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One thousand moviegoers turned up at the premiere of Ang Lee's Lust, Caution on Monday. PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES AND AP

Ang Lee (李安) made a swift, three-day visit to his homeland this week for a whirlwind of book signing events, the local premiere of his espionage thriller Lust, Caution (色,戒), press conferences, Mid-Autumn family festivities and to receive a US$600,000 award by the Government Information Office (GIO) for bagging a second Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Though having personally invested US$2 million in the film, Lee said that he would donate the GIO's award - criticized as "adding flowers to the bouquet" (錦上添花), meaning that the government gives resources to the well endowed, leaving budding filmmakers to struggle - to help young talent.

While the limited release of the film in the US does not bode well for Lee, the traffic-blocking line of moviegoers for the Taiwanese premiere last Monday suggests that the film will be a hit here, in part for the same reasons Tsai Ming-liang's (蔡明亮) The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲) - another movie that garnered massive media coverage for its explicit scenes - was two years ago.

Jay Chou likes what he did in his film Secret so much that he is turning it into a novel.

One thing is for sure, those who watch Lust, Caution for the exposed bits will leave feeling much more satisfied than those who watched The Wayward Cloud - no amount of nudity could have saved that sleeper.

In a recent homosexual popularity contest, Aboriginal diva A-mei (張惠妹) outshone dancing queen Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) to become the rainbow ambassador for Taiwan's LGBT community and an honorary witness to the same-sex "wedding" ceremonies slated to take place at the 2007 Taiwan Pride Parade on Oct. 13.

Unperturbed, EMI issued a statement proclaiming Tsai as the new queens' queen. Taiwan Pride Community (TPC, 台灣同志遊行聯盟) leapt to the rescue, rebutted the label's doublespeak and confirmed A-mei's rainbow credentials.

Noting both pop stars are highly admired among the LGBT community, TPC stated A-mei had been chosen as the event's spokeswomen a long time ago and noted Tsai was fully booked on the day. The group said it was at a loss to explain EMI's declaration.

In its quest for pink dollars, EMI got egg on its face, but has hopefully learned its lesson: You can fool some LGBTs all of the time, and all LGBTs some of the time, but you cannot fool all LGBTs all of the time.

Mando-pop king Jay Chou (周杰倫) is proving himself to be a savvy businessman, publishing a short novel adapted from his box-office hit Secret (不能說的秘密) last week, that is one month after the film's release.

You have been warned: Brace yourself for yet another version of Chou's cloyingly saccharine puppy-love story.

Other stars who know how to milk the showbiz industry are Hong Kong actress Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) and actor Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒). One month after the birth of their baby boy, the couple flew to Suzhou City to sing one song each and walked home with more than US$100,000 in their pockets.

Meanwhile in matrimonial news, tomboy Ella of S.H.E was voted as the best potential wife material by the Chinese gossip Web site ent.163.com, beating strong contenders Vicky Zhao (趙薇) and Fan Bingbing (范冰冰), to become the only Taiwanese star to make it into the top five.

Pop Stop reckons either the Chinese have distinguished and ahead-of-the-times tastes or that Ella has a solid lesbian fan base.

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