Elizabeth Taylor persuaded the Writers Guild of America not to picket the Paramount Pictures lot on Dec. 1, when the actress and AIDS activist is slated to give a benefit performance of Love Letters with James Earl Jones.
Taylor said she would not cross picket lines but asked the union for a "one night dispensation" so she and her guests could enter the studio with a clear conscience.
"The Writers Guild of America has shown great humanity, empathy and courage by allowing our little evening to move forward," Taylor said.
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She also expressed support for the striking writers.
"I beseech those in power to treat members of the Writers Guild of America with fairness and decency," she said
Because no agreement has been reached in the 15-day strike, movie studios are postponing high-profile feature productions Shantaram, with Johnny Depp and Nine, which was to star Penelope Cruz and Sophia Loren.
PHOTO: EPA
That makes at least four feature films derailed by the strike.
Writers and studios are scheduled to resume contract talks on Monday, but for now, the union's 12,000 members remain on picket lines.
On Wednesday, New York judge Helen Freedman ordered a theater owner to reopen Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical despite the stagehands' strike, saying, "I think that one Grinch in this city is enough."
James Sanna, the producer of The Grinch is not a member of the league, and a union spokesman said the stagehands wanted the show to go on so he could avoid financial ruin.
Children who are part of the cast filled the front row of the courtroom and shrieked with joy as she announced her ruling.
"We got our miracle on 44th Street," the producer said.
Fernando Fernan Gomez, a prolific Spanish actor, director and writer, died of cardio-respiratory failure Wednesday, a Madrid hospital said. He was 86.
Fernan Gomez appeared in more than 200 films, directed another 20 and wrote novels, plays and poetry. He was also a member of the Spanish Royal Academy, the official watchdog of the Spanish language.
His first play to obtain major critical success was Las Bicicletas Son Para el Verano (Bicycles Are for the Summer). He won international acclaim for his role in Belle Epoque in which he played father to four pretty daughters. The movie won nine Spanish Goya Awards and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Funeral arrangements were not immediately available.
Jackie Chan (成龍) says he's in talks with Brett Ratner, the director of the Rush Hour series, to set up a movie company that specializes in Hollywood productions shot on-location in China.
"The whole idea of this company is for China and America to cooperate so I can make American films in China and Brett can act as my consultant, giving me advice and deciding whether or not the film would be suitable for the American market," he wrote in his blog.
Solon So, (蘇志游) senior vice president of Chan's company, JC Group, said the two partners haven't agreed on any specific projects.
Chan recently finished shooting The Forbidden Kingdom in China, his first on-screen collaboration with Jet Li (李連杰).
Almost 70 years after The Wizard of Oz premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, a few of the film's Munchkins made a grand entrance there to receive the Hollywood Walk of Fame's 2,352nd star earlier this week.
Seven of the surviving little people who played the inhabitants of Munchkinland in the classic 1939 movie arrived for the ceremony in a horse-drawn carriage and trailed by a marching band. A yellow carpet led them to the stage.
"We love you, you have touched our hearts," former Munchkin Mickey Carroll, 88, told the crowd.
Carroll was joined by former Munchkins Ruth Duccini, Jerry Maren, Margaret Pellegrini, Meinhardt Raabe, Karl Slover and Clarence Swensen.
Carroll was one of more than a hundred people who were recruited for Oz. They made US$125 a week while filming, followed by decades of recognition, Carroll said by phone before the ceremony.
"I'm not a Munchkin, I'm an entertainer," Carroll noted. "But the movie is great because we all grew up with it. ... It never dies."
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
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
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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