Part of this movie is set in Moon Kingdom, a fantastical place hidden in an abandoned amusement park, but the reality 16-year-old Melody (Cheng Hsi-ti, 程希緹) lives in is also quite surreal.
Eschewing linearity, Melody-Go-Round shifts between the two realms and also jumps through time, but the plot is still an easily digestible family drama.
After a bad investment leads the family into bankruptcy, Melody’s father Tai-sheng (James Wen, 溫昇豪) moves the family into his friend’s empty rural mansion. The friend emigrated to the US after marrying an American woman, and the decor of the house is eccentric, almost like a Western castle. Tai-sheng drives around town in the friend’s old car with American flags planted on each side of the hood, eking out a living through odd jobs such as reporting illegal cars, hunting pigeons and selling counterfeit goods. These ventures often get him in trouble.
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings Films
His marriage to Hui-min (Peggy Tseng, 曾珮瑜), who reluctantly works as a salesperson in a luxury jewelry store, has collapsed, but they’re still determined to fake it until Melody turns 18.
But they aren’t good at it, fighting incessantly and carrying on affairs. Melody is aware of the latter, of course, accidentally seeing her mother have car sex, and her frustration and anger toward her parent’s behavior and shenanigans are the focus of the plot.
The simple premise is made entertaining through the overt surrealism in both worlds. Melody is invited to join the Moon Kingdom after sneaking into the creepy amusement park, which is inhabited by a group of youngsters who wrestle, hunt, make hooting sounds and claim to be totally free.
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings Films
The real-world bits are more surreal than the fantasy bits. In one scene, Tai-sheng calms a vicious dog by jerking it off while delivering street-caught pigeons to a customer. The bizarre scene ends with Melody grabbing the bag and setting the birds free, while Tai-sheng stares exasperatedly at the sky.
Unsurprisingly, Melody is upset, and Moon Kingdom becomes a more rational vehicle for her to deal with her problems and come to terms with what’s going on. But she needs to first pass a series of challenges to be fully accepted into the rowdy group.
The three leads provide decent acting, but Wen’s vivid portrayal of the caring yet dishonest and often flippant father is especially memorable.
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings Films
This is director Lai Kuo-an’s (賴國安) second feature after a successful commercial career. His 2017 debut A Fish Out of Water (上岸的魚) also used magical elements to explore a family story, and he seems to be taking this device a step further in Melody-Go-Round.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would