Time magazine's annual search for the 100 most influential people of the entertainment world this year has launched a struggle for cultural dominance between fans of director Ang Lee (
Lee came in first with 34 percent of the vote, with Rain trailing at 29 percent. Clint Eastwood managed to put in a respectable performance with 18 percent, but the cream of celebrity stardom, including George Clooney, Jon Stewart and J.K. Rowling, all polled at 4 percent or under.
Some Taiwan patriots on local BBS where busily posting links to the site. Fearing that South Korean fans would mobilize a mass vote for Rain, they urged Taiwanese fans to support Lee. They even designed a program to allow Internet users to vote multiple times.
PHOTOS: TAIPEI TIMES
You can't help but wonder that given their tech savvy fans, just how much of Lee and Rain's popularity was due to technology. Even Zhang Ziyi (章子怡), Miss Bitch herself, got in with 8 percent. Clearly fans in Asia are willing to go the last mile for the cultural icons, even if it does involve bending the rules.
Broadway musical Westside Story will be performed in Taiwan from May 15 to May 28. The star of this much-anticipated show is Caral Anne Sanita, who is a great fan of Chinese culture, and even has the Chinese character, xin (
"I got this tattoo in China Town in New York two years ago. I like its meaning," she said.
Preparations for the Beijing Olympics 2008 are moving on apace, but even the issue of the official song, which will be sung by a number of Hong Kong stars, has led to some unseemly wrangling, with Jackie Chan (成龍) demanding a bigger slice of the lyrics than had been allotted to him. You would have thought Chan is secure enough in his celebrity status to be above that kind of thing. In any case, his request got knocked back by producer Alan Tan (譚詠麟), who didn't want Chan hogging the whole show.
Chan said he wanted every-body to have an equal share. Like, yeah right.
Hong Kong's notorious paparazzi have been up to their old tricks again, catching Karen Mok (莫文蔚) and boyfriend Stephen Fung (馮德倫) enjoying a bit of domesticity. Mok has denied that the two are living together, but Fung was happy to leave the allegations of cohabitation hanging, and added that he was glad of the opportunity for the media exposure. Nevertheless, he said he would keep the curtains drawn next time.
Popular show host Little S (
Little S will be co-hosting the Golden Melody Awards with Momoko Tao (陶晶瑩) in June. Tao's baby wasn't expected until the end of the month, which had producers worrying she would not be back in shape for the big event, but now the smiling new mother is also the darling of the event organizers, who can expect two young mother hostesses on the award podium.
Perhaps the fuzzy feelings generated by two new, young, and most importantly, slim mothers will be enough to give new life to the sagging spirits of the Golden Melody Awards.
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby