
Not to be confused with the 2001 British movie of the same name, The Hole by director Joe Dante combines horror and some family-friendly thrills, and exploits 3D to get the most out of its claustrophobic setting. (It picked up the best 3D picture award at last year’s Venice Film Festival.) The film tells the story of a pair of brothers and their neighbor who discover a huge and seemingly infinitely large cavern concealed beneath their homes. The script is by Mark Smith, who also wrote the two Vacancy movies, and while the idea that the dark underground corridors lead the way into inner fears is not new, the visual impact and the use of 3D technology pays off, even if the clever conceit that blurs the line between actual horror and frightening imaginings falls flat in the third act.
Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
Cats and Dogs was a minor success in 2001 but its sequel hung in production limbo for almost a decade. Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore proves that it should have stayed there. The story about a police dog and a slinky feline who put their differences behind them to take down Kitty Galore, a rogue feline superspy, relies heavily on canine and feline jokes and references to a slew of other movies from Scarface to Get Smart, and for that matter, the James Bond franchise. There is some decent voice work, with the likes of Nick Nolte, Christina Applegate and Roger Moore, and a particularly fine performance by Bette Midler as the pussycat of the title.
Magical Girl, Lyrical Nanoha — The Movie 1
A feature film adaptation of a Japanese anime television series that was originally released in 2004. The series was sufficiently successful to warrant an English-language distribution. The story is about a girl called Nanoha Takamachi, who joins forces with a young wizard called Yuno to recover a set of magical artifacts. She learns magic from Yuno, which helps her in a battle with her wizard enemies. While all this is going on, she also tries to get on with her ordinary life as an elementary school student. For manga and anime fans only.
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
From Godzilla’s fiery atomic breath to post-apocalyptic anime and harrowing depictions of radiation sickness, the influence of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki runs deep in Japanese popular culture. In the 80 years since the World War II attacks, stories of destruction and mutation have been fused with fears around natural disasters and, more recently, the Fukushima crisis. Classic manga and anime series Astro Boy is called “Mighty Atom” in Japanese, while city-leveling explosions loom large in other titles such as Akira, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Attack on Titan. “Living through tremendous pain” and overcoming trauma is a recurrent theme in Japan’s
As last month dawned, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was in a good position. The recall campaigns had strong momentum, polling showed many Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers at risk of recall and even the KMT was bracing for losing seats while facing a tsunami of voter fraud investigations. Polling pointed to some of the recalls being a lock for victory. Though in most districts the majority was against recalling their lawmaker, among voters “definitely” planning to vote, there were double-digit margins in favor of recall in at least five districts, with three districts near or above 20 percent in
RSS