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.
Growing up in a rural, religious community in western Canada, Kyle McCarthy loved hockey, but once he came out at 19, he quit, convinced being openly gay and an active player was untenable. So the 32-year-old says he is “very surprised” by the runaway success of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian-made series about the romance between two closeted gay players in a sport that has historically made gay men feel unwelcome. Ben Baby, the 43-year-old commissioner of the Toronto Gay Hockey Association (TGHA), calls the success of the show — which has catapulted its young lead actors to stardom -- “shocking,” and says
The 2018 nine-in-one local elections were a wild ride that no one saw coming. Entering that year, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized and in disarray — and fearing an existential crisis. By the end of the year, the party was riding high and swept most of the country in a landslide, including toppling the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in their Kaohsiung stronghold. Could something like that happen again on the DPP side in this year’s nine-in-one elections? The short answer is not exactly; the conditions were very specific. However, it does illustrate how swiftly every assumption early in an
Inside an ordinary-looking townhouse on a narrow road in central Kaohsiung, Tsai A-li (蔡阿李) raised her three children alone for 15 years. As far as the children knew, their father was away working in the US. They were kept in the dark for as long as possible by their mother, for the truth was perhaps too sad and unjust for their young minds to bear. The family home of White Terror victim Ko Chi-hua (柯旗化) is now open to the public. Admission is free and it is just a short walk from the Kaohsiung train station. Walk two blocks south along Jhongshan
Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 In 1933, an all-star team of musicians and lyricists began shaping a new sound. The person who brought them together was Chen Chun-yu (陳君玉), head of Columbia Records’ arts department. Tasked with creating Taiwanese “pop music,” they released hit after hit that year, with Chen contributing lyrics to several of the songs himself. Many figures from that group, including composer Teng Yu-hsien (鄧雨賢), vocalist Chun-chun (純純, Sun-sun in Taiwanese) and lyricist Lee Lin-chiu (李臨秋) remain well-known today, particularly for the famous classic Longing for the Spring Breeze (望春風). Chen, however, is not a name
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