Chapter 233 The Great Controversy of the Golden Horse Awards
In mid-November 2006, the rd Golden Horse Awards was held in Wanwan.

Liu Zhou's "New World" and "Father and Son" starring Aaron Kwok both received seven nominations.

However, the biggest favorite for this year's Golden Horse Awards is "If Love" directed by Chen Kexin, which received a total of twelve nominations including Best Feature Film and Best Actress.

It is worth mentioning that another film produced by Golden Harvest, "Crazy Stone", was also nominated for four awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing.

At the awards ceremony that just ended, "New World" beat "If Love" and won the Best Picture.

But the Best Director award went to Chen Kexin.

After winning the Best Supporting Actor Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards, Liang Jiahui won the Best Supporting Actor Award at the Golden Horse Awards for his role as Ding Qing.

The Best Supporting Actress award went to Xie Xinying for her role in Alice's Mirror.

After losing at the Hong Kong Film Awards, Andy Lau failed again at the Golden Horse Awards, losing to Aaron Kwok.

Aaron Kwok won the Golden Horse Award for two consecutive years with last year's "Forking Road" and this year's "Father and Son".

As for "Crazy Stone", it won the trophy for Best Original Screenplay at this Golden Horse Awards.

But this time the Best Original Screenplay award went to "The New World", which meant that "Crazy Stone" won nothing.

As for "Red Cliff", although it earned more than 300 million yuan at the box office, its treatment was the same as "The Banquet" and it basically did not receive any important nominations.

Most of them are behind-the-scenes awards such as special effects, photography, and costumes.

It is normal for such commercial blockbusters without deep plots to be unpopular in terms of awards, and everyone knows this.

In fact, even if it is nominated for an important award, it will most likely be a runner-up and it will be difficult to compete with those literary or drama-oriented films.

However, "Red Cliff" was lucky enough to win two trophies, Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction, while "The Banquet" won nothing.

This caused Feng Kuazi to curse the Golden Horse Awards in front of the media again.

Liu Zhou had just returned from Hollywood and had been busy dealing with matters of his company, so he did not attend the Golden Horse Awards this time and let Zou Chongyan lead the team to attend.

This Golden Horse Awards ceremony immediately caused an uproar.

The media in Hong Kong and the mainland have all spoken up for Liu Zhou and Liu Dehua.

"New World" is as famous as "Infernal Affairs" and is regarded as the pinnacle of Hong Kong films after the new century.

At the beginning, "Infernal Affairs" almost swept the Golden Horse Awards, but "New World" lost in the Best Director and Best Actor awards.

Especially at this year's Academy Awards, "New World" is the biggest winner.

As a result, there were two big upsets at the Golden Horse Awards.

At this moment, conspiracy theories emerged one after another. Someone revealed that Liu Zhou was disqualified from winning the Best Director award because he did not come to receive the award.

Even the Best Actor award that was supposed to go to Andy Lau was cancelled because the Golden Horse Awards didn't want "New World" to be too out of line, so it was given to Aaron Kwok.

This forced the Golden Horse Awards organizing committee to issue an explanation and clarification, but it still failed to quell the outside discussion.

Among them, the biggest controversy is about the Best Actor.

Andy Lau gave an outstanding performance in "New World", but unexpectedly, he not only lost to Leung Ka Fai at the Hong Kong Film Awards, but also failed at the Golden Horse Awards.

When Andy Lau lost to Leung Ka Fai, there was controversy among the media on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and Hong Kong, and many media outlets spoke up for Andy Lau.

This time, Andy Lau lost to Aaron Kwok again, which caused even greater controversy.

The Hong Kong media, in particular, took the opportunity to criticize the Golden Horse Awards.

Although Aaron Kwok is also a Hong Kong actor, he has little presence in the art film "Father and Son".

So relatively speaking, they will definitely support Andy Lau who starred in the hugely influential "New World".

If Andy Lau's loss of the Best Actor award caused the biggest controversy, then Liu Zhou's loss to Penny Chan for Best Director was considered the most conspiracy-fuelled.

The award selection is highly subjective and it is indeed difficult to say. After all, Andy Lau performed well in "New World", but Aaron Kwok's performance in "Father and Son" was definitely not bad either.

However, the quality of "New World" is much better than "If Love", and Liu Zhou was not present. The fact that Liu Zhou lost to Chen Kexin makes it hard not to think of conspiracy theories.

In fact, for Liu Zhou, he has a calm attitude towards whether he can win the award, and the situation of favorites being defeated by upsets happens every year.

But people outside the party began to speak up for him, and Liu Zhou also went to inquire about the internal situation of this year's Golden Horse Awards.

We learned from various channels that the Golden Horse Awards did not deliberately suppress him. It can only be said that this year's judges prefer art films.

Several important awards are basically for art films, and almost all commercial films failed. It is already very good that New World won the [Best Picture] and [Best Supporting Actor].

If there really is a shady deal, Liu Zhou is not a good-tempered person, but if he loses normally, he can afford to play with it.

Speaking of which, Liu Zhou has never participated in the Golden Horse Awards since his debut.

The main reason is that there are too many trivial matters in the Golden Horse Awards, and Liu Zhou is really too lazy to deal with them.

Back in 2002, Liu Zhou filmed "The Piano Tuner", which won multiple awards at the Golden Rooster Awards in mainland China.

Many people were expecting The Tuner to win the Golden Horse Awards again, but something strange happened again. That year, no mainlander and no mainland film participated in the Golden Horse Awards.

Otherwise, it’s hard to say whether Liu Zhou will win the Best Director award, but there is a high probability that Qin Hao will be able to win the Golden Horse Award for Best Actor again.

Later, as Liu Zhou became more and more famous, the Golden Horse Awards kept inviting him to participate, but Liu Zhou either didn't want to go or had something else to do and couldn't go.

To be honest, Liu Zhou really looks down on some Taiwanese filmmakers.

The Golden Horse Awards is supposed to be a grand gathering for filmmakers, but people often say nonsense on this film stage.

Rather than not knowing whether I will be disgusted again if I go to the Golden Horse Awards, it is better not to go.

Instead of having this idea, it would be better to spend a few years to reform the Hong Kong Film Awards and make it better than the Golden Horse Awards. That way there wouldn't be so many problems.

However, although there was huge controversy at this year's Golden Horse Awards, Zhou Gongzi's winning of the Golden Horse Best Actress award was still generally recognized.

Chow Yun Fat also won Best Actress at both the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards this year for her performance in "If Love", becoming one of the few double-gold actresses in the Chinese film industry.

If the most popular female artist last year was international star Zhang Ziyi, then this year it is Zhou Gongzi.

Last year, Zhang Ziyi won the Best Actress award at the Hong Kong Film Awards, and also completed the Best Actress Grand Slam of the three major awards in mainland China, namely the Golden Rooster, Hundred Flowers and Huabiao awards.

The movie "Memoirs of a Geisha" starring her grossed over 100 million US dollars worldwide, and she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, marking her entry into Hollywood.

This made Zhang Ziyi the talk of the town.

This year, Ms. Zhou won two Best Actress trophies, the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards, which made her extremely popular in mainland China.

With Huayi's support behind the scenes, the two of them are competing against each other.

But to be honest, Zhang Ziyi's achievements and status are higher than Zhou Gongzi's.

In terms of awards, both of them are double gold actresses, barely on par with each other, but in fact Zhang Ziyi is slightly better because she has achieved the Grand Slam in mainland China.

As for his works, so far, most of Zhou Gongzi's works are art films, and the only commercial blockbuster is "Night Banquet", in which he played a supporting role with Zhang Ziyi.

Zhang Ziyi not only starred in Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers" and Feng Kuzi's "The Banquet", but also played the leading role in "Hero".

What's more, there are Hollywood movies such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "Rush Hour 2", and "Memoirs of a Geisha", whose cumulative box office is much higher than that of Zhou Gongzi.

After entering Hollywood, Zhang Ziyi's status in the industry and international influence have also improved significantly.

Princess Zhou may be able to rely on a few hit TV series to make her influence in mainland China comparable to that of Zhang Ziyi.

But when it comes to overseas influence, Mr. Zhou is really not as good as Zhang Ziyi.

However, Zhang Ziyi also has a fatal flaw, that is, she is not very popular among the public and her national popularity is not high.

On the contrary, Mr. Zhou has a very good popularity among the public, and the roles he played in several TV dramas are deeply loved by the audience.

Perhaps the biggest complaint about her is that she has too many love affairs. Although they are all legitimate, they still have some impact.

However, with Boss Zhao doing all kinds of things and making himself a controversial figure, and Zeng Li's productions significantly reduced in recent years, Ms. Zhou has now become the most popular among the four major actresses.

Liu Zhou didn't care too much about the commotion surrounding the Golden Horse Awards. At this time, he had already fully devoted himself to the promotion of "Red Cliff".

In order to support "Red Cliff", Han Shanping, who had just become the head of China Film Group, directly concentrated some Hollywood blockbusters for release in November and early December.

As for domestic films, none of them needed Han Shanping's arrangements, and they all avoided "Red Cliff".

Not to mention that if their own movies are released during the Lunar New Year holiday, they might become cannon fodder.

And looking at the attitudes of Han Shanping, Liu Zhou and others, if you dare to release the movie during the Lunar New Year holiday, you will most likely offend these bigwigs.

As long as you have a clear mind, you will know what to choose.

So this time, the second part of "Red Cliff" can dominate this year's Lunar New Year box office.

Starting from November 15th, a large amount of promotional materials about "Red Cliff" were sent to major media.

This time, the five companies worked together, and more media participated in the publicity, and the momentum created was stronger than any other time.

At the same time, Liu Zhou also found Zhang Chaoyang and Ding Lei and bought advertising space on their portal websites. The homepages of the three major portal websites continued to scroll and promote information about the release of "Red Cliff".

Not only that, Liu Zhou also found Xiao Ma Ge again and bought Penguin's pop-up ads for a month.

This time, 50 million yuan has been spent on publicity alone.

This money was additionally contributed by the five major investors.

In addition, both the leading and supporting actors of the film also participated in the promotion of the film.

Even Liu Zhou appeared on several TV shows during this period.

This made some TV station program crews very happy, and they made adequate preparations for Liu Zhou's arrival.

Liu Zhou also took this opportunity to not only promote the movie, but also satisfy the outside world's accumulated curiosity about him.

(End of this chapter)