China launched a full-scale cinematic invasion of Taiwan on Saturday, not only taking the Golden Horse Awards’ best feature film, best director and best actor, but also bagging two best actresses with Zhou Dongyu (周冬雨) and Ma Sicun (馬思純). Ma and Zhou both starred in Soul Mate (七月與安生), a story about the intertwined fates of two childhood friends. This marks the first time in Golden Horse history that two actors from the same film have co-won an award.
In addition, China finished with best new performer, best adapted screenplay, best cinematography, best special effects, best makeup and costume design, best action choreography and best sound editing. It also took the unofficial Audience Choice and FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) awards.
Taiwan and Hong Kong split the remaining awards except for best original film song, which went to Malaysia.
Photo: Taipei Times
RISE OF CHINA
It feels like it hasn’t even been that long since fully-Chinese productions were even allowed to participate in the Golden Horse Awards, but much has changed in Taiwan in 20 years. It should be noted that the award was even more restrictive in its early days, as The Sandwich Man (兒子的大玩偶) was almost disqualified in 1983 because almost half the film was in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese).
China has been taking home major awards for many years as its film industry rapidly improves, winning its third best actor in a row and third best feature in five years. But the accolades are usually distributed more evenly with Hong Kong also claiming a share while Taiwan often takes a back seat.
Photo: Taipei Times
This year, however, it was utter domination. And it wasn’t one exceptionally good film that won it all. The Summer is Gone (八月) won the best feature, but none of the major acting or directing awards except for best newcomer, which went to 10-year-old Kong Wei-yi (孔維一), whose eyes the story is told through. The win came as a surprise even to director Zhang Dalei (張大磊), and Kong admitted to not knowing what a Golden Horse was before being nominated.
After winning best actor last year, Feng Xiaogang (馮小剛) returns to his usual position at the helm and was named best director for I Am Not Madam Bovary (我不是潘金蓮), which also won the Audience Choice Award.
The two hopeful Taiwanese nominations, Godspeed (一路順風) and The Road to Mandalay (再見瓦城), both fell flat, with the former only winning best art direction. Instead, young experimental filmmaker Huang Ya-li (黃亞歷) won best documentary with his first feature-length production, the creative and beautiful piece Le Moulin (日曜日式散步者), about surrealist Taiwanese poets during the Japanese era.
Other wins include Austin Lin’s (林柏宏) best supporting actor for At Cafe 6 (六弄咖啡館) and Lim Giong’s (林強) best original film score for City of Jade (翡翠之城). This is the musician’s fifth Golden Horse.
DOUBLE YOLKED EGG
How does a film award produce double winners? Each institution has its own rules, but in this case, jury chair Ann Hui (許鞍華) says that during the discussion process, two-thirds of the jury agreed to vote for Zhou and Ma as one contestant, pitting them against Fan Bingbing (范冰冰), also from China, in the final round of voting.
“If we separate them, everyone will choose Zhou as Ma did not have as good of a role,” Hui says. “But we discussed it at length, and we felt like we couldn’t leave one of them out.”
While this is the first Golden Horse where two actors from the same film won the same award, the “we can’t just give it to one person so we’ll give it to both” decision is nothing new, first taking place during 1991’s ceremony when Wang Lai (王萊) and Rebecca Pan (潘迪華) became co-best supporting actresses with the now-classic films Pushing Hands (推手) and Days of Being Wild (阿飛正傳).
It then happened two years in a row in 2003 and 2004 with the best new performer award. But the highest profile decision came in 2009 when Nick Cheng (張家輝) and Huang Bo (黃渤) were both named best actor.
The Golden Horse Awards styles itself as the Chinese-language Academy Awards, which actually produced its first double-yolked egg in 1932 when Fredrich March and Wallace Beery both won best actor at the fifth edition of the ceremony. However, there would be only five more Oscar deadlocks for the next 84 years.
The 2018 nine-in-one local elections were a wild ride that no one saw coming. Entering that year, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized and in disarray — and fearing an existential crisis. By the end of the year, the party was riding high and swept most of the country in a landslide, including toppling the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in their Kaohsiung stronghold. Could something like that happen again on the DPP side in this year’s nine-in-one elections? The short answer is not exactly; the conditions were very specific. However, it does illustrate how swiftly every assumption early in an
Francis William White, an Englishman who late in the 1860s served as Commissioner of the Imperial Customs Service in Tainan, published the tale of a jaunt he took one winter in 1868: A visit to the interior of south Formosa (1870). White’s journey took him into the mountains, where he mused on the difficult terrain and the ease with which his little group could be ambushed in the crags and dense vegetation. At one point he stays at the house of a local near a stream on the border of indigenous territory: “Their matchlocks, which were kept in excellent order,
Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 In 1933, an all-star team of musicians and lyricists began shaping a new sound. The person who brought them together was Chen Chun-yu (陳君玉), head of Columbia Records’ arts department. Tasked with creating Taiwanese “pop music,” they released hit after hit that year, with Chen contributing lyrics to several of the songs himself. Many figures from that group, including composer Teng Yu-hsien (鄧雨賢), vocalist Chun-chun (純純, Sun-sun in Taiwanese) and lyricist Lee Lin-chiu (李臨秋) remain well-known today, particularly for the famous classic Longing for the Spring Breeze (望春風). Chen, however, is not a name
There is no question that Tyrannosaurus rex got big. In fact, this fearsome dinosaur may have been Earth’s most massive land predator of all time. But the question of how quickly T. rex achieved its maximum size has been a matter of debate. A new study examining bone tissue microstructure in the leg bones of 17 fossil specimens concludes that Tyrannosaurus took about 40 years to reach its maximum size of roughly 8 tons, some 15 years more than previously estimated. As part of the study, the researchers identified previously unknown growth marks in these bones that could be seen only
RSS