Bolt
This Disney animated feature tells the story of Bolt, a pumped-up little doggie whose TV star persona (should that be “canina”?) in an action show is a lot less real than he thinks. When he finds himself cast astray, the challenge is not only to adapt to the new world and his newfound physical limitations but also to find his true identity. Some have likened this well-received film to The Truman Show and doggone road epics like Homeward Bound, but the most fetching comparison that leaps to mind is Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, a tale of innocence supplanted that also ends with an action sequence in Hollywood. With the voices of John Travolta as Bolt, Miley Cyrus as his owner and Malcolm McDowell as the baddie. Screening in 3D at compatible theaters.
Transporter 3
Jason Statham is back in theaters as Frank Martin, the inscrutable deliveryman of choice for organized crime in Europe. In this entry, thugs kidnap the daughter of a Ukrainian environment official (Jeroen Krabbe from The Fugitive) to force him to do their bidding, and Statham is the man they turn to to keep her out of harm’s way — for the time being. Natalya Rudakova, as the daughter, offers her services as the exotic but irritating female love interest that Taiwan’s Shu Qi (舒淇) provided in Part 1. Written and produced — again — by Luc Besson.
Elegy
Ben Kingsley is a professor of literary criticism in New York who never got over the bug for seducing students — careful seductions, so as not to jeopardize his tenure — and his next target is Penelope Cruz. The wily bugger isn’t quite prepared for his own primal jealousy, and that’s before Cruz’s Cuban character ratchets up the emotional heat. A good supporting cast (Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson, Peter Saarsgard) helps to sell a story that will put off a lot of potential audiences from the get-go. The Village Voice called this adaptation of Philip Roth’s book The Dying Animal “dreary,” but other critics have been kinder. Either way, it’s got Kingsley, who has seduced movie lovers for decades, and Cruz, whose best movies have been the ones that fewer people see.
The Last Princess
This is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, the rich clan warfare classic from 1958 that provided Western filmmakers with bountiful inspiration — not least George Lucas. This version of hidden gold and epic battles prefers celebrity and computer-generated special effects to characterization, which marks it as a would-be classic for the Nintendo era. Those who think depictions of samurai are falling apart on the big screen these days should check out Kurosawa’s oldies, or even the Lone Wolf and Cub series for immediate, if even more bloodthirsty, relief. Directed by Shinji Higuchi, whose last effort was The Sinking of Japan, which did reasonable business here two years ago.
The King of Ping Pong
An award-winning Swedish drama, the king of the title is a very large youngster with an odd family whose dirty laundry is more hindrance than help to his personal development. But he does have a supportive — if combative — brother, and his devotion to table tennis is a bonus. Family secrets emerge over time, and things take a turn from the slightly whimsical to the dramatic. Likened to My Life as a Dog, the classic Swedish thematic forerunner to this effort, there might also be a touch of the younger Jane Campion (Sweetie, for instance) in the way director Jens Jonsson goes about his business.
Most heroes are remembered for the battles they fought. Taiwan’s Black Bat Squadron is remembered for flying into Chinese airspace 838 times between 1953 and 1967, and for the 148 men whose sacrifice bought the intelligence that kept Taiwan secure. Two-thirds of the squadron died carrying out missions most people wouldn’t learn about for another 40 years. The squadron lost 15 aircraft and 148 crew members over those 14 years, making it the deadliest unit in Taiwan’s military history by casualty rate. They flew at night, often at low altitudes, straight into some of the most heavily defended airspace in Asia.
This month the government ordered a one-year block of Xiaohongshu (小紅書) or Rednote, a Chinese social media platform with more than 3 million users in Taiwan. The government pointed to widespread fraud activity on the platform, along with cybersecurity failures. Officials said that they had reached out to the company and asked it to change. However, they received no response. The pro-China parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), immediately swung into action, denouncing the ban as an attack on free speech. This “free speech” claim was then echoed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC),
Many people in Taiwan first learned about universal basic income (UBI) — the idea that the government should provide regular, no-strings-attached payments to each citizen — in 2019. While seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 US presidential election, Andrew Yang, a politician of Taiwanese descent, said that, if elected, he’d institute a UBI of US$1,000 per month to “get the economic boot off of people’s throats, allowing them to lift their heads up, breathe, and get excited for the future.” His campaign petered out, but the concept of UBI hasn’t gone away. Throughout the industrialized world, there are fears that
Like much in the world today, theater has experienced major disruptions over the six years since COVID-19. The pandemic, the war in Ukraine and social media have created a new normal of geopolitical and information uncertainty, and the performing arts are not immune to these effects. “Ten years ago people wanted to come to the theater to engage with important issues, but now the Internet allows them to engage with those issues powerfully and immediately,” said Faith Tan, programming director of the Esplanade in Singapore, speaking last week in Japan. “One reaction to unpredictability has been a renewed emphasis on
RSS