The Game Plan
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays a quarterback upended by an eight-year-old girl claiming to be his offspring. This set-up sounds terribly familiar, but even the sternest critics couldn't help admitting that The Rock brings a lot of charisma to his films, including this one. If you're a sucker for movies where beefy tough guys get domesticated by cute kids (think Arnie in Kindergarten Cop and Vin Diesel in The Pacifier), then you'll probably get clucky and weepy over this one, too.
Everyone's Hero
This animated baseball feature for children was co-directed by Christopher Reeve and co-voiced by his wife, Dana Reeve, before both passed away. However, the selling point in Taiwan - for all those Wang Chien-ming fans, at any rate - is the New York Yankees connection. "Everyone's Hero" is Yankee Irving, a youngster who sets off to recover a bat stolen from Babe Ruth and ends up helping his namesake team win the World Series. The movie features a big name cast (Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker and spurned Yankees coach Joe Torre), but most critics thought it struck out.
Rise: Blood Hunter
Lucy Liu stars as a reporter-turned-vampire in a sexed-up horror effort with toothless box office in the US. Reminiscent of the Blade series, she then exacts revenge on her own kind, but not before copious coupling. It's notable for Liu's no-holds-barred performance, cameos from the likes of Marilyn Manson, and for being a B movie with an A crew - Oscar winner John Toll (Braveheart, The Last Samurai) was cinematographer.
Singapore Dreaming
This film's distributor is not doing itself any favors by releasing this breezy drama with comic touches in a week packed with new titles. That's a shame, because this multilingual tale of an unhappy middle class family and their travails in an all-too-materialistic "5Cs" society could strike a chord with many here. It was produced by plastic surgeon, 10-pin bowler, snooker player, painter and actor Woffles Wu.
Bleach: Memories of Nobody
First the bestselling manga, then the anime TV series, now the film. Bleach is the tale of a Japanese schoolboy who can see apparitions and a female death spirit who befriends him. In Memories of Nobody, our heroes are beset by sinister creatures that lack the capacity for memory. This film could further unnerve Taiwanese educators rattled by Japan's Death Note films, which were also aimed at adolescents. The second Bleach feature opens in Japan next month.
Crazy Assassins
This is a 2003 action-comedy-period piece from South Korea's budding answer to lowbrow movie icon Lloyd Kaufman, Yun Je-gyun, who made the gross-out farce Sex is Zero, also released here. The inept "assassins" of the title are charged with finding an AWOL concubine, only to get themselves tied up with some female ghosts. The Kung Fu Cinema Web site says the film "makes Dumb and Dumberer look smart." Screening at the Baixue grind house in Ximending.
L'Amour Retrospective
Taipei's Spot theater is offering a romantic two-week program of films by acclaimed husband-and-wife directors Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda. The titles are Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Le Bonheur, and two films by Varda about Demy: Jacquot de Nantes and L'Univers de Jacques Demy.
July 1 to July 7 Huang Ching-an (黃慶安) couldn’t help but notice Imelita Masongsong during a company party in the Philippines. With paler skin and more East Asian features, she did not look like the other locals. On top of his job duties, Huang had another mission in the country, given by his mother: to track down his cousin, who was deployed to the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II and never returned. Although it had been more than three decades, the family was still hoping to find him. Perhaps Imelita could provide some clues. Huang never found the cousin;
On Friday last week, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency very excitedly proclaimed “a set of judicial guidelines targeting die-hard ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists” had been issued “as a refinement and supplement to the country’s ‘Anti-Secession’ law” from 2005, with sentencing guidelines that included the death penalty as an option. At the same time, 77 People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) aircraft were flown into Taiwan’s air defense identification zones (ADIZ) in just 48 hours, a high enough number to indicate the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was peeved about something and wanted it known. What was puzzling is that the CCP always
Once again, we are listening to the government talk about bringing in foreign workers to help local manufacturing. Speaking at an investment summit in Washington DC, the Minister of Economic Affairs, J.W. Kuo (郭智輝), said that the nation must attract about 400,000 to 500,000 skilled foreign workers for high end manufacturing by 2040 to offset the falling population. That’s roughly 15 years from now. Using the lower number, Taiwan would have to import over 25,000 foreigners a year for these positions to reach that goal. The government has no idea what this sounds like to outsiders and to foreigners already living here.
David is a psychologist and has been taking part in drug-fueled gay orgies for the past 15 years. “The sex is crazy — utterly unbridled — which of course is partly down to the drugs but also because you can act out all your fantasies,” said the 54-year-old, who has been in a relationship for two years. Chemsex — taking drugs to enhance sexual pleasure and performance — “has opened a whole world of possibilities to me,” David added. “Sex doesn’t have to be limited to two people... There is a whole fantasy and transgressive side to it that turns me on. It