Organized for the second year as a large promotional event at the Cannes International Film Festival, Hong Kong night in Cannes this year was seemed to be making a nod toward Wong Kar-wai (
As Cheung and Leung are best remembered for their turns in Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (花樣年華), the Hong Kong promotional program this year was titled "In the Mood for Hong Kong."
Carlton Beach on Saturday was specked with stars, champagne and fine food. Giant balloons with "Hong Kong" written in both Chinese and English hung high above the sea. And again, there were performances of dragon and lion shows, kung fu demonstrations and Chinese acrobatics. But of course most of the spotlights fell on Maggie Cheung.
Cheung just finished shooting Chinese director Zhang Yi-mou's (
It was also rumored that Cheung came to Cannes for another reason. Her ex-husband, French director Olivier Assayas, has had his new work Demonlover selected in Cannes' official competition. Cheung's agent announced two weeks ago that Cheung and Assayas had divorced.
"I'm glad that Hong Kong films are getting widely recognized. I'm proud to be a part of it," Cheung said in front of a crowd of journalists. She said it's always good for her to expand her acting career beyond Hong Kong. "Because I am new to the international audience, but in Hong Kong, I'm an old actress already," she said. "I appreciate having worked with Wong Kar-wai. He taught me to be an actress, instead of teaching me how to act," Cheung said.
Both Cheung and Tony Chiu-wai Leung are are slated to star in Wong's futuristic film 2046. The film began shooting two years ago, which is considered a normal schedule for Wong, who almost always takes more than a year to finish a film. As for the film's story, Leung only has a vague answer.
"When we began shooting, I was playing a cop in the year 2046, working in Japan with Wong Faye (
Leung was named Best Actor at Cannes two years ago for In the Mood For Love. He said he had been involved more in kung fu films. Apart from Hero, his next project is playing a Bruce Lee-like kung fu hero. "It's based on a true story and takes place at a martial arts parlor. And the character of Bruce Lee will show up at the end," he said.
Another Tony Leung, Tony Ka-fai Leung came to Cannes for the suspense thriller Double Vision (
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