Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
This 3D sequel of the not-entirely-awful Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, directed by Thor Freudenthal, tries to combine Clash of the Titans with the Harry Potter franchise, Transformers and X-Men. It is a strange and almost entirely unsatisfactory combination. Along with its unmemorable cast, led by the unprepossessing Logan Lerman, it fails entirely to capture the audience’s imagination. Percy is a demigod, the son of Neptune, lord of the oceans, and he lives at Camp Half-Blood, a haven for a bunch of adolescents who are actually characters out of Greek mythology. The camp comes under threat from the forces of evil and only by finding the Golden Fleece in the Sea of Monsters can Percy save himself and his friends. The mishmash of mythology and teen movie dynamics is pretty weird, and there is none of the chemistry of the Potter films to lift the material above its labored posturing.
The Purge
Schlock home-invasion movie with aspirations to social satire. Directed by James DeMonaco and starring Ethan Hawke, the story is set in a futuristic America which has reduced crime to almost nothing due to the institution of “the purge” of the title. One night a year all crime becomes legal, and it is this release valve that has society living peacefully all the rest of the year. The actual setup is of a well-to-do family settling down for the night, all snug behind sophisticated defenses, only for something to go terribly wrong when their daughter lets a target of a murderous syndicate into the house. The few interesting ideas proposed in the concept of The Purge quickly get left behind as the director settles in for the usual brutal close quarters combat and stock shocks of a genre thriller.
Planes
Currently, the animation Turbo is on the screens, and Cars one and two are both available on DVD. Planes is more of the same inspirational cuteness. You can pretty much guess the story if you have seen any of the above. Dusty, a crop-dusting plane, dreams of competing in a famous aerial race, but suffers from a fear of heights. With the help of his friends he manages to make his dream come true. Planes hasn’t the star power of Turbo, and makes do with a mostly second-tier voice cast, who do a perfectly adequate job in this tried-and-tested formula, but the jokes, accents and attitudes are all a bit shop soiled. Summer vacation fodder.
Child’s Pose
The Romanian New Wave has carved out a reputation for itself on the arthouse circuit and Child’s Pose is a sure-footed drama by Calin Peter Netzer and starring actress Luminita Gheorghiu, a powerful screen presence in her own right. It is a tragi-comic portrait of a domineering mother who sees a chance to regain control over her adult son when he faces manslaughter charges for reckless driving. Although the plot arc is a little too pat, the tight script and solid acting make it easy to ignore the too easy progression, and Netzer’s ability to shift between melodrama and comedy gives the family portrait a hint of absurdity, making it much more than the grim portrayal of dysfunctional family situations so much beloved of arthouse cinema.
Blancanieves
Silent films seem to be making a comeback as Hollywood leads the talkies to the brink of self-destruction. First there was the enormous success of Michel Hazanavicius The Artist, and now, from Spain comes Blancanieves, a reworking of the story of Snow White set in 1920s Seville and centered on the character of a female bullfighter. Shot in black and white and with a score of entrancing flamenco music, Blancanieves delivers some entrancing images. Directed by Pablo Berger, the film has already proved a massive hit on the festival circuit, and proves, if proof were needed, that filmmaking with heart can be more powerful than all the bells and whistles provided by the big studios.
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