Jet Li (李連杰) dropped a bombshell this week when he announced -- from the set of his new martial-arts period flick Huo Yuan-jia (霍元甲) -- that his days as an kung-fu action star are over. "It's time for a change of direction," the 42-year-old told the Apple Daily (蘋果日報). "Huo Yuan-jia is the end of martial-arts films for me. There are more important things I have to do. After [finishing this movie] I will spend only half my time on filming movies."
It's hard to imagine what sort of roles Li will take now that martial artists are a no-no. In fact, it's hard to imagine Li at all without thinking of martial arts. Between the ages of eight and 16, the Hebei native won five martial arts championships in China, and shocked everyone when, instead of going on to win a sixth, he made a movie: the 1982 Shaolin Temple.
Now, having spent the better half of his life building a career as one of the most prominent martial-arts actors in the world, Li says, "I've proven I can do it."
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
It's unclear what "more important things" Li plans to move on to, but it's not a bad bet that he'll start with some quality time with the missus -- Nina Li Chi (利智) -- who he says will be his strongest supporter no matter what he ends up doing.
As Jet Li prepares for something new, Chow Yun-fat (周潤發) is going back to his roots. After a long stint in Hollywood, the actor has taken his first Hong Kong role in a decade. He'll be playing a conman who falls for a mark in Ann Hui's (許鞍華) The Aunt's Postmodern Life (姨媽的後現代生活).
"I agreed to this movie because I haven't worked with Ann in a long time. Plus the role I was offered was something new. I've never played a swindler before, so I want to try," Chow said simply in an interview with the Apple Daily.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Of course Lin Chih-ling (林志玲) news is obligatory here at Pop Stop, so this week we bring you news that boy-band member and Lin's rumored boyfriend Jerry Yan (言承旭) took a break from his duties in F4 to go on a "secret" mission to Dalian, China, to visit Taiwan's favorite convalescent model. Perhaps he was spurred by jealousy over a similar trip last week by Qiu Shi-kai (邱士楷) -- Lin's other rumored boyfriend.
Yan took all the usual precautions befitting a high-profile boy toy trying to travel incognito. He wore sunglasses. And hat. To be fair, he did try to sneak out of the hospital by a different way than he'd come in, but the paparazzi were there waiting for him, and followed him all over town as he tried to lose them.
Failing to present the unified front that might have been politic at such a time, Lin Chih-ling's brother Ling Chi-hong (林志鴻) denied that Yan had visited his sister, while their mother Wu Tzu-mei (吳慈美) confirmed that he had.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
The rumors of a Lin-Yan hookup began last year when a photograph of the model and the boy posing in their bathrobes was stolen from Lin's cellphone.
Readers of the Great Daily News (大成報) are claiming that there's another notch in the ABC section of Mando-pop star Elva Hsiao's (蕭亞軒) bedpost. They reported catching the star hanging around Plush and intimately "chatting" with a male friend a couple weeks back.
The only problem with their theory is that the singer herself coolly shot it down. "The music in there was too loud, so you had to get real close to talk, that must be why people mistook us [for a couple]." "If we had hit it off or fallen for each other, I would admit it, because I really do want to be in love, but I really am not right now. Those guys were just friends of my friend."
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