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.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50