August 27th, 2008
The Golden Rock - August 27th, 2008 Edition
- It’s time for Korean box office. This week was a very quiet week, with The Dark Knight still ruling the top spot and CJ7 debuting dead on arrival. I’ll leave it to Mark Russell to do the analysis work.
- As mentioned earlier in the week, the Japanese comic adaptation Detroit Metal City managed a 2nd place opening in Japan behind Ponyo on a Cliff By the Sea. Unlike Box Office Mojo, Eiga Consultant has actual numbers. Over the course of the two-day weekend (films open on Saturday in Japan), the comedy made roughly 350 million yen from 241 screens. It’s pretty damn good, but apparently it was only 85% of Crows Zero’s opening, another Toho youth-oriented release from last year. Still, it’ll be the first Kenichi Matsuyama film since the last L: Change the WorLd to make this much money, and he needs a hit that has nothing to do with death gods.
- It’s Japanese Oricon Charts time! Arashi now holds the record for the biggest singles debut of the year with their latest single, and it’s expected to beat their previous single as the best-selling single of 2008 so far. Meanwhile, Namie Amuro takes the top spot on the album chart for the 4th week in a row with her compilation album.
- Twitch has more on the critically trashed-but-commercially-successful Korean horror film Gosa, which has already broke even, despite the huge blockbusters that are dominating the Korean box office this month.
- Looks like Takeshi Kitano is done with his artistic maturbation self-examination trilogy with his latest film Achilles and the Tortoise. Before going off to Venice with the film, he announced that he plans to make another period film that will be unlike Zatoichi, as well as his indifference towards film festivals.
- Current “it” girl Yui Aragaki will be covering a song by male duo Kobukuro as a collaboration for the duo’s 10th anniversary. But why the hell is anyone still letting her sing?
- Han Cinema takes a look at a Korean film that co-stars Japanese “it” man Jo Odagiri, who is expanding all over the world with the Hong Kong film Plastic City as well.