In one of the more dramatic scenes from Infernal Affairs, Tony Leung (梁朝偉) and Andy Lau (劉德華) face off on the roof of a Hong Kong skyscraper trading barbs on their respective treasonous ways. But in an on-line Taiwanese-dubbed version of the scene being sent around in mass e-mails, Lau is an audiophile gearhead lamenting his inability to find products with CD-Pro2 technology. In the clip, Lau wants to buy a stereo with the new sound module and Leung taunts him by saying he's already got two, and even knows someone who has 20 CD-Pro2 systems. Then Leung says he'll sell one system for an exorbitant $200,000, to which Lau responds that he's a "real bastard."
A second clip features the two in a stereo store enjoying the perfect response of CD-Pro2 stereos. What is in the original version another tense encounter between the two stars is transformed through the new overdub into a pair of tech geeks having knee-tremblers over superior sound quality. The voices and dubbing are uncannily well done. Check the clips at: http://myweb.hinet.net/home6/shoda/cdpro2.wmv, http:// myweb.hinet.net/home6/shoda/cdpro2-2.wmv and myweb.hinet.net/home6/shoda/cdpro2-mtv.wmv.
Lau is also starring in Magic Kitchen (魔幻廚房), which is currently playing in Taiwan, but if you blink it may already have left the theaters. The movie co-stars Sammi Cheng (鄭秀文), Maggie Q and Jerry Yen (言承旭) of the boy band F4, but even that much star power hasn't been enough to help the flick break the NT$1-million mark in ticket sales over two weeks. Nevertheless, its take at the box office is considered a fairly good result for Chinese-language movies these days, sad as that may sound.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Competition is just as fierce on the little screen these days and the past week has seen a raft of new TV shows take to the air.
Momoko Tao (陶晶瑩) is back on Azio TV, Monday through Wednesday, at 10pm, with a fashion commentary show after her racy talk show was discontinued late last year for offending the community standard through its blunt treatment of, well, mostly just sex. This time the topic up for discussion, with a long list of celebrity guests already lined up, will be fashion -- which should be easy enough to lead into the jucier subject of sex.
Formosa TV (民視) and SET-TV (三立台) have squared off this week in a head-to-head prime-time battle with two new shows in the hotly contested 8pm time slot. On Monday, Formosa TV's Life of Desire (慾望人生) pulled ahead of SET-TV's Taiwan Tornado (龍捲風) with a modestly higher rating, according to an AC Nielsen poll. The following day Life of Desire's producer Cheng Chao-cheng (鄭朝城) gloated over the superior rating, telling reporters he had already bought a one-way ticket for Taiwan Tornado's script writer Cheng Wen-hua (鄭文華) to go back to Hong Kong. Reports in several local papers had the two men going for the jugular in the week leading up to their shows' face-off, calling each other's scripts garbage and "daring" the loser to retire from the business.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Chinese-language movies didn't appear on the Oscar radar screen on Sunday, but at least Wong Kar Wai (王家衛) got a shout out from Sophia Coppola, who credited the director with providing inspiration for the script for Lost in Translation, which won best screenplay. Hong Kong's Apple Daily (蘋果日報) reported on Wednesday that Wong hadn't watched the ceremony nor Coppola's movie, because he's too busy filming his sci-fi drama 2046, but said he'd get around to it "soon," which might suggest that the filming of the movie is finally nearing completion after innumerable delays.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated