The Golden Horse Awards (
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.
PHOTO COURTSY OF GOOD FILM LTD
John Woo is working on a Chinese historical drama about the famous Battle of the Red Cliff (
PHOTO COURTSY OF GOOD FILM LTD
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 (
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 (
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 (
In the film, A-zhou (Tony Yu-ning Yang) and his partner Guei (Huang Hung-sheng,
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,
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.
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