The biggest stars of Saturday's 44th Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎) were, of course, Ang Lee (李安), with his erotic spy thriller Lust, Caution (色,戒), the flick's cast and crew and veteran actress Joan Chen (陳沖), who plays Tony Leung Chiu-wei's (梁朝偉) wife in the film.
Chen trumped contender Tang Wei (湯唯) to pick up her second Best Leading Actress trophy for her performance in Australian production, The Home Song Stories, but was given the cold shoulder by the media, which swarmed around the Lee camp, especially 28-year-old Tang.
The smile on the 46-year-old actress' face froze and faded when she was almost left out of the happy photo moment. It was the last of Chen the press would see for the rest of the night. The sulky actress didn't show up at the after party and left Taiwan the following morning.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
The annual event also gave the hoi polloi a chance to spot stray celebrities on the streets of Taipei. Skilled in making good use of her hard-earned stardom, Shu Qi (舒淇) made time during her short visit home to attend a party thrown by Jaeger-LeCoultre watches last weekend.
Apparently, Qi's no-eating-at-parties rule made her ravenous. After the party, the belle, dressed in a Burberry wool coat, gold boots and black stockings, legged it to a donut shop on Minsheng East Road, closely trailed by paparazzi, and swiftly returned to her Mercedes for a nibble.
The moral of this showbiz tidbit is: don't believe the hype. You can have your cake, eat it and still be a thin glamour-puss.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
How does an obscure male model make it onto the billboard of the city's premier shopping mall? Easy, date the owner's sister. A year of going out with Breeze Center (微風廣場) art director, Liao Hsiao-chiao (廖曉喬), sister of the mall's owner, paid off for wannabe star and model Denny Huang (黃柏鈞). His Herculean body is featured predominantly on the center's new billboard advertisement for the winter holidays.
Huang may be a business-savvy man who knows how to take a shortcut to fame and glory, but the Liaos are also notorious for using the family for modeling and showbiz. The clan succeeded in propelling Breeze owner Henry Liao's (廖鎮漢) wife and society dame Amy Sun (孫芸芸) to stardom by featuring her in promotional material.
In other model-related news, the love between Catwalk's (凱渥) Ethan Ruan (阮經天) and Tiffany Hsu (許瑋甯) has matured over the past six months, with gossip hounds partaking in each and every treasured moment of their high-profile courtship.
The liaison blossomed from a casual summertime fling on the beach, when the pair appeared on a reality TV show filmed in Kenting (墾丁), to house-hunting last week, which has been interpreted by the tabloids as a sign of hitting the final phase of romance.
As every showbiz news reader will know, the race is on to uncover any hint of double-crossing or a breakup.
June 9 to June 15 A photo of two men riding trendy high-wheel Penny-Farthing bicycles past a Qing Dynasty gate aptly captures the essence of Taipei in 1897 — a newly colonized city on the cusp of great change. The Japanese began making significant modifications to the cityscape in 1899, tearing down Qing-era structures, widening boulevards and installing Western-style infrastructure and buildings. The photographer, Minosuke Imamura, only spent a year in Taiwan as a cartographer for the governor-general’s office, but he left behind a treasure trove of 130 images showing life at the onset of Japanese rule, spanning July 1897 to
One of the most important gripes that Taiwanese have about the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is that it has failed to deliver concretely on higher wages, housing prices and other bread-and-butter issues. The parallel complaint is that the DPP cares only about glamor issues, such as removing markers of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) colonialism by renaming them, or what the KMT codes as “de-Sinification.” Once again, as a critical election looms, the DPP is presenting evidence for that charge. The KMT was quick to jump on the recent proposal of the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) to rename roads that symbolize
On the evening of June 1, Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) apologized and resigned in disgrace. His crime was instructing his driver to use a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon. The Control Yuan is the government branch that investigates, audits and impeaches government officials for, among other things, misuse of government funds, so his misuse of a government vehicle was highly inappropriate. If this story were told to anyone living in the golden era of swaggering gangsters, flashy nouveau riche businessmen, and corrupt “black gold” politics of the 1980s and 1990s, they would have laughed.
In an interview posted online by United Daily News (UDN) on May 26, current Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) was asked about Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) replacing him as party chair. Though not yet officially running, by the customs of Taiwan politics, Lu has been signalling she is both running for party chair and to be the party’s 2028 presidential candidate. She told an international media outlet that she was considering a run. She also gave a speech in Keelung on national priorities and foreign affairs. For details, see the May 23 edition of this column,
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