Valentine’s Day
Best start with the most obviously timed of the New Year slate of offerings. A huge cast that crosses the generations locks horns with a limited timeframe and a dozen plot lines to try to deliver romantic entertainment for the masses. With Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman) at the helm, one might expect a brisk package of laughs and a few tears, but early reviews have largely dumped all over this one. Got a date? Maybe you should consider ...
I Love You Phillip Morris
Now this is a Valentine’s Day movie. Jim Carrey throws hypocritical Hollywood pseudo-liberalism out the window and takes up his role as a comically shaded gay criminal with devil-may-care gusto. In so doing he might lose a few fans (Variety wondered if the film “will give some fans of Ace Ventura heart attacks”), but he’s also bound to gain some, too. Carrey plays a real-life fraudster who ends up in prison and smitten with Ewan McGregor. Directed by the writers of the uproarious Bad Santa, which in itself is a reason to give this movie a chance, but with a warning that the humor will be in your face.
The Wolfman
Romance is in the back seat for this faithful version of one of the oldest — if less revisited — movie monster traditions. Benicio Del Toro is the afflicted one, Anthony Hopkins is his father, Hugo Weaving is the Scotland Yard detective on the trail and Emily Blunt the woman caught up in it all. Few previews available for this one, which usually suggests nervous distributors, and what reviews are out there are split down the middle. Includes many computer animation effects, which would not impress those of us brought up on The Howling and An American Werewolf in London. But it does have Benicio.
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
Based on a series of popular books, Percy makes it to the big screen but without the massive publicity blitz and nurturing of critics that preceded the first Harry Potter movie. In fact, as with The Wolfman, we’re two days out from a wide US release and there are virtually no reviews out there save those of Australian critics in an earlier time zone. Percy is a normal youngster who suddenly discovers he has blood ties to the Greek gods, and this is not such a good thing if there’s trouble brewing around Mt Olympus. Directed by Chris Columbus, who also made the first two Harry Potter installments.
Hidden Diary
A professional woman in Canada falls pregnant and returns to France; there, amid tensions with her mother, she discovers the diary of the title, which belonged to her grandmother she never knew, and whose sad experiences are recounted in flashback — or are they? A sober but searching family drama with more than a hint of wistfulness, this stars Catherine Deneuve as the mother and is a welcome adult entertainment for this holiday season. French title: Meres et Filles.
Changing Sides
The other French-language release of the week features another top actress, Sophie Marceau, as a woman who swaps working roles with her husband to save their marriage. In so doing, this crafty couple find that changing sides brings early frustrations but longer-term benefits, but not without a few relationship crises along the way. The swap also pigeon-holes the book on which the film was based, resulting in charges of gross sexism on the part of the filmmakers ... which leads to the question: Assuming the original author was unhappy with the film’s treatment of her work, why didn’t she have her name removed or changed? (Mme Alaina Smithee, perhaps?)
Bride Flight
Good to see New Zealand featuring on the big screen other than as a setting for hobbits, dwarves and monsters. In this Dutch period piece, three northern European women move to the Shaky Isles to start new lives with their hubbies-to-be, and the intrigue deepens as relationships form and suffer in the process. For more discerning and adventurous moviegoers who don’t want to be confronted by headlong comedy, this might be the Valentine’s Day pick. Rutger Hauer appears briefly as the love interest on his deathbed in the present day.
Boa
The last three movies this week started last week at the Baixue theater in Ximending as DVD promos, so get in quick if they appeal. The first is a 2006 wildlife-on-the-loose flick from Thailand whose poster gets down to business: A bloodied babe somewhere in the Thai jungle is half-consumed by a ravenous constrictor. Of course, there will be other youngsters on the menu. Really, boas don’t deserve this kind of press.
To Live and Die in Mongkok (旺角監獄)
As with Boa, get in quick to see this pair of movies from vet Hong Kong producer-director-writer-actor Wong Jing (王晶) that didn’t enjoy a proper theatrical release. In this one, co-directed by Chung Siu-hung (鍾少雄), Wong ups the self-conscious style quotient in a strange tale of a gang member who gets out of prison, but only in the literal sense (the Chinese title means “Prison Mongkok”). Stars Nick Cheung (張家輝) as the hapless gangster.
Underdog Knight (硬漢)
This earlier production by Wong Jing and directed by Ding Sheng (丁晟, whose Jackie Chan starrer Little Big Soldier starts in Taiwan in two weeks) also suggests that the king of populist cinema is trying to extend himself a little, even if he is hampered by Chinese content restrictions. Liu Ye (劉燁) is a People’s Liberation Army officer who becomes a simpleton after a diving accident; he then turns into a fighter for justice, albeit hamstrung by his condition. Co-stars Anthony Wong (黃秋生) as a sympathetic crook.
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