April 5th, 2007
Abnormal
There might be less news in the next few days because the Ching Yeung Festival got mixed in with the Easter holiday in Hong Kong, so they’re pretty much on public holidays all the way until the 10th. What does that mean? No Thursday and Sunday numbers from mov3.com, and maybe less news from Variety Asia, so look for fairly short entries from tomorrow til next week.
- Let’s face it, my knowledge of Japanese animation and comics are quite minimal. I’ve heard of the name Tetsujin 28 here and there, including the live-action adaptation that opened when I was studying in Japan. But apparently a new Tetsujin 28 film opened this past weekend, but since it’s a relatively small production, the distributor decided to play it at one theater in Tokyo (followed by a tour around Japan, perhaps of the same print) for only a week with 5 showings a day, then decreasing to one morning and one late show a day after that. What they didn’t expect was that the film managed to attract 1291 people the first 2 days for the 133-people auditorium. At 5 shows a day, that means each show attracted 129.1 people, that’s full capacity right there. Apparently, a lot of the audience, primarily late 20-30s male who were fans of the anime, bought advanced tickets, which convinced the theatre to add matinee shows for one week. So now that it’s a hit, what now?
- As reported last week, the president of KTV, the broadcaster behind the drawn-out natto scandal, has resigned, but that only means that he’s now a director without voting rights on the board. What does that mean? It means he still gets paid, under lower salary, and with less power.
- I also mentioned a few days ago the Andy Lau fan madness saga. Anyone that wants a fairly comprehensive wrap-up and a look at the next step for the mentally unstable Yang family shouldn’t hesitate to look at the always informative EastSouthWestNorth blog. Yikes.
- After watching Love@First Note, the Gold Label-produced stinker with the equally overrated Justin Lo (that’s right, I went there), I placed Dennis Law so high up my director’s blacklist that I still can’t get myself to watch Fatal Contact yet. Then again, he did produce the Election movies, which may just mean good things for his latest producing gig - Herman Yau’s Gong Tau. But somehow I can’t help but think Twitch’s expectations for it may be a tad too high.
- New on the list of “not very good producers” is RTHK, who refused to allow Yan Yan Mak’s film “August Story” to screen at the Hong Kong International Film Festival because Mak put together the 62-minute “long version” from a 22-minute short film that RTHK commissioned her to do. At first, RTHK refused the existence of the film because Mak never received official permission to make it, then they said she can show only the 22-minute version along with 2 other films in the series of short films, and now the film festival people just flat out decided to pull it because RTHK won’t budge. With RTHK in hot waters lately, I’m not so sure if they should be making any more enemies these days.
- Am I the only that thinks the Pang Brothers should take a step back and chill? I’m already behind on 4 Pang films - Recycle, The Messengers, Diary, and Forest of Death, all of them are thrillers with maybe some horror mixed in. Do something else, guys - comedy (I know you did one of those), romance, dramas, something else other than horror, and do them slowly. Looks like I’ll be behind on a 5th one, if the film in this sales flyer is coming out anytime soon.
- I mentioned two or three days ago about Rules of Dating director Han Jae-Rim’s latest The Show Must Go On. Well, now Variety has an English review of it all the way from Hong Kong International Film Fest.
- Jackie Chan is looking for a successor that isn’t named Jaycee, and he’s looking hard. You can try too.
That’s it for today. Remember, no Hong Kong numbers for the weekend, but I can predict how the Easter box office will go tomorrow.