Please help - I'm gathering TK articles

[Webmaster]

Hey guys, I'm trying to gather as many as TK articles as possible to put on the website (yes I want visitors to spend hours looking at my site )

If you know or come across any, please post the link(s) on this thread. You, the submitter, will be credited.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Domo!

PS. It doesn't matter what language the article is in... English, French, German, Italian, Thai, Chinese or Japanese... I myself or I'll have someone to translate it.

[alisa]

Article from Manila Times

The information is about "Tarzan" which is the one he already did.

www.manilatimes.net/national/2005/jan/25/yehey/enter/20050125ent1.html

Here you go, in case the above link is gone.


Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Takeshi Kaneshiro
The ‘Tarzan’ who can speak five languages


He is Prada’s spokesperson for Asia; has been a frequent nominee on searches for the most beautiful men in the world; is fluent in five languages, and to date one of Asia’s most-favored heartthrobs. He is Takeshi Kaneshiro, one of the lead stars in Wong Kar Wai’s critically acclaimed film Chung King Express.

His ability to speak various languages recently earned him a stint in Hollywood, where he would do the voice over of a Tarzan animation in Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese languages.

Unknown to many, however, the handsome multi-lingual actor grew up struggling to pursue his dreams. He was born in Taipei to a Japanese father and a Taiwanese mother, a mixed heritage that in those days was considered taboo by Taiwanese society. As such, Kaneshiro always found himself ridiculed by his classmates. This made him transfer to the Taipei American School.

During his high school years at said institution, the young Kaneshiro did stints for television commercials. In the mid 1990s, he brought his soulful eyes and sensitive good looks to Hong Kong, where he debuted as a singer in 1992 and instantly became a star of the Chinese-speaking region. He sang pieces that he himself wrote in both Mandarin and Cantonese.

His silver screen debut came in Johnnie To’s Executioners (1993), where he made such a deep impression that it became his only supporting role to date. Kaneshiro has since played the male lead in all of his subsequent films, which included Wong Kar Wai’s Chung King Express and Fallen Angels.

Despite being effortlessly good-looking, Kaneshiro avoids the usual pop fodder in favor of quirky character parts - a move that is unusual for Asian leading men. Coincidentally, a Japanese television producer spotted Kaneshiro and gave him a role in an unusual miniseries. The controversial show was a huge success in Japan and sparked Kaneshiro’s Japanese film career.

His portrait was even taken for a popular Sony Playstation video game entitled Onimusha: Warlords (2001).

Aside from his achievements in the filming career, Kaneshiro also maintains a professional singing career as a pop star, and finds success as an international print model for the designer label Prada as well as appears extensively in advertisements all over Asia.

On Friday at 5: 30 in Star Chinese Movies, witness Kaneshiro’s panache for drama in Chung King Express (Moonlight Express). In the film, he plays a handsome detective who is infatuated with the mysterious blonde hit-woman Brigitte Lin.

Star Chinese movies is available on Dream Satellite TV (Ch. 29), Sky Cable (Ch. 53) and Home Cable Ch. 77 (on premium), Parasat (Ch. 65) and various cable operators nationwide.

[alisa]

Here's an old article but I just love the picture of TK on the cover.


cn.ent.yahoo.com/040624/166/23l25.htm


At the 57th Cannes Film Festival, HOFD caused a stir. On July 10, the movie would be premiered. For now, Men's Uno went to Beijing to interview the main character of HOFD.

This was the first time Takeshi posed for a magazine cover in China.


AM 11:00
The photo shoot was being organized and the moment Takeshi stepped in, the entire attention fell on him.


AM 12:00
The Taiwan and the Japanese manager came along with Takeshi at the appointed time of 12 noon. With a short haircut, and good proportional visage, wearing a casual light green BEAMS T-shirt, beige suede jacket and brown pants, and wearing black camper soft leather shoes, elongated pupils lent a sleepy air.


PM 1:00
As scheduled, waiting for Takeshi to go onstage. As soon as he was ready, the shooting was smooth and flawless. This was because of the long cooperation between him and the photographer. Not until I see him in front of myself, I would not have realized how perfect his face is.

PM 3:30
I opened with the exciting subject HOFD after the Cannes Festival, obviously he has answered it many times.

Interviewer (I): How would you rate Zhang Yimou?
Takeshi (T): I really like him. To be chosen by him, I'm very happy. In my mind, he is a skilled director who could direct feelings, and could perform as a teacher. He cares about how every actor thinks. Many of that we do is under his direction. He did it once for us and then I would imitate him and his dialog and expression.

I: How do you find working with Andy Lau and Zhang Ziyi?
T: I think they are very professional, very hardworking. Every scene they would ask the director to repeat, watch playback so that they could do their best. I am not like that because every time the performance is different. If the director thinks it's good, it's only if I think I really didn't do well would I do it again.

I: How do you make your stand as an entertainer?
T: I only wanted to be a good actor that's why all this time I have not released an album. In the end I don't know how far I have to go. Now that I have the chance to work with so many directors, I should value the experience and do well and perform well as an actor. Otherwise, I would waste their efforts. In the future, I hope I would be a director to make a movie. That could be my little dream.

I: Many people change at 30 years old. Do you think you have changed?
T: Yes, I have....But I could not say how! Entertainers after all work from 9 to 5 and they feel a bit younger and do not grow up. Just be ourselves!

I: How do you find life in Tokyo?
T: Tokyo is a very attractive city. It absorbs the European fashion and yet have a local flavor. This type of exchange is very interesting. Everyone is very united, obey rules and when they work, they feel safe. It's easy to develop a schedule.

I: Because you are hardly in the news, everyone feels your sense of mystery. What do you normally do ?
T: Play video games, watch movies, go out with friends, think about things...very normal. These things I don't need to show them on stage for others to see! I don't go out often, and I don't know where to go...Because of the press in Hong Kong and Taiwan, it's inconvenient to go out. I don't always stay in Japan. Someimes I would go travel, return to Taiwan to see my family. I go here and there. I still like Taiwan the most. Whenever I think about my family, I would go back to Taiwan. Every time I go back I would defintely buy the hawkers goodies - stinky tofu and beef noodles - to revisit the days from young to old and relish the old familiar flavors.

[alisa]

Article is in Korean with beautiful pics of TK.

kr.blog.yahoo.com/monobic/784830.html

[jadedragon]

Hello, Alisa! Welcome to this fantastic website!! The Korean link that you just posted---Takeshi's absolutely gorgeous in this pic!! Thanks so much for sharing this with us here at the forum!!

[OleWiseOne]

Here's a good article:

www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501031006-490735,00.html

October 6, 2003 / Vol. 162 No. 13

Pan-Asian Sensation


Takeshi Kaneshiro became a superstar playing oddball characters. Is this typecasting?
BY KATE DRAKE | TOKYO


When Johnny To signed on to direct the wistfully romantic Turn Left Turn Right, the Hong Kong filmmaker knew exactly whom he wanted to play the male lead. In the illustrated novel by Jimmy Liao, from which the new movie is adapted, the protagonist is so estranged from society that he's depicted floating above the city, like a melancholy blimp. When you want someone who practically oozes that kind of ethereal alienation, whom are you going to call?

Answer: Takeshi Kaneshiro, the half-Taiwanese, half-Japanese movie star who, thanks to his protean good looks and versatile acting skills, has become the Asian film industry's Johnny Depp—a quirky, unpredictable leading man capable of seducing audiences no matter how dark or oddball the role. Kaneshiro is "mysterious," says To. "He doesn't belong to Hong Kong, Taiwan or anywhere." Indeed, in his eclectic 10-year career, Kaneshiro—who speaks five languages and has made films in four countries—has trained his chameleon-like talents on a remarkable array of characters. In Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels, he played a mute who rode the carcass of a pig like a cowboy. He made love to an HIV-infected teen in the blockbuster Japanese TV miniseries God Please Give Me More Time. In Returner, he played an orphaned assassin-for-hire, and he was a bowling-addicted stockbroker in another Japanese TV series, Golden Bowl. "I don't let myself follow in anyone else's footsteps," says Kaneshiro, 29. "Let other people do what has been done before. All I want is to do something special."

In life and on film, Kaneshiro has proven impossible to typecast. The son of a Japanese businessman and a Taiwanese homemaker, he grew up in Taipei straddling two cultures. "When I went to Japanese school, everybody told me I was Taiwanese," says Kaneshiro. "But when I hung out in the neighborhood, people told me I was Japanese." School-yard taunts about his parentage were a part of his education, but Kaneshiro soon learned that being an outsider offers certain advantages. Pulled over for speeding in Taipei while still a teenager, he produced his Japanese-school ID card instead of a driver's license (he was too young to drive) and babbled at the cop in Japanese. Taking him for a befuddled foreigner, "the cop just got frustrated and waved me off," Kaneshiro says.

A Taipei artist-management company recruited him to be a pop idol when he was 15; Kaneshiro had the requisite looks but not the drive. "It took us two years to make him realize what he needed to do to be a pop star," says Eva Yao, Kaneshiro's longtime manager. "I would have to explain a lot of things to make him understand why he couldn't smoke or why he had to cooperate." His biggest shortcoming: "I couldn't sing," says Kaneshiro. Still, he endured voice and dance lessons and released Mando-pop albums with titles such as Tenderhearted Superman. When the time came to parlay his local celebrity into a film career (routine for Taiwan's idol factory), he perversely shunned roles in safe, saccharine vehicles, insisting instead on quirkier character parts. He won acclaim in his second movie for his role as a lovelorn cop in Wong Kar-wai's 1994 cult hit, Chungking Express.

A copy of Chungking Express and Wong's followup, Fallen Angels, landed on the desk of Hiroyoshi Koiwai, a producer for Fuji TV. Koiwai wanted to make a miniseries about a musician who falls in love with an HIV-positive high-school girl, but it was a controversial premise, and the lead part was seen as a potential career killer. "No Japanese musician would take the role," Koiwai says. He was going to give up on the idea—until he saw Kaneshiro, who was only too happy to sign on. "I wanted to use actors who were different," Koiwai recalls. "I needed a cool actor." The series, God Please Give Me More Time, sizzled. It drew an astonishing 28.3% of Japan's viewing audience and was even credited with sparking a 62% increase in the number of Japanese getting HIV-aids tests. Kaneshiro followed up in 2000 with his third Japanese movie, the offbeat action-comedy Space Travelers, which broke box-office records in Japan. His latest Japanese movie, Returner, was the top-grossing domestic film last year.

Kaneshiro's ability to act convincingly in several tongues helps explain his pan-Asian appeal. Because the characters of his name are read differently across the region, he's known as Kam Shing-mo in Cantonese, Kin Chengwu in Mandarin and Kim Sung Moo in Korean. "I feel weird sometimes," he says as he sips iced coffee in a secluded hotel café in Tokyo. "When people call me Mr. Kam, I'm like, who is Mr. Kam? Or they call me Mr. Kim, and I have to remind them that I'm not Korean." He admits his shape-shifting attributes, which are a powerful acting tool, may stem from personal rootlessness. He owns two apartments, one in Tokyo and one in Taipei, but says that he's never in either long enough to decorate. "I don't have a sense that I live anywhere," he sighs. By nature, he suggests, he's a fickle character with no fixed center: "My thinking changes all the time. People may read an interview I gave a year before and assume that's who I still am. But usually I've changed altogether." He tried vegetarianism then went back to red meat. He enrolled in a film class at New York University but never completed it. He sought enlightenment through meditation then gave up: "When I try it, nothing happens."

So who is he this month? In Turn Left Turn Right he plays "a normal guy leading a normal, lonely life," says Kaneshiro. Next, he's looking to conquer mainland China. Kaneshiro is scheduled this month to begin closed-set shooting with fabled director Zhang Yimou (Hero, Raise the Red Lantern) in an as-yet-untitled film set in the Tang dynasty. As always, his challenge is to test the boundaries of his craft, making each role fresh and unexpected. "A melody can be made with only a few notes, right? In acting, it's the same," says Kaneshiro. "There are only a limited number of characters and a limited number of ways to play them." He seems determined to hit all the high notes.

[alisa]

Here the correct link to Men's Uno cover pic

cn.ent.yahoo.com/040624/166/23l25-img.html

The link to the article

cn.ent.yahoo.com/040624/166/23l25.html