Wednesday, November 14, 2018 at 6:00PM The Golden Horse Awards are happening this Saturday in Taiwan and they've done official photoshoots with the nominees. If you missed the nominations we listed them here. We have to share a handful of the photos which are by someone named CK for the Taipei Golden Horse Festival because they're gorgeous.
Monday, October 1, 2018 at 10:24AM 
Good news for fans of Zhang Yimou. His latest film Shadow, which we quite liked at TIFF, leads the 55th annual Golden Horse nominations which focus on Chinese language cinema. The higher Shadow's profile gets the more eyeballs it will theoretically find once Well Go, releases it in US theaters. It's definitely worth seeing in a movie theater since it's a visual spectacle. China still hasn't named their Oscar submission so we hope it's going to be Shadow which was released at home yesterday, the last day of eligibility for Oscar's Foreign Language Film submission requirements.
Interestingly enough, Hong Kong's Oscar submission Operation Red Sea received NO nominations whatsoever.
A full list of Golden Horse nominations is after the jump with links to reviews for the few films we've seen...
Saturday, November 25, 2017 at 6:14PM by Nathaniel R
The 54th Annual Golden Horse Awards were held today in Taipei. That's the Taiwanese Oscars if you will. Though a female-led comedy called The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful took the top prizes, the film with the most wins was The Great Buddha+ which took home five. A romantic comedy called See You Tomorrow (the all-star cast includes TFE favorites Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Angelababy) took home most of the 'eye candy' prizes. The family tragedy Old Beast, about a father in court and at war with his kids, also did well.
Curiously Taiwan's Oscar submission Small Talk was eligible last year at this ceremony but wasn't a major player. You can see the whole 2017 ceremony online here but it's not subtitled so good luck! Toward the end of the ceremony Jessica Chastain even shows up to help Ang Lee present Best Actress (which went to Kara Wai) so we've included gifs of that and the list of winners after the jump...
Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 10:30AM 
Nominations for the 52nd annual Golden Horse Awards have been announced with Taiwan's Oscar submission The Assassin leading the pack as well as netting arthouse favorite Hou Hsiao-Hsien a non-competitive statue for "Outstanding Taiwanese Filmmaker" to go along with his Best Director prize from Cannes earlier this year. The Assassin opens in limited US theatrical release on October 16th via Well Go entertainment. China's Oscar submission Wolf Totem, which is actually from animal-movie loving French director Jean-Jacques Annaud (!), only received 1 nomination for visual effects. The latter film is about a student living with Mongolian herders who adopts a wolf cub.
Though The Assassin is likely to sweep the Golden Horses outside of acting (where only the ridiculously beautiful Shu Qi, Hou's regular muse, is nominated. No Chen Chang? Grrrr.) it's not the only big deal in Chinese languages cinema this year. Taiwan's Thanatos, Drunk, Hong Kong's popular crime thriller Port of Call, and China's acclaimed festival favorite Mountains May Depart also reaped several nominations. The event will be held on November 21st in Taipei.
BEST FEATURE FILM
A complete list of nominations after the jump...
Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 1:22PM 
Glenn here again, and as if yesterday’s look at the Best Documentary Short category didn’t prove it, there really aren’t any hard and fast rules when predicting the short categories. In live action short especially they go with serious issues, except when they don’t. They frequently go foreign, except when they don't. They're not overly thrilled with big stars or Hollywood directors, except when they are. It’s all a bit of a gamble, really. This year’s contenders, however, seem a little easier to decipher in terms of what has the potential to win and what hasn’t a hope in hell. Sorry, Butter Lamp, but I think that means you. You will always be my winner.
Aya, dir. Oded Binnun and Mihal Brezis (40mins)
Boogaloo and Graham, dir. Michael Lennox and Ronan Blaney (14mins)
Butter Lamp (La Lampe au Beurre de Yak), dir. Hu Wei and Julien Féret (16mins)
Parvaneh, dir. Talkhon Hamzavi and Stefan Eichenberger (24mins)
The Phone Call, dir. Mat Kirkby and James Lucas (21mins)
Right now it seems pretty hard to look past The Phone Call given it stars an Oscar nominee (Sally Hawkins) and an Oscar winner (Jim Broadbent) and is emotional in ways that many will find belies its 20-minute runtime. Despite the curio factor of both doc and live action short Oscars potentially both going to films about suicide prevention hotline operators, I still feel rather confident over that prediction. It's certainly feels like a more complete film than, say, Boogaloo and Graham, which has wisps of nostalgia floating through its brief runtime and its cute children with pet chickens, but feels relatively light-weight compared to the rest (it gets to The Troubles right in its final shot, which seems like a more logical place to begin, but maybe that's just me).
I was a fan of Parvaneh about an Afghani girl in Switzerland and her friendship with a partying street kid, which feels like the most likely usurper to the throne given the Academy has shown an affinity towards films that bridge between the races. Maybe my hatred of the Israeli nominee Aya is clouding my judgement on that one, but what I do know for certain is that the best of an okay bunch is the sublime Butter Lamp, set in Tibet and focusing on a nomadic photographer who arrives in a village and who, in vignette form, has to deal with locals for whom photography isn't that common. It's wonderfully observed and it's an amazing example of how a film can thrill with restraint. I audibly gasped in the final shot despite it being so very simple. If it pulls a highly unlikely win out of the hat then I will scream with joy, but I think it's impressive festival haul (plus win at the Golden Horse Awards) will have to suffice.
Will Win: The Phone Call
Could Win: Parvaneh
Should Win: Butter Lamp
