Judy Chiang (江慧), the undisputed queen of Taiwanese-language pop music, is feeling pretty good this week after she won a suit brought against her by the illustrated story-book author Jimmy Liao (吉米), who claimed the singer had ripped off his ideas in a video for one of her songs several years ago. The real target of the suit, the director of Chiang's video Kuang Sheng (鄺盛), told media after the judgment was announced that it was
"overdue justice."
Liao had accused Chiang and Kuang of plagiarizing a scene from his Turn Left, Turn Right (向左走,向右走) book for Chiang's video of Late Marriage (晚婚) from 2000, in which a couple hide under a coat from the rain in a park.
Kuang, who won a Golden Melody Award this year for best video, has been behind a number of videos that have aroused suspicion of plagiarism because of, shall we say, references to videos by Japanese, American and Korean pop stars. Liao has said he plans to appeal the case.
Another case to come out of the courts in the past week was Takeshi Kaneshiro's (金城武) unsuccessful attempt to get a NT$2.65 million tax refund from the ROC government. His agents at Fulung Artist Management had sued over a case of what it claimed to be double taxation on income he earned in 1997 for an advertisement filmed in Japan. The court rejected the case and Fulung expects to appeal.
We can probably also expect some kind of investigation and perhaps (though if the president gets shot in broad daylight and no one's caught, then it's not guaranteed) a suit in the vicious assault by baseball-bat-wielding thugs on TV personality He Yi-hang (賀一航). Three assailants beat He almost beyond recognition in Taipei, breaking one of his legs, severely bruising his arm and giving him a concussion and facial injuries that required minor cosmetic surgery to bring some symmetry back to his face. He told the Apple Daily (蘋果日報) he didn't recognize his attackers and
speculated he may have been beat en in retribution for refusing a show appearance.
There was more rage over the past week when Taiwanese rocker Chang Chen-yue (張震嶽) exploded on stage in response to what he said was poor sound equipment at a charity concert in Taipei County. According to the Great Daily News (大成報), A-yue was already fed up with the sound system at warm-ups and during the first of two shows. He unleashed a torrent of expletives at the sound people and then went on to destroy a Gibson Les Paul. And they wonder why rock is dead.
The Great Daily News also offered an interesting article after former US president Ronald Reagan's death written by Little S (小S) intellectualizing on the pros and cons of stars entering politics. The Gipper, as everyone knows, started out in Hollywood and worked his charm all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue, whereas Little S is still on TV and was seen recently leading the protests on Katagalan Avenue in the wake of Taiwan's recent election. Her activism at the time suggested a politically engaged star, but in her article she says: "I don't understand politics, so I don't really have an opinion about stars entering politics." She did, however, say: "Being president must be a nice feeling sometimes because you get to control people. ? Like a boss at a company, you just have to say something and then people have to do it." But, to explain why she thinks she's not qualified to get into the political realm, she said she hates dealing with media, and constantly worrying about her appearance, and also, to use her words, because "I'm dumb."
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