The Day of the Siege
An English-language movie from Europe directed by Renzo Martinelli is a vast historical epic about one of the crucial moments of Western history. The siege referred to is that of Vienna by the Ottoman Turks in 1683. It manages to be cynical, clumsy, offensive and boring. It does not help that the film is subtitled in many international releases as “September 11 1683,” claiming contemporary relevance in some sort of eternal clash between Western and Muslim forces. Some effort is made to provide a balanced portrayal, with The Turkish Pasha, Kara Mustafa (Enrico Lo Verso) shown to be as decent and brave as Polish King Jan Sobieski (Jerzy Skolimowski), but too much time is given to the priest Marco d’Aviano (F. Murray Abraham), who provides ill-delivered and bigoted polemics against Islam before leading the eventually victorious Christian troops to defeat their enemy. Offense is added to injury by the ham-handed dialogue and the cheap special effects, so that The Day of the Siege fails to engage on pretty much every level.
Amoureuse
A made-for-television movie from France from 2011 that has been brought to big-screens in this particularly sad week for the movies in Taiwan. There is a beautiful reporter, a leader of an extremist political party, a suave police agent and lots of intrigue. Amoureuse makes a play for contemporary relevance with its subject matter, with far-right politics and media involvement getting an airing, but it is essentially matinee fare with the politics simply a sophisticated background to a bland romantic drama that never really rises above its TV roots. Adequate acting and good TV production values, but you are not going to be holding your breath to discover the outcome.
On the Way to School
Four children from different parts of the world, all with the same problem. The long road to school. With good cheer and enthusiasm, they overcome monstrous obstacles in their arduous daily commute. This is an “uplifting” documentary about the power of the human spirit and the eagerness for education felt by people in remote parts of the world battling under the burdens of poverty and isolation. There is Jackson from Kenya, Carlito from Argentinian, Zahira from Morocco and Samuel from India. Getting to school for them is a huge trek, demanding endurance, commitment and cooperation from others. One cannot but be moved by the stories, but the presentation is so one-dimensional and relentlessly positive that even the children and their hardships can become a little hard to take.
Walking on Sunshine
Mama Mia! without the all-star cast. Built around the music of the 1980s, and featuring a string of hits ranging from the title track by Katrina and the Waves, to other pop hits such as Cindy Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Eternal Flame by the Bangles, Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time, and Wham!’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. You won’t be making any new discoveries and the playlist is pretty predictable. Sadly, there are no so-awful-it’s-perfect moments like Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep singing When All Is Said and Done. Even the story doesn’t manage to shake of stale echoes of the earlier compilation musical, though the location has been moved to Italy, and the romantic dynamic has morphed from mother and daughter to two sisters. Maddie (Annabel Scholey) is about to marry Raf (Giulio Berruti), and invites her sister (Hannah Arterton), who turns out to be an old flame of Raf’s. Romantic contretemps follow, providing excuses for various members of the cast to break out into song and dance routines. There is nothing objectionable about it, but it all just feels a little stale.
The Taipei Times reported last week that housing transactions fell 15.3 percent last month, to under 20,000 units. However, the market boomed for the first eight months of the year, and observers expect it to show growth for the year as a whole. The fall was due to Central Bank intervention. “The negative impact of credit controls grew evident for the third straight month,” said Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) research manager Tseng Ching-ter (曾敬德), according to the report. Central Bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) in October said that the Central Bank implemented selective credit controls in September to cool the housing
During the Japanese colonial era, remote mountain villages were almost exclusively populated by indigenous residents. Deep in the mountains of Chiayi County, however, was a settlement of Hakka families who braved the harsh living conditions and relative isolation to eke out a living processing camphor. As the industry declined, the village’s homes and offices were abandoned one by one, leaving us with a glimpse of a lifestyle that no longer exists. Even today, it takes between four and six hours to walk in to Baisyue Village (白雪村), and the village is so far up in the Chiayi mountains that it’s actually
It’s a discombobulating experience, after a Lord of the Rings trilogy that was built, down to every frame and hobbit hair, for the big screen, to see something so comparatively minor, small-scaled and TV-sized as The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. The film, set 183 years before the events of The Hobbit, is a return to Middle-earth that, despite some very earnest storytelling, never supplies much of an answer as to why, exactly, it exists. Rohirrim, which sounds a little like the sound an orc might make sneezing, is perhaps best understood as a placeholder for further cinematic
These days, CJ Chen (陳崇仁) can be found driving a taxi in and around Hualien. As a way to earn a living, it’s not his first choice. He’d rather be taking tourists to the region’s attractions, but after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck the region on April 3, demand for driver-guides collapsed. In the eight months since the quake, the number of overseas tourists visiting Hualien has declined by “at least 90 percent, because most of them come for Taroko Gorge, not for the east coast or the East Longitudinal Valley,” he says. Chen estimates the drop in domestic sightseers after the
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