HKFA 2008

For the longest time, I had given up on watching the Hong Kong Film Awards ceremonies. You often hear people give their reasons for disliking the show (fixed results, always the same people nominated/awarded, boring) but to me the biggest reason for not watching is the simple fact that it's hard to respect a program that doesn't respect itself.

For example, my biggest beef with the show is the way the Nominee Clips are so randomly cut. These clips are supposed to demonstrate why the nominee deserves to win, which means that they represent the best performance in the entire movie. Yet year after year, the most arbitrary cuts are shown. I remember one year, the category was for Best Supporting Actress and the clip that was played for one nominee featured a scene where she was being embraced by another actress. That alone wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the nominee's back faced the camera for the entire clip, and all the lines were given by the other actress. I mean, do you really think that scene showcases the nominee's talent? Similar clips involving close-up shots of performers' faces for Best Costume Design were laughably irrelevant.

And then there's the horrible writing for the award presenters. Traditionally, the banter between the presenters wasn't just awkward, it was painful to watch. I always thought to myself, If this is the best that professional writers can come up with, then no wonder the film industry is doing so poorly.

So as I said earlier, it's a matter of respect. How can you expect me to respect the awards show when those responsible for it didn't respect themselves?

Anyways, during dinner last night the restaurant I was at televised this year's awards ceremony so I got to glimpse at bits and pieces. The banter was still insanely painful to watch but I did notice some improvements in the quality of the Nominee Clips. Many of the Acting categories still featured the occasional random cut but other categories like Art Direction and Costume showed rather meaningful clips (BTW, why is Best Costume and Make-up lumped into 1 category? Shouldn't it be broken up into 2? Guess it just shows the lack of importance placed on these 2 aspects; it's all about the performers).

Also, it was nice to see 5 separate nominees in each category. I understand that the HK film industry is very small so it's a bit difficult to have non-repeating nominees, but in the past it was just plain silly to have 1 actor nominated for 3 out of the 5 spots in the same category (although I have to admit that I found it rather funny one year when one of such nominee lost; losing when you have a 1/5 chance is nothing to be ashamed of, but to hold 60% of spots and still lose is pretty embarrassing).

So after 27 years, I guess the-powers-that-be have finally gotten off these asses and have begun to make some changes. It's way overdue, but better late than never.