During the Straits Cup basketball tournament in Miaoli last September, reigning local champions Taiwan Beer (台灣啤酒籃球隊) were in the process of losing to China's Jiangsu Nangang Dragons when one of the Chinese players elbowed his Taiwan Beer opponent in the face. Two days later, Taiwan Beer's management ignored an apology from the Dragons and removed its team from the competition. Its players, the team said, were afraid of their Chinese opponents.
It seems a little rich then, to say the least, that a new documentary made about the Taiwan Beer basketball team is called Attitude. This, after all, is the team that wimped out of a tournament while the documentary was in production. So what does "attitude" mean? Sportsmanship and professionalism? Or self-absorbed preening?
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
Ostensibly, Attitude - which was produced and financed by basketball player-turned-entertainer Chen Jien-chow (陳建州), better known as "Blackie" (黑人), who is also the team's PR director - is about dreams, friendship and refusing to give up, and its tone is exhaustingly positive. It begins with Blackie reminiscing about Taiwan Beer's recent past and how it rose from being a team that nearly fell apart in 2003 to a second place finish two seasons later. Thanks to unimaginative camera work and editing, the first 20 minutes feel more like a boring speech than a movie.
Things take a lachrymose turn when a junior high school teacher and Taiwan Beer fan surnamed Lin appears. Lin is terminally ill with cancer but is still optimistic and upbeat about life, and his last words, spoken in front of the camera, provide the film's only genuine emotional moment. After Lin dies and Blackie attends his funeral, the tearjerker subplot continues with an episode about basketball star Sam Ho's (何守正) close relationship with his late father and his mother, who he visits in the hospital after practice.
Subsequent chapters ensure that there is no shortage of humor and drama, as basketball fans are wooed with behind-the-scenes glimpses of the celebrity athletes. Viewers see Lin Chih-jeh (林志傑), the SBL's most valuable player, threaten the director and order him to turn off the camera. There's also plenty of brotherly love: players kissing each other on a bus, and horseplay that involves pulling each other's clothes off after practice. Not surprisingly, things come to an end with the team's victory in the 2007 SBL finals, which conveniently (for the film's sake) occurred before its craven exit from the Straits Cup later in the year.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
There is nothing wrong with making a film that seeks to inspire people and encourages them to see the bright and sunny side of things. But it's troubling when a film seems like an extended publicity vehicle that aims to advertise SBL stars much in the same way as the movie Stars (星光傳奇) sought to enhance the celebrity of pop idol contestants in the "talent" show One Million Star (超級星光大道). To be fair, Attitude can at times be reasonably entertaining. But the real never-give-up spirit on display here has nothing to do with sports: it's the moxie that Blackie has displayed by risking more than NT$5 million of his own money on a film that, if it succeeds at the box office, will make himself and his teammates more famous.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
Nov. 11 to Nov. 17 People may call Taipei a “living hell for pedestrians,” but back in the 1960s and 1970s, citizens were even discouraged from crossing major roads on foot. And there weren’t crosswalks or pedestrian signals at busy intersections. A 1978 editorial in the China Times (中國時報) reflected the government’s car-centric attitude: “Pedestrians too often risk their lives to compete with vehicles over road use instead of using an overpass. If they get hit by a car, who can they blame?” Taipei’s car traffic was growing exponentially during the 1960s, and along with it the frequency of accidents. The policy
Hourglass-shaped sex toys casually glide along a conveyor belt through an airy new store in Tokyo, the latest attempt by Japanese manufacturer Tenga to sell adult products without the shame that is often attached. At first glance it’s not even obvious that the sleek, colorful products on display are Japan’s favorite sex toys for men, but the store has drawn a stream of couples and tourists since opening this year. “Its openness surprised me,” said customer Masafumi Kawasaki, 45, “and made me a bit embarrassed that I’d had a ‘naughty’ image” of the company. I might have thought this was some kind
What first caught my eye when I entered the 921 Earthquake Museum was a yellow band running at an angle across the floor toward a pile of exposed soil. This marks the line where, in the early morning hours of Sept. 21, 1999, a massive magnitude 7.3 earthquake raised the earth over two meters along one side of the Chelungpu Fault (車籠埔斷層). The museum’s first gallery, named after this fault, takes visitors on a journey along its length, from the spot right in front of them, where the uplift is visible in the exposed soil, all the way to the farthest
The room glows vibrant pink, the floor flooded with hundreds of tiny pink marbles. As I approach the two chairs and a plush baroque sofa of matching fuchsia, what at first appears to be a scene of domestic bliss reveals itself to be anything but as gnarled metal nails and sharp spikes protrude from the cushions. An eerie cutout of a woman recoils into the armrest. This mixed-media installation captures generations of female anguish in Yun Suknam’s native South Korea, reflecting her observations and lived experience of the subjugated and serviceable housewife. The marbles are the mother’s sweat and tears,
RSS