Since I went all post-crazy yesterday, let’s take it a little easier today, and start with some personal notes:

Thanks to Kozo over at Lovehkfilm for mentioning this blog, and actually calling me an all-around great guy, although you probably can’t tell by the antagonistic attitude I’ve got on this blog. Traffic has gone up considerably since that link went up, so thanks for stopping by.

munin left a comment (sorry I’m singling you out, but I do have to single out your comment to make a point) down at the Departed-Hong Kong-China article. Your corrections are all correct…..because that’s exactly what I corrected in my response to what Professor Fung wrote in his article, which I translated. I’ve now put bold on my response to clear up any misunderstandings. Thank for coming anyway.

Also added some new blogs on the favorite menu on your right - YTSL, whose top 10 list I’ve mentioned before has Webs of Significance, Brian, the webmaster of Hong Kong Cinema - View from the Brooklyn Bridge has Asian Cinema-While on the Road, and Sanney Leung, the ex-webmaster of Hong Kong Entertainment News in Review (which I honestly did not frequent much because I probably had the same source for news as him, except he took the effort to spread it, which deserves any Hong Kong film lover’s respect) is back with The House Where Words Gather.

Jason Gray, in his comment for my entry yesterday, has cleared up the discrepancy in the data that Box Office Mojo and Eiga Daisuki! has regarding box office numbers. Here is his comment:

“As you guessed, Kôgyô Tsûshin’s weekly ranking, which is in turn used by sites such as eiga.com, is based on total admissions (全国動員集計).

Box Office Mojo is ranked by earnings. The problem with that site is that they don’t post the original yen figures. You can back calculate it using their exchange rate, but that’s only good for the 1 minute on the 1 day that rate was in effect.

At Screen (which is subscriber only, unfortunately) we publish the original figures and $ amount.

Sakuran earned Y44,855,778 while Marie pulled in Y43,975,895. Sakuran’s per screen average was Y879,525 from 51 screens, which is not incredible but still pretty good.

As for the discrepancy in earnings vs. admissions, there are lots of ticket-related reasons for that such as discounts for groups of 3 high-school students, Y1000 Ladies Day, maeuriken (advanced tickets), people going to discount ticket shops in urban centers, comp tickets related to campaigns etc. etc.

So, that’s why Sakuran/Marie Antoinette and I Just Didn’t Do It/Battle Of Wits were flipped.”

There ya have it. Thanks, Jason!

- Also saw A Battle of Wits with Andy Lau and The Lives of Others (the best foreign film winner at the Academy Awards).

A Battles of Wits is an immensely entertaining war epic by Hong Kong veteran director Jacob Cheung and stars Andy Lau as a war advisor from the Mozi tribe to help the Liang city from being destroyed by the Zhaos. It’s ok, just think of it as big army A attacks small city B, so Andy Lau comes and defend small city B without wanting to wipe out big army A. But things are complicated when the Mozi war advisor pisses off the king with his pacifism and general likability. Despite being a very entertaining war epic (without going into laughable territory like The Promise), A Battle of Wits feels very impersonal. Cheung chooses to constantly shoot scenes at a certain distance, allowing his actors to really be in the middle of things, but it also feels detached. There aren’t many close-ups, and when the camera does get up close, the 2.35:1 ratio always manages to fit at least 2 faces in there. While some of these scenes are compelling thanks to Cheung’s handle on interpersonal tension (he’s known for making human dramas, not large-scale epics), A Battle of Wits takes a while to get used to.

Of course, credit to Cheung for creating a realistic period film without resorting to martial arts and flying people. Despite its comic roots, A Battle of Wits is largely grounded in reality, and the battles are fought with real smarts rather than supernatural powers. And Micheal Jackson would surely love at least part of the ending.

A lot of people felt that Pan’s Labyrinth was robbed when The Lives of Others won the best foreign film Oscar. But here I can tell you that it was largely deserved. Taking place in 1980s East Germany, The Lives of Others is about an East German State Security Agent charged with spying on a loyal communist playwright, but begins to grow sympathetic towards his target. It’s gripping, tense, involving, and even touching. Pan’s Labyrinth was a very strong contender, with beautiful set designs, great cinematography (although it robbed Children of Men), and it’s a work of great imagination. But The Lives of Others have a stronger script, strong performances, mature direction, and it’s more grounded in its humanity. Both films take place at times when the country is under great oppression, but while Pan’s Labyrinth used graphic (sometimes even exploitive) violence, The Lives of Others uses its script and its atmosphere to build up the possibility of the oppression. And what an ending.

Both are great movies, but in my humble opinion, The Lives of Others deserved that Oscar.

- Moving on, looks like we have more details about the limiting of competition shows in China. It seems that the move is due to the authorities believing that shows are being dragged on to to make more money from SMS voting. I can buy that reason.

- German firm Contraco will be collaborating with a Korean firm to create a film fund, and it will be the first Korean film fund to include foreign capital. The entire fund of $42 million will launch its first film in May, though there are no announcements regarding what the film will be.

- In Japanese music news, Shiina Ringo’s first solo album in 4 years (I introduced two of the track in last night’s entry) has debuted at number 1 on the Oricon weekly chart, selling 97,000 copies. It’s not a great number, but a number one debut is a number one debut. Meanwhile, in the singles world, Arashi has the number 1 single from last week, while Ai Otsuka debuts only at 3rd place, and Mika Nakashima, despite having a theme song to a fairly popular drama, can only muster a 4th place debut.

On the daily chart, Utada Hikaru has a first-place debut with Flavor Of Life.

Singles ranking is here, and album ranking is here.

- Speaking of music, the New York city council seem to symbolically banned any racial slurs, which would mark trouble for rappers who like using such slurs in their music. Apparently, using it carries no penalty; instead, you just get a wag of the finger. Chris Rock has a funny remark at the end of the article that I can’t write out again, but trust me, it’s funny enough to warrant checking it out.

- Last week, I mentioned that Japanese Academy Award winner Hula Girl is getting an encore run at a limited amount of screens at 1000 yen per ticket. Eiga Consultant has analyzed its first day earnings, and it made 18.24 million yen on 52 screens nationwide. At 1000 yen a pop, that means 18,240 people showed up, averaging about 350 people per screen.

FYI, though, the DVD is coming out on March 16th.

- I’m personally not an anime fan (I don’t really watch it….at all), but Twitch reports that John Woo is producing the sequel to the animated film Appleseed, and they also have a teaser up now. I watched it, and it looks just like an ad for another video game. But I’m not an anime fan, so maybe i have no right to talk.

- As we reported before, the Japanese Genghis Khan movie (honestly, the full name takes too much effort to type right now) is coming out this Saturday with huge fanfare and widespread advertisement (I’m not in Japan, so I don’t know). But as they say, the higher you climb, the harder you fall. Someone is already suing the production company for never signing the official document to get the rights transferred from her in order to produce the film. This is why you never transfer anything without signing an official document.

Tomorrow, looks like we’ll have Hong Kong numbers, and the new Japan Times reviews.

Since the traffic at this site has gone up considerably (more later today on responses and thanks), I decided to round up some news from February that is most worthy to repost. If you have any news that you think belong here, but didn’t, be sure to leave a comment:

By the way, these are all just copy and paste jobs:

– This is why there needs to be a free flow of information on the internet: A Hong Kong blog has an expose on Hong Kong’s so-called hottest MTV director, nicknamed “Jacky” (who has done MTVs for mostly EEG artists). In an interview for Easyfinder, he talks about his MTV for Yumiko Cheng’s single “Up and Down,” which is outright copied from Goldfrapp’s Strict Machine MTV. This is a (translated) excerpt about his “creative process”

“A lot of dance songs are just pure Music Video (earlier in the article, he mentions three types of music videos - pure music videos, ones with story, and ones for advertisements), because inserting a story would just be hackneyed. I use a lot of graphics and abstract color tones to package it. The record company already decided that Yumiko would wear Chinese-style red and green clothes to dance. I felt that the clothes is like a kaleidoscope, so I found a lot of vintage toys to create that kaleidoscope effect.”

Yeah, I’m sure he’s that much of a genius.

the blog entry is here (The pictures on the left are from the Goldfrapp video while the ones on the right are of Yumiko Cheng’s)

You can watch Goldfrapp’s Strict Machine here, and Yumiko Cheng’s Up and Down here

- YTSL, a writer for the site Hong Kong Cinema: View From the Brooklyn Bridge, has posted a top 10 list for 2006 Hong Kong films on her blog here. She amazingly includes McDull the Alumni, which I’ve always contend is Hong Kong’s answer to the Monty Python films and comes even with a hell of a monologue by Jim Chim.

– I don’t watch much Thai films, honestly, so you can’t blame me for not catching SARS Wars, although it does sound real wacky in that good way. Now the director Teewewat Wantha is back with a new work, and it sounds wackier than ever. Honestly, with a title like The Sperm, how can it not be wacky? Twitch has posted a teaser up, and it may be the funniest teaser I’ve seen in a while. Don’t worry, I don’t speak Thai either, and I thought it was funny, so there.

- Lovehkfilm’s 2006 Awards.

- - On that note, the new years installment of TVB variety show Beautiful Cooking is up on Youtube (I’m not condoning piracy here, I’m just taking advantage of the free flow of information). Essentially, it’s a show where three females celebrities go on the show and test their cooking skills (or often, the lack thereof) for the male judges. Of course, it features the same old canned laughter and lame musical segments that only TVB can think of. Most amusing is Alex Fong Lik-Sun lip-syncing to the theme song to It’s a Wonderful Life, except he even lip-synced to Tony Leung Ka-Fai’s line.

Through further research on Youtube, I have found a clip of long-running Japanese variety show called “Ai no Apron” (or the Apron of Love), and it’s basically where the cooking skills of female idols are tested for a male judge…wait a minute, that sounds like exactly what Beautiful Cooking is! This Wikipedia entry in Japanese shows that it at least goes back as far as 2005 (Beautiful cooking debuted in fall 2006)And here are those poor posters of Asian Fanatics Forum believing that TVB has come up with something original. Unless TVB’s got the rights to it, they better start preparing for a lawsuit.

This is why there should be free flow of information on the internet.

Note: looking up “Ai no Apron” or “愛のエプロン“( Japanese name) will not get you any result on youtube because of the copyright claims by Japan’s copyright people. Sorry.

- - Back to more positive things, Twitch has a great interview with director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (whose new film Sakebi is coming out soon in Japan). But the interview isn’t about his new film, but rather about Japan’s response to Clint Eastwood’s critically acclaimed Letters From Iwo Jima (which has finally made its way to the imdb top 250!…..then dropped back out). It’s very informative, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

- The Japanese Academy Awards results are out, and I was kind of right - Memories of Matsuko’s Tetsuya Nakashima did not get the best director’s award. Instead, it went to Hula Girl’s Lee Sang-Il. Apparently, since Hula Girls was not produced by the big three (Toho, Shochiku, and Toei), this is pointing to further diversity in the industry….even though Hula Girls’ fate was written in the wind when it was picked for Academy Award consideration last year.

Hoga Central analyzes the awards and has the winners list here.

– Going over the China, it seems that the filmmakers behind the controversial Lost in Beijing has decided to screen the uncensored version for the public audience in Berlin, regardless of what the Chinese censors say. Ballsy move, indeed.

Source: Variety Asia

– Johnnie To has also apparently signed a deal to make his English debut - a remake of the French film Le Cercle Rouge. Good news is the To is now asking legendary French star Alain Delon to be in the film (who is apparently quite interested), bad news is that it’ll be produced by the producer of Rush Hour Arthur Sarkissian. Judging from the plot of the French original, this seems like the perfect way for To to break into the West. Just don’t forget about Hong Kong!

Source: Variety Asia.

- David Mamet has written a book about his experiences in Hollywood and advice for those who would like to enter that elite world. My favorite quote from the review on Yahoo News refers to film school: “One can study marching, the entry-level skill of the military, until one shines at it as has none other. This will not, however, make it more likely that one will be tapped to be the Secretary of the Army.” Mamet films are a bit of hit-and-miss for me, but you can’t deny that he’s a pretty damn good writer.

The review of the book is here.

- Variety Asia reports that Jia Jiangke’s film Still Life, which was shot and projected in Hong Kong in digital, was taken out of the Hong Kong Film Award best Asian film race because the award has a rule that stipulates films must be shot in 35mm. According to vice-chairman director Gordon Chan, the rule is to “protect movies” and that they are aware that more and more films are being shot in digital but they are “not ready to include them.” In other words, they’re trying to protect high-budget blockbusters produced by the committee members’ (quite a few of them producers and filmmakers themselves) bosses so they can get their next films funded. I’m not a fan of Jia Zhangke at all, and I don’t mean to be on a personal attack mode, but the man who made this movie shouldn’t talk about protecting movies anyway.

- - Johnnie To seems like a far more productive version of Wong Kar-Wai; while he does put out up to two movies a year, he can’t seem to decide what to do. News reported that shooting for a PTU TV series have been underway with different directors, but now comes the announcement that Johnnie To himself is going be making 5 films under the PTU series, with one being a theatrical release and the others being straight-to-video releases. He’s also in post-production for two films - Sparrow, which he’s been shooting on-and-off for a while, and his third of “The Iron Triangle,” co-directed by Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam. He’s probably shooting three more films we don’t know about that has no script, but who cares? He’s Johnnie To. As long as he keeps churning out more Exiled than Yesterday Once More, I ain’t complaining.

Wow, that was a lot. Anyway, starting next week, this will become a weekly thing, so to add to the daily entries, I’ll be doing an additional weekly round-up entry on Sunday as well. More the reason to check back everyday.

Anyway, a real entry will come later today. Promise.

I’ve already written three posts today, so might as well go out with one more thing that I must share:

Personal favorite Shiina Ringo was on the classy music show “Bokura no Ongaku” (Our Music), where entertainers (usually one musician and a celebrity or two musicians) in an interview plus a few performances, this past weekend. It’s her third appearance (an awesome clip of her first appearance is here), and she delivers a spectacular performance of my favorite song on her new album: Gamble. A description of the show (including her interview with baseball star Ichiro) is here. But first, go look at the video, it has a 65-people orchestra, for crying out loud, what else do you want?

For those who don’t feel like listening to Japanese, here’s another performance from the show of her singing in half-comprehensible English.

Both these songs appear in the film Sakuran.

Expect this blog to get back to normal posting tomorrow. But it will be late, since I’m gonna be watching The Lives of Others tomorrow, so expect a review or two.