Golden Horse Nominations for 2019
Tuesday, October 1, 2019 at 11:35PM
NATHANIEL R in A Sun, Golden Horse Awards, Wet Season, foreign films

by Nathaniel R

A lonely student and his teacher become friendly in "Wet Season"

Usually the Golden Horse nominations are a fun and glamorous mix of all the hot movies and movie stars from various Chinese language countries. This year, however, due to political fallout from a speech last year and a Chinese boycott because of increasing tension between the way China sees Taiwan and the way Taiwan sees itself, no films from Mainland China are competing (which takes out a huge chunk of movies and a lot of the most famous movie stars). So the bulk of the features nominated this year are features from Taiwan with a little Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong thrown in. UPDATED WITH THE WINNERS MARKED BY STARS

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE 

You may have noticed that Taiwan's current Oscar submission Dear Ex  (streaming on Netflix) is not nominated here. That's because it was a major nominee last year at these same awards. Curiously Singapore's current Oscar submission A Land Imagined (streaming on Netflix) was not nominated in Best Feature at the Golden Horse Awards. It had to settle for a few craft nominations...

Judging by these nominations, we have to suspect that Wet Season could be a strong contender for next year's Singaporean submission in the Best International Feature (it wasn't released in Singapore in time for eligibility this season. As for the other Golden Horse nominees, we're unsure of their release dates in their home country but for Detention, which did open in time for Oscar submitting eligibility but Taiwan chose Dear Ex.)

BEST DIRECTOR

Synapses and Nina Wu both did well in nominations, but didn't make the top category. We're not sure what Synapses is since IMDb doesn't have a listing for it under the director's name. Nina Wu is a drama about a struggling actress.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

No nominees this year (Perhaps Mainland China is where most of the animated films come from?)

BEST LEADING ACTOR

Wu Chien Ho in "A Sun" 

Love these nominees because they remind us that a film can have more than one lead of the same gender. That's something American cinema now pretends does not exist unless the actors have different genitalia. Side note: IMDb is so messed up when it comes to Chinese language names. Wu Chien-ho and Chen Yi-wen both have extensive IMDb pages but under "A Sun" their names are listed but in separate order and link to blank IMDb pages. Note to everyone but especially to IMDb whose pages are a mess when it comes to this: when writing about Asian cinema, family names come first with most actors/directors (for example Bong Joon-ho -- Bong being the surname) unless the person is very Westernized or has an American first name in which they will often be listed in the credits in the Western tradition (like Ben Yuen above) with the family name last.

BEST LEADING ACTRESS

Lee Sinje stars in "The Garden of Evening Mists"

Yeo Yann-yann is very good in Wet Season but it's the only nominee we can vouch for having seen the film. It's a very quiet performance, a character study movie even, about a teacher in an unhappy childless marriage who becomes too close to a student.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

We Are Champions

We can also support the two supporting actor nominations for Wet Season. Koh Jia-ler plays a high school student with a major crush on his teacher (the leading actress) and Yang Shi-bin is her very old and ill father-in-law. The friendship that develops between these two men is one of the few moments of joy in an otherwise melancholy film. 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

BEST NEW DIRECTOR 

BEST NEW PERFORMER

Yuan Teng won Best Actor this summer at the Shanghai Film Festival for his role in "The Paradise"

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

A Land Imagine, currently streaming on Netflix, finally shows up in the nominations. Despite being Singapore's Oscar submission, the Golden Horse Awards obviously far preferred another Singaporean picture, Wet Season.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

The Devil Fish 

BEST ART DIRECTION 

BEST MAKEUP & COSTUME DESIGN

BEST ACTION PHOTOGRAPHY

BEST ORIGINAL FILM SCORE 

BEST ORIGINAL FILM SONG

BEST FILM EDITING

BEST SOUND EFFECTS 

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

OUTSTANDING TAIWANESE FILMMAKER OF THE YEAR

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 

The 56th annual Golden Horse Awards will be held in Taipei on November 23rd. 

 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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