Together (在一起)
Film from China directed by Clarence Fok (霍耀良) and featuring the Taiwanese duo Michelle Chen (陳妍希) and Kai Ko (柯震東), who came to prominence following the 2011 local hit You Are the Apple of My Eye (那些年,我們一起追的女孩). In Together, they are cast together with Hong Kong veterans Donnie Yen (甄子丹), who is taking a break from his stern kungfu master roles, and Angelababy (楊穎), in a lightweight romance that is driven by a more than usually absurd premise, not least that one of the characters, played by Yen, has a rare disease that makes him unable to smile, while another, played by Chen, has amnesia. Audiences may well want to forget why they bothered paying money to see this film.
Poor Folk (窮人。榴槤。麻藥。偷渡客) and Return to Burma (歸來的人)
These two films make up a double bill by director Midi Z (趙德胤). Although one is a feature film and the other a documentary, both deal with the harsh life of people living on the Thai/Burmese border, caught up in a complex web of drugs and people smuggling, hoping to find a new life in a better place. Midi Z’s career was kick started when he was selected as a protege of Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), whose style of detached observation he has adopted in telling these gritty tales of ordinary people whose lives and hopes are bound up with the ambitions of brutal gangs and the impersonal forces of international relations.
Hitchcock
Based on Stephen Rebello’s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho and adapted John J McLaughlin (author of Black Swan), Hitchcock stars Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, and Scarlett Johansson. You could not really ask for better credentials than that, and the film does not disappoint, providing some fascinating insight into the Hollywood studio system and the way one of the world’s most recognized directors played it to get the film Psycho shot and screened even though it broke all the accepted rules of blockbuster production. The story follows the emotional rollercoaster between Hitchcock and his wife, and collaborator, Alma Reville during the making Psycho in 1959. Skilled storytelling, solid research and lovely performances make this film, so instructive about the mechanics of Hollywood, also great entertainment in its own right.
Parker
A thief with his own brand of ethics gets double-crossed by his crew and is left for dead. The thief, Parker, is played by Jason Statham. Is there any more to be said? Of course Parker is out for revenge, and there is the expected violence and the occasional cool one-liner from the Transporter star. Statham is playing a role he has played many times before, but this time he also gets to undress Jennifer Lopez, who provides the curves to complement the beefcake. The film does pretty much what it says on the box but nothing more.
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