SUBMARINE

Pretty sweet. Maybe a little too quirky.

WALKING STILL

A nice movie to watch on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival - Koreeda's Walking Still.

GOLDEN HORSE FILM ACADEMY

I'm going to be one of the instructors for Hou Hsiao Hsien's Golden Horse Film Academy this November. It's a pretty cool program (now in its third year) for aspiring filmmakers from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, to come to Taipei for a few weeks and make short films. Should be fun.

LANE 256

TAKE THAT APES

Last weekend, two local Taiwanese movies You Are the Apple of My Eye, and Jump Ashin!, beat out all Hollywood movies at the box office, including Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which also just opened. Growing audiences for locally-produced movies have been a trend for the last few years, ever since 2008 and the breakout of Cape No. 7, but I think this is the first time since I've been back in Taiwan that I've seen two local films both doing so well (so well, in fact, that they're competing directly with each other for the much-coveted youth audiences).

JUMP ASHIN!

SECRET SUNSHINE

Why are Korean directors so good?