The battle between the Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎華語影片競賽) and the Asia-Pacific Film Festival (APFF) over which will be the most star-studded event is intensifying as the award ceremonies approach. For the moment, the Golden Horse seems to have fallen behind in the celebrity stakes: its most recent setback has been the defection of Yang Kui-mei (楊貴媚).
A member of the Golden Horse Film Festival Committee, Yang claimed she would not attend the Golden Horse Awards and would embrace the APFF instead. The former Golden Horse queen is apparently furious that she wasn't nominated for the best actress award at Taiwan's premiere movie event.
Is this pettiness? Maybe. As for members of the Golden Horse Festival committee, they reportedly can't understand the betrayal.
National treasure Ang Lee (李安), however, showed off his diplomatic skills by declining invitations from both events, saying that he was both mentally and physically spent, and that his latest film project Lust, Caution (色戒) is far behind schedule.
According to gossip observers writing in the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister paper), Lee is paying for his bold decision to work with a group of young and inexperienced actors such as ABT pop idol Wang Lee-hom (王力宏) and Ke Yu-lun (柯宇綸), who have so far failed to live up to the director's high expectations and need extra training in order to give presentable performances.
While Lee's mission to elevate local actors onto the world stage seems to have become an obstacle to his film, local pop diva A-mei (阿妹) is successfully continuing her quest to promote her tribe's culture. The Puyuma celebrity has recently purchased 10,000 ping (approximately 3,300m2) of land worth NT$30 million in Taitung after last year buying 6,000 ping of land for traditional Aboriginal ceremonies and gatherings.
The land is reportedly earmarked for an Aboriginal dreamland where an art village will be built for young Aborigines to learn music and dance. Playing down her ambitious project, A-mei said the land is just for her mom, who likes to farm, which makes no sense, as the huge area would be difficult to cultivate.
A-mei's gesture of generosity, however, may put her in debt. According to gossip insiders, the diva has an overdraft of nearly NT$50 million that was used to cover her expenses over the past two years. At the same time, she has turned down lucrative TV commercials, endorsements and concerts to make time for studying in the US, public service activities and the musical Carmen, which is slated to take to the stage at Taipei Arena (台北巨蛋) by the end of the year.
The rumored romance between Shu Qi (舒淇) and Chang Chen (張震) that budded during the shooting of Three Times (最好的時光) last year is back on the front pages of the gossip rags as the two have paired up for Blood Brothers (天堂口), a film produced by John Woo (吳宇森), and are said to often sneak out for secret trysts after a hard day's work.
If what maybe a publicity stunt transforms into a genuine love story, the two would be coming together again after a number of detours: Earlier this year Shu was spotted touring Tokyo with playboy Wang Lee-hom while Chang openly displayed his admiration for his co-star Hong Kong's Karena Lan (林嘉欣) in Silk (詭絲).
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