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.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and