Ang Lee just did the Chinese proud again, which his latest gay cowboy romance melodrama, Brokeback Mountain, brings home 3 Golden Globes, including Best Director and Best Picture.
It is a triumph to the Chinese, especially since he is the 1st Chinese director to won a Best Director award in Golden Globes, which marks the prequel to the Oscars. He turns Annie Prolux's story within The Shipping News into an award winning drama (while Lasse Hallstrom failed to turn the Shipping News into a hit, though it receives several nominations.), which has once proven to the Hollywood that Chinese can do it.
However, just this morning, i am notified that Brokeback Mountain has been slapped with an R21 rating for homosexual issues in Singapore, while few days ago, UIP, the distributor of Brokeback Mountain in Malaysia, has decided to replace Brokeback with Steven Spielberg's Munich instead. Reason: even though Malaysians has no relationships with Israel due to some sensitive issues, they would rather bring in political dramas than homosexual romance, where Malaysia is a Muslim country. So Samuel, i lend you my eyeball, and u go and watch Brokeback Mountain for me in theatres okay? hehe. (p.s: unless i am able to fool the ah peks working at Lido cineplex or Balestier cineplex that i am 21. Hey, i am turning 21 soon, okay? I am not going to catch Brokeback at Yangtze. )
While at the same time, Memoirs of a Geisha has reached the theatres here, finally. Lost to King Kong, Narnia and Jim Carrey (in his upcoming Fun With Dick and Jane) on its opening week, me as a Malaysian, placed my hopes on the strong cast of Datin Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li and Ken Watanabe to score in the box office results in Singapore. An Asian Hollywood epic shoud not deserve the fate of box office flop, especially when Bernarto Bertolucci has create a phenomenon with his Last Emperor (1987) close to 19 years ago.
Will the miracle appears here again?