The Communist Party is chasing a New York-based company around the world in an attempt to pressure venues into canceling performances. When Singapore got cold feet, an extra show was added in Chiayi
By Blake Carter
After viewing a four-minute ad online, seeing the brochure, reading reviews and interviewing the Taiwan spokesperson for the show, what will happen when Shen Yun Chinese Spectacular (神韻晚會) opens in Tainan City tonight is still something of a mystery.

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By David Chen
A boriginal musician Leo Chen (陳永龍) grew up singing about joy and the beauty of the mountains of his home, Nanwang Village in Taitung County. At that time, he saw the traditional songs of his native Puyuma tribe as nothing special - they were just an ordinary part of life.

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By noah buchan
In some countries getting smashed, going behind the wheel and running over a pedestrian would be grounds for a prison sentence. Taiwan, however, plays by a different set of rules. Here, at least for celebrity saucers, begging forgiveness publicly and handing over some cash seems to be the ticket to redemption.

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By noah buchan
Peter Pan brings two weeks of acrobatic adventure and fantasy to these shores beginning tonight at Novel Hall (新舞臺) and running through March 16. Performed by an international cast of adults and child actors, the musical fuses the best of the story's humor and imagination with contemporary special effects and musical numbers.

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Feb. 15 to Feb. 21

By Noah Buchan
Theater troupes from Germany, France, Israel and South Korea, as well as two from Taiwan, have drawn inspiration from Athol Fugard, Bernard-Marie Koltes, Sophocles, and Ingmar Bergman and others for this year's International Theater Festival.

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By Tom Leeming
Unless you're on LSD or magic mushrooms, music can be tough to see. Enter the video jockey, who can provide a party's optical soul.

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By Ho Yi
To celebrate moving to the National Taiwan University Extension Education Center (台灣大學進修推廣部) eight years after it opened, the French language center Alliance Francaise de Taiwan will treat Taipei's residents to an open-air concert tomorrow afternoon.

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By Ron Brownlow
Baba Kebaba, a brand new Middle Eastern restaurant just off Shida Road (師大路), has a name and a menu that are reminiscent of Sababa, another Middle East-themed restaurant that's opened four branches in Taipei.

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By Diane Baker
Tucked down an alley behind the Shin-Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tianmu and just two doors away from the Spice Shop, another Indian restaurant, is a jewel box of a restaurant, Saffron. It's fine Indian dining, but in a very elegant yet comfortable atmosphere.

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Going back and forth in time to tell the same story from different perspectives has worked in the past ('Rashomon,' 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead'), but not here
By Manohla Dargis
Vantage Point, a gimmick in search of a point, is nothing if not, er, timely. Set in the picturesque Spanish city of Salamanca (otherwise known as Mexico City), this jigsaw puzzle exploits a repellent conceit - the shooting of an American president (William Hurt, effectively insincere) - in a vague attempt to explore questions of narrative and subjectivity (like Rashomon) through the box-office-friendly form of a thriller (like the Bourne flicks). Instead of pushing the story forward, the filmmakers instead repeatedly return to the crime, or rather to a handful of witnesses, all of whom saw the same exact event from critically different angles.

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When it comes to this serial bridesmaid's turn to tie the knot, she makes all the right moves by bagging the Right Wrong Guy and ditching the Wrong Right Guy
By A.O. scott
At the beginning of 27 Dresses, Jane (Katherine Heigl), a serial bridesmaid with an almost pathological devotion to other people's nuptials, spends a long night shuttling between two weddings. One is in Midtown Manhattan, the other in Brooklyn; one has an upper-crusty, white-bread look, while the other appears to be a Jewish-Hindu intermarriage. But as director Anne Fletcher methodically cuts back and forth between them, she makes the reasonably insightful, moderately funny point that modern American weddings, however they may strain for individuality and specialness, are all pretty much alike.

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This saccharine adaptation of David Gerrold's short story is a sticky, gooey tearjerker
By Manohla Dargis
Trend spotters (and actresses) take note. This season John Cusack is struggling with parenthood and worlds of sorrow: In Martian Child he plays a novelist widower hoping to adopt a small, broken boy, and in the forthcoming Grace Is Gone his working-stiff widower grapples with trying to break the bad news to his girls. In each movie the beloved is already out of the picture, which allows Cusack instantly to take possession of the screen with his trademark sensitivity. Nice guys rule, and don't you forget it.

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Actors Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung are scheduled to portray Ip Man, the kung fu master who trained Bruce Lee and many others
By Min Lee
Bruce Lee (李小龍) is the master to many martial arts fans. Less is known about his master, Ip Man (葉問), a pioneer in the kung fu style that influenced Lee. Hong Kong filmmakers hope to change that by bringing Ip's story to the big screen.

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The US television ratings for this year's Oscars sunk to an all-time low, preliminary figures showed Monday. According to figures from Nielsen Media Research, Sunday's ceremony at the Kodak Theater averaged an audience of only 32 million viewers, the worst since records began in 1974. [ FULL STORY ]

By Martin Williams
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