Turbo
It’s cute. It’s competent. It’s even occasionally clever. But with such a volume of animated material for kids hitting the screen over recent summers, Turbo doesn’t seem quite able to make its mark. Don’t get me wrong, this is a superior Dreamworks product, and it sports an outstanding voice cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Giamatti, Snoop Dogg and Michael Pena, who work well together and go a considerable way to saving a story about a snail called Turbo, whose dreams of participating in the Indy 500 motor race become a real possibility after a freak accident that gives him an amazing turn of speed. It’s life in the fast lane for Turbo, but unfortunately the scriptwriters can’t keep up, the film sags a little in the middle and all the cute inspirational stuff quickly becomes a little cloying.
The Conjuring
Critics are polarized: Variety calls it “a sensationally entertaining old-school freakout and one of the smartest, most viscerally effective thrillers,” while The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern sees nothing more than “amped-up echoes of old ideas.” The Conjuring contains numerous echoes of The Exorcist and the The Amityville Horror, and the sense of nostalgia for these classics may prevent this horror flick from cutting its own groove. On its own terms, the filmmaking is more than competent, with solid acting and some clever play with the conceit that it is all based on a true story.
R.I.P.D.
After the Men in Black franchise ran its course, Hollywood had to come up with something else to cash in on the alien comedy conceit. That something is R.I.P.D., complete with its mismatched cop buddies, but this time both these cops are dead, working for the Rest in Peace Department, searching out bad guys among the undead. Headlining are Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds, who both deserve better than this second-rate, second-hand material. There are some good action sequences, but the tired format fails to provide context to make them gripping. The concept, for what it’s worth, seems ideal for humor, but director Robert Schwentke takes everything dead seriously and the film never comes to life.
The Dream Team (Les seigneurs)
Big-budget French soccer comedy that is unlikely to break out of the Francophone sphere despite the presence of some well-known comic talent including Omar Sy (Intouchables), Gad Elmaleh (Midnight in Paris) and Ramzy (Porn in the Hood).The plot hinges on a washed-up, binge-drinking soccer champ, Orbera (Jose Garcia), who, in order to maintain custody of his daughter, is sentenced to coach a fledgling team on the tiny Breton island of Molene. To help the team win, he brings together a bunch of has-beens who all now face their own slew of problems. The group is little more than a bunch of comic cut-outs and director Olivier Dahan, who directed La vie en rose, one of the best musical biopics ever, fails to find any inspiration and works by numbers. With The Dream Team, the numbers simply do not add up.
Take the A Train
The last film by Japanese director Yoshimitsu Morita, who came to prominence in the 1980s with films like The Family Game, a black comedy that took a clear-eyed view of Japanese middle-class family life. Take the A Train couldn’t be more different from this earlier material, as he follows two young men infatuated by trains, but who inevitably have to balance this hobby with the needs of their jobs and romantic involvement as well. Kenichi Matsuyama and Eita play simple-souled train buffs who find uncomplicated pleasure in each other’s company, and their chemistry is the primary force that carries the film through a shambolic plot line that never really seems to be going anywhere.
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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