The Hollywood Reporter 'Next Gen' Event at HKIFF

Last Tuesday was quite busy.  after Filmart, I went to the office for about 40 minutes then grabbed a bus for the Kowloon side to go see The Hollywood Reporter (THR)'s special HKIFF event at the W. Hotel.  In addition to giving a special prize at the Asian Film Awards the night before,  THR Publisher Eric Mika was also holding an event marking THR's 'Next Gen' of Asia.  Here's an article explaining a bit more about the awards they were handing out:

Next Gen Asia launches

basically they gave out 20 awards to people deemed as Asia's 'rising stars' under 35. In the intro they admitted that its entirely arbitrary, since there's no predicting the future.... and even the definitions they're using are pretty ambiguous. 

But then again arts awards are almost always subjective anyway. :-P

THR's big boss,  Eric Mika.

This award was pretty funny,  the award went to Pan-Asian pop sensation BoA (who is now apparently conquering the US now too?)...

That guy is obviously not BoA... nor is he under 35.  He's actually her boss from Korea entertainment company SM Entertainment, S.M. Lee.  He had a good joke when he went up on stage "actually I just turned 36..." 

Other winners included Raymond Wong's daughter Alvina Wong.

THR's professional photos are here:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/slideshow/slideshow.jsp?slideshowId=124826 except i don't think the one with Kiefer was taken while I was there, otherwise I would have noticed!  I didn't see him til two days later.

Besides smoozing with industry big wigs,  Simon and I did take the opportunity for one pic with a celeb:

Yes, you're right, that is 2000 Miss World and biggest box office draw in India,  Miss Priyanka Chopra.

After meeting those two hunks, I expect her to join alivenotdead.com any day now... (but I may be completely wrong).