- Watching TV today, I realize that the trailer for Johnnie To’s The Sparrow is up, and I found it on Youtube. Whoever edited it is a genius.

-Under “Cannes market deal” news today, Variety has a wrap-up of the various deals Cannes market. Meanwhile, Jason Gray also has a look at the deals being made for Japanese films at the market.

Also, director Wim Wenders have a Korean investor involved with his latest film, an adaptation of a novel by Ryu Murakami.

- The comic adaptation Maison Ikkoku is coming back for another live-action episode this summer.

- Amidst the current situation in China, it’s amazing that the media authority in the government still has time to get some censorin’ on.

- The Daily Yomiuri has a feature on the flash animated movie Eagle Talon II, currently playing in one Tokyo theater. Confession time and relax time in the middle of the movie? Sounds like a ton of fun.

- Actress Aoi Miyazaki just picked up the Galaxy Award for her starring role in the Taiga drama Atsuhime, currently playing to pretty damn good ratings on NHK.

- It’s reviews time! Hollywood Reporter finally updated their review page with the latest from Cannes. From reviewer Maggie Lee are reviews of the Korean thriller The Chaser, the omnibus film Tokyo!, Jia Zhangke’s 24 City, and the Korean horror The Guard Post. Meanwhile, Peter Brunette has a review of Wong Kar-Wai’s Ashes of Time Redux.

In addition, Twitch’s Todd Brown has a review of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata and for the Japanese wrestling comedy Gachi Boy (Wrestling with a Memory).

- While we’re on the subject of Tokyo!, an American distributor recently bought up the film at Cannes, but it may not be the best distributor out there.

- Ryuganji has the second part of a Japanese magazine interview with mega-producer Haruki Kadokawa. He makes more sense in this part.

- Japanese actress Saki Takaoka will star in the American film The Harimaya Bridge. She will play the girlfriend of a dead American man who helps his father retrace his life in Japan.

- The announcement came at the Avex party over at Cannes, where an extended trailer for John Woo’s Red Cliff was shown, as Avex is one of the film’s major investors.

- Japanese public broadcaster NHK has come up with a new way to irritate non-fee payers into paying: put a big bold warning across their screens. I had fee collectors come to my door when I was in Japan, but I’m pretty sure the text across the screen is more annoying.

- Ex-NHK Morning Drama Chiritotechin has apparently earned itself a spinoff with an 8pm time slot. You had no idea how much I had to resist using “Chiritotechin After Dark” to start this item off.

- Shipping of a popular Japanese comic and its DVDs had to be stopped after finding out that one of the scenes included arabic text that was taken out of the Quran.

- Mark Russell over at Korea Pop Wars writes about going to recent copyright-related forums and writes his own thoughts about why piracy may not always be the consumers’ fault.

- With no major opener this past weekend, Hong Kong box office was fairly quiet this past weekend. The apocalyptic thriller Doomsday performed the best, making HK$330,000 from 23 screens on Sunday for a 4-day weekend total of HK$1.25 million, despite being slapped with the category-III rating. Of course, Iron Man ruled for the third weekend in a row, making HK$724,000 from 41 screens on Sunday. After 19 days, the superhero film has already made HK$19.62 million. However, with Indiana Jones coming this week, it’s not likely to surpass the HK$25 million mark.

Meanwhile, What Happens in Vegas seemed to have been fueled by strong word-of-mouth, retaining much of its business for a second-place finish. On Sunday, the romantic comedy made HK$507,000 from 29 screens for a 11-day total of HK$4.97 million. As counter-programming, it may have a solid chance of hitting HK$10 million. On the other hand, Speed Racer suffered a far worse fate, making only HK$145,000 from 37 screens, and it has only made a depressing HK$2.53 million after 11 days.

Be Kind, Rewind did a lot better over the weekend, making HK$221,000 from just 11 screens for a 4-day total of HK$710,000. Hong Kong continues to prove their love for dog movies with A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies, which made another HK$317,000 from 24 screens for a 18-day total of HK$6.65 million. Too bad only one screen in Hong Kong (I think) is playing the original Japanese version. The dark comedy/horror film Teeth also did OK, making HK$128,000 from 8 screens for a 4-day total of HK$500,000.

- In Japanese cinema attendance figures, only Charlie Wilson’s War hit the top 10, debuting at 3rd place. This bumps everything below it down by at least one place, including The Last Princess, Shaolin Girl, and Crayon Chin-chan dropped from 6th place all the way to 9th. However, The Mist and The Sand Chronicles remain unaffected, staying at 7th and 8th place, respectively. More when the numbers are out.

- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! As I reported on Tuesday, Kimura Takuya’s much-anticipated drama CHANGE started a little disappointingly with just a 23.9% rating. Meanwhile, Muri Na Renai finally found its way up, getting a 6.9% rating after the season-low 6.2% in the previous week. The same applied for Ryoteki Na Kanojo (aka My Sassy Girl), which went up to 8.0% for this week’s episode after last week’s season-low 7% rating. In fact, only Kimi Hannin Janai yo ne is the only drama that reached a new season low this week.

Meanwhile, comic adaptation Rookies have recovered from its disappointing opening and scored a season-high rating of 16.4% rating this week. Hachi One Diver also recovered quite well, scoring a 11% rating for this week’s episode. Gokusen, Osen, Puzzle, and Hokaben all recovered slightly, scoring 25.3%, 9.5%, 10.2%, and 7.8%, respectively. Lastly, Last Friends is still doing well with a 17.2% rating for this week’s after scoring a season-high 19.9% last week.

-  While Hayao Miyasaki’s Ponyo on a Cliff is poised to take the top spot in this year Japan box office, Mark Schilling over at Variety also looks at a few other movies that may hit it big at the Japanese box office this summer. Believe it or not, Speed Racer is one of them.

- In light of last week’s earthquake in China, the government has set a three days’ mourning period, effective stopping all “public recreational activities” for three days, including variety shows and even cinema screenings. Hong Kong is also suspending the nightly laser show at Victoria Harbor, which sucks if you’re a tourist and you’re only in Hong Kong for these three days.

- Since I found it, I’ve already watched it 4 times: It’s the trailer for Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, The Bad, The Weird. Am I overzealous of thinking already that this can either be the most spectacular success or the most spectacular failure of 2008 Korean cinema? Anyway, time to pull out that A Bittersweet Life DVD again.

Note: The link from Kaiju Shakedown is already down. You can catch it here, before it gets deleted.

- It’s reviews time! Variety’s Derek Elley has two reviews from Cannes: First his not-positive-but-not-negative review of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, then his somewhat positive review of Jia Zhangke’s 24 City.

Also, Midnight Eye has been updating quite a bit, including reviews of Fine Totally Fine and Tokyo Sonata, so keeping checking that front page.

- With the Ashes of Time Redux cut having premiered at Cannes already, Grady Hendrix looks at what are some of the already known facts about it. Also, Oriental Daily already covered the premiere today, and reported not seeing much changes except for the new score and some color correction.

-Veteran Japanese pop group Southern All Stars (the originator of many hit Cantopop songs in the 80s and the 90s) are announcing an indefinite hiatus to start after their 30th anniversary concert.

- While Toshiba and Gaga Usen are closing shop as film distributors in Japan, a new distributor backed by record label Avex has popped up, and it will concentrate on directors rather than stars. “Cast and script quality are not enough,” the label’s new head says. Ouch.

- I didn’t see this coming: Actress Manami Konishi’s first single, the theme song for the Takeshi Kaneshiro-starrer Accuracy of Death, has hit the number 1 spot in Taiwan ahead of the film’s opening. Is it for the film, or is Konishi really that popular in Taiwan?

- Beast Cops was on TV this morning, and I was wondering what has happened to Gordon Chan? After finishing the latest Donnie Yen star vehicle Painted Skin, the Hong Kong director will be directing the film version of the classic video game King of Fighters. Worse of all, he’s now known in the West only as the director of The Medallion. How far the greats have fallen.

- Death Note star Kenichi Matsuyama has won the Grand Prize of the first annual Eigakan Taisho, which gathered 6,000 votes for Japan’s favorite actor or actress. Good for him, now his non-Death Note films just have to do better.

- There was a public holiday in Hong Kong today, so no box office numbers. Maybe tomorrow night.

- We DO have, however, the cinema attendance figures for Japan. Aibou - The Movie took first place, as expected. What wasn’t expected was the Hollywood comedy The Bucket List got second place, and The Last Princess could only muster a third place opening, which may be a little disappointing considering its blockbuster status. Also, The Mist opened at 7th place. More when the numbers are out.

- We also have last week’s Japanese drama ratings. The biggest surprise is the sudden boost for Last Friends, which saw last week’s rating jumped from the previous week’s 15.9% all the way up to 19.9%. Meanwhile, Muri Na Renai continues to stumble, this week down to 6.2%, while Ryoteki na Kanojo (aka My Sassy Girl) continues its fall with only a 7% rating for this week’s episode. On the other hand, Gokusen got a bit of a bump, scoring a 25% rating for Saturday’s episode, and Fuji’s new Saturday 11pm drama 81 Diver got a bit of a rebound as well with a 7.6 rating this week.

All Japanese drama sypnosis at Tokyograph.

- (via Ryuganji) Sai Yoichi has certainly been in the public eye a lot recently, and his latest appearance is in a discussion with Yasukuni director Li Ying as the head of the Director’s Guild of Japan.

- Not only will Gegege No Kitaro see its movie sequel this summer, there will also be an animated movie coming this December, and there will be six different theatrical versions of the film, depending on the region. Intriguing, but will it give extra incentive for people to buy a ticket?

-Kaiju Shakedown’s Grady Hendrix has revealed that the limited American screenings of Japanese film Death Note will be unfortunately be dubbed in English.

- The Kimura Takuya drama CHANGE is premiering tonight, and Fuji TV actually wants ratings so badly that they’re ready to give away a car for it.

- Japanese young audiences are apparently so poor at reading that subtitlers are now struggling to make subtitles that everyone can understand. It’s depressing that Japanese kids today don’t even know what The Soviet Union is and who the Nazi are.

- It’s Taiwanese music charts time! Soda Green’s live CD tops the G-Music Charts in its first week, taking up over 10% of total sales. Meanwhile, Korean boy band Super Junior’s latest debuts at 2nd place, taking over 5% of total sales. June Chu’s debut album arrive on the chart at 8th place with just under 1% of total sales. Korean pop singer Jang Nara’s Mandarin album could only muster a 13th place debut with 0.75% of sales, but she still did better than Japanese pop duo WaT, whose latest debuted all the way down at 18th place with just 0.53% of total sales.

- This week’s Teleview column is all about Change, the upcoming Kimura Takuya drama where he plays an elementary school teacher who becomes the Prime Minister of Japan. Sounds like a real winner.

- Ryuganji has translated another interesting piece from Sai Yoichi, turns out he wrote an even more scathing piece about the making of Soo before the interview that Ryuganji translated about a week and a half ago.

- It’s trailers time! Twitch brings us all three of them today. First, it’s another trailer for Tokyo Gore Police that’s still, well, gory.  Then it’s a trailer for God’s Puzzle, a teen love story that you would’ve never guessed it’s made by Takashi “Ichi The Killer” Miike.  Lastly, there’s a trailer for Ryuichi Hiroki’s Your Friends, which I missed at the Hong Kong International Film Festival and will not even open in Japan until end of June.

- Korean director Na Hong-Jin is already planning for his next film after his megahit thriller The Chaser. The Murderer will be about a man forced to become a murderer to overcome starvation. Any cannibalism involved?

- The controversial documentary Yasukuni has reached the Kansai area after a week of sold-out screenings in Tokyo. The theater in Tokyo has also extended the film’s run after it was only set to play it for a week.

- A new powerful documentary about the issue of forced comfort women premiered at the Jeonju Film Festival this past week and presents evidence that clearly prove the existence of such women even outside of Japan and Korea.

- JJ Sonny Chiba (or the artist formerly known as Sonny Chiba) will take once again take on 7-Color Mask, a TV series role that Chiba took on as his screen debut all the way back in the 60s. After the death of the original writer last month, Chiba has decided to fulfill the actor’s wish by producing and starring in the film version of the series.

- The San Sebastian Film Festival this year will include a retrospective of old black and white Japanese film noir from Japan.

- Jason Gray shows us some of the promotional material Japan is seeing for Hayao Miyazaki’s latest, which is nice since we overseas get damn near nothing to see on the internet.

- Oh, there’s a new post at the spin-off.

- Finally got some Japanese box office numbers in, although it only covers Saturday and Sunday, which was the middle of the Golden Week holidays. As a result, most of the movies on the chart saw a rise from their previous weekend’s gross. For example, Shaolin Girl saw a 20% boost and has now grossed 715 million yen, despite a somewhat weak opening last weekend. But of course, the biggest boosts went to the kid-friendly films such as Conan (20.3%), Crayon Shin-Chan (27.7%), and The Spiderwick Chronicles (17.7%). However, the Masked Rider movie took a drop instead, losing 23.4% of business despite not losing any screens. Hollywood flick 10,000 B.C. also lost business, presumably because theaters put the more popular films on bigger screens and moved this to smaller ones.

- With its first hit in two years, Toei is now crossing their fingers on God’s Puzzle, Takashi Miike’s latest, to rebound them from what was their worst fiscal year in 20 years.

- Meanwhile, The Forbidden Kingdom has done solid business in China, making 150 million yuan since its release in late April already, partly thanks to the holiday last week.

- Things are not doing so well in Korea, where theaters saw April’s performance as the lowest monthly attendance figures since April 2003.

- However, local performance is not stopping them from taking their award-nominated films for a special showing in Japan.

- Earlier in the week, I mentioned that the Chinese distributor for the new Donnie fantasy film Painted Skin already estimated a final box office take simply based on screen counts. Now, the investors are so confident that not only did they already plan two sequels, they already assume they’re successful enough to raise the budget and get Zhang Ziyi for the second movie.

- The Asia Pacific Screen Awards, which had its first year in Australia last year, is now adding an academy, with all the nominees from last year’s awards being included with voting powers for this year’s awards.

-  There’s a short teaser for the omnibus movie Tokyo!, though it doesn’t really show anything from any of the three films, which will get their premiere at Cannes this year.

- A Spanish film buyer has bought their first Asian film, and…it’s Taiwanese torture porn?

-  Hollywood Reporter’s Maggie Lee turns in a review for Sylvia Chang’s Run Papa Run.

-  Chinese president Hu Jintao told Japanese reporters that his favorite Japanese TV drama is the popular 80s morning drama Oshin. It would’ve been great if he said anything with Kimura Takuya in it, but alas, that was not to be.

- My boy Jero has now joined the ranks of popular Japanese pop stars - he’ll be the spokesman for a new line of canned coffee.

Japan is at the tail end of its Golden Week holiday, so no Japanese drama numbers yet.

- However, we do have the Japan box office attendance figures for Saturday and Sunday (the “weekend” in Japanese box office terms since Saturday is opening day), and popular drama-now-movie Aibou (aka Partners The Movie) is at the top as expected. Meanwhile, 10,000 B.C. fell to 5th place already, Shaolin Girl hangs on at 3rd (despite poor English-language reviews), and Conan also hangs on by falling only to second place. Believe it or not, the only film that didn’t fall in placing is Nicholas Cage’s sci-fi thriller Next, which stayed at 8th place.

- Twitch also has the Korean attendance figures for the past weekend. Iron Man has already passed the 1 million mark, not including the Monday holiday. Also, The Legendary Libido attracts only 181,000 admissions, while the French action film Taken has already reached 1.7 million admissions.

- Kaiju Shakedown brings to our attention to the Kankuro Kudo-penned, so-crazy-it-might-be-good stage show Metal Macbeth. Its cast actually features Takako Matsu, who is actually quite an accomplished stage actress in addition to her success on TV dramas. Do I dare spend 6800 yen on a 210-minute stage with no subtitle at all on DVD?

- Twitch offers us the full-length trailer for the Japanese action film Chameleon, which I hope won’t have as much slow-mo hair moments as Donnie Yen movies often do. Actually, the behind the scenes video of star Tatsuya Fujiwara doing stunts were more interesting than the trailer.

There’s also a trailer for Kami ga Kari, the latest film from director Minoru Kawasaki, better known for cult favorites such as Crab Goalkeeper, Calamari Wrestler, and Everything but Japan Sinks. It seems to be a more mature film about…a magical stylist?

- Ahead of the release of his latest film, director M. Night Shyamalan will be receiving the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honors.

- It’s Cannes Film Market news time! First, Variety takes a look at the films Japanese studios will be taking to the market, including the second film by Kenji Uchida (Stranger of Mine) and Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers.

Also, the Thai-Singapore-Hong Kong co-produced horror film The Coffin will be premiering at the market. The film stars Hong Kong-based actress Karen Mok and has a Thai-based director.

- Bollywood, after remaking plenty of overseas films without buying any rights, are now talking with Warner Bros. about buying the rights to remake The Wedding Crashers.

- Remember a few months ago, Yuen Wo-Ping wanted to train people to kick ass? It may be for the film Iron Mask, the supposed sequel to Iron Monkey that will star Louis Koo and Shawn Yue that will start shooting in July.

- Lastly, I give you all the Stephen Colbert-Rain dance-off:

Remember, guys. It’s all played for laughs.

- Let’s look at Hong Kong opening day box office first - The expected winner of the weekend, the Muay Thai action flick Chocolate, had a disappointing opening of only HK$391,000 from 33 screens, which means it might not even hit the HK$2 million mark even with a boost over the weekend. The corrupted cops drama Street Kings with Keanu Reeves opened on 30 screens for a HK$275,000 gross. The other cops drama, We Own the Night (why the two distributors decided to clash release dates, I have no idea), made even less per-screen with just barely HK$19,000 from 5 screens. Lastly, the Hong Kong idols romance flick Love is Elsewhere opened with HK$241,000 from a surprising 27 screens. Maybe the teens will show up for this one over the weekend.  More on Monday when the weekend numbers come out.

-  The Cannes lineup is about to be announced, and sadly, the Asian pickings is a little slim this year. At least there may be high-profile premieres such as Kim Jee-Woon’s The Good The Bad and the Weird and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata. However, one reportedly hasn’t been screened, and the other is still up in the air.

- The Japanese animated series Gegege no Kitaro is celebrating its 40th (non-consecutive) year on television, and Japan Times has a feature on it, especially on its tendency to be on the small screen in increments.

- On a related note, some stills from the sequel of the Gegege No Kitaro live-action movie are out. The thing is that the first movie’s monsters didn’t look all that bad, it was just the rest of the movie that was bad.

- The popular MySpace internet drama Prom Queen is getting a Japanese version. Like the original, the drama will be comprised of 80 daily 90-second episodes, even though “prom” isn’t something embedded in Japanese culture. I felt so old when I realize I didn’t even know what the hell Prom Queen was.

- And today, I leave you with one of the funniest entries I’ve ever read on Kaiju Shakedown. As always, it’s also very informative.

- In South Korean box office, it’s amazing that Three Kingdoms has managed two weekends at second place (the power of Andy Lau, ladies and gentlemen), while An Empress and the Warriors flopped on its opening weekend. Also, The Chaser is still on the top 10, 2 months after its release. More over at Korea Pop Wars.

- It’s reviews time! All of them are from Variety this time and from Derek Elley, who offers his take on Pang Ho-Cheung’s Trivial Matters, as well as his take on Oxide Pang’s The Detective.

- After the success of the cell phone novel adaptation Koizora last year, Shochiku and Fuji television are teaming up to bring another successful cell phone novel to both the big and small screens. This time it’s Akai Ito, which apparently will feature more drugs, rape, and suicide involving teenagers. Do Japanese kids really like watching this stuff?

- Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks are planning to bring the classic animated film Ghost in the Shell into a live-action 3D feature. This feels kind of redundant, especially when I felt like I already reported this, except it turns out that I was thinking of the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced Akira.

- More animation news: The voice talent cast has been announced for Mamoru Oshii’s Sky Crawlers, and it features Oscar-nominated actress Rinko Kikuchi and Ryo Kase. With recent animated films choosing stars over experience, are Japanese animated films starting to become more and more like American ones?

-  The short animated film Megumi, based on a true story about a girl abducted by North Korean agents and produced by a government agency, can now be downloaded for free. Er….I’ll get to watching it sooner or later, I guess.

- The Weinstein Company has revealed some of the films they’ll be making with their so-called “Asian fund,” and while we all know about Shanghai by know, I did a mental spit take when I saw the other film they announced.

- I like well-done parodies, especially when they capture something that’s timely in a sharp manner without being childish. But do we really need a parody of a blockbuster film a month within its release?

Welcome to an extended Tuesday edition of The Golden Rock. By extended, I mean it’s taking me 2 days to compile and write this entry.

- In Hong Kong weekend box office (the link you click on will probably have been updated for Monday box office already, though), Daniel Lee’s Three Kingdoms is at the top again with HK$924,000 from 40 screens on Sunday for a 11-day total of HK$13.99 million. That not only means that the film didn’t lose much of its business from last weekend, but also Daniel Lee can now make more crappy and overdubbed historical epics. Sylvia Chang’s Run Papa Run saw a pretty big boost in business over the weekend, making HK$813,000 from 30 screens for a weekend total of HK$2.65 million. The Pang Brother-produced (one of them) horror flick scare 2 die hangs in there with HK$91,000 on 14 screens that are probably not playing it 5 shows a day.

As for foreign flicks, John Rambo made HK$526,000 from 28 screens for a 4-day weekend total of HK$1.74 million. Step Up 2 the Streets is a real sleeper hit with another HK$482,000 from 27 screens on Sunday and a 11-day total of HK$6.07 million. British comedy Run Fat Boy Run couldn’t go far with only HK$99,000 from 10 screens for a 4-day total of HK$350,000. Small Irish film Once is still doing OK with HK$52,000 from 4 screens for a 11-day total of HK$460,000.

- In Japanese box office attendance figures, a Masked Rider movie made its way to the top (which I’m sure is something that can only happen in Japan….on a quiet weekend), while Cloverfield drops by one place along with Enchanted. Meanwhile, Curse of the Golden Flower managed to open in the top 10, even though it’s opening a year and 4 months later than everywhere else in the world. I guess the appeal of Jay Chou didn’t reach Japan. More when the numbers are out.

- Since only very few Spring dramas have premiered in Japan, we’ll get to the drama ratings report next week.

- I first read it up on the Hong Kong Film blog, and it was also reported as the entertainment headline on Apple Daily: Johnnie To’s English-language film debut, the remake of the French film Le Cercle Rouge, is a go to start shooting in June. It will be starring Liam Neeson, Orlando Bloom, and Chow Yun-Fat. However, To confirmed that he has only signed Orlando with the other two’s deals in the works. The film will be shot in Macau and Hong Kong with a budget of USD$40 million dollars. Now you may scream in excitement.

- A Filipino film about the Manila squatter slum has picked up multiple prizes at the Singapore International Film Festival, including Best Asian film. Last week, it was reported that four films at the festival were banned for their possibly undesirable content.

- Despite calls from both a major figure and the shrine in question asking for their footages to be deleted, Yasukuni distributor Argo is refusing to make the cuts and is now consulting with lawyers about said requests. Fight the good fight, y’all.

- Here’s something that I don’t think a lot of people ask for, but will probably get anyway: Japanese consumers can now spend about US$4,500 on a 3D TV……to watch one hour of 3D programming currently being broadcast everyday. In the future, Kimura Takuya’s hair will fly towards you during those Gatsby commercials.

- Speaking of celebrity advertising, learn English at ECC, or Takeshi Kitano will come and stick chopsticks up your nose. Why not ECC, indeed.

- How’s this for an unlike pairing? Bad girl Anna Tsuchiya will be providing her vocal talents to the new Anpanman movie.

Anna Tsuchiya:

Anpanman:

Who wants to take bets which one Anna is doing?

- Cine Quanon, a fairly major indie distributor in Japan, will be closing their theater in Seoul. No word on whether they will reopen at another location.

- If you all remember, the upcoming Japanese drama adaptation Sushi Ouji was greenlit before the series even aired, and the ratings ended up being fairly unspectacular. Without even bothering to find out how that went (the film will open this Saturday), Shochiku went ahead and greenlit the sequel to their new film Tsukiji Uogashi Sandaime before it even opens in June. Apparently, they hope to turn it into a modern “Taro-san” film series. I know Japanese people love fish and everything, but does that apply to paying 1800 yen every year to see a movie about it?

- A little more rational move by Shochiku this week is their decision to distribute HD-recorded Kabuki performances not only overseas, but also on commercial flights.

- In Hong Kong TV, there are only 2 free-to-air networks: TVB and ATV. TVB tends to take up about 80%-90% of viewership, which means ATV is just there because it has to be there. However, ATV finally scored a small victory Sunday night, when their Chinese channel showed a James Bond movie. It got a 11 rating, which is already better than the average ATV rating. Meanwhile, TVB’s Chinese channel was showing Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046, which only got a 10 rating. Yes, that means James Bond beat Wong Kar-Wai, which is a little sad from a film fan’s point of view, but happy from a fan of a little competition in the TV industry.

- After hitting one disappointment after another, Viz Media (buy their Japanese movies DVDs, people! They actually got good movies!) has found a new way to distribute Death Note in North America - by making it a limited event.