SHORE THING
Nearly a decade after Titanic smashed box office records and revived the cruise industry, Cannes attendees clearly now feel safe heading into deep water. Not only will George Lucas of Star Wars fame board the Queen Mary II to receive the prestigious Festival Trophy in honor of his filmmaking career, but the seafront Majestic Hotel has created a private bar moored offshore. Described by the hotel as a "floating marvel in teak," the 6m2 floating salon seats up to a dozen on overstuffed white pillows and can be anchored anywhere within reach of the hotel's boat-borne waiters.
UNDERGROUND
The Hollywood Reporter's "A-list" of the hottest flicks for sale at the film market held in the Palais basement during the festival include Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction, a sequel to her 1992 sexual thriller; Copying Beethoven, in which Ed Harris plays the maestro falling in love with a woman hired to help him complete his string quartets; Little Fish, in which Cate Blanchett stars as a recovering drug addict driven to crime to support the launch of her Internet cafe; and The Tiger and the Snow by Roberto Benigni, creator of the tragicomic Holocaust movie Life Is Beautiful, who now addresses current affairs by playing a love-struck poet stuck in Iraq as the American-led invasion begins.
GRAB BAG
One was already received via special delivery by the sultry Mexican star Salma Hayek, but nobody knows who will get the remaining 50 goody bags said to be worth US$4,000 each and to be handed out at the festival's American Pavilion. Stuffed with high-end cosmetics and a bucketful of exfoliating bath products, the bags also have iPod speakers. "Wearing a black turtleneck is not enough to get these bags; you must truly be A-list," says their creator, Jane Ubell-Meyer.
ELITE CLUB
In bringing to the competition Three Funerals, a film he both directed and stars in, Tommy Lee Jones could enter an exclusive circle of actor-directors who have won the Palme d'Or. The club has had only two members in 58 festivals: Orson Welles in 1952 for Othello and Nanni Moretti in 2001 for The Son's Room.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s