Reviews

Books

Pook book series

The Changjiang Literature & Arts Publishing House has released the first batch of the so-called Pook publication series for young readers.

Pook is a word coined by Guo Jingming, a young writer and publisher who has not only churned out best-selling novels but also edited and compiled popular magazine-book series, such as Island (Dao), and Best Novels for Youths (Zui Xiao Shuo), which respectively sold at least 40,000 copies per issue.

Well-designed, easy to carry and packaged with give-away collectibles such as hand-drawn posters, the Pook series, featuring mainly novellas written by young authors, appeal to readers in high schools and universities, says Guo.

Zhu Linyong

Roaming the Borders of Heaven

Lucy Luo, a Chinese-born poet/writer from Rochester, New York, has traveled to the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Russia and finally the United States.

As a medical major, she describes what she sees, feels and experiences through poetry, a writing form she began to love during her childhood in Beijing decades ago.

The China Wenlian Publishing House has published a collection of her selected poems, Roaming the Borders of Heaven (Lang Ji Tian Ya), in Chinese.

"These poems are an excellent introduction to a writer who had kept close ties with her Chinese homeland while venturing into the vast world around us," says Edward D. Hoch, an American writer and Luo's friend. ZLY

Film

The Matrix Revolutions

Directed by the Wachowski Brothers, starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss

Doh! Just when things seemed to be gearing up to a satisfying climax for The Matrix trilogy, a big pile of stink lands in laps of fans. Overlong, overcooked and lacking the vibrancy of previous installments, The Matrix Revolutions should have been a soaring experience, but instead, it's a Hindenburg. Staggeringly self-indulged, this is a movie that is so convinced of its own conceptual brilliance that it forgets to fulfil its main requirement: to entertain. While in Reloaded, we got the sense that maybe a little humor was creeping in, this ends the ride in Dullsville.

The sentinels have finally drilled their way into Zion (about bloody time!), and the emancipated humans face what seems to be certain annihilation. That is, of course, unless Neo can pull his finger out and strike at the heart of the evil program. To do this, he'll first need to grapple with his own inadequacy complexes and realize that he is really the savior that Morpheus has been blabbing on about all along. Still, to make an omelet, a few eggs need to get cracked, and the battle for mankind's survival has a bodycount that must - by the doctrine of such movies - claim at least a few of the central characters.

After a long journey to get to the bottom of who controls what, the best that directing duo, the Wachowski Brothers, can come up with is an ethereal figurehead. Whatever. The figurehead is like a straight-faced Wizard of Oz who talks the same kind of navel-gazing mumbo-jumbo that Morpheus does. The final scenes are the cinematic equivalent of a sports coat-wearing adolescent that is trying to impress his date by referencing concepts that are beyond his grasp. No wonder Keanu frowns the entire movie; it must be frustrating to be the hero in an action movie that talks in riddles.

Ben Davey

(China Daily 09/25/2007 page20)