Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
It wasn’t even that great back in the 1980’s as a television show, but director Jonathan Liebesman, working with Michael Bay, has created something significantly less interesting even that that blip in the pop culture radar. The concept retains the pre-adolescent vibe, but to grab an audience which has reached puberty, the filmmakers have added Megan Fox as April O’Neil, the chick who discovers the quartet of lovable skateboarding dudes whose mission is to protect New York City from arch villain Shredder and his evil Foot Clan. Liebesman directed Wrath of the Titans, and with the presence of Bay, one can expect a film that aims to impress simply by ramping up the volume. For Hollywood gossip watchers, one of the most notable features of the film is the return of Fox to the good graces of Bay, after he fired her from Transformers: Dark of the Moon for making a silly comment comparing Bay and Hitler. This has all the production values you can expect from a huge budget and the kinds of resources that Bay commands, and with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles you get exactly what you deserve.
Into the Storm
If Twister left you yearning for more tornado mayhem, then Into the Storm is just the ticket. The film tracks the events over a single day when the town of Silverton is ravaged by an unprecedented onslaught of tornadoes. Everything is by the book. There are the group of university graduates caught in their campus, the anxious father trying to save his son, the crazy tornado chasers with their specialist gear looking for the ultimate adrenalin rush and the attractive female scientist who gets to say things like: “I have been studying storms all my life and this is the biggest storm ever.” There is nothing new, and the special effects are not noticeably superior to Twister, which was made way back in 1996, though more and bigger things do get thrown up into the air. The film is directed by Steven Quale, who has worked as a second unit director for major films like Titanic and Avatar, but whose own directorial debut was the very-far-from-memorable Final Destination 5. Production values are adequate, but for the most part Into the Storm is little more than lots of people shouting at each other and getting very wet.
20 Feet from Stardom
Backing singers have been crucial to the success of some of the best-loved works of pop music, but their names are often unknown. 20 Feet from Stardom takes a look into the world of these anonymous singers who have contributed so much. Director Morgan Neville mixes amazing archive footage of singers along with searching contemporary interviews that explore the choices and circumstances that kept these singers always standing behind the star. The singers, mostly African-American women, gave their all to their art, and while 20 Feet from Stardom does not shy away from the unfairness of the music industry that kept many of these women out of the limelight despite their manifest talent, it celebrates them rather than pities them, and follows them through their frustrations and frequent despondency and glories in their contribution to contemporary music. 20 Feet from Stardom is the kind of film that immediately has you searching for tracks you haven’t heard before, and listening to familiar tracks with new interest. A must see for all music lovers.
Deepsea Challenge
James Cameron is in love with deep sea exploration, and in Deepsea Challenge, the director of Aliens, Terminator and Avatar takes us on a journey into the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on the earth’s surface, with a maximum-known depth of 10.911km. Unlike previous deep sea documentaries like Aliens of the Deep and Ghosts of the Abyss, Deepsea Challenge is not directed by Cameron. A trio of associates takes the helm, and the focus is put on Cameron and his crew of submarine designers trying to get the unique craft ready for the adventure. Effort is made to create a sense of drama to the whole event, and the risks that Cameron is taking are undeniable, but ultimately Deepsea Challenge does not really warrant the big screen treatment it is given here. Apart from the talking heads, the Mariana Trench, for all its fame, is really not much to look at. Sure there are occasional creatures never seen before, but for the rest, it is rather like a lunar surface, and the film would be perfectly enjoyable as a primetime National Geographic feature, which it in fact resembles. This is clearly a bit of a vanity project for Cameron, who has already reached the pinnacle of fame as a film director, and it is both a worthy and an interesting venture. The only question is: Is it worth cinema prices?
Two Lives
Loosely based on a novel by Hannelore Hippe that taps into the effects of Lebensborn, Heinrich Himmler’s mad effort to engineer an Aryan super-race during the Second World War. The project saw the commandeering of offspring of blond, blue-eyed Germans and similar counterparts in Nazi-occupied countries such as Norway, and, as with all such efforts at eugenic engineering, the price is born by the children. Directed by German filmmaker Georg Maas, Two Lives taps into this extraordinary material using the techniques of the spy movie, with distant echoes of John le Carre, as the characters try and discover the truth about others even as they desperately hide the facts about themselves. The film tells the story of Katrine (Juliane Kohler), the daughter of a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier, who finds her idyllic life disrupted as she refuses to testify in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of her fellow “war children.” There are moments when the film falls into mawkishness, but on the whole it proceeds at a brisk pace, and features a small but powerful performance by Liv Ullmann.
May 26 to June 1 When the Qing Dynasty first took control over many parts of Taiwan in 1684, it roughly continued the Kingdom of Tungning’s administrative borders (see below), setting up one prefecture and three counties. The actual area of control covered today’s Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The administrative center was in Taiwan Prefecture, in today’s Tainan. But as Han settlement expanded and due to rebellions and other international incidents, the administrative units became more complex. By the time Taiwan became a province of the Qing in 1887, there were three prefectures, eleven counties, three subprefectures and one directly-administered prefecture, with
It’s an enormous dome of colorful glass, something between the Sistine Chapel and a Marc Chagall fresco. And yet, it’s just a subway station. Formosa Boulevard is the heart of Kaohsiung’s mass transit system. In metro terms, it’s modest: the only transfer station in a network with just two lines. But it’s a landmark nonetheless: a civic space that serves as much more than a point of transit. On a hot Sunday, the corridors and vast halls are filled with a market selling everything from second-hand clothes to toys and house decorations. It’s just one of the many events the station hosts,
Among Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) villages, a certain rivalry exists between Arunothai, the largest of these villages, and Mae Salong, which is currently the most prosperous. Historically, the rivalry stems from a split in KMT military factions in the early 1960s, which divided command and opium territories after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cut off open support in 1961 due to international pressure (see part two, “The KMT opium lords of the Golden Triangle,” on May 20). But today this rivalry manifests as a different kind of split, with Arunothai leading a pro-China faction and Mae Salong staunchly aligned to Taiwan.
Two moves show Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) is gunning for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) party chair and the 2028 presidential election. Technically, these are not yet “officially” official, but by the rules of Taiwan politics, she is now on the dance floor. Earlier this month Lu confirmed in an interview in Japan’s Nikkei that she was considering running for KMT chair. This is not new news, but according to reports from her camp she previously was still considering the case for and against running. By choosing a respected, international news outlet, she declared it to the world. While the outside world
RSS