The Huntsman: Winter War
This was supposed to be Snow White and the Huntsman 2, but an affair between director Rupert Sanders and Snow White (Kristen Stewart) led to their departure from the film, and now we have a prequel sans the main character. Picking up the pieces with a still-impressive cast, and visual effects supervisor Cedric Nicolas-Troyan moving up to director, the story now revolves around Eric the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) as a young man trained from childhood to work for the Ice Queen Freya (Emily Blunt) alongside his wife Sara (Jessica Chastain), who was dead in the last film. Charlize Theron reprises her role Queen Ravenna, who happens to be Freya’s sister, and the two pose double the threat as the previous installment.
Eye in the sky
Drone warfare and its ethical dilemma is the theme in this British thriller by Gavin Hood (Tsotsi, Ender’s Game) which is one of the last two times we’ll see Snape (Alan Rickman) on the big screen after his passing in January. Helen Mirren leads as a military intelligence officer commanding from England an anti-terrorism operation in Kenya, who becomes caught up in the political firestorm regarding the use of drones to take out identified suicide bombers in other countries, and the ensuing civilian casualties that are bound to occur (in this case, a cute little girl selling bread). Eventually, the Americans get involved too. This film is about inaction as much as action, and we are not revealing what the final decision is.
Look who’s back
It is 2011 and Hitler has come back to life in a vacant parking lot in Berlin. Nobody believes he is the real thing, though, and he becomes a television comedic celebrity for his portrayals of, well, himself. And the extremist right-wingers hate him because they think he is making fun of the late dictator. Based on the bestselling novel by Timur Verme, the movie adds its own touch by throwing in unscripted scenes of Hitler (Oliver Masucci) interacting with German civilians on the street. He said people welcomed him, taking selfies, kissing him and even reportedly telling him to bring back labor camps. “I found it disturbing how quickly I could win people over,” he tells German newspaper Bild. “I mean, they were talking to Hitler.” The comedy is dark and biting here despite the silly premise.
All roads lead to rome
Can it get anymore cliched than this? Sarah Jessica Parker plays a just-divorced mother who takes her rebellious young daughter on a trip to Italy — supposedly to get her away from her drug dealer boyfriend — but they conveniently arrive in the same town where Parker’s former Italian lover lives. And l’amante is played by no other than Raoul Bova, who happened to romance another American recent divorcee 13 years ago in Under the Tuscan Sun. You know what you are getting with this film and you will watch it anyway despite all signs indicating a disaster.
Love
Before making the film, director Gaspar Noe proclaimed, “With my next film I hope guys will have erections and girls will get wet.” So here we are with an erotic drama revolving around aspiring filmmaker Murphy, who proclaims in a scene he wants to make films out of “blood, sperm and tears.” Sounds like Murphy is Noe (whose mother’s maiden name is Murphy) and the whole thing could be an egotistical romp. Much of the talk is about the movie’s unsimulated sex scenes, and not the fact that it really does not have a story at all. But Noe says what separates this film from porn is that feelings are involved, hence the title. On a side note, actor Karl Glusman almost ran away after Noe began the first day of filming with closeups of his genitals.
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
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