Woody Allen’s ex-girlfriend Mia Farrow and his wife Soon-Yi Previn will not be called to testify at a trial pitting the movie director against American Apparel, a lawyer for the clothing company said on Thursday. Allen sued the US clothing company for false advertising more than a year ago seeking more than US$10 million after the American film director’s image appeared on billboards in New York and Los Angeles. Allen says his image was damaged and used for profit without his consent.
Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s Nobel Prize-winning author, said he may face new compensation claims for remarks he made about the World War I-era killing of Armenians, despite an earlier acquittal in a criminal trial, the Anatolian news agency said on Saturday. Turkey’s Court of Appeals this week overturned a lower court decision that had dismissed the claims of personal damages against Pamuk, 56, paving the way for a new case.
Actor Charles “Bud” Tingwell, who starred in more than 100 films and television programs in his native Australia and in Britain, has died aged 86, his family said on Friday. Tingwell, whose career spans some 60 years, died in a Melbourne hospital with his daughter Virginia and son Christopher at his bedside. A statement on his Web site said he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and took ill two weeks ago.
A dying Farrah Fawcett is caught in the middle of a legal battle between her longtime companion, Ryan O’Neal, and a producer who has worked with the Charlie’s Angels star during her fight with cancer. The dispute centers on the TV documentary Farrah’s Story, which aired on NBC on Friday. Fawcett collaborated with producer Craig Nevius on the video diary that makes clear she is nearing the end of her life.
Emotional Korean tale Mother of a woman’s relentless fight to save her mentally challenged boy won a standing ovation for cult The Host director Bong Joon-ho at the Cannes festival on Saturday.
Starring veteran actress Kim Hye-ja as a mother convinced of her son’s innocence in a murder case, the movie brought the audience to its feet after premiering as one of the films running for the Un Certain Regard prize for fresh upcoming talent.
“A mother can be a noble figure or a savage beast,” the director said.
In the audience were fellow South Koreans at Cannes, director Park Chan-wook, whose movie Thirst is competing for the coveted Palme d’Or and writer-director and former minister Lee Chang-dong, who is a member of this year’s Palme jury.
Crowds hoping to glimpse the stars on the Cannes festival’s red carpet got an eye-popping surprise on Saturday as a team of nude Belgian cyclists paraded down the Riviera seafront.
Director Felix van Groeningen and four of his actors straddled bicycles and careened down the Croisette and back under warm spring sunshine, in a remake of a scene from La Merditude des Choses (The Misfortunates).
The comedy, which tells the story of a family of drunkard brothers, seen through a teenagers’ eyes, premiered on Saturday at the Directors’ Fortnight, one of two high-profile sidebars to the main Cannes film festival.
For China’s Lou Ye (婁燁), the journey to the red carpet on the Riviera is fraught with risk.
Lou is at the festival with a movie made undercover after he was barred from working by Chinese authorities.
Lou tackles subjects that make officials at home uneasy — gay relationships in Spring Fever (春風沉醉的晚上).
Lou, 44, was banned from filmmaking in China for five years after he brought his last film Summer Palace (頤和園) — about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — to Cannes in 2006 without permission. He shot Spring Fever, a moody and sexually explicit drama that tracks the romantic entanglements of five characters over the course of a torrid spring season, with a small camera and without authorization in the city of Nanjing.
“I was worried I might be stopped from working — worried I might get a call from the Chinese Film Bureau,’’ he said on Friday.
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
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
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
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