Golden Horse Winners 2017

by Nathaniel R

The 54th Annual Golden Horse Awards were held today in Taipei. That's the Taiwanese Oscars if you will. Though a female-led comedy called The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful took the top prizes, the film with the most wins was The Great Buddha+ which took home five. A romantic comedy called See You Tomorrow (the all-star cast includes TFE favorites Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Angelababy) took home most of the 'eye candy' prizes. The family tragedy Old Beast, about a father in court and at war with his kids, also did well.

Curiously Taiwan's Oscar submission Small Talk was eligible last year at this ceremony but wasn't a major player. You can see the whole 2017 ceremony online here but it's not subtitled so good luck! Toward the end of the ceremony Jessica Chastain even shows up to help Ang Lee present Best Actress (which went to Kara Wai) so we've included gifs of that and the list of winners after the jump...

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What on earth will be nominated for Adapted Screenplay?

Past Oscar years have often had an imbalance in the screenplay categories, with original being the designated place for edgy (for Oscar at least) critical darlings and adapted screenplay being the place where all the prestige Best Pictures gather to receive their admirer. But old rules are going away, "prestige" has lost meaning, and this year nearly all the critical darlings AND consensus Best Picture likelies have been deemed "original" -it's seriously stacked, just look at the updated chart. 

So what gets nominated for Adapted in this vacuum? Here's an alphabetical list of 15 possibilities but beyond Call Me By Your Name none of them seem like safe bets, exactly. So which way does this go? After scratching my head I've made a guess on the chart but I'm eager to hear what you're thinking on that matter.

• Beguiled
• Blade Runner 2049
• Call Me By Your Name 
• The Disaster Artist
• Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
• Last Flag Flying
• Logan
• The Lost City of Z
• Molly's Game
• Mudbound
• Stronger
• Victoria and Abdul
• Wonder
• Wonder Woman
• Wonderstruck

Tweetsgiving Parade

Anjelica Huston and Liza Minnelli on a road trip in Mexico c.1975 pic.twitter.com/7tyRMpQaDY

— Wendy O. (@wendyOrourke) November 20, 2017

Did this really happen? If so how are we just seeing it/ hearing of it? An abbreviated tweet roundup today because everyone's been travelling and gorging and not tweeting. But tweets ahead on Aquaman, Thanksgiving, Lady Bird, and baby Bergman fans after the jump...

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59 days til nominations. Time for a little Disney trivia

by Nathaniel R

Disney won every single short category plus Documentary Feature at the 1953 OscarsWith 59 days left until Oscar nominations, it seems an appropriate time to remind everyone that it's not Meryl Streep (20) or Woody Allen (24) or even John Williams (50) who holds the record for Most Oscar Nominations of All Time, but industry titan and one of the most influential people who ever lived: Walt Disney. His fingerprints... or mouse glove prints if you will, are still all over showbiz, especially the business part. But we're here to talk Oscar. He received an incredible 59 competitive Oscar nominations, winning 22 of those races.

So in addition to holding the record for most nominations, he also holds the record for most wins. The last of those nominations and wins was his only posthumous honor -- Winnie Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) took the Animated Short Oscar (then called "Best Short Subject, Cartoons")...

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Oscar Contenders Sweep Through the 11th Asia Pacific Screen Awards

By Glenn Dunks

Rajkummar Rao wins BEST ACTOR for India's Oscar submission "Newton"

This past Thursday, the 11th Asia Pacific Screen Awards were held in Brisbane, Australia. The awards cover 70 countries and areas, which makes their scope even bigger than APSA's cousin the European Film Awards. Now, fair admission, working for APSA is my day job for four months of the year, but when I say what they do is so incredible and important you should know I'm not saying so out of obligation. How many award shows do you know that can honour an Australian 1920s-set western, a contemporary Georgian drama for actressexuals, and Syrian documentaries about life-saving humanitarians?

More than half of the 13 categories this year were won by films on various Oscar eligibility longlists and therefore in serious contention of nominations. While the big winner of the night for Best Feature Film was ultimately Warwick Thornton's Sweet Country of Australia, it won't be released locally until January next year so it could potentially be eligible for 2018 (his 2009 debut, which also won the Best Feature Film APSA made the foreign language shortlist). But the big country winners of the night were Georgia and Russia with three wins.

The winners are after the jump...

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