The Pink Panther 2
Enough people saw and enjoyed the Pink Panther remake featuring Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau for this sequel to be financed, but it’s hard to imagine another one being made. The upside is that it’s got a good cast: John Cleese, Jeremy Irons, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina and Martin’s All of Me co-star Lily Tomlin, to name a few, though some critics lamented the waste of talent — not to mention a gratuitous CNN cameo (guess who). In Part 2, the Pink Panther diamond is targeted by a legendary thief, and Clouseau must foil him. Peter Sellers fans are advised to hire the old DVDs.
The Unborn
Now we’ve seen everything: an Exorcist-style movie steeped in Jewish religious lore and Nazi scientific atrocities. For the rest of the horror crowd not into such themes, there’s also hot babes, creepy children and a catalog of shocks. Odette Yustman (Cloverfield) plays a young woman whose link to experiments at a World War II concentration camp turns her life into a supernatural nightmare. Also stars Gary Oldman (as a rabbi) and Jane Alexander. Director David S. Goyer is a prolific action/fantasy writer-producer; he played a big role in Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. But his work here has not passed muster among those with little tolerance for the genre.
Personal Effects
A casualty of a nervous (or passionless?) US film industry amid the economic gloom, this Michelle Pfeiffer film had lone screenings in New York and Los Angeles before being dumped on the DVD market. Taiwanese audiences, however, are lucky because some of the many straight-to-DVD-in-the-US features screened here are worth the price of a ticket. Pfeiffer is the mother of a deaf child and, because of a murder, recently bereaved; she meets a man (Ashton Kutcher, from That ’70s Show) in a support group and a bond develops between them. Also stars Kathy Bates.
Thomas & Friends: The Great Discovery
Fans of the long-running (25 years!) British TV show for kids about a friendly, hard-working locomotive, his engine friends and their controller will be delighted to see this up on the big screen. Thomas’ “discovery” is an old mountain town on a little-used stretch of track. For the TV show, Ringo Starr and the late George Carlin were among the narrators for the UK and US markets respectively; for the movie, Pierce Brosnan steps into the sound-proof booth. Screening at the Vieshow complex in Xinyi District.
A Frozen Flower
South Koreans took to this sensual, bloody costume drama in record numbers — for an adults-only film. Set around 1,000 years ago, a homosexual emperor asks his lover/bodyguard to impregnate his wife and sire a son to avoid a clash over succession ... but allegiance to the emperor can only go so far. Handsomely mounted, beautifully filmed and featuring a gorgeous cast, this lengthy saga has sex scenes that fully earn its restricted rating.
Shakariki!
Some might argue that the Japanese film industry is an offshoot of that country’s manga market, and here is yet more grim evidence of it. Selected members of the curious male acting ensemble known as D-BOYS star in this trifling story based on a dated manga of a high school bicycle racing team that must overcome assorted challenges to prevail. The film may score points for its enthusiasm, but this is no Breaking Away, sad to say.
The Bridge
A remake of a pioneering German film from the late 1950s that attempted to make sense of World War II, this is a made-for-TV production that will be quickly forgotten. A bunch of high school students find themselves called up to the army as US forces approach; their token job is to defend a bridge of no strategic value, but disaster looms anyway. Stars Franka Potente (Marie in The Bourne Identity) and a bunch of young male actors unknown outside Germany. Screening at the Scholar multiplex in Taipei and Wonderful Cinemas in Taichung.
Highway Star
The Baixue theater in Ximending is hosting more hiChannel promotional screenings, this time for Highway Star, a South Korean comedy from 2007 about an up-and-coming heavy metal singer who signs up to perform the dreaded form of music known as “Trot,” which the atmovies Web site helpfully likens to Taiwanese pop songs — the ones with interchangeable melodies, plagal cadences and warbling saxophones beloved of variety shows. Stars Cha Tae-hyun from the hugely successful My Sassy Girl. Starts tomorrow.
Earlier this month the Interpret: China series at the US-based Center for International and Strategic Studies (CSIS) published a translation of a piece from the “Cross-Strait Institute of Urban Planning” at Xiamen University, arguing that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) should begin preparing for the occupation of Taiwan after a successful invasion. It was swiftly deleted. The “institute” is one of the many faux research organizations the PRC has established to give its propaganda a scholarly veneer. The article, “Start Taiwan Takeover Preparations as Soon as Possible,” whose authors were not named (though CSIS presented them as “experts”), called
After the killing of foreign sailors on Taiwanese soil and the resultant Mudan Incident of 1874, which threatened the Qing’s claims on Taiwan, Chinese authorities decided to beef up defenses in the south by constructing a wall around what is today’s Hengchun Township (恆春) in Pingtung County. Today, it has the distinction of being the only city wall left in Taiwan with all of its original gates still intact. Not only are the original gates still intact, but most of the original wall is still standing, and open to the public. A walk along — and often on top of
This is the summer of hell for the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and their leader Ko Wen-je (柯文哲). In just the last few weeks the party has imploded. The question now is if they will have any future as an electable party or not. The first blow fell on July 26, when the party’s Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) was convicted on corruption charges and sentenced to seven years and four months in prison and suspended as Hsinchu mayor. She left the TPP in disgrace. Then starting on Aug. 8, in quick succession the party became embroiled in three new
Last spring, Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned for hush-money payments made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels. For a popular online content creator who goes by the moniker Sneako, the moment seemed to crystallize all of his dark thoughts about America and its coming election. “Nobody is surprised that Trump was arrested,” he tweeted. “Everybody on both sides knows it’s rigged.” Sneako, 25, whose real name is Nico Kenn De Balinthazy, had been chasing online fame since he was a teen, first with apolitical gaming videos and slightly wooden man-on-the-street interviews, often about dating, before working briefly for the wildly