The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
There is plenty of comic talent on show in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, with Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi taking the central roles of two magicians who try to freshen up their show after a street performer’s daring stunts make their own act seem stale. The story of two incompetents trying to prove themselves and getting into all kinds of humorous trouble is well-worn, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone does little to freshen it up. A cameo by Alan Arkin as an old magician who is the inspiration for the Burt Wonderstone of the title is one of the best things about the picture. A serviceable comedy with a few laugh-out-loud moments, but far too often you are left trying to work out where you last saw a particular gag.
Mystery 浮城謎事
A Un Certain Regard entry at Cannes last year, Mystery gets off to a good start with a dark, intense opening sequence and the introduction of intriguing and well-handled relationship-drama elements. Director Luo Ye (婁燁) hit the international scene with the success of his offbeat romance Suzhou River (蘇州河) in 2000, and has been an innovative presence in Chinese cinema ever since, but his attempts to combine thriller elements with domestic drama are less successful in Mystery, with a couple of unnecessary subplots that do nothing more than complicate the story to no real dramatic effect.
I Give It a Year
Written and directed by Dan Mazer, who produced and has writing credits in films of Sacha Baron Cohen, including Ali G, Borat and Bruno. The style of humor reflects this background, and Mazer manages to get considerable mileage from a story about a couple experiencing a rocky first year of marriage. The couple, Josh (Rafe Spall) and Nat (Rose Byrne), are incompatible to begin with, and then there are bickering relatives, a tactless best man, a marriage guidance counselor, an ex-girlfriend and a charming businessmen, who all help to make things worse (and more amusing). The basic blueprint for the story is old and despite some good laughs, the whole things moves forward in a predictable way, and the fact that Josh and Nat are neither believable real people, or totally off the wall, makes the whole concoction rather bland.
Celeste and Jesse Forever
Balancing a little heartache with breezy humor and sharp dialogue is never easy, but Celeste and Jesse Forever, co-written and starring Rashida Jones, is a class act and provides one of the best new movies opening this week. The film, which also stars Andy Samberg, has plenty of heart, but for some tastes, the dialogue is a little too self-consciously clever. That does not alter the fact that this is a movie with real heart, and it is willing to replace the usual rom-com cliches with some painful truths about the uncertainty and complexity of modern relationships.
Trance
Danny Boyle never provides the expected, and with films from Trainspotting to Slumdog Millionaire he has altered, or at least broadened, the cinematic landscape. With Trance, he tries to put his stamp on the mind-bending thriller, though instead of amnesia (as in Memento) or dreams (as in Inception), Boyle has found his inspiration in hypnotism. Starring Rosario Dawson as the shapely hypnotist Elizabeth, who has been hired by a criminal gang to explore the brain of Simon (James McAvoy), an art auctioneer who may be the only person who knows the whereabouts of a artwork lost during a heist gone wrong. With Simon wandering through his own imagination, it is hard to keep track of what’s conscious and real, and what is unconscious and merely imagined. For most, the mind tease pays off.
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
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located