Thomas and Friends: Hero of the Rails
Thomas the Tank engine is going to have a very tough time against this week’s big release How to Train Your Dragon, and is likely to appeal only to the very, very young. Little seems to have been done to upgrade the presentation from its action model animation television incarnation. The main difference is that while it features Michael Brandon, one of the TV program’s original US narrators, there are other voices as well, providing a more dramatic quality. This is something that the venerable program, which dates back to 1984, is only just beginning to do now in its 13th series, for which Hero of the Rails seems to be little more than a big-screen teaser.
Bandage (Bandeiji)
Japanese teen music flick that harks back to the music scene of the 1990s when forming a band was, supposedly, every young Japanese student’s dream. The film is a directing debut for Takeshi Kobayashi, primarily a composer with credits that include the score for the minor 2001 hit All About Lily Chou-Chou (Riri Shushu no subete) and contributions to Kill Bill Vol. 1. The film was adapted for the screen by Shunji Iwai, who may be known to Western audiences through this participation as a director in last year’s cinematic collage New York, I Love You. Bandage follows the life of Asako and Miharu who, looking for a way out from problems at home, ingratiate themselves into an indie-rock band. Romance and rousing rock numbers follow.
Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji (Kaiji: Jinsei Gyakuten Gemu)
There seems to be no end to manga adaptations coming out of Japan, though this one seems sillier than most, despite some credibility deriving from star Tatsuya Fujiwara, who featured in past manga classics such as Death Note (2006). This time Fujiwara is salaryman Kaiji who is offered the ultimate chance to escape his dead-end existence at the gambling table. The risks for losing are no less than an eternity of torment. The original comic books aim at some deep social commentary about how a plutocracy keeps the common man enslaved, but this theme seems to have rather lost out to some entertaining gambling set pieces in which the fates of the lead characters are decided.
Remember Me
Romantic drama that might be described as Greek tragedy for the tween generation. It stars Robert Pattinson, who is making a foray out from the world of the undead (just before his Twilight persona gets another airing in Eclipse, the third segment of that saga), who is doing his best to look dissipated if very much alive. Individual performances, particularly that of Pierce Brosnan, have received praise from no less a source than Roger Ebert, but even this most gracious of critics accepts that there is good reason for the hailstorm of one-star or less reviews across the media at what is variously regarded as a movie that is adolescent, contrived, tasteless, or all three. The harshness of the critical response almost makes this film worth a peek.
Dear John
Another movie about love and war that ultimately has not much to do with either, Dear John is a romantic drama about the transcendent potential of the human soul to overcome loss and people’s ability to act in noble ways with the aid of pre-written dialogue. Based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, who is also responsible for the books Message in a Bottle (1999) and The Notebook (2004), both of which were turned into films, Dear John exists in a world that real people rarely ever visit. There are beautiful people, in this case Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, who fall in love, and then find that topical issues, 9/11 and Asperger syndrome in this case, pull them apart. They rise to the challenge. An inoffensive way of getting through a box of tissues.
Sagan
French biopic of the writer Francoise Sagan, with a heavy dose of romantic sorrow. Sagan wrote a number of hugely influential books, starting out with Bonjour Tristesse (1954) when she was just 18, the first of many works that served as a clarion call to disillusioned teens. Her story should be interesting, for Sagan parleyed her early literary success into an introduction to the literary elite of the French and English-speaking intellectual worlds, consorting with the likes of Sartre and Capote. Although directed and co-written by Diane Kurys, who has a reputation for the insightful portrayal of women’s lives, Sagan seems to have little to say about the celebrity author despite a strong performance by Sylvie Testud in the title role.
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