How much are you willing to pay for a CD? Hong Kong singer-actor Jacky Cheung (張學友) believes his crooning is worth far more than NT$300. After a five-year hiatus, Cheung has returned to the music scene with jazz album Private Corner. The limited-edition glass CD of his record will set you back NT$60,000.
For those who are not familiar with the relatively new audio format, the transparent glass CD is a Japanese invention that guarantees near-perfect sound quality and is not affected by humidity or heat.
Cheung is the world’s first singer to use the glass CD for a major-label release, and there
are only 6,000 copies available
for purchase.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Super Band (縱貫線) returned home with two farewell concerts at Taipei Arena (台北巨蛋) last weekend. Comprised of venerable rockers Lo Ta-yu (羅大佑), Emil Chou (周華健), Jonathan Lee (李宗盛) and Chang Cheng-yue (張震嶽), the group’s recent tour was a smash hit with 58 shows in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada and the US in the past year. An estimated 1.7 million people attended the concerts, with Super Band pulling in NT$43 billion in revenue.
In film-related news, TV entertainer Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) and friends have forked out NT$120 million to set up an animation company. The celebrity investor said he hopes to produce films similar to Avatar.
The studio’s first 3D feature-length animation is called I Am
a Little Bird (我是一隻小小鳥).
Wu plans to dub and edit the work himself.
Last June, Wu took up the post of chairman at H&T Electronics (翔昇電子), only to step down from the position 168 days later after learning the company was NT$600 million in debt.
Another man who’s feeling confident these days is Jay Chou (周杰倫). The versatile pop star turned to stuffed animals for inspiration while directing Panda Men (熊貓人), a television drama co-staring his buddy Devon Song (彈頭) and J-girl (J女郎) Chiang Yu-chen (江語晨). (The term J-girl refers to female stars who have been romantically linked to Chou.)
Despite a production budget reportedly exceeding NT$100 million, the story about two panda suit-wearing super heroes has suffered from low ratings and negative reviews in China.
The Chairman has embraced the criticism by calling his work “retarded in an entertaining, funny way,” “very cool” and “a classic.” Local audiences can judge for themselves when the show premieres in Taiwan today on CTS (華視).
Finally, China’s answer to
the Golden Raspberry Awards, the Golden Broom Awards
(金掃帚獎), were held in Beijing on Saturday to recognize the worst in Chinese-language cinema over the past year.
Taiwan’s Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) beat out compatriot Big S (大S), otherwise known as Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛), to take home top honors in the most disappointing actress category for her performance in the nonsensical adventure flick The Treasure Hunter (刺陵).
The gong for most disappointing director award went to China’s Zhang Yimou (張藝謀), whose A Simple Noodle Story (三槍拍案驚奇) also shared the award for most disappointing film with The Treasure Hunter and City of Life and Death (南京！南京！).
The Golden Broom Awards were founded and are supported by cinema periodical Youth Film Handbook (青年電影手冊) and independent film critics in China.
The breakwater stretches out to sea from the sprawling Kaohsiung port in southern Taiwan. Normally, it’s crowded with massive tankers ferrying liquefied natural gas from Qatar to be stored in the bulbous white tanks that dot the shoreline. These are not normal times, though, and not a single shipment from Qatar has docked at the Yongan terminal since early March after the Strait of Hormuz was shuttered. The suspension has provided a realistic preview of a potential Chinese blockade, a move that would throttle an economy anchored by the world’s most advanced and power-hungry semiconductor industry. It is a stark reminder of
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
The last couple of weeks spectators in Taiwan and abroad have been treated to a remarkable display of infighting in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over the supplementary defense budget. The party has split into two camps, one supporting an NT$800 billion special defense budget and one supporting an NT$380 billion budget with additional funding contingent on receiving letters of acceptance (LOA) from the US. Recent media reports have said that the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) is leaning toward the latter position. President William Lai (賴清德) has proposed NT$1.25 trillion for purchases of US arms and for development of domestic weapons
As a different column was being written, the big news dropped that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) announced that negotiations within his caucus, with legislative speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, party Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chair Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) had produced a compromise special military budget proposal. On Thursday morning, prior to meeting with Cheng over a lunch of beef noodles, Lu reiterated her support for a budget of NT$800 or NT$900 billion — but refused to comment after the meeting. Right after Fu’s
RSS