One would think that a film opening on New Year weekend would be at least watchable to compete with big holiday blockbuster movies. It is not the case with We Are Family (我們全家不太熟), a college comedy revolving around a group of pals who suddenly break into song and dance in polka-dot costumes.
Writer and director Wang Chuan-tsung (王傳宗) actually fields a solid cast of promising talents and old hands, but even the brilliant Sandrine Pinna (張榕容) cannot save her boring role.
Pinna plays Kaka, an attractive young woman who quits school and returns home from a trip to Australia with a baby boy. The bulk of the story fixates on Kaka trying to hide her illegitimate son from her grandfather (Chen Sung-yung, 陳松勇), who raised Kaka alone. As preposterous as the story is, Kaka enlists help from her old classmates Willy (Chang Shu-hao, 張書豪), Fatty (Hao Shao-wen, 郝劭文) and Yaya (Daniel Chen, 陳大天), who are staying at her grandfather’s apartment.
Photo courtesy of Double Edge Entertainment
The three college buddies, whose world has hitherto been all about skipping classes and playing computer games, now face the seemingly insurmountable challenge of babysitting. This is where the movie tries to be funny, pulling out all the comic stops, including a couple of music numbers, but none of it works. The cameos by seasoned comedians Hsu Hsiao-shun (許效舜) and Lin Mei-hsiu (林美秀) as a loudmouthed couple are embarrassingly dull. Acclaimed thespian Wu Peng-fong (吳朋奉) is thrown into the plot as a self-help instructor for no apparent reason.
Later, when the baby’s biological father comes into the picture the story quickly turns into a bad soap opera, culminating in an ending that will leave people wondering why they came to see the movie in the first place.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Mongolian influencer Anudari Daarya looks effortlessly glamorous and carefree in her social media posts — but the classically trained pianist’s road to acceptance as a transgender artist has been anything but easy. She is one of a growing number of Mongolian LGBTQ youth challenging stereotypes and fighting for acceptance through media representation in the socially conservative country. LGBTQ Mongolians often hide their identities from their employers and colleagues for fear of discrimination, with a survey by the non-profit LGBT Centre Mongolia showing that only 20 percent of people felt comfortable coming out at work. Daarya, 25, said she has faced discrimination since she