- No Japanese box office numbers yet, but we now know that Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd made a killing (ha ha!) at the box office, making 398 million yen from 400 screens on its opening weekend. Warner Bros. expects the film to make about 3 billion yen, nearly matching the film’s box office gross in the US.

- Sadly, the horror-musical didn’t do nearly as well in South Korea, where it opened at third place with 1.84 billion won from 321 screens, way behind the two Korean films that topped the box office for the second weekend in a row.

- Tired of Japanese dramas adapted from comic books? Too bad, because you’re getting two more of them.

- You learn something new on the internet everyday: did you know that the American sitcom Growing Pains was such a huge hit in China that its star is still very popular there? Popular enough to have investors fund a movie that will be released nationwide where he plays a white Chinese-speaking ballet dancer who falls in love with a Chinese ballerina.

- Turns out Atonement will not be the first film released in China at the end of the Hollywood blackout. Instead, the family film The Water Horse will beat it to the punch by opening a week earlier on February 16th.

- Under “let’s make up a story out of tragedy for ratings” news today, Fuji Television will bring to the small screen a documentary drama about a heroic policeman who died while saving a woman who was trying to commit suicide at the train tracks.

- How the hell does Grady Hendrix find stuff like North Korean electronic keyboard-driven propaganda music?

- Kazumasa Oda beats yet another record, as his compilation album Jikou Best has now spent 300 consecutive weeks on the Oricon charts and counting.

- In yet another high profile competition titles at the Berlin Film Festival, Hong Sang-Soo’s latest Night and Day will be heading to the competition. It will also run 2 hours and 24 minutes, which is an eternity in Hang Sang-Soo pacing.

-  Kaiju Shakedown introduces you to another type of underground director in China: One that makes films about Christianity.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm and is filed under China, Europe, TV, festivals, Hollywood, South Korea, Japan, music, news, box office. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.