Melody’s Smile
A deceptive title, this; the original French title is La Chambre des Morts, which gives viewers a much better idea of what’s in store (the Chinese translates as “Sample of a Smile,” which is somewhere in between). The Hollywood Reporter raved about this “horror classic,” in which single mother and detective Melanie Laurent closes in on a duo of sick puppy lesbian kidnappers as a ransom goes missing. The multiple viewpoint style of Rashomon collides with The Silence of the Lambs in this depiction of the worst and best that humanity has to offer.
Always: Sunset on Third Street 2
A sequel to the 2005 original, this film is essential viewing for anyone who has lived in Tokyo. Following several story strands, Part 2 mixes good-natured neighborhood and family melodrama with another widescreen presentation of unusually detailed and moving special effects that recreate the Japanese capital of the late 1950s. Variety and the Japan Times disagreed on the accessibility of this film for those who didn’t see the first one; that debate is quickly shut down by a quick trip to the DVD store.
One Piece The Movie: Episode of Alabaster — The Desert Princess and the Pirates
Part 8 in Japan’s One Piece theatrical saga has Princess Vivi of Alabaster and our trusty band of Straw Hat Pirates travel once again to the scorched kingdom. This time it’s to do battle with a formidable crocodile who heads a criminal network and who has designs on the kingdom’s subjects, and is prepared to use the most nefarious means to take power. Lots of fight scenes for the faithful.
4bia
In case you don’t get the pun, this film is also listed as Phobia. Four of Thailand’s better suspense directors deliver short pieces for this “portmanteau horror film,” but with titles like Happiness, Tit For Tat, In the Middle and Last Fright, it may seem more like Twilight Zone: The Movie than Creepshow; the last episode even takes place on an aircraft. Still, ghostly images on a cellphone, curses, ghost stories that come true and animated corpses should please fans of the latter minor classic.
The Love of Siam
This pastel-shaded Thai youth film pits female fans of a boy band frontman against his unstoppable desire for another young gentleman who has reentered his life, all the while coping with dysfunction in the latter’s family. Amid military coups and the protests of an autocratic middle class, Thailand keeps churning out gay and ladyboy-themed flicks such as this to the delight of local audiences, a phenomenon one would be hard pressed to find anywhere else. Variety says the film courts gay audiences and their straight friends; one could add to this list undiscriminating fans of boy-band music.
Winds of September PLUS The Pain of Others
With local productions Cape No. 7 and Orz Boyz doing splendidly at the box office, the producer of Winds of September, a coming of age drama set in Hsinchu, is re-releasing the film to boost its modest haul. There are two more incentives this time around to see it. The first is a cut price ticket of NT$150; the second is a bonus, award-winning short film from 2005 by Winds director Tom Shu-yu Lin (林書宇), The Pain of Others, a drama about military service. Screening exclusively at Xinyi Vieshow.
If you are a Western and especially a white foreign resident of Taiwan, you’ve undoubtedly had the experience of Taiwanese assuming you to be an English teacher. There are cultural and economic reasons for this, but one of the greatest determinants is the narrow range of work permit categories that exist for Taiwan’s foreign residents, which has in turn created an unofficial caste system for foreigners. Until recently, laowai (老外) — the Mandarin term for “foreigners,” which also implies citizenship in a rich, Western country and distinguishable from brown-skinned, southeast Asian migrant laborers, or wailao (外勞) — could only ever
Sept. 23 to Sept. 29 The construction of the Babao Irrigation Canal (八堡圳) was not going well. Large-scale irrigation structures were almost unheard of in Taiwan in 1709, but Shih Shih-pang (施世榜) was determined to divert water from the Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪) to the Changhua plain, where he owned land, to promote wet rice cultivation. According to legend, a mysterious old man only known as Mr. Lin (林先生) appeared and taught Shih how to use woven conical baskets filled with rocks called shigou (石笱) to control water diversion, as well as other techniques such as surveying terrain by observing shadows during
In recent weeks news outlets have been reporting on rising rents. Last year they hit a 27 year high. It seems only a matter of time before they become a serious political issue. Fortunately, there is a whole political party that is laser focused on this issue, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP). They could have had a seat or two in the legislature, or at least, be large enough to attract media attention to the rent issue from time to time. Unfortunately, in the last election, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) acted as a vote sink for
This is a film about two “fools,” according to the official synopsis. But admirable ones. In his late thirties, A-jen quits his high-paying tech job and buys a plot of land in the countryside, hoping to use municipal trash to revitalize the soil that has been contaminated by decades of pesticide and chemical fertilizer use. Brother An-ho, in his 60s, on the other hand, began using organic methods to revive the dead soil on his land 30 years ago despite the ridicule of his peers, methodically picking each pest off his produce by hand without killing them out of respect