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Other releases
Compiled by Martin Williams | |
The Happening M. Night Shyamalan, who wowed everyone with The Sixth Sense, has been struggling for a few years with unloved films like The Village and Lady in the Water. Now he’s back, and here’s the deal: An airborne toxin that leads people to kill themselves with spectacular gusto is spreading throughout the world, and a science teacher (Mark Wahlberg) must flee the carnage with his wife as the apocalypse closes in. There have been few advance screenings for this flick, which is never a good sign. Trivia: This is the first film by Shyamalan to receive an American “R” rating.
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I Could Never Be Your Woman Michelle Pfeiffer is usually reason enough to see a movie, but this one may be an exception. Pfeiffer plays a TV producer and single mother who falls in love with an actor on her TV show who is 11 years her junior even as she raises a precocious daughter, battles industry creeps and receives visits from Mother Nature herself (Tracey Ullman). This semi-autobiographical comedy by veteran director Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless) had disastrous luck in the hands of its distributor and was held up for more than two years before going straight to DVD in the US. | |
Dear Friends Here’s a morality tale about a Japanese high school student (Keiko Kitagawa, from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) who is just the pits. She exploits her “friends,” disrespects her parents, lies to former beaus and does just about everything she can to be horrid while trading on her alluring looks. Then she is diagnosed with cancer, and as she sickens, a classmate takes it upon herself to be her friend and visit her regularly in hospital. Secrets are then revealed and lives are changed forever. Older teens should lap this up. | |
The Hamiltons Released in 2006, The Hamiltons is a sardonic, low-budget horror drama from the US that has generated a lot of interest in genre circles. Four siblings whose parents are deceased are forced to travel from town to town because two of them — twins — just can’t help abducting and killing people. Sort-of American Gothic family melodrama with bloody extras may impress anyone heartily sick of the “torture porn” direction American horror films are taking. But that isn’t to say that nasty stuff doesn’t happen in this unhappy family’s basement-cum-dungeon. Directed by The Butcher Brothers (a pseudonym used by writers/directors Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores) and shot on high-definition video. Starts tomorrow. |
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
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located