Oscar organizers said they had invited 83 countries to submit movies for foreign language film nominations for the movie industry's top honors including first timers, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan.
For moviemakers outside the US, an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can give their films global recognition and help boost ticket sales, making Oscar nominations of major importance.
The Beverly Hills-based Academy established a foreign language film category in 1956, and since then 102 different countries have participated in the nomination process.
PHOTO: AP
The first Oscar for a foreign film went to Italian movie La Strada, and the winner at this year's Oscars was South Africa's Tsotsi, about a young gang member in a tough Johannesburg township.
Memorabilia from Hollywood star Angelina Jolie is catching fire on the Internet with the planned auction of boots she used to strut to her Oscar in Girl, Interrupted and her skin-tight outfit from Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Both items — a pair of tan, suede boots from the 2000 film and a beige ensemble number from her 2005 thriller where she starred opposite her beau Brad Pitt — are to go on sale on eBay for US$1,500 a piece, according to the online auction Web site on Wednesday.
It is unclear who owns the items, but the boots may be purchased immediately with a certificate of authenticity for US$2,000. They do not come with a size mention — and neither does the outfit.
Jolie, whose career slowed in the past year during her pregnancy, will lend her voice to a tigress in a new Dreamworks animated film Kung-Fu Panda, the studio said.
Jolie will join Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu and Dustin Hoffman in the story of a panda who dreams of becoming a martial arts fighter, due for release in May 2008, Dreamworks said.
Dreamworks was behind blockbuster animation hits like Shrek and Shark Tale.
Winner of an Oscar for best supporting role in 200 for Girl, Interrupted, Jolie, 31, had a baby girl in May with her superstar partner Pitt.
US entertainment giant Walt Disney Co plans to reduce its workforce and slash by more than half the number of films it releases yearly, Variety reported Wednesday.
Disney, whose Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest smashed opening weekend records in the North American box office last weekend, had no immediate comment on the report in Variety, which covers Hollywood and the entertainment industry.
It reported that Disney “will announce within the next 10 days that it's cutting back on the number of films it makes to around eight per year — it currently releases around 18 — and will substantially reduce its workforce.”
Moreover, Variety said, all the new movies will be Disney-branded, which could impact Disney subsidiaries like Touchstone Pictures, which has made more mature, adult-oriented films for traditionally family-focused Disney.
Variety linked the cutbacks to the strategic vision of Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook and an effort to improve the studio's return on investment and to get infrastructure back into line.
June Allyson, the stage, film and television actress best known for her girl-next-door charm and winsomely husky voice in such 1940s MGM classics as Good News and Little Women, has died at age 88, her husband said on Monday.
Allyson, who had been in declining health since undergoing hip-replacement surgery a few years ago, died on Saturday at her home in Ojai, California, northwest of Los Angeles, from respiratory failure and acute bronchitis, said her spouse of 30 years, David Ashrow.
A Chinese actress who played Hollywood movie star Zhang Ziyi's (章子怡) naked body double in The Banquet wants her name in the movie's credits, state media reported on Friday.
The Banquet, a film directed by Feng Xiaogang (馮小剛) is set for release in China in the autumn, stars Memoirs of a Geisha actress Zhang and features several body doubles to play her in nude and fight scenes, the Nanfang Daily newspaper said.
Shao Xiaoshan said she was paid US$2,500 for shooting several nude scenes in comments carried by the paper.
“Feng Xiaogang was very satisfied with my body, and asked me to play the ‘naked double,’” the paper quoted Shao as saying.
But the actress feared a lack of exposure, hearing that her name would not appear in the credits and having her calls ignored by the director, the paper said.
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