The 25th Hong Kong Film Awards (2006)

I've tickets to attend the HK Film Awards Presentation Ceremony this year. Balls to your Oscars, these are much more fun ~ they stick to the principal that, the sooner you dish em out, the sooner you can get to the parties afterwards. My kind o ceremony! And being able to go and see it for real… how fab is that? I've been watching it ont telly fer't past three years, and this year I can actually go! Think of it: the guests, the actors, the directors, the excitement, the atmosphere, Aaron Kwok winning Best Actor and the audience going nuts… Well, hopefully, anyway I have $100 on him winning, so that selection/judging committee had better not let me down…

After all, nominating Tony Leung Ga-Fai twice (for different roles, obviously) is just rude. Could you not have found the bottom of another barrel to scrape? Andy Lau is a twice past winner anyway, so he dunt need another trophy. And there's nowt wrong wi Simon Yam ~ he just didn't do as world-changing a job as Aaron Kwok, that's all (as inspector Syun from "Divergence". Yes, the crazy one). This is Aaron's first nomination ever in HK, and his best proper chance o winning. I mean, Taiwan awarded him the Golden Horse for Best Actor last year (again, his first and only nomination there), so he can't be all that shite. It dunt guarantee im an award o course, but we're hoping it helps.
But how did Jackie Chan's "The Myth" get nominated fer't Best Picture and not "Divergence"? Just not right ~ got to hope "Election" or even "Initial D" get it, eh. Although if the latter does get it, it'll just go to show how the Awards are grasping at straws. Not that "Initial D" were a bad film, I just dunt think it deserves a Best Picture award.

Actually, looking at the nominations list, it seems they've kept all of em to the same small circle. I wonder how many films were made in HK since April '05? And the best they can do is nominate the same four or five for each category? Hmm. It's not just foreigners that under-appreciate HK films. In fact, it's hard to find any bloke-on-the-street John Lee that considers HK-made films useful and essential. Most of my friends seem to think o them as, at worst, disposable, uninventive clones of previous similarly poor efforts. At best, they think they're desperate Hollywood wannabes, or straight copies of "Infernal Affairs" and any other top-grossing HK film. Notice how the adverts for Andy Lau's "Wait Till You're Older" owe more than a passing nod to Tim Burton's "Big Fish"?

These are not my views of the HK film industry. It's had some bad times (name any '80's sex comedy or vampire-slaying horror flick) but it's also had some fucking fantastic times, in all genres: "Seoul Raiders", "Election", "Storm Riders", "Infernal Affairs" (1 and 3 ~ 2 was completely lost on me, I have to admit), "Moonlight in Tokyo", "Enter the Phoenix", "King of Comedy", "Divergence", Stephen Fung Dak-Lun's "Fist of Fury", "Initial D", "Shaolin Soccer"… The list goes on, and these are just the ones I can name off top o me head. Now with this entertainment expo on, perhaps locals ~ and foreigners ~ will make the effort to't get back int cinemas and watch em! HK films deserve audiences!

Tags:
Aaron Kwok ~ Andy Lau ~ Tony Leung ~ Jackie Chan ~ HK Film Awards ~ Divergence ~ Election ~ Initial D ~ Hollywood ~ Tim Burton ~ Asian Cinema