VIEW THIS PAGE Tricked out in leather and heavy metal hair, the British actor Michael Sheen takes a lively break from his usual high-crust duties to bring wit, actual acting and some unexpected musculature to the goth-horror flick Underworld: Rise of the Lycans The film, a prehistory to the first two Underworld movies, rewinds time to when the werewolves, or Lycans, led by Lucian (Sheen), began rattling the chains clamped on them by their vampire masters, a louche crowd that answers to Viktor (the British actor Bill Nighy).
Set primarily in the lair of the vampires, a dark castle bathed in moon-blue light and dappled with pools of black shadow, the film offers few surprises other than Sheen’s vigorous, physical performance. Although the presence of Sheen — who can be seen twinkling as David Frost in Frost/Nixon and is probably best known for playing Prime Minister Tony Blair in The Queen — is initially distracting, it soon becomes the movie’s greatest asset. There is, as it turns out, some benefit to having a real performance even in a formulaic entertainment like this, as shown by Sheen’s commitment here and by the lackluster star turn of Kate Beckinsale in the previous movies.
Unlike Nighy, who puts an amusing camp spin on his every line and gesture, Sheen appears to have taken his monster duties seriously: his eyes pop with menace, and he howls up a mighty storm. Though the director, Patrick Tatopoulos, clearly likes the looks of the female lead, Rhona Mitra as Sonja, Viktor’s daughter and Lucian’s lover, he gives Sheen plenty of face time. The actor’s value is particularly evident during the various fight sequences, which — because they are underlighted and, as is too often the case in contemporary genre cinema, overedited — come across as needlessly chaotic. It’s at moments like these that Sheen’s bright eyes become beacons, two points of light in the murky dark. VIEW THIS PAGE
Nothing like the spectacular, dramatic unraveling of a political party in Taiwan has unfolded before as has hit the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) over recent weeks. The meltdown of the New Power Party (NPP) and the self-implosion of the New Party (NP) were nothing compared to the drama playing out now involving the TPP. This ongoing saga is so interesting, this is the fifth straight column on the subject. To catch up on this train wreck of a story up to Aug. 20, search for “Donovan’s Deep Dives Ko Wen-je” in a search engine. ANN KAO SENTENCED TO PRISON YET AGAIN,
Despite her well-paying tech job, Li Daijing didn’t hesitate when her cousin asked for help running a restaurant in Mexico City. She packed up and left China for the Mexican capital last year, with dreams of a new adventure. The 30-year-old woman from Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital, hopes one day to start an online business importing furniture from her home country. “I want more,” Li said. “I want to be a strong woman. I want independence.” Li is among a new wave of Chinese migrants who are leaving their country in search of opportunities, more freedom or better financial prospects at a
During her final years of high school, Chinese teenager Xu Yunting found an unusual way to make some pocket money: transforming herself into male video game characters and taking their female devotees on dates. The trend, called “cos commissioning,” has gained traction in China recently, with social media posts garnering millions of views as an increasing number of young women use their purchasing power to engineer a meeting with their dream man in real life. One early morning in Shanghai last month, Xu carefully inserted contacts to enlarge her irises and adjusted a tangerine wig to transform into “Jesse,” a character from
When the Dutch began interacting with the indigenous people of Taiwan, they found that their hunters classified deer hide quality for trade using the Portuguese terms for “head,” “belly,” and “foot.” The Portuguese must have stopped here more than once to trade, but those visits have all been lost to history. They already had a colony on Macao, and did not need Taiwan to gain access to southern China or to the trade corridor that connected Japan with Manila. They were, however, the last to look at Taiwan that way. The geostrategic relationship between Taiwan and the Philippines was established
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