Pride and Glory
Edward Norton and Colin Farrell are New York policemen and brothers-in-law and Jon Voight is Norton’s father and top detective for Manhattan. The story starts with a disastrous drug bust in which four police are slain, then pits family loyalties against propriety with an ethnic Irish angle. For these compromised, feuding men, there’s no genuinely happy ending; dare it be said that the title of the film is meant to be ironic? Lukewarm reviews carped about the familiarity of it all, though a strong lineup should attract the faithful. Either way, the bluster of Pride and Glory only reinforces the contention that the opening half hour of World Trade Center remains the most credible portrayal of NYC cops in recent years.
Big Stan
Rob Schneider stars, directs and flogs anal rape humor for all it’s worth in this comedy eventually set in a prison. Schneider is a real estate shyster who gets jail time, but not before undergoing a course in self-defense from The Master (David Carradine). Unreleased in the US (a shame, because a Roger Ebert review of the film would have been a corker), though it’s been wandering through European and Asian territories for a year looking for a home. Now it’s Taiwan’s turn, presumably thanks to the modest success of You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, which was made later. The elegant Chinese title of the film (“Fierce Men Rape Prison”) should snare exactly the local audience Schneider is looking for.
The Women
Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Jada Pinkett Smith, Bette Midler, Candice Bergen, Cloris Leachman, Carrie Fisher, to name a few ... what a cast. The relationships of four friends — with each other and the unseen men in their life — are the basis for a very loose remake of the George Cukor favorite from 1939, itself based on a hit play. This post-Sex and the City, Taiwanese-financed yarn is being marketed as having no male actors whatsoever, which might have worked in the 1930s, but it all seems a little desperate today, and a lot of critics were unimpressed. Still, watching the films back to back might offer a fascinating exercise in how women’s mores have changed — and stayed the same — over 70 years, at least in Hollywood’s eyes (but can you imagine Joan Crawford doing a tampon gag?). Directed by Diane English, a writer-producer of Murphy Brown.
Quarantine
Apparently there is yet to be a simultaneous release of a non-English-language film and its English-language remake (though 1931’s Dracula and a Spanish-language cover with the same title were shot over the same period in the same studio), but Quarantine has gone some way toward making this possible. A quickly produced stateside version of the Spanish zombie flick [Rec], which was released here only five months ago, this version follows the leader and tries to scare and disorientate in equal measure as a building’s residents succumb to a horrifying virus — but the survivors can’t get out. What needs to be asked is how many more shakycam epics will be made before the plug is finally pulled on this audience-unfriendly gimmick.
The Wave
A teacher in Germany launches a sociological experiment in his class that spreads, gets out of hand and sets the dogs of fascism loose for a new era. Critics sniffed at the obviousness of some of the moralizing, but the film’s momentum and intriguing premise — based on a real experiment conducted in a California high school in 1967 — sound like something that would happen if Jane Elliott of The Eye of the Storm fame lost control of her campaign to destroy racism and prejudice and ignited an iris race war. It’s interesting to contemplate what Taiwanese schoolkids would make of this film, not to mention the tantalizing ramifications of a “green versus blue” experiment in local classrooms — were it not for the suffocating conservatism of Taiwan’s education system.
A Job to Kill For
In a week of too many new releases and an Ingmar Bergman festival, it’s a mystery why this Canadian made-for-cable entry from 2006 would be dressed up as a cinema product and expected to capture market share. But if the idea of a humorless boardroom version of To Die For by veteran TV director Bill Corcoran (21 Jump Street, Wiseguy) grabs you, rush to catch this one before it disappears in a week or so. Sean Young (a long way from Blade Runner) is an executive whose new female assistant really wants a promotion.
Taiwan Association for Human Rights Film Festival
Lots of good titles are featured in this timely showcase, including Let Him Have It from the UK, Small Soldiers on the child soldiers of Liberia and works on state terror relating to Taiwan, Cambodia, North Korea, Tibet and Chile, among others, as well as indigenous issues. All screenings are free, so get down to the Eslite bookstore on Dunhua South Road (tomorrow and Sunday) and the Chinese Taipei Film Archive (from Monday through next Saturday) in Taipei and the Kaohsiung Film Archive (Dec. 21 to Dec. 31). More details at udhr60.twbbs.org.
Nine Taiwanese nervously stand on an observation platform at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. It’s 9:20am on March 27, 1968, and they are awaiting the arrival of Liu Wen-ching (柳文卿), who is about to be deported back to Taiwan where he faces possible execution for his independence activities. As he is removed from a minibus, a tenth activist, Dai Tian-chao (戴天昭), jumps out of his hiding place and attacks the immigration officials — the nine other activists in tow — while urging Liu to make a run for it. But he’s pinned to the ground. Amid the commotion, Liu tries to
A dozen excited 10-year-olds are bouncing in their chairs. The small classroom’s walls are lined with racks of wetsuits and water equipment, and decorated with posters of turtles. But the students’ eyes are trained on their teacher, Tseng Ching-ming, describing the currents and sea conditions at nearby Banana Bay, where they’ll soon be going. “Today you have one mission: to take off your equipment and float in the water,” he says. Some of the kids grin, nervously. They don’t know it, but the students from Kenting-Eluan elementary school on Taiwan’s southernmost point, are rare among their peers and predecessors. Despite most of
A pig’s head sits atop a shelf, tufts of blonde hair sprouting from its taut scalp. Opposite, its chalky, wrinkled heart glows red in a bubbling vat of liquid, locks of thick dark hair and teeth scattered below. A giant screen shows the pig draped in a hospital gown. Is it dead? A surgeon inserts human teeth implants, then hair implants — beautifying the horrifyingly human-like animal. Chang Chen-shen (張辰申) calls Incarnation Project: Deviation Lovers “a satirical self-criticism, a critique on the fact that throughout our lives we’ve been instilled with ideas and things that don’t belong to us.” Chang
Feb. 10 to Feb. 16 More than three decades after penning the iconic High Green Mountains (高山青), a frail Teng Yu-ping (鄧禹平) finally visited the verdant peaks and blue streams of Alishan described in the lyrics. Often mistaken as an indigenous folk song, it was actually created in 1949 by Chinese filmmakers while shooting a scene for the movie Happenings in Alishan (阿里山風雲) in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投), recounts director Chang Ying (張英) in the 1999 book, Chang Ying’s Contributions to Taiwanese Cinema and Theater (打鑼三響包得行: 張英對台灣影劇的貢獻). The team was meant to return to China after filming, but
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