Maggie Cheung & The 50th Anniversary of The Golden Horse Awards
Monday, May 27, 2013 at 11:37PM 
For those of you who still miss Maggie Cheung (i.e. all people with good taste who've seen anything she's done) you should know that she's been named the Ambassador for the 50th anniversary of the Golden Horse Awards (one of three major Oscar-like awards for Chinese language films). She's a good choice since she's won five (!) of them (from six nominations, only losing for Dragon Inn from 1992), the most of any actor. Nominations are announced in October with a November 23rd ceremony in Taipei.
Since it's the 50th anniversary they're pulling out all the stops and famous actors and directors are talking about what the awards meant to your career. In this promo video you can see TFE favorite Tony Leung Chiu Wai (only one of the great living movie stars) as well as other recognizable faces like director Ang Lee and hotties like Aaron Kwok and Shu Qi (which...where's she been lately?)
The best news is that elusive Maggie has shot a one minute commercial (though we hope it's more like an abstract short film) with the acclaimed director Hou Hsiao-Hsien and cinematographer Lee Ping Bing (the cinematographer of In the Mood for Love!). It's not available yet but stay tuned...
Reader Comments (6)
Missed Maggie Cheung a lot. Even in Chinese movie world we rarely get her news now.
Actually, we (Chinese movie audience) don't usually see Golden Horse as the "Oscars" of Chinese movie, it's one of the three major movie awards in Chinese movie world. Golden Horse is in Taiwan, Golden Rooster in Mainland China and Hong Kong Film Awards in HK.
In history, it was a relatively limited award body since they only cater for Taiwan and HK movies (due to the complicated political relationship between Taiwan and China). Only in recent years China movies which have achieved very rapid growth in terms of quality and quantity became main contenders in a lot of major categories (It also didn't help that Taiwan and HK movies were having a hard time during the past 10 or so years which quality was very hard to come by).
Another aspect where it's unlike Oscars is that you actually have to fill in registration form to be eligible in a category. It's not automatically qualified based on release date. In individual categories like the acting, you have to be specific who (can be more than one) you are registering for your movie. Anyone outside of the one you register will not be considered.
And then there's the nominating process. It's not voting by members of the academy, but it's a less than twenty jury members. That's why it's more like a movie festival than an Oscars (The Chinese name of Golden Horse is actually Golden Horse Movie Festival). It's been the target of criticism for many years where they nominate a lot of movies where the mass people scratch their heads, and it's been receiving some "operating in small circle" criticism as well.
Anyhow, we still see Golden Horse as a very important movie event here, since it's an old movie awards show and it did give us some very worthy winners very often. It's also the only movie awards that will name Jackie Chan Best Actor... twice... consecutively. That's enough for me LOL.
About Shu Qi, she still works very frequently, but her movies are not going overseas I guess. She just finished starring in a Stephen Chow directed movie in January (Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons) and will have a Hou Hsiao-Hsien directed movie and coming up later this year with and cinematographer Lee Ping Bing. So were you actually talking about Shu Qi instead of Maggie in your article?
will GRANDMASTERS score at this year GOLDEN HORSE? I hope so, singe I love WKW so much...and it's great that his new movie worked so well at chinese box office.
even if I appreciate Maggie in her juror or awards functions, I wish I could see her acting again...
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L O V E
W K W
Can't wait to see Grandmasters
With due respect, I think Maggie deserved only 3 of the 5 GH awards she'd won. Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan. Her win for Full Moon in New York was truly a surprise, and may I add undeserving, considering the superb performances of other nominees for that year. I guess she had the votes based on the strength of Stanley Kwan's stature (who directed the film) and her watershed commitment to 'more serious roles' (if you'd watched Maggie's earlier films (1982-88), you wouldn't have guessed she could even win a GH award - her acting was wooden and her comedic timing was way off, even her line reading was rather awkward). But she has since evolved and matured into a great thespian. Back to the topic - she was rather one-note in Red Dust (her supporting win the following year). I remember my jaws fell when they announced her name given that once again the other nominees had given much more brilliant performances (the same reaction I had when Cher beat Glen Close at the Oscars). As for Centrestage, Comrades almost a love story, and In the mood for love, she absolutely deserved every bit of the glory. In fact, I thought she was also a force to be reckoned with in Dragon Inn (another nom for Maggie).
All in all, I'm so proud of Maggie - she could easily rival the best in Hollywood, France and other parts of the world..
I think many people will be quiet dissappointed with "The Grandmasters". Yeah it looks pretty and there is solid acting, but the story is a mess and every single line of dialogue is so artisticly styled that there must be a deep and profound meaning to it. But with my limited knowledge of Chinese culture I couldnt get to it.
I agree with jans that Maggie Cheung excellent and possibly deserving of an award for her role in "Dragon Inn", but it would have been impossible (at least for me) to chose between Maggie Cheung and Brigitte Lin delivered an amazing performance in the same movie.