A slow news day means a shorter entry today:

- The latest Narnia movie scored a fairly huge opening in Japan this weekend, easily beating out Aibou for that number 1 spot. However, Mr. Texas at Eiga Consultant points out that the Disney-produced sequel actually opened at only 70% of the first film’s opening. As expected, the audience were spread out fairly evenly between the subbed and dubbed versions, with the subbed version getting 53% of total audiences. While the film doesn’t have any big opponents until Indy shows up on June 21st, it’s more on par to do Golden Compass numbers rather than matching the 6.88 billion yen gross of the original.

- The 2,000 seat Koma Theater, which has attracted enka shows and international stage shows, will be closing down at the end of the year along with the theater next door.

-  Aibou was scheduled to end its run on June 6th, assuming that Toei needed to make room for Takeshi Miike’s God Puzzle, but now Toei is extending its time in theaters, which is natural since it’s still at 2nd place of the box office chart this past weekend.

- Speaking of God’s Puzzle, Twitch has the film’s latest trailer.

- After Bae Yong-Joon joined the cast of the animated version of Winter Sonata, now actress Choi Ji Woo from the live-action drama is also voicing her animated counterpart.

-  For some reason, China’s CCTV has stopped airing the NBA playoffs, though reasons that can be attributed to this is that peope are in no mood to watch the NBA after the earthquake and neither of the two Chinese players in the league are actually playing in the playoffs.

- A Twitch reader sent in a review for Shaolin Girl, and the news isn’t good. I’m catching this tonight, and I’m lowering my expectations already.

- Jason Gray checks out Tokyo! in Tokyo and writes about a famous Shibuya arthouse theater in the process.

- Japan Times has a lengthy report on this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

- The Golden Rock’s favorite Japanese enka singer Jero has been spending this Spring all over the Japanese spotlight as his single remains on the Oricon charts. Now the Washington Post finally found a chance to sit down with him.

That post in Japan Probe also include his latest TV ad for a canned coffee. It’s not that great.