16 發光的城市 A R O U N D T O W N FRIDAY, JULY 10, 2009 • TAIPEI TIMES OTHER RELEASES COMPILED BY MARTIN WILLIAMS Lee Hsing Retrospective Veteran award-winning director Lee Hsing (李行), who is 80 this year, is being honored by the Chinese Taipei Film Archive with screenings of 12 of his most notable films until Tuesday next week at the Spot theater in Taipei; many have English subtitles. Other films are being screened at the archive, together with a symposium. Further details are at www.ctfa.org.tw and www.spot.org.tw. Festival of City Tours 2009: The Wedding Season This cumbersome festival title brings together a number of intriguing wedding-related films from around the world that deserve wider attention. Brides is a Martin Scorsese production set in the 1920s in which hundreds of European mail- order brides head to the US to discover their fate. Tulpan, set in Kazakhstan, is the name of a would-be bride of the protagonist; the film has astonished reviewers everywhere with its texture and sense of whimsy. Silent Wedding, from ‘Boy A’ is a heartrending melodrama Russia, is a humorous account of a wedding that takes place on the sly during an enforced mourning period for an autocrat. Algeria-set Masquerades is a that sympathizes with comedy of errors and misunderstandings, while Vacation from Japan mixes its protagonist, a former convict marital longing with the ugly reality of capital punishment. The films are screening exclusively at Taipei’s Changchun theater until Aug. 6 handed a second chance All Around Us BY STEPHEN HOLDEN A Japanese film that prefers idiosyncrasy to NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK histrionics in developing its characters? This might be worth seeing. A husband and wife come under the microscope in this feature, but the threat to their relationship is far removed from what the average melodrama contains, with the possible exception of the fate of their offspring. Mixed reviews followed, as might be expected for a film that violates narrative conventions, but there has been praise from all corners for lead actor Lily Franky (an eclectic artist and author in real life) as the husband. The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks around the Corner Variety considered “theatrical release outside the Balkans is unlikely” for this film mostly out of Bulgaria, but no one should underestimate Katie Lyons, far left, and Andrew Garfield, the tenacity of Taiwan’s smaller distributors, left and above, star in Boy A, directed by who rely on obscure European product as John Crowley. PHOTOS COURTESY OF STARSWOK much as the Japanese and Thai stuff. A man loses his memory in a car accident that kills his who has a son around Jack’s age. The movie Every step of that courtship, from gathering the parents, so his grandfather shows up to take pointedly compares Terry’s alienation from courage to ask her out to sharing their first kiss, him on a two-wheeled road trip back to Bulgaria his biological son with his devotion to his is a major personal leap forward. But as Jack’s as therapy — the same place the young man’s surrogate one. heart opens, he longs to tell Michelle about his parents fled when it was a repressive regime. With bicycles all the rage now, Under no circumstances, Terry emphasizes, past and clear the slate. this amiable movie couldn’t be better timed for release here. is Jack to reveal his former identity or discuss One day when he and Chris are driving he ingenuous 24-year-old man-child at his imprisonment. The only information that the company van, Jack spots a car that has The Sniper (神槍手) the center of John Crowley’s wrenching his new employer at the delivery company that spun off the road into the woods and saves melodrama Boy A is a familiar movie hires him has is that he served time and has the life of a young girl trapped in the vehicle. Lots of blood is spilled in this Hong Kong action type: a basically good person who paid his debt to society. He becomes a local hero. But heroes — even flick, but the biggest victim was the film itself, T In some ways Boy A is a throwback to the genuine ones — are resented. So is the media which was shelved after star Edison Chen (陳 made a tragic mistake years earlier and is handed a second chance. sooty kitchen-sink realism of early-1960s British attention that heroism brings. Society doesn’t 冠希) got embroiled in the starlet home movie Adapted from a novel by Jonathan Trigell, films by Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson and forget violent crimes, even those committed scandal. For some reason, this tale of hotshot the movie is unambiguously enamored of Jack John Schlesinger, that portrayed a depressed, by children. As flashbacks reveal Jack’s past, professional snipers has taken even longer to Burridge, ne Eric Wilson (Andrew Garfield), alienated working class teetering between rage Boy A asks us to weigh issues of forgiveness, get released in Taiwan, which was fascinated who is re-entering society under a new name and hopelessness in a stagnant economy. justice and human nature. — but not scandalized — by Chen’s digital after having served 14 years in a juvenile prison In Boy A, Manchester looks much the If the movie has already made up its mind romps. Dante Lam’s (林超賢) film of style but little in Manchester, England. Given a job and a same now as it did in movies back then. The that Jack is a good guy worthy of salvation, it substance brings to mind the halcyon days of John Woo (吳宇森): excellent modest one-room apartment, Jack seems ready identical brick buildings and narrow streets implies that for the majority of people some action set pieces but emotional holes as big as exit wounds. to make a go of it. The details of his heinous through which Jack furtively scuttles evoke crimes are unforgivable; once a monster, always crime are leaked out gradually. time-honored film images of Britain’s northern a monster. The pill we are asked to swallow is a Detective Conan: The Raven Chaser Flashbacks portray Eric as the only industrial cities as forbidding, prison-like very bitter one. child of troubled parents: a mother dying environments. Although shot in color, Boy A Body-of-a-child, mind-of-an-adult sleuth Conan is an excruciating death from breast cancer in leaves a black-and-white impression. back for the 13th Case Closed manga feature, this an upstairs bedroom and a gruff father who Garfield’s performance makes Jack so time in more peril than usual as the organization broods downstairs over a bottle of whiskey. endearing and vulnerable that as he takes his responsible for his bodily predicament, the Black Relentlessly bullied by his peers, Eric develops first wobbly steps, like a baby bird shoved from Organization, returns to wreak havoc, culminating a friendship with Philip Craig (Taylor Doherty), its nest, your instincts are protective. When in a violent showdown. a fellow outcast with a history of sexual abuse he goes out drinking with his co-workers, and BOY A and a streak of sociopathic rage. swallows a tab of Ecstasy without knowing DIRECTED BY: JOHN CROWLEY Gao Xing (高興) The movie’s depiction of Eric, who at the what it is, you worry that disaster is imminent. Later, when he comes to the rescue of Chris This is an unusual film from China, based on time of his crime was identified as Boy A STARRING: ANDREW GARFIELD (JacK because he was underage, doesn’t jibe with (Shaun Evans), his closest friend at work, in a the book by the celebrated Jia Pingwa (賈平凹). BURRIDGE), PETER MULLAN (TERRY), KaTIE LYONS Gao Xing is a jolly fellow from the country who its portrait of the dewy, verbally stumbling drunken rooftop brawl, the movie portrays his (MICHELLE), SHAUN EVANS (CHRIS), TaYLOR man released from juvenile prison. Shy and violent intervention as brave and not as a scary DOHERTY (PHILIP CRAIG) wants to fly — and sets out to build his own handsome, prone to frightening nightmares, reversion to previous behavior. aircraft to that end. Along the way there are Jack is desperately eager to put the past Most important is Jack’s developing RUNNING TIME: 100 MINUTES songs to be sung and dance moves to be made behind him. His emotional lifeline is his stern, relationship with Michelle (Katie Lyons), the in this lightly satirical musical comedy. Starts kindhearted caseworker, Terry (Peter Mullan), grounded, no-nonsense secretary at his job. TAIWAN RELEASE: CURRENTLY SHOWING tomorrow. The days of storytelling in porn a la ‘Deep Throat’ are long gone as viewers’ attention spans shorten and studios tailor content to be uploaded to the Net BY MATT RICHTEL films a year. Three years ago, Fishbein, president of the AVN new clips. of scenes of women having NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK almost all of them were feature- Media Network, an industry Adult film actress Savanna Samson says she Joone said that of Digital sex while wearing glasses. “It’s The actress known as Savanna length films with story lines. Today, trade publication. favors scripts with more dialogue. Playground’s 60 productions this almost like we’re back to the Samson once relished preparing more than half are a series of sex Fishbein said plot came into PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE year, roughly 30 had little or no late ’70s or early ’80s when the for a role. “I couldn’t wait to get scenes, loosely connected by some vogue again in the late 1990s with plot, up from about 10 two years average movie was eight minutes my next script,” she said.