TVB Anniversary Awards 2016 – My Thoughts

Let me just start off by saying that I don’t have too much to say on the award results themselves, since I haven’t watched many TVB series this year and -- as has been the case the past few years -- I also haven’t watched a single TVB series in its entirety (meaning every single minute of every single episode).  With that said, any opinion that I give below regarding the results are based mostly on the episodes/partial episodes that I caught here and there during the times when I happened to be in the same room when a family member was watching the series.  Also, since the TVB awards have grown increasingly meaningless as each year goes by, I’ve become more and more indifferent towards who the winners end up being in most of the categories except for a handful that can pretty much be counted on one hand (i.e. TV King, Best Supporting Actor, Professional Actors Award, Lifetime Achievement Award).  Therefore, don’t expect me to comment on each category or to writeup a detailed recap like I’ve done in the past, as I feel it is a huge waste of time. 

As with past years, I’m more interested in who the presenters for each of the awards ends up being rather than who actually got nominated and/or wins in each category.  Over the years, I’ve found that the choice of presenters as well as the ‘speeches’ they give prior to presenting are often the biggest highlights of the Anniversary award show, sometimes even overshadowing the speeches from the winners themselves.

Ok, so diving right in….

Lifetime Achievement Award:  Chow Chung

This was actually the one award I was most concerned about this year, especially after stupid TVB chose undeserving Nat Chan as the recipient of this award last year (believe me, it was one of those WTF moments of the ceremony that I was pissed off about for months).  This year, they chose to give the award to 81 year old veteran actor Chow Chung, which was a great choice (ok, TVB, you redeemed yourself in this category this year – better not screw it up again next year!!!).  Though Chow Chung may not be the best of actors (to be honest, I’ve never been particularly fond of his acting), there is no doubt about his contributions to the television (and movie) industry throughout his extremely long acting career.   

In terms of presenters for this award, TVB did the right thing by having veterans Kenneth Tsang and Wu Fung do the honors.  Both artists are good friends with Chow Chung and have known each other for many years, plus all 3 were Shaw Brothers actors back in the day and collaborated often during those times, so of course, having them present was appropriate and relevant.  This is one category where I’m happy with the result!

Professional Actors Award:  Jerry Koo Ming Wah, Carlo Ng, Chun Wong

Ever since TVB added this category a few years ago, it’s been one of the few award categories that I pay attention to every year and largely agree with the results.  This year was no exception, though I do feel that only 3 artists receiving the award this year is not enough (I wonder why so few?  The past few years it has always been at least 5 artists receiving this award).  The way I see it, this category was created to recognize those veterans who have contributed greatly to the industry (most of them through stellar acting) but do not have much chance to receive any of the other ‘main’ awards.  I guess we could say that this is TVB’s way of still promoting the people they want to promote (to get the ‘main’ awards) but still throw an olive branch to audiences by still recognizing the veterans who actually deserve those ‘main’ awards way more but will never get the chance to be in the running.  Though I may not necessarily agree with the motive for creating this award, my take is that SOME recognition of veteran actors is better nothing, right?

I don’t have much comment on the recipients of this award other than I was surprised that Jerry Koo was on the list, since it’s not like he hasn’t won any major award with TVB before, plus he has been largely MIA from the small screen the past year or so (I had read that he was actually ill for a long period of time, to the point of having to be hospitalized, so that’s why he hadn’t filmed much for TVB this past year).  Of course, I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve the award because he does, but given that so few artists got the award this year, I was surprised that they gave it to him over others who were equally deserving.  I was definitely ecstatic to see Carlo Ng and Chun Wong receive this award, as it has been long overdue for both of them.  Both are great actors (and in the case of Carlo, he is a great host too) who’ve never gotten recognition from TVB despite their contributions.  In my opinion, Carlo gave the most moving speech of the night with the mention of his wife saying it was a good thing he hasn’t been tremendously popular over the years because that has allowed him to spend a lot of time with his family (indeed, Carlo actually has a reputation for being a family man as well as a good husband and father).  The fact that Carlo prioritizes his family over his work and would rather sacrifice the chance to become popular if it means he can spend quality time with his wife and kids definitely makes him a good man in my book!  Congrats to all the winners in this category!

Best Supporting Actor:  Raymond Cho

For me, this has always been a tough category to choose a winner, as most of the candidates are usually very strong.  This year, TVB decided to go with Top 3 finalists (as opposed to top 2 like they’ve done in the past).  While I agree with Raymond Cho and Hugo Ng making it into final 3, I had no clue what TVB was thinking by putting FAMA’s Luk Wing in the 3^rd spot (my immediate reaction when I heard them announce final 3 was – WTH, Luk Wing made it into the last spot?  What happened to the other more deserving nominees such as John Chiang, Power Chan, Carlo Ng, Jimmy Au, etc.?)  Though in the grand scheme of things, it probably didn’t matter much since the ‘race’ was pretty much between Raymond and Hugo anyway (both were hot favorites for this category), but still – would’ve preferred for the ‘race’ to be tighter like in past years. 

In terms of result, I would’ve been happy with either Raymond or Hugo winning, as I like both actors and both were equally deserving of the award (though I kind of felt that Hugo had a slight edge in that he was pretty much the sole highlight of Brother’s Keeper II and made that series even remotely watchable, so in a way, he single-handedly saved that entire series – no small feat given how horrible that series was overall).  But Raymond definitely did stand out this year as opposed to previous years (though he has actually given enough outstanding performances in the past to make him long overdue for this award).  I was happy to see Raymond finally get this award and also enjoyed watching him give his acceptance speech with the signature humor that has always made him endearing to friends and fans (I chuckled when he made sure to thank his father-in-law John Chiang not once but twice, LOL).  Congrats to Raymond but at the same time, kudos to Hugo for putting in such a strong performance!  I’m actually glad he’s back and look forward to seeing more from him in the future!

Most Improved Male Actor:  Jonathan Cheung

I usually don’t care much about this category and to be honest, this year I didn’t really care a whole lot either.  But since Jonathan Cheung was nominated this time around and he’s an artist I started noticing a few years back as an actor with huge potential, I naturally was interested in this category this year.  After Jonathan’s win at the Astro Awards in Malaysia, no doubt that he was a shoo-in to win again at the Anniversary awards too, but I was curious to see whether TVB would pull an upset or not.  Luckily TVB came through as they were supposed to and chose Jonathan as the winner – definitely a wise choice given the rest of the nominees who made it into top 5 were extremely weak (to the point that I’m sure TVB would’ve gotten major backlash if they chose any of the others to win in this category).  Jonathan gave a great acceptance speech (though not as touching as the speech he gave in Malaysia, which had most everyone in tears) – glad he got the chance to thank people that he had forgotten to thank in Malaysia (such as Andy Lau for instance).  Congrats to Jonathan for a well-deserving win!

TV King (aka Best Actor):  Ruco Chan

Ok, I will admit that Ruco’s win in this category was unexpected in my book.  Nothing against Ruco, as he is definitely a solid actor – in fact, he’s one of the few ‘current generation’ actors I actually like due to him having true acting talent.   Ruco’s performance this year was solid as usual, but acting-wise, was not as challenging as past roles he’s had, especially when compared to Roger Kwok, who was outstanding in Dead Wrong.  If it was based on acting, I would’ve definitely chosen Roger over Ruco (and yes there is a little bias at play here due to me being a Roger fan).  I don’t think it would be a far stretch to say that Ruco had an advantage due to the popularity of his character and the series itself, plus the fact that Roger’s series aired so late in the game (the final episode of Dead Wrong aired just 1 day prior to the awards).  Those of us who have been following TVB’s awards for a long time know that when it comes to TV King and Queen, it’s not necessarily about whose acting is truly the best – popularity of a series, ratings, hype, etc. can impact the results and it’s obvious that’s what happened with this category (and with the entire awards ceremony in general, since Ruco’s series A Fist Within Four Walls pretty much swept the awards with 6 wins).  With all that said though, I guess it shouldn’t matter to me, since my first choice for this category (Liu Kai Chi, an actor I adore who did great in his series Law Disorder) didn’t even make it into top 5 (can’t even remember if he was nominated or not, since there was like zero hype for his series).  So I guess you could say at the end of the day, I’m indifferent to Ruco’s win – I’m neither for nor against it, just surprised given TVB’s pattern of rewarding veterans the past few years.

That’s it for me in terms of award results (LOL…obviously I didn’t care about the other categories so didn’t even bother mentioning them).  I do want to say a few things about the presenters this year as well as the awards ceremony itself.

I will admit that the choice of presenters for some of the categories was very surprising (in some cases, pleasantly so).  I was happy to see some familiar faces back again and appreciate that TVB put in the effort to do a “partner” theme this year with the presenters.  Of course, the presenters were relatively lackluster in that they were all mostly current/former TVB people (or non-TVB people currently filming series for TVB) and no big names like they’ve had in the past (though this has actually been the case for like what 4-5 years already?).  The “highlights” of the night in terms of presenters (in my opnion) were definitely:  the Virtues of Harmony cast (Nancy Sit, Louis Yuen, Joyce Chen, Johnny Tang), the Come Home Love cast (led by Lau Dan), Frankie Lam and Jessica Husan, Andrew Lam and Johnson Lee (mostly for Andrew’s irreverent humor, which always manages to crack me up, lol), and of course, the biggest surprise of the night, Sheren Tang returning to present the Best Series award alongside Wayne Lai.  No doubt that the 64 million dollar question that has been abuzz since the awards wrapped is whether Sheren will return to film another series for TVB or not -- my gut instinct is “no” given Sheren has such strict requirements nowadays for filming series and TVB obviously is not high on her list of priorities…however, if Wayne is persuasive enough and TVB is willing to meet her requirements (and if they bring back producers/scriptwriters that Sheren is willing to work with), it still might be a possibility in the near future (though my personal preference is for Sheren not to return if TVB is just going to give her crap series, plus the way they treated her, I wouldn’t even give them the time of day if I were her).

Rundown wise, I honestly didn’t really like the format this year.  The whole Dodo + FAMA gimmick has been used/re-used way too much this year and it’s getting old.  They should’ve gone with either having Dodo host the show by herself as she’s done in the past or perhaps just pair her up with Sammy Leung (who is a good host actually) if they truly wanted to switch things up this year.  The way they did it with Sammy officially hosting and the others kind of doing a ‘side-hosting’ thing was a bit unprofessional in my opinion (plus kind of annoying).  Other than that, the show was similar to previous years in that it was largely disorganized and lackluster.

Back from hiatus + Jacky Cheung’s 2016/2017 World Tour Concert – post #2

I’m back!!!! :-)

Yes, after a nearly 3 month hiatus, I am finally back to writing and posting stuff on my blog.  My apologies to those readers who have continued to follow my blog, expecting to read about certain topics, but in the end, the posts didn’t materialize.  I am working on finishing up some of the posts that I’ve had in draft mode for ages as well as hopefully getting around to starting some of the newer posts that I’ve been wanting to do but just haven’t had time to gather my thoughts on.  I am hopeful at being able to do at least a few posts a month rather than the dismal one post every couple months that I’ve been averaging.  To all my blog readers – thank you in advance for your patience!

Ok, so with that out of the way….I can’t think of a better way to “return” to blogging than to blog about my idol, Jacky Cheung!  As I’m sure all of you know by now, Jacky launched his highly anticipated “A Classic Tour” concert on October 21^st in Beijing, China and since then, has already completed multiple shows in other Mainland China cities such as Chongqing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Wuhan.  Jacky kicked off the Hong Kong leg of his tour 6 days ago on 12/4 at the Hong Kong Coliseum (a ‘second home’ of sorts for him given the number of concerts he’s held there in his 30 year career).  He will be doing 23 shows in HK this month, with the last show on January 2^nd.  Not surprisingly, tickets for Jacky’s concert have been extremely hard to get, with each show selling out within a matter of hours from when the tickets officially go on sale – so if you were able to get tickets to watch his concert, I absolutely salute you (though please be careful because there have been an unprecedented number of scalpers in recent months buying up Jacky’s concert tickets and re-selling them for ridiculously inflated prices)!

Even though I haven’t really kept up with posting actual written content on my blog, I’ve been doing my best to keep up with the schedule for Jacky’s concert tour and so have posted up the latest tour dates and venues on the side bar of my blog for those who are interested.  Like many others I’ve talked to, I am anxiously awaiting the announcement of the dates for the “overseas” leg of Jacky’s tour – more specifically, for the U.S. leg, since that’s where I live.  The concert organizers (Jacky’s record label Universal) have confirmed that Jacky will definitely come to the U.S. and Canada for a few shows, but they are still working out the schedule as well as the choice of venue.  This actually does make sense, as Jacky’s concert this year is unique in that he decided to bring back the ‘4-side open stage’ concept to his concert, which is something he hasn’t done in over 20 years (the last time he did a ‘4-side open stage’ concert was back in 1995 if I remember correctly).  And for those who have seen any of the 23 shows Jacky has done so far, I’m sure you can attest to the spectacular effect the stage has on the show this year.  With that in mind, the search for an appropriate venue that would be able to accommodate the stage is crucial and will undoubtedly take some time, so I will continue to patiently wait because I know it will be well worth it.  Of course, just being able to see Jacky perform live is already worth the wait (I already waited 4 years for Jacky to do another concert tour, what’s another few months, right?)!  Admittedly, I am super-excited about Jacky’s concert this year, especially after watching some of the fan-vids that have come out of the past few shows as well reading the various opinion pieces that people (both Jacky fans and non-fans alike) have written after watching the concert.  Please, Universal, announce the U.S. dates soon!!!

While I have been following Jacky’s concert pretty closely since its launch in October, I don’t intend to do a recap of the shows so far, as I don’t feel that I would be able to do justice to all the great moments that have occurred so far (and we’re barely 25 shows in).  With that said though, there ARE a few highlights from the past few shows that I do want to mention.  I will try to post up relevant pictures where I can, but it may not always be possible due to the sheer number of pictures that are out there now, especially on social media.  Anyway, if you weren’t hyped up about Jacky’s concert before, you probably will be after checking out these highlights!! J

**NOTE:  All pictures credited as listed ***

Beijing kickoff – October 2016

**Jacky performed to a sold-out stadium packed with fans who have been highly anticipating his return to the stage.  Of course, Jacky did not disappoint, as the first night was absolutely spectacular, with Jacky giving 110% as he always does and audiences from that night walking away after the concert regretting that they didn’t buy tickets to the other 2 shows as well!

** On the third and last night of the Beijing leg, Jacky supposedly ‘screwed up’ a little on one of the songs (meaning he couldn’t hit one of the notes in the climax of the song and his voice nearly cracked).  Of course, no one noticed that he messed up, but being the perfectionist that Jacky is when it comes to his singing, he absolutely noticed and essentially beat himself up over it – during the “talking” segment of that show, Jacky apologized to the audiences and to the crew for his ‘mess-up’ and vowed to work even harder to ‘perfect’ that particular song.  To be honest, not a single person in that stadium that night minded that he had messed up (in fact, probably 99% of the audience didn’t even notice), yet Jacky took the issue to heart and took it as an opportunity to do even better.  No other celebrity out there has the type of work ethic and super high standards set for themselves as he does!  Of course, this is one (of the many) reasons why we love Jacky so much, but at the same time, it’s heartbreaking to see Jacky beating himself up over a non-issue.  Aside from that small ‘incident’, the rest of the Beijing leg was spectacular!

**In terms of ‘celebrity sightings’, there were quite a few ‘big names’ and familiar faces who flew to Beijing to support Jacky, including the following (not all-inclusive):

--- Jacky’s former record producer Michael Au (who lives and works in Beijing now) as well as Jacky’s good friend and long-time singing partner Priscilla Chan (loved their frequent collaborations in the 80s and 90s).

--- Songwriter Keith Chan and family (his wife and 2 daughters), who penned the lyrics to many of Jacky’s greatest hit songs back in the 80s/90s and is still a frequent collaborator even now (Keith’s wife is also a former songwriter who wrote some of Jacky’s songs as well).

--- CRHK DJ Vani, who is also Jacky’s god-sister (she also went to Jacky’s HK shows too!)

--- Actress Zhang Zhiyi and her husband Wang Feng; also singer Eason Chan, who also held his concert in Beijing on the same days as Jacky, but still went to Jacky’s concert after wrapping the last show of his own concert. (sorry, couldn't find the actual pics so had to use a newspaper clipping)

--- My personal FAVORITE moment of the night though was ‘Film King’ Tony Leung Chiu Wai attending the concert and surprising Jacky by showing up backstage after the concert.  I’m sure all Jacky fans know how close Jacky and Tony are (gosh, they’ve know each other for what, like 30 years now?) and with both artists’ busy schedules, it’s not always possible for them to get together…so obviously, us fans were overjoyed to see the two of them share such “sweet moments” together, lol (yes, I know – I’m technically a Jacky/Harlem shipper, but hey, I love the Jacky/Tony ‘bromance’ just as much, haha!).  Oh, and big THANK YOU to Vani, as she was the one who took the photos of Jacky and Tony together backstage and shared them with fans via weibo.  [Sidenote:  the pictures of Jacky and Tony were all over various media outlets’ entertainment sections the next day, lol!]

 

 

Hong Kong kickoff – December 2016

** Jacky kicked off the HK leg of his tour on 12/4 and once again, it was spectacular!  Performing in his hometown, Jacky said that he was very nervous because he didn’t want to let HK audiences down.  In interviews with the media after his concert, Jacky said that he would only give himself a score of 80% for his performance, as he felt that there some things he could’ve done better.  Sorry Jacky, but we have to disagree with you -- most of us felt that you were flawless that night!

** The HK shows are special not just for Jacky, but for us fans as well, since it’s also home to many of the celebrities we know and love.  I am highly anticipating all of the celebrities who will undoubtedly attend one of the 23 shows in HK, but so far, the number of celebrities who came out to support Jacky on the first night was enough to make my jealous of those fans / audiences who were able to score tickets for that show!

--- On that first night (12/4), many of Jacky’s long-time friends (the crowd that Jacky usually hangs out with outside of work) came out to support him by attending the concert together as a big group (they all sat together in the same section too – man, those fans who sat behind them were SO LUCKY!!!).  A few of those friends include:  Eric Tsang, Alex To and his wife Ice, Kenny Bee and his wife Fan Jiang, Chingmy Yau and her husband Shum Kar Wai (they also brought one of their daughters with them), Nansun Shi, Margie Tsang, Tina Liu, Anna Ueyama, etc. (I didn’t name everyone, as there were way too many). 

 

--- In addition to Jacky’s friends, other celebrities such as Na Ying, Candy Law, Candice Yu, etc. attended as well. Jacky’s godfather Wu Fung also went to support his godson (Wu Fung is so sweet – so far, he’s gone to 3 of the shows!), as did Jacky’s god-sister Vani (who went again after flying to Beijing to attend the debut shows).

--- I’m still trying to catch up but I know on subsequent nights, other celebrities attended the concert as well, including Nick Cheung, Bernice Liu, Karen Tong, Miriam Yeung, C-Allstar, etc.  I haven’t gone through all the pictures yet so only posted up a few below.

***** TO BE CONTINUED…..