Monday December 10, 2007 China The director of the movie "The Warlords" has turned down a nomination under the Foreign Film category at the Oscars. "The Warlords" is an epic about the Qing Dynasty in 1850. The plot revolves around three sworn brothers who were torn apart by their different ambitions. The massive production looks set to be a smash hit at the box office. Director Peter Chan – the man behind the cameras of "The Warlords" – has won many prestigious film awards, especially in Hong Kong. In October, Chan turned down a nomination for the Foreign Film category at the Academy Awards as he is aiming for a bigger haul at the next Oscars when the film is released in the US later in December. He said: "I don't see why we have to rush the film for this year's instead of the next. When the film finally gets a US release next fall, which is the proposed date, the film should have – other than a foreign film nomination – their own individual category nomination. "With enough people seeing it in the US, I believe there will be more nominations. If we had gone to the Oscars this year, we would not be eligible for next year's individual category nomination." Chan is especially proud of his stellar cast of Jet Li, Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Xu Jinglei. He feels that these critically-acclaimed actors have all been given equal exposure in "The Warlords". "At the day's end, the hardest part, I thought, would be to edit the movie down to a length that would be good for distribution and good for the pacing of the film for an audience that is used to a 2-hour maximum duration. But how do I pace the story in a way where all the actors will have equally important parts? I realized that I actually didn't cut any significant scenes out of any actors and their proportions came out almost very equal," Chan said. Besides being released in the US and Singapore, the 40-million-dollar movie has premiered in mainland China. credits: asianpopcorn.
