Golden Horse Awards are ready to roll

The 42th Golden Horse Awards ceremony (金馬獎) is slated to take place in Keelung on Sunday, when film professionals and stars on both sides of the Strait will anxiously await the yearly verdicts on their performances at the gala event.

Hou Hsiao-hsien's (侯孝賢) Three Times (最好的時光) and Tsai Ming-liang's (蔡明亮) The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲), competing with each other for best feature film and best director, are the two local art house films which stand out from the dominance of Hong Kong contenders.

Hong Kong crime drama Election (黑社會) by Johnnie To (杜琪峰) takes the lead in a number of nomination categories with 11 potential awards, followed closely by Kung Fu Hustle (功夫) by Stephen Chou (周星馳) with 10 nominations, Three Times with nine and Seven Swords (七劍) with seven.

Local audiences will have the chance to see Election at theaters before the award ceremony hands out the medals. Hitting the big screen in Taiwan today, the film revolves round a bloodstained competition among two gangster leaders, Big D (played by Tony Leung (梁家輝)) and Lok (played by Simon Yam (任達華), to become chairman of Hong Kong's oldest Triad society.

After Lok wins the election, the merciless Big D vows to claim the title with force and declares a full-scale war on anyone who disagrees. During the factional battles, the syndicate's sacred emblem, the Dragon Head Baton, goes missing.

Leaders of five sections of the crime ring are ordered to retrieve the baton using all the resources at their disposal, but each of them secretly wishes to wield the ultimate power that possession of the baton endows.

Rather than romanticizing the life of gangsters, director To's realistic approach to the subject matter vividly portrays individuals trapped in a world of cruelty and violence, where humanity and values are twisted and eaten away by greed for power and money. Yam is said to give his best performance to date in the film, while Tony Leung is nominated for best leading actor for his role as Big D.

Leung will face a fierce battle in the best leading actor category against three other nominees, Chang Chen (張震) for his role in Three Times, Chinese actor Chen Khen (陳坤) for A West Lake Moment (抹茶之戀味) and Aaron Kwok (郭富城) for Divergence (三岔口).

As a movie star with 14 years experience, Kowk is nominated for the leading actor for the first time, and some critics think he may be a dark horse at this year's Golden Horse for his refreshing performance.

For the best leading actress category, Shu Qi (舒淇) in Three Times will compete with first-time Golden Horse nominee Miriam Yeung (楊千嬅) in Drink, Drenk, Drunk (千杯不醉), American-born-Chinese Michelle Krusiec (楊雅慧) in Saving Face (面子) and Chen Shiang-chyi (陳湘琪) in The Wayward Cloud.

Originally up for nomination in the best supporting actress category, Krusiec was recognized by the jury members as worthy of recognition as a leading lady, and she subsequently replaced the former best leading actress candidate from the film, Joan Chen (陳沖).

Stephen Chou's performance as the leading actor in Kung Fu Hustle has been subsumed under his directorial role in the film, but the movie successfully sent Yuen Wah (元華) and Yuen Qiu (元秋) into the nomination categories for the best supporting actor and actress respectively for their humorous roles as landlords in the film. The two categories are dominated by Hong Kong actors and actresses with the exception of two locals, Hsiao Shu-shen (蕭淑慎) and Liu Yi-jung (陸奕靜) entering the competition on behalf of Taiwan's film industry.It's also interesting to note that most nominations in the technical categories concentrate on a few movies such as Election, Kung Fu Hustle, Seven Swords, Three Times and Initial D (頭文字D).