February 28th, 2008
The Golden Rock - February 27th, 2008 Edition
- The Japanese box office numbers are out, and L: Change The World is hanging on surprisingly well, losing only 17% of its business from the previous week. I guess people will watch detective L in anything. Meanwhile, the standings with money figures in is slightly different from the previously reported attendance figures, as Kabei and Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium draw the “cheap ticket” audience, ie the old and the young, which would have an impact on final figures. If you see, Magorium’s take is actually fairly close to Earth’s take.
Meanwhile, box office was also somewhat impact by the previews for The Golden Compass. No word on how many screens it was shown on, but it managed to take a fairly strong 270 million yen over a 2-day period. That’s 155% of last year’s Springtime blockbuster Night at the Museum. It’s set to open on a whopping 700 screens this Saturday, and will probably open big to knock L right off the top spot.
- It’s Oricon charts time! On the singles chart, Arashi has their 10th consecutive number 1 single, selling 324,000 copies. But consider their thunder stolen by Jero, the first African-American enka singer whose first single debuted at 4th place with 35,000 copies sold, making it the best debut by a solo enka singer.
On the albums side, another compilation tops the chart, while Yuna Ito and pop/rock group TOKIO saw fairly weak debuts.
- The Bollywood epic film Jodhaa Akbar has now grossed US$18.5 million worldwide, and it still have a holiday weekend coming up. The blockbuster has garnered plenty of controversy for inciting riots, leading to its ban by the regional government in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
- Japan’s Takashi Miike will be the director for a major TV drama project that will run a rare 51 episodes. However, other directors will also come in a direct some episodes as well. The drama is about a high schooler who works with a cell phone robot against internet-based criminal organizations. Wicked.
- China Film Group’s Han “China needs more movie like Pursuit of Happyness” Sanping announces that the Christmas and Lunar New Year period was phenomenal for Chinese films at the box office. Of course, he didn’t say that they didn’t play fair by completely blacking out non-Chinese films for 3 months.
- As reported a while ago, there are two movies about Bruce Lee’s master Ip Man in the works. One of them is the one directed by Wong Kar-Wai and starring Tony Leung Chiu-Wai. I had thought the other one will be by Fruit Chan (whose film will be about Bruce Lee as a child in Hong Kong?), but turns out it’ll be directed by Wilson Yip and star none other than Donnie Yen (DONNNNNIIIEEEEE!!) and Sammo Hung.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
That Donnie drags Wilson Yip down. I like WY as a director but Donnie somehow manages to reduce the class of any project he is involved in.