Painted Skin: The Resurrection (轉生術)
Films with the word “resurrection” in their title often suggest a lifeless remake or extension of a franchise. In the case of Painted Skin: The Resurrection this is undoubtedly the case. Gordon Chan’s (陳嘉上) Painted Skin (畫皮) in 2008, was a huge success and this second film tries to get a little more mileage out of the classic story taken from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (聊齋誌異). Directing duties have been taken over by the hyper-stylish Mongolian-born director Wuershan (烏爾善), who came to prominence with the Golden Horse-winning The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman (刀見笑). Wuershan has created a luscious effects-driven movie. As with the original, the film stars Chen Kun (陳坤) and Zhou Xun (周迅), but they have no chemistry as general and a fox demon intent on benefiting from his star-crossed romance with the disfigured Princess Jin, played by Zhao Wei (趙薇). Visually stunning, but without heart.
Rebirth
Based on a popular novel by Mitsuyo Kakuta with a screenplay by Satoko Okudera, this Japanese psychological drama shows the skill of director Izuru Narushima, who manages to take sensational and melodramatic material and present it in a flat, almost documentary style that heightens rather than blunts the emotions on display. A number of fine performances, particularly from Hiromi Nagasaku, who plays a young woman who steals the young child of her married lover and engages in a long-distance rivalry with the child’s birth mother (played by Yoko Moriguchi) before she is finally tracked down by police and put on trial for kidnap. Told in a complex arrangement of flashbacks, the film also tells the story of the child, Erina, who becomes deeply attached to her kidnapper, who shows her nothing but affection and love during their four years together. Narushima, despite the title, refuses to provide any kind of easy redemption for all the emotional suffering that he depicts.
Bliss
Based on an account in the novel Crime by attorney/novelist Ferdinand von Schirach, Bliss tells of love on the harsh Berlin streets between two of society’s disenfranchised: Irena (Alba Rohrwacher), an illegal immigrant who has seen her parents killed and has herself been gang raped during ethnic conflicts in Macedonia, and Kalle (Vinzenz Kiefer), a hard-living, but disconcertingly philosophical, German punk who sleeps rough. Director Doris Doerrie mixes harsh realism with moments of cloying sentiment in a manner that can be profoundly irritating, and resorts to heavy-handed use of the soundtrack and stylistic tricks to build up the emotions in a story that would be quite powerful enough without such enhancements.
Beloved
Director Christophe Honore works from his own screenplay about Madeline, a shopgirl who earns a few extra dollars as a call girl. She meets the man she loves while on the job, gets married, gives birth to a daughter, watches her marriage fall apart, and then sees her daughter making the same sort of mistakes that led her to her current lot. Madeline is played by Ludivine Sagnier as a young girl, and by Catherine Deneuve as a mature woman. Her daughter is played by Chiara Mastroianni, who is a real revelation in this role. There are hints of Pedro Almodovar in Honore’s delight in watching the ways women define themselves; then there are also songs, which can be off-putting if you expected to watch a drama and find yourself floundering in a musical. The quality of the cast makes up for much, but watching Deneuve burst into song produces the same kind of dissonance as Meryl Streep getting lyrical in Mamma Mia!.
Ice Age 4: Continental Drift
The delightful cast is back, but are they beginning to wear out their welcome? Ice Age 4: Continental Drift has many of the same elements that made its predecessors such solid entertainment, including the core characters of Manny (Ray Romano), Sid (John Leguizamo), and Diego (Denis Leary), who continue to entertain. There are even a couple of good ideas in the story, but as with so many franchises, the producers have felt an overpowering need to up the ante, creating an avalanche of new characters (including Jennifer Lopez as a feisty white tigress), ratcheted up the silly scale to include pirates on an ice-boat powered by narwhals and an army of Ewok chipmunks. One can’t help but sigh in weary appreciation at the producers’ efforts, but ultimately, it is the almost silent and wholly iconic Scrat the squirrel who reminds us of the spark that gave life to Ice Age.
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
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
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