The Ministry of Justice presented three anti-drug films on Wednesday as part of the government's efforts to fight drug abuse.
According to a ministry official, one of the three films features the stories of drug addicts in Malaysia and Thailand shot by a preacher from Malaysia who was also a drug addict but kicked the habit more than 20 years ago.
At a press conference the preacher, surnamed Chen, expressed hope that the story of his life with drugs will help other people say no to drugs.
PHOTO: AP
Crimes related to drug abuse and trafficking have risen significantly in the last three years, according to the ministry, with the amount of seized drugs last year reaching a 10-year high.
Honoring one of the world's most important cinema nations, the accent will be on Japan at Munich's 23rd annual film festival this year.
In a special section, New Asian Cinema, initiated at last year's festival to honor the artistic qualities of East Asian movies, no less than 18 films from Japan will unspool during the eight days of screenings from June 25 to July 2.
And as part of the special fest, organizer Andreas Stroehl and his staff have lined up two retrospectives featuring films from Keisuke Kinoshita and Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
Star Wars had an out-of-this-world long weekend at the North American box office, raking in another US$70 million which brought its two-week earnings to US$270.4 million.
Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas' final installment of the six-part Star Wars franchise outgunned two high-performing new films to take top spot at the US and Canadian box offices over the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
The animated family film Madagascar earned US$61 million and took second spot, and prison remake The Longest Yard, came in third with US$58.6 million, box office trackers Exhibitor Relations Co Inc said.
The romantic comedy "Monster-
in-Law" starring Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda dropped to fourth place, bringing in US$12.7 million in ticket receipts.
The screwball soccer comedy Kicking and Screaming was fifth with US$6.5 million, followed by Crash with six million.
Political thriller The Interpreter, starring Nicole Kidman, was seventh with US$2.6 million, followed by Jet Li's Unleashed, with US$2.4 million.
Crusade epic Kingdom of Heaven was ninth with US$2.2 million while House of Wax rounded off the weekly top 10 with US$1.6 million.
The top 12 films grossed US$225.4 million over the four-day period -- the second-highest ever for the holiday -- but was 5.5 percent lower over last year's Memorial day weekend when earnings hit US$238.6 million.
India has banned smoking scenes in movies and on television, saying they glamorise the use of cigarettes but the move has angered filmmakers in the prolific
Bollywood movie industry.
In tough new regulations, the health ministry said distributors and directors would have to show health warnings on screens in old movies and TV shows, whether Indian or foreign, that showed actors smoking.
"[There would have to be a] mandatory display of a prominent scroll containing a health warning in programs containing scenes with smoking situations that have been produced before this notification," a ministry statement said.
Producers of the upcoming movie based on the blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code were not allowed to film in London's Westminster Abbey after church officials denounced the book as "theologically unsound".
The 940-year-old Abbey features in the international murder mystery by US author Dan Brown which has been condemned by the Vatican and Anglican Church leaders for distorting the Christian message.
The novel alleges Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children, whereas Christians are taught that Christ never married and was childless when he was crucified.
-- agencies
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
The recent decline in average room rates is undoubtedly bad news for Taiwan’s hoteliers and homestay operators, but this downturn shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. According to statistics published by the Tourism Administration (TA) on March 3, the average cost of a one-night stay in a hotel last year was NT$2,960, down 1.17 percent compared to 2023. (At more than three quarters of Taiwan’s hotels, the average room rate is even lower, because high-end properties charging NT$10,000-plus skew the data.) Homestay guests paid an average of NT$2,405, a 4.15-percent drop year on year. The countrywide hotel occupancy rate fell from
Indigenous Truku doctor Yuci (Bokeh Kosang), who resents his father for forcing him to learn their traditional way of life, clashes head to head in this film with his younger brother Siring (Umin Boya), who just wants to live off the land like his ancestors did. Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) opens with Yuci as the man of the hour as the village celebrates him getting into medical school, but then his father (Nolay Piho) wakes the brothers up in the middle of the night to go hunting. Siring is eager, but Yuci isn’t. Their mother (Ibix Buyang) begs her husband to let
In late December 1959, Taiwan dispatched a technical mission to the Republic of Vietnam. Comprising agriculturalists and fisheries experts, the team represented Taiwan’s foray into official development assistance (ODA), marking its transition from recipient to donor nation. For more than a decade prior — and indeed, far longer during Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule on the “mainland” — the Republic of China (ROC) had received ODA from the US, through agencies such as the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). More than a third of domestic investment came via such sources between 1951
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