12 Nominations For Lust, Caution At The 2007 Golden Horse Awards

To me, Lust, Caution is the must watch Chinese movie of 2007. The extensive media coverage and the lively debates generated by the movie have been unprecedented, no Chinese film has generated this kind of buzz in a long long time, Lust, Caution is truly the Chinese-language movie event of the year. And I think the Golden Horse Awards panel thinks so too as the film has been nominated for a whopping 12 awards at this year's Golden Horse Awards to be held on December 8th in Taiwan including the major awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Ang Lee), Best Actor (Tony Leung) and Best Actress (Tang Wei). Me thinks Lust, Caution is going to take more than a few of these golden horsies home this year ;-)

Besides Lust, Caution (色，戒), other nominees for Best Picture are:

• What On Earth Have I Done Wrong (情非得已之生存之道) first feature film by Taiwanese director Doze Niu who also directed the Wu Bai and Barbie Hsu idol drama Say Yes Enterprise


• Getting Home (落叶归根) a black comedy by Chinese Sixth Generation director Zhang Yang and starring Best Actor nominee Zhao Ben Shan and Hu Jun


• The Home Song Stories (意) an Australian/Singaporean bilingual movie (in English & Chinese) by Tony Ayres and starring Best Actress nominee Joan Chen and Singapore based actor Qi Yu Wu.

And the other Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress nominees are:
Best Director: Yau Nai Hoi (Eye In The Sky), Li Yang (Blind Mountain)
Best Actor: Gurmit Singh (Just Follow Law), Zhao Ben Shan (Getting Home), Aaron Kwok (The Detective)
Best Actress: Joan Chen (The Home Song Stories), Li Bing Bing (The Knot).

A full list of the nominees can be found on the official Golden Horse Awards site:
http://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/gh_main/gh/gh-e-5.aspx.

And here are some screen shots of the nominated Best Picture films below:


Video: goldenhorse nomination films

Latest News: According to this news report, one of the original nominees, Tuya's Marriage (图雅的婚事) - Golden Bear winner at the 57th Berlin Film Festival, has announced its withdrawal from the Golden Horse Awards yesterday. So as of today, we are left with four competing films for Best Picture, and three nominees each for the Best Director and Best Actress awards...

Tags: Golden Horse Awards, Lust, Caution, Tuya's Marriage, Getting Home, The Home Song Stories, Ang Lee, Chinese movies, Chinese films, Film awards.

Curse Of The Golden Flower Makes It To Time Magazine's 10 Best Films Of 2006

The Chinese hit movie Curse Of The Golden Flower has made it into Time Magazine's 10 Best Films of 2006 sharing the honour with prestigious films like Borat and Letters from Iwo Jima. It is the only Asian film to have made it to this prestigious list.

However, reviews for the movie have been mixed. The movie only managed to obtain a 57% rating in the Rotten Tomatoes critic ratings. This is very much lower than other recent Zhang Yimou movies with similar themes like House of Flying Daggers (88%) and Hero (94%). Chinese netizens were also not too impressed with the film, they have dubbed the movie "The Curse Of The Golden Corset" due to lead actress Gong Li's tight revealing costumes that showed off her ample curves to superb effect :-P

The harsh reviews did not seem to have any adverse effect on the movie's box office though... Golden Flower broke the opening week box office record previously set by super blockbuster Titanic in China. Till date, its box-office takings in China alone have exceeded the $200 million renminbi (approximately US$13 million) mark and the movie also performed above expectations in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

I have not watched the movie yet.. will post my thoughts on the movie here once I have watched it. Check out my earlier post for more interesting info on this hotly debated film of the moment.

Tags: Curse Of The Golden Flower, Chinese Movie, Zhang Yi-Mou, Chow Yun-Fatt, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Time Magazine, Best Film, Time Best Films Of 2006.