Stephen Chow Won Court Case

The Hong Kong court has thrown out a suit from the ex-girlfriend of comedian and director Stephen Chow, who accused him of failing to pay her commission totalling more than HK$70 million (RM37 million) from the sale of their luxury home.

Quoting a judgement released by the city state's High Court yesterday, Singapore portal The Straits Times reported that the presiding judge had instead ordered Alice Yu to pay cost.

Yu, 49, who split up with Chow in 2010, had testified in court in November that she and Chow had reached a verbal agreement on the commission on Christmas Eve in 2002.

He was reported to have had suggested giving her a bicycle as a gift. But she then proposed a 10 per cent commission on their investments, including three luxury units with five parking spaces and projects under his investment fund.

Taking the stand during the trial, the 58-year-old Chow admitted in court to making the promise, but he said they were merely “sweet words” during their 13-year courtship.

Yu had insisted that Chow was then both her boyfriend and business partner, with the verbal agreement hence a business contract and legally enforceable, or Chow would not have shared some investments profits with her after their break-up.

Chow, who directed hits like Kung Fu Hustle (2004), CJ7 (2008) and The Mermaid (2016), however, said the money was a gift to her with no other motives.

While it was unclear how much Yu had to pay for costs, the judge ruled yesterday that Yu did not act as an agent for the properties and did not facilitate Chow's investments.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily reported Chow's lawyer Anthony Siu saying the actor hoped the matter would end with the judgement.

He also wished Hongkongers Merry Christmas on behalf of Chow.

Source: MSN

Jordan Yeoh's Abs Circuit Workout

 

Source: Jordan Yeoh's Facebook

Jay Chou Concert Postponed

 

Taiwanese superstar Jay Chou's Carnival World Tour — Kuala Lumpur has been postponed indefinitely.

In a post via its official Facebook page, TicketCharge said the concert that was slated for January 16 next year at Bukit Jalil National Stadium will be rescheduled following government regulations and travel restrictions.

It stated that the new date will be announced in early January 2021.

The concert was originally scheduled for February 29 but was later pushed to August due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Responding to queries from fans, the company said refund details will be updated early next month.

Carnival World Tour is Chou's eighth concert tour to celebrate the multi award-winning singer’s 20 years in the music business.

Chou last performed in Malaysia in January 2018, before returning again in October to accompany his wife Hannah Quinlivan, who was shooting a movie on location here.

Source: MSN

Bruce Lee - Idol or Villain

Nearly 50 years 

after his death

, Bruce Lee remains not only Hong Kong but Asian cinema’s biggest icon. That’s quite a feat given the subsequent rise of other martial arts stars like Jackie Chan and Jet Li, Japanese and Korean idols like Takuya Kimura and Jun Ji-hyun, and award-winning directors like 

Wong Kar-wai

, 

Ang Lee

 and Bong Joon-ho.

Even today people are 

intensely passionate about preserving Lee’s legacy

. Just last year a storm erupted when Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, featured a portrayal of Lee that showed him as arrogant and which exploited his legend to put over what a tough guy Cliff Booth, Brad Pitt’s character, is.

Earlier this year Shannon Lee, Bruce’s daughter, talked to the South China Morning Post about the film and discussed the pain that Tarantino’s characterisation of her father caused.

“My feeling is the same. I was very disappointed,” Lee said. “I’m not going to say I wasn’t angry at all, but certainly sitting in the movie theatre and having that experience with an audience was not a fun experience for me.

“I was very disappointed to see Quentin Tarantino’s response, which was to continue to say, ‘Oh, Bruce Lee was arrogant, he was an asshole’, and to incorrectly cite my mother’s book as a defence. I really thought it was irresponsible of him to do what he did and have that portrayal.”

Tarantino received widespread criticism for his depiction of Lee – not just from family members like Shannon Lee, but fans across the world. It’s not hard to understand why. For decades Lee has been heralded as an icon. He did untold good in breaking down barriers for Asians in America.

When Lee started working in Hollywood in the 60s, it was normal for Caucasians to play Asian characters – this was the same decade, remember, when Mickey Rooney played the racist caricature that was Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Lee came along and changed that. Suddenly, an Asian character like Kato, in The Green Hornet, could actually be played by an Asian actor. In an era where white folk were always the hero and people of colour were often the first to die in Hollywood films, Bruce Lee stood tall, not only surviving but saving the day along the way. When Lee defeats Chuck Norris in the Coliseum at the climax of The Way of the Dragon, he represented all people of colour still fighting wars against Western imperialism.

Given the hagiographic nature of much of the coverage surrounding Lee, I was surprised to come across a work that suggested there might be negatives to Lee’s legend. The work in question was Paul Bowman’s scholarly text Theorizing Bruce Lee: Film-Fantasy-Fighting-Philosophy.

“What is Bruce Lee?” the author asked. “One answer might be: a trivial and trivialising, violent, masculinist, Orientalist stereotype; a mythologized commodification of alterity packaged for a fetishistic Western gaze; the mythological reduction of ethnicity into posters, T-shirts, nerds’ film collections; one which provided bullies, show-offs, fighters and fantasists the world over with an entire new lexicon of moves and stances for posturing, parading and pugilism … The sort of thing you might want to keep very far away from kids.”

Viewed this way, Lee – or at least the cult surrounding him – could be summed up as: “Trivial, nerdy, fetishistic, violent, Orientalist, exploitative, and typifying the Western impetus to appropriation.”

As a member of the dominant Western, white, male culture that has done much to package Lee’s legacy for its own ends, I wouldn’t want to pass judgment on Lee or these accusations that not even Bowman suggests he actually believes.

Nonetheless, it’s worth considering these points. Was Lee too successful as an icon of martial arts and a modern day Confucius? Could that be one reason why it has taken Asian actors so many years to be seen as anything except masters of kung fu or mystic sages? Could something like Last Christmas, where 

Asian actor Henry Golding was the romantic interest

 for Emilia Clarke, have come along sooner if Lee, through his brilliance, had not set a particular image of Asian males in the minds of Western directors?

I highly doubt Lee did more bad than good – and much of his legacy was fixed after his passing anyway. Whatever the reasons, here’s hoping that the West continues to reappraise its use and portrayal of Asians in cinema, as it has only recently and belatedly begun to do.

Source: SCMP

Eason Chan Is The Most Streamed Artist on Spotify

Canto-pop singer Eason Chan Yik-shun was the most-streamed artist in Hong Kong for the fifth consecutive year, streaming service Spotify revealed this week.

Taiwanese singer-songwriter Jay Chou was second, K-pop giants 

BTS

 were third, US singer-songwriter 

Taylor Swift

 was fourth and in fifth place was Hong Kong singer-songwriter Hins Cheung. Cheung’s album Zhang Jingxuan, It’s Time was the most-streamed album in the city this year.

Jin Shares Sadness Through New Song

Ahead of his 28th birthday on Friday, BTS member Jin shared a surprise with the world on Thursday night when he released the song Abyss, a meaningful tune about his relationship with his art.

Jin wrote Abyss alongside Bumzu – a producer who frequently works with boy band Seventeen – as well as with fellow BTS member RM and long-time collaborator Pdogg.

When he shared the song on the BTS’ Twitter page, he linked to both SoundCloud and a blog post in which he shares his thoughts on the sweet, reflective ballad.

In a letter to 

BTS’ fandom, known as Army

, Jin recalled how he recently told a press conference that he felt he could share his feelings of sadness with fans through music, and how this song grew out of him questioning whether he was worthy of congratulations after 

BTS hit No 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart with

 

Dynamite

 

over the summer

.

“To be honest, I recently felt really burnt out. I think it was because I had a lot of thoughts about myself,” he wrote, according to a translation by South Korean portal Soompi. “I was congratulated by many people after reaching No 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, but I wondered if it’s really OK for me to receive something like that.

“There are honestly a lot of people who love music more than me and are better at music than me, so is it OK for me to be feeling this happiness and being congratulated like this? That’s what I thought about, and going further into that made me feel troubled, so I wanted to lay everything down.”

Source: SCMP

Harshvardhan Kapoor Wants To Be On Tinder

Blessed with good looks and a notable family pedigree, Harshvardhan Kapoor seems destined to be a huge Bollywood star. But unlike other young up-and-comers – including his sister Sonam.

 and cousin Arjun – the youngest son of Slumdog Millionaire star Anil Kapoor and wife Sunita appears to prefer approaching his career with patience and strategy. While his peers typically work through a multitude of roles at the beginning of their careers, Harshvardhan has only made two films since he made his acting debut in 2016. 

Harshvardhan earned his bachelor’s degree in screenwriting from Chapman University in California and initially opted to become an assistant director in Bombay Velvet (2015). “I think being an actor is the most insecure thing,” he told Indian newspaper Deccan Chronicle. “The worst thing in the world is to become an actor and not find consistency in the work.”

The Kapoor family is one of the oldest celebrity clans in India; in other words, Harshvardhan is the third generation of a long line of thespians

. His grandfather, Surinder, was a famed Bollywood producer and the cousin of renowned silent actor Prithviraj. His father Anil, meanwhile, has been one of India’s top actors since the 80s while his sister Sonam has been dubbed “the fashionista of Bollywood”.

For his debut film Mirzya (2016), Harshvardhan played the starring role of a stable boy. He underwent intense horse riding training for the role, taking a year and half to prepare. But the 29-year-old actor went even further: he spent months in a horse stable in Seattle in the US, tending to the horses every day on top of training, to commit deeper to the role.

Harshvardhan will be starring opposite his father in an upcoming biopic about Abhinav Bindra, retired sport shooter and first Indian Olympic individual gold medallist. In order to portray Bindra, Harshvardhan spent five months practising daily at a shooting range.

The Manchester United fan also believes that he should be living a normal life in spite of his background. He was even on the dating app Tinder for a while before deactivating his account as the price of fame. “I really want to be on Tinder,” he told Man’s World India. “I am dying to be on Tinder. I am going to take a trip abroad just so that I can download Tinder and be on it.” He further stated that he dreads “the misinterpretation and the judgment” that comes with being a movie star.

Source: SCMP