While alternative sounds are once again prominent at this year's Golden Melody Awards, many pundits believe the competition will maintain the balance of power between the alternative and the mainstream unless the event itself undergoes a structural change
By Ho Yi
It's another gloomy year for heavyweight pop idols as alternative music once again predominates over the mainstream on the nomination lists for the 18th Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎), which are scheduled to take place at Taipei Arena (台北巨蛋) next Saturday. With folk rock outfit Sodagreen (蘇打綠) garnering the most nominations (Best Album, Best Band, Best Producer, Best Lyricist, Best Songwriter and Best Composer categories), followed by Hakka musician Lin Sheng-xiang (林生祥) with six and singer/songwriter Deserts Chang (張懸) with four, the annual music event seems to reaffirm musical quality rather than pandering to popular taste, in theory at least.

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By Ho Yi
It is amazing to see how the entertainment apparatus turns a nobody into a star and its efficiency to produce, consume and cash in on its creations is flabbergasting. Right now the machine is working its magic on Aska Yang (楊宗緯), its latest product. A local version of China's Li Yuchun (李宇春), Yang rocketed to stardom after participating in the singing contest One Million Star (超級星光大道), on national TV. Two months on, the college student-turned-household name keeps the nation enthralled with no more than a reasonably nice voice and a bent for getting teary eyed over defeated contenders.

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By Ron Brownlow
Scott Prairie considers himself a spiritually oriented person — and maybe for good reason.

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By Ron Brownlow
Every non-rainy day for the last three weeks, stand-up comedian Kurt Penney has been riding his mountain bike up to Tianmu to promote his upcoming show. Since he approaches foreigners wearing a bicycle helmet, many mistake him for a Mormon.

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By Noah Buchan
Chi Wei-jan (紀蔚然) was 30 when he first considered writing a play about four friends playing mahjong. But an over-reliance on the game's technical terms meant Chi focused too much on the game at the expense of characterization. It was a case of a young playwright getting bogged down in an abstract subject that requires a tremendous amount of knowledge — one that would confuse rather than edify the audience. Six years and seven drafts later, Chi was fed up.

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By Marcus Aurelius and Jules Quartly
It was business as usual at Luxy on Sunday and that was puzzling. Admittedly there was work for most of us on Monday, but where were the queues of people for the world's most popular DJ? Two years ago there were fights to get into his gig at the Taipei World Trade Center and 6,000 people eventually made it. This time around there were still tickets for sale outside the city center club.

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Lots of lush interiors and well-draped men fill the screen, but the story never gets beneath the surface
By Bob Strauss
Hollywood is back in threequel mode with Ocean's Thirteen.

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By Charles McGrath
If you're one of those troubled creatures who lurk around the nethermost shelves of the video store, you already know one of Hollywood's dark secrets: Every year, scores of horror movies never make it to the screen at all and are instead dumped right onto the DVD market, where they earn a total of about US$150 million a year.

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In an Orwellian vision of the present, Jackie Dickie works as a CCTV operator, a cog in the wheels of a system that’s crossed over from totalitarianism to democracy
By A. O. Scott
Red Road, the arresting first feature by Andrea Arnold (who won a best-short-film Oscar for Wasp) takes place in a world where the daily activities of citizens are subject to constant surveillance. That is, it takes place in an ordinary city — Glasgow, as it happens — at the present time. The dire Orwellian warning that Big Brother is watching has evolved from a grim fantasy of totalitarianism into a banal fact of life, in democratic as well as in authoritarian societies. The security cameras fastened on lampposts and the sides of buildings, after all, are put there with our safety in mind, and we have learned to view them with more reassurance than alarm when we notice them at all.

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The script might sound familiar: a South American nation in turmoil, a leader from humble origins who becomes a hero to the poor, and the story made into a movie. No, not Evita, this is Evo.

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By Jules Quartly
You would have thought a fusion of Chinese, Malay and Indian cultures producing spicy and original flavors would be popular here. The reality is there are no authentic Malaysian restaurants in the city that I know of, though a few have opened and closed over the years. Therefore, a two-month festival of Malaysian cuisine at the Sunworld Dynasty Hotel is a welcome addition to the list of dining options.

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By Noah Buchan
Since FuBar opened last year it has become a hit with expats and locals in Taichung wanting to kick back and relax while watching their favorite game and sucking back some suds. The satellite dish and sling box gives sports fans top-notch coverage of sports including MLB and Taiwanese baseball, NBA and SBL basketball, NHL hockey, rugby and NCAAs, as well as F1 and NASCAR racing. Indeed, sports fans wanting a fix of their favorite sport could hardly find a place that provides a more eclectic mix of coverage than FuBar.

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Theater

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Top Five Mandarin Albums

1. S.H.E and PLAY with 20.59% of sales

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