Loose sweaters and precious dresses lend this season's fashions a conservative look; shoes, on the other hand, are the outlet for any vixen's racier side
By Hadley Freeman
Last week at the fashion shows in Paris I saw a woman who looked, to all intents and purposes, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, tilting by at least 45°. Sensing that she was being quizzically watched, she straightened herself up, and took tentative baby steps to her seat, barely able to move more than a cobblestone at a time. It was Dita von Teese, a burlesque dancer who has achieved a certain level of fame thanks largely to her diligently maintained, cartoonish sexiness, which was certainly on display at the Louis Vuitton show, hoiked up on heels higher than the length of my hand. Three years ago I interviewed Von Teese and she claimed that she "literally" could not put her feet flat on the floor, having worn such high stilettos for so long. "So you stand on your tiptoes in the shower and stuff?" I asked. "Yes," she replied, with a solemn purse of blood red lips.

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After a four-year hiatus, Michelle Pfeiffer returns to the screen as a youth-obsessed witch in 'Stardust.' In reality, the actress has come to terms with aging and recognizes more important things in life
By Harriet Lane
Michelle Pfeiffer didn't plan to take a four-year sabbatical. It just sort of happened. "Honest to God, I got busy." With what? "Life," she says. Throughout her 20s and into her 30s, she says she fell apart between projects, and downtime filled her with horror. "My dad used to say, 'An idle mind is the devil's playground,' and I was certainly a more balanced person when I was working. Acting's an odd profession for a young person; it's so extreme. You work, and the conditions are tough and the process is so immersive, and then it stops, and then there's nothing. So you have to find ways of making you feel productive when you're not actually producing anything. For a young person, that's really challenging."

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Hualien's 2007 International Stone Sculpture Festival covers stonework from prehistoric times to modern day artists
By Susan Kendzulak
Rock the Dream is the theme for this year's biennial Hualien's International Stone Sculpture Festival (花蓮國際石雕藝術季), but activities are not limited to stone and include rock music (get it?), stone carving, prehistoric fossils, crafts and Ami cuisine.

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Treasures of Southeast Asia' shows off some fine folk artifacts but suffers in that it doesn't create a context for the objects on display
By Noah Buchan
The terra-cotta warriors have come and gone and the National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館) is now devoting its first floor to folk artifacts from the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam in an exhibition called Treasures of Southeast Asia (菲越泰印:東南亞民俗文物展).

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By Noah Buchan
Animamix art is taking the art world by storm - at least for the younger generation. Animamix, a portmanteau of "animation" and "comics," is as much a reflection of contemporary obsessions with virtual reality as it is an art movement.

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By Bradley Winterton
Les Troyens (The Trojans) can be relied on to be a headache for anyone who opts to take it on. It represented Hector Berlioz's bid for operatic immortality, but in reality it contains long stretches of considerable boredom. He conceived it on a massive scale, but only the last three of its five acts were performed during his lifetime, and heavily cut at that. New York's Metropolitan Opera decided to mount it to open their centennial season in 1983, but even this was a re-staging of their production 10 years earlier. It's this version that finally arrives in DVD format from Deutsche Grammophon this month.

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