The seabed stone formations discovered in the 1980s off Japan's Yonaguni Island, 111km directly east of Taiwan, have aroused controversy. Are they, as some theorists from the Morien Institute claim, the remains of an ancient culture? Or simply the work of natural processes? For filmmaker Tsui Hark (徐克), the mysterious structures provide a backdrop for Missing (謎屍), a romantic thriller starring Lee Sin-je (李心潔).
Despite a big-name cast, star director and enigmatic setting, the film suffers from a flabby storyline and vacillates unconvincingly between the romance and horror genres.
Lee plays Gao Jing, a psychologist living in Hong Kong who hits it off with underwater photographer Dave Chen (played by China's Guo Xiaodong, 郭曉冬).
PHOTO COURTESY OF STAR GROUP
Romance ensues, and Chen takes Gao on a diving trip to visit Yonaguni Island where he plans to propose to his true love.
But tragedy strikes on a dive when Chen loses his head. Literally.
Heartbroken and traumatized, Gao turns to hypnotherapy to retrieve the buried memories of what actually happened during the fateful dive.
PHOTO COURTESY OF STAR GROUP
Meanwhile, Chen's younger sister, Xiao Kai (Isabella Leong, 梁洛施), returns from Taiwan carrying a human head that she believes to be her deceased brother's and becomes possessed.
Gao's life spirals out of control when one of her patients, Simon (Chang Chen), convinces her of the existence of spirits. The psychologist finds it increasingly difficult to tell the difference between drug-induced visions, apparitions or illusions, as did this reviewer.
Missing opens with a promising premise but rapidly descends into convoluted plot devices with few genuine moments of horror, preventing viewers from suspending disbelief. There are unconvincing spirits, half-baked characters and an overwrought love story. Missing's end credits roll several anticlimaxes too late.
Taiwanese actor Chang Chen is one of the film's few pleasant surprises as he takes a break from his usual reticent leads to play an amusingly wacky sidekick.
Lee Sin-je, on the other hand, doesn't deviate from her usual scream queen expressions, and the deadpan Chang Chen-yue (張震嶽), who plays a marine archeologist, could have been left on the editing room floor without affecting the film's overall appeal.
Inspired by a documentary about the ancient underwater structures, Tsui reportedly spent three years and NT$300 million on Missing, which required advanced underwater cinematography equipment as well as a highly trained production team capable of underwater filmmaking. Though the effort involved is commendable, the results are not, which means the behind-the-scenes story of how the movie was filmed could be more enjoyable than the film itself.
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;
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.
Lines on a map once meant little to India’s Tibetan herders of the high Himalayas, expertly guiding their goats through even the harshest winters to pastures on age-old seasonal routes. That stopped in 2020, after troops from nuclear-armed rivals India and China clashed in bitter hand-to-hand combat in the contested high-altitude border lands of Ladakh. Swaths of grazing lands became demilitarized “buffer zones” to keep rival forces apart. For 57-year-old herder Morup Namgyal, like thousands of other semi-nomadic goat and yak herders from the Changpa pastoralist people, it meant traditional lands were closed off. “The Indian army stops us from going there,” Namgyal said,
In spite of the next local elections being over two years away, there is already considerable intrigue and jockeying for position by politicians and their supporters. The local press runs quite a bit of content, mostly speculative, on who will run in what races and what the outcomes might be. This is an overview for English language readers to get a taste of the state of play. Four races in particular are drawing a lot of heat, those of mayors of New Taipei City, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung because in all four the incumbent mayors will be term-limited out. In