The leading parts in Cloud Gate Dance Theater's 'Nine Songs' were tailor-made for dancers who are no longer with the group. Despite this, Lin Hwai-min says the new production is better than the original
By Diane Baker
A lotus pond fills the front of the stage. A masked god dances on the shoulders of two men. A river goddess borne on two bamboo poles trails an endless white veil across the stage. A river of flickering candles creates a vision of eternity.

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By Ian Bartholomew
Next week M Dans (驫舞劇場), the small and amorphous contemporary dance company headed up by Chen Wu-kang (陳武康), will celebrate the third anniversary of its founding. Given its somewhat unconventional method of operation this is a remarkable achievement, and Velocity (速度), which will premiere this weekend at the National Experimental Theater, shows off the group's efforts to "keep it fresh" and to hold the audiences' attention as the world of contemporary dance spins madly into an unknown future.

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Compiled By Ho Yi
The most embarrassing moment in the Golden Bell Awards' (金鐘獎) 42-year history came to light on Monday when the jury panel confessed that a top honor, the Best Supporting Actor accolade, was awarded to the wrong person at the ceremony on Saturday. The real winner was Hong Kong-based Chang Chia-nien (張嘉年), also known as Tai Pao (太保), not veteran actor Chang Kuo-chu (張國柱).

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By Bradley Winterton
These days, it would seem, Taipei can have anything it wants. In the world of classical music at least, if something is famous anywhere in the world, then it must come here. The money's no problem - Taiwan knows it can afford the best, and so the best it continues to insist on having.

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BY TAIPEI TIMES STAFF
Nov. 9 to Nov. 15

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By Ron Brownlow
On To a God Unknown's MySpace page there's a note that reads, "The songs are long. You should listen to them very loud." But some people don't get it. Earlier this year at party in Nantou County, its set was cut short because an organizer possessed more limited tastes. The band members had spent a lot of time and money traveling from Taipei, and they were angry. So after the other acts had finished, they plugged in their instruments and started playing again. Screaming for them to stop, the bar's manager grabbed vocalist Leon LaPointe's microphone and wouldn't let go. Incensed, LaPointe knocked over a speaker and punched out a Heineken light. Someone called the police.

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By Tom Leeming
Serious Loss of Perspective Syndrome, or SLOPS, is a debilitating condition that afflicts many an expat in Taiwan. Sufferers can easily be identified at after parties as they make audacious and absurd comments about their own self-worth and status, such as, "I'm a musician, writer, director, freelance graphic designer ... teacher." Though everyone knows someone with SLOPS, what's not common knowledge is that the term was coined by house and electro DJ Nicola Kriz, Swank resident, native Scot and party physician/physicist.

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By Noah Buchan
Creative Society's (創作社劇團) earlier plays dealt with lost idealism in Taiwan's rapidly changing society and the frustration people feel when they have to make unwanted compromises.

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The Golden Horse Film Festival, which this year focuses on award-winning and more obscure works, begins today
By Ho Yi
The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival's (TGHFF, 台北金馬影展) young and rebellious spirit is indefatigable. This year's themes focus on value-defying and uncompromising works by and about iconoclasts such as Bob Dylan, Marlon Brando, Wim Wenders and John Waters.

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This remake of a minor classic trades sexual psychology and soul searching for misogynistic filth
By A.O. Scott
If you haven't seen The Heartbreak Kid, Elaine May's 1972 adaptation of a short story by Bruce Jay Friedman (with a screenplay by Neil Simon), you're missing a minor classic, a study in Jewish male sexual anxiety that fits comfortably (which is to say nervously and neurotically) alongside Portnoy's Complaint and the early films of Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky.

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Murder, thugs and family ties all take a turn under the microscope in this cynical movie that nevertheless attacks from a very humanistic point of view
By A.O. Scott
The grim lesson of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is delivered by an elderly jewelry dealer sitting in a tiny, dark room somewhere in the diamond district of Manhattan. "The world is an evil place," he declares, with the authority of someone who has seen and done plenty of bad things. "Some people make money from it, and some people are destroyed by it."

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This computer-game-turned-movie is a complete waste of time for anyone who enjoys a plot and good acting
By Manohla Dargis
Based on the video game franchise of the same title, Hitman exploits every action-flick cliche imaginable and still manages to be dull. It's bang, boom, blah - action movies for bored dummies.

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Elizabeth Taylor persuaded the Writers Guild of America not to picket the Paramount Pictures lot on Dec. 1, when the actress and AIDS activist is slated to give a benefit performance of Love Letters with James Earl Jones.

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Compiled by Martin Williams and Ho Yi
Epitaph

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By Ron Brownlow
Long John Silver's took some flak from the blogosphere when the quick-service US seafood chain opened its first Taipei branch late last year. One poster on Forumosa.com wrote, "Even foreigners will not eat there more than once." Another: "I wouldn't go back if it were free." But I decided to check it out anyway. I had happy memories of eating there when I was a small child. It couldn't be that bad, could it?

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By Ian Bartholomew
Danny Deng, the culinary maestro behind the Ambassador Hotel's newest endeavor, is aiming for the very top. "We think we have a chance at the title of best steakhouse in Asia," he said of A Cut Steakhouse, which opened two weeks ago in the hotel's basement.

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Upcoming

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