Man of Steel
There have already been five major Superman feature releases, starting with Richard Donner’s 1979 film Superman with Christopher Reeve in the title role. The most recent was in 2006, Superman Returns, directed by Bryan Singer and starring the relatively unknown Brandon Routh, which was acceptable but failed to reboot the original franchise in the way that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight did for Batman and JJ Abram’s 2008 film did for Star Trek. Another effort is being made to redeem Superman, this time by Zack Snyder, who polarized audiences with his super-nerd take on superhero comics in Watchman and the darkness and dubious mindgames of Sucker Punch. Snyder has opted to take Superman as a serious character-driven drama, with epic dimensions, following in the vein of Watchman and The Dark Knight rather than the pandering to the mainstream success of knowing self-referential humor that is the key to the most successful recent superhero franchise, Iron Man. The title character is played by Henry Cavill, who has emerged from the bodice-ripping romance of the HBO series The Tudors to a much more nuanced role in Man of Steel.
The Passion of Marie
Also released under the title Marie Kroyer, this film by Billie August, twice winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Pelle the Conqueror and The Best Intentions, The Passion of Marie is a solid period drama that deals with the family life of Peder Kroyer, one of Denmark’s foremost artists. The story focuses on the relationship between Kroyer and his wife Marie, which is seemingly happy but coming apart from within as Kroyer suffers of increasingly intense bouts of mental illness, and Marie finds comfort in the arms of another. Solid performances, a good eye for period detail and August’s own assured style ensure that this film provides stimulating entertainment for those with a passion for well-acted period drama, but unlike films like Pelle the Conqueror, it remains very much defined by its time and place.
The Kirishima Thing
A high concept drama based on a novel by Ryo Asa and directed by Daihachi Yoshida, The Kirishima Thing is a study of high school culture that tries to bypass the usual tropes of the schoolyard drama. Kirishima is a star athlete and multi-talented high achiever who opts out of school and who is never actually seen in the film. Nevertheless, his act of rebellion sends ripples through the hierarchical structure of cool kids and nerds, shattering accepted notions and forcing all those affected by his presence to think about who they actually are. Yoshida’s film tells of a series of events from a number of perspectives, replaying the same scenes as experienced by different protagonists. The director handles his large cast well, but the slow build of the drama, as various characters establish themselves, demands some patience from the audience.
Side Effects
The prolific Steven Soderbergh is back with another mind-bender, quite literally, in this tale about a young woman whose world unravels when a drug prescribed by her psychiatrist has unexpected side effects. Psychoactive drugs are very much a hot-button issue, and this is Soderbergh in his typical mode, going for a quick hit in the manner of Contagion, which focused on the possibility of a global pandemic. The story is pretty implausible, but such is Soderbergh’s bag of cinematic tricks and the persuasiveness of the cast, which includes Channing Tatum, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Rooney Mara (from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), that this doesn’t matter too much. It’s a terrific thriller, but you don’t want to go thinking too much about it or it begins to unravel pretty quickly.
Five Dances
While this is both a dance film and a gay interest film, it is much more than either. Writer and director Alan Brown explores a wide range of emotions and their expression through dance using a skeleton cast that included only one trained actor, shifting between dance sequences and minimalist scripted scenes to tell the story of the rocky emotional journey of an 18-year-old dancer, who must choose between his responsibility to his broken family in the Midwest, and of pursuing the promising career that awaits him in New York.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
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