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Anselm Chan’s The Last Dance leads the pack going into the 43rd Hong Kong Film Awards (Hkfa) with 18 nominations.

It is followed by Soi Cheang’s Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In with 14 nods and Philip Yung’s Papa with 11 nominations. All three films will face off alongside Adam Wong’s The Way We Talk and Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well, in both the best film and best director categories.

The 18 nominations secured by The Last Dance is the highest in Hkfa’s history since Teddy Chen’s Assassins And Bodyguards received the same number in 2010. Chan...

The ceremony was held on Sunday evening.

Mabel Cheung’s controversial documentary To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self was named best film at the 41st Hong Kong Film Awards (Hkfa), which also saw Wai Ka Fai’s Detective Vs. Sleuths walk away with best director.

Held on Sunday evening (April 16), the awards ceremony returned to the Hong Kong Cultural Centre for the first time since 2019. It was a star-studded event with a big presence of nominees and guests on the red carpet. Most notable was Michelle Yeoh who recently won the best actress Oscar.

As the first presenter of the night, Yeoh...

Mabel Cheung’s controversial documentary To My Nineteen-year-old Self scooped Best Picture at the Hong Kong Film Awards on Sunday night (April 16), where the crowds also applauded an appearance by Best Actress Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh.

Malaysia-born Yeoh, who recently became the first Asian woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress, started her career in the Hong Kong film industry and has been making a celebratory return trip to the city over the past week. At the Hong Kong Film Awards, she presented the award for Best New Performer, which went to 10-year-old Sahal Zaman for The Sunny Side Of The Street.

Cheung’s documentary, which follows six schoolgirls over a perod of ten years, won Best Picture despite being earlier pulled from the awards after some of the girls said they hadn’t consented to any public screenings.

The film was resubmitted by its co-director, William Kwok,...

‘My Nineteen-Year-Old Self’ withdrawn over public screening consent issues.

Courtroom drama The Sparring Partner has received 16 nominations for the 41st Hong Kong Film Awards, which saw the last-minute withdrawal of Mabel Cheung’s documentary To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self.

The Sparring Partner, which marks the feature directorial debut of Ho Cheuk Tin, leads the pack with nominations in all but three categories. Based on the true story of a gruesome double murder case, its nods include best film, best director and five nominations for performers including lead actors Mak Pui Tung and Yeung Wai Lun. The film has become Hong Kong...

We live in an era where celebrity has become more about fame than talent as those wishing for adulation do what they can to mimic the greats that came before them without ever worrying about proving whether they possess an ounce of originality. You want to impress the judges on “American Idol”? Show them you can be Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna all at once. You want to be the talk of the fighting world by unleashing your strength in the Ultimate Fighting Championships’ octagon? Switch up styles from boxing to Krav Maga with everything in-between to keep your opponents off-balance and your viewers entertained. Be the carbon copy of everything the zeitgeist craves, make as much money as you can during your fifteen minutes, and fade away.

The formula works twofold: the public does eat it up and those who don’t will dunk on those who do. So...

The results of the 21st Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards were announced earlier today, with Fruit Chan's surreal science fiction comedy thriller The Midnight After named as Best Film of 2014. Chan was also named Best Director, while Lau Ching Wan took the Best Actor award for Overheard 3, directed by Felix Chong and Alan Mak.Vicky Zhao Wei won Best Actress for her role in Peter Chan's Dearest, which also earned the Best Screenplay award for Zhang Ji, in a tie with Wai Ka Fai, Ryker Chan and Yu Xi for Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2, directed with Johnnie To.Every year the Hkfcs presents a list of 10 "recommended films" from the year's crop of domestic offerings. Joining The Midnight After on the...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

The 33rd Hong Kong Film Awards is expected to be a hell of a show with some great films going head to head. Leading the way with nominations is The Grand Master with 14, followed by Unbeatable (Dante Lam).

There were complaints last year, that the show didn’t live up to expectations, mainly due to the fact the movie Cold Wars, won nearly every award. Best actor award see the likes of these guys going head to head, Tony Leung (The Grandmaster), Louis Koo (The White Storm) and also Anthony Wong (Ip Man: The Final Fight).

Take a look at the list and comment who you think will win. The winners will be announced on April 13.

Best Film:

- The Grandmaster

- Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons

- The Way We Dance

- The White Storm

- Unbeatable

Best Director:

- Wong Kar Wai (The Grandmaster)

- Johnnie To...

As with any year, some people have begun arguing that 2013 was a bad year for film, because of the expected glut of effects-heavy blockbusters that litter the multiplexes each summer, or because there was a lack of auteur-driven storytelling for the majority of the year. Though it is indeed frustrating that studios hold their more prestigious films until the last month or two of this or any year, 2013 was an excellent year for film. You shouldn’t have to look first to Sound on Sight’s list of the 30 best films of 2013 for proof, but you should add it to the pile, no doubt. We asked our film writers to provide their personal lists of the 15 best films of the year; everyone’s number-one pick got 15 points allocated, everyone’s number-two pick got 14 points, and so on. (As you’ll see, the point values for each of the 30 films is included here.

Ziyi Zhang: Best Actress at the 2013 Golden Horse Awards (photo: Ziyi Zhang in ‘The Grandmaster’) (See previous post: “Golden Horse Awards: Singaporean Movie ‘Ilo Ilo’ Is Surprising Best Picture Choice.”) Although Anthony Chen’s Ilo Ilo took home the top award at the 50th Golden Horse Awards, Wong Kar Wai’s Berlin Film Festival opening gala film The Grandmaster was this year’s big winner: six awards, including the Best Actress trophy for Ziyi Zhang. That marked Zhang’s first victory, after three previous nominations: Best Actress for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000 and for 2046 in 2004; Best Supporting Actress for Forever Enthralled in 2009. "It was a very long and suffering journey making The Grandmaster, but now I’m very happy," Zhang said in her acceptance speech. In Wong’s Hong Kong-Chinese martial arts drama she plays the daughter of fighting master, who, so as to restore her family’s honor,...

Drug War

Written by Wai Ka-Fai, Yau Nau-hoi, Ryker Chan and Yu Xi

Directed by Johnnie To

2012, Hong Kong/China

The name of Hong Kong director Johnnie To resonates strongly with fans of hard edged gangster films and cop stories. For years already he has delivered time and time again with some of the most vivid, gritty and viscerally charged films which populate the genre. His more recent output has occasionally diverged from the action dramas he built his name on, mainly with 2008′s cape flick Sparrow and 2011′s Don’t Go Breaking my Heart with which he branched out into romantic comedy.

Admirers clamoring for a return to the bolder crime films have their prayers answered with To’s latest, Drug War, starring Louis Koo as Timmy Choi, a mid level drug smuggler, and Sun Honglei as police captain Zhang Lei, the man trying to use Timmy’s intel...

Drug War

Directed by Johnnie To

Written by Ryker Chan, Ka-Fai Wai, Nai-Hoi Yau, Xi Yu

China/Hong Kong, 2012

Drug War begins on an impromptu note: a man foaming at the mouth and barely in control of his vehicle thunderously crashes into a local restaurant after fleeing from a drug house. This is followed by a highway sting where a few low level drug traffickers are caught; one man exchanges furious obscenities with his police captor, which are immediately closed off with a response of “I didn’t betray you; I busted you.” Drug War succeeds in never backing off this initial thrust and heightened interplay. The story of cops and criminals predates most, but master director Johnnie To’s latest plays out like an innovative trailblazer and modern spectacle all at once.

Equipped with a hardened zeal and a swift set of genre kinetics, Drug War is close to...

The announcement of the Asian Movie Awards has just been released with some big films and actors going against against each other to win the big awards. Some of these include Drug War (Louis Koo), Outrage Beyond, actors such as Choi Min-sik and Tony Leung Ka-fai, to Directors such as Takeshi Kitano and Lou Ye.

I do have a few favorites in this list and i feel best movie could go to Drug War and best actor should fall to Choi Min-sik (just brilliant in every movie).

Here is the list of nominations below, feel free to write your favorites in the comment box at the bottom of the page.

Best Film

“Drug War” (Mainland China)

“Gangs of Wasseypur, Part 1 & 2″ (India)

“Mystery” (Mainland China)

“Outrage Beyond” (Japan)

“Pieta” (South Korea)

Best Director

Anurag Kashyap, “Gangs of Wasseypur, Part 1 & 2″ (India)

Abbas Kiarostami, “Like Someone in Love” (Japan/France/Iran)

Kim Ki-duk,...

Four Indian films have been nominated for the 7th Asian Film Awards with Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur leading the pack with four nominations: Best Film, Anurag Kashyap for Best Director, Wasiq Khan for Best Production Designer and Rajeev Ravi for Best Cinematographer.

In other nominations, Nawazuddin Siddiqui will compete for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Talaash, Anand Gandhi contends for Best Screenwriter for his debut film Ship of Theseus and Pritam Chakraborty vies for Best Composer Award for his melodies in Barfi!.

Andy Lau, a noted actor of Hong Kong will head the judging panel. A total of 30 films from nine countries will compete under 14 categories at the award function to be held on 18th March, 3013. The annual event is organised by the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society.

Full List of Nominations:

Best Film

Drug War (Mainland China)

Gangs of Wasseypur, Part 1 & 2 (India)

Mystery (Mainland...