rt house director Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) ended the 62nd Cannes Film Festival’s main competition on Saturday with a display of stunning visuals in his latest movie Face (臉).
It was a fitting end to the Cannes festival’s race for the coveted Palme d’Or, which was due to be awarded early this morning Taiwan time and has included some remarkable visual moments from human longing through to futurism as well as sweeping vistas displaying the force of nature.
“The image is extremely important to me. The image is central in my films,” said Tsai at a press conference held on Saturday to mark the Cannes premiere of Face, which is about a Taiwanese director making a film at the Paris Louvre museum, based on the story of Salome.
Tsai assembled his usual group of actors including Lee Kang-Sheng (李康生) for Face.
However, he has also added leading French actors Jean-Pierre Leaud and Fanny Ardant as well as French model-turned actress Laetita Casta to tell his story of Salome and the first century AD King Herod.
Tsai’s Face is one of a slew of Asian movies included in Cannes’ main competition with six of the 20 films competing for the Palme d’Or from Asian filmmakers.
They also touch on a range of themes such as gay desire, a father seeking revenge and a priest-turned vampire along with gangland terror in Manila.
Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn has called off his divorce from Robin Wright Penn for a second time, not long after seeking legal separation. Weeks after saying he and his wife of 13 years will separate on the grounds of irreconcilable differences, Penn has withdrawn a court application filed in Marin County near San Francisco, the New York Daily News reported, citing court records.
Actor George Hamilton has had his right knee replaced. His publicist, Jeffrey Lane, said the elective surgery was performed on Thursday in Chicago. He said the 69-year-old Hamilton, who sports a permatan, first injured his knee while starring in Chicago on Broadway, and decided to have his knee replaced after he injured it a second time when he competed on the second season of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars in 2006.
Hamilton is expected to return to Los Angeles this week.
Britain’s unlikely singing sensation Susan Boyle, the frumpy church volunteer who wowed the world with her angelic voice, has been voted into the next round of a TV talent show that propelled her to global fame.
The 47 year old, who lives alone with her cat Pebbles in one of Scotland’s poorest regions, was due to perform in a live show yesterday [today Taiwan time], weeks after her surprising performance of I Dreamed a Dream from the musical Les Miserables shocked judges and charmed tens of millions of people worldwide.
Boyle’s performance last month on the American Idol-style show Britain’s Got Talent has been viewed almost 60 million times on YouTube, and saw the shy Scot feted by celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey and Demi Moore.
Boyle, who says she’s never been kissed, was greeted with giggles from a skeptical audience and eye rolls from the show’s famously sardonic judge Simon Cowell when she appeared last month — but startled viewers with her soaring voice.
Bookmaker William Hill makes Boyle a runaway favorite to win the final on May 30.
“She had a tremendous reaction because of the phenomenon that is YouTube — it’s now all over the world and she’s coping rather well,’’ said the singer’s brother, Gerry Boyle. “But I think some of the reality is now starting to sink in.’’
The youngest of nine children, Boyle grew up in Blackburn, a community of 4,750 people located 32km west of Edinburgh, in Scotland — a district blighted by unemployment and crime.
As an adult, she’s struggled for work but had been a regular on her local karaoke circuit and performed in church choirs.
Sara Lee, a spokeswoman for Britain’s Got Talent said that Boyle’s performance will be available almost instantly on Internet, allowing her international fans a chance to watch the singer’s latest appearance.
Earlier this month Economic Affairs Minister Kuo Jyh-huei (郭智輝) proposed buying green power from the Philippines and shipping it to Taiwan, in remarks made during a legislative hearing. Because this is an eminently reasonable and useful proposal, it was immediately criticized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). KMT Legislator Chang Chia-chun (張嘉郡) said that Taiwan pays NT$40 billion annually to fix cables, while TPP heavyweight Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) complained that Kuo wanted to draw public attention away from Taiwan’s renewable energy ratio. Considering the legal troubles currently inundating the TPP, one would think Huang would
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) last week told residents to avoid wearing scary Halloween costumes on the MRT so as not to alarm other passengers. Well, I thought, so much for my plan to visit Taipei dressed as the National Development Council’s (NDC) biennial population report “Population Projections for the Republic of China (Taiwan): 2024-2070,” which came out last week. Terms like “low birth rate” and “demographic decline” do not cut it — the report is nothing short of a demographic disaster. Yet, in Taiwan, as in other countries, it is solvable. It simply requires a change in mindset. As it
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For three films now, Tom Hardy has smushed Jekyll and Hyde into one strange and slimy double act. In a Marvel universe filled with alter egos that cloak stealthy superpowers, his investigative reporter Eddie Brock doesn’t transform. He shares his body with an ink-black alien symbiote (voiced with a baritone growl by Hardy), who sometimes swallows him whole, sometimes shoots a tentacle or two out and always chipperly punctuates Eddie’s inner monologue. These have been consistently messy, almost willfully bad movies, but Hardy’s performance has been a strangely compelling one-body buddy comedy. It’s one thing to throw a cape on and
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