Machi Action 變身
Directed by Jiu Ba-dao (九把刀), the Internet novelist turned director whose style crisscrosses genres such as fantasy, romance, thriller, black comedy, action and wuxia (武俠), or Chinese martial-art literature. With Machi Action, he taps into the superhero serial, telling a tale of a TV actor who loses his job after 10 years playing a world-saving superhero character. Inevitably the actor, played by Chen Bo-lin (陳柏霖), has a disabled younger brother, who plays into the inspirational theme of the film, and a romantic element handled by Chen Ting-hsuan (陳庭萱). Although a younger actor with more contemporary appeal has replaced Chen’s character on TV, our hero finds that you don’t have to wear spandex tights to change the world for someone else.
To My Dear Granny 親愛的奶奶
Directed by Arthur Chu (瞿友寧), this semi-autobiographical film is an intimate look back over the complex life of a family with deeply hidden secrets. The story is told largely in flashback as the narrator Ah-da, played by Lawrence Ko (柯宇綸) helps his aging grandmother write a letter and gradually delves into his own past, understanding, little by little, the small events of his childhood that shaped the life of his family members. The grandmother is played by Chang Hsiu-yun (張岫雲), a former Chinese opera star who brings enormous presence to the screen.
The Sessions
A very different film about sex. New York Time’s critic Stephen Holden describes it as “a touching, profoundly sex-positive film that equates sex with intimacy, tenderness and emotional connection instead of performance, competition and conquest,” and many have agreed that it serves as a slap in the face of all the either glamorized or salacious content that passes for movie sex. There are outstanding performances by John Hawkes and Helen Hunt, which elevates a potentially tiresome and manipulative story about a man in an iron lung who wants to lose his virginity before his inevitable early death, and who does this with the assistance of a sex surrogate, into realms of deep feeling and, astonishingly, even comedy.
The Last Stand
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rebirth as a Hollywood action hero after his stint in politics enters high gear with The Last Stand, standing out from his crowd of tough-guy cronies of The Expendables to take his rightful place at the head of a rocking and rolling action romp. With South Korean Kim Jee-woon at the helm, who wrote and directed the wacky action hit The Good, the Bad, the Weird, good things can be, cautiously, hoped for. We can only hope that Kim finds his groove with Arnie more effectively than John Woo did when he teamed up with Jean-Claude Van Damme in Hard Target. Trailer releases promise a mix of big-ticket stunts and easy humor, as Arnie plays off his persona as a tough local sheriff, head of a small town police force, who is the only thing that stands between an escaped drug lord and the Mexican border. Cigars, a Gatling gun, a wacky sidekick, and the occasional babe as window dressing. Don’t pretend you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get.
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
There are shadowy cabals plotting to sell out Taiwan to be annexed by China, by invasion if necessary. Fortunately, they are buffoons. In 2019, former Bamboo Union gangster and founder of the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP), Chang An-le (張安樂, colorfully known as “White Wolf”), led a protest at the Legislative Yuan against comments made by then-premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) that in the event of an attack by China, he would never surrender, but would protect the nation by fighting to the end, even if he only had a broom. Chang had party members bring a wooden casket that they
June 1 to June 7 "If all Taiwanese were as afraid of dying as you, then what would happen?” Physician Shih Chiang-nan (施江南) reportedly said this to his wife Chen Chiao-tung (陳焦桐) after she urged him to stop intervening on behalf of Taiwanese soldiers stranded overseas after serving in the Japanese Army during World War II. Shih had clashed with high-ranking officials over the issue, engaged in several heated arguments with Taiwan governor-general Chen Yi (陳儀) and allegedly shouted at general Ko Yuan-fen (柯遠芬), chief of staff of the Taiwan Garrison Command, over
RSS