GOLDEN HORSIES HAPPEN; NO ONE INJURED

Political wrangling and angry directors were the order of the day in the run-up to Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards Ceremony, the largest and most prestigious Chinese film awards which are attended by the largest number of Chinese film celebs. But the ceremony itself went off with no punches thrown and no Susan Sarandon-style speeches at the mic; and this year, surprisingly, art took top prize.

Last year, Ang Lee spat some choice insults when Stephen Chow's KUNG FU HUSTLE took home bigger and better awards than the latest art flicks from Taiwan's senior film-heads, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang. This year he just nodded and smiled a lot.

In the days leading up to the awards, China withdrew Tian Zhuangzhuang's THE GO MASTER, his typically snail-paced and highly worthy biopic about a master of Go, with no explanation given. Tsai Ming-liang's I DON'T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE didn't have to compete, either, after Tsai took his movie out of the competition complaining that it didn't get enough nominations (only two: "Best Supporting Actress" and "Best Sound").

Nevertheless, the day was taken by Patrick Tam's return to filmmaking, AFTER THIS OUR EXILE, starring Aaron Kwok (who won his second "Best Actor" Golden Horsie in a row - last year he won for DIVERGENCE). Kwok's next movie is Chinese billionaire, Terry Gou's, first project. Not surprisingly Kwok will play a Chinese business marvel who just happens to be from Gou's home province, building a business empire in the Qing Dynasty. Tam's first artfilm in 17 years, AFTER THIS OUR EXILE, took "Best Picture", "Best Actor" and "Best Supporting Actor" for Gow Ian Iskander, Kwok's nine-year-old co-star.

Peter Chan took home "Best Director", "Best Song", "Best Cinematography" and "Best Actress" (Zhou Xun) for PERHAPS LOVE which is, amazingly, still winning awards approximately a year after it hit theaters (it was on Chinese screens December 2, 2005).

But the evenings best award went to Chen Zi-fu, Taiwan's legendary movie poster painter. Capable of cranking out a poster in three hours, Chen has painted around 5,000 posters in his 50 year career. At 80 years old he's hailed as a national treasure, and his two personal favorite works are his black A TOUCH OF ZEN poster and his poster for BATTLE OF TIEN MOUNTAIN (on the right). Someone issue a book of this guy's posters, please. You can read more about his career here.