https://www.scmp.com/rss/12916/feed David Frazier is a journalist, filmmaker and festival organiser based in Taiwan since 1995, where he is founder of the Urban Nomad film and music festivals. As a journalist and critic, he has written for The New York Times, Taipei Times, South China Morning Post, Art in America, ArtAsiaPacific and others. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com David Frazier David Frazier In the summer of 1987, John Michael Boyum, American surf pioneer and “a hustler of the highest order”, “a visionary and a sociopath”, according to fellow drug smuggler Mike Ritter, was released from prison in Nouméa, New Caledonia, after serving two and a half years for trafficking cocaine. A year later, Boyum saw one more drug deal go bad and his co-conspirator jailed in Australia. But that was not his only worry. Since leaving prison, Boyum had also burned powerful trafficker friends in Hawaii... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3309493/how-drug-smuggler-and-his-mysterious-death-put-siargao-surfing-map?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/travel/article/3309493/how-drug-smuggler-and-his-mysterious-death-put-siargao-surfing-map?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 09 May 2025 02:30:09 +0000 The phrase a “new Cold War” is regularly tossed about in discussions of mainland China, the United States and Taiwan. Russian-American pundit Dmitri Alperovitch has even gone so far as to declare that “Taiwan is the new Berlin.” Mostly, it is the hawks on both sides who have kept this kind of “new Cold War” talk in circulation, but if some hardliners are touting a new Cold War, how might this version compare to the original? The spy-novel genre of the 1960s offers one measure for comparison, and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3278237/how-cold-war-and-largely-imagined-china-made-spy-novels-cool?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3278237/how-cold-war-and-largely-imagined-china-made-spy-novels-cool?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:15:08 +0000 David Frazier David Frazier For the Chinese-speaking world, Teresa Teng Li-chun’s untimely death on May 8, 1995, at the height of her fame, aged just 42, could perhaps be compared to the deaths of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana; in that they were deaths that not only shocked millions of admirers, but sparked endless waves of conspiracy theories. Some of the more bizarre theories surrounding Teng’s passing allege that she was assassinated by the CIA to prevent East Asian unification, or faked her death and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3261192/what-butler-saw-teresa-tengs-death-chiang-mai-thailand-and-how-she-found-love-there?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3261192/what-butler-saw-teresa-tengs-death-chiang-mai-thailand-and-how-she-found-love-there?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 04 May 2024 23:45:12 +0000 The confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers sits in a sleepy, broad plain that runs through a historically lawless section of highland Southeast Asia. It marks the three-way border between Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, and the virtual centre point of one of the world’s main opium-producing regions, an area that America’s Drug Enforcement Administration in 1971 dubbed “the Golden Triangle”. Phatcharee Srimathayakun, a 70-year-old native of the Thai village poised on this riverbank, at Chiang Saen,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3259484/how-former-opium-producing-towns-thailands-golden-triangle-are-cashing-their-troubled-past-museums?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3259484/how-former-opium-producing-towns-thailands-golden-triangle-are-cashing-their-troubled-past-museums?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 19 Apr 2024 09:15:15 +0000 “Blue Monday”, by the British 1980s band New Order, is generally considered the biggest-selling dance single of all time. The song celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, but within months of its March 1983 release, an unauthorised Mandarin version was put out in Taiwan by singer Frankie Kao under the title “Love is Like Green Olives”. Kao’s version cut the seven-minute dance track in half and added cheesy female backup singers. The lyrics were rewritten into a Mandarin love ballad that... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3254698/taiwans-forgotten-disco-era-and-singers-who-made-it-big-covers-abba-new-order-and-david-bowie?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3254698/taiwans-forgotten-disco-era-and-singers-who-made-it-big-covers-abba-new-order-and-david-bowie?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Mar 2024 23:45:18 +0000 In 2019, posts began popping up on my social media about a retro oddity, a 1969 guidebook called Taipei After Dark, which had just been published in a 50th anniversary edition. The book’s cover depicts a Western man being massaged by two Asian women in bras and panties, below a title in a groovy comic-book font. It has the kind of sensational camp of an early James Bond film, but with a subheading that declares Taipei to be the “blatant sex capital of Asia, where vice is legal and the price is... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3237855/reprint-sleazy-1960s-travel-guide-blatant-sex-capital-taipei-paints-very-different-picture-todays?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3237855/reprint-sleazy-1960s-travel-guide-blatant-sex-capital-taipei-paints-very-different-picture-todays?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Oct 2023 03:15:14 +0000 Off Taiwan’s northeastern coast, the double hump of Guishan Island, also known as Turtle Island, dominates the view from all points along a 60km-long (37 mile) arcing sweep of coastline of the Lanyang Plain. No matter where one is on this gentle parabola of shoreline, you cannot help but gaze upon this solitary and strangely shaped volcano. In profile, the island resembles a sea turtle, its massive triangular headland facing the Pacific Ocean and its thin tail – a natural, 1km-long jetty of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3228491/taiwans-turtle-island-surfing-diving-incredible-views-and-fantastic-beaches-within-easy-reach?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3228491/taiwans-turtle-island-surfing-diving-incredible-views-and-fantastic-beaches-within-easy-reach?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 22 Jul 2023 05:15:08 +0000 In 1999, Chinese media reported that a great portion of the single largest trove of master recordings from China’s jazz age – 80,000 gold- or silver-plated masters under the care of the Shanghai branch of China Records – had warped, corroded and generally deteriorated beyond repair. This collection, stored poorly since the 1940s in a Shanghai warehouse, was estimated to represent roughly 75 per cent of China’s pre-1949 recordings. It had once belonged to the foreign concession record companies... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3222718/sun-yat-sen-shanghai-jazz-tears-fears-bakelite-shellac-and-78s-record-collection-ages?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3222718/sun-yat-sen-shanghai-jazz-tears-fears-bakelite-shellac-and-78s-record-collection-ages?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Jun 2023 02:45:16 +0000 In the autumn of 1969, Daniel Reid was a long-haired, freewheeling undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, living in “a ramshackle house […] with eight hardcore hippies, none of whom were students”, according to Reid’s 2018 memoir, Shots From the Hip: Sex, Drugs and the Tao. Reid was in his senior year but still undecided on a major. Then one morning he ingested what he calls a “macro-mega-dose” of LSD and wandered into a lecture on Chinese culture. “The guy starts talking about... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3216912/sex-drugs-and-fasting-how-detox-pioneer-daniel-reid-started-his-lifelong-career-lsd-trip?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3216912/sex-drugs-and-fasting-how-detox-pioneer-daniel-reid-started-his-lifelong-career-lsd-trip?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Apr 2023 23:45:15 +0000 The next time you’re in Seoul, you may find me in a basement bar near Hongik University, listening to scratchy old records. With any luck, spinning on the turntable will be Shin Jung-hyun and The Questions’ 1970 recording of In A Kadda Da Vida, a cover of the 1968 Iron Butterfly classic – the 17-minute album version – albeit with a slightly different spelling. The bar, Gopchang Jeongol – literally meaning “beef tripe hotpot”, though small English text on the sign reads, “Korean Traditional Pop’s... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3038531/beyond-k-pop-soul-funk-rb-and-psychedelia-reign?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3038531/beyond-k-pop-soul-funk-rb-and-psychedelia-reign?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 22 Nov 2019 12:00:14 +0000 Andrew Lloyd Webber'sThe Phantom of the Opera is one of the world's most successful musical theatre productions, currently ranked second behind The Lion King in terms of total box office.   Premiered in 1986 in London's West End, the musical has played more than 10,000 shows in both New York and London. Runs continue in both cities, with the rest of the world being serviced by two touring programmes.  With a total box office now estimated at approximately US$6 billion, The Phantom of the Opera... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1648873/andrew-lloyd-webbers-phantom-opera-returns?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1648873/andrew-lloyd-webbers-phantom-opera-returns?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 26 Nov 2014 14:15:00 +0000 In choosing Nicolas Bourriaud as curator of the 2014 Taipei Biennial, which opened last weekend at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the art establishment of Taiwan selected an immaculately credentialed European critic and ardent educator to head its most prestigious event. Bourriaud, the director of France's top arts university Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, has served as a curator at London's Tate Modern, and has in recent years helmed biennials at the Tate, in Moscow and in Athens. Relational... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1596022/taipei-biennial-sounds-warning-about-our-treatment-world?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1596022/taipei-biennial-sounds-warning-about-our-treatment-world?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 21 Sep 2014 03:07:03 +0000 A cluster of visitors is standing near Michael Landy's giant trash can for unwanted art, Art Bin (2010), at the opening of the Yokohama Triennale 2014 when Belgian artist Wim Delvoye turns to the group and asks: "Did you see the blowjob guy?" Delvoye - whose contribution to the exhibition is 15 metres of rusting iron sheet metal cut into Gothic patterns and assembled to look like a semi truck, titled Flatbed Trailer (2007) - is referring to a stubble-faced Japanese man standing nearby. He is a... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1579178/overblown-triennale-need-unifying-theme?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1579178/overblown-triennale-need-unifying-theme?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Aug 2014 23:13:11 +0000 Is Hong Kong ready for its own heavy metal fest? With the new Heart-Town Festival, taking place simultaneously in Hong Kong and Taiwan from August 8 to 10, promoter Jimmy Liu has been getting that question a lot lately. "People are asking me, are you trying to be Loud Park or something?" says Liu, referring to Japan's top music festival for metal, hardcore and every other genre that drives a mosh pit. "At first, we just wanted to start a music festival. But we also wanted to be different. Not... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1564318/arrival-heart-town-hong-kong-has-its-first-heavy-metal-festival?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1564318/arrival-heart-town-hong-kong-has-its-first-heavy-metal-festival?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 06 Aug 2014 16:00:15 +0000 IN 2004, SODAGREEN had been playing around Taiwan's college band scene for three years, and nearing graduation, with no prospects, they were preparing to call it quits. The group had entered a contest, the Taiwan Indie Rock Awards at the Ho-Hai-Yan Music Festival, and looked on it as their final show. After playing the festival's small stage, Sodagreen ended up winning second prize and - more importantly - caught the eye of producer Will Lin, who signed them to his label a few months... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1471666/almost-disbanding-10-years-ago-sodagreen-are-now-mando-pops-biggest?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1471666/almost-disbanding-10-years-ago-sodagreen-are-now-mando-pops-biggest?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 09 Apr 2014 14:45:15 +0000 GOING WEST My mom and dad moved from Taipei to Texas (in the United States) for university, and my grandma moved over shortly afterwards. My sister and I were born in Houston. We travelled a lot as kids, but we never came to Asia. We didn't really know much about our Taiwanese roots except for the language. At home we spoke Taiwanese and English mixed up all together. NO STRINGS ATTACHED I thought I wanted to be a violinist. I loved performing and had an opportunity to perform in the White... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1435749/my-life-janet-hsieh?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1435749/my-life-janet-hsieh?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Mar 2014 15:13:36 +0000 Xu Bing has never been prone to the art-world showmanship of other top Chinese contemporary artists such as Ai Weiwei, Cai Guoqiang and Zhang Huan, the men who will one day be remembered as his peers. In his Harry Potter glasses, wavy grey hair, knit scarves and sports coats, Xu looks more the part of the university professor than the aesthete or provocateur. Yet in the art world of recent years, Xu's star has been rising quickly. The Chongqing native has seen his work exhibited in the Louvre,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1432690/artists-fascination-text-writ-large?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1432690/artists-fascination-text-writ-large?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 23 Feb 2014 07:49:17 +0000 IF THE SPRING WAVE MUSIC festival succeeds with its inaugural event next weekend - and that looks likely, with almost all of the 12,000 tickets pre-sold - it may provide an answer to the question of what kind of large-scale Chinese pop music festival is right for Hong Kong. Summer music festivals are the norm throughout the world. Japan, South Korea, mainland China and Taiwan all have events that can draw up to 40,000 fans for a weekend of music. Even in Singapore and Malaysia, festivals are... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1286306/island-poppin?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1286306/island-poppin?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 24 Jul 2013 16:00:00 +0000 In the galaxy of Chinese pop, A-Lin's star is rising. Just four years ago, she could barely attract fans to an autograph signing in her native Taipei. But by 2011, she was filling back-to-back shows at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, and has now graduated to stadium status. Following a concert for 13,000 in Taipei last month, she will try to match that turnout here when she brings her "Feel Lin" concert to the Hong Kong Coliseum on June 29. A-Lin, born Huang Li-ling, is billed as... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1265964/feelin-groovy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1265964/feelin-groovy?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 26 Jun 2013 16:00:00 +0000 In 1995, the first Spring Scream music festival took place on an improvised stage at a little-known beach in southern Taiwan. It was still two years before the first Fuji Rock Festival was held in Japan, or any other major music festival in East Asia, for that matter. Australia's Big Day Out had only arrived three years earlier, in 1992. In the eastern hemisphere, the era of the massive music festival hardly looked imminent. "Now, Spring Scream is a tradition, just like the annual Mazu [sea... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1197214/spring-scream-music-festival-something-shout-about?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1197214/spring-scream-music-festival-something-shout-about?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Is there such a thing as Malaysian indie rock? Or indie culture? There is, but you may not have heard of it. Malaysia's music scene usually only makes headlines when conservative Muslims protest against the sexy outfits of visiting R&B singers. Outcries forced Beyonce to cancel concerts in the country in 2007 and 2009, while Rihanna, Avril Lavigne and the Black Eyed Peas have all had to cover up bosom, midriff and legs. These controversies may be part of the country's cultural growing pains, but... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1074591/declaration-independence?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1074591/declaration-independence?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000 The Austin, Texas, band …And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Dead can drop guitar distortion on an audience as if they are carpet-bombing. They also have a weirdly literary edge, a way of carving real songs out of all their noisiness, and a reputation for trashing instruments at the end of their shows. A decade ago, all of this helped push Trail of Dead into the clubhouse of America's best indie rock bands, an informal pantheon defined by college radio playlists, festival lore and a few... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1064881/trail-death-forging-legend?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1064881/trail-death-forging-legend?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Contemporary mainland artist Ai Weiwei seems to spark controversy everywhere he goes these days - even when he's not there. Following the opening of his exhibition, 'Ai Weiwei: Absent', at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum late last month - his first major show in any Chinese territory - Taiwan's media exploded with criticism. They charged the museum with failing to speak out on the dissident artist's behalf or work to bring him to the island. Underlying this furore, however, is a larger issue:... https://www.scmp.com/article/985312/absent-big-picture?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/985312/absent-big-picture?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 19 Nov 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Red Rock: The Long Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll by Jon Campbell Earnshaw Books One of the peculiarities of Chinese rock'n'roll is that it has an exact birthdate: May 9, 1986, was the day Cui Jian, the mainland's 'godfather of rock', performed the song Nothing to My Name as part of a concert broadcast on TV. Cui's tune went on to become an anthem of Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989, and the man himself embarked on a roller-coaster career of performance bans, stadium shows, hero status,... https://www.scmp.com/article/980073/rise-red-rock-gods?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/980073/rise-red-rock-gods?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:00:00 +0000 In the 1990s, Taiwan's music industry surpassed Hong Kong's to become the global engine of Chinese pop. But the last decade has seen a different trend: the mushrooming of Taiwanese independent music. Next weekend Taiwan Calling 2011 - a two-day festival of 19 acts at the Kowloon Bay International Trade and Exhibition Centre - will showcase the variety of Taiwan's indie scene, from singers who have burst onto commercial radio, such as Sandee Chan and Waa Wei, to the island's best rock bands,... https://www.scmp.com/article/978671/its-taiwan-calling?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/978671/its-taiwan-calling?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 10 Sep 2011 16:00:00 +0000 When painter Walasse Ting fled communist-pressed Hong Kong for Paris in 1950, he had little money and few connections. But within five years, the son of a wealthy Jiangxi family was painting and had befriended the influential abstractionist Pierre Alechinsky, who was to become a lifelong friend. By 1958, Ting - who chose his idiosyncratic English name out of emulation of painter Henri Matisse - had sold enough paintings in the galleries of Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam to move on to the... https://www.scmp.com/article/733107/chameleon?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/733107/chameleon?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Dec 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Artists have often asked 'What is art?' Now the curators of the 2010 Taipei Biennial, which opened at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum earlier this month, are taking that process a step farther by asking 'What is an exhibition?' The question is timely and especially relevant in this region, given the Taipei Biennial opens during what can be considered the Asian biennial season. It has been estimated there are more than 200 biennial art exhibitions worldwide, and the two big South Korean ... https://www.scmp.com/article/725192/lets-get-personal?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/725192/lets-get-personal?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000 The release of Terminator Salvation in late May marked a dubious first: it was followed by the online release of a 72-minute downloadable animated film, Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series, which was 'filmed' entirely inside the brand new Terminator Salvation video game. The project marked the first time that a major studio - Warner Bros - has spent serious money on the geeky enterprise of in-game filming, or machinima, a genre that, until now, has been the domain of a geeky tribe of PC... https://www.scmp.com/article/687232/get-game?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/687232/get-game?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:00:00 +0000 It was inevitable that the Yes Men would pull a prank at the premiere for their new film, The Yes Men Fix the World, at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year. The group's founders, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, wore inflatable costumes and blocked the red carpet of the BMW's Cinema for Peace gala. They said they would not leave 'until BMW stops making cars'. Their biggest stunt to date came in November 2004, when Bichlbaum made it onto the BBC posing as a representative... https://www.scmp.com/article/686557/know-yes-men?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/686557/know-yes-men?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:00:00 +0000 It has been much in the news that journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained and sentenced to 12 years of hard labour in North Korea. Much less discussed, however, is their network, an internet-TV hybrid called Current TV, and its citizen-oriented journalism. Current now reaches 51 million homes in the US, Britain and Ireland, but its presence on the Web (www.current.com) is just as significant. The network was founded in 2005 as an experiment in citizen journalism by a group... https://www.scmp.com/article/685080/current-affairs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/685080/current-affairs?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Quentin Tarantino's latest film Inglourious Basterds is hardly the only one spoofing the Nazis these days. A group of Finnish geeks who released their first feature for free on the internet just a few years ago was also at Cannes last month. They were looking for second-round financing for their latest project, Iron Sky, a sci-fi parody with one of the coolest tag lines ever: 'In 1945 the Nazis fled to the moon. In 2018 they are coming back.' Now, this is hardly the tale of someone putting... https://www.scmp.com/article/683560/heil-sky?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/683560/heil-sky?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:00:00 +0000 The next time a friend sends you a text message asking some annoying question such as who they should vote for on American Idol, imagine that instead of just ignoring the text, you can send them a clip from a movie or TV show, asking them to 'use the Force, Luke'. This is one of the dreams of an Israeli company called Anyclip, whose grand vision, according to a recent report in The New York Observer, is to turn film studio vaults into a database accessible to users of the internet and... https://www.scmp.com/article/682051/clipped-chat?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/682051/clipped-chat?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Nine years ago, cultural relations between Taiwan and the mainland could have been summed up by Beijing's ban on Taiwan's biggest pop star, A-Mei, for singing Taiwan's national anthem at the May 2000 inauguration of president Chen Shui-bian. Since the beginning of Mr Chen's second term in 2004, the cultural ice across the Taiwan Strait has steadily thawed, a process which further accelerated with the mainland-friendly policies of Ma Ying-jeou, who completed his first year as president of... https://www.scmp.com/article/681795/growing-ties-and-exchanges-cultural-ice-across-taiwan-strait-thaws?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/681795/growing-ties-and-exchanges-cultural-ice-across-taiwan-strait-thaws?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 28 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000 With all the free video available online, why would anyone need a DVD magazine? As the name implies, it is a collection of video segments - short films, interviews, documentaries, music videos and so on - published periodically on DVD. There are only a few of them out there, and the commercially successful ones can probably be counted on one hand. The New Yorker of this strange new breed goes by the name of Wholphin (www.wholphindvd.com). Wholphin was born in 2005, and was named for a... https://www.scmp.com/article/680514/rare-view?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/680514/rare-view?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Tu Duu-chih estimates he has done the sound for about 70 per cent of all Taiwanese films made in the past 20 years. This includes virtually every film by auteurs Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, several by Tsai Ming-liang, last year's box office record breaker Cape No7, and even the occasional student short. His many awards include the top prize for sound design at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival for Hou's Millennium Mambo. Some top Hong Kong indie directors have begun to gravitate towards... https://www.scmp.com/article/680155/also-showing-tu-duu-chih?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/680155/also-showing-tu-duu-chih?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 13 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000 When she was telephoned last week to discuss a film that she had recently produced, Singaporean activist Chee Siok Chin said to phone during lunch time as the rest of the day she would be on trial. The charge against her is assembly without a permit for a protest she helped organise in 2006 against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Chee has also been summoned for questioning by police over the 40-minute film One Nation Under Lee, which she produced. Directed by Seelan Palay, ... https://www.scmp.com/article/678895/free-views?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/678895/free-views?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 02 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000 The next time you find yourself in moral anguish about whether to buy your mistress a new condo or give your laid-off factory workers their back pay, you can find guidance in the television advertisements of one of America's largest insurance companies. That's right, in this dark age of corporate recklessness, it is a US financial giant, Liberty Mutual, that brings us the Responsibility Project, a 'socially responsible' ad campaign masquerading as an online forum and short-film collection... https://www.scmp.com/article/677258/canned-morality?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/677258/canned-morality?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:00:00 +0000 I was using two computers to stream simultaneous games of the American college basketball championships last weekend, when commentator Ian Eagle quipped after one spectacular play: 'Now that's a YouTube moment'. It probably won't be an actual YouTube moment, since YouTube has been yanking copyrighted content since last year. But if highlight clips seem to be locking down, watching live sports over the internet is taking off, thanks largely to peer-to-peer networks. Sports P2P first appeared... https://www.scmp.com/article/674981/live-sports?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/674981/live-sports?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Upon entering Spectacle: To Each His Own, an ongoing 28-artist group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (MoCA), the installation that smacks the eyes is three 'wolf missiles' - real wolf skins stretched over missile-shaped tubes, with wolf heads as warheads - dangling just a metre over the museum floor. It's as if it's ready to turn the gallery into ground zero. Ren Qinga, 38, the Beijing artist who created the piece, called Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!, chuckles at the connotation... https://www.scmp.com/article/673337/cross-purposes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/673337/cross-purposes?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:00:00 +0000 North America may have just seen its first major internet lynch mob. Last month, a pair of teenage brothers from Oklahoma put up a home video on YouTube of the younger brother pummelling their pet cat and then soaking it in their shower. Cat lovers surfing YouTube quickly discovered the video and spread the word about the feline's abuse in forums such as Catster.com. Pet owners quickly flagged the clip as violent and asked YouTube officials to take it down, which the site did within... https://www.scmp.com/article/672485/internet-vigilantes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/672485/internet-vigilantes?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Late last month, a movie billed as 'the world's first fully user-generated film' was released. The director was chosen from among 800 online applicants, as were 10 actors in supporting roles and seven songs for the soundtrack. Script feedback was solicited over the internet, as were the cinemas chosen for the film's one-day screening on January 27. The film's budget was around GBP1 million (HK$11 million), and the platform for selecting talent was MySpace.com. The result of the experiment... https://www.scmp.com/article/670765/film-numbers?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/670765/film-numbers?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Second Life appeared in 2003 as one of the first 3-D virtual worlds, a sort of interactive video game with no compelling goal for its users besides building up the virtual realm. Last week, there were more than half a million logins by Second Life's users - or 'residents', according to its official website. The 'in-world' society, as it is called, has developed an economy with a currency exchangeable for US dollars, myriad tribes and subcultures. More recently, Second Life is also creating ... https://www.scmp.com/article/669204/second-life?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/669204/second-life?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Feb 2009 16:00:00 +0000 I tend to think of Ted.com as an antidote to YouTube. When I get bogged down in YouTube's infinite branching, where every video refers endlessly to other videos, I turn to Ted for moments of clarity. Ted, which stands for 'technology, entertainment, design', was launched in 1984 in Monterey, California, as a conference for progressive and inspiring thinkers. In April 2007 it began putting videos of its presentations online, each of which is about 20 minutes long, pertinent to the world today... https://www.scmp.com/article/668078/tedcom?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/668078/tedcom?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +0000 At a recent holiday gathering, a friend turned to another friend, whom I'll call Downloader, and said, 'I need a new show.' Downloader thought for a second, then recommended Let the Right One In, a Swedish indie vampire movie. 'No,' my first friend said. 'I need a show, a TV show.' Downloader, after another moment's thought, said: 'OK then, Freaks and Geeks, and you don't even have to BitTorrent it. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube.' I checked out Freaks and Geeks too and can... https://www.scmp.com/article/665775/net-vs-networks-david-frazier?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/665775/net-vs-networks-david-frazier?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Truncated marching legs and squirting penis monsters may sound like the stuff of nightmares, but they're all in a day's work for Bu Hua. Beijing-based Bu, 35, has been making short Flash animations and posting them online since 2001. Her wonderfully bizarre parables combine Chinese industrial landscapes a la Giorgio de Chirico, innocent stories of love and loss, and surreally noir elements. Most of Bu's works can be viewed free on her website and are hosted in the Flash area of Chinese ... https://www.scmp.com/article/664511/it-art?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/664511/it-art?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Fringe Club Sun, 8pm The latest wave in Taipei's indie scene is a crazy mixture of garage punk, art rock and electro, and one of the bands powering this youthful abandon is White Eyes. This summer, the group won top prize at Taiwan's 2008 Indie Rock Awards, and on Sunday night they'll head the bill of the Taiwan Explosion show featuring bands from the island. White Eyes is fronted by an arty provocative waif named Gao Xiao-gao (above), who has the potential to turn into a Taiwanese P.J.... https://www.scmp.com/article/662458/taiwan-explosion?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/662458/taiwan-explosion?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0000 First the Beastie Boys went pro-Tibet. Then Bjork. Now Guns N' Roses have come out with a critique of China that is somehow so much more bare-knuckled and ill-defined at the same time. The band's latest album is called Chinese Democracy, and since its release last week, media attention has focused almost exclusively on this being their first new album in 17 years. The best clue to what this release actually has to do with Chinese democracy, and virtually the only discussion of this, is... https://www.scmp.com/article/661949/china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/661949/china?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Nov 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Seldom has a minor public official and a flock of cantankerous senior citizens been able to cause such a stir. On October 21, Wang Ding-yu, a city counsellor from the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan, brought out a posse of geriatrics to publicly berate mainland envoy Zhang Mingqing. They demanded that Zhang apologise for tainted milk powder and insults against Taiwan. As Zhang tried to back away from the scrum, he fell to the ground. Headlines described the incident using words such... https://www.scmp.com/article/660373/internet-row?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/660373/internet-row?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:00:00 +0000 When Michael Moore's documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11 came out critiquing George W. Bush and the Iraq war just ahead of the 2004 US presidential election, commentator Christopher Hitchins noted that the American left had finally found its Rush Limbaugh. Moore came on as the liberal camp's first true demagogue in decades, a film director who often put bravado and spin before the traditional tools of the liberal media - namely objectivity and firm, dreary logic. Liberal-leaning Americans... https://www.scmp.com/article/658636/elections?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/658636/elections?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:00:00 +0000 A little more than two years ago, artist Zhou Yi had her first close encounter with the world of high fashion. 'I was approached by Elle USA,' she recalls. 'The fashion editor saw me in a restaurant in Paris and said to me, 'We should shoot people like you for our magazine'.' The result was a spread of Zhou in pleated plaid skirts and waist coats and posed against tapestries and gilt-framed oil paintings in classic European drawing rooms. The photos captured her as a new world avatar of old... https://www.scmp.com/article/657689/airy-space?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/657689/airy-space?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Oct 2008 16:00:00 +0000