The official list of nominees for this year’s Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎) was released last week, sending some big-ticket pop stars back to prominence. Last year’s sore loser Jay Chou (周杰倫) leads the pack with eight nominations for his album Jay Chou on the Run (我很忙) and the soundtrack for Secret (不能說的秘密).
Singaporean pop singer Tanya Chua (蔡健雅) comes in second with seven nominations, including one in the Best Mandarin Female Singer category, which sees Taiwan’s pop diva A-mei (張惠妹) competing against Chua, Jasmine Leong (梁靜茹) from Malaysia, Hong Kong’s Karen Mok (莫文蔚) and Stefanie Sun (孫燕姿) of Singapore.
Last year’s Mandarin pop diva title-holder Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), however, falls from grace with a mere two nominations in minor categories for her chart-topping Agent J (特務J).
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Overjoyed that he has been vindicated after last year’s neglect, Tsai’s rival in music and former lover Chou has reportedly taken back his unfavorable opinion of Golden Melody jury members as a bunch of dilettantes, saying that they have quite good taste.
In film-related news, Taiwan’s pride and joy, Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) is one step closer to her dream of becoming an international movie star as she made her debut at the Cannes Film Festival last week. While helping to promote John Woo’s (吳宇森) highly anticipated Red Cliff (赤壁) dressed in a golden cheongsam, she proved a smash hit with photographers; so much so that festival staff had to lead her away from the slavering press pack.
Although Lin helped burnish Taiwan’s reputation with her beauty and sentiment — she was caught shedding a tear of joy or two as she walked down the red carpet — the Government Information Office (新聞局) did Taiwan few favors with its poorly reviewed Taiwan Night party.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
More than 200 Asian stars, international distributors and buyers arrived at a dinner only to find that wine and hors d’oeuvers were all that were on offer for the four-hour mingling session. Many of the guests left still famished, or half drunk from drinking on an empty stomach. This was one instance when President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) famous frugality in public display did the country a disservice.
On the romantic front, pop idol Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒) was spotted by local paparazzi getting her hands all over a Russian stud in front of the exclusive residential complex Xinyi Star (信義之星) in Xinyi district last weekend. The two were then whisked off in a taxi by a friend.
Her agent gave the usual they-are-just-friends speech and stressed that the star would stay chaste; a fortuneteller has told Hsiao that her career would prosper if she quits men until August.
Another mild fling, one may say. But with the release date for her new album just around the corner, the timing for the budding romance seems suspect to the trained eyes of gossip hounds.
Just try to answer this: if it was all so innocent, why would Hsiao put herself in the line of fire at Xinyi Star, just at a time when the paparazzi where known to be staking out the apartment block to catch a glimpse of A-mei, who just returned from Japan, and her young sweetheart Sam Ho (何守正)?
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and