The threat of an actors' strike in the months ahead has put movie studios in a tenuous situation. Filmmakers are reluctant to launch any production that cannot be completed before the expiration of the Screen Actors Guild's (SAG) major film and TV contract ends on June 30.
"The studios for the most part are not greenlighting any movies that would have to be in production after that (June 30) deadline," said an insider at one leading talent agency.
Labor jitters have even prompted Hollywood's leading insurance carrier, Fireman's Fund Insurance Co, to offer a first-of-its-kind "strike expense" policy for studios.
PHOTO: AP
In light of strike concerns, Steven Spielberg has called off the April start to a DreamWorks film about the trial of the 1968 anti-war activists, the Chicago Seven, according to Variety.
Michael Bay, director of Transformers, is keeping his fingers crossed as he sticks to an early June start date for a sequel to the movie.
India's Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted state bans on the screening of Jodhaa Akbar, a blockbuster film about the love between a Muslim emperor and his Hindu wife.
Several states last month prohibited cinemas from showing the film after it sparked protests by Hindu Rajputs - a traditional warrior caste - against a "wrong interpretation" of history.
But the court lifted the bans until March 14, when a hearing will receive a petition from the Bollywood film's producers, who say the protests have cost them heavy losses.
Cinemas in western Rajasthan state were the first to refuse to screen the film after threats came from the Rajput community, which says it is grossly inaccurate.
The film - one of the most expensive Bollywood productions with an estimated budget of US$10 million - depicts a romance between the 16th-century Mughal ruler Akbar and Rajput princess Jodha Bai.
Former Miss World Aishwarya Rai portrays Jodha while Akbar is played by Bollywood heartthrob Hrithik Roshan.
In Hollywood, some insiders are scratching their heads over comments by French Oscar winner Marion Cotillard.
"I think we're lied to about a lot of things," Cotillard said during a television program first broadcast last year, which has resurfaced on the Internet.
The actress, who picked up her award for playing Edith Piaf in the French film La Vie en Rose, cited the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 as one example, adding: "I tend to believe in the conspiracy theory."
Cotillard's lawyer Vincent Toledano said she had "never intended to contest nor question the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and regrets the way old remarks have been taken out of context."
Paul Raymond, the porn baron and multi-millionaire property developer credited with staging the first live striptease show in London, has died, his company said Monday. He was 82.
Raymond, who amassed an estimated US$1.2 billion fortune, was once dubbed the "King of Soho" for his businesses, including Raymond's Revue Bar, in the London nightlife district.
His stable of top-shelf magazines, overseen by his company, the Paul Raymond Organisation, included Razzle, Men's World and Mayfair. Born Geoffrey Anthony Quinn, the son of a haulage contractor, Raymond left school at 15 vowing to make his name in show business. He started out with a mind-reading act, before becoming producer for a touring vaudeville show.
For many commentators he brought erotica into the mainstream, hosting a ground-breaking live striptease in 1958, before going on to make a vast fortune by buying and developing property in Soho and west London.
He was also described as a British version of Playboy founder Hugh Heffner in the US.
Bienvenue Chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Land of the Ch'tis), a French comedy mocking national stereotypes about the country's north, usually depicted as a bleak, depressed land of beer-swilling brutes, looks set to be the movie of the year in France after smashing box office records.
Released last Wednesday, it has already overtaken France's most costly film ever, Asterix at the Olympic Games, which came out in January.
Films and novels about the area, which is a stark contrast to the glamour of Paris or the sunny mountains and coast of the Riviera, often feature coal mining, unemployment, rain or heavy drinking.
This grim social realist tradition can be traced back to the 19th-century writer Emile Zola and his bleak mining novel Germinal.
But Bienvenue Chez les Ch'tis, written and directed by comedian Danny Boon, a Ch'ti himself who also stars in the movie, satirizes the prejudices about the area to reveal the warmth and big hearts of its people.
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
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
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,
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