After the Writers Guild of America (WGA) began its strike against Hollywood studios Monday, production ceased on TV shows such as Two and a Half Men, Back to You and The Office, and hundreds of crew and cast members from those series began receiving layoff notices.
Other shows ending include Til Death, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Rules of Engagement and The Big Bang Theory.
Other shows have enough new episodes produced in advance to last a few more weeks without repeats, leaving viewers largely unaware of the strike fallout for the time being.
Nightly talk shows that rely on a steady stream of topical jokes and skits were the first to be affected. At least eight such programs, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, were forced into reruns the first day of the strike.
The strike began when the two sides failed to reach a deal on writers' demands for a greater share of revenues from the Internet.
On a happier Hollywood note, French architect Christian de Portzamparc has been chosen to design the world's largest and most ambitious museum dedicated to the history of film and the Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said yesterday.
Sid Ganis, the president of the group that annually hands out the Oscars, says he hopes to see ground broken on the 3.24 hectare site in 2009 and have the museum completed by 2012.
But there are a few problems, readily admitted, by Ganis and de Portzamparc: the museum still has to be designed and a budget still has to be arranged.
On the East coast, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will appear in the film version of Sex and the City, due for release next year, his spokesman said.
Bloomberg, appearing as himself, filmed the cameo appearance earlier this week in New York, his spokesman said, revealing only that "the mayor was playing himself and doing the kind of things that mayors do."
Bloomberg follows in the footsteps of former mayors Ed Koch and Rudolph Giuliani who appeared as themselves in the sitcom in 2001 and 2004 respectively.
Borat, the fictional Kazakh reporter who caused a diplomatic stir with his moviemaking adventures in the US, is back with Touristic Guidings to Minor Nation of US and A and Touristic Guidings to Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Borat Sagdiyev, a clueless and offensive journalist created by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, made television and movie audiences laugh and cringe but angered the government of Kazakhstan for portraying the former Soviet country as misogynistic, anti-Semitic and backward.
Earlier this week, he said that he preferred Kazakhstan to the US and encouraged everyone to "look on my guidings book and then come visit. Bring your whole family and stay at Astana Funworld Resort - it have beautiful beaches, almost totally free of land mines and the sea is guarantee to have no jellyfish, shark, or any other marine life."
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