AWARDS, PREMIERES, BEST OF LISTS!

It's that time of year when Best of lists are busting out all over and the same movies show up again and again and again, awards go to the movies you thought awards would go to and so on and so forth. Here's the rundown:

- the list of Hong Kong's top-grossing artists have been released with Aaron Kwok heading the pack (HK$105,380,000), Andy Lau coming in second with about half that (HK$68,380,000) and in a surprising upset, Joey Yung (#3) outgrosses the Twins (#4) by HK$4 million.

- THE HOST has cleaned up at Korea's Blue Dragon awards, including "Best Picture", "Best Supporting Actor" (Byun Hee-Bong), "Best New Actress" (Ko Ah-Sung), "Best Technical Achievement" and "Best Lighting". RADIO STAR stars Ahn Sung-Ki and Park Joong-Hoon shared "Best Actor" and Kim Hyee-Soo won "Best Actress" for TAZZA: THE HIGH ROLLERS. "Best Director" went to FAMILY TIES director, Kim Tae-Yong. KING AND THE CLOWN got one award: "Best Music".

- the Rotterdam Film Festival is honoring Johnnie To in a sidebar next year. The Berlin Film Festival will honor 50's and 60's director Kihachi Okamoto.

-the Japanese Academy Awards were announced with Yoji Yamada's LOVE AND HONOR hitting 12, SUITE DREAMS in at 11 and HULA GIRLS at 10. But the star of LOVE AND HONOR, Takuya Kimura, turned down his "Best Actor" nomination. His manager, the agency Johnny & Associates, gave the weird explanation that it didn't "want to put him in a position of competing with other actors for the prize." Uh, okay.

-Film Comment's critics poll for 2006 is out, with LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA coming in at #16 for best film of the year and then for unreleased movies we had SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY at #1, THE HOST at #2, Tsai Ming-liang's I DON'T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE at #4, STILL LIFE at #6, TRIAD ELECTION at #13, IN BETWEEN DAYS (#15), and THE GO MASTER (#19).

- Indiewire's poll is out, and it's basically the old Village Voice poll, run by Dennis Lim, but over at Indiewire instead of the Voice. THREE TIMES comes in at #6 and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA at #19. FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT is the #10 undistributed film with 6 votes (one of them mine) and you can read the list I sent them.

These Best of lists are a pain because you have to know what exactly constitutes a release: can a 1996 movie released in NYC in 2006 count as a 2006 movie? What about something like PAPRIKA? I didn't put it, THE HOST or ELECTION 2 on my list of undistributed movies because they're all getting distributed next year. But this kind of thing can be frustrating - proving the point that it's still hard to see foreign movies the year they're released.

A real "Best of" list will show up here tomorrow - only Asian movies movies released in 2006.