Ghost films have become a trend in Hong Kong filmmaking and something a money making machine at the box office. But making all this "ghost money" might, for the superstitious Hong Kong film industry, have inauspicious effects.
In Inner Senses (
PHOTO COURTESY OF GROUP POWER
According to Hong Kong media, making this ghost film might have damaged Cheung's acting career, which is currently in transition as he angles to become a film director.
In the film, Cheung plays a psychiatrist who is treating Lam, a young woman suffering from constant hallucinations and panic attacks. Cheung convinces himself that the symptoms are caused by Lam's traumatized family life and her love affairs, and that by falling in love with her, he will be able to rescue her from falling into a psychological black hole.
Then the inconceivable happens. The psychiatrist starts to see the ghost of his high school girlfriend who committed suicide 20 years ago when he broke up with her.
In real life as in the film, Cheung (who established a reputation for his roles in Farewell My Concubine and Days of Being Wild), has been reported suffering from depression. Although his role in Inner Senses earned him a nomination for a Golden Horse award last November, this does not seem to have lifted his mood.
During the shooting of Inner Senses, the 46 year-old actor was reported as being "too involved" in his role for this film and was suffering from insomnia as a result. And now, Cheung has turned down all promotional appearances for health reasons even as the film is getting ready for commercial release in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. During his few public appearances Cheung has looked pale and weak.
Speculation has been mounting in the Hong Kong media. It's been reported that the actor has been worried that his screen image is not youthful and beautiful anymore, and signs of baldness have been commented on in recent years.
Cheung began his career as an actor and pop singer in 1978, and has always been portrayed as a handsome, clean-cut leading man. His current depression has been attributed to a crisis in his 17-year relationship with his boyfriend, the mysterious Mr. Tang. The official reason is that Cheung is taking a course of Chinese medicines and it is inconvenient for him to travel.
Whatever the reason may be, many on-going projects have been affected. Cheung recently canceled such filmmaking projects as Beautiful Shanghai (
His own production company, Dream Team (夢幻聯隊), was preparing to shoot Stealing Heart (偷心), to be directed by himself and starring two Chinese actors, Hu Jun (胡軍) and Ning Jing (寧靜), but even this personal project has been temporarily abandoned.
Has the making of Inner Sense put a hex on Cheung? This is what the gossip rags are asking, and ghosts and lost love are definitely more exciting than a career that has been involved in an extended downswing.
Jan. 6 to Jan. 12 Perhaps hoping to gain the blessing of the stone-age hunter-gatherers that dwelt along the east coast 30,000 years ago, visitors to the Baxian Caves (八仙洞) during the 1970s would grab a handful of soil to bring home. In January 1969, the nation was captivated by the excavation of pre-ceramic artifacts and other traces of human habitation in several caves atop a sea cliff in Taitung County. The majority of the unearthed objects were single-faced, unpolished flake tools fashioned from natural pebbles collected by the shore. While archaeologists had found plenty of neolithic (7,000 BC to 1,700
Famed Chinese demographer Yi Fuxian (易富賢) recently wrote for The Diplomat on the effects of a cross-strait war on demography. He contended that one way to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is by putting the demographic issue front and center — last year total births in the PRC, he said, receded to levels not seen since 1762. Yi observes that Taiwan’s current fertility rate is already lower than Ukraine’s — a nation at war that is refusing to send its young into battle — and that its “demographic crisis suggests that Taiwan’s technological importance will rapidly decline, and
When the weather is too cold to enjoy the white beaches and blue waters of Pingtung County’s Kenting (墾丁), it’s the perfect time to head up into the hills and enjoy a different part of the national park. In the highlands above the bustling beach resorts, a simple set of trails treats visitors to lush forest, rocky peaks, billowing grassland and a spectacular bird’s-eye view of the coast. The rolling hills beyond Hengchun Township (恆春) in Pingtung County offer a two-hour through-hike of sweeping views from the mighty peak of Dajianshih Mountain (大尖石山) to Eluanbi Lighthouse (鵝鑾鼻燈塔) on the coast, or
Her greatest fear, dormant for decades, came rushing back in an instant: had she adopted and raised a kidnapped child? Peg Reif’s daughter, adopted from South Korea in the 1980s, had sent her a link to a documentary detailing how the system that made their family was rife with fraud: documents falsified, babies switched, children snatched off the street and sent abroad. Reif wept. She was among more than 120 who contacted The Associated Press this fall, after a series of stories and a documentary made with Frontline exposed how Korea created a baby pipeline, designed to ship children abroad as quickly as
RSS