Melancholia
Lars von Trier takes on the end of the world and shows that he can bring the art house into the multiplex, a trick that has been tried many times, but which has seldom succeeded. Whether or not Von Trier has pulled it off is arguable, but he has certainly wowed the critics with his Zen-like assurance and intellectual scope. The mind-blowingly massive cast, which spans Hollywood aristocracy such as Kirsten Dunst and Kiefer Sutherland to art house eccentrics like Charlotte Gainsbourg and Charlotte Rampling, play at the top of their form. There are plenty of big set pieces, sumptuous costumes, and dense art references that include an eight-minute melody of surreal tableaux set to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and images referencing Shakespeare and echoing the dreamlike photos of Gregory Crewdson. This is cinema with a capital C.
Zookeeper
Not to be confused with the excellent film The Zookeeper (2001) starring Sam Neill and set against the inhumanity of the Balkan conflict, Zookeeper is your standard Hollywood comedy that needs cute talking animals to make up for the fact that it doesn’t have any proper gags. Stars Kevin James, a B-list comedian probably best known for the forgettable TV series The King of Queens. He plays Griffin Keyes, a nice guy who can’t get the girl, Kate (Rosario Dawson), because he is a zookeeper. But then the animals step in and give all sorts of silly animal advice that gets Griffin into all kinds of “funny” situations. Only you saw them coming a mile away and when they happen, you forget to laugh.
Black Butterflies
Biopic about the life and suicide of the South African poet Ingrid Jonker (Carice van Houten), who found world recognition 30 years after her death when one of her poems was read by Nelson Mandela at the opening of parliament. As she is considered to be “a South African Sylvia Plath,” you know that this will not be a happy film. Director Paula van der Oest handles Jonker’s complex relationship with her father (who was South Africa’s minister for censorship, played here by Rutger Hauer) and her destructive relationship with fellow writer Jack Cope (Liam Cunningham) with considerable sensitivity, managing to avoid pigeonholing her as a glib stereotype of the highly strung poet.
The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond
Released in 2008, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond is a self-conscious and stagy production of a film script written by Tennessee Williams and directed by Jodie Markell. Williams skirts dangerously close to self-parody, spiced as the film is with lashings of overblown Southern Gothic. There’s the arrogant debutante, the studly suitor, the alcoholic father, the insane mother and a powerful spinster aunt who controls the family fortune. To make matters worse, the film, directed by TV actress-turned-director Markell, doesn’t have the production value to support its period drama pretensions.
Ninja Kids!!!
Another product from the twisted but fecund mind of Japanese director Takashi Miike, though this time he takes his fantastic musings on Japanese samurai movies in a decidedly child-friendly direction, which is very much at odds with the ultra-violence of cult classics like Ichi the Killer. Ninja Kids!!! tells the story of a bunch of children studying at a ninja academy, and the rather chaotic film is made up of a relentless barrage of gags parodying genre cliches. There are delightful moments, but not quite enough to sustain the film’s 100 minutes.
The Cinderella
Thai horror film by director Sarawut Intaraprom. When a young actor dies after an on-set argument with the movie crew, his mother resorts to black magic to avenge her son. Soon members of the crew start to die. There are some Thai hotties who meet unpleasant deaths and an online teaser suggests some startlingly horrific gore.
Doraemon: Nobita and the New Steel Troops
Nobita and the robotic blue cat Doraemon feature in a remake of a 1986 movie of the same name. Nobita inadvertently creates a giant robot called Zanda Claus who turns out to be a powerful weapon against the robot army that’s about to invade Earth. For fans and young children.
SuperShow 3 — Super Junior 3rd Asian Tour Concert
The title pretty much says it all. This is a film of South Korean boy band Super Junior’s concert in Seoul’s Olympic Stadium, in August last year, which began its 3rd Asian tour. You’re either already a fan or you’re not.
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
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
RSS