Oscar-winning director Ang Lee’s (李安) latest film, Life of Pi (少年PI的奇幻漂流), won more recognition on Thursday, with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association nominating it for three of the 70th Golden Globe Awards.
The 3D movie, 70 percent of which was shot in Taiwan, scored Golden Globe nominations for the best motion picture (drama), best director and best score.
The nominations came on the heels of an array of accolades and awards from other film critic groups, including six awards by the Las Vegas Film Critics Society and nine nods for the 18th Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.
Taiwan-born, US-based Lee said after learning of the Golden Globe nominations that he was excited to get the recognition.
“The nominations are very encouraging,” Lee said.
He also expressed gratitude to each of the movie’s 3,000 cast and crew members for their dedication.
Life of Pi, adapted from Canadian novelist Yann Martel’s best-selling 2001 novel of the same name, explores faith through tales of a shipwrecked boy adrift on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger.
Besides critical acclaim, the film has also proved a commercial success since its release late last month.
On Tuesday, Life of Pi was the second-highest-grossing film in North America, just trailing the latest 007 film, Skyfall, while surpassing blockbusters such as Rise of the Guardians and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2. Globally, the film has raked in more than US$120 million at the box office as of Sunday.
A Hollywood Reporter piece, titled “Life of Pi Blows away Chinese Box Office,” said that not even its production company, 20th Century Fox, expected the film to become a cultural phenomenon in China, where after two weeks it has grossed more than US$68 million, more than The Dark Knight Rises (US$53 million) and The Amazing Spider-Man (US$49 million) earned in their entire runs.
Even though Lee is well-known in China, the report said, the film’s success extends beyond just hero worship.
The film has lit up social media sites, with more than 5 million Life of Pi-related messages posted on leading Twitter-like site Sina Weibo thanks to its spiritual themes and its depiction of Indian culture, the Hollywood Reporter said.
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