Wong Kar-Wai's (王家衛) 2046 finally saw the light of day this week at the world premiere held in Shanghai, a massive gala event on the Bund attended by the director and all the stars, minus Takuya Kimura, the Japanese superstar who reportedly butted heads with Wong during the film's five years of production. The conspicuous absence of the Japanese star caused awkwardness that Wong diplomatically deflected by assuring Kimura would be on hand at the film's Japan premiere.
Meanwhile, Carina Lau (劉嘉玲) made a couple of disclosures in The Great Daily News (大成報) about her nude scene with Taiwanese actor Chang Chen (張震), saying he had a great body that was "just her type," and made favorable comparisons with her boyfriend Tony Leung (梁朝偉), who's also in the movie. When pressed to elaborate on the comparison, she made her man proud by saying that while Tony may not be as chiselled, he more than makes up for it where it counts.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Sex talk was another theme last Friday on Star TV's new show Sex, hosted by the statuesque model Emma Ni (倪雅倫), which was advertised in local media under banners that read: "Taiwanese on average have sex 113 times a year" and "Satisfaction with their sex lives among Taiwanese rates the third lowest in the world." The first special guest on the show that aims to tackle these harsh truths was Stephanie Hsiao (蕭薔), who described herself as a "good Taiwanese girl," which she interpreted to mean "not very open" about sex. She then went on to pontificate about the indivisibility of emotional and physical intimacy and about how size doesn't matter. But when it came time for her sex psychology test, the result said that she "is very curious about sex, but pretends to be pure and innocent."
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Chang Huei-mei (張惠妹) might be a good choice, going by her new video that tells the story of a love affair between two girls. The video has proved too controversial, due to its tongue-kissing scene, for Southeast Asian markets, so Warner Records has rushed out a less saucy
edition that turns the story into a nebulous friendship, for play in other even more uptight regions, including China.
Meanwhile, Taiwan's Taekwondo gold medalist Chen Shih-hsin (陳詩欣) is basking in the limelight for the time being and enduring the attention of the gossip rags with applomb. The former betel nut girl will be featured on commemorative stamps and was in Ximending last weekend for an anti-piracy campaign where she told reporters that during her training she would change the lyrics to popular songs by Jay Chou (周杰倫) and others to fill them up with expletives so that at each curse word she would deliver one of her devastating kicks to whatever object or person had the misfortune of being in front of her. Apparently it worked.
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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