It’s been a mixed season - an interesting start, interesting middle and a few occasional wonderful plot twists (several involving Gaius), with filler episodes spread throughout. But this? Genius! Sheer genius.

I’d had my suspicions for a while, though I still got several surprises. I won’t say any more since I don’t want to spoil it. Suffice to say, if you’d lost interest in BSG, catch up, for goodness sake! It’s worth it, just for Ep. 20!

I think this episode deserves my maximum rating: 5/5 cylons.

Warner Bros.

For those of you living in Taoyuan, I can confirm that the cinema in Taoyuan city centre has it showing 8 times per day right now, lunch till late, prices from 170 to 220 NTD. Don’t miss it.

UPDATE: I should probably add this little nugget about films & cinemas in Taiwan. Basically there are two main rules that are always observed:

Rule 1. Nobody likes surprises, so in every area with public transport, there should be several huge TVs blaring out trailers that spoil every plot twist of all the films currently at the cinema. The perfect example of this is Saw, where the front part of the Taiwanese DVD cover is a frame taken from the very end (if you’ve seen it, you can guess which plot twist I’m thinking of). Nice, real nice…

You see this in Taiwanese TV shows too. The last thing they do in each episode is a spoiler for every single plot twist in the next episode. Heaven forbid you actually enjoy the damned show.

Rule 2. People should be forcibly evacuated from cinemas starting approximately 1 millisecond before the last frame of the main feature - after all, who cares who made the film, anyway?? And as for the occasional easter egg that crops up if you watch right through the trailers? Forget it.

You just have to get used to the idea of some cinema rep standing up and screaming at everyone “GET THE HELL OUT OF MY G*DDAMN CINEMA YOU STUPID BUNTS! C’MON, WHAT ARE YOU MORONS WAITING FOR?? B*GGER OFF!!!” as the credits start to roll. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what he’s shouting. Then, they just turn the projector off. Very annoying.

From Columbia pictures.

Here’s a quick preview of Pete’s comments on the film:

“Regarding the scariness of the movie; I thought it was not much a horror film, more like an interesting CSI episode held in Taiwan. My wife on the other hand was upset by the movie, and got upset at me for making her sit through such a scary movie. This puzzled me, because I know we’ve watched much scarier movies together than this one, and I was thinking that she was taking her fear of horror movies a little too far. It did intrigue me though, and I decided to ask her why she felt this film was so scary. She explained to me that the film held a lot of underlying Taoist and Buddhist beliefs that would scare a Taiwanese person more than a foreigner - kind of like a black cat crossing our path would make us nervous in the west.”

“I think Double Vision could be considered a one timer for many people in the world, but a must-see if you are a foreigner living in Taiwan.”

Reviews of this film: (Pete’s Site) (LoveHKFilm) (IMDB)

The film “Hot Fuzz” is debuting currently in the UK. By the same people that produced “Shawn of the Dead”, and ‘Spaced’, this film could perhaps be described as a comedy about a top London cop being transferred to a rural village police force, but it’s probably more accurate just to say “Simon Pegg and chums d*cking around in police uniforms, being funny”. Trailers here. Already showing in the UK, but it doesn’t reach the rest of the world till April. Curses!

Finance: There’s gossip going round various respectable mailing lists about the price movement in Shanghai this week. The word on the street is that China’s government deliberately engineered the drop in Shanghai’s market, to try and prick the speculative bubble that is pointlessly sucking in all the free capital in the country. If so (and unlike 99% of what I read about markets, this actually seems like a sensible thing to do), there will probably be more hilarity to follow as Shanghai investors adjust to the idea of being regularly ninja-nutkicked by their own government as a form of therapy. Oh, and if you’re as much of a finance geek as I am, you’ll be delighted to know Warren Buffett’s annual shareholder newsletter is out and quite deservedly slagging off the efficient market hypothesis.

Fighters: The Taipei Times (& Michael Turton) report that America has decided to sell shiny new explody things to Taiwan to counter the large number of shiny new explody things lined up along the Fujian coastline of the PRC. Who knows - perhaps Taiwan’s invasion of the PRC is now merely weeks away from happening. China is responding by implanting electrodes into the brains of pigeons to control them remotely. Missiles, pigeons - where will this military escalation end?

Flat transistors: You’ll be reading a lot just now about some crazy new carbon based transistors that - just like every other idea you’ve ever heard - will revolutionise computing as we know it, for ever. Graphene is actually rather groovy and the story behind the research that went on over the last few years is kind of funny. Basically, Graphene shouldn’t exist. Nano-meter-thick sheets of material (such as the toilet paper found in British public toilets) tend to tear rather easily. Graphene is kind of wibbly shaped though, and not entirely flat, which provides it with structural integrity that makes it fantastically interesting and useful. It has some unusual properties that also allow it to be made into a fast, reliable and low-power transistor at sizes that would be completely unsuitable for Silicon chips. It is so thin, and uses so little power, that it can be easily stacked up into sheets. Electrons don’t seem to scatter in Graphene, so it makes electronic circuits run super fast. And when I say super-fast, I mean, electrons travel at speeds normally only found in the center of collapsed stars or at the beginning of the universe. Great stuff. The future is Graphene, I’m fairly sure.

Anyway, the amusing story. Graphene is just like a single layer of ‘Graphite’, the carbon molecule that your pencils are made from. Some researchers realised that to draw little tiny bits of graphite, you should make a really tiny pencil. They spent tens of millions of dollars developing this ‘nano-pencil’ that could be used - at great time and expense - to draw little areas of Graphene. Then, just as this huge research effort was finally starting to produce some results, some guys at Manchester Uni and Columbia Uni had an idea. They got some bog standard pencil graphite. Then, they stuck some sellotape on it and a thin layer of graphite came off. Then, they stuck other sellotape to the first bit, and an even thinner layer came off. Repeat as necessary till you have single layer Graphite on your sticky tape. Total cost: $0.30. LOL.

However this cheap production method is actually very important in other ways. Current computer processors are made from silicon crystals that are carefully grown at great time and expense, and represent the biggest part of the cost of a computer besides research and development. Sellotape and pencils on the other hand, are plentiful. Anyway, that’s all I’m going to say about Graphene for the moment.

Finally, Frikkin nutcases: “Canada’s ex-defense minister continues to call on governments worldwide to release their extra-terrestrial, UFO-derived technologies for the benefit of mankind. Film at 11.”

Fist of Fury (Amazon) was originally a Bruce Lee film made in 1972. No doubt many of you will have seen it. I’ve only seen it once - I like Bruce Lee films, but I find almost all of them hard to watch more than once, particularly since this film perpetuates the grossly inaccurate ‘No Dogs or Chinese allowed’ myth (yes, a sign existed but it certainly didn’t say that!).

Fist of Fury 1991 is rather more insane. It pays some homage to the original (mostly a remake of one scene from the 1972), but as you might expect, mainly zooms around according to the whims of Stephen Chow’s imagination. As you may know, Stephen Chow is famous for inventing innovative forms of Kung Fu in his films - the ’sleeping Kung Fu’ of “King of Beggars” being my favourite - and he comes up with yet another new style at the start of this film. However… let’s just say it’s kind of gross and leave it at that. Most of the film is about Chow/Ng’s characters’ attempt to find his friend, get some Kung Fu lessons, and charm the instructor’s daughter at the same time.

Fist of Fury 1991 original cover. The Taiwanese DVD edition cover is more cartoonish.

Overall, I just wasn’t exactly super-impressed with this film. There are a few funny moments - probably enough to keep you watching - but it felt kind of slow. Quite a few scenes miss the mark and come across as stupid, or just boring - I mean, who buys a Stephen Chow film to watch a moral lesson? If you’re a huge Bruce Lee fan, then watch it for the parody in the middle, as well as the general feel of the whole film, but if you’re just looking for a decent HK comedy for the evening, give it a miss and try something like “From Beijing with love” (pure genius) or “Forbidden City Cop” instead (my most favouritest ass-kickingly surreal kungfu comedy film ever).

It seems that the spirit of Bruce Lee, infused throughout this homage, has made it a once-only experience. I’ll probably watch the sequel/second part (Fist of Fury II/1992) but I must admit, I don’t have high hopes…

I think it’s pretty safe to conclude that Taiwan’s choice of imports often seems rather surreal from a western point of view.