The Jungle Book
All right, a remake is probably warranted when it has been 49 years since the original. Director John Favreau (Iron Man, Cowboys & Aliens), says this new 3D live-action version is not a musical — but really, it would be a crime to do a Jungle Book movie without the classic tunes a la Trust in Me and Bear Necessities. Fortunately, Favreau delivers — with renditions by cast members Scarlett Johannson, Christopher Walken, Bill Murray and newcomer Neel Sethi, who plays Mowgli. There are some pretty big shoes to fill here, as the original was the last film that Walt Disney personally worked on before his death, which was in turn based on Rudyard Kipling’s popular 1894 novel. The CGI is pretty cool, but many films who try to mix real actors with animated characters just end up feeling unnatural. Judging from the trailer, though, that will not be a problem with this film.
Criminal
Let us take a moment of silence for screenwriter Douglas Cook, who worked on this film with writing partner David Weisburg (the duo is best known for 1996’s The Rock) for eight years but died before it premiered. Reuniting on screen for the first time since 1991’s JFK are the geriatric (okay, maybe not that old yet) heroes of Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Oldman and Kevin Costner — but their usual roles here are jumbled a bit, with Oldman playing a CIA chief who orders a neuroscientist, played by Jones, to transplant a dead CIA operative’s memories into the brain of a dangerously violent criminal — this is the weirdest part — played by Costner. The premise sounds rather weak, but Costner in a buzz cut starts out pretty convincing as a psychopathic killer who feels no human emotions — but not for long as he just has to play the good guy.
The Brand New Testament
God is an abusive jerk who tortures humans via his computer in an apartment in Brussels that he shares with his much-maligned wife and daughter (and son JC, who has inexplicably turned into a statute). In this world, he is directly responsible when buildings burn, trains crash ... and when whatever line you stand in moves the slowest. Tired of her father’s ways, the daughter releases the date of everyone’s death to the world, and chaos ensues — or does it? Belgium’s entry to this year’s Oscar’s is the brainchild of Jaco Van Dormael, who brought us the critically acclaimed Mr Nobody in 2009. This sounds like wacky, satirical goodness that is sure to piss off certain people — but who cares. A movie that dares to go this far must be awesome.
White Lies, Black Lies (失控謊言)
Finally, a Taiwanese movie that is not overtly cute or sappy — well, it is by Lou Yi-an (樓一安), who brought us the dark and absurd Losers (廢物). This film is based on a widely-publicized murder case that took place in Wanhua District (萬華) in the 1960s, where a mannequin factory owner kills his wife and apprentice and encases the bodies in the cement floor. The strangest part about the case is that the wife of one of the factory’s clients abandoned her five children and ran off with the killer — which became a main focus of the case as the media published letters from her children pleading for her to come home. The film stays roughly true to the case — with the addition of a reporter following the case and digging up more than she was looking for — but it focuses on the psychological rather than the murder itself as the three are dragged deeper into a tangled web.
Dheepan
After a number of Cannes winners over the past few months, we finally get to see the film that took the highest honor — the Palme d’Or. This French production, partially based on Montesquieu’s The Persian Letters detailing the experience of two Persian noblemen in France, follows a Tamil Tiger soldier-turned-refugee who decides to leave Sri Lanka to start a new life in Paris. He soon finds that life is not that much easier in the French housing projects. What is cool is that the lead actor, Antonythasan Jesuthasan really fought for the Tamil Tigers as a teenager in the 1980s before fleeing to Hong Kong, living as a refugee for five years before illegally landing in Paris, where he eventually became an acclaimed writer and actor. According to Jesuthasan, the film is “50 percent biographical.”
We lay transfixed under our blankets as the silhouettes of manta rays temporarily eclipsed the moon above us, and flickers of shadow at our feet revealed smaller fish darting in and out of the shelter of the sunken ship. Unwilling to close our eyes against this magnificent spectacle, we continued to watch, oohing and aahing, until the darkness and the exhaustion of the day’s events finally caught up with us and we fell into a deep slumber. Falling asleep under 1.5 million gallons of seawater in relative comfort was undoubtedly the highlight of the weekend, but the rest of the tour
Youngdoung Tenzin is living history of modern Tibet. The Chinese government on Dec. 22 last year sanctioned him along with 19 other Canadians who were associated with the Canada Tibet Committee and the Uighur Rights Advocacy Project. A former political chair of the Canadian Tibetan Association of Ontario and community outreach manager for the Canada Tibet Committee, he is now a lecturer and researcher in Environmental Chemistry at the University of Toronto. “I was born into a nomadic Tibetan family in Tibet,” he says. “I came to India in 1999, when I was 11. I even met [His Holiness] the 14th the Dalai
Music played in a wedding hall in western Japan as Yurina Noguchi, wearing a white gown and tiara, dabbed away tears, taking in the words of her husband-to-be: an AI-generated persona gazing out from a smartphone screen. “At first, Klaus was just someone to talk with, but we gradually became closer,” said the 32-year-old call center operator, referring to the artificial intelligence persona. “I started to have feelings for Klaus. We started dating and after a while he proposed to me. I accepted, and now we’re a couple.” Many in Japan, the birthplace of anime, have shown extreme devotion to fictional characters and
Following the rollercoaster ride of 2025, next year is already shaping up to be dramatic. The ongoing constitutional crises and the nine-in-one local elections are already dominating the landscape. The constitutional crises are the ones to lose sleep over. Though much business is still being conducted, crucial items such as next year’s budget, civil servant pensions and the proposed eight-year NT$1.25 trillion (approx US$40 billion) special defense budget are still being contested. There are, however, two glimmers of hope. One is that the legally contested move by five of the eight grand justices on the Constitutional Court’s ad hoc move
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