Top 10 things Hollywood can learn not to do from the Hong Kong Film Awards

TVB botched up last year's Hong Kong Film Awards broadcast by prioritizing sponsors' interests over the show to the point of cutting Canto-pop King Jacky Cheung mid-song to go to a commercial break. So this year, the live broadcast of the ceremony went to rival station ATV who wanted to show Hong Kong how these things should be done.

There was no cutting off of anyone mid-speech or mid-song. In fact, people on stage were allowed to ramble on endlessly. By the time the show entered it's third hour, we should all have been given an award just for staying awake.

Unfortunately there was little to divert our attention to on TV. We were stuck between The Neverending Show on ATV, a tired gameshow in it's umphteenth season on TVB, Jodie Foster doing 470 different version of the 'rabbit in the headlights look' in "Flightplan" on TVB Pearl, and of course we didn't even bother to check what's on ATV World as we would rather read a book.

So, we ended up sticking it out until nearly midnight with the Hong Kong Film Awards ceremony. Thankfully we did come out of it with 10 rules about putting on an awards ceremony:

(You may also want to read: 4th Asian Film Awards 2010: Glitz, glam, and awkward moments)

1. Do not let really really old people on stage
The lifetime achievement award went to martial arts director and actor Lau Kar-leung. Stemming from an eminent line of martial artists that can be traced back to the legendary Wong Fei-hung, Lau is also the first to add comedic elements to his kung fu films, pioneering the endearing Hong Kong-made chop socky. But Lau is quite old now. Like, takes-three-seconds-to-speak-one-word kind of old. His acceptance speech, during which he attempted to examine the interrelated history of kung fu, Hong Kong cinema, and each of his 74 years of life, went on for a five full minutes and was probably going to go on for another 55 if his wife hadn't told him to stop. Which leads us to conclude that awards ceremonies producers should ...

2. Go to commercials in the middle of boring speeches
We found ourselves craving a simple pithy commercial in the middle of each five-minute acceptance snoozer. Even if the ads were incredibly repetitive, as they were last night.

3. Do not have less than two corporate sponsors
This would make for less repetitive ads and hopefully much better ads than the one Hoi Tin Tong had last night. Hopefully, it will also result in the unashamedly low-pro, seemingly immortal Bigen commercial from ever being aired ever again.

From left to right: Kelly Lin Hsi-lei, Shu Qi, Zhu Xuan and Fala Chen.

4. Do not allow feng shui consultants near celebs' wardrobes

Red is an auspicious Chinese color and there were quite a few celebs in head-to-toe red, clashing with the red carpet. The color easily makes women look overly vampy, like Zhu Xuan above. Even Nicholas Tse (below) did a red suit, and although he won the best dressed award for the evening as well as best supporting actor, we think Denise Ho (posing with Tse) put it best: "Nic is literally wearing the red carpet."

5. Do not lump cartoons together with everything else

"Bodyguards and Assassins", "Red Cliff 2", "Echoes of the Rainbow" and... McDull?! (nominated for best song) 

6. Do not allow the same joke from being made more than twice

When the first crack at the TVB-ATV competition was made, it won a few genuine chuckles from on-screen and off-screen audience. But by the sixth time it really hurt. Even if it was made by hunky Simon Yam.

7. Do not allow "overtime" jokes at all

If you know you are going overtime on your yawn-fest acceptance speech, don't think that you can make it better by making an un-hilarious ironic crack about it. We really just want you to stop talking.

Left to right: Ethan Ruan and Mark Chao from "Monga," Nicholas Tse and Denise Ho, Shawn Yu and Miriam Yeung from "Love in a Puff."

8. Do not waste a funny guy

Stand-up comic Dayo Wong Tze-wah got to do a skit in the middle of the show and got tons of laughs. That should be enough to convince show producers that funny guys aren't meant to appear fleetingly in the middle of the show -- they're supposed to host the whole evening to keep everyone awake so the show isn't a complete dud.

9. Do find a reason to get LMF on stage

When LMF did their tribute performance to Bruce Lee, it was probably the only time that anyone who wasn't nominated enjoyed themselves all night.

10. Do get kids

Several dozen kids in yellow Bruce Lee jumpsuits did a choreographed jeet kune do display like a bunch of adorable little jumping bananas. The main kid even had his suit sequined. It was nearly enough for us to forgive the rest of the evening.

Left to right: Aaron Kwok, Lynn Xiong, best newcomer Aarif Lee.