A road warrior of a different sort, the title character played by Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli spends much of the story traveling by foot across an eerie landscape, a long and quick knife at the ready. The brown, dusty environs look familiar and not, dotted with abandoned cars and the occasional corpse. When Eli pauses, the camera settles near his feet, and the sky opens above him like a sheltering hand. With his green jacket and unsmiling mouth, he looks like a veteran of an unknown war, a soldier of misfortune — though, given the fog of religiosity that hangs over the movie, he might be an avenging angel.
This is the first movie directed by the talented twins Allen and Albert Hughes since From Hell, their torpid, predictably hyperviolent 2001 take on Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s graphic novel about Jack the Ripper. Although this new one has its comic-book qualities, good and bad, the Hugheses have stanched the blood in The Book of Eli, making it easier to pay attention to what else is happening on screen. They stage an early fight, for instance, entirely in silhouette, so that the arcs of spurting gore appears black, not red. Like all the fight sequences, this one is highly stylized: Set inside a tunnel with the camera low and the sky serving as an illuminated backdrop, it looks like a page out of a comic come to animated life.
The graphic simplicity of this scene works not only because it’s visually striking, but also because it’s a part of a meaningful piece in a story in which everything, nature and civilization included, has been stripped away. Much like the land and narrative he travels through, Eli has been similarly reduced. A loner, he doesn’t speak much, even to himself. During the first few minutes of the movie, which opens in some barren woods with either falling snow or ash, he remains silently fixed on his task: bagging a pitifully thin cat. His first companion is a mouse (he offers it some roast cat), a creature that proves friendlier company than most of the isolated people he encounters, the majority of whom, as in The Road, would like to cook him over a fire.
Shooting in high-definition digital (with the Red camera) and working with the cinematographer Don Burgess (a frequent shooter for Robert Zemeckis), with New Mexico standing in for the US, the Hugheses have created a plausible post-apocalyptic world, one that draws from the western (Hollywood, Sergio Leone) and the tradition of science-fiction dystopia. As George Miller proved in his brilliant Mad Max cycle — one of the Hughes brothers’ more overt cinematic touchstones here — and as Quentin Tarantino reaffirmed with his two Kill Bill films, the western can be reconfigured to suit any number of contexts, themes and warriors. (In one scene, when Eli settles into a room, a poster for the 1975 cult film A Boy and His Dog, another post-apocalyptic fairy tale, hangs on the wall behind him.)
After hunting the cat, a little human mayhem and a lot of atmospheric preambles. Eli wanders into a deadwood town and the story kicks into gear, for better if sometimes for disappointing worse. The happiest development is the introduction of Gary Oldman as Carnegie, the leader of the outpost. Fortified by his thugs, including some bulging muscle called Redridge (Ray Stevenson, from the HBO show Rome), Carnegie keeps the peace, doling out the scarce supplies to the ragtag inhabitants. Among the few faces that stand out from the squinting, scurrying horde are a Mr Fixit (an amusing Tom Waits); Carnegie’s lover, Claudia (a sympathetic Jennifer Beals); and her daughter, Solara (the miscast Mila Kunis), who despite the deprivations, appears to have swung by a Beverly Hills salon for an eyebrow wax.
Oldman gives the movie, which at its most serious veers into lugubriousness, a nice jolt and a flinty presence that Washington can spark against. But the story that the two play out, beat by beat, cliche by cliche, rarely rises to their talents. Written by Gary Whitta, with some rewriting by Anthony Peckham, the story takes a wrong turn once Solara enters the picture, first as bait for Eli (he doesn’t bite) and then as his unwanted traveling companion.
Kunis isn’t to blame. As Jessica Rabbit says, with knowing wit, in Who Framed Roger Rabbit: “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.” Even so, despite Solara and her manicured brows, and the increasingly pro forma action — Eli has what Carnegie wants, and so the bad man gives rabid chase — the movie keeps you watching and generally engaged. There’s a ticklish interlude at a house where Eli and Solara encounter a fine pair named Martha and George, played with energy and inviting humor by Frances de la Tour and the invaluable Michael Gambon. Despite the air of unease and wary glances, when George cranks up a phonograph, and the disco song Ring My Bell pours out, you’re happily, goofily hooked.
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
Indigenous Truku doctor Yuci (Bokeh Kosang), who resents his father for forcing him to learn their traditional way of life, clashes head to head in this film with his younger brother Siring (Umin Boya), who just wants to live off the land like his ancestors did. Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) opens with Yuci as the man of the hour as the village celebrates him getting into medical school, but then his father (Nolay Piho) wakes the brothers up in the middle of the night to go hunting. Siring is eager, but Yuci isn’t. Their mother (Ibix Buyang) begs her husband to let
In late December 1959, Taiwan dispatched a technical mission to the Republic of Vietnam. Comprising agriculturalists and fisheries experts, the team represented Taiwan’s foray into official development assistance (ODA), marking its transition from recipient to donor nation. For more than a decade prior — and indeed, far longer during Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule on the “mainland” — the Republic of China (ROC) had received ODA from the US, through agencies such as the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). More than a third of domestic investment came via such sources between 1951
For the past century, Changhua has existed in Taichung’s shadow. These days, Changhua City has a population of 223,000, compared to well over two million for the urban core of Taichung. For most of the 1684-1895 period, when Taiwan belonged to the Qing Empire, the position was reversed. Changhua County covered much of what’s now Taichung and even part of modern-day Miaoli County. This prominence is why the county seat has one of Taiwan’s most impressive Confucius temples (founded in 1726) and appeals strongly to history enthusiasts. This article looks at a trio of shrines in Changhua City that few sightseers visit.
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