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.
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