Taipei film awards honor homegrown hit 'Detention'

Nikkei Asian Review
Date: December 01, 2019
By: Chris Horton

TAIPEI — Stymied by censorship and political repression during decades of one-party rule, Taiwan’s film industry blossomed during the island’s liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s. But in recent years, it has felt cross pressure from the censorship regime of the neighboring Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.

With a heavily Mandarin-speaking population of 23 million, compared with 1.4 billion in China, many of the democratic island’s filmmakers are attracted to the larger market across the Taiwan strait. But bigger-budget films like “The Assassin,” a 2015 release by director Hou Hsiao-hsien, have had to comply with increasingly restrictive Chinese censors, whose demands include downplaying or erasing Taiwanese identity.

Some filmmakers, though, are succeeding with low-budget Taiwan-centered stories told by young directors and aimed at the local market. John Hsu’s hit film “Detention” offers a prime example of how Taiwanese films can find success. Not only is the film Taiwan’s highest-grossing release this year, it landed a slew of awards at the annual Golden Horse Awards held in Taipei on Saturday.

Hsu, who has directed a number of successful short films, starting with “Intoxicant” (2008), had been deeply moved by the video game “Detention” (2017), he told the Nikkei Asian Review. The survival horror adventure was created by Taiwan’s Red Candle Games for Steam, a distribution platform owned by Valve Corp. of the U.S.    [FULL  STORY]

The fourth film in the series focuses on the relationship between Ip Man and his greatest student, Bruce Lee

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/12/01
By: Lyla Liu, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Hong Kong martial arts actor Donnie Yen (甄子丹) has announced that 'Ip

Man 4: The Finale' (葉問4：完結篇) will be his last kung fu film.

The classic kung fu film series, Ip Man, has been running for a decade. Dozens of popular scenes have in that time been created by Yen, such as the three-minute fight with boxer Mike Tyson.

The Ip Man series of films unveiled the legendary life of Wing Chun (詠春拳) kung fu master Ip Man, who inspired generations of martial artists. 'Ip Man 4: The Finale' opens on Dec. 20 and stars Yen, Wu Yue (吳樾), who plays the Tai Chi master Wang Tsung-hua (萬宗華), and martial art instructor Chris Collins.

Among all Ip Man’s apprentices, his relationship with Bruce Lee (李小龍) is the most intriguing one. Despite the heated fight scenes in 'Ip Man 4,' the film mainly focuses on the relationship between the master and Lee, played by Hong Kong actor Chan Kwok-kwan (陳國坤) — who looks just like Lee himself.    [FULL  STORY]

2019 Golden Horse Awards

The News Lens
Date: 2019/11/21
By: Daphne K. Lee

“Have you forgotten or are you scared of remembering?” This eerie quote from the recent Taiwanese horror film Detention (返校) has become a catchphrase among the twentysomethings.

For the younger Taiwanese who never lived through an authoritarian era, they might just use the haunting question to mock their forgetful friends. But it alludes to a traumatic history that’s still relevant today.

Adapted from a survival video game of the same title, Detention is the first feature film directed by John Hsu. The film has received widespread attention for its attempt to explore — or exploit — a highly sensitive topic: Taiwan’s martial law period between 1949 and 1987. It was one of the world’s longest martial law periods, during which hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese were jailed or executed for their alleged opposition to the authoritarian government Kuomintang.

Set in the fictional Greenwood High School in 1962, the first segment of the film, “Nightmare,” opens with a female student, Fang Ray-shin (Gingle Wang), waking up from a nap and finding herself in a ghostly classroom with broken windows and chilling winds. In an act that mimics the original gameplay, Fang lights a red candle that becomes the only light source leading us from one dimly-lit scene to another.    [FULL  STORY]

2019 Golden Horse Awards

The News Lens
Date: 2019/11/15
By: CJ Sheu

The key to a good joke is the timing. More generally, a joke is funny because of its delivery rather than the content. Canadian stand-up Norm Macdonald is famous for his hilarious execution, which gets people to laugh at things that they really shouldn’t laugh at. As a cishet man, I have the privilege of turning my brain off and enjoying the impeccable comic setups of the many queerphobic jokes in The Gangs, the Oscars, and the Walking Dead (“江湖無難事”). The undeniable humor of these jokes is a problem for the audience (including me), and an even bigger one for the film.

Gangs is about BS (Roy Chiu) and Wenxi (Huang Di-yang; the character’s name roughly translates to “bound to fail”), two childhood friends who decide to make a zombie movie. The production gets derailed, they run out of money, and they end up working for a mob boss (Lung Shao-hua). Their wedding video work for the Boss convinces him to finance their movie, with a proviso: The female protagonist, a pure and innocent high schooler who’s dating her teacher, must be played by his, um, lustful squeeze, Shanny (Eleven Yao). Soon after, she has a fatal disagreement with some poolside concrete. But the show must go on.

Director Kao Pin-Chuan displays a stylized mastery of filmmaking technique that’s a wonder to behold. He and his editor, Shieh Meng-Ju, have an almost preternatural sense of comic timing that amplifies every slightly awkward moment into a laugh-out-loud gag. The camerawork guides the events of the film: it alternatives between energetic handheld shots that propel the narrative forward and static close-ups that allow momentous events to sink in. Better yet, cinematographer Garvin Chan lights even the darkest image just enough to make it comprehensible, something a surprising number of contemporary films fail to consistently do.

This exemplary technique, however, is used to paper over the film’s questionable sexual politics, slapdash plot, and presumptuous world-building. Unexpected events often happen to our two leads (and their accomplices), keeping them on their toes. But they often get away with their shenanigans only because the script (by Tsai Yi-Ho and Birdy Fong) declines to give us their comeuppance scenes. Or when it seems like they’re doomed for sure, the Boss suddenly does an about-face. It’s a series of comic set-pieces strung together with excuses.    [FULL  STORY]

French filmmaker Tolt proves why travelers should go to Taiwan

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/10/30
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — French film director Benjamin Martinie, who goes by the handle "Tolt," has created a travel video introducing Taiwan with the contrarian title "Don't go to Taiwan" to prove why travelers should, in fact, visit the country.

The film is Martinie's ninth episode of a series of travel films intentionally given the admonishment "Don't go to… " Martinie, who specializes in travel films, says he deliberately chooses negative titles to use reverse psychology "to oppose negative misconceptions of the footage."

Martinie said that when he was approached by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau to produce a film about Taiwan, he was excited because he knew nothing about the country and was sure that the "'Made in Taiwan' vision we have in Western countries could only be false." After completing the project, Martinie said, "I was not disappointed! Honestly, it was a great trip."

The director lamented that he only had a week and said he wished he had been able to extend his stay. Martinie said he especially remembered "the warmth of Taiwanese people, its very surprisingly lush nature, and its amazing gastronomy."    [FULL  STORY]

Makoto Shinkai's 'Weathering With You' is a cinematic delight that also disappoints.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/10/08
By: Daphne K. Lee

Two years after releasing Your Name (2016), one of the highest-grossing anime films of all time, director Makoto Shinkai returns to cinema by recycling the same formula for box office success, but with less magic.

Shinkai’s new film, Weathering With You (Tenki no Ko), again tells the story of a teenage girl with mystical powers, this time grounded in a more familiar backdrop: a flooding Tokyo.

In the rainy Tokyo, a runaway teenage boy Hodaka (voiced by Kotaro Daigo) is offered a job at an obscure magazine run by Suga (Shun Oguri) after struggling to survive between meals. Through Hodaka's initial struggle, Shinkai portrays Tokyo as a harsh metropolis for the underprivileged and accentuates the city’s apathy with the never-ending bad weather.

Hodaka's first assignment is to look for the mythical “Sunshine Girl” around Tokyo and eventually finds a teenage girl, Hina (Nana Mori), who had kindly offered him a burger when he was homeless and hungry. With the “superpower” of being able to pray for temporary good weather, Hina soon explodes in popularity with Hodaka’s help.    [FULL  STORY]