Author Topic: BBM hits Taiwan  (Read 5539 times)

Offline tallasnnyc

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BBM hits Taiwan
« on: Jan 17, 2006, 11:21 PM »
Ang Lee is flying back home tonight for the opening in Taiwan at Jan. 19th. Not sure my neighbors (Heath and Michelle) will go or not. My niece just told me that they are living on same street as I in Cobble Hill/Boerum Place area in Brooklyn. I will start to walk my dog 10 times a day and see whether I can bump into them one day . ;D

Offline ethan

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Re: BBM hits Taiwan
« Reply #1 on: Jan 18, 2006, 11:27 AM »
Ang Lee is flying back home tonight for the opening in Taiwan at Jan. 19th. Not sure my neighbors (Heath and Michelle) will go or not. My niece just told me that they are living on same street as I in Cobble Hill/Boerum Place area in Brooklyn. I will start to walk my dog 10 times a day and see whether I can bump into them one day . ;D

Lucky you. Do keep us posted how BBM is doing in Taiwan. Thank you.
Remembering Pierre (chameau) 1960-2015, a "Capricorn bro and crazy Frog Uncle from the North Pole." You are missed

Offline tallasnnyc

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Re: BBM hits Taiwan
« Reply #2 on: Jan 19, 2006, 01:47 AM »
Here is a report in Taiwan News headline about Ang Lee. It is very interesting to see how he had go through in the movie business.

Please bear with my poor English, I tried my best to translate the article. Please ask any question if you got lost in any point.

Proud of Taiwan; but take a look at the movie making Journey of Ang Lee.

Et-Today Entertain News

http://news.yam.com/ettoday/entertain/200601/20060118082065.html

Directing by Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), the biggest winner of Golden Globe award, won 4 awards including best movie in Drama and Directing. Golden Globe Award usually the forecasting of Oscar again recognized Ang Lee alone with most of the critic’s and Medias. Most of them now consider Brokeback Mountain as the front runner for Oscar. It was not an easy journey for Ang Lee to be who he is today, with his father strongly against him to get involved in Movie making Industry and more than 6 years without work. All he had was the strongly support from his wife and a dream.

Born in Ping Dong, Taiwan, in his early year against his father’s well to be a doctor. He went to US to study Movie. After graduated from NYU, he was in unemployment for more than 6 years could not find anything to do. Ang Lee never give up his dream about movie making, Lee said “No one was interesting in hiring me for any film making or producing and I did not want to do anything else. So I spent most of my time writing scripts no one was interesting.” The old pictures in his NY office of home in South of Taiwan shows the struggle of his idea of achieving his dream and how much he cares about the family value, his heart to the family members which become his significant character and reflects in his movies.

Ang Lee got recognized by “The Wedding Banquet”, (a gay Taiwanese story in New York City) which he won the Golden Bear Award in Berlin Film Fest in 1993.  After that he got 7 Oscar nominations from British movie “Sense and Sensibility”, which he also won the Golden Bear Award from Berlin Film Fest. Because of that he earned his International reorganization as a Director. But two movies after that “Ice Storm” and “Riding with Devil” only got good critics but not doing too well in box office. He got his moment and swept the box office at year 2000 by “Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon” which he won the Best Director from Golden Globe Award but missed the Oscar’s Director Award.  (P.S. “Eat, Drink, Men and Women” a Taiwanese movie was nominated for best Foreign Movie for Oscar in late 1990’s but did not win).

After “Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon” won the Best Foreign Movie from Oscar, Lee became a well known Director and started to attention from Hollywood. “Hulk” was produced due to his popularity as a wonderful Director but did not do well. Lee mentioned, he is only comfortable to make movies without any commercial pressures. He did not feel too comfortable for all the promotion issues for making that film.

After the failure of “Hulk” Ang Lee was getting tired and considered getting out of movie business. His father was in the hospital with the serious condition. His father encouraged Ang Lee the first time in his life “Stick with your dream” before he died. That was the force for Lee to pack up his patient again and dived into “Brokeback Mountain” production. After winning the Golden Lion Award from Vince Film Fest, Lee was releifed and said “Finally, there is something my father will be so proud of me”.

In 2003 Ang Lee published a book “10 Years Dream of Movie Making”, in the book he mentioned about all the joy and pain he went through in the movie business. With all the recognition of Awards from all over the world, our best wishes to Lee (the Bright Star of Taiwan) for getting to higher level of every films he is going to make.

Offline tallasnnyc

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Re: BBM hits Taiwan
« Reply #3 on: Jan 19, 2006, 02:16 AM »
Not enough time to talk about how he felt of winning the Award, Ang Lee is sharing with people at home.

Chong-Gwong Broadcasting News 2006-01-19

After winning the Best Director Award from Golden Globe, Ang Lee became the hot person all the madias are alfter. Attented two parties in Hollywood, Ang Lee had to rush to airport to take the latest flight back to Taiwan for the Openning of Brokeback Mountain at 19th. A lot of stars attending Brokeback Mountain party to congradulate Ang Lee including Geroge Clooney and Phil Haffman.

Ang Lee arrived at 6:30 Am in the international airport and had to rush to the discussion conference in Taipei.  Lee was very happy to join his fans face to face and talk about his views of Brokeback Mountian film making and obtainning all the awards.

Offline tallasnnyc

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Re: BBM hits Taiwan
« Reply #4 on: Jan 19, 2006, 03:02 AM »
Ang Lee mentioned, he had expectation of getting the award this time. Therefore he was more propared for the acceptance speech. But getting the award from the cowboy Icon, Clint Eastwood is just so meaningful and priceless. This was the scoend time he won the Golden Globe Award, so he could catch the shape of the mouth for who is the winner from the anouncers. He did not expect this movie can make so much impact when he decide to direct the movie. He was very happy to get the award from Clint Eastwood for him as such a well known Cowboy that means a lot to him and also Golden Globe is a mainstream Award.

Brokeback Mountain is a low buget movie, there are a lot of hopes and wishes of this movie can make it to the market during the making of it. But no one expecting a big hit in the boxoffice. Due to all the awards from every where, Brokeback Mountain built the force and hit the boxoffice from words of the mouths. For Oscar Award, just let is be the nature (wish I know the better word to translate this, it means as long as we do the best we can, do not worry too much win or lose it).

Lee does not feel too much of pressure of getting any award of an Asain making movies about western culture. The world is changing everyday, he said, it is all about accepting other culture and giving feedback of what are we taking in. It is hard to explain.

Asked, does he worry about the gay contain in Brokeback Mountain will effect the viewers of Taiwan?
"I did not see any protectors every where I go as in some places in US. It seems like people in Taiwan are more open minded about how to view Brokeback Mountain. Do not think it will be any issue here."

Note: Geroge Clooney expressed his interesting of being in Brokeback Mountain II, if Ang Lee would consider making it.


Offline tpe

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Re: BBM hits Taiwan
« Reply #5 on: Jan 19, 2006, 02:06 PM »
Ang Lee is so unassuming, but he is eloquent.  The story about his father and the encouragement he gave in the end is very touching.

Offline ethan

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Re: BBM hits Taiwan
« Reply #6 on: Jan 19, 2006, 03:31 PM »
Ang Lee is so unassuming, but he is eloquent.  The story about his father and the encouragement he gave in the end is very touching.

Indeed. He dedicated BBM to his father at the end of credit roll.

Thank, tallasnnyc for these wonderful posts. I was in Taiwan for a few days and took some BBM photos. They are posted in following topic.

http://www.ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=450.0
Remembering Pierre (chameau) 1960-2015, a "Capricorn bro and crazy Frog Uncle from the North Pole." You are missed

Offline tallasnnyc

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Re: BBM hits Taiwan
« Reply #7 on: Jan 19, 2006, 04:40 PM »
And do not forget to send me one of the post card. I just sent you an e-mail.  :-)

Offline tallasnnyc

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Re: BBM hits Taiwan
« Reply #8 on: Jan 20, 2006, 07:46 AM »
Just another story of 20 years friendship


Sleeping on the floor in a friend’s apartment; a 20 years friedship between Ang Lee and Zen Hon Zi.

Central Station News 2006-01-20

The story of Brokeback Mountain is about the 20 years relationship between two cowboys, the friendship between Ang Lee and Mr. Zen (CEO of one of the biggest internet company in Taiwan) is also 20 years. And it also happened as they slept together 20 years ago. But they did not inside the tent and without holding each other when they were sleeping. They slept on the floor of their common friend’s NYC apartment with separate sleeping bag. Mr. Zen laughed and said: “I did not expect to sleep with one of the great Director in the future”.

Ang Lee and Mr. Zen held an open conference in the biggest book store in Taipei with the subject: “Movie Making and Life”. We all know the life achievement of both of them but no one knows, they have been good friends of each other for more than 20 years.

Mr. Zen mentioned, they both were poor and had to sleep on the floor of a friend’s NYC apartment during his visit at 1985.

Mr. Zen also mentioned, Ang Lee looked sort of low. He was supported by his wife financially and without knowing the future ahead of him and was very lost and down. Even so, all the friends knew that one day, he is going to shine. After Lee showed Zen his thesis from NYU; "there was something unspeakable about his work. It is not really super shocking for me after I read it, but I could feel, there was something there I did not know what was it about his work" said Mr. Zen..

Mr. Zen was the person sent him the application form to get funding from Taiwanese government of Movie Making Support for Young Artists. With the help from Mr. Zen for borrowing money all the possible places, Ang Lee made his first movie “Pushing Hand” with the funding from government. Ang Lee also won the young artist award for making “Wedding Banquet”.

It was coincident when they met the first time, but they kept in touch of each other. Ang Lee always will find time to visit Zen whenever he went back to Taiwan. For the matter of fact, Ang Lee made up his mind to film “Brokeback Mountain” during his visit of Mr. Zen.


Offline tallasnnyc

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Re: BBM hits Taiwan
« Reply #9 on: Jan 20, 2006, 07:48 AM »
The result of the box office will not be shown until next week for the weekend sale. But it will be real big for sure from all the news I have been read.

Offline tallasnnyc

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Re: BBM hits Taiwan
« Reply #10 on: Jan 21, 2006, 04:30 AM »
I ran cross one website while looking for the BBM news in Taiwan.

It is a question of from scale 1 to 7 rate your sexuality. Here is the result so far:

1 Totally Straight                        20%
2 Mostly Straight                         23%
3 Somewhat Straight                     9%
4 Bi Sexual                                  11%
5 Somewhat Gay                           9%
6 Mostly Gay                                 7%
7 Totally Gay                                 6%
8 Secret, do not want to answer   14%

Taking the consideration of #8 (Secret as from Bi to totally Gay), there are almost 80% of the people had sexual encounter with same sex (let me know why if you disagree). and at least from 35 to 47% of the people think they are Bi or Gay.

Just think it is very interesting for how open the society is. Consider most of the people will get in the movie website are mostly young people. And this is not a BBM related area, sort of just there to understand what movies people would like to see and the question is at the end of it. Just think it is amazing to see the result.

As I understand, Taiwan is a very gay friendly area with couple gay bars and clubs in all the major cities. The concept there is "if you do not agree with gay people, accept their existence". It is very common to see two guys holding each other on the street and sort of way of life of two girls holding hands walking down the street. But it does not mean they are gay. Homosexuality is very acceptable in the society as long as it is not in the family. It does shock me of how things changed there since I left.

Offline tallasnnyc

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Re: BBM hits Taiwan
« Reply #11 on: Jan 23, 2006, 07:25 PM »
Brokeback Mountian #1 in Taipei

                                     Weekend    # screen   Avg/screen  Total      # weeks
1. Brokeback Mountain  USD 278975       15           18598       373358        1
2. Memoirs of a Geisha         157682        19            8299       805009        2
3. Narnia                            132438        19            6970     2982950        4
4. Stormy Night                    74242       16             4640        92217         1
5. Saw 2                             61808        16             3863      383662         2
6. King Kong                        24860         9             2762     3830533        6