The Golden Era at the Golden Horse Awards
Wednesday, October 1, 2014 at 11:00PM You may recall that last year the Golden Horse celebrated its 50th year so it was a big big deal. All the stars of Chinese language cinema were out with all the living winners of the lead acting prizes prominently displayed on stage. Zhang Ziyi finally took home Best Actress for The Grand Master, a prize that had continually eluded her. This year, the 51st, is bound to be a let down in comparison but it's still worth noting since we like to see how the Oscar submissions from various Asian countries fare. So let's just hit that straightaway...
Tang Wei stars in The Golden Era, a 30s era biopic of an important Chinese writer
THE GOLDEN ERA (Ann Hui) - Hong Kong's Oscar submission
This historical bio of a famous female writer finds Lust Caution's then-novice star Tang Wei headlining another acclaimed 3 hour period epic. It's nominated for 5 awards and they're all major ones: Feature, Director, Actress, Supporting Actress and Original Screenplay. No tech nominations though, which seems strange for a period epic. I'm still kicking myself for missing this one at TIFF but it's hard to fit the super-sized movies into those jampacked schedules.
ICE POISON (Midi Z) - Taiwan's Oscar submission
Our own Oscars don't ever have the "lone wolf" director anymore with the expanded Best Picture lineup and an increasing willingness to embrace chillier critical darlings anyway, but the Golden Horse got one this year. This Taiwanese drama about a poor young farmer and a woman escaping an arranged marriage who both get mixed up in selling crystal meth is only nominated for Best Director.
MY BELOVED DEAREST (Sanif Olek) - Singapore's Oscar submission
Last year, Singapore was the surprise winner of the Best Feature Golden Horse (which tilts heavily China and Hong Kong) for their Oscar submission Ilo Ilo but this year their representing film either wasn't eligible or was not well loved by the Golden Horse jury. Zero nominations.
Black Coal Thin Ice led the nominations
We don't yet know what the mainland has chosen as their Oscar submission but the other films that were embraced by the Golden Horse Jury were: Black Coal, Thin Ice from China and winner of the Golden Bear early this year (Glenn reviewed) which led nominations with 8 including all the biggies - Feature, Director, Actress and Actor; Blind Massage from China, exactly what it's title implies, was not far behind with 7 nominations including Feature and Director; Kano from Taiwan, a true story baseball movie set in the 1930s won 6 nominations including Feature and Makeup & Costumes; Coming Home, the new Gong Li drama about a man returning from prison to his estranged wife, missed the key nod for Best Feature but won 5 other nominations including two for acting: Gong Li and a Newcomer nod for Zhang Huiwen who plays her daughter; Paradise in Service was also big in acting categories with three supporting nods but it missed Best Feature, too; A Fool about parents desperate to save their son convicted of a crime won five nominations including Feature.
Young Detective Dea: Rise of the Sea Dragon is available on Netflix Instant Watch!
And finally, just because it's fun to know these films -- and because yours truly kind of misses the days a decade ago when everyone was excited about wuxia movies - other films that did well, particularly in the tech awards included Brotherhood of Blades set in the Ming dynasty, The White Storm a drug underworld action film, No Man's Land about a lawyer's adventures in the Gobi desert and the biggie, a wuxia prequel with five tech nominations: Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon which is available on Netflix Instant Watch.
You can see a complete list of nominations here.
Extensive charts of this year's foreign language Oscar submissions (71 announced to date) are fully updated here.
Reader Comments (7)
The Singapore submission this year is not eligible for Golden Horse, as it is not in Chinese or Cantonese language. It is in Malay language.
The snub of Chen Daoming for Coming Home bothers me. The movie is not outstandingly good but the duo combo of him and Gong Li save the movie from being a train wreck. Their roles are equally in weight and quality, so the OCD inside of me is not very happy they only nominate Gong Li. It's another case of nominating Emmanuelle Riva (a.k.a. the one with illness) and snub Jean-Louis Trintignant (a.k.a. the healthy one, in another word, less showy role).
I agree with PJ: CHEN DAOMING is as deserving as GONG LI...I wonder if she could win her first Golden Horse
Looked at the chart. Vietnam was nominated once, by the way. For "Scent of Green Papaya."
Ian -- Duh! I knew that. corrected. thanks for catching that!
The Golden Era was a huge disappointment to me. Failed experiment in structure, lack of focus on its subject' actual work, too much focus on a poorly developed romance plotline... Tang Wei is good, but her role is under-written. The techs are nothing special, no surprise they were not nominated. Never very boring despite the 3-hour running time, but I don't recommend it and it's going nowhere at the Oscars. It was also weird to see the lack of interest for it in Venice. I was at the second press screening and the screenings before the premiere were always full, for films in any sections, but there were less than 20 people there and several walked out.
The only other film I've seen is Black Coal, Thin Ice which totally deserves all of its nominations. Weird but interesting mix of surrealism and realism, very original in its neo-noir elements. The lead actors are fantastic, especially Gwei Lun-Mei in a kind of a femme fatale role. I hope I can squeeze her into my supporting ballot at the end of the year.
Also, after looking at the full list of nominees and seeing that Red Amnesia was eligible, I'm shocked that its lead actress, Lü Zhong, was not nominated. She was absolutely amazing (and the film much better than The Golden Era) and yet she seems to have bad luck with awards. She was considered the only option for the Volpi Cup which she lost to Alba Rohrwacher's dull performance in the horrible Hungry Hearts, and now a snub here. Shame.