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.
Last week saw the appearance of another odious screed full of lies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian (肖千), in the Financial Review, a major Australian paper. Xiao’s piece was presented without challenge or caveat. His “Seven truths on why Taiwan always will be China’s” presented a “greatest hits” of the litany of PRC falsehoods. This includes: Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were descended from the people of China 30,000 years ago; a “Chinese” imperial government administrated Taiwan in the 14th century; Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), “recovered” Taiwan for China; the Qing owned
In Taiwan’s politics the party chair is an extremely influential position. Typically this person is the presumed presidential candidate or serving president. In the last presidential election, two of the three candidates were also leaders of their party. Only one party chair race had been planned for this year, but with the Jan. 1 resignation by the currently indicted Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) two parties are now in play. If a challenger to acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) appears we will examine that race in more depth. Currently their election is set for Feb. 15. EXTREMELY
Jan. 20 to Jan. 26 Taipei was in a jubilant, patriotic mood on the morning of Jan. 25, 1954. Flags hung outside shops and residences, people chanted anti-communist slogans and rousing music blared from loudspeakers. The occasion was the arrival of about 14,000 Chinese prisoners from the Korean War, who had elected to head to Taiwan instead of being repatriated to China. The majority landed in Keelung over three days and were paraded through the capital to great fanfare. Air Force planes dropped colorful flyers, one of which read, “You’re back, you’re finally back. You finally overcame the evil communist bandits and
They increasingly own everything from access to space to how we get news on Earth and now outgoing President Joe Biden warns America’s new breed of Donald Trump-allied oligarchs could gobble up US democracy itself. Biden used his farewell speech to the nation to deliver a shockingly dark message: that a nation which has always revered its entrepreneurs may now be at their mercy. “An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,” Biden said. He named no names, but his targets were clear: men like Elon Musk
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