In the opening title sequence of Laws of Attraction, little golden bubbles float upward to a satiny Champagne score (by Edward Shearmur), but the movie never makes good on this promise of effervescence. This is too bad, because the two principal actors in this watery romantic comedy, which opens nationwide today, make you wish it were better.
As Daniel Rafferty, a dashing divorce lawyer, Pierce Brosnan, with a hint of James Bond swagger, continues his run as a late-blooming, grown-up sex symbol. He is far more appealing in middle age than he was in his pseudo-Bond Remington Steele youth. And it is a relief to see Julianne Moore doing something onscreen besides suffer.
PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX
Her character, Audrey Woods, also a divorce lawyer, is at first so antiromantic that she refuses even to discuss the possibility of dating. Given Moore's attractiveness, this may seem wildly implausible -- in any case it is never explained -- unless it is a reaction to some of her recent roles. If you had endured the marital agonies of Far From Heaven, The Hours and Safe, you might be a little gun-shy, too.
PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX
But of course Audrey's tough shell exists only to be pierced, as it were, by Daniel's rascally charm. In time-honored screwball fashion, the script, by Aline Brosh McKenna and Robert Harling, casts its lovers as professional adversaries. They meet in court, spar and banter and double-cross (in front of a dour judge played by Nora Dunn) and then, before you know it, he sweeps her off her feet (and also, perhaps, vice versa).
And -- as we are not quite back in the winking, Rock Hudson-Doris Day era of the Production Code, which this picture occasionally evokes -- to bed they go after a drunken evening at an ethnic restaurant. (Audrey is one of those ultracosmopolitan Sex and the City Manhattan women who are freaked out by noisy Cuban restaurants, to say nothing of the streets of Chinatown, where Daniel keeps his disheveled office.)
PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX
When the two repeat this indiscretion after sampling the local moonshine at a rustic pub in Ireland, they wake up with wedding rings on their fingers, a development that nods playfully toward the old days, when, in the movies at least, one-night stands were unthinkable without benefit of clergy.
Unfortunately, in trying to update the naughty sparkle of the studio days to our own more
permissive but more anxious and less well-written times, Laws of Attraction, like the somewhat better Intolerable Cruelty, seems desperately unsure of itself at crucial moments.
The screenwriters and the director, Peter Howitt (Sliding Doors, Johnny English), appear to have no clue about how modern adults might feel or behave, and they are too timid to poke fun at any but the easiest targets. Parker Posey as a bratty fashion designer and Michael Sheen as her soon-to-be-ex-husband, a loutish British rock star, try valiantly to inject a bit of broad comic liveliness into the overly polite proceedings. But their characters are so stale and secondhand that they might have stepped out of a recent Woody Allen picture.
As Audrey's mother, Frances Fisher, a mere eight years older than Moore, fares a little better. The character is a serenely shallow plastic-surgery addict. ("The girls and I are having a lip party," she informs her appalled daughter.) But Fisher plays her with a smooth, unflappable dignity that reminds you of Agnes Moorehead.
Still, the efforts of the cast are not enough to lift Laws of Attraction above the cautious banality of a midseason replacement sitcom. The real problem is that despite game, charming performances from Brosnan and Moore, you never feel the urgency of Daniel and Audrey's rivalry or the attraction that springs from it.
What was the population of Taiwan when the first Negritos arrived? In 500BC? The 1st century? The 18th? These questions are important, because they can contextualize the number of babies born last month, 6,523, to all the people on Taiwan, indigenous and colonial alike. That figure represents a year on year drop of 3,884 babies, prefiguring total births under 90,000 for the year. It also represents the 26th straight month of deaths exceeding births. Why isn’t this a bigger crisis? Because we don’t experience it. Instead, what we experience is a growing and more diverse population. POPULATION What is Taiwan’s actual population?
After Jurassic Park premiered in 1993, people began to ask if scientists could really bring long-lost species back from extinction, just like in the hit movie. The idea has triggered “de-extinction” debates in several countries, including Taiwan, where the focus has been on the Formosan clouded leopard (designated after 1917 as Neofelis nebulosa brachyura). National Taiwan Museum’s (NTM) Web site describes the Formosan clouded leopard as “a subspecies endemic to Taiwan…it reaches a body length of 0.6m to 1.2m and tail length of 0.7m to 0.9m and weighs between 15kg and 30kg. It is entirely covered with beautiful cloud-like spots
For the past five years, Sammy Jou (周祥敏) has climbed Kinmen’s highest peak, Taiwu Mountain (太武山) at 6am before heading to work. In the winter, it’s dark when he sets out but even at this hour, other climbers are already coming down the mountain. All of this is a big change from Jou’s childhood during the Martial Law period, when the military requisitioned the mountain for strategic purposes and most of it was off-limits. Back then, only two mountain trails were open, and they were open only during special occasions, such as for prayers to one’s ancestors during Lunar New Year.
March 23 to March 29 Kao Chang (高長) set strict rules for his descendants: women were to learn music or cooking, and the men medicine or theology. No matter what life path they chose, they were to use their skills in service of the Presbyterian Church and society. As a result, musical ability — particularly in Western instruments — was almost expected among the Kao women, and even those who married into the family often had musical training. Although the men did not typically play instruments, they played a supporting role, helping to organize music programs such as children’s orchestras, writes
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