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Home , Catherine Taber, Nightwatching, Peter Greenaway, Rembrandt, Rembrandt (train), The Night Watch

16 發光的城市 A R O U N D T O W N FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2008 • TAIPEI TIMES

Love songs from Hengchun

Wei Te-sheng’s feature film irector Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖) was 25 when he stepped into the movie business wanting to ’ The Clone Wars debut has it all: romance, tell good stories. For the following 14 years, he fills in the blanks between D Episodes II and III of the Star worked with masters such as Edward Yang (楊德昌) and Wars prequels. photos: Agencies music and a cast of veteran Chen Kuo-fu (陳國富), and is best known as the wild man actors and musicians who took NT$2.5 million out of his own pocket to make a five-minute demo in a bid to attract investors for his By Ho Yi yet-to-materialize epic about the Seediq Aborigines and Staff Reporter their anti-Japanese revolt in 1930. Wei has put himself further into debt, this time to the tune of NT$30 million, to make Cape No. 7 (海角七 號), his feature film debut. If nothing else, it is likely to In ‘: establish him as a more than competent storyteller and Cape No. 7 mined Taiwan’s indie music scene for much of its cast. maker of warmhearted movies. The story goes something like this: 60 years ago, a photos courtesy of ARS Film Production Japanese teacher was forced to leave his Taiwanese command of the vernacular and the troupe of musi- The Clone lover in the town of Hengchun (恆春) when the repatria- cians, including pop singer Fan, Aboriginal crooner tion of Japanese nationals began following the end of Min-Hsiung, indie musicians Clipper Xiao Ying and Word War II. Back at home he wrote a letter each day Ma Nien-hsien, and real-life beiguan (北管) wizard Lin Wars,’ it’s all to the lover he would never see again. Tsung-ren, share an explosive onscreen chemistry. The Sixty years on, a young man named Aga (Van Fan) weakest link is the romance between Aga and Tomoko. returns home to Hengchun after his dream of becom- Although Van Fan is reasonably charming as the reti- ing a rock musician in Taipei falls flat. Reluctantly, Aga cent, bitter teenager Aga, Tanaka Chie is excessively about CGI takes up a job as a substitute for Uncle Mao (Lin Tsung- irritated and grouchy, so that even a night of intimacy ren) after the old postman breaks his leg. fails to make the pair into plausible lovebirds. By NATHAN LEE Equally reluctantly, Tomoko (Tanaka Chie) from NY Times News Service, New York Japan is asked to stay in Hengchun to supervise a warm-up act scraped together at the last minute for an Expectations were set so low by George Lucas’ lousy trilogy upcoming concert by Japanese superstar Kousuke Atari. of Star Wars prequels that the latest from the The newly enlisted band members seem, however, less 海角七號 factory, a feature-length digital animation called Star Wars: than promising: the reckless Aga, hot-tempered Aborigi- Cape No. 7 ( ) The Clone Wars, comes as something of a surprise: it isn’t the nal policeman Laoma (Min-Hsiung), auto mechanic Frog most painful movie of the year! (Clipper Xiao Ying) who has a thing for his big-breasted DIRECTED BY: Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖) Set between Episodes II and III, this new Star Wars saga lady boss, elementary school student Dada (Mai Tzu), (II.5?) completes the franchise’s divorce from photography- 范逸臣 and Uncle Mao, a yueqin (月琴) master. STARRING: Van Fan ( ) as Aga, based cinema, as well as from any relationship to credible With the concert just three days away, Uncle Mao Tanaka Chie as Tomoko, human feeling. 民雄 is still having a hard time figuring out how to pluck his Min-Hsiung ( ) as Laoma, Clipper Xiao Ying As a mechanical thrill ride, however, The Clone Wars has 夾子小應 馬念先 bass. Aga has yet to write something for the band to play. ( ) as Frog, Ma Nien-hsien ( ) as an uncluttered look and furious pace that make it more or 林宗仁 In fact, the band looks verge of breaking up even before Malasang, Lin Tsung-ren ( ) as Uncle Moa, less as satisfying as its wildly overdesigned predecessors, 麥子 its first gig. There is also the parcel of letters, posted 60 Mai Tzu ( ) as Dada, Kousuke Atari as Japanese although it’s neither as agile nor as well made as the terrific teacher and himself years ago, which Aga is not able to deliver, as the mailing series of short, traditionally animated Clone Wars install- address no longer exists. Amid all of this, a romance Language: In Mandarin, Taiwanese and Japanese ments shown on the from 2003 to 2005. begins to bud between Aga and Tomoko. with Chinese and English subtitles The director, Dave Filoni, has cited Thunderbirds, the Though the narration feels forced and stretched at 1960s British animation series with marionettes, as an times, Wei does a commendable job weaving together RUNNING TIME: 133 MINUTES inspiration for the, uh, wooden of his picture, but stories of characters from different generations and the stiff, self-important characterizations; corny space-war diverse ethnic and social backgrounds. He has a fine TAIWAN RELEASE: TODAY talk; and overheated militarism kept reminding me of Team America: World Police. No more than a pretext for exploding robots and light-saber duels, the plot concerns the efforts of Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, his neophyte sidekick, to secure a fragile alliance by retrieving Jabba the Hutt’s baby son from the double-crossing clutches of Count Dooku, blah, blah, blah. Exploding robots!

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

DIRECTED BY: ave Filoni

STARRING: (Anakin Skywalker), Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka Tano), (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Dee Bradley Baker (Captain Rex/Clone Troopers), Tom Kane (), Nika Futterman (Asajj Ventress), (Chancellor Palpatine), Coey Burton (Ziro the Hutt), Catherine Taber (Padme Amidala), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Christopher Lee (Count Dooku), Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu)

RUNNING TIME: 95 MINUTES

TAIWAN RELEASE: TODAY

Art with a capital ‘A,’ and acting, too ’s splendid evocation of helps ‘’ rise above the self-conscious artistry of its composition

By Ian Bartholomew very different movie The Da Vinci like Lars von Trier’s Dogville. Staff Reporter Code, in which a picture reveals But even Freeman’s best is one of those hidden truths. Greenaway has efforts cannot overcome the English directors who have always insisted on playing games convoluted plot line, which seems embraced the European tradition Nightwatching with the way relates to life, to willfully confuse. There are of the , with its ostentatious and this is done quite elegantly elements of a who-done-it about intellectualism and its consuming DIRECTED BY: Peter Greenaway in Nightwatching, as he embarks Nightwatching, as Rembrandt passion for post-. But on a remarkably subtle and gradually gathers the evidence he has occasionally flirted with STARRING: Martin Freeman detailed analysis of the picture that convinces him that these the mainstream, most notably in (Rembrandt van Rijn), Emily as it is formed on the canvas members of the citizen militia prey his controversial film The Cook, Holmes (Hendrickje), Eva through the course of the movie on the very society they are sworn Birthistle (Saskia), Jodhi May the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (Geertje), Toby Jones (Gerard Dou) while exploring how it resonates to protect, but the plot sags under (1989), which had something that through Rembrandt’s life and the weight of an overextended might be described as a narrative RUNNING TIME: 134 MINUTES the lives of all those depicted. cast and Greenaway’s almost line and the recognizable faces Like the Rembrandt it takes as its Rembrandt as played by Freeman pathological disdain for linear of and Helen TAIWAN RELEASE: TODAY subject, Nightwatching has many subtleties has an intense physicality and narrative. Working out who is Mirren. He is back in flirtatious and complexities that reward the attentive many, many weaknesses, both of who becomes increasingly like an mood with his most recent viewer. photos courtesy of Zeus International Productions the spirit and the flesh. art history exercise of identifying film Nightwatching, which popular appeal is not uppermost Freeman creates a character characters in a large and complex is purportedly a biographical in his mind. This is a film about able to encompass. While Freeman about how Rembrandt’s famous commission to create a group who is charismatic, vain, insecure, Renaissance painting such as snippet from the life of the , capital “A,” and why art is the best known of the cast, there painting came to portrait because of the much- arrogant, talented and intensely The Night Watch. But as with Renaissance painter Rembrandt, matters, and how art both raises are some splendid performances, be created. The painting depicts needed money and the kudos it stupid all at the same time, and the painting, it also has many and which stars Martin Freeman up humanity, yet may also destroy most notably by , a group of citizen militia turning will bring, but cannot resist using it is this fully realized version of subtleties and complexities that of The Office in a truly stunning individuals. Freeman shows who plays Saskia, Rembrandt’s out for a parade, but Greenaway the work to accuse the men of an artist that saves Nighwatching repay attention, and you leave the performance. himself a powerful actor who is wife and the dominating female posits that it contains a secret terrible crimes, which he learns of from the self-conscious artistry cinema wanting to watch the film It doesn’t take many able to humanize genius, both in its influence in the story. accusation against the men it during the course of painting the of its composition. It gives the again in the hope of discovering minutes into the film to realize tormented and obsessive aspects, Unsurprisingly for a Greenaway depicts: the sexual abuse of young group portrait. film a beating heart and sets it more from it, rather than simply that biography is the least of as well as in the many failings that film, the main subject is itself a children entrusted to their care. In this respect, comparisons apart from the soulless pseudo- dismissing it as the intolerable Greenaway’s concerns and that artistic genius is also somehow . Nightwatching is Freeman’s character accepts the can be made with the otherwise Brechtian wilderness of something mess that it sometimes appears.