The Big Short
If you’re able to get the holy quadrumvirate of Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling to be on one set, your film better be good — especially when it’s produced by Pitt’s Plan-B Entertainment, which has churned out a few notables such as 12 Years a Slave and Moneyball. Director and writer Adam McKay is a long-time Will Ferrell collaborator with the not-really-funny Anchorman, its terrible sequel and the and sort-of-funny Step Brothers, but this time he may have struck gold as The Big Short has made its way to four Golden Globe nominations, five BAFTA nominations and is mentioned among Oscar hopefuls. Anyway, like many movies today, it’s based on a non-fiction book — this one about the build up of the credit and housing bubble and its collapse during the financial crisis of 2007-08. How can such a subject be funny? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.
Extraction
You know you’re getting old when you see Bruce Willis taking second billing to some dude named Kellan Lutz — in an action movie, for crying out loud. But when you find out that Lutz is one of the main actors in Twilight, you’re kind of glad you’re too old to know who he is. This film is all about Lutz — he’s the CIA badass with mad skills who launches a personal mission to, well, extract his father (Willis) who has been kidnapped by terrorists. Very inventive stuff here — too bad it’s only 83 minutes long. It’s directed by Steve Miller, known for his low-budget horror films, so it will most likely be b-movie-ish — which doesn’t mean it’s bound to bad, as campy could be ridiculously entertaining if done right. The only question is why the hell did they convince Willis to be in such a film, especially one where he isn’t the hero.
Brooklyn
No, there are no mobsters shooting people in this quiet period piece about Irish immigrants in America, which is based on the award-winning 2009 novel by Irish writer Colm Tolbin about a young Irish woman (Saorise Ronan) who, unable to find work in her home country, emigrates to New York in the 1950s for a better life. By this time, the formerly ostracized Irish-Americans had mostly outgrown their lower-class status, so the film seems to be less about the typical immigrant struggle and more about finding love, identity and belonging as the protagonist becomes torn between her old and new homes. The film has earned very positive reviews since it premiered at Sundance last year, and Ronan has already been nominated for several best actress awards. In addition, director John Crowley has done good work in Intermission while screenwriter Nick Hornby is originally a novelist whose books High Fidelity and About a Boy have been made into films.
45 Years
The lead couple of Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling took home Silver Bears for best actor and actress at the Berlin Film Festival (and numerous other accolades and counting) in this film that is, well, again, based on literature, this time the short story Another Country by George Constantine. Andrew Haigh of Weekend fame directs this drama piece about a childless, retired couple preparing to celebrate their 45th anniversary (their 40th anniversary plans were derailed) when authorities inform them that they’ve found the frozen and perfectly preserved body of the husband’s ex-girlfriend who plummeted to her death in the Swiss Alps shortly before their marriage. Things subtly start changing, and a quiet marital crisis develops.
Midnight Sun
Twilight showed up again when looking up the movie’s title on Google, but fortunately this film has nothing to do with the upcoming vampire tragedies of the same name. Forget about Kellan Lutz, this is Patrick Schwarzenegger’s (Arnold’s non-bodybuilder son) first major role, where he romances Bella Thorne and funnyman Rob Riggle tackles his first drama role ever as Thorne’s father. The movie is based on the Japanese film of the same name (is anything original anymore?), which is about a teenage girl who has xeroderma pigmentosum, meaning she cannot be exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Unable to go out during the day, she spends her night busking in front of a train station, until, of course, she runs into some kind of love interest and her life starts to change. Pretty typical Japanese warm-hearted, tear-jerking, seize the fire of youth stuff. Let’s see how it translates in a Western context.
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
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