Even before Taekwondo fighter Chen Shih-hsin (
Chen's colorful past before winning an Olympic gold medal is said to be the main attraction for adapting her story to the silver screen. She was a dropout at the age of 16, working as a betelnut girl. Also she has done jobs cleaning ash trays in computer arcades and selling Hello Kitty dolls as a street vendor, constantly playing hide-and-seek with the police. It was after three years of self-abandonment that Chen found her life goals and returned to home and school.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
News that Hong Kong production house Tse-Xin Films (澤星電影) would be making Chen's story into a movie caused ripples in the business, but Cheung's agent said she was unaware of the news and thus could not confirm whether she's playing the role. Chen herself thinks of Cheung as a suitable candidate, but added that Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊), who excels at fighting scenes, could be more a more appropriate choice.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
"I've seen a few films of Cecilia Cheung and read about her on-and-off romance with Nicholas Tse (
Speaking of the Olympics, director Zhang Yi-mou (張藝謀) was bombarded for his direction of the seven-minute performance during the closing ceremony in Athens. Internet users attacked his use of red lanterns as "cliched, cheesy and totally selling superficial Chinese culture to Westerners." Zhang obviously doesn't mind selling Chinese culture to the Western world. His Hero (英雄) was released in the US last week and immediately became the top-selling movie at the box office, grossing more than US$7 million. Hero was also the most widely released Chinese film in the US. It was screened in 2,031 cinemas, exceeding the record of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍), which was shown in 2,027 cinemas in the US.
Boy band 5566 last week just finished their first concert and immediately held a post-party celebrating the success of the concert. While the band members were spraying champagne at each other, they received complaints from their fans that their voices were dubbed at the concert. Fans were furious, saying they spent five hours standing in line, with NT$1,200 for a concert ticket, but in return had a dubbed concert. There were also fans complaining that the performance was full of slap-stick slip-ups. One of the boys lost his grip on a walking stick and another boy tripped and fell on stage during the encore song.
5566 admitted that some of the fast songs were dubbed and explained that the main entertainment of those songs was the visual parts. "We wanted the concert to be a visually stunning show," Sun Hsieh-chih (
The magnetic power of being a pretty-looking idol is still strong. Jerry Yen's (
Taiwanese rocker Chang Chen-yue (
"I want Westerners to know that there is not only William Kong (who won recent fame for his comic singing and performance) in Asia. We have also critical and humorous music," Chang said last week, according to Apple Daily. Chang added that the concert will be in Mandarin only. He will not be singing songs in English. "I don't think Americans will come to my concert to hear my English. Aren't there enough English songs in the US?" -- Compiled by Yu Sen-lun
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not