Zootopia
We begin the year of two Walt Disney Animation Studios features with this tale set in a world inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, starring Judy, an idealistic rookie policebunny (who has 225 brothers and sisters) wanting to prove herself but is instead assigned to parking duty by her cape buffalo chief. You’ve also got an arctic shrew crime boss, a honey badger doctor and sloths working at the Department of Motor Vehicles, all meticulously researched as the team even traveled to Africa to observe animal walking cycles and fur color. We have a pretty cool cast, many right in their element with Ginnifer Goodwin voicing the naive but strong-headed Judy, Shakira as a gazelle pop star and Tommy Chong voicing an enlightened, laid-back yak. Of course, a world like this is bound to have inter-species tension — and the film seems to have fun and run with it, such as when Judy says a bunny can call another bunny cute but another animal can’t.
Zoolander 2
These “same cast reuniting decades later to do a sequel about them being much older” films rarely work out — watch Dumb and Dumber To and you’ll see why. So why is Ben Stiller bringing back everyone’s favorite male fashion model after 15 years? And why is Owen Wilson joining him as Hansel? In stereotypical fashion, both have retired from the scene — Zoolander living in “extreme northern New Jersey” as a recluse and Hansel participating in orgies in “uncharted Malibu territories.” You might wonder if it’s actually Zoolander-style self-parody, where all things inane are celebrated — but unfortunately it doesn’t seem so. The trailer just doesn’t seem very funny, appearing dated as if cinema never progressed — but again, that could be attributed to Zoolander-style satire. I guess you won’t know if this movie is terrible or pretending to be terrible while actually being awesome until you watch it.
Gods of Egypt
When this film was under fire for using Scottish, Danish and Australian dudes to play the three main Egyptian characters, the Egypt-born Australian director Alex Proyas stated that it was not a history film and cited artistic freedom of expression, but ultimately apologized, along with Lionsgate. However, the purpose of this film, with such an unimaginative title, isn’t quite clear after reading the extremely generic synopsis: a mortal hero sets out to save his love (and the world) by teaming up with the god Horus in a fight against the god of darkness, who has taken over Egypt and enslaved its population. But then you watch the trailer. Armored shape-shifting gods, fire breathing twin snakes, awesome demon armies and over the top CGI effects — this is stuff straight out of a beat-em-up video game: wildly entertaining without requiring too much brain power.
Room
Inspired by the ghastly Fritzl case in Austria, Emma Donoghue wrote the award-winning Room, told from the perspective of a five-year-old boy who has been confined with his mother in a space called Room ever since he was born. His life changes when he enters the outside world for the first time. Donoghue also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation, directed by Lenny Abrahamson of What Richard Did and Frank fame. The film has been praised for its acting — it netted Brie Larson a Golden Globe for Best Actress and is nominated for four Oscars: Best Picture, Director, Actress and Adapted Screenplay. And it’s not all depressing — Larson says it is less of a crime piece than one of “freedom, love and perseverance.”
Concussion
Will Smith stars in this sports drama about Bennet Omalu, the real-life physician who fights against the National Football League’s efforts to suppress his research on how repeated head trauma to players causes a type of brain damage he named chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The original report by Jean Marie Laskas first appeared in the US magazine GQ and was later expanded into a book, but the film seems more like a character study on Omalu, a Nigerian immigrant with no knowledge of football who risks his job and reputation to do the right thing. So it’s a good thing that Smith has impressed with his performance, as he was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor despite the film being considered a box office flop in the US and receiving mixed reviews.
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