New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Rob Cohen.
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, John Hannah, Luke Ford, Michelle Yeoh
Description: Suspended in animation as terracotta statues by a wily sorceress, the dastardly Dragon Emperor and his 10,000 strong army wait patiently for someone to break the curse. Young archaeologist Alex O'Connell unwittingly wakes the Emperor from his slumber, unleashing the otherworldly ruler and his acolytes on an unsuspecting world. With the fate of mankind hanging in the balance and only himself to blame, Alex turns to the people who can stop the Emperor: his explorer father Rick, gung-ho mother Evelyn and accident-prone uncle Jonathan.
Country: US. 2008. 111mins
Chip off the old block: Brendan Fraser is handsomely wooden as Rick
Fantasy land: the Dragon Emperor
There are certain franchises that you don't really want to see more of. The X-Files came near to that last week. The second episode of The Mummy came nearer still. rob Cohen's third instalment tries hard for something new, but it still looks as if everyone's run out of steam. Somehow they remain determined to ignore the fact and whack on with special effects that will please the eye but ignore the mind.
The plot is set not in dusty old Egypt but in China, circa 240BC, where wicked emperor Qin bullies all and sundry. The character is only very loosely based on Qin Shi Huang, the paranoid first warlord who united the country, created the terracotta warriors seen in all their glory at the British Museum last year and who sought immortality by munching mercury, arsenic and heavy metals. Having murdered anyone getting in his way, Qin decides that all-embracing power is not enough. Like the real emperor he wants to live for ever and engages a well-known witch to cast the requisite spell. She can't deliver the goods herself but says she'll help him find someone who can if he'll let her marry his second-in-command and best friend.
This riles the emperor, who fancies her himself, which is not surprising since she is played by Michelle Yeoh, the best performer in the film and a notable beauty too. So he kills the friend and grabs her without due ceremony.
The perfidy eventually gets him turned into a terracotta warrior himself (she's not just a pretty face) and, when awoken from her 2,000-year curse, he finds he can transmogrify into a dragon with three heads (none of which can act), and fights rick (Brendan Fraser) and evie (Maria Bello) to the death.
Fraser is his usual handsomely wooden self but we miss Rachel Weisz as his missus, since Bello is not much of a bargain in the acting stakes. The real surprise is Jet Li as the emperor. He looks exceedingly grumpy throughout, accomplishes a few of his familiar fight scenes and, sensibly enough, shouts a lot but says as little as possible. Rick and evie come into it because they now have a son (Luke Ford) who carries on the business and, bored to death by their retirement from the archaeological espionage game, they go off to China to help him. He is unwisely looking for the emperor's tomb and, after digging it up, gets assailed by terracotta warriors suddenly coming to life and the emperor himself, who now believes he is truly immortal. Anyway, there's hell to pay and more than a thousand visual tropes lavished on our unwary eyes on the way to the film's conclusion. This suggests another movie is on the way, set in Peru.
The BC part of the film with its trio of Chinese stars (Isabella Leong is the third) looks the best since it doesn't have Rick and co in it and substitutes a sense of old-fashioned spectacle that's well marshalled by Cohen, cinematographer Simon Duggan and production designer Nigel Phelps. Regrettably, when the principals arrive, equipped with some fairly inept banter from writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, things go downhill fairly fast. "There's something terribly romantic about raising the dead," somebody says at one point. If there is, I missed it.
In subsidiary roles, John Hannah reprises the camp Jonathan, Evie's brother, and, unfortunately, gets the worst lines. There clearly ain't no justice in Hollywood. There are also several yaks which look endearing enough but, according to Bello, smell awful.
The whole thing, despite its decent start and $100 million, looks a bit of a mess to me. An entertaining one, no doubt, for those who love the franchise, but a bore for those who don't much care but would have preferred a more well organised
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Morning:
14°c
