The 44th Taipei Golden Horse Award Winners

The winners were announced on Saturday, 8th December, and as expected, Lust, Caution was the big winner of the night, bagging statuettes in the best film score, makeup and costume, adapted screenplay, new performer, actor, director and picture categories. It's a small compensation for being snubbed at the Oscars, but frankly it's sad to see revered directors like Lee and Martin Scorsese obsess over the Academy Awards. They don't need the gold, bald men to prove to us how awesome they already are.

Ang Lee was also awarded the Outstanding Taiwanese Filmmaker of the Year trophy. Frankly, they should have given him this last year for Brokeback Mountain, which is a far more significant movie milestone than Lust, Caution could ever be.

See my truncated list, or go to the Golden Horse main site for the complete winner's list.

Tuya's Marriage and Blind Mountain are kicked off the Golden Horse! (Part 2)

Stupid me for not doing a more thorough research before putting up the recent Golden Horse post. Apparently, the two scrapped contenders depict rural China in less than flattering ways. I'm sure that has got absolutely nothing to do with their removals from the Golden Horse nom list.

More info on Tuya's here, and Blind here.

Tuya's Marriage and Blind Mountain are kicked off the Golden Horse!

Some belated news: Golden Horse contenders, Tuya's Marriage and Blind Mountain, both PRC productions, have been withdrawn from this year's Golden Horse competition. The reasons for this are vague, something about being "pressured" by China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). You can read the Variety article here to derive your own conclusions. The Golden Horse committee's statement on this wasn't really enlightening either, promising to "have a discussion after this year’s award ceremony to come up with a solution for new rules of submission". Whatever happened to selecting movies for competition because they happened to be just plain good? If you're able to decipher the BS, please feel free to share it here.
Big winners for these omissions include drug-themed thriller Protege, now getting nods for Best Director and Original Screenplay, while The Sun Also Rises director Kiang Wen and Kidnap star Rene Liu were added into the Best Director and Actress categories respectively.

The 44th Taipei Golden Horse Award Nominees

Gurmit Singh, Golden Horse Best Actor Nominee

• Sorry for the long hiatus. Been busy grappling with life issues, but am now back on track, first with the announcement of the nominees for Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards. Click here for the complete list.
• After getting snubbed by some major award bodies (e.g. Oscars) for being neither Hong Kong nor Taiwanese enough (huh?), Ang Lee's Lust, Caution finally gets its day, with eleven Golden Horse nominations including (not surprisingly) Best Feature Film and Best Director. Other than The Home Song Stories, I haven't heard of the other three Best Features. Also, zero Hong Kong films for best pic. Good time for other filmmakers to nab some statuettes before Johnnie To and Stephen Chow dominate the award show next year with Mad Detective and A Hope/CJ7 respectively.
• The big eye-catcher is our very own Gurmit Singh's Best Actor nomination for his performance in Just Follow Law. His movie also garnered a Best Original Screenplay nod, so I guess I'm watching the movie after all. Strangely, the hugely popular 881, which I thought would be the bigger Singapore highlight at the awards, was only acknowledged for its loud, garish costume designs. For a movie about the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival and with Hokkien/Teochew musical numbers, you would think it should do better at a Taiwanese film competition, of all places. Oh well, there is still the Best Foreign Film Oscar...
• Been itching to watch Eye in the Sky, and now its noms for Best Director, Supporting Actress and Film Score may finally make me get off my lazy butt and go rent the DVD.
• Aaron Kwok seems bent on taking over Anthony "the Chinese Meryl Streep" Wong's position as most prolific Golden Horse winner/nominee, nabbing another Best Actor nom three years straight. But he'll need all the luck in the world to win this one, because you don't need to be a detective to know who's more likely to win this year's award (hint: he won Best Actor for Infernal Affairs).