Pop stop

Is there a community standard dictating how low pants can ride before they become indecent? Next Magazine (壹週刊) seems to think so. Always tireless in exposing new angles on its subjects, the magazine's photographer put his telephoto lens to use for two extremely revealing extreme close-up shots of Hong Kong supermodel Karina Lau's (劉嘉玲) mid-section at the press conference for the release of the movie Infernal Affairs 2 (無間道) last Thursday. One of the close-up details shows what unmistakably is pubic hair peeking out at the waist area and the other displays more butt crack than a New Jersey plumber. Strangely, the accompanying story didn't answer the logical follow-up question raised by the photos, which would have to be: where did the underwear go? Pop Stop will be certain to get the lowdown the next time Karina's in Taipei.

Speaking of plumbers and not wearing underwear, A-hsian (阿賢) of the Taiwan Plumber (台灣水電工) porno has marked his comeback into public view with the release on Double Ten day of a nude photo book of himself. His partner in that groundbreaking, yet mercilessly boring porno Hsuan Hsuan (宣宣) is also taking a new tack career-wise by announcing last week that she now aspires to become a mainstream actress. She got her first part two Saturdays ago in a promotional video for an urn repository in which she played the role of a corpse. According to the director, quoted in the Liberty Times (自由時報), she acted her part well.

The path from smut to stardom is a well-worn one in Taiwan, having been taken by such stars as Shu Qi (舒淇) and Vivian Hsu (徐若瑄), the latter of whom said Saturday on the SET TV show Cover Person (封面人物) that she had no regrets about shooting a nude photo book 10 years ago. She also said on the show that her only true love has been the Japanese rock star Sugizo. Of her previous liaisons with the Japanese singer Gackt and Jay Chou (周杰倫), she said they were all just friends.

Gackt and Vivian had a chance to see each other again last Saturday at Lee Hom Wang's (王力宏) concert, which went off without a hitch and was attended by about 20,000 screaming teenage girls and a few dozen boys, give or take a few. After eight years in the public view as a singer and heart-throb, this was Lee Hom's first headlining concert, so he came out strong playing guitar, piano, drums and rapping to prove his mettle as more than just another pretty face.

The other big show last weekend was the one in front of the Presidential Office for Double Ten Day. Shunza (順子), as a Golden Melody Award winner, was one of the most anticipated acts, but once onstage she made an ass of herself by singing off key and forgetting even the words to her own hit song Come Home (回家). The Apple Daily (蘋果日報) took her to task for her dismal performance and rubbed salt in her wounds by pointing out that she'd "gotten rounder."

Fans of Wang Kar-wai (王家衛) will have to keep waiting for his next movie to finally come out. The film, titled 2046, was set to continue shooting last week in Shanghai, but for reasons unannounced, was postponed. Tetsuya Kimura (木村拓哉), the Japanese actor starring in the movie, had come all the way from Japan for the shoot, but ended up going home the next day with agents saying it was because he was sick. The suspicion, though, is that Tetsuya left in disgust when the filming was delayed at the last minute.