Fledging actor Mark Chao (趙又廷) played the ungrateful son in this week’s tabloids, with his semi-retired entertainer father Allen Chao (趙樹海) in the role of the overbearing father. It all started when the younger Chao was named Best Actor for his role in popular police drama Black & White (痞子英雄) at the Golden Bell Awards two weeks ago, beating out audience favorite and former F4 member Vic Chou (周渝民), to the surprise and consternation of many in the audience and entertainment media. Rumors have been circulating that the elder Chao had an “innocent chat” with an “old friend” who happened to be a jury member prior to the awards ceremony.
Allen Chao says that isn’t true. But he’s been griping about how his 25-year-old son has turned down jobs for commercials and television shows featuring the father-son duo that Chao Senior had arranged. “I’d be lucky to be seen at all with my son on television these days,” Allen Chao was quoted as saying by the Apple Daily.
Black & White director Tsai Yueh-hsun (蔡岳勳), meanwhile, was cozying up to Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) by throwing a party to thank the city for its support during the shooting of the television drama.
Chen and Tsai announced at the party last week that a movie version of Black & White will be set mostly in Kaohsiung, which Tsai says he hopes will help boost tourism in the southern city.
In another boost for tourism in Kaohsiung, it is estimated that pop-rock outfit Mayday (五月天) will draw more than 7,000 fans from Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore to its sold-out concert scheduled to be held in the city on Dec. 5. According to calculations by local media, the concert will generate NT$150 million for the local economy, cementing Mayday’s role as the new F4, the Taiwanese boy band that had a large following in Asia.
In other music-related news, singer Joanna Wang (王若琳) will reportedly return to the stage in January, just a few months after what was billed as a good-bye concert was held at The Wall (這牆) by Wang, who at the time was said to be returning to the US to resume her education.
Gossip observers suspect the bye-bye gig was a publicity stunt and question whether the 21-year-old singer’s upcoming show is worth NT$10,000 per seat, a price that even by big-name pop stars such as Wang Lee-hom (王力宏) and Aaron Kwok (郭富城) would have a hard time matching.
Wang’s record company Sony Music later explained that the NT$10,000 tickets were for sofa seats for two. But as Wang has been outspoken about her disappointment with Sony Music for making her a sweet, mellow jazz crooner rather than letting her to do what she truly wants, the upcoming concert may very well be an attempt by the record label to cash in on the defiant young star while it still can.
Finally, after months of rumors about pregnancies and miscarriages, Hong Kong paparazzi confirmed last week that Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) is pregnant with twins.
The actress and mother of one was reportedly trying to have a child again with husband Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒) to save their marriage in the wake of her star turn in the Edison Chen (陳冠希) sex photo scandal.
Towering high above Taiwan’s capital city at 508 meters, Taipei 101 dominates the skyline. The earthquake-proof skyscraper of steel and glass has captured the imagination of professional rock climber Alex Honnold for more than a decade. Tomorrow morning, he will climb it in his signature free solo style — without ropes or protective equipment. And Netflix will broadcast it — live. The event’s announcement has drawn both excitement and trepidation, as well as some concerns over the ethical implications of attempting such a high-risk endeavor on live broadcast. Many have questioned Honnold’s desire to continues his free-solo climbs now that he’s a
As Taiwan’s second most populous city, Taichung looms large in the electoral map. Taiwanese political commentators describe it — along with neighboring Changhua County — as Taiwan’s “swing states” (搖擺州), which is a curious direct borrowing from American election terminology. In the early post-Martial Law era, Taichung was referred to as a “desert of democracy” because while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was winning elections in the north and south, Taichung remained staunchly loyal to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). That changed over time, but in both Changhua and Taichung, the DPP still suffers from a “one-term curse,” with the
Jan. 26 to Feb. 1 Nearly 90 years after it was last recorded, the Basay language was taught in a classroom for the first time in September last year. Over the following three months, students learned its sounds along with the customs and folktales of the Ketagalan people, who once spoke it across northern Taiwan. Although each Ketagalan settlement had its own language, Basay functioned as a common trade language. By the late 19th century, it had largely fallen out of daily use as speakers shifted to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), surviving only in fragments remembered by the elderly. In
Lines between cop and criminal get murky in Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, a crime thriller set across one foggy Miami night, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Damon and Affleck, of course, are so closely associated with Boston — most recently they produced the 2024 heist movie The Instigators there — that a detour to South Florida puts them, a little awkwardly, in an entirely different movie landscape. This is Miami Vice territory or Elmore Leonard Land, not Southie or The Town. In The Rip, they play Miami narcotics officers who come upon a cartel stash house that Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon)
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