Oz: The Great and Powerful
There is a bucket load of superlative special effects being handled by a master of illusion in Oz the Great and Powerful, a prequel (as if one was needed), to The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Sam Raimi (Evil Dead and Spider-man), Oz tells the story of Oscar Diggs (James Franco), a small time musician with dubious ethics who gets whisked away into a magical land where he is faced with some moral choices, as well as early iterations of Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West (Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis respectively). Critics have been widely divided on whether Franco is either perfect for his role, or hopelessly miscast. The film is so full of oblique cinematic references and overburdened with visual cues that it’s like an overstuffed hamper of slightly suspect goodies.
Stoker
There has been a great build up to Stoker, a film by South Korean director Park Chan-wook, working with Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, and Matthew Goode to create one of those low-key frighteners that target both mind and body with their mix of insidious unease and horrific violence. This kind of genre work often divides critics along the lines of those who “get it” and those who don’t. Roger Ebert is a fan, describing Stoker as “chilling and stylish and aggressively creepy,” but Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal feels that Park has made a film in which “spontaneity has been banished by rigid stylization, and the net effect is as lifeless as a severed head that turns up in a basement freezer.” For all that, Park is working with fine materials: A strong cast is aided by a tight script by Wentworth Miller and cinematography by Chung Chung-hoon that summons up visions of David Lynch.
Inch’Allah
Well-meaning films about the tragically absurd situations that international political tensions can place ordinary people often manage to find a silver lining somewhere, however small and tattered, to give audiences a sense that all the suffering is not in vain. Inch’Allah, a Canadian production written and directed by Anais Barbeau-Lavalette, follows Chloe, a young Canadian doctor who divides her time between Ramallah, where she works with the Red Crescent, and Jerusalem, where she lives next door to her friend Ava, a young Israeli soldier. Barbeau-Lavalette has a clear eye for the daily horrors of the conflict, and looking fearlessly into the abyss and sees … an abyss. No light at the end of the tunnel provides enlivening flickers of hope, but Barbeau-Lavalette and the excellent cast give her dark vision clarity and emotional intensity.
Detective Hunter Zhang (神探亨特張)
Also released under the title Beijing Blues, this gritty cop drama that takes a look at the dirty underbelly of China’s capital city, and does not spare its punches. The film picked up Best Film, Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing at the 2012 Golden Horse Awards, and director Gao Qunshu (高群書) has shown great originality in his casting and mix of various genres. The film features many well known personalities, mostly non-professional actors who have made a name for themselves in cyberspace, led by Zhang Lixian (張立憲), a former journalist turned micro-blogger and publisher, who takes the role of the unsmiling plainclothes cop Zhang Huiling, who is constantly on the prowl, fighting crime on the street. There are thrilling city chases and elements of straight up comedy, over-the-top melodrama and documentary coverage of one of the world’s most fascinating cities.
In the House (Dans la maison)
No one manages social ambiguity like Francois Ozon (remember Swimming Pool) and In the House sees the director treating an intriguing concept with more than his usual skill. The film is an adaptation of Juan Mayorga’s play The Boy in the Last Row, centered on the bizarre friendship between a jaded high-school literature teacher, Germain (Fabrice Luchini), and one of his precocious students, Claude (Ernst Umhauer), who comes to his attention after writing about his stay with the middle-class family of a classmate, Rapha (Bastien Ughetto). Claude’s talent in bringing Rapha’s family to life on the page reignites Germain’s passion for literature, but it also unleashes all sorts of unexpected consequences. Umhauer’s performance as Claude is nothing short of brilliant, holding together a film that teeters on the brink of falling apart, but manages to stay the course brilliantly.
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
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