A Taiwanese family drama about a daughter’s relationship with her parents and stepmother was the front-runner among top contenders for Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards — the “Oscars” of Chinese-language cinema — clinching 14 nominations, including for best film and best director.
Besides Chang Tso-chi’s (張作驥) When Love Comes (當愛來的時候), Teddy Chen’s (陳德森) historical thriller Bodyguards and Assassins (十月圍城) was also a leading nominee, shortlisted in nine categories. The winners will be announced on Nov. 20 in an awards ceremony to be held in Taipei.
The two movies will compete for best film honors against Seven Days in Heaven (父後七日), which examines Taiwanese funeral rituals; Chung Mong-hong’s (鍾孟宏) The Fourth Portrait (第四張畫), about the struggles of a 10-year-old boy from a broken family and Liu Jie’s (劉杰) Judge (透析), which takes a look at injustice in China’s legal system.
Liu and Chung were also nominated for best director along with Chang and Chen.
Oscar-winning Taiwanese Director Ang Lee’s (李安) protege Tang Wei (湯唯), who was once blacklisted in China, is up for her first big prize, vying for the best actress title against veterans Xu Fan (徐帆), Sylvia Chang (張艾嘉) and Lu Liping (呂麗萍).
Tang was barred from acting for a period after performing in Lee’s 2007 World War II thriller Lust, Caution (色,戒), a role that won her a Golden Horse for best new performer.
Allegedly, the Chinese authorities were angered by the sex scenes in Lust, Caution because of their acrobatic nature and because they involved her character and that of a Chinese collaborator working for the Japanese.
In the best actor competition, China’s Wang Xueqi (王學圻), who played a businessman sympathetic to the revolutionary cause in Bodyguards and Assassins, will face off against countrymen Ni Dahong (倪大紅) and Qin Hao (秦昊) and Taiwan’s Ethan Ruan (阮經天).
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,