This would be so much funnier if I still called myself “Sanjuro.”

I have to level with you: the title of this post is purposely misleading, as I have not seen anywhere near enough Hong Kong films this year to be even remotely qualified to assemble a proper “Best of” list for 2010. I’d love to do it; it’s just not possible. To tell the truth, you can count the number of 2010-released Hong Kong films I’ve seen on one hand  — Crossing Hennessey, Fire of Conscience, Ip Man 2, Little Big Soldier, and True Legend.

So, that makes only makes five movies I’ve seen total; well, I suppose if you were getting creative, you could say I’ve seen six — that is, if you count Jet Li’s performance in Sylvester Stallone’s incredibly disappointing action extravaganza, The Expendables.  If a) Jet’s totally out-of-sync performance with the rest of the cast didn’t make me think he was just there to cash a paycheck and b) his one-on-one fight with Dolph Lundgren hadn’t been so terribly, terribly choreographed, I might be persuaded to think that it somehow “counts” as a Hong Kong film. Either way, it doesn’t.

“Okay, okay — you were a Fullbright scholar and got a Master’s in Chemical Engineering!”

As a self-professed critic of Hong Kong cinema, I suppose my ignorance of this year’s crop of movies damn near amounts to heresy, but as many of you know, it’s been a rough second half of the year. I’ve done my best to review what I could whenever I could and keep the blog going on a regular basis, especially during LoveHKFilm.com’s extended hiatus, but the simple truth of it all is that major events dictated a serious re-prioritizing of my energies and efforts.

Although I know it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to implement as much cool stuff as I had planned for this blog. I guess there’s always next year.

Still, at the very least, I can say that I achieved at least one thing this year — Jaymee Ong, a model/actress who appeared in such fun HK cinema diversions as Gen X Cops and Rave Fever, is my Facebook friend. Now, while I recognize that it’s less of a big deal now since she didn’t continue working in the HK film business after starring in that initial pair of films, I have a feeling that the Calvin who joined LoveHKFilm.com back in the early 2000s would have gotten a real kick out of this — that is, right before he asked, “What the hell is a Facebook?”

Anyway, here’s to a happy, healthy, and more productive New Year to you and yours! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 31st, 2010 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Happy New Year, Toshiro Mifune, Toys, Ekin Cheng, Hong Kong cinema. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.