Meet Dave
Eddie Murphy has struggled a little of late. Missing out on a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Dreamgirls, some say, because of the immense crudity of his characters in Norbit, Murphy has chosen a better vehicle in Meet Dave. This is entirely appropriate because “Dave,” a strangely dressed man who turns up in New York one day, is a vehicle, too — a spaceship, in fact, containing tiny aliens. This is a fun movie for all ages that makes much better use of Murphy’s prodigious talent and without the flatulent humor and rubber suits that have marked his films over the last decade or so.
The Violin
An unusual mixture of black-and-white photography, music and radicalism, The Violin stars a real-life violinist, the 81-year-old Don Angel Tavira, as a farmer and wandering musician who gets involved in the movement that attempted to oust a Mexican government 30 years ago. Scenes of brutality mix with a subtle tale of cunning as the old violinist and his family attempt to turn the tables on the military.
Memory
In this Thai thriller, an overworked psychiatrist at a Chiang Mai hospital is referred a case of a little girl who appears to have been abused. When he investigates, he discovers things are more sinister than even that, with something supernatural possibly preying on the child. There may be something even more sinister in store, too, given that the shrink fails to stop himself from getting it on with the little girl’s mother. Some viewers may sense The Sixth Sense in all of this, but at least Bruce Willis didn’t seduce anyone (even if he was a ghost).
The Room
A struggling family goes from bad to worse when a strange room appears in their house in this Belgian flick from 2006. With a failed composer father, his mistreated wife, a handicapped son and an unhappy pregnant daughter vying for the most-dysfunctional-family-member title, audiences will wonder if the mysterious room of the title is doing one victim a favor when he disappears through its door. This film made appearances at various genre film festivals but has failed to stir up much interest since then. Starts tomorrow.
Keroro the Movie 3
Keroro, better known to English-speaking manga/anime fans as “Sgt Frog,” is one of the more bizarre Japanese animated characters to gain a following. The slovenly leader of a failed invasion force from a faraway planet, Sergeant Keroro makes do with wasting his time in between errands for a nice, ordinary Japanese family, despite having a team of crack soldiers at his call. In Part 3, Keroro and the gang end up at the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu on holiday, only to encounter strange forces that produce an “evil” Keroro who also wants to conquer Earth and kidnaps the “good” Keroro’s hosts. Now there’s a dilemma for the “good” Keroro. Screens with a Keroro short entitled Warrior Kero’s Announcement! The Battle of the Warring State Pekopon.
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
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
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