Taiwanese-American filmmaker Justin Lin will be in the director's chair for filming of the third movie in the wildly successful Fast and Furious franchise.
The 32-year-old, who is best-known for 2002's Better Luck Tomorrow was picked by Universal films, Hollywood Reporter said on Wednesday.
The Fast and Furious (2001) and 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) were loved by car fans worldwide and each earned more than US$200 million in the US alone.
Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe has blamed a combination of "jet lag, loneliness and adrenalin" for the meltdown which left him facing possible jail or deportation from the US for allegedly assaulting a clerk in New York's exclusive Mercer Hotel.
"I'm at the bottom of a well. I can't communicate how dark my life is right now," Crowe said in an interview published yesterday in The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
The Sydney-based actor said the fracas was entirely his fault. "I've got no excuses," said Crowe, 41.
The notoriously short-tempered Crowe was charged with assault for allegedly throwing the phone at hotel employee Nestor Estrada.
If convicted, he faces up to eight years in prison and said in the interview that even if he escapes a jail term, he may lose his US visa and never be able to work in Hollywood again.
The actor said the hotel incident came at the end of an exhausting 24 hours during which he had flown from New York to Manchester, England, and back to catch a world title fight involving Australian boxer Kostya Tszyu.
Once back in New York he went to a bar for a few drinks.
Crowe then tried to call his wife Danielle in Sydney just after 4am New York time but could not reach her from his hotel room.
Screen idol Tom Cruise and Paramount Pictures have reached an agreement for Cruise to star in Mission Impossible 3, with filming set to begin next month, Variety reported Wednesday.
The daily said the deal, reached after a series of tough negotiations, grants the superstar 30 percent of the US$150 million film's proceeds.
Unlike the covert messages in the film, which are designed to self-destruct after a preset period of time, the two previous Mission Impossible films have had serious staying power, reeling in a billion dollars in worldwide box office receipts.
Belgian Hollywood star Jean-Claude van Damme is to star alongside French actor Alain Delon in a third film of the adventures of those heroic cartoon Gauls, Asterix and Obelix.
Indian actress Aishwarya Rai also gets a role in Asterix at the Olympics which is due to start filming next May in Morocco or Tunisia, with a scheduled release date in December 2007, publishers Editions' Albert Rene said.
Gerard Depardieu will once again play the heavyweight Obelix who owes his strength to falling into a cauldron of magic potion as a baby, but it has yet to be decided who will fill Asterix's shoes, with Christian Clavier not taking up the role again.
Delon will play Julius Caesar seeking to quell the pesky Gaul resistance, while Van Damme will don a toga to play Roman athlete Cornedurus.
The first Asterix film, Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra was a box-office hit in France and was followed by Asterix and Obelix Against Caesar.
Animated animals ruled the big screen across North America this weekend, as the latest installment of the Star Wars saga sank to third place, according to box office returns.
DreamWorks' animated Madagascar, which debuted last weekend in second place, topped the list of most viewed movies, according to Encino, California-based Exhibitor Relations, which monitors ticket sales.
Madagascar is expected to gross US$28.7 million this weekend, boosting its estimated two-week take to US$101 million, according to Exhibitor Relations.
The Longest Yard, which pits inmates and guards against each other in an American football prison game, moved from third place to second, earning about US$26.1 million lat weekend.
The movie, starring comedians Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, is the remake of a 1974 movie starring Burt Reynolds, who has a role in the re-made version.
Meanwhile Star War: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which held the top spot for two weeks, fell to third place with an expected gross of US$26 million.
That would raise the three week domestic take for the movie, the last of George Lucas' six-partStar Warsfranchise, to US$308.8 million.
Trailing in fourth and fifth place are two debuts: the boxing flick Cinderella Man, starring Oscar winner Russell Crowe, which grossed some US$18.6 million, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, a teenage girl movie that raked in some US$10.2 million.
Rounding out the top 10 were the debut of Lords of Dogtown (5.7 million), Monster-in-Law (US$5.3 million), Crash (US$3.3 million), Kicking and Screaming (US$2.1 million) and Unleashed (US$889,576).
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
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
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located