Hong Kong film awards wrap-up

The Hong Kong film awards ceremony was held last night, and unsurprisingly, there were no suprises, no upsets, nothing except the same banal shit. You can read about it here. A note about that article: It says that the HK Film Awards are the Chinese Oscars, even though Shanghaiist thought that the Golden Horse awards over in Taiwan were the Chinese Oscars. Which one is it? Or should the Golden Rooster awards be considered as well?

Back to HK -- Taiwanese pop sensation Jay Chou won the best newcomer award for Initial D. It's a mediocre film, and though his performance isn't bad, we wonder what the meaning of such award is ... the reason why teachers give you Bs is because you didn't do something worthy of an A. We guess that in the HK and greater Chinese film world, though, they don't ask for much more.

We love Anthony Wong. He reminds us of Al Pacino (though not as good), a guy that can just show up with a five o' clock shadow and play the part of the crapulous curmudgeon, yet we think he pretty much dialed in his performance in Initial D,which amounted to little more than well-executed cliches. Tony Leung Ka-fai (Liang Jiahui) won for best actor in Election, which won best picture. He was also nominated for Everlasting Regret (Chang Henge), which means that he was two of the five nominees for that award, which makes absolutely no sense. Oh yeah, so Election (Longcheng Suiyue) won best picture as a "masterful" take on the rivalry of two crime bosses. We've only seen the film once, and yeah, it was relatively well-made, the performances weren't half bad, but somehow, from beginning to end, Shanghaiist couldn't get over the fact that it was yet another gangster/triad film in Hong Kong -- we like all kind of movies, but to be honest, after so much of this drek, we find even that most basic act of sympathizing with the protagonists to be difficult.

Finally, two more absurdities: Best "Asian" film went Ke Ke Xi Li, Lu Chuan's 2004 film set in the Tibetan plains. It wasn't a bad flick, but we were incredulous that something that old should pop up again. The Chinese Oscars sure have a different notions of the cycle of Oscar "buzz". There was only one good thing about this whole business, which is Zhou Xun winning best actress for Perhaps Love (Ruguo Ai), which we haven't seen, but since she's 1,000 times hotter than say, oh, Zhang Ziyi, we felt like she kinda deserved it.

You can find the full list of nominees is here and some Chinese coverage of it here.