Director John Woo's cult classic A Better Tomorrow, which launched the career of Holly-wood star Chow Yun-fat, is to be remade with a South Korean director at the helm, a press report said earlier this week.
The remake of the violent 1986 gangster flick will be directed by Marathon director Jeong Yoon-chul in a joint production between a Hong Kong and a South Korean film company.
The lead roles will be played by Hong Kong heartthrob Louis Koo and South Korean pop sensation Rain.
The movie will cost about HK$100 million, and filming will begin this summer.
An Indian film maker has attempted a world record by canning a 74-minute feature, loosely based on Terri Schiavo's protracted right-to-die battle that gripped the US in last year, in two hours and 14 minutes.
Engineer-turned-director Jayaraj's Atbhutam (Wonder) tries to capture the drama of mercy-killing in the last hour-and-a-half in the life of a US-based Indian-born playwright suffering from pancreatic cancer.
"I felt the power. When we started at 11.46am, the whole crew was in a trance ... a kind of invisible energy, and we were just flying from one sequence to the other," 45-year-old Jayaraj said.
"And just before the last shot, when my associate said `one shot left', that's when I realized my dream is finally going to come true."
The record-breaking attempt has been forwarded to the Guinness Book of World Records with authentification letters from Ramanaidu, himself listed as the most prolific producer with 110 films, and an official from the Andhra Pradesh state government, who were present for filming.
In Oscar related news, there will be no F-word but the word "bitches" will be heard during the first-ever rap performance at the Academy Awards on Sunday.
At the request of the Academy and ABC, which is broadcasting the Oscars show, the authors of best song nominee It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp from the film Hustle and Flow have substituted less offensive words for the song's profanity-laced lyrics.
"As long as the Academy approves it, it's cool," said rapper Jordan "Juicy J" Houston, a member of Three 6 Mafia, which wrote the song for the film and will be performing it.
But he said he was told by actress Taraji Henson, who performed the song in the film, and will sing onstage with Three 6 Mafia, that the show's producers were letting her keep the word "bitches," in the chorus.
In another flap over lyrics a few years ago, actor-comedian Robin Williams performed a cleaned-up version of Blame Canada the off-color, Oscar-nominated song from the animated South Park movie during the Oscars telecast.
It is up for several honors at Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony, but already Crash has taken first prize when it comes to most curse words in a move nominated for a best picture Oscar, according to the movie watchdog group FamilyMediaGuide.com
The organization, which tracks incidents of profanity, sex, violence and tobacco use in films, reported that Crash wins the most profane award with 182 expletives, including 99 utterances of the F-word.
Brokeback Mountain ranked second among best picture nomi-nees with 92 curse words, followed by Munich with 22, according to FamilyMediaGuide.com.
The record for most profanities in a film to win the best picture Oscar is held by the Vietnam War drama Platoon, with 329. The Vietnam War drama The Deer Hunter is second with 208.
Hollywood superstar Jennifer Lopez will join the star-studded cast of celebrities presenting Oscar statuettes at Sunday's Academy Awards show, organizers said
earlier this week.
The 36-year-old singer and actress whose private life keeps her in the headlines when her movies or recordings fail to, was last seen on the big screen in last year's comedy Monster-in-Law opposite screen legend Jane Fonda.
She recently finished shooting a new thriller called Bordertown, about the string of murders of young women in the Mexican city of Juarez, and will be seen next in El Cantante, the story of salsa king Hector Lavoe.
Among those already signed to hand out awards is this year's big Oscar hopeful George Clooney.
Also presenting are best actress Oscar favorite Reese Witherspoon, nominated for the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, Australian Nicole Kidman, who won best actress in 2003 for The Hours and South African Charlize Theron, who snatched the same award in 2004 for Monster.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless