How an international megastar, Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) is riding a crest of Chinese fever in Hollywood and has easily scored two movie deals with big-name producer Harvey Weinstein, with another in the offing. Two confirmed projects will see Zhang play a young woman passing herself off as a man in the well-know Chinese story Hua Mulan (花木蘭) and team up with George Clooney in a remake of Japanese master Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic Seven Samurai.
Exactly why an American actor has been picked to play the leading samurai role, producer Weinstein didn't say. Casting non-Western actors for all the leading roles would, of course, be asking too much from Hollywood.
Taiwan's pride and joy Ang Lee (李安) is ready to shoot his next project Lust Caution (色戒) based on Eileen Chang's (張愛玲) novel of the same title in September and will return to Taiwan next week for auditions. It was said that more than 30 veteran actors and teen-idols have signed up for the coveted honor of appearing in the movie.
Ang Lee's brother Khan Lee (
According to Khan Lee, Big S (
The leading lady in Hong Kong director John Woo's (吳宇森) Battle of the Red Cliff (赤壁之戰), local supermodel Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) was in Xian (西安), China, last week to attend the extravagant banquet thrown by Longines as the watch brand's celebrity spokeswoman. After paying taxes of some NT$5 million this year, the wealthy lady whined that forking out such a large wedge of cash hurt a little and said she would consider buying expensive watches from now and claim them as tax deductible.
Other local catwalk queens contributed their fair share to the national treasury. Shatina Chen (
Mando-pop queen Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), on the other hand, has lost out on a lucrative deal with Motorola after the mobile-phone maker ditched her.
Spotted by local paparazzi using a mobile phone made by Sharp a couple of months ago, Tsai's treacherous misconduct pissed Motorola off, and prompted the company to sign up members of the four-piece pop/rap outfit Nan Quan Mama (
Tsai suffered another slap in the face last week, this time by Bvlgari. As the brand's celebrity guest at a party, Tsai expressed her keen interest in the brand's luxuries and tried to squeeze two free pieces of jewelry out of the Russian fashion house instead of the one promised by the fashion empire. Bvlgari stuck to its guns and assured the greedy star that one piece of jewelry was more than enough to pay for her brief appearance at the show.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Mongolian influencer Anudari Daarya looks effortlessly glamorous and carefree in her social media posts — but the classically trained pianist’s road to acceptance as a transgender artist has been anything but easy. She is one of a growing number of Mongolian LGBTQ youth challenging stereotypes and fighting for acceptance through media representation in the socially conservative country. LGBTQ Mongolians often hide their identities from their employers and colleagues for fear of discrimination, with a survey by the non-profit LGBT Centre Mongolia showing that only 20 percent of people felt comfortable coming out at work. Daarya, 25, said she has faced discrimination since she
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