August: Osage County
A drama about dysfunctional families do not get more star-studded than this. Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tracy Letts and starring a super A-list of veteran performers, August: Osage County manages the transition from stage to screen with skill and sophistication, creating a work that will likely appeal to fans of the play as much as people approaching the work for the first time. The film takes a look at the lives of the strong-willed women of the Weston family, whose paths have diverged until a family crisis brings them back to the Oklahoma house they grew up in. Predictably, things start to get violent, mostly verbally, but with some plate smashing in the background, as the strongly opinionated women and their accompanying men folk go for each other’s throats. The scene is darkly comic, as the likes of Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Margo Martindale, Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor and Benedict Cumberbatch cross barbs, dredging up past and picking at current sources of contention. The result is explosive, if not exactly cheerful. A film that packs a solid dramatic punch.
Mr Peabody & Sherman
A 3D computer-animated adventure-comedy based on the characters from the “Peabody’s Improbable History” segments of the 1960s animated television series TheRocky and Bullwinkle Show. Mr Peabody & Sherman is a story that is bound to captivate young audiences. Directed by Rob Minkoff, who brought us the incomparable The Lion King, the film manages to preserve the kind of charm and innocence that is gradually disappearing from more sophisticated animated feature films with a firm eye on providing laughs and excitement for grownup audiences as well. The premise is that Mr Peabody, a talking dog and a super intelligent being adopts a child, Sherman, whose unconventional background brings him into conflict with other kids at school. Then he accidently-on purpose gets a little girl, Penny, sent back in time in Mr Peabody’s time machine, and dog and boy then have to embark on an adventure to bring back Penny and stop space and time from disintegrating. The likeability of the characters and the tight script hold together a film that is largely episodic in structure.
The Past
Following on from his Oscar-winning film A Separation, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has come out with yet another intense drama that looks at the themes of separation, loss and the difficulty, even impossibility, of people connecting with others once loved. The Past is a bravura performance by the director, showing off his skill at picking through the web of relationships, and some critics have suggested that in this new film he has taken the story past the verge of plausibility. As with much great tragedy, plausibility takes second place to the ability to tap into deep universal truths about people, and Farhadi has assuredly achieved this in The Past. The film is anchored by a mesmeric performance by Berenice Bejo as Marie Brisson, who has called her estranged husband from Iran back to Paris to participate in divorce proceedings and generally make an amicable departure from their children. The children are full of their own muddled emotions and the situation is made worse by the presence of Marie’s new partner. Bad decisions, good intentions and much else get dragged into a horrible tangle, and melodrama is never far off, but the clear eye of the director and fine supporting roles keep the film on track.
The Face Reader
Big-budget period drama from South Korea directed by Han Jae-rim knows what it is aiming for and manages to tick all the right boxes for its target audience. A mix of high stakes political intrigue, dastardly crimes, a flawed super sleuth, seductive women and the occasional battle scene gives The Face Reader a deceptive cinematic richness which dresses up a pretty conventional piece of period drama. It does break some ground in giving the starring roles to less mainstream characters, in this case Nae-gyeong (Song Kang-ho), a skilled physiognomist, who solves a crime that gets him noticed, then becomes embroiled in a palace feud as warring factions seek to discover traitors in their midst. The plot occasionally veers into incoherence, but a generally solid cast and the sure hand of the director give the impression that everything is under control. It isn’t really, but that hardly matters, as the film builds to a surprise finish, making its 139-minute running time almost worth while.
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
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