300: Rise of an Empire
If you saw the first installment, 300, directed by Zack Snyder, then you probably have a pretty good idea what to expect. This is the same sort of video game/graphic novel-inspired combat fantasy movie, except even more over-the-top. The story might be loosely based on real events, in this case the Battle of Salamis in which the Greeks turned the tide of Persian ambitions on the Greek mainland in 480 BC, but after that it is pretty much pure fantasy. Director Noam Murro follows the Snyder playbook pretty much play for play, and the film is primarily about huge CGI effects, gaudy costumes, men in leather underpants, women in revealing armor, lots of sex, buckets of gore and the kind of moronic dialogue that fanboys remember forever. If you like ultra-violent high camp then this is something you are going to love, but things like acting, character and narrative cohesion are pretty much tossed by the wayside.
Nymphomaniac
The film has caught the attention of the public with its racy subject matter and the promise of pornographic titillation in mainstream cinemas under the cover of artistic expression. The critics have come away with a general assessment that Lars von Trier is not quite so cynical, and that while Nymphomaniac is certainly not for all sensibilities, and certainly not for the prudish given its extended sequences of erotic acts (often, according to publicity material, performed by doubles from the porn industry), it is a mature work of cinema by a veteran director. It is a cinematic fable that is less about explicit sex than about the eternal questions of how sexuality can be discussed and understood. Nymphomaniac manages to be good-humored and serious-minded at the same time, and while the story, an account of a young woman’s sexual history, and the manner of its telling pushes the boundaries of absurdity, it is an entertaining tale that synthesizes the world, ideas and filmmaking savvy of the director.
Salinger
A documentary about the reclusive novelist J. D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, who after the phenomenal success of his book all but disappeared from the literary world. Directed by Shane Salerno and featuring many greats from the arts ranging from Philip Seymour Hoffman to Gore Vidal, the film provides a few genuine gems of biography buried amid a bombastic and chaotic presentational style that tries to hype its subject with various literary and cinematic tricks when the story itself is perfectly sufficient. The integrity of the filmmaker further comes into question when you discover that the film is also linked to the upcoming issue of previously unpublished works by Salinger. At this point it seems like an overlong promotional picture (it runs 124 minutes) for a publishing event.
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
Yet another attempt to bring the Jackass franchise to the big screen in a story about the 86-year-old Irving Zisman (Johnny Knoxville), who travels from Nebraska to North Carolina with his 8 year-old grandson, Billy (Jackson Nicoll). Of course, there are plenty of pranks along the way, and even at low-ebb the movie effuses an infectious, mischief-making joy. Knoxville’s style of humor is familiar to anyone who has seen Jackass on TV or in its previous cinematic incarnations, but Nicoll proves a real talent at the pranking game and embellishes the movie with his own style. The film is inevitably episodic and often sloppy, but it has just enough impish energy to keep it going.
Paris or Perish
A Moroccan-born fashionista, Maya, living the dream in Paris finds herself deported back home to Morocco, where she lands back in the spartan country home she left 20 years earlier. This is a debut feature for actress-turned-filmmaker Reem Kherici and is an endearing comedy that riffs off the contrasts between snobby, stylish Paris and charming, rustic Marrakech. There are plenty of titters and giggles along the way as Maya gets charmed and angered by her relatives at home and struggles to get back to Paris where she thinks she belongs. Her hardships are never too hard and the film remains annoyingly lightweight throughout, without any insight or character development to give it ballast. There are some perfectly adequate supporting roles and technically the film is well made, but probably better suited to a Friday night at home on the DVD.
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