Up against Shark Tale in the battle for half-term change, this Anglo-German computer-generated animation inevitably comes off poorly in contrast with high-end Hollywood product. You can't fault the industry and effort of the film-makers, but there's a crucial gap in both the technological edge and the fizz and sparkle of dialogue and pacing.
The two title characters, Boo and Zino, are some sort of Ewok-type munchkins who reside in a fantasy land called Gaya, existing only in a fictional TV cartoon. Snurks are their mortal enemies, but they don't seem especially
different.
The script tries for a post-modern twist when a whole bunch of Gayans are transported into the real world by an evil scientist, and come face to face with their "creator" Drollinger (voiced by Patrick Stewart). Boo, at one point, remarks "I think therefore I am" -- pretty heady stuff for the kids' club audience for which this is presumably destined. But proceedings are largely swamped by the regulation Saturday-morning cartoon moves that means the whole thing falls a long way short of the quickfire Toy Story wit it would like. Emily Watson is particularly badly served with a Lara Croft-meets-Bratz character she has to voice -- surely she can't be that hard up for things to do?
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would