Cold War – A fascinating memory project and dissection of how buried histories and superimposed ideologies impact our lives and choices. With this and 2013’s Ida, director Pawel Pawlikowski seems to be embarking on a larger national identity project: What does it mean to be Polish in Europe today? And what did it mean before? He frames his questions here through an epic love story of two musically gifted Poles, as they scurry around mid-century Europe, trying to make sense of what they want from their lives and eachother. Pawlikowski’s direction around framing, time, and sound is worthy of closer examination. My only complaint is that at times the austere manner stifled my emotional connection to the drama. Nevertheless, this is one of the best movies of the year.

Madeline’s Madeline – This movie very cleverly flattens the barriers between mental illness, being a teenager coming of age and rebelling, being a half black girl in liberal NYC, performance, and authority. I really dug how Decker puts each of these factors on the same continuum as borne out by the films style, in particular by the camerawork and editing. Break out performance by Helena Howard as Madeline.

Eighth Grade – Millennial nostalgia and teenagers with social media technology commentary. Burnham as director is surprisingly interested in lighting! The scenes at night with Kayla in the dark of her room, her iPhone as the sole light source, always disrupted momentarily by the light from the hallway door as her father peaks in to say goodnight, are among the film’s best. A little too sappy at the end for my taste, but an excellent comedy overall. Looking forward to more from Bo Burnham and Elsie Fisher.

Private Life – Insightful, and very funny, exploration of a topic that was oblivious to me. Peak Giamatti.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? – A delightfully drab film and a stealth portrait of the AIDS crisis in NYC. The excellent chemistry between Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant makes this an entertaining, if slight, film.

Shirkers – I really applaud the courage a movie like this takes. Jumping back into a painful, life-altering episode and fashioning it for public consumption cannot be fun and Tan graciously chooses to make the experience fun and often exciting. In its construction, it is unlike any film (documentary, or otherwise) that I’ve seen and I won’t spoil exactly why; but in substance I didn’t feel like this was offering much to chew on. George is a fantastic character, the dynamo for the entire project, but as a mysterious, compulsive story-teller/liar I didn’t find much insight that isn’t already covered in better documentaries like Tabloid or The Imposter.

Hold the Dark – People are like wolves! I wanted to like this much more than I did. Wright is convincing as a grizzly wolf expert and Skarsgard is convincing as a tall guy and quite great in the morgue scene. The movie’s momentum and tone just gets shot off the rails after the mid movie gun battle. I also felt that Saulnier failed to get the environment working for him. If there was a buried narrative about Alaska, I was unable to piece it together.

North Macedonia (NYT)

Belated reactions to this under discussed story. This is very exciting going forward! In my opinion the West should be integrating these Balkan states ASAP. And remarkably, this happened in a time of European disunity and weak American leadership. What is not mentioned in this story: China as a large financier for Greece post-euro crisis has partially freed Greece from Russian influence which sets the larger stage for moves like this. Russia will continue to lose influence as long as energy and antagonism are their main exports.

In December 2018, my siblings, my brother-in-law, my girlfriend and I embarked on a trip to Taipei and Bangkok for the holidays. Starting in the Fall of 2018, I began periodically sending out a periodical for our group, The Taipei 5, in order to get us informed and excited about the regions we’d be visiting. Each volume contained just a handful of recent media links that I would then provide thematic background for. Posted here post-trip for posterity are the four volumes I prepared. In each volume, I may add some new comments in italics that reflect a deeper or revised understanding of what I thought before the trip. 

August 6th, 2018

Members,

Below are two articles from this weekend with Taiwan related news. Interestingly, the three largest cultural influences on the island (The Mainland, Japan and the USA) are tangible forces in each story.

China – Taiwan Tunnel

Fascinating plans for a China “Chunnel” that will not happen anytime soon. Even though it may not be financially or politically feasible, this type of project tells you a lot about the kinds of pressure and control China would like to have over the region.

Something like this project seems farther away than ever. President Xi and President Tsai recently traded barbs over the fate of the island and tensions are higher than normal. Even more interesting: though Tsai presided over massive electoral losses in the November election, recent polling suggests that more Taiwanese than ever (approximately 47%) expect Taiwanese independence to take place in the future and reject the “one-China” principle. I suspect cross-strait tensions and support for independence are linked and are likely to temper down, but the long term trend points to some sort of independence referendum down the line. If such a referendum were to happen, this would become the most important story in the world and the most challenging nexus point yet for the US and China’s struggle for geopolitical dominance. 

Baseball in Taiwan

Really funny piece. I did not know that Baseball was transmitted to Taiwan by Japan and not the US. One thing that you will see when you watch the Taiwanese movies pre-trip is how much Japan shaped the island in its imperial image and how (and why) this image lingers to this day. We tend to use shorthand and think of Japan as a major importer of US culture and ideals, both in the industrial revolution and in the post-war era, but this missed a lot and is by no means the end of the story. Perhaps we should really be thinking about Japan as both a cultural synthesizer and exporter. Not only is Japan historically a major conduit for “western” values and trade in East Asia, you could argue that what they are demonstrating (or demonstrated decades ago) to Taiwan, South Korean, Vietnam, etc is that you can absorb these western values, achieve great prosperity and not lose your identity along the way.

On a separate note, I didn’t know that aging MLB baseball players go to Japan and Taiwan to retire. You see the same thing with NBA players in China and obviously soccer players here in the US. When you’r rich but suck at the sport, just overpay for old stars! We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for some Elephant Brothers jerseys. . .

I also devised a list of Taiwanese films and books to read pre-trip, hence the reference to movies. On the Japanese front, I did not have the data to back up my assertions at the time, but I do now. Joe Studwell’s How Asia Works is an excellent primer on how and why North-East (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China) and South-East Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and The Philippines) developed so differently in the 20th century. One of the major takeaways is how the northern group followed Japan’s and Germany’s pre-war developmental examples in employing land reform and “export discipline,” while the southern group did not. It’s obviously more complicated, with Western intervention playing an important supporting role, but the fundamental story is consistent on an economic level for each stage of development. We did not see any Elephant Brothers jerseys. . .

Enjoy!

-Max