'Holiday Dreaming' may benefit from Golden Horse fever

The Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎) brought home famous faces such as Ang Lee (李安) and John Woo (吳宇森). It also brought good news about their upcoming films.

Ang Lee's Universal Studios film, Brokeback Mountain has wrapped up shooting and is now in post-production. The gay Western drama, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, will be available for Taiwanese audiences to view in March at the soonest, Lee said.

John Woo is working on a Chinese historical drama about the famous Battle of the Red Cliff (赤壁之戰) in the Three-Kingdoms period (207 AD to 269 AD). Woo's favorite actor, Chow Yun-fat, (周潤發) will be starring.

Ttwo major award-winning films that have not been released, Kekexili and The Moon Also Rises, will have their movie release dates put forward, in order to cash in on Golden Horse fever.

Lin Cheng-sheng's (林正盛) drama The Moon Also Rises (月光下我記得) was scheduled to be released in March but there will be special screenings by the end of the year.

As for Kekexili, its Golden Horse award has lifted hopes that Chinese films will do well in the Taiwan market. Many Taiwanese distributors have started arguing over the distribution rights for the movie.

Another movie that is likely to benefit from the Golden Horse is Holiday Dreaming (夢遊夏威夷), which stars Tony Yu-ning Yang (楊佑寧), who was crowned Best New Performer at the Golden Horse Awards for the film Formula 17 (十七歲的天空).

In Holiday Dreaming, Yang shows his agility performing in comedies and for this reason Holiday Dreaming may follow the example of Formula 17 and become another box office hit.

Holiday Dreaming, however, is not just a romantic comedy and is more of a nicely-woven drama, with funny elements. Stories of military training and students under pressure to pass the college entrance exam are the two main themes.

In a way, first-time director Hsu Fu-chun (徐輔軍) has re-interpreted his youthful memories and will share them with a wider audience, in this film.

In the film, A-zhou (Tony Yu-ning Yang) and his partner Guei (Huang Hung-sheng, 黃鴻升) are two young men about to finish their military service with the marines. One week before they leave the military, however, they are asked to go to Hualien to catch a rookie soldier who has escaped with a rifle.

Reluctant to do the job, they take a holiday in Hualien. The licentious Guei fools around with betel nut girls while the naive A-zhou finds his elementary school classmate, Hsin-hsin (Chang Chun-ning, 張鈞甯).

He goes to a hospital to find out that the girl he adores has become a mental patient living in the asylum. She starts to stalk A-zhou and he takes her with him on his Hualien trip.

The three enjoy a tropical holiday on the beaches of Hualien. By accident they bump into the escaped soldier and are taken hostage in the soldier's temporary hut.

The three realize that the soldier is blindly in love with his girlfriend, could not accept their break-up and has run away. Now, he has turned into a mad man, producing dynamite in his hut.

The best part of the movie is that the two leading men deal with two crazy people during the trip -- the girl and the soldier. They have to constantly make up lies and they keep on growing until they become unresolvable.

A-zhou's decision to continue entertaining the girl he adores, treating her as a queen, despite the fact she's gone mad, brings both laughter and tears.