Ending Cut (老徐的完結篇)
A short film, running just 59 minutes, Ending Cut is yet another sentimental take on life in Taiwan. Produced by veteran filmmakers Wang Tung (王童) and Wu Nien-jen (吳念真) and created by aspiring director Liao Chi-hua (廖祺華), the movie is about an old man, his two sons having more or less abandoned him, who picks up a small video camera and starts recording his life for posterity. The leading role is played with assurance by Taiwanese new wave auteur Ko Yi-cheng (柯一正), and the film won a Best Supporting Actor gong at the 12th Taipei International Film Festival (第十 二屆台北電影節) among other awards. A film with lots of heart that will also test your love of all things Taiwanese.
Villain (Akunin)
High-profile Japanese release based on a novel by highly accomplished writer Shuichi Yoshida. Villain, which is a crime thriller-cum-melodrama, focuses, after an elaborate setup, on two lonely people on the lam. Yuichi Shimizu (Satoshi Tsumabuki) is a young man who has killed an insurance saleswoman. He meets Mitsuyo (Eri Fukatsu) through a dating agency, and she dissuades him from turning himself in. During their time on the run, the two develop a passionate relationship. At the same time, both their families, and the victim’s, suffer the fallout caused by this decision. Big-time melodrama with superior acting and a contemporary nihilistic vibe.
Room in Rome (Habitacion en Roma)
Spanish production with English-language dialogue that walks the line between art house and soft porn with shameless abandon. Alba (Elena Anaya) and Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) are strangers from opposite ends of Europe (Spain and Russia) who chance upon each other in a bar. One is straight, the other gay, but a game of seduction begins in which clothes are quickly shed, but the baring of souls, as the film’s promotional material emphasizes, is much slower. Much is made of the psychological foreplay, and while the setting never strays from the room in Rome, director Julio Medem shows some skill in working the camera to broaden the visual scope of the film.
The Woman Who Dreamt of a Man (Kvinden der Dromte om en Mand)
More steamy art house fare, this time from Denmark. The film examines sexual obsession from a female perspective. Karen (Sonja Richter) is a successful photographer whose career gives her little time for family life. She meets Machik (Marcin Dorocinski), a professor from Warsaw, and falls for him hard. When he tries to extricate himself, Karen is not having any of it. Director Per Fly adopts a first-person view that blurs reality and fantasy elements. There are some hot bedroom sequences, but this material has been covered so often that even the writhing of well-toned bodies is not enough to get audiences going.
Shodo Girls (Shodo Garuzu!!: Watashitachi no Koshien)
A film about a calligraphy club in a small-town Japanese high school that follows the well-worn narrative of oddball teachers and unlikely students overcoming adversity to achieve a goal — often winning some kind of competition — and also becoming better and more mature people in the process. Shodo Girls’ only innovation is to bring this tried and tested formula to the discipline of calligraphy.
Final Days
A television drama by director Thomas Berger that looks at the last days before the fall of the Berlin Wall through a cast of characters linked through various relationships with a young couple who attempted the dangerous journey from East Germany to West Germany in 1983. One made it, the other didn’t, and the ramifications of this minor tragedy of the Cold War lingers on into the late 1980s as agitation for reunification gets serious and the battle for hearts and minds gears up. Originally released in 2008, the film runs for 186 minutes and is good value for money, if nothing else.
China has begun recruiting for a planetary defense force after risk assessments determined that an asteroid could conceivably hit Earth in 2032. Job ads posted online by China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) this week, sought young loyal graduates focused on aerospace engineering, international cooperation and asteroid detection. The recruitment drive comes amid increasing focus on an asteroid with a low — but growing — likelihood of hitting earth in seven years. The 2024 YR4 asteroid is at the top of the European and US space agencies’ risk lists, and last week analysts increased their probability
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Power struggles are never pretty. Fortunately, Taiwan is a democracy so there is no blood in the streets, but there are volunteers collecting signatures to recall nearly half of the legislature. With the exceptions of the “September Strife” in 2013 and the Sunflower movement occupation of the Legislative Yuan and the aftermath in 2014, for 16 years the legislative and executive branches of government were relatively at peace because the ruling party also controlled the legislature. Now they are at war. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) holds the presidency and the Executive Yuan and the pan-blue coalition led by the