I would rate this event as more awkward than the Hong Kong Film Awards, because of the international audience and the attempts to make it more friendly to them. The whole thing was in English, but the presenters were ill-prepared. They couldn't pronounce names, said stuff like "And the winner goes to...", and sometimes just announced the winner and not the film. When the film in question was from Thailand or Iran, that presented a bit of an issue for the people trying to follow along.

Also, the translators sometimes stepped on the presenters/winners and vice-versa. Co-host Fiona Sit was really cute, but also unprofessional, while David Wu looked like he wanted to get it overwith due to the crowd not getting into the jokes. It's hard to humor people from all Asian countries + foreign press and guests. He ended up leaning on the Rain fans in the audience. Everytime he said "Rain" they would freak out. Also, I'm not a big fan of businessmen and trade people appearing onstage to give awards. Not only are they sometimes more awkward, but nobody in Korea, Japan, or India will care about Hong Kong's Trade Development VP of Location Shoots. They needed Andy Lau, Fiona Sit, and Rain fans to help fill up the auditorium and even then if was somewhat empty. Plus, the fans were noisy and kind of rude. Really, they just need to plan better for these Awards.

Positives: they tried hard, and the Sandy Lam musical number (Where she sang the theme songs to My Sassy Girl, Laputa and He's a Woman, She's a Man in their original languages) was really impressive, and it's certainly great to see Rain, Andy Lau, Song Kang-Ho, Chang Chen, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Miki Nakatani, Kim Hye-Soo, Vicki Zhao, Daniel Wu, Lee Byung-Hun, Karen Mok, Maggie Q, Yoshino Kimura, Ando Masanobu, Josie Ho, Johnnie To, Michelle Yeoh, Josephine Siao, Simon Yam, and my personal hero, David Bordwell, all on the same stage. For the Asian Cinema fan, it still feels like a thrill -- even from the cheap seats.

I think this thing could stick around. I was leery of the idea in the beginning, because I think it's hard to compare all these movies fairly. Also, regardless of what people say about the parity of awards given out, I still feel countries like Singapore, Indonesia, India, Iran, Malaysia, etc., etc., will get marginalized. At the same time, I think they tried to vote for deserving films/people. The Host winning was no surprise, but it wasn't undeserved. One thing, however, was that it was easy to guess winners simply based on who was attending. If they didn't present an award, then they were obviously there to win. Simple process of elimination made it easy.

Still, I think it will at least present a unified Asian Cinema community to the world, which can only be a good thing as each industry (bar perhaps Japan) appears to be shrinking or on the brink of doing so.

Just to complete the stargazing tour, I also saw prior to the event: Niki Chow, Terence Yin, Twins (both Charlene and Gillian), and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai. They were all about twenty feet from me. Man, those girls are thin. I also walked by Francis Ng and Tin Kai-Man, two men who are not on the same level star-wise.

Overall I give it a 5 out of 10 for actual execution, but i'll add two points (making it 7 out of 10) for actually attempting something like this. Unfortunately, I have no star photos to share.