Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
This 3D sequel of the not-entirely-awful Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, directed by Thor Freudenthal, tries to combine Clash of the Titans with the Harry Potter franchise, Transformers and X-Men. It is a strange and almost entirely unsatisfactory combination. Along with its unmemorable cast, led by the unprepossessing Logan Lerman, it fails entirely to capture the audience’s imagination. Percy is a demigod, the son of Neptune, lord of the oceans, and he lives at Camp Half-Blood, a haven for a bunch of adolescents who are actually characters out of Greek mythology. The camp comes under threat from the forces of evil and only by finding the Golden Fleece in the Sea of Monsters can Percy save himself and his friends. The mishmash of mythology and teen movie dynamics is pretty weird, and there is none of the chemistry of the Potter films to lift the material above its labored posturing.
The Purge
Schlock home-invasion movie with aspirations to social satire. Directed by James DeMonaco and starring Ethan Hawke, the story is set in a futuristic America which has reduced crime to almost nothing due to the institution of “the purge” of the title. One night a year all crime becomes legal, and it is this release valve that has society living peacefully all the rest of the year. The actual setup is of a well-to-do family settling down for the night, all snug behind sophisticated defenses, only for something to go terribly wrong when their daughter lets a target of a murderous syndicate into the house. The few interesting ideas proposed in the concept of The Purge quickly get left behind as the director settles in for the usual brutal close quarters combat and stock shocks of a genre thriller.
Planes
Currently, the animation Turbo is on the screens, and Cars one and two are both available on DVD. Planes is more of the same inspirational cuteness. You can pretty much guess the story if you have seen any of the above. Dusty, a crop-dusting plane, dreams of competing in a famous aerial race, but suffers from a fear of heights. With the help of his friends he manages to make his dream come true. Planes hasn’t the star power of Turbo, and makes do with a mostly second-tier voice cast, who do a perfectly adequate job in this tried-and-tested formula, but the jokes, accents and attitudes are all a bit shop soiled. Summer vacation fodder.
Child’s Pose
The Romanian New Wave has carved out a reputation for itself on the arthouse circuit and Child’s Pose is a sure-footed drama by Calin Peter Netzer and starring actress Luminita Gheorghiu, a powerful screen presence in her own right. It is a tragi-comic portrait of a domineering mother who sees a chance to regain control over her adult son when he faces manslaughter charges for reckless driving. Although the plot arc is a little too pat, the tight script and solid acting make it easy to ignore the too easy progression, and Netzer’s ability to shift between melodrama and comedy gives the family portrait a hint of absurdity, making it much more than the grim portrayal of dysfunctional family situations so much beloved of arthouse cinema.
Blancanieves
Silent films seem to be making a comeback as Hollywood leads the talkies to the brink of self-destruction. First there was the enormous success of Michel Hazanavicius The Artist, and now, from Spain comes Blancanieves, a reworking of the story of Snow White set in 1920s Seville and centered on the character of a female bullfighter. Shot in black and white and with a score of entrancing flamenco music, Blancanieves delivers some entrancing images. Directed by Pablo Berger, the film has already proved a massive hit on the festival circuit, and proves, if proof were needed, that filmmaking with heart can be more powerful than all the bells and whistles provided by the big studios.
Feb. 9 to Feb.15 Growing up in the 1980s, Pan Wen-li (潘文立) was repeatedly told in elementary school that his family could not have originated in Taipei. At the time, there was a lack of understanding of Pingpu (plains Indigenous) peoples, who had mostly assimilated to Han-Taiwanese society and had no official recognition. Students were required to list their ancestral homes then, and when Pan wrote “Taipei,” his teacher rejected it as impossible. His father, an elder of the Ketagalan-founded Independence Presbyterian Church in Xinbeitou (自立長老會新北投教會), insisted that their family had always lived in the area. But under postwar
On paper, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) enters this year’s nine-in-one elections with almost nowhere to go but up. Yet, there are fears in the pan-green camp that they may not do much better then they did in 2022. Though the DPP did somewhat better at the city and county councillor level in 2022, at the “big six” municipality mayoral and county commissioner level, it was a disaster for the party. Then-president and party chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) made a string of serious strategic miscalculations that led to the party’s worst-ever result at the top executive level. That year, the party
As much as I’m a mountain person, I have to admit that the ocean has a singular power to clear my head. The rhythmic push and pull of the waves is profoundly restorative. I’ve found that fixing my gaze on the horizon quickly shifts my mental gearbox into neutral. I’m not alone in savoring this kind of natural therapy, of course. Several locations along Taiwan’s coast — Shalun Beach (沙崙海水浴場) near Tamsui and Cisingtan (七星潭) in Hualien are two of the most famous — regularly draw crowds of sightseers. If you want to contemplate the vastness of the ocean in true
In 2012, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) heroically seized residences belonging to the family of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “purchased with the proceeds of alleged bribes,” the DOJ announcement said. “Alleged” was enough. Strangely, the DOJ remains unmoved by the any of the extensive illegality of the two Leninist authoritarian parties that held power in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan. If only Chen had run a one-party state that imprisoned, tortured and murdered its opponents, his property would have been completely safe from DOJ action. I must also note two things in the interests of completeness.
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