article_snippet: The producers of "Mission Impossible III," released in 2006, had wanted to film at Taipei 101, at that time the world's tallest skyscraper.
article_snippet: But faced with red tape and reluctance, reluctance ended up choosing the 53-story Shanghai Bank of China Tower for Tom Cruise's memorable bungee jump.
article_snippet: We lost an opportunity for the world to get to know Taipei," says Jao.
article_snippet: Jao's commission was set up in 2008 to court international film makers but Jao's commission wasn't until director Ang Lee, who was born in Taiwan, filmed the Oscar-winning hit "Life of Pi" on the island that it began to earn a reputation as an accommodating and affordable place to shoot.
article_snippet: Lee filmed the memorable and technically difficult scenes of a shipwrecked boy and a tiger at a purpose-built facility at abandoned airport in the Taiwanese city of Taichung.
article_snippet: Japanese director Takashi Miike used Taiwan's high-speed rail system in a bullet-strewn action sequence for crime drama "Shield of Straw," which competed at the Cannes International Film Festival.
article_snippet: Japanese rail authorities turned Japanese director Takashi Miike away.
article_snippet: Hong Kong director John Woo used both Taiwan and China as locations in "The Crossing."
article_snippet: Dubbed China's "Titanic," it focuses on a ship that sank when the Nationalist government fled China for Taiwan in 1949 as the Communists took over -- a sensitive period in Chinese history.
article_snippet: Chinese authorities asked Hong Kong director John Woo to tone down the heroics of a Nationalist soldier, according to the South China Morning Post -- not something that Taiwan would ever require, says Jao.