When Ami Ankilewitz was barely 18 months old, his mother was told that he had a rare motor neuron disease called spinal muscular atrophy and that he was unlikely to live beyond six. Now 34, Ankilewitz lives in Tel Aviv and works as a 3-D animator, despite weighing only 39 pounds [17.7kg] and being able to move only one finger on his left hand.
''Animation makes me feel free,'' he explains. And in the lighthearted yet forthright documentary 39 Pounds of Love, the director, Dani Menkin, follows Ami and two friends as they travel across the US to realize Ami's three main ambitions. He wants to confront the doctor who predicted his early demise; to reconcile with his estranged brother, Oscar, now living in Dallas; and to ride a Harley-Davidson. Throughout, Ankilewitz's internal life is expressed by means of a parallel narrative featuring his own unique and colorful computer drawings.
PHOTO COURTESY OF JOINT
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
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It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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