In a country of drug traffickers, savage battles between cartels, and their victims, the spark that set everything off came from a remote spot in an isolated mountain range. In the early hours of April 19, two CIA officers and two agents from the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office were killed in a brutal car crash. On a road that winds through the gorges of the Sierra Tarahumara, their vehicle plunged into the depths of a ravine. The tragedy itself quickly receded into the background because of what it revealed: U.S. intelligence officers were with Mexican state agents returning from dismantling a huge drug lab. That revelation quickly set the rest of the pieces in motion.
LibriVox recording of Diary of a Provincial Lady, Version 2 by E. M. Delafield. Read in English by Anne Fletcher. Daily thoughts on the life of a fictional upper middle-class lady. The family is well-connected but rather short of money, so " keeping up with the Jones's" requires some tricky balancin....
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Munich is a top European city for urban vibrancy, culture, and a fascinating, beautiful heritage spanning the Middle Ages, the baroque and rococo periods of the 18th century, and beyond. The city reflects well the massive wealth of the Bavarian nobility over the centuries. Although not captured here, I also loved the extensive neighbourhoods immediately surrounding Munich's Altstadt, with its many trendy cafes, great restaurants, and young people, as well as beautiful, lively parks such as the English Garden.
EXCLUSIVE: Nat Geo has bought the BBC’s docu-drama about the sinking of the Titanic. Titanic Sinks Tonight tells the story of the final hours of the most famous sea disaster of all time. From the crucial seconds before the ship hit the iceberg, to the final moments when the hull sank beneath the waves, the […]
Usually when we’re talking about Japanese lifestyle brand Felissimo, we’re highlighting one of their animal-themed creations, like the Shiba Inu-shaped hot water bottle cover or red panda nap cushion. But Felissimo also has a “Museum Division” that draws inspiration from the arts, and who’ve come up with something a little less cute and cuddly looking.
Felissimo has entered into a creative partnership with the Kyoto Kanze Kaikan, or Kyoto Kanze Noh Theater. Noh is Japan’s oldest form of stage theater that’s still performed today, with its origins predating kabuki by more than a century. Noh performers wear masks while on stage, and with many of the stories dealing with demonic possession, madness, and other such chilling topics, the masks too are often unnerving in design, but the amount of undeniably skilled craftsmanship that goes into them also makes them, one could argue, in a way, beautiful.
Of course, Felissimo realizes that the average person doesn’t really have many occasions on which to slip on a Noh mask, so they’ve instead applied three classical designs as motifs for organizer pouches. With help from Kyoto Kanze Kaikan, Felissimo has produced a hannya mask pouch, showing a female demon consumed by jealously and sporting intimidating horns, and also a Okina mask, showing an old man with a long beard.
Being roughly the same size as a person’s face, they can actually hold quite a bit of stuff, with interior zippered sections and pockets to keep everything nice and organized.
Also part of the lineup is a pouch styled after a Kasei mask. Also known as a manbi mask, this type of mask is meant to create different atmosphere depending on the angle it’s viewed from, switching from a beautiful woman with a demure smile to something bolder or even sinister. The Kasei mask pouch was actually created by Felissimo’s designers prior to the start of their collaboration with Kyoto Kanze Kaikan, but as you can see, they were still able to achieve some terrifying results.
As further proof of just how committed Felissimo was to authenticity, even the backsides of the pouches mimic the interior surface of Noh masks.
The whole lineup is available from Felissimo online store here, priced at 2,860 yen (US$18.50) each. And should you find yourself instead in the mood for something that’s still strange but not quite so scary, don’t forget about Felissimo’s steamy Myaku-Myaku photo album.
It took Felix the Cat 72 years to star in his only feature film. His creator (and, at times, sole animator), Otto Mesmer, did not live to see this event, nor did anyone else who brought various incarnations of Felix to animated life over the decades. However, the last person to usher Felix to reasonable success in 1958, Joe Oriolo, passed the reins on to his son Don, who paid tribute to Dad with Felix the Cat: The Movie.
If there was ever a labor of love, this 1989 animated film is it. Don Oriolo wrote the script, did some voice work, served as one of the producers, and, if the end credits are correct, even performed some of the music. Wow. The direction was by Tibor Hernadi (“Animation director” on The Time Masters). No less than six nations (primarily Hungary) contributed to the production.
Yet, the film had but one US theatrical showing (as the opening selection of the third Los Angeles Animation Celebration), and plans for a wider release ended when the movie’s distributor, New World Pictures, went belly-up. The picture went unseen until it appeared on DVD on August 29, 2002.
Felix is, alas, not a very good film, and most critics have been considerably harsher than that. The story, involving Felix’s adventures in an alternate dimension where he battles on the side of a beautiful princess against her evil uncle, the Duke of Zill, is disjointed and plagued by unnecessary scenes that push the plot aside. In one of them, we watch foxes (who get their own song!) prepare to urinate on Felix’s bag. They disappear after that. An interlude with tap-dancing mice goes on far too long. And how about the one-time appearance of a dragon that silently impersonates (I think) Marlon Brando?
The animation reflects the $9M budget and is almost universally floppy and choppy: mouth movements rarely match the dialogue, and facial expressions often do not correspond to what the characters are experiencing. The editing is atrocious. There are some very primitive CGI sequences of Felix’s head bookending the film. Most of Felix’s lines are like “Dad jokes” that would embarrass Dad. Some of the characters (particularly Madame Pearl and Pim) look like they came from different films.
The picture strongly reminded me of the 1986 film Cat City (another very bad Hungarian film) in its flawed design and execution, and I would not be surprised if Felix employed many of the same animators. However, Felix is the better film, and this leads us to why this movie is merely a semi-total disaster. Some redemptive comments are due here:
To begin with, the film harkens back to the 1958 TV version of the fabulous feline, and this is rather welcome. Felix has a magical bag of tricks that comes in quite handy. Series stalwarts The Professor and his brilliant nephew Poindexter are along for the ride (Rock Bottom must still be serving time). The Master Cylinder gets a cameo (on paper). The picture even ends with Felix signing off with “Right-e-o!” The closing theme (by Winston Sharples) is the same one featuring Ann Bennett’s singing. David Kolin, replacing the immortal Jack Mercer, does a credible job voicing Felix.
The main villain, the Duke of Zill, is perhaps the best-designed character the crew came up with, and he gets a fitting backstory. The Duke resembles a tricked-up version of Spider-Man villain Mysterio, and Peter Newman lends the bad guy a great voice.
But what are the real reasons to buy/rent/stream this Felix movie besides Boomer nostalgia? One, it’s a surreal, loopy ride featuring acid-trip design, hallucinatory color, and bonkers secondary character designs (especially in the land of Zill) that must have existed in the animators’ nightmares. This messed-up menagerie is even weirder than the nutty backgrounds and layouts in this picture.
Secondly, if seeing this movie piques anyone’s curiosity about Felix the Cat, it is worth sitting through. Whether they explore the 1958 series, the three 1936 shorts from Van Bueren Studios, or take a deep dive into the iconic black-and-white Felix cartoons from his heyday during the 1920s, rediscovering this animated idol is a worthy cause. Felix the Cat: The Movie may not have been the cat’s crowning glory, but at least it kept a legend alive.
Nothing says “I love you” like a bullet to the heart in Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra (The Black Ball), an unashamedly romantic decades-spanning drama that emerged in the last days of a very austere Cannes Film Festival as a possible dark horse Palme d’Or winner. It’s long even by Cannes standards, […]
“I wish New York had cobblestone streets, like in Spain. They [would make it easier] to water the city, the trees would thrive and, on top of that, people could interact with them: lift the stones, reposition them, move them around.” John Wilson – with his blond beard, thick-rimmed glasses and faded red t-shirt that depicts Yo La Tengo (an American indie rock band) – is trying to recover from a hangover: “I drank a lot of wine and ate a whole rabbit.”
Hong Kong authorities cannot rule out theft in 16 of 142 lost property reports filed by residents of the fire-ravaged Wang Fuk Court housing estate, the security minister has said.
Wang Fuk Court on April 22, 2026. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
Secretary for Security Chris Tang said on an RTHK programme on Saturday that in 48 cases, the police and the residents were able to retrieve the missing items.
“About 20 per cent [of the reports] concerned flats that were severely burned, for which we, as well as the residents, believe the items had likely been incinerated,” Tang said in Cantonese. “In 30 per cent of cases, the residents could not clearly describe the items, making it difficult to follow up.”
But Tang said in the remaining 16 cases, the missing items might have been stolen, and that police were investigating.
Wang Fuk Court residents were allowed to return to their homes twice since April to collect personal belongings, months after a massive inferno in November ripped through seven blocks of the Tai Po housing estate, killing 168 people and displacing others.
The entire estate’s eight blocks have been cordoned off by the authorities since the blaze. Some residents raised alarms about a possible security loophole as they suspected valuable items at their homes had been stolen.
In March, weeks before residents made their first home trips, police arrested three men hired to carry out reinforcement works at Wang Fuk Court for allegedly stealing jewellery from unoccupied flats. Authorities said they had stepped up security at the estate since then.
Increased emergency hotlines
Tang also said on the Saturday programme that the Fire Services Department (FSD) had increased its emergency phone lines from 30 to 48 in recent months, with the figure expected to reach nearly 70 in the next two to three months.
After the FSD completes its command system upgrade early next year, there will be 100 available hotlines, Tang added.
Secretary for Security Chris Tang at the Legislative Council on March 14, 2024. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
The public inquiry into the blaze previously heard that hundreds of emergency calls during the fire had overloaded the FSD’s system, leading to backlogged calls and failed connections. In one case, a woman died after the police failed to pass her call to the FSD.
Tang said on Saturday that the 30-line system had been enough for handling fires in the past until the Tai Po blaze.
“We realised 30 lines were not enough in an event like this, so we felt the need to immediately increase that. But we have to strike a balance between resources and needs, and we think that 100 lines will be enough,” Tang said.
He also mentioned the government’s proposal to revamp the city’s fire safety laws, saying it aims at ensuring the FSD has the “final responsibility” in the oversight of buildings’ fire risks.
The Fire Services Department brought Wednesday’s deadly Tai Po fire under control in the early hours of November 27, 2025. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
After the revamp, the FSD will actively refer structural fire hazards, such as exit points for workers in a building’s fire staircase, to the responsible departments and follow up on the matter, Tang said.
The proposed amendments will cover the Fire Services Ordinance and three subsidiary pieces of legislation on fire safety equipment in buildings, the professionals who oversee them, and the FSD’s powers to abate fire hazards, the government announced last week.
A one-month public consultation regarding the proposed revamp is underway. Residents have until June 25 to submit their views in writing.
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