In DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, Ben Stiller returns to the comedy crime scene to portray a monstrous, pumped-up fitness guru and hilarious variation of Derek Zoolander, the airheaded male model he played with pursed-lipped, vacant-eyed perfection three years (and many, many dull movies) ago. Nobody eviscerates the scary depths of male narcissism with such ferocity, and it is a huge relief to find Stiller flexing his oiled, low-comedy triceps with such vengeful glee.
His character, White Goodman, a glaring, preening product of fanatical self-improvement, wears a blow-dry mullet and a Fu Manchu mustache and favors hideous white leisure suits. Affecting the pseudomacho bark of a drill instructor, he suggests Anthony Robbins as a shrimpy, steroid-enhanced gym rat. Making a crude pass at a woman, he remains blissfully unfazed when she throws up in her mouth. "In some cultures, they only eat vomit," he chirps. "I read about it in a book."
PHOTOS COURTESY OF FOX MOVIES
Once a 279kg sack of blubber, White, when alone in his office, practices self-administered aversion therapy in which he attaches electrodes to his nipples and trains himself to resist the temptations of junk food. Before an appointment with a pretty woman, he uses an air pump to inflate his crotch into an outrageous bulge. Stiller, with a face that veers between the geeky and the handsome, and a bunched-up body that even when buffed looks strangely misshapen, skewers male vanity with the X-ray vision of someone who has writhed in its clutches.
White and the world of sneering babes and hunks that crowds his gleaming emporium, the Globo Gym, represent the Goliath that Peter La Fleur (Vince Vaughn), the slobby, nice guy who owns Average Joe's, a nearby low-rent gym, sets out to slay. When a pretty blond bank lawyer threatens to foreclose on Peter's gym unless he comes comes up with US$50,000 in a hurry, White itches to buy the crumbling enterprise and add it to his chain.
The absurd moneymaking scheme that Peter and his nerdy pals come up with is to compete for the US$50,000 first prize in a Las Vegas dodge ball tournament. Never mind that the Average Joes have no experience in the sport. To study it they absorb a grim 1950s instructional film in which a youthful Patches O'Houlihan (Hank Azaria), a legendary dodge ball champion, gives lessons in what he touts as "the sport of violence, exclusion and degradation."
Meanwhile, White assembles his own team, the Purple Cobras, to compete in what one gushing sports announcer describes as an event "bigger than the World Cup, the World Series and World War II combined."
Lo and behold, the aged Patches (Rip Torn) turns up in a motorized wheelchair, his aggression undiminished, to train the Average Joes. His favorite teaching tools, carried in a sack, are wrenches that he hurls full-force at the heads of his pupils to help them master the essential D's of the sport: "dip, duck, dive and dodge." Many head injuries later, the Average Joes have learned their lessons well.
DodgeBall, a promising first feature written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (his previous credits include Reebok commercials) may be a silly throwaway sports spoof, but it is consistently funny. Some of its jokes are tasteless, others envelope-pushing, and some both. The movie loses only a little of its maniacal glee by the time of the playoffs. In the first round, when the Average Joes find themselves facing a team of savagely competitive Girl Scouts, the movie glides up to another peak of daffiness. In a later round, a mix-up in uniforms forces them to prance around the court in skimpy leather and bondage gear.
The movie unapologetically roots for the uber-nerds. And what a curious crew they are. They include a pudgy Panglossian milquetoast (Stephen Root) whose blocked anger explodes in the nick of time; a chicken-chested, absent-minded ninny (Joel David Moore); and a lunatic who imagines he's a pirate. Any movie that is fonder of these losers than of their robotic would-be nemeses is OK by me.
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
Artifacts found at archeological sites in France and Spain along the Bay of Biscay shoreline show that humans have been crafting tools from whale bones since more than 20,000 years ago, illustrating anew the resourcefulness of prehistoric people. The tools, primarily hunting implements such as projectile points, were fashioned from the bones of at least five species of large whales, the researchers said. Bones from sperm whales were the most abundant, followed by fin whales, gray whales, right or bowhead whales — two species indistinguishable with the analytical method used in the study — and blue whales. With seafaring capabilities by humans
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