The films Brokeback Mountain and Crash scooped up honors from the Writers Guild of America Saturday, fuelling award momentum for the pair of Oscar hopefuls.
The guild gave its award for best adaptation to Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, who wrote the script for Brokeback Mountain based on a short story by Annie Proulx. They won a Golden Globe for the work last month.
The gay western love story directed by Taiwan-born Ang Lee (李安), which leads the Oscars race with eight nominations, beat out Truman Capote, The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence and Syriana.
Rock 'n' roll stars, rap singers and other legends of modern music are tuning up their guitars, arranging their drums and more unusual stage accessories for the 48th Grammy Awards ceremony that is scheduled to take place on Wednesday.
The gala event is expected to feature appearances by U2, Coldplay, Paul McCartney, Madonna and Gorillaz.
The Oscars of the music world are generally unpredictable, and the best-kept secret every year are scandals that can be sparked when prominent musicians appear on stage.
Millions of viewers remember well a mouth-to-mouth kiss between Madonna and Britney Spears two years ago during the MTV Music Awards ceremony.
This year's event will attract divas like Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera, Madonna and this year's top contender Mariah Carey, who has a total of eight nominations.
Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and Grammy-winning pop star Sheryl Crow have split up, scrapping plans for a Texas wedding after two years of dating, People magazine reported on Friday. "After much thought and consideration we have made a very tough decision to split up," a joint statement by the couple issued to the magazine said.
Also hitting the rocks is Heather Locklear and Richie Sambora's marriage. The actress and her husband, the lead guitarist for the rock band Bon Jovi, have filed for divorce, according to reports Friday.
Locklear, 44, and Sambora, 45, have been married for 11 years and have an eight-year-old daughter. Locklear was previously married to Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee.
Lawyers for Paris Hilton are in talks with a broker of celebrity porn in a bid to recover private diaries and photos of the celebrity heiress that were put up for sale for US$20 million, both sides said on Friday. The broker, David Hans Schmidt of Phoenix, Arizona, said he was seeking US$20 million for material he claims includes 18 personal diaries recounting sexual escapades and risque photos of Hilton.
Troubled US rocker Courtney Love was released Friday from home detention after telling a judge that she is on the road to recovery from her addiction to drugs.
Love, 41, who in the past two years was in and out of court on various drug and assault charges, told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rand Rubin she was doing much better.
"I feel like I'm getting my creativity back ... and that I've put a very gnarly drug problem behind me," Love told Rubin, who had ordered her into a drug rehabili-tation programme that she ended in November.
"I thank you for not being as punitive as you could have been," said the widow of grunge icon Kurt Cobain of Nirvana.
Lee Tamahori, the New Zealand-born director of the James Bond movie Die Another Die, has been arrested in Los Angeles and charged with solicitation in a bizarre sex case.
Los Angeles police said they arrested the 55-year-old director on Jan. 8 when, dressed in women's clothing, he approached an undercover officer sitting in a car and offered to perform a sex act on him.
The incident occurred on a part of Hollywood's Santa Monica Boulevard that is known as a haunt for prostitutes and their clients.
Tamahori was charged with two misdemeanours: agreeing to engage in an act of prostitution and unlawful loitering. He is to be arraigned in court in Los Angeles on Feb. 24 and is currently free on US$2,000 bail.
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