The Good Dinosaur
Peter Sohn, the long-time Pixar story artist, voice actor and short film director whom the protagonist for Up was based upon, has finally made it to the top of the ladder by directing his first full-length feature, The Good Dinosaur. It took a while though, as the film changed directors and almost all of its cast mid-production with even the plot completely reimagined. The story is set in a world where dinosaurs never went extinct, and features Arlo, the young son of Apatosaurus farmers (yes, really) who loses his family and meets a human boy. It’s a cool concept (the pair later encounter T-Rex buffalo ranchers fighting Velociraptor rustlers), but the ensuing synopsis doesn’t seem to do it justice, seemingly morphing into a pretty standard tear-jerking coming-of-age adventure flick.
Youth
The second English film by Italian director Peter Sorrentino, Youth features Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as two septuagenarian creatives (a filmmaker and a composer) hanging out at a luxurious resort in the Swiss Alps and contemplating on the twilight of their lives. One retired, one still working, the two are also in-laws as their children are married to each other. Joined by Jane Fonda and Rachel Weisz, this seems to be dialogue-driven stuff, covering topics such as creative satisfaction in old age, fading memories and lost loves, all topped with a healthy dose of cynicism. The resort is populated with a bunch of quirky characters to provide some humor to the melancholy. The film received a mix of boos and cheers when it premiered at Cannes, and you can decide what you want to do after watching it. Oh, and it’s said to have an amazing score.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
With titles like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, Quirk Books is known for its bestselling mashup novels. Its 2009 masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame Smith, remained on the New York Times bestselling list for more than 50 weeks and is just something that has been screaming for a movie version — and here we are. Directed and written by Burr Steers of Igby Goes Down fame, the plot is quite simple: this version of Elizabeth Bennett is a martial arts master who teams up with Mr. Darcy to save England from a zombie plague. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like pure entertainment to me.
Marry Me
German-born actress and director Neleesha Barthel, of both German and Indian ancestry, uses her personal experience to create this tale of cultural and lifestyle clashes and in her debut film, Marry Me! Spending six years working on the film, Barthel says like many people of mixed ethnicity, she’s been looking for her origins, and that the film is released in a time when ethnic tensions are high in Germany. The film features a young woman living a Westernized lifestyle in Berlin whose Indian grandmother suddenly appears and threatens to sell the house if she doesn’t marry the father of her child in a pompous wedding, Indian-style. But the woman later finds out that there’s more behind her grandma’s intentions.
Like Life (人生按個讚)
If you don’t know who old school Taiwanese entertainers Hu Gua (胡瓜) and Pai Ping-ping (白冰冰) are, you probably don’t need to watch this movie. It’s a trademark Taiwanese “smiling-and-crying inspirational comedy” that features ordinary working people — the kind of stuff local directors have been gravitating towards to resonate with the masses. Anyway, the movie follows four characters — a taxi driver, a neighborhood-level official, a bar woman past her prime and a rookie cop, who somehow all cross paths and embark on a life-changing adventure, or something like that. Anyhow, it has all the ingredients to be a Lunar New Year commercial blockbuster, but again, if you’re not very familiar with Taiwanese pop culture or humor, just skip this one.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
By far the most jarring of the new appointments for the incoming administration is that of Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) to head the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF). That is a huge demotion for one of the most powerful figures in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Tseng has one of the most impressive resumes in the party. He was very active during the Wild Lily Movement and his generation is now the one taking power. He has served in many of the requisite government, party and elected positions to build out a solid political profile. Elected as mayor of Taoyuan as part of the
Moritz Mieg, 22, lay face down in the rubble, the ground shaking violently beneath him. Boulders crashed down around him, some stones hitting his back. “I just hoped that it would be one big hit and over, because I did not want to be hit nearly to death and then have to slowly die,” the student from Germany tells Taipei Times. MORNING WALK Early on April 3, Mieg set out on a scenic hike through Taroko Gorge in Hualien County (花蓮). It was a fine day for it. Little did he know that the complex intersection of tectonic plates Taiwan sits
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50