Taiwan has been dragon boat racing during the Duanwu Festival for 120 years and this year will be no different
By Gavin Phipps
The hugely popular annual dragon boat races will be the focus of a series of festivities nationwide this weekend, when hundreds of teams from across the country and a dozen international squads take to rivers in the Taipei, Bitan, Kaohsiung, Tainan, Ilan and Lukang in celebration of Duanwu Festival (端午節).

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Compiled by Ho Yi and Max Woodworth
Reporting on the controversy over reports by Newsweek that interrogating guards tossed the Koran down toilets at the Guantanamo detention center to antagonize Muslim prisoners, the New York Post ran a front-page piece under a headline reading "Holy Shiite" with a picture of Newsweek being flushed down a commode. Unfortunately, the paper chose the edition with Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) on the cover, which drew flak from the Chinese community in the US and elsewhere over what one New York University professor said was an intentional slight against China.

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By David Momphard
Homegrown hero and long-reigning "king of rock" Wu Bai (伍佰) and his band China Blue are set to shake Taipei County tomorrow night for a concert in support of his latest album Two Faced Man (雙面人).

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By Diana Freundl
If you rate your plays according to the amount of time you spend thinking about them afterward then Riverbed's shows should be near the top. Blurring the boundaries between visual and performing arts is a Riverbed Theatre (河床劇團) specialty, and its latest production doesn't disappoint. Exploding Rice is the third and final instalment of the Rice Series -- the first and second of which were staged at Eslite Bookstore and Huashan Creative Industry Center in 2004.

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By Derek Lee
After three years of producing popular stage shows Godot Theatre (果陀劇場) is once again ready to please with another of its thought-provoking works, this time dealing with the theme love and marriage.

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By Max Woodworth
To wind up his national tour that took him to a string of tiny dives, one of them a joint in Kenting where male and female strip shows are a nightly feature, rocker Chang Chen-yue (張震嶽) and his band Free 9 are closing things out with a bang at The Wall tonight.

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By Jules Quartly
The Vinyl Word has not been a big fan of Party Room in the past but we were last week when jungle music's "favorite son" Andy C turned up in Taipei for a one-night stand. The sound system was set up for optimum aural pleasure, the sprung floor was bouncing in time to the bass and it was a full house of tuned-in ravers, despite the lack of publicity for the event.

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'Birth' is similar to 'Ghost' or a super-elegant version of 'Scooby-Doo.' It's a spellbinding film that plays with the heart and mind
By A. O. Scott
The opening sequence of Birth, a suave and brooding gothic tale directed by Jonathan Glazer, is a small tour de force. It takes a perfectly ordinary urban moment -- a jog through Central Park in wintertime -- and turns it into a visual and aural overture for the film's layered and shifting moods.

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`Alone in the Dark' is a stinker of a movie with nothing to recommend it
By Stephen Holden
Bad movies are a dime a dozen, but every so often, an out-and-out stinker like Alone in the Dark slinks into the marketplace. This horror film, spun off from an old Atari video game, is so inept on every level, you wonder why the distributor didn't release it straight to video, or better, toss it directly into the trash.

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Eric van den Broek and Katering Rejgar have boosted reconciliation among people from the former Yugoslavia through the medium of film
Documentary film directors are often inspired by a dose of idealism, and even by the belief that their exposure of some atrocity or injustice can stir public outrage and government action. But rare is the case in which filmmakers actually set out to do good and can claim to have achieved it. Eric van den Broek and Katarina Rejger are two such directors.

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The Taipei Film Festival showcases movies from Taiwan's independent scene and the Chinese diaspora
By Tayi Lee
Recently there has been much talk of the decline of Taiwan's movie industry. It may be hard to deny, considering that Taiwan produced less than 20 feature films last year. However, Taiwan's film festival scene is on the upswing: This year there are 193 films competing in the Taipei Film Festival's Taipei Grand Award competition, 50 more than last year.

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The Human Rights Watch Festival in New York marks a point in film history when documentaries shown signs fo moving closer to the forefront of international cinema
By Stephen Holden
Nothing casts a sharper focus on the human cost of terrorism than an examination of its impact on a single family. In Pete Travis' film Omagh, the Gallaghers, who live in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh, are devastated when a car bomb explodes in August 1998 in the center of town, killing more than two dozen people, including their son, Aiden.

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Taiwanese-American filmmaker Justin Lin will be in the director's chair for filming of the third movie in the wildly successful Fast and Furious franchise.

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Address: 6, Alley 5, Lane 70, Yanji St, Taipei (台北市延吉街70巷5弄6號)
Telephone: (02)2773 3227
Open: Lunch 11am to 2pm. Dinners 5pm to 10:30pm
Average meal: NT$800 to NT$1,000 for two
Details: English menu. Major credit cards accepted
By Gavin Phipps
Over the past couple of years the number of South Asian eateries in Taipei has climbed to an all-time high. Sadly, however, the increase in numbers doesn't mean that good Indian or Pakistan fare is readily available. Some of the joints might boast "the real thing" in their adverts, but the reality is often different.

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Address: 1 and 6, Lane 6, Yongkang St, Taipei (台北市永康街6巷1與6號)
Telephone: (02) 2321 1579 and (02) 2322 2765
Open: 11:30am to 11:30pm
Average meal: NT$400 for two
Details: There is an English menu
By Jules Quartly
"The best Vietnamese noodles in town" have kept the crowds coming back to Thanh Ky on Yongkang Street for 25 years and the family business is more popular than ever. You have to queue for a place on the weekend when families visit and office workers keep it busy throughout the week.

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