April 14th, 2007
Lost entry+Hong Kong Film Award predictions
This space represents a lost entry. It was lost when Firefox unexpectedly closed on me in the middle of an entry.
It included Hong Kong box office numbers for Thursday, why Nikkatsu announcing its lineup mattered, Japan Times reviews for this weekend (one of them is a Japanese film that opened on only one screen), how Chinese subtitling groups work, Information on Taiten no Ken, a new Japanese film investor, and how Thailand is unreasonably censoring an independent filmmaker.
Please leave a comment if you would actually like to see any of these stories, because I really don’t want to go and dig up all the links again.
The rest of the entry is my predictions for the Hong Kong Film Awards, happening tomorrow night Hong Kong time.
Overview: As always, the nominations tended to recognize established names rather than new filmmakers. All the nominees for best pics, best director and best screenplays are people who have spent 10 or more years in the industry. This points to a committee that seems to be just putting together an award that pats their buddies in the back rather than encouraging new talents. I’m not just saying this because a personal favorite Isabella didn’t get much major nominations, but also because this archaic system managed to recognize The Myth with multiple nominations.
With that said, here are my predictions for this year’s major awards (Those I want to win are in parenthesis):
Best Editing: After This, Our Exile (Exiled)
Best Cinematography: Curse of the Golden Flower (Isabella)
Best new actor: Gouw Ian Iskandar for After This, Our Exile (same)
Best Supporting Actress: Haven’t seen most of the films, can’t comment
Best Supporting Actor: Jay Chou for Curse of the Golden Flower (Simon Yam for Election 2)
Best Actress: Gong Li for Curse of the Golden Flower (same)
Best Actor: Chow Yun Fat for Curse of the Golden Flower (Lau Ching Wan for My Name is Fame)
Best Screenplay: Yau Nai Hoi and Yip Tin Shing for Election 2 (same)
Best Director: Patrick Tam for After This Our Exile (Johnnie To for Exiled)
Best Picture: After This, Our Exile (Election 2)
Results will be posted tomorrow morning, or tomorrow evening at the latest.