London's Leicester Square was getting a dose of Hollywood glamour on Wednesday with the opening of the 49th annual London Film Festival.
Stars Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz and master spy writer John Le Carre were due to walk the red carpet before the opening-night screening of The Constant Gardener, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' adaptation of Le Carre's novel of international diplomacy and betrayal.
The festival closes Nov. 3 with George Clooney's McCarthy-era drama Good Night, And Good Luck. In between, it will screen 180 feature films and 130 shorts from some 50 countries.
PHOTO: AFP
Spanish screen heartthrob Antonio Banderas won a coveted place on Hollywood's prestigious Walk of Fame this week, 16 years after he arrived in the US as a struggling young actor.
The 45-year-old star of blockbuster Hollywood films as Zorro made his mark on Tinseltown when his bronze-edged star was unveiled on the pavement of Hollywood Boulevard before a cheering crowd including his wife Melanie Griffiths and pal Sharon Stone.
"It is an honor and privilege, thinking that I arrived to this country and this city 16 years ago with practically no money in my pocket," said Banderas.
PHOTO: AP
France is offering financial incentives to lure Bollywood producers to its shores, a French official said.
Franck Priot, deputy director of Film France, an agency set up by the French government to attract international film shoots, said value added tax was refundable on shoots by foreign film crews.
Priot, in Mumbai, India, this week with a French delegation to meet Bollywood heavyweights, said the agency had put together hotel packages at special rates for Indian crews to film in mountain resorts.
"Six years ago no one in France thought that Indian commercial films will become so big, but now Bollywood is very big in France and lots of people are fascinated by Indian cinema," Priot told a gathering of Bollywood producers.
And on the other side of the world in Hollywood, heavyweight star Sylvester Stallone will reprise his role as a working-class boxing champ in a sixth Rocky movie, the iconic role that propelled him to fame 30 years ago, he said.
Stallone, now 59, will also direct, write and co-produce Rocky Balboa, the latest in the winning series launched with the Oscar-winning Rocky in 1976, Stallone's spokeswoman and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios said.
"Rocky Balboa is about everybody who feels they want to participate in the race of life, rather than be a bystander," Stallone said in a statement.
Actor Ashton Kutcher, whose May-to-December romance with screen star Demi Moore has riveted the tabloids for months, is producing a Fox TV sitcom pilot inspired by the couple's recent real-life marriage. The show, about a man closer in age to his eldest stepdaughter than his bride, is "loosely based" on Kutcher's new blended-family life, with some key variations, 20th Century Fox Television spokesman Chris Alexander said this week.
Nearly a thousand people and dozens of horses launched an epic city invasion in China's Inner Mongolia for a scene in a new movie starring Andy Lau, a newspaper reported this week.
Four hundred crew members captured the scene from Mozi Gong Lue (Mo Zi's Attack Strategy) with four cameras, the Apple Daily newspaper reported.
The shoot took more than 40 consecutive hours, the Shanghai Youth Daily reported.
It said Lau didn't take part in the scene and that the star is due to start filming his scenes later this week.
The film, set in ancient China and based on a Japanese comic, has drawn investments from China, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong totaling up to US$12.4 million, the Shanghai Youth Daily reported.
Turning his attention to Japan movie legend Clint Eastwood is making two new movies about the World War II battle for the island of Iwo Jima, one from the US point of view and the other from the Japanese.
Eastwood revealed he was planning a second Iwo Jima film giving the other side of the story as told in his Flags of Our Fathers, he said in an interview in this week's edition of Time magazine.
In a rare move in Hollywood, the counter-balanced movies will be released simultaneously late next year.
Legally embattled Hollywood actor Tom Sizemore won a reprieve from jail time earlier this week when a judge suspended his 16-month prison sentence and reinstated probation imposed for a drug offence.
But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paula Adele Mabrey warned the troubled actor that he would find himself behind bars if he flouted the conditions of his probation.
"I have seen remarkable improvement ... I believe that you know what you need to do to stay out of prison, sir, and I believe you can do it," she said.
Judge Mabrey last July revoked Sizemore's probation and confined him to a drug rehabilitation centre for at least two months after he admitted violating probation by attempting to fake a urine drug test by using a prosthetic device.
Jason Han says that the e-arrival card spat between South Korea and Taiwan shows that Seoul is signaling adherence to its “one-China” policy, while Taiwan’s response reflects a reciprocal approach. “Attempts to alter the diplomatic status quo often lead to tit-for-tat responses,” the analyst on international affairs tells the Taipei Times, adding that Taiwan may become more cautious in its dealings with South Korea going forward. Taipei has called on Seoul to correct its electronic entry system, which currently lists Taiwan as “China (Taiwan),” warning that reciprocal measures may follow if the wording is not changed before March 31. As of yesterday,
The Portuguese never established a presence on Taiwan, but they must have traded with the indigenous people because later traders reported that the locals referred to parts of deer using Portuguese words. What goods might the Portuguese have offered their indigenous trade partners? Among them must have been slaves, for the Portuguese dealt slaves across Asia. Though we often speak of “Portuguese” ships, imagining them as picturesque vessels manned by pointy-bearded Iberians, in Asia Portuguese shipping between local destinations was crewed by Asian seamen, with a handful of white or Eurasian officers. “Even the great carracks of 1,000-2,000 tons which plied
It’s only half the size of its more famous counterpart in Taipei, but the Botanical Garden of the National Museum of Nature Science (NMNS, 國立自然科學博物館植物園) is surely one of urban Taiwan’s most inviting green spaces. Covering 4.5 hectares immediately northeast of the government-run museum in Taichung’s North District (北區), the garden features more than 700 plant species, many of which are labeled in Chinese but not in English. Since its establishment in 1999, the site’s managers have done their best to replicate a number of native ecosystems, dividing the site into eight areas. The name of the Coral Atoll Zone might
Nuclear power is getting a second look in Southeast Asia as countries prepare to meet surging energy demand as they vie for artificial intelligence-focused data centers. Several Southeast Asian nations are reviving mothballed nuclear plans and setting ambitious targets and nearly half of the region could, if they pursue those goals, have nuclear energy in the 2030s. Even countries without current plans have signaled their interest. Southeast Asia has never produced a single watt of nuclear energy, despite long-held atomic ambitions. But that may soon change as pressure mounts to reduce emissions that contribute to climate change, while meeting growing power needs. The
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