Displaying more corn than is usually found in the North Pole, Arctic Tale documents the travails of a polar bear cub and a walrus pup as they struggle toward adulthood on diminishing quantities of ice.
Cute of face and name, fuzzy Nanu and sleek Seela (played by a variety of animals at different stages of life) dodge predators and heed their mommies while the filmmakers, Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson, spin a global-warming-for-tykes theme around their endangered bodies. This being an American family movie, the pop songs and unbridled flatulence are givens.
Assembled from more than 800 hours of film shot at the Arctic Circle over the last 15 years, this National Geographic production (written in part by Al Gore's daughter Kristin) uses its narrative artifice to serve the greater good. And if you can get past Sister Sledge belting We Are Family over a herd of frolicking walruses - whose mating calls sound a lot like Tom Waits after venturing to the heart of Saturday night and back - the movie's stunning underwater photography (fearlessly captured by Ravetch) effectively dilutes the saccharine tone.
PHOTO: AP
Still, adults may squirm at the film's persistent anthropomorphism and Queen Latifah's cloying narration. "Meanwhile, Seela's tusks have filled out nicely, and the boys are taking notice," she observes. And if "the boys" are anything like their human counterparts, I'll bet they have no idea what color her eyes are, either.
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
The Taipei Times last week reported that the Control Yuan said it had been “left with no choice” but to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the central government budget, which left it without a budget. Lost in the outrage over the cuts to defense and to the Constitutional Court were the cuts to the Control Yuan, whose operating budget was slashed by 96 percent. It is unable even to pay its utility bills, and in the press conference it convened on the issue, said that its department directors were paying out of pocket for gasoline
On March 13 President William Lai (賴清德) gave a national security speech noting the 20th year since the passing of China’s Anti-Secession Law (反分裂國家法) in March 2005 that laid the legal groundwork for an invasion of Taiwan. That law, and other subsequent ones, are merely political theater created by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to have something to point to so they can claim “we have to do it, it is the law.” The president’s speech was somber and said: “By its actions, China already satisfies the definition of a ‘foreign hostile force’ as provided in the Anti-Infiltration Act, which unlike
Mirror mirror on the wall, what’s the fairest Disney live-action remake of them all? Wait, mirror. Hold on a second. Maybe choosing from the likes of Alice in Wonderland (2010), Mulan (2020) and The Lion King (2019) isn’t such a good idea. Mirror, on second thought, what’s on Netflix? Even the most devoted fans would have to acknowledge that these have not been the most illustrious illustrations of Disney magic. At their best (Pete’s Dragon? Cinderella?) they breathe life into old classics that could use a little updating. At their worst, well, blue Will Smith. Given the rapacious rate of remakes in modern
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