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Hong Kong actor-singer Edison Chen (陳冠希) says he is not yet ready for a high profile return to show business after a sex scandal last year that shocked the Chinese-speaking entertainment industry.

“I still don’t know if I am comfortable with that. Honestly, I don’t know if people are comfortable with me doing that,’’ the Sunday Star quoted him as saying during a visit to Kuala Lumpur on Saturday.

Last year, photos of Chen having sex with female Hong Kong stars were widely circulated on the Internet. A Hong Kong computer technician was sentenced to more than eight months in jail last month for stealing the photos from Chen’s laptop during repairs.

Chen said he’s still producing films and albums for several artists.

“I’m there but not really there. Maybe I’m there in the background instead of being in the front now ... but at this point I love my job,’’ the 28-year-old Chinese-Canadian said at the launch of his first Juice streetwear store, which he co-owns, outside of Hong Kong.

Perhaps Chen could take a lesson in extroversion from Sacha Baron Cohen, who in his latest incarnation as a gay Austrian fashion reporter, jet skied down a canal into Amsterdam’s red light district on Friday to open a brothel full of men in thongs ahead of the Dutch premiere of Bruno. “For too long, guys coming here from around the world have been forced to have sex with women,” Cohen said, standing in front of a pink-lit brothel building in the Dutch capital as surprised tourists and stag partygoers looked on.

Former Bond girl Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) said yesterday that she will star in an upcoming kung fu movie directed by John Woo (吳宇森), adding that she’s not avoiding action movies despite a recent break from the genre.

The Tomorrow Never Dies and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) actress told a press conference at the 12th Shanghai International Film Festival that the Chinese-language film will start shooting in China in September.

She said Woo will share directing duties on the film — tentatively called The Sword and the Martial Arts World — with Taiwanese filmmaker Su Chao-pin (蘇照彬), who directed the horror film Silk (鬼絲). She declined to give further details.

Yeoh is a former beauty queen who first made her name as an action star in Hong Kong. Her recent roles in Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and Far North (2007) have veered toward drama, but the 46-year-old actress said she still feels fit enough to handle action.

“I have felt physically stronger the past few years. I don’t let age limit me,” Yeoh said, adding that she chose her recent projects because she enjoyed the stories — not because they were less physically taxing.

The film with Yeoh is Woo’s first new project since his US$80 million two-part historical epic Red Cliff (赤壁). The Hong Kong native was supposed to next direct 1949 — an epic romance set against the Chinese Civil War in that year — but the project fell through because of a dispute with its Taiwanese investors.

South Korean pop star and actor Rain has settled a civil suit over a canceled concert in the US, reports said Wednesday.

The June 2007 concert for the performer — who has been called the “Justin Timberlake of Asia’’ — was canceled with just a few days’ notice, disappointing fans who paid up to US$300 for a ticket and flew to Hawaii from as far as away as Japan and South Korea. It was supposed to be the first stop on the Rain’s Coming US tour.

Earlier this year, a federal jury ordered Rain and his former managers to pay a Hawaii promoter more than US$8 million in damages. It said Rain, his former agency JYP Entertainment Co and two South Korean promotion companies breached a contract to perform and defrauded Click Entertainment Inc.

Rain settled the suit in Hawaii, South Korea’s Kookmin Ilbo newspaper said, citing a US court document. No details on financial compensation were given.

The star is scheduled to appear in the upcoming Hollywood action film Ninja Assassin.

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