On 16 January 2013, Andy Lau attended the press conference of 7th Asian Film Awards held at Grand Hyatt Hotel Hong Kong, it was announced that the award presentation ceremony will be held on 18 March 2013 at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and the nomination for the 14 awards was announced, a total of 30 films from 9 different countries were nominated.
After being last year’s Golden Horse Film Awards chairman of the judging panel, he was again appointed the chairman of the judging panel for the 7th Asian Film Awards. Andy quipped that he feel more relaxed this time round, he said: “I’ve the experience in Golden Horse Film Awards, I’ll put my experience to good use in this year’s Asian Film Awards. However, the Golden Horse Film Awards required all judges to be “locked together” to watch the nominated films, this time would be better as they send the nomination films to us and we could watch them slowly!” When asked if he would watch the films with his wife, Andy immediately changed topic by saying: “I’ve downloaded all the films on my tablet, would watch it when I’m free and will be watching them with friends of the film industry. (You’ll watch after your daughter had sleep?) I still have a lot of space in my home!”
When talked about fewer Hong Kong films got nominated this year, Andy expressed that it doesn’t matter, “We’ll work harder next year as there will be ups and down!”
When reporters mentioned about the 2013 Policy Address where the government has First Feature Film Initiative which new directors can take part in a competition on screenplay and production proposals where the winner will received full funding from a development fund. With regards to this, Andy expressed that it’s not a bad idea, he said: “But it’s still yet to be implemented as it still need to be discussed, furthermore only one winning director each year, it would not be enough. I’ve always supported new directors! Take for example Storm that I’m shooting now, it’s a Hong Kong film by a new director, it’s a film with high budget which rarely seen for a Hong Kong produced film in recent years, hope that we can make a Hong Kong flavoured film! As the film has quite a number of action scenes, in addition to most of the scenes happened at Central, thus shooting can only be done on Sunday. Currently had completed some 60 – 80 scenes, expected to completed by Chinese New Year! I’m also one of the investor for the film, it’s a collaboration with Edko Films Ltd boss William Kong, I believed the film will do well in the box office!”
When talked about singers’ fear of winning the Asia-Pacific Most Popular Singer award at TVB Jade Solid Gold music awards, where Kelly Chen suggested to remove the award, meanwhile Andy feel that any changes would create people making different guesses, thus no change is better than multiple changes, thus TVB can made their decisions when close to next year’s award ceremony date. When asked if Andy had noticed not much singers attended Jade Solid Gold award presentation ceremony, he said: “I did watch it, it feels good!” It was alleged that Ivana Wong filmed TV drama in exchange to win the Hit Song Gold Award, Andy feel that one should not be so critical, there are allegations every year, in the past Alan Tam and Leslie Cheung always made people talking, enough said that there will be allegations every year, everyone has their decision whether to believe it!
With regards to allegation that Jacky Cheung redrew himself to perform at the CCTV Chinese New Year gala show and Andy was invited to replace him, Andy expressed that he does not know if he received the invitation from CCTV thus he does not wish to comment on this matter.
In addition, Andy had released his Andy World Club 2013 calendar which he role-played several characters which includes yellow jump suit Bruce Lee and army uniform, many changes. It sees that since fathered a daughter, he made one feel that he’s a good father as fans exclaimed: “So cute.”
news and photos from: udn.com, Macao Daily, Apple Daily News, Skypost, AM730, Metro Daily, Hong Kong Daily, Wei Wen Po, Sing Tao, Ming Pao, ent.QQ.com