Salt
Angelina Jolie shows herself, one again, to be a match for the boys as an action hero. Her Evelyn Salt, CIA agent on the run from, well, just about everybody, blows Tom Cruise and his ridiculous Knight and Day out of the water in terms of solid action, with an emphasis on real stunts that hurt and a minimum of CGI. This is a spy thriller on the lines of a James Bond adventure, with a plot that does not bear close scrutiny, but enough happens on screen that you don’t really care. Daniel Craig had better watch his back, because Jolie is close on his heels as the coolest secret agent around.
Jaffa
Well-crafted version of a perennial love story that goes back to Romeo and Juliet. Mali, a young Israeli woman, and Toufik, a Palestinian mechanic who works in her father’s garage, fall in love in the town of Jaffa. Mali is an almost invisible member of her family, whose members lavish all their attention on her brother Meir, a sullen, lazy boy who will inherit his father’s auto business. Ethnicity, religion, class, as well as a good dose of jealousy and possessiveness, all get in the way of a happy ending. Fine acting by Dana Ivgy as Mali and good support from the rest of the cast give this low-key and rather mournful romance its appeal.
Piecing Me Back Together (Matataki)
Originally scheduled for last week, Piecing Me Back Together is based on a best-selling novel by romance author Ren Kawahara. A story of young love interrupted by the terrible consequences of a traffic accident, the film features established names in the leading roles. For those in search of a good weepy melodrama, this fits the bill.
Keroro: The Movie 5
More adventures of Sergeant Frog (Keroro), the green frog-like alien, and his earthly companion Fuyuki Hinata, a young lad obsessed with all things paranormal. Japanese girl group SKE48 was brought on board to do some of the voices, and a theme song by J-Pop idol Ayaka Hirahara is expected to bring in fans. In this anime adventure, Hinata finds a carved image that greatly resembles his alien companion Keroro and sets out to discover how it came to be found on Earth. Strictly for fans.
Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf Desert Trek: The Adventures of the Lost Totem (喜羊羊與灰太狼之虎虎生威)
A feature film version of the Chinese television series for young children that screens on MoMo Kids TV (Momo 親子台). The title says it all. The goats and the wolves are in a constant battle, and the wolves, despite all their evil schemes, always come off worse. For the very young.
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