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.
June 23 to June 29 After capturing the walled city of Hsinchu on June 22, 1895, the Japanese hoped to quickly push south and seize control of Taiwan’s entire west coast — but their advance was stalled for more than a month. Not only did local Hakka fighters continue to cause them headaches, resistance forces even attempted to retake the city three times. “We had planned to occupy Anping (Tainan) and Takao (Kaohsiung) as soon as possible, but ever since we took Hsinchu, nearby bandits proclaiming to be ‘righteous people’ (義民) have been destroying train tracks and electrical cables, and gathering in villages
Dr. Y. Tony Yang, Associate Dean of Health Policy and Population Science at George Washington University, argued last week in a piece for the Taipei Times about former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leading a student delegation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that, “The real question is not whether Ma’s visit helps or hurts Taiwan — it is why Taiwan lacks a sophisticated, multi-track approach to one of the most complex geopolitical relationships in the world” (“Ma’s Visit, DPP’s Blind Spot,” June 18, page 8). Yang contends that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a blind spot: “By treating any
Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sacks over a town emptied by fighting in South Sudan, a country wracked by conflict. Last week’s air drop was the latest in a controversial development — private contracting firms led by former US intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world’s deadliest conflict zones, in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts. The moves are roiling the global aid community, which warns of a more militarized, politicized and profit-seeking trend
This year will go down in the history books. Taiwan faces enormous turmoil and uncertainty in the coming months. Which political parties are in a good position to handle big changes? All of the main parties are beset with challenges. Taking stock, this column examined the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) (“Huang Kuo-chang’s choking the life out of the TPP,” May 28, page 12), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) (“Challenges amid choppy waters for the DPP,” June 14, page 12) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) (“KMT struggles to seize opportunities as ‘interesting times’ loom,” June 20, page 11). Times like these can
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