Hollywood
Taiwanese director Liang to release movies at art museums
KOLKATA: Taiwanese director, Tsai Ming Liang, who participated in the 20th Kolkata International Film Festival that kicked off last Monday, declared that his movies going forward will be screened in art museums where it would not compete with commercial and Hollywood movies.
Also, the director talking about the freedom of film makers said that a movie is majorly controlled by financers, distributors and the demands of the viewers, leaving the director with no independence.
“Henceforth I shall release my movies at art museums where they won’t have to compete with commercial and Hollywood movies,” said Liang, talking about his films and cinema in general in front of a heavily packed auditorium.
He nostalgically also shared experiences of his childhood and mentioned how the political situation in Malaysia did not allow him to watch European films. It was only possible once he migrated to Taiwan which became a democratic nation at around the same time.
With such a change in political climate, several international film festivals were arranged which introduced him to directors like Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut.
To him, the final frozen frame of ‘The 400 Blows’ raised more questions than it answered and was a major cinematic moment in his life, he added.
While talking about filmmaking as a practice, he said that the foremost question a filmmaker should ask is, “why am I making films?” When asked about the long duration of his shots, he defended them by saying that they are a representation of his own time. In most films objectification of the subject obliterates time.
However, he wants to remove the object so the viewer is aware of the flow of time.
When speaking about the casting of his films, he mentioned that he always casts an individual and not an actor. He discovers his actors in their moments of solitude. He found Lee Kang Sheng when he was riding his bike, he concluded.
Hollywood
Remembering Chuck Norris: the man, the myth, the legend at 86
From martial arts legend to internet folklore, fans honour his final level up
KAUAI: The world lost a legend on 19 March 2026, when Chuck Norris died aged 86. For a man long treated as immortal in internet folklore, the news felt almost unreal. Yet in true Norris fashion, the farewell has been less about mourning and more about myth-making.
Just days before his passing, on his 86th birthday, Norris shared a video from Kauaʻi, Hawaii, showing him sparring under the sun. His caption was characteristically wry: “I don’t age. I level up.” It now reads like a final wink to fans who had spent years elevating him to near-superhuman status.
His death followed a sudden medical emergency while on holiday. He passed away peacefully, surrounded by family, who described him not just as a global symbol of strength, but as a devoted husband, father and grandfather.
Online, grief quickly gave way to tribute in the language Norris helped popularise. Social media filled with one last wave of “Chuck Norris Facts”, the tongue-in-cheek myths that turned him into a digital demigod. The jokes wrote themselves, as always. Death did not take Norris, it finally dared to meet him.
Behind the humour, however, lies a formidable real-world legacy.
Long before the memes, Norris was Carlos Ray Norris, a decorated martial artist. After serving in the US Air Force, he rose to become a six-time world professional middleweight karate champion. His on-screen duel with Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon remains one of cinema’s most iconic fight sequences.
Through the 1980s, he became the face of action cinema with films such as Missing in Action and The Delta Force, embodying a stoic, no-nonsense hero. In the 1990s, he reached living rooms worldwide as Cordell Walker in Walker, Texas Ranger, blending Western grit with martial arts flair.
Off-screen, his work carried equal weight. His foundation, Kickstart Kids, continues to teach martial arts to at-risk youth, focusing on discipline and self-worth. He also founded Chun Kuk Do, a martial arts system that trained thousands.
What made Norris unique was not just his strength, but his willingness to laugh at it. When the internet transformed him into an exaggerated symbol of invincibility, he embraced the joke. In doing so, he bridged generations, from cinema-goers to meme-makers.
His passing marks more than the loss of an action star. It signals the fading of a rare cultural crossover, where genuine athletic prowess met Hollywood heroism and early internet humour.
For many, remembering Chuck Norris means recalling a time when heroes were simple, punches were decisive and the internet still felt like a playground of shared jokes.
And if the myths are to be believed, this is not quite the end. It is simply Chuck Norris moving on to his next level.
