Once again, LoveHKFilm.com dispenses immaterial film awards to some deserving and some not so deserving Hong Kong films. The same jury as last year participated in this year's LoveHKFilm Awards, bless their bitter souls. Again, we'd love to get more people to do this, but it's hard to find people who'll watch more than 25 Hong Kong movies per year, let alone Here Comes Fortune.

The voting process this year took place from February to March 2011, and involved screaming, finger-pointing, politicking and even some actual thought. A full list of jury members can be found below.

Best Picture
Winner:
- Gallants
Nominees:
- Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
- Little Big Soldier
- Love in a Puff
- Reign of Assassins

Best Director
Winner:
- Derek Kwok Chi-Kin, Clement Cheng Sze-Kit (Gallants)
Nominees:
- Tsui Hark (Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame)
- Pang Ho-Cheung (Love in a Puff)
- Su Chao-Bin (Reign of Assassins)
- Dante Lam Chiu-Yin (The Stool Pigeon)

Best Actor
Winner:
- Wen Zhang (Ocean Heaven)
Nominees:
- Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau (Crossing Hennessy)
- Simon Yam Tat-Wah (Echoes of the Rainbow)
- Jet Li (Ocean Heaven)
- Nick Cheung Ka-Fai (The Stool Pigeon)

Best Actress
Winner:
- Josie Ho Chiu-Yi (Dream Home)
Nominees:
- Sandra Ng Kwun-Yu (All About Love)
- Fiona Sit Hoi-Kei (Break Up Club)
- Sandra Ng Kwun-Yu (Echoes of the Rainbow)
- Miriam Yeung Chin-Wah (Love in a Puff)

Best Supporting Actor
Winner:
-Teddy Robin (Gallants)
Nominees:
- Deng Chao (Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame)
- Sammo Hung Kam-Bo (Ip Man 2)
- Leon Dai (Reign of Assassins)
- Wang Xueqi (Reign of Assassins)

Best Supporting Actress
Winner:
- Carina Lau Ka-Ling (Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame)
Nominees:
- Siu Yam-Yam (Gallants)
- Fiona Sit Hoi-Kei (La Comedie Humaine)
- Barbie Hsu (Reign of Assassins)
- Karen Mok Man-Wai (The Road Less Travelled)

Best Screenplay
Winner:
- Pang Ho-Cheung, Heiward Mak Hei-Yan (Love in a Puff)
Nominees:
- Derek Kwok Chi-Kin, Clement Cheng Sze-Kit, Frankie Tam (Gallants)
- Felix Chong Man-Keung, Lau Ho-Leung, Chapman To Man-Chat (Once a Gangster)
- Su Chao-Bin (Reign of Assassins)
- Jack Ng Wai-Lun, Dante Lam Chiu-Yin (The Stool Pigeon)

Best New Artist
Winner:
- Aarif Lee (Echoes of the Rainbow)
Nominees:
- Aarif Lee (Bruce Lee, My Brother)
- Buzz Chung Shiu-To (Echoes of the Rainbow)
- Jing Boran(Hot Summer Days)
- Dennis To Yue-Hong(The Legend is Born - Ip Man)

Best Action
Winner:
- Sammo Hung Kam-Bo (Ip Man 2)
Nominees:
- Sammo Hung Kam-Bo (Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame)
- Yuen Tak (Gallants)
- Stephen Tung Wai (Reign of Assassins)
- Chin Kar-Lok, Wong Wai-Fai (The Stool Pigeon)

Worst Film
Here Comes Fortune
Lunar New Year films are usually excused for poor filmmaking, but it's hard to cut Here Comes Fortune any extra slack. It's not that funny, plus it has gross product placement and it wastes actors like nobody's business. Miriam Yeung? Sandrine Pinna? Chang Chen? All have seen better days. Alan Tam, however, is largely in his element.

Runner Up: Vampire Warriors

Most Underrated Film
Once a Gangster
Despite questionable production values and numerous esoteric gags, Felix Chong's triad film satire hits the mark more often than not. Having quintessential 90s triad boyz Ekin Cheng and Jordan Chan on board is a huge, huge plus. Young and Dangerous? More like Old, Silly but Still Pretty Cool.

Runner Up: Ocean Heaven

Most Overrated Film
Echoes of the Rainbow
Hong Kong loved it and so did some kids in Germany, but some of our jury members were less enchanted by Echoes of the Rainbow. Maybe it was the conventional plot twists or the questionable cultural detail. Or maybe they just thought young Buzz Chung was annoying. You'll have to ask one of them.

Runner Up: Break Up Club

Most Bizarre Film
City Under Siege
It's a battle in Hong Kong between super-strong, super-tough mutants - and they choose to fight with throwing knives? Also featuring an annoying and possibly mentally-handicapped Aaron Kwok and Collin Chou as a mutated bad guy who just wants to be loved. If you can make sense of this film, then you win the Internet.

Runner Up: Like a Dream

Most Disappointing Film
Triple Tap
Director Derek Yee usually equals quality, but Triple Tap was boring and underwhelming, with wasted performances by a number of award-winning actors. Louis Koo's sweaty overacting and some disingenous narrative trickery seal the deal: Triple Tap blows.

Runner Up: Bruce Lee, My Brother

Funniest Performer
Wilfred Lau Ho-Lung (Once a Gangster)
More a victim of comic cruelty than an actual comedian, Wilfred Lau nonetheless stole the show in Once a Gangster with his parody performance on Tony Leung Chiu-Wai's Infernal Affairs character, who he plays as the worst and most obtuse undercover cop in history.

Runner Up: Teddy Robin (Gallants)

Most Annoying
Janice Vidal (Frozen)
Patrick Tang's bothersome and insufferable best pal in Break Up Club was trumped by singer Janice Vidal in Frozen. Vidal barely registers in the film, but her flat English is what raises her acting from poor to annoying. Her hats were fab though.

Runner Up: Patrick Tang Kin-Won (Break Up Club)

Most Awesome
Teddy Robin (Gallants)
If you saw Gallants, you'd automatically get why Teddy Robin is the Most Awesome person and/or entity found in Hong Kong Cinema in 2010. He beat an old lady and a dog, both of whom were pretty damn awesome too.

Runners Up: Candy Hau Woon-Ling (Bad Blood), Little Huang the ghost-seeing dog (The Child's Eye)

Most Underrated Performer
Jet Li (Ocean Heaven)
He won acting awards for Warlords, but Jet Li received comparatively little notice for his landmark "non-action" role in the drama Ocean Heaven. Audiences didn't pay much attention either. Too bad, the movie was good and so was Jet.

Runner Up: Shawn Yue (Love in a Puff)

The Liu Kai-Chi Overacting Award (three-way tie)
Collin Chou (City Under Siege)
Darren Shahlavi (Ip Man 2)
Aaron Kwok Fu-Sing (City Under Siege)

Collin Chou deserves notice for his all-out gusto as a devolving circus performer slowly turning into a clone of the Toxic Avenger. Meanwhile, he cries (That's right - cries!) because his "dream lover" Angel (Shu Qi) won't find him attractive. Thanks to Collin Chou, grotesque Chinese mutants can now be considered cute.

Darren Shahlavi overacted so egregiously in Ip Man 2 that his cinematic shouting was likely heard in three adjacent galaxies. Shahlavi probably shouldn't be sharing this award - his vein-bursting role as the racist Mr. Twister was that impressive. But China demands that a foreigner not win, so we're giving it to two other guys too.

Overacting isn't always bad; it can be funny and entertaining too. Sadly, that's not what happened with Aaron Kwok's childlike and possibly mentally-addled performance in City Under Siege. Perhaps Kwok was aiming for cute or winsome with his dopey mutant hero, but the result was more bizarre and idiotic than anything else. If actors had to give back acting awards for bad performances, Kwok would be at minus 3 and counting.

Taking Up Space
Janice Vidal (Frozen)
Poor Janice. Frozen was Janice Vidal's screen debut (unless you count the 2006 "music movie" A Melody Looking) and she spent the entire film enabling other characters and reciting her lines in poorly-enunciated Cantonese and English. We look forward to her second film because there's nowhere to go but up.

Runner Up: Jennifer Tse Ting-Ting (Bruce Lee, My Brother)

Career Suicide
Foreigners in Hong Kong Movies
In 2010, nobody in Hong Kong Cinema saw their stock drop more than foreigners. Take your pick of nationality and they were used by some Chinese filmmaker as a tool to invite scorn, hatred or just plain disapproval. Granted, this isn't really a suicide because it's not like foreign actors were doing this to themselves. Then again, western fest audiences cheered, so maybe the shoe does fit.

Runner Up: Wong Ching-Po (Revenge: A Love Story)

Best Use of Housewares
Dream Home
Pang Ho-Cheung's social drama cum slasher featured a number of gratuitously gory kills, but the genius here was in the use of common household fixtures - vacuum cleaners, toilet bowls, bed frame slats, that damn wooden step - to off the populace of the film's too-expensive housing estate. When we buy our own place, we're remodeling the whole thing into one big pillow.

Best Dance Moves (click image to enlarge)
Leon Lai Ming (Frozen)
Frozen had many things - time travel, family drama, Cantopop nostalgia, bad hair - but the thing it may be most remembered for years from now is the cringeworthy and also genuinely entertaining dance sequence where Leon Lai aped the King of Pop and sent half his fan base screaming for the cinema exits. Okay, half his fans is probably an exaggeration. Maybe more like 37%.

Subtitle of the Year (click image to enlarge)
"Karma really is a bitch." (said by King Shih-Chiehin Reign of Assassins)
Reign of Assassins is an excellent swordplay film with a fine mix of new and old genre tropes. That said, it's doubtful that a mixture of new and old is what this line intended. The character who said this was gravely pointing out an instance of heavenly irony, and not righteously copping a 'tude about messin' with the man upstairs. Why not just call the movie All Men are Bros?

The Hand of China Award
Triple Tap
Director Derek Yee stated he was making a film to appeal to the China market - and did this after nixing that same market with the dark Shinjuku Incident. The result of his money-chasing move? Triple Tap, a snoozeworthy action film and quite possibly the worst film of Derek Yee's storied directorial career. The positive to this story? We'll let you know if we ever figure one out.

The Dynasty Award
Black Ransom
Unintentional entertainment is still entertainment, which is why we give out the Dynasty Award to a Hong Kong film that gets laughs or cheers despite being quality-impaired. Black Ransom featured over-the-top action, homoerotic cop vs. criminal conversations and Simon Yam as a Jedi Cop who uses "the feeling" to become an instakill police warrior. The man curves bullets, for chrissakes.

The Ed Wood Award
Dennis S.Y. Law (Bad Blood, Womb Ghosts and Vampire Warriors)
Dennis S.Y. Law loves to make movies. Too bad he's not very good at it. In 2010, Law attempted to fill Hong Kong's genre film void with a trio of features, but the results were so inept that it's hard to figure out who to blame: the director, screenwriter or the producer. Whoops, Law wears all three hats. If Law insists on directing, he should hire a better producer or screenwriter. We suggest he buy a mirror, too.

The Next 10 Best Films of 2010
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
Reign of Assassins
Love in a Puff
Little Big Soldier
The Stool Pigeon
Echoes of the Rainbow
Once a Gangster
The Drunkard
Ocean Heaven
Dream Home

Ross Chen (a.k.a. Kozo)
Webmaster, LoveHKFilm.com

Shelley Cheung
Minion of Kozo
Editing Monkey, YesAsia.com

Paul Fox (a.k.a. Canton Kid)
College Lecturer, Media Studies, HKU Space
Creator and Host, East Screen/West Screen Podcast

Kevin Ma
Minion, YesAsia.com
Blogger/Tweeter extraordinaire, The Golden Rock

Sean Tierney
PhD and Hong Kong Film Scholar
Hong Kong Film Blogger, alivenotdead.com

Tim Youngs
Hong Kong Consultant, Udine Far East Film Festival

Yuen Man (a.k.a Garden)
Chinese Editor, YesAsia.com