Another year of Hong Kong Cinema means another year of the LoveHKFilm Awards (link to the amazing archive of previous awards), dedicated to recognizing the best, worst and weirdest movies out of Hong Kong every year. Entertainment industry professionals undoubtedly look forward to our choices.

“Hey, LoveHKFilm.com! I got one finger for you, and it isn’t this one!”

This is the fifth year that LoveHKFilm.com has run its awards using a jury of individuals. Despite the unofficial nature of these awards, everyone who’s a part of the jury makes an effort to see most if not all the films, frequently trading DVDs and VCDs towards the end of the year. People in the jury will actually buy a copy of stuff they normally wouldn’t buy, like BUTTERFLY LOVERS or WONDER WOMEN, and pass them around so that people can see what they missed. Such dedication and/or masochism is to be commended.

“I’m just pretending to pay attention.”

Also, the jury takes movies seriously. We watch them and we honestly discuss them. There are biases and blindspots like in any process based on opinion, but the group doesn’t cater to a single type of movie watching. Not everyone is an art film fan or a genre geek, and we actually try to recognize the gaps between films and audiences when making our selections. It’s not a process that wins friends and influences people, but it’s the way things have worked out.

The jury also knows when not to take movies seriously, which is why you can expect VIRTUAL RECALL to end up with some props this year. Bad movies need to be recognized too, and movies that are so bad that they’re amazing absolutely need to be recognized. If you have to watch 60+ movies per year, and even drag yourself to ones that are clearly the absolute pits (I LOVE WING CHUN, I’m looking at you), then you need an outlet. Giving out wacky awards is ours. If they had physical form, they’d look like this:

Actually, Fan Siu-Wong did win a LoveHKFilm.com Award,
waaay back in 2008. We didn’t give him a penguin though.

Now, about the rules for which films qualify: In previous years, the rules were confusing but well-intentioned, with some credit given to video-only releases and some - but not all - China/HK co-productions. Eligible films required a HK-based director or stars, some measure of Hong Kong investment, Chinese-language dialogue and/or some mystery fourth rule called Webmaster Veto. I used it a lot.

Those rules worked pretty well for a few years, but have become increasingly difficult to maintain. Since nearly all current Hong Kong films have China money involved, and the gap between HK and Chinese cinema is closing every day, it’s hard to ascertain what really counts as a “Hong Kong” or a “China” film anymore. If you asked any five people what constitutes a Hong Kong film, I’m sure you’d get a different definition from each person.

“You want a definition? Here’s a definition: my foot up your ass!”

The Hong Kong Film Awards still has a complex definition for film eligibility, involving at least one Hong Kong film company, six crew members with permanent Hong Kong ID cards, no qualifying crew members in the same position (e.g., for GALLANTS, Derek Kwok and Clement Cheng count as 1 crew member and not 2), and probably an appearance by Lam Suet. But the LoveHKFilm Awards can’t be that complex. For one thing, we have no access to any crew information, and it’s not like the film companies are going to provide it. The Asian Film Awards uses submissions to find qualifying movies, but there’s no way any film company would submit their films to the LoveHKFilm Awards. After 10 years, we’ve maybe earned the prestige of DVD quotes, but that’s it.

So, in light of the ever-changing world of Hong Kong and China Cinema, we’ve made the rules simple:

1) The film must be either Hong Kong or China funded. A combination of both is fine too.
2) The film must have received an accessible theatrical run in Hong Kong during the 2011 calendar year. By “accessible”, we mean it it must be possible to buy a ticket if you’re an everyday joe, e.g. everyone who’s on the jury. Some of us do luck into press passes and industry invites, but it’s the exception and not the norm.
3) I may veto a film if I don’t think it really fits. Not really an issue at the moment, but you never know.

Up front, some key Chinese-language films won’t be getting any consideration. Ann Hui’s A SIMPLE LIFE won’t be included because NOBODY HAS SEEN THE MOVIE in Hong Kong outside of a few lucky souls. Super-popular megahit YOU ARE THE APPLE OF THE MY EYE, now officially Hong Kong’s highest-grossing Chinese-language film, won’t be getting consideration because it’s pure Taiwan, and these awards do not count Taiwan as a part of China. So yeah, Michelle Chen and her pals are out of luck.

“I’m holding my breath until you guys let my movie in!”

On a semi-related note, THE KILLER WHO NEVER KILLS, while seeming to be all-Taiwan, actually has Hong Kong money in it, so we’re counting it. It also has Eric Tsang, who’s totally a Hong Kong filmmaker. However, Eric Tsang is not an absolute guarantee of entry, because he appears in about 50 zillion films a year, including some Taiwan or other country’s movies that won’t count.

Yeah, confusing, isn’t it?

“I really have no idea what he’s talking about anymore.”

So these are the eligible films (with handy links to LoveHKFilm.com reviews, if they exist):

1911
3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy
The 33D Invader
All’s Well Ends Well 2011
Beach Spike
A Beautiful Life
Beginning of the Great Revival
Big Blue Lake
Buddha Mountain
The Butcher, The Chef and The Swordsman
Chase Our Love
A Chinese Ghost Story
Choy Lee Fut
Choy Lee Fut Kung Fu
Cure
Datong: The Great Society
Demon 2
The Detective 2
Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
East Meets West
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
Fortune Buddies
Hi, Fidelity
Hong Kong Ghost Stories
I Love Hong Kong
I Love Wing Chun
If You Are The One 2
The Killer Who Never Kills
Lan Kwai Fong
Legendary Amazons
Let the Bullets Fly
Let’s Go!
Life Without Principle
The Lost Bladesman
Love for Life
Love in Space
Love is the Only Answer
Love You You
Magic to Win
Men Suddenly in Love
Microsex Office
Moon Castle: The Space Adventure
Mr. and Mrs. Incredible
Mr. and Mrs. Single
Mural
My Ex-Wife’s Wedding
My Kingdom
Mysterious Island
Old Master Q and Little Ocean Tiger
Overheard 2
Punished
Road to Dawn
Roomless
Sacrifice
Shadowguard - The Blood Bond Saga
Shaolin
Sleepwalker
The Sorcerer and the White Snake
Starry Starry Night
Strawberry Cliff
Summer Love Love
Treasure Hunt
Treasure Inn
Turning Point 2
Virtual Recall
The Warring States
The Way We Were
What Women Want
White Vengeance
Wind Blast
The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake
Wu Xia

In total, that’s 72 eligible films. At this time, I’ve only seen 62 of them, though I may up that number in the coming weeks. Still, I don’t think I need to see THE WAY WE WERE or MOON CASTLE: THE SPACE ADVENTURE to round out my Top 10 list. The latter is a member of China’s Pleasant Goat and Big Bad Wolf animated franchise, which I doubt will have any impact on those awards. So it’s officially off the table. WAY WE WERE? DEMON 2? I might see those though you’ll probably never read the reviews.

I think Pleasant Goat is too busy being happy to care about the LoveHKFilm Awards.

“Hey, Jay Chou! I’ve got a finger for these guys too!”

So that’s the skinny on this year’s LoveHKFilm Awards. Voting for these awards starts early February and continues on through March. The Awards will likely get announced sometime in March or early April, usually before the Hong Kong Film Awards. See you then. I hope.

Random toy photo to end this:

It’s the Circle of Life!

Hey everyone, it’s a blog entry! Remember when we used to do this every two weeks or so? Now we’re looking at a two year gap. It’s simply awful, but now we’re back. Yay!

“Do I look like I care about your stupid blog?
When Jackie reads, nothing else matters!”

Since I haven’t done this in a while, this will be a big blog entry with highlights of what’s coming up on the site, plus some “how did we end up here” navel-gazing. Since self-reflection is undoubtedly tiresome, the promises and other highlights come first. Even better, it’ll happen in bullet points. If I could draw up an infographic, I would.

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Welcome to the third and final installment of Michael Wells’ coverage of the 2011 New York Asian Film Festival here on Damn You, Kozo. Michael writes for the Everybody Likes Movies blog, and it’s a place for, well, everybody who likes movies. This time out, Michael talks about director Tsui Hark, plus some guy named Tsui Hark and maybe a little something about Hark (first name) Tsui (last name). They’re all fascinating people. He also talks about two other films he saw at the NYAFF. After this entry, Michael will ride the Information Superhighway back to his regular haunt on Everybody Likes Movies. We thank him for his time and his copious way with words. His cheap per-word rates are helpful too.

By Michael Wells

Grady Hendrix, co-founder, co-programmer and official publicity whore for the New York Asian Film Festival, took the words right out of my mouth when he stood up before the screening of DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME and gushed, misty-eyed, about how Tsui Hark had changed his life and that of the other members of the Subway Cinema group (Daniel Craft, Goran Topalavic and Marc Walkow, as well as retired founding members Brian Naas, Paul Kazee and Nat Olson). I, too, can credit or blame this single individual, more than any other, for an addiction to Hong Kong film that would lead me to orally pleasure strangers in back alleys, like some desperate crackhead at rock bottom, if that was what it took to get my eyeballs on these movies.

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If you haven’t been paying attention, have simply had better things to do, longtime Asian Cinema fan Michael Wells of the Everyone Likes Movies blog is contributing coverage of the 2011 New York Asian Film Festival here on Damn You, Kozo. This is Part Two of his three-part effort - Part One can be found right here, while Part Three is likely to drop sometime in the next few days. Also, be sure to visit Everyone Likes Movies for more of Michael’s movie musings.

By Michael Wells

The NYAFF programmers say they’ve been wanting for a few years to show Yeo Joon-han’s SELL OUT! (Malaysia, 2008), a low-budget indie musical comedy satirizing corporate capitalism in general and Malaysia’s ethnically-Chinese, “Manglish”-speaking yuppie elite in particular. I would bet they made that decision as soon as they saw the opening: a filmmaker who has just won the Kryzhindangzhongbushaus Village Far Eastern Film Festival Young Oversea-Chinese Women New Director’s Honorary Mention Award is interviewed for TV, proves as pompously impenetrable as the drying-paint minimalist drama he directed, lambastes popular genre cinema and all who make it, and then is killed along with most of the other people in the room when a post-robbery shootout spills through the door. It’s virtually a one-scene manifesto - and a very funny one - for the festival’s sloppy, smoochy embrace of pulp movies and their bored distaste for stereotypical festival art cinema.

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Michael Wells of the Everyone Likes Movies blog has graciously offered to cover the 2011 edition of the New York Asian Film Festival (Called NYAFF by friends and intimate acquaintances) for LoveHKFilm.com, and we’re posting his text here on Damn You, Kozo! This is only Part One of his mult-chapter, super verbose look at the fest and its movies, so check back in the coming days for more on this week-long fest. Also, be sure to visit Everyone Likes Movies for more of Michael’s movie musings.

By Michael Wells

It’s a sign that you’ve arrived when the press gives you your own set of cliches. So, in celebration of this year’s bigger-than-ever 10th annual edition of the New York Asian Film Festival, here goes: Kung fu monks and giant robots and violence and sex and body fluids. Cheeky defiance of the staid art-cinema norm of film festivals. Scrappy four-man team makes it all happen. They’re not culture big shots, they’re just regular fans like their audience. They charge it all to their credit cards! Don’t they know how hard it is to get credit these days? Crazy! And that guy with the red hair and the loud suits who shouts a lot before the movies? Crazy! Also there are three other guys. And they’re not even Asian! But now they’re almost respectable (they get actual Asians who make movies to fly over for the festival and they show movies at the Lincoln Center Film Society right across the street from the Metropolitan Opera and NY Philharmonic) but not quite, because they still raffle off prizes to the audience and still kung fu monks and giant robots and blood and slime and only in New York!

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Complain all you want, he still can’t hear you.

“It’s all pops and buzzes from here, dawg.”

Edison is a bad role model. If we did things his way, we would gladly ignore any and all criticism, and would classify those who criticize us as “haters” a.k.a. “people who don’t agree with me, and thus are terrible or awful because of it.” When you think about it, Edison is actually a prime example of the Internet generation: poor English standards, bad perspective and overwhelmingly in love with himself. At least he’s good with a camera.

Bringing this back a bit, LoveHKFilm.com and the powers-that-run-it have received a fair amount of criticism over the years. I try to look at the good side: going on ten years online, LoveHKFilm.com has long outlived what I thought would be its usefulness. It’s done a great deal for me, and supposedly it’s done a good deal for others too. At least, that’s what the email I get tells me.

At the same time, my email also tells me that the site has annoyed and even offended some, and I do take those complaints seriously. Still, I eventually have to decide if the complaints are fair and have merit, or if they come from people who are operating from a limited if not selfish perspective. It would help if I could read minds, but I don’t seem to be able to do that. Yet.

The last time I updated Damn You, Kozo was over a year ago. In that time, LoveHKFilm.com has taken numerous vacations and the site blogs have become rather quiet. Something needs to change. LoveHKFilm.com has a focus, limited and unpopular though it may be. Damn You, Kozo needs a focus too. As soon as I figure out what it is, I’ll do it.

In the meantime, this blog will reopen with occasional posts. Michael Wells of the Everyone Likes Movies blog will be contributing some guest posts on the latest New York Asian Film Festival plus we may do one of those Top 100 Hong Kong Movies reader polls again. We might also post some pictures.

It’s good to be back.

It’s been nearly a month since I attended the 12th Udine Far East Film Festival, but I have yet to post more than one or two photos detailing the trip. In past years, I’ve usually written quickly about the experience, but this year? It didn’t happen. Besides a podcast I did over at Paul Fox and Kevin Ma’s KongCast, all I did was put up one photo of LGM and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Here’s a photo of me taking that photo:

That’s GALLANTS co-director Clement Cheng in the background,
wondering why I’m interrupting an interview to take toy photos.

Obviously, I act in a completely professional manner while I’m over there.

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Enjoying myself here in Udine at the Far East Film Festial, but have neglected a lot at the website and blog. I don’t think I ever published my Top 20 Hong Kong movies of the 90s, so that ancient poll still isn’t done. I also have laundry to do so life is full of troubles.

The evil ash cloud has prevented many a filmmaker from attending, but a host of people have shown up, including Chapman To, directors Derek Kwok and Clement Cheng, Pang Ho-Cheung, and also Patrick Lung Kong, the focus of the main retrospective. Saw a lot, and may write some, but it’ll have to be after I clear my main backlog of reviews.

Anyway, met Derek Kwok and he’s a big fan of Hong Kong action figure manufacturer HOT TOYS. He even brought along the new TERMINATOR 2  Movie Masterpiece 1/6th scale action figure and is snapping photos. I added my own toy and we got a crossover going:

LGM enjoys the feel of Ah-nuld’s hair beneath his toes

I’m doing work here for YesAsia plus LoveHKFilm, but the Udine Far East Film Festival is also largely a holiday for me. No real pressure, I can talk to directors or actors during lunches or while lounging around, and the staff is always exceptionally helpful. I sincerely doubt I would ever enjoy Cannes or other high pressure film fests. Hell, the HKIFF always threatens to make me sick. In Udine, I can just be and you can’t really put a price on that.

See you in a few.

NOTE: If you’re just staring to read this Top 100 list, please go back to the very beginning to experience it from #100. Starting here will spoil the fun, plus result in the death of kittens.

On the list of things that I should be doing at this very minute, putting up a complete list of our recent Top 100 Hong Kong Films of the Nineties is not one of them. But it’s been nearly two weeks since the results went out so I figured I should finally get to it.

These guys were happy with the results:

“We have triumphed again, Tony.
Wilson and Donnie have nothing on us!”

Can’t wait for the scene in Wong Kar-Wai’s IP MAN where Ip Man kicks ass and then smokes in slow motion for about half-an-hour.

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Hello and welcome to the final episode of the Top 100 Hong Kong Films of the Nineties, as decided upon by LoveHKFilm Readers who had far too much time on their hands. This countdown has dragged on for a week now, so people must be ready to find out what’s in the Top 5. You’re all excited, right?

“I can’t have any more movies on this list, so what do I care?
These people are morons if they can’t rank me higher than #10!
I call shenanigans! Screw this! I’m going home!”

Well, maybe not everyone is that excited.

Anyway, it was necessary to drag this thing out for so long because A) we needed to manufacture suspense, and B) we needed to delay things to finish writing the blurbs, resizing the photos, and attending to that thing called a day job. But hey, we made it. We can finally return to our regular life, which involves sleep, some hopeful PS3 time and maybe some attention paid to the main LoveHKFilm website. Last we checked, it still existed.

We’re always required to always say this: if you’ve just joined us, check out the earlier entries so as not to ruin the experience of reading the countdown from the very first entry. We urge you to punish yourself and start from the beginning:
Numbers 100-81
Numbers 80-61
Numbers 60-41
Numbers 40-31
Numbers 30-21
Numbers 20-11
Numbers 10-6

Okay, let’s finish this thing! Then we can forget that it ever happened.

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