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'Secret Sunshine' Sweeps Top Honors at Asian Film Awards

Held in conjunction with the Hong Kong International Film Festival and Hong Kong Filmart, the Asian Film Awards celebrated their second edition by handing three top honors to Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine, according to Variety. The film won awards for Best Asian Film, Best Director, and Best Actress (Jeon Do-yeon). Secret Sunshine began receiving accolades at Cannes last year and the positive press has never let up as it's played the festival circuit worldwide. Sad to say, it has yet to be acquired for US distribution, so if you want to see this highly-acclaimed family drama, you'll have to pony up for an import DVD from overseas.

Best Actor prize went to the great Tony Leung Chiu-wai for Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. Our own Jeffrey M. Anderson didn't like the film overall, but was mighty impressed by Leung's performance: "In one great sequence, he reacts to a bit of news only with his eyes and then his feet, and it's an astonishing bit of acting." Joan Chen (Twin Peaks, Saving Face) won as Best Supporting Actress for Mainland Chinese arthouse flick The Sun Also Rises. Sun Honglei received Best Supporting Actor award for his work in Mongol, a movie that Picturehouse will open in limited release on June 6.

Other films that were awarded include Mad Detective (Screenwriter), Help Me Eros (Cinematography), Eye in the Sky (Editor), and The Assembly (Visual Effects). India's Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani shared the Best Composer award. The awards are decided upon by an 18-member jury composed of critics, festival programmers, and other film experts.

Star-Studded Cast for Woo's Battle

The last we heard about John Woo's long-simmering The Battle of Red Cliff was back in February, at which point there were rumors that it actually might be moving forward. And now, a mere seven months later, the project finally has financing lined up, a cast in place, and a confirmed start date. Woo (if you will) hoo! For those of you who have forgotten, the movie is based on a classic Chinese novel, and tells the true story of "the final days of the Han Dynasty in the year 208, ... [covering] the war that established the Three Kingdoms period, when China had three rulers." The central battle of that war took place, as you might have guessed, at Red Cliffs, and involved as many as a million soldiers. Damn.

Surprisingly, the mutterings about the cast have turned out to be mostly true: This morning's Variety reports that the film will star frequent Woo collaborator (back in the Hong Kong days) Chow Yun-Fat, as well as Ken Watanabe, Tony Leung and Lin Chi-Ling, who apparently is a Taiwanese model. The IMDb also lists Andy Lau in the cast, but his presence is unconfirmed.

Production is expected to begin next March, with release planned for early 2008.

Andy Lau and Oliver Assayas?

According to reports on the foreign wires, ageless Hong Kong legend Andy Lau is in talks to star in the next film from critic-turned-director Olivier Assayas, a project that would mark Lau's English-language debut. As we reported back in February, the film, entitled Boarding Gate, already features a cast including Asia Argento and Maggie Q (and, if you believe the IMDb and various web reports, Michael Madsen and both Tony Leungs), and is set to shoot this summer in Hong Kong and France.

Early reports indicated the movie has an awesomely convoluted plot, involving "An Italian woman [Argento] who lives in London [and] has a passionate affair with a former financial big gun [Madsen]. She also had a second lover [a Leung], a contract killer who has to kill the big gun. Her second lover's wife [Yeoh] is behind the scenes, pulling the strings." So it sounds pretty damn great, no matter who Lau might play. The problem, however, is that Lau is supposed to be shooting a film with Derek Yee this summer as well, and it may be difficult for him to find time to appear in Boarding Gate. According to Lau, though, there is still hope, because Assayas has said he'll "try to work around my schedule."

I just wish we had a damn release date for this thing -- the combination of cast and director on this one is making it one of my most-anticipated upcoming projects.

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