september 25, 2002 Culture Reviewer: Eileen Velthuis Artist: Various Artists Album: Frosh 5 Label: Universal Here's a little something about me. I am a constant song-flipper, a sort of control freak when it comes to music. I have to find the best possible song, no mat- ter what moment in time. I hardly ever listen to a song on the radio the whole way through without checking to see what's on the other stations. That’s why Frosh 5 works for me. You see, I have the first Frosh CD, and it makes me happy too. Why, you ask? Because Frosh CDs happen to be those strange “various artist” compila- tions that actually work. They’re sort of reminiscent, for those of you that remember, of 80s K-Tel Movie Review The Rule of the Game Norlinda 6. OP Contributor The film is in Mandarin and Taiwanese dialects with English subtitles. Running time 100 minutes. Festival ShowTimes: September 28 9:45pm at Granville 7 Cinema Cinema 4 $8.50. September 27 3:00pm Granville 7 Cinema 3 $ 6.50. The director Ho Ping will be attending the Vancouver Film Festival. A native Taiwanese, he graduated from Syracuse University, NY with a MFA in film production. Filmography includes: Motel Erotica (1997), Wolves Cry Under the Moon (1997), Honor Thy Father (1990) and The Digger (1988). © page 16 albums—except that they've got a mix of songs from different decades. For the most part, it’s stuff you don’t actually mind listening to. The songs on Frosh 5 tend to be songs that I already have on CDs I made for roadtrips at one point or another. From fairly recent songs such as Andrew W.K.’s “Party Hard,” Weezer’s “Island In The Sun,” or Ice Cube’s “You Can Do It,” back a few years to KISS’ J Was Made For Loving You, or the uber-punky Ramones’ Rock & Roll High School. For those 80s fans, there’s Rockwell’s way too catchy, I- can’t-believe-I-was-just-humming-the-chorus, the other press Somebody's Watching Me. The only songs this CD could do without are Swollen Members’ Lady Venom, (way too over- played), and Adam Sandler’s At A Medium Pace, (obviously the reason this CD received its illustrious and sought-after “Parental Advisory—Explicit Lyrics” banner on the front). That aside, Frosh 5 has something to make every- one happy. The musical genres are varied enough to keep even me from too much song changing. In the opening scene of The Rule of the Game, two men under the darkness of night drag a body up an incline to its final resting place—a hole dug in the dirt. Halfway through the film, we can pretty much guess who ends up in the lonely grave, or can we? The Rule of the Game or if you literally translate the Taiwanese title The Hole-digging People is director Ho Ping’s fifth feature film. With his previ- ous films going by titles like Motel Erotica and Wolves Cry Under the Moon, | expect- ed the unexpected and I wasn’t disap- pointed. The two men introduced in the start of this black comedy are best friends Chewy (Chang Chih) and Turtle (Hsia Ching- Ting). Turtle, swindled by his business partner Will, decides to take revenge by plotting to murder him. Chewy cooper- ates by offering the perfect way to dispose of the body—the perfectly dug hole. In their small town, their fates are interwov- en with two other groups of criminal minds. Ox, a hired assassin, keeps his day job from his family. He patiently executes his final assignment before he leaves Taiwan in search of a better life for his son. Will's bored wife and her boyfriend, drunk in a bar one night, come up with a plan to steal Will’s money. The film’s lan- guid pace sustains the suspense that sim- mers quietly but never quite boils over. The absurd way the storylines unfold pro- vides the comedic laughs that never quite lighten the situations that go horribly wrong. Some scenes in the film appear as if multiple takes were done and deliber- ately edited together. This created a dis- jointed flow that I found irritating at times. Nevertheless, the dreary backdrop and the retro 80s synthesizer soundtrack perfectly enhanced the misery onscreen as the characters search for an escape hole in their situations. More tragic than comedic, I cringed at the crass depiction of the women characters, and yes, the purposeful violence. A film in this genre is never complete without the spilling of blood and gory vivid details. Ho Ping, an X-gen himself, makes a statement with this film about the future of his own generation in Taiwan. It is so subtle, though, that you have to look hard to see it. The pursuit of money, though considered a virtue in most Asian cultures, creates a myopic outlook to life. Often it comes with a price one must be prepared to pay. Chewy, the least greedy character, appears to be a simple-minded man. He wanders aimlessly through life; a second genera- tion Mainland Chinese refugee neither belonging to Taiwan or to China. Unmotivated by greed or sex, he has only his dark past to contend with. But like him, everyone is looking for a way out from their personal hell.