It wasn’t actors and actresses grabbing headlines on this week’s entertainment pages, but rather Taiwanese films, which filled the nomination list for the 48th Golden Horse Awards.
Wei Te-sheng’s (魏德聖) Seediq Bale (賽德克‧巴萊) was at the top of the list with 11 nominations, including best picture and best director. The two-part Taiwanese epic has already raked in NT$470 million in ticket sales at the box office, according to the Apple Daily.
Two other homegrown hits, Jump Ashin! (翻滾吧！阿信) and You Are the Apple of My Eye (那些年,我們一起追的女孩) are also potential Golden Horse winners. Jump, whose lead actor Eddie Peng (彭于晏) is the only Taiwanese in the running for the best actor gong, picked up five nominations, while You Are the Apple bagged four.
Photo: Taipei Times
For the China Times, the nominations are heralding the “revival of the nation’s film industry” (國片復興). The paper noted that this year the Golden Horse axed its Most Outstanding Taiwanese Film Award because there is no longer any need. Locally produced movies these days are on a par with big-budget Hong Kong and Chinese movies, one Golden Horse judge was cited as saying.
And Taiwanese filmmakers are sticking to their guns when it comes to dealing with investors from China. According to the China Times, the producers of Seediq Bale decided to turn down funding from a Chinese investor who requested that Wei add the role of a journalist to the movie.
“I preferred to risk the NT$700 million, and besides, you can’t change history,” coproducer Huang Chih-ming (黃志明) told the China Times. “No compromises, that’s the Taiwanese spirit.”
Photo: Taipei Times
Jump Ashin! director Lin Yu-hsien (林育賢) encountered a similar request from Chinese investors. Lin, whose movie is based on the life of his gymnast brother, was asked to change the story, in which Lin’s brother Ashin (林育信) flees his home in Yilan to hide in Taipei. The Chinese investor asked Lin to have his brother escape by boat to Xiamen instead.
Lin declined to make the change. “My brother would have killed me!” he said.
Another potential homegrown Golden Horse winner is actress Shu Qi (舒淇), who picked up a Best Actress Award nomination for her role in A Beautiful Life (不再讓你孤單).
According to the Apple Daily, she received the news on the phone from a gossip reporter, who greeted her by saying “Congratulations.” “What for?” she asked tartly. “I haven’t gotten married and I’m not pregnant.”
When the reporter broke the news of her nomination, she broke down in tears, and thanked director Andrew Lau (劉偉強). “I’m weeping bitter tears right now,” she said.
The Taipei Times last week reported that the rising share of seniors in the population is reshaping the nation’s housing markets. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, about 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident. H&B Realty chief researcher Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨), quoted in the article, said that there is rising demand for elderly-friendly housing, including units with elevators, barrier-free layouts and proximity to healthcare services. Hsu and others cited in the article highlighted the changing family residential dynamics, as children no longer live with parents,
It is jarring how differently Taiwan’s politics is portrayed in the international press compared to the local Chinese-language press. Viewed from abroad, Taiwan is seen as a geopolitical hotspot, or “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth,” as the Economist once blazoned across their cover. Meanwhile, tasked with facing down those existential threats, Taiwan’s leaders are dying their hair pink. These include former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), among others. They are demonstrating what big fans they are of South Korean K-pop sensations Blackpink ahead of their concerts this weekend in Kaohsiung.
Taiwan is one of the world’s greatest per-capita consumers of seafood. Whereas the average human is thought to eat around 20kg of seafood per year, each Taiwanese gets through 27kg to 35kg of ocean delicacies annually, depending on which source you find most credible. Given the ubiquity of dishes like oyster omelet (蚵仔煎) and milkfish soup (虱目魚湯), the higher estimate may well be correct. By global standards, let alone local consumption patterns, I’m not much of a seafood fan. It’s not just a matter of taste, although that’s part of it. What I’ve read about the environmental impact of the
Oct 20 to Oct 26 After a day of fighting, the Japanese Army’s Second Division was resting when a curious delegation of two Scotsmen and 19 Taiwanese approached their camp. It was Oct. 20, 1895, and the troops had reached Taiye Village (太爺庄) in today’s Hunei District (湖內), Kaohsiung, just 10km away from their final target of Tainan. Led by Presbyterian missionaries Thomas Barclay and Duncan Ferguson, the group informed the Japanese that resistance leader Liu Yung-fu (劉永福) had fled to China the previous night, leaving his Black Flag Army fighters behind and the city in chaos. On behalf of the
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