Ang Lee

Ang Lee OBS (Chinese: 李安; pinyin: Lǐ Ān; born October 23, 1954) is a Taiwanese-born American film director, screenwriter and producer.

Lee's earlier films, such as The Wedding Banquet, Pushing Hands, and Eat Drink Man Woman explored the relationships and conflicts between tradition and modernity, Eastern and Western. Lee also deals with repressed, hidden emotions in many of his films, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Hulk; and Brokeback Mountain. Lee's work is known for its emotional charge, which critics believe is responsible for his success in offsetting cultural barriers and achieving international recognition.

Lee has won the Academy Award for Best Director twice: for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and for Life of Pi (2012). He also won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). He is the first person of Asian descent to win an Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA for Best Director, and is the only director to win both the Golden Bear and Golden Lion multiple times.

Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 American romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee. Adapted from the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx, the screenplay was written by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry. The film stars Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Michelle Williams, and Randy Quaid, and depicts the complex emotional and sexual relationship between Ledger and Gyllenhaal's characters in the American West from 1963 to 1983.

Brokeback Mountain was a commercial and critical success. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Best Picture and Best Director at the British Academy Film Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Producers Guild of America Awards, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and Independent Spirit Awards, among others. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, the most nominations at the 78th Academy Awards, where it won three: Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score, while losing Best Picture.

Plot

In 1963, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) are hired by Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) to herd his sheep through the summer in the Wyoming mountains. After a night of heavy drinking, Jack makes a sexual pass at Ennis, who is initially reluctant but eventually responds to Jack's advances. Though he informs Jack that it was a one-time incident, they develop a sexual and emotional relationship. Shortly after learning their summer together is being cut short, they briefly fight and each is bloodied.

Life of Pi

Life of Pi is a Canadian fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

The novel, which has sold more than ten million copies worldwide, was rejected by at least five London publishing houses before being accepted by Knopf Canada, which published it in September 2001. The UK edition won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction the following year. It was also chosen for CBC Radio's Canada Reads 2003, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee. The French translation, L'Histoire de Pi, was chosen in the French CBC version of the contest Le combat des livres, where it was championed by Louise Forestier. The novel won the 2003 Boeke Prize, a South African novel award. In 2004, it won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Best Adult Fiction for years 2001–2003. In 2012 it was adapted into a theatrical feature film directed by Ang Lee with a screenplay by David Magee.

Britannia Awards

The Britannia Awards are presented by BAFTA Los Angeles, a branch of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), as "a bridge between the Hollywood and British production and entertainment business communities." Established in 1989, it honours "individuals and companies who have dedicated their careers or corporate missions to advancing the art-forms of the moving image."

From 1989-1998, only an honorary award was handed out to an individual during the presentation. By 1999, the accolade was expanded to include additional awards which include: Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film, John Schlesinger Britannia Award for Excellence in Directing, John Schlesinger Britannia Award for Artistic Excellence in Directing, Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year and Charlie Chaplin Britannia Award for Excellence in Comedy. It is presented at a gala dinner during the month of November and has been televised in the United States from 2010.

Ceremonies

Jake Gyllenhaal

Jacob Benjamin "Jake" Gyllenhaal (/ˈdʒɪlənhɔːl/ JIL-ən-hawl; born December 19, 1980) is an American actor. The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Gyllenhaal began acting at the age of ten. Following his first lead role in October Sky (1999), he starred in the indie cult hit Donnie Darko (2001), in which he played a psychologically troubled teenager alongside his older sister, Maggie Gyllenhaal. In 2002, he starred in another indie film, The Good Girl. In 2004, he appeared in the climate fiction-disaster film The Day After Tomorrow, portraying a student caught in a cataclysmic climate event.

Gyllenhaal played a frustrated Marine in Jarhead (2005) and, the same year, his role as Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain earned him critical acclaim. For his Brokeback Mountain performance, he won the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor and was nominated for the Academy Award in the same category. He has since played lead roles in many films, including Zodiac (2007), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), Love & Other Drugs (2010), Source Code (2011), End of Watch (2012), Prisoners (2013), Nightcrawler (2014), and Southpaw (2015).