Mikhail Pletnev and the celebrated Russian National Orchestra will bring Liszt, Dvorak and Shostakovich to Taipei and Taichung
By Bradley Winterton
This weekend Mikhail Pletnev's Russian National Orchestra will play six of Liszt's symphonic poems in their two Taipei concerts (tonight and tomorrow), three in each. They will form the first half of the events, with a symphony in the second half. In their single Taichung concert (Monday) they will repeat the two symphonies they first played in Taipei.

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George Winston's style has been termed world music, but don't mention that to the musician -- he prefers the appellation of `rural folk piano'
By Ron Brownlow
Like many members of his generation, the seminal musical experience of George Winston's adolescence was listening to The Doors' debut album. One Friday night in January of 1967, he took his Christmas money and bought the record. The band wasn't famous yet, but Winston liked instrumentals and, as he described himself, was the kind of music fan who "freaked out on organ music like young girls freaked out on the Beatles."

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By Ho Yi
The ongoing brawl between Jay Chou (周杰倫) and his former record company, Alfa Music (阿爾發), over the copyright to the Mando-pop king's catalog, turned into open warfare last week when the record label confirmed it had applied to have a portion of Chou's property, some NT$50 million worth, seized by authorities. The company claims it owns the copyright to many of Chou's popular songs.

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By Noah Buchan
When Umass (巫瑪斯), a Paiwan tribe member who is credited with reinventing the Aboriginal group's tradition of glass bead-making, was conducting research he found anthropologist Chen Chi-lu's (陳奇祿) lavishly illustrated books invaluable.

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By Ho Yi
Taipei's stand-up comedy circuit has long been an arena for comedians of foreign nationalities such as comics Mark Goding, Kurt Penney, Brenda Fiala and Brian David Phillips, all previously reviewed in Taipei Times. Yet starting tonight, local comedians will have a chance to exchange comic skills with their foreign peers as Taipei's first stand-up comedy club will stage its inaugural show at a basement in the Shida (師大) neighborhood.

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By Gareth Price
Taipei's nightlife — more so than down South, it seems — is awash with rubbish gimmicks and it gives The Vinyl Word great pleasure to snort with derision at some of the utterly brainless naffness that passes for original marketing strategies. Hardly a week goes by without there being something to cackle at: whether it's complicated sticker games, free entry for jugglers, every fifteenth tequila half price for people wearing cowboy hats, or the ultimate tired-and-testing "pimps-and-ho-ho-hoes' nights"; we've seen it all. And it's boring. Largely it's just a facade for the fact that the music isn't all that great, the bar staff is often rude, or the beer is warm.

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The `Pirates' franchise improves on the boring dud that was number two, and resurrects Jack Sparrow who was previously eaten by a giant squid
By Jeannette Catsoulis
"The immaterial has become material," announces the East India Co's scheming Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) early in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. "He could be referring to the recent resurrection of the pirate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), flush with life and his expanded role in the trilogy. Or he could be speaking of his newfound dominion over the Flying Dutchman and its squid-faced captain, Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), whose excavated heart is now in Beckett's possession.

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Traditionally, sequels failed to live up to the original, but `Pirates of the Caribbean' changes the equation
Like a weightlifter popping ever more steroids, Hollywood is breaking record after record this summer as its diet of bigger, better and more spectacular sequels pulls in huge audiences all around the world.

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`Dead Girl' is a dark tale of women's strength in times of adversity
By Stephen Holden
The Dead Girl is a movie with a chip on its shoulder. The relentless emotional violence in it, a compendium of five vignettes related to a young woman whose naked, mutilated corpse is discovered on a barren hillside, is of a level rarely found in movies, even those steeped in gore. There is some gore in The Dead Girl, but it is eclipsed in intensity by the verbal abuse hurled by its desperately unhappy characters at the people closest to them. All five stories are set in the desolate outliers of Los Angeles, portrayed as a physical and emotional wasteland.

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The film's tag line says it all: `The thrill is in the hunt'
By Manohla Dargis
The vogue for retro-horror, particularly the stripped-down shivers of 1970s slasher flicks, continues apace in this nasty little piece of work from Australia. Written and directed with an eye toward Hollywood by the enterprising Greg McLean, Wolf Creek explains why traveling in the Outback without a couple of guns and a man-eating Rottweiler is never a good idea, especially when — like the three nitwits at the center of this creepfest — you're young, nubile and don't know the first thing about fixing cars.

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A powerful film by hot German-Turkish director Fatih Akin about two families bridging the East-West divide after tragedy strikes, emerged Wednesday as a front-runner at Cannes.

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THEATER
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Restaurants: La Marquise a 5 houres

By Noah Buchan
Vegetarian cuisine plays an important role in Taiwanese gastronomic culture. Taipei has an abundance of vegetarian restaurants and cafeterias serving up a multitude of cuisine to vegetarians and omnivores alike. The roots of vegetarian fare can be found in the philosophical and religious beliefs of Chinese culture. Taoists encourage people to eat a predominately vegetarian diet as a means of living a simple life and Buddhists often live off a diet free of meat because they are prohibited from killing living creatures for food.

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Restaurants: Niu Dian (牛店)

By Jules Quartly
Kunming Street in Ximending is, in parts, lit by those rotating blue, red and white barbershop signs that are not advertising haircuts. I was on my way to a restaurant that had won a national beef noodle prize and was reluctant to stop when a man started talking to me, thinking it was a tout offering a "massage" from one of these establishments.

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