The start of another weekend, and the beginning of spreading news out over 3 days. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of news all weekend.

- Last week I linked to the review for Suzuki Matsuo’s Welcome to the Quiet Room, which opened on 13 screens last weekend. With one theater in Shibuya seeing full house all day on opening day, the comedy-drama made an impressive 15.47 million yen, surely scoring the best per-screen average amidst the weak box office.

Meanwhile, Japan Times’ Mark Schilling chimes in with a review.

- There are also a ton of stories about the animated series Afro Samurai, which is seeing its extended cut get a theatrical release in Japan this weekend.

First, there’s a report from The Associated Press/The Daily Yomiuri about the reaction to the first series.

Then the Japan Times has a feature on what’s next, including a comic book version by the creator himself.

And then comes the confirmation that creator Okazaki is now working on the production of the second series.

- Don’t think I forgot about the Tokyo International Film Festival. Actually, I’ve been waiting all week for a review anywhere for the opening film Midnight Eagle. But the only news about the film so far is that it’s been sold to a few more territories, including this blogger’s current city of residency Hong Kong.

- At least we know Tokyo is the real land of opportunity: Even a movie a written by the writer of the Tony Jaa starrer Tom Yum Goong can win the Tokyo Project Award out of 37 other movies.

- Meanwhile, another film festival is underway. In addition to the Sylvia Chang tribute, the World Film Festival of Bangkok opened with the unintentionally funny historical epic Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea (lovingly called here as “that Genghis Khan movie).

- Also, the Reel Asian International Film Festival in Toronto announced its lineup. Try to avoid the self-promotion along the way.

- Lastly, in your daily Lust, Caution news, the Philippines will be getting a full uncensored version of Ang Lee’s erotic espionage drama in its theatres while those in neighboring countries are stuck with a censored version.

Sadly, it has also become the little puppy without a home, as the Hong Kong Film Awards have also disqualified the Asian co-production because it doesn’t feature eight Hong Kong residents in key creative roles.

That, and a ton of other unfairness in the world from Kaiju Shakedown.

For convenience, everything will be combined into one entry today:

- The Japanese box office numbers are out, and it’s consistent with the audience admission rankings. As expected, the box office is fairly weak, with The Good Shepard managing only a third place opening with only 97 million yen from 290 screens. Even less lucky is The Invasion with only 560 million yen. Disastrous is the Hollywood action film The Kingdom, which lost almost 53% of business from last weekend. The only films that are still really hanging in there are Hero, The Sign of Love, and Pan’s Labyrinth.

- Under “What silly thing will Jackie Chan do today?” news today, someone actually have the bad taste to ask Jackie Chan to sing the official countdown song for the Chinese Olympics. It’s OK, it’s one of the many songs the Olympic organizers plan to release to celebrate the Olympics. Seriously, how many songs does China need to celebrate the damn thing?

- Hideo Nakata is going back to Hollywood, this time adapting a Japanese novel for English-speaking audiences. No word on whether the adaptation will retain the Tokyo setting.

- Thai horror film Alone just won 4 awards at the Los Angeles Scream Fest, and no one had to censor the trailer for it to get attention either.

- I’m getting increasingly convinced that China is living in 60s United States with no racial tensions: a group of 40 conservative songwriters have signed a petition calling for a boycott of vulgar pop songs with “weird” lyrics and “lustful” themes. Next thing you know, they’ll be complaining about hip gyrations.

- I take that back - they seem to be living in a timeless fantasy communist world where producers actually think that putting the Twins as voice talents would help sell a propaganda animated film in Hong Kong.

- There will be a Japan Film Council established by April 2009 to help foreign producers coordinate their shoots in Japan. One of the reasons: The Last Samurai could’ve been shot in Japan instead of New Zealand. They probably shot in New Zealand because a bottle of coke doesn’t cost 140 yen there.

- Expect China to give The Knot its best film award at the Golden Rooster this week, because no way the film they picked to be their representative at the Academy Award would not be the best Chinese film of the year.

Let’s start off with some more news from the TIFF (That’s what the Tokyo International Film Festival calling themselves these days, despite Toronto having the same abbreviations):

- Jason Gray won’t be in the country for the rest of the TIFF, but he does have a link to the two-hour video of red carpet coverage and opening ceremony. I don’t think anyone is expected to watch all 2 hours of it, but you can see some interesting things, including finding out that Akiko Wada and Tokoro Joji are voicing Marge and Homer in the Japanese dub of the Simpsons movie, which will screen during the festival. D’oh!

For those not in the know, some fans protested to 20th Century Fox for not using the original Japanese voice actors for the film, but I guess Fox cared about getting non-fans in more than loyal fans.

- Meanwhile, the Winds of Asia section has a new programmer this year: Asian film scholar Kenji Ishizaka. Like many film scholars, he decided to bring lesser-known Asian films to the festival this year, particularly films from Islamic countries. The problem is even if you bring the movies, will people go see them?

Now, back to your regular news.

- Of course, we always start off with box office news around here. In the first seven months of 2007, local Japanese films have fallen to making up just 43% of the market, down 10 % from the same period in the previous year. Judging from this year’s output, the answer lies in the fact that there hasn’t been any huge blockbuster that reached the size of those last year. local megahit Hero opened in September, so we won’t know until the end of the year whether Japanese films will regain its strength. But there are still a few possible crowdpleasers on the way.

- The Daily Yomiuri’s Teleview column looks at two dramas where the Kanto and Kansai separation seems to be an issue: the new NHK morning drama Chiritotechin, which is getting much better ratings in the Kansai region than Kanto, and the Masami Nagasawa drama Hatachi no Koibito.

- Today’s Oriental Daily reports that some netizens are saying that the MTV for Jay Chou’s latest single “A Cowboy is Very Busy” (directed by Chou himself) is similar to the video for Christina Aguilera’s Candyman.

Jay Chou’s “A Cowboy is Very Busy” (try not to get too shocked)

Christina Aguilera’s Candyman

Personally, just because the diner images are similar don’t mean that one is copying the other, but what do you think?

- In more possible plagiarizing news in Chinese music, the Chinese blog 3cmusic reveals that netizens are saying that Hong Kong pop singer Paisley Wu’s “Don’t Think Just Do” has a similar arrangement (credited to veteran C.Y. Kong) to British singer Sophie Ellis Bextor’s “The Sun’s On Us.”

Don’t Think Just Do

The Sun’s On Us

Since “Don’t Think Just Do” seems to be a cover song, can anyone name the original track, and can that same person tell us whether that song has a similar arrangement as well?

- In more posting of Youtube clips, Chinese star pianist Li Yundi says in the an interview that he wonders out loud if treating classical musicians as pop idols (i.e. him) is the right thing to do. Probably not, but showing up on TVB promoting a Japanese drama that you have nothing to do with just seemed like such a right thing to do.

- In more TV news, Hotaru No Hikari, which averaged only a 13.6 rating on Wednesday nights during the Summer 2007 season, won four of the five awards at the Nikkan Sports Drama Grand Prix. The fifth award went to Arashi member Kazunari Ninomiya for his role in Yamada Taro Monogatari.

- Under “cut off one head, another one will pop up” news today, Taiwanese police arrested two people who run the website XYZ and confiscated 40,000 pirated discs of Hollywood movies. Yes, just two people and one of the many many websites that sell pirated discs.

- Under “what things will Jackie Chan say” news today, the action star, who is producing the Chinese reality show The Disciple in a search for the next martial artist, tells aspiring action stars to not bow the “old-fashioned way”. I hope he doesn’t mean greet your master with high-fives.

Three slow news days automatically add up to a slow news week in general. That means shorter entries. Expect short weekend entries if this keeps up. I may just post something in the spin-off instead.

- Lust, Caution’s chances at the Oscars has just decreased by quite a bit, as the Academy Awards foreign films committee disqualifies Ang Lee’s erotic drama as the Taiwanese entry because it’s not Taiwan enough. Essentially, the main gripe is that it doesn’t have enough Taiwanese involvement. That must suck for Lee, seeing that his Chinese movie for westerners, also known as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, manages to win best foreign film, while his Chinese movie for Chinese people gets disqualified.

Taiwan will submit Island Etude in its place.

- In another blow to the film (this ought to be the unofficial Lust, Caution blog), Chinese censors have apparently yet to screen the Mainland Chinese-safe version of the film, which means its November 1st opening date may get pushed further back. Meanwhile, pirated copies have finally gotten online, which may hurt the big chunk of change the film expected to make from the region.

- Meanwhile, Twitch has another update for the latest omnibus-film-in-a-city film Tokyo!. Apparently, Korean director Bong Joon-Ho’s section is done filming, with Michel Gondry’s getting ready to shoot later in the month. No idea when third director Leos Carax will be filming his, though.

Original Tokyograph story.

- Poor Twitch contributor Blake only got two questions with Park Chan-Wook because what was supposed to be a one-on-one interview became a roundtable with people asking about ridiculous rumors such as whether Park took a 5-year break to train being an astronaut. At least now you know he’s making a bat film for his next project.

- DVDTalk has a review for the American DVD of Kazuaki Kiriya’s Casshern, which boasts a so-called “director’s cut” that’s 25 minute shorter than the original Japanese cut. According to some poster on imdb, the DVD is missing not only scene selections, but the subtitles are also off-sync, and important bits are cut out.

- It’s no news, but Japan’s DVD market is still suffering, as sales for the first half year are down 2% from the same period last year.

- The new drama season started in Japan last week (Fall 2007 drama information from Tokyograph), and Iryu 2, the sequel to the hit drama from Spring 2006, got off to an excellent start with a 21 rating on the ratings chart. Meanwhile, Dream Again, starring Takashi “Genghis Khan” Sorimachi could only score a 12.9 rating for its premiere. Another star who might not be such a star is Masami Nagasawa, as her latest drama Hatachi No Koibito got only a 13.5 rating for its first episode. More premieres to come this coming week, so look for a slightly more comprehensive wrap-up next week. It all depends how tired I’ll be, really.

Now, the wrap-up from Pusan International Film Festival:

- The competition section of Pusan, called New Currents, actually has the least well-known films. This is probably because the jury tends to pick heavy art films with social messages, and Variety reports that history has repeated again this year.

- Meanwhile, it seems like the Asian Film Market was pretty quiet in terms of sales, with distributors sending people to just look as opposed to buy.

- Despite the festival running into obstacles and just being generally bland this year, the attendance was still record-breaking.

And now, back to your regular news:

- Wong Kar-Wai was supposed to make a biopic about Bruce Lee’s master and it was supposed to star Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, who reportedly spend the last few years getting physically prepared for the role. However, his 5-year rights is expiring and Raymond Wong’s Mandarin Films (who last made the Donnie Yen lovefest Flash Point) is stepping in and make their own film about Bruce Lee’s master.

This is in addition to the planned film by Fruit Chan about two childhood friends in 1950s Hong Kong who split up on their own roads, one of them being Bruce Lee.

- The teaser trailer is out for the Hollywood remake of the Pang Brothers’ The Eye, and I guess it looks blah.

- Also, the second trailer for Feng Xiaogang’s The Assembly is online. I use Firefox, so I haven’t watched it, and I’ll probably watch the movie when it comes out anyway.

- In not-so-pleasant news for the blogging community, the Chinese government is continuing its crackdown of the internet ahead of the party congress.

- And yet, they decided to allow a shorter version of Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, which was edited by Lee himself and is a few minutes longer than the Malaysian version, to play nationwide starting November 1st. Can someone tell me whether Lam Ka Tung makes an appearance at the end of the Mainland version? Someone who’s seen both Infernal Affairs and Lust, Caution should get this.

- Then again, despite the film having done very well in Asian territories, audiences in China may very well not even get what “the bad guy” in the movie does.

- China may seem pretty bad, but then the head of the Thai ministry of culture came out and pretty much says: 1) Thai audiences are not educated, and 2) just because said audience doesn’t understand a movie, it should be be classified and/or banned.

- It’s Oricon charts time! As expected, B’z tops the single chart with their latest, selling 180,000 copies to make it their 40th consecutive number-one single. This also puts them above SMAP as their 41st consecutive single in the top 10. Meanwhile, Dreams Come True scores a number-two debut on the same week as the film based on their songs open this past weekend. The new single sold more than 81,000 copies, which would’ve earned it a number 1 spot on any other week. Lastly, Mika Nakashima’s latest could muster only a 5th place debut with 13,600 copies sold. If the daily charts hold up, expect L’Arc~En~Ciel’s latest to top the charts next week.

On the album chart, two compilations topped the chart. Yuki’s compilation is far and away the number 1 album with 180,000 copies sold. Far far behind is Yuzu’s compilation, which sold 95,500 copies. Last week’s winner Ai Otsuka’s album (this one’s for you, Tokyograph) drops to 3rd place with a still-pretty-strong sales of 66,000 copies, and last week’s second place album, the latest from Shiina Ringo’s Tokyo Jihen, tumbles to 5th place with just 26,700 copies sold. As for daily rankings, Spitz’s latest album should take the top spot if they hold up through the week.

Today in Pusan Film Festival news:

- Director Peter Greenaway would like you to know that cinema has been dead since 1983. Yeah, I saw his 1999 film 8 1/2 women - it wasn’t much of a movie indeed.

- The Hollywood Reporter critics report on the critical and audience reactions for some of the films at the festival.

- Variety also has their own report, but concentrating more on the Asian Film Market rather than the films themselves.

- It’s festival reviews time! From Pusan comes Russell Edward’s review of Isao Yukisada’s Into the Faraway Sky and Derek Elley’s review of Takashi Miike’s Crows: Episode 0, which seems to be the talk of the town so far.

- This year marks the first ChinaBizCamp, where Chinese film industry professionals teach Korean audiences how to sell their movies in a market that restricts foreign films imports to 20 a year and where piracy is rampant partly because of said laws.

- There’s an interview with director Lee Chang-Dong, who is currently a jury member on the New Currents section. His award-winning Secret Sunshine is opening in Hong Kong today.

- Lastly, J-Pitch, where Japanese producers try to sell ideas to foreign investors, took its show on the road to Pusan this year with three presentations. At least two of them sound promising. No, I’m not telling you which two.

Back to a short version of your regular news:

- Remember I mentioned in a previous entry that Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django is being criticized for featuring a character hung on a Shintoist gate? Twitch has the offending image that’s now been deleted from all the promotional materials. It’s in the movie anyway, people.

- After weeks of secrecy, China has revealed that they submitted the carefully calculated war drama The Knot as their pick for a nomination for best foreign film at the Academy Awards. For weeks, there were speculations that China would also pick Lust, Caution (Taiwan’s entry) after Peter Chan announced that The Warlords won’t be ready on time.

- Good for him. Feng Xiaogang says openly that he hopes to shed the propaganda image of recent Chinese war films with his latest The Assembly. However, it still features an ending fit for both government and audiences.

- Lastly, there’s a teaser for Daniel Lee’s Three Kingdom: Resurrection of the Dragon, starring Andy Lau and Maggie Q (wtf?). Honestly, it’s always been hard to get me excited about a Daniel Lee film, even one with Andy Lau.

More coverage of other people’s coverage of the Pusan Film Festival:

- I mentioned that New Taiwan Cinema filmmaker Edward Yang’s films are getting a retrospective in Pusan. I was wrong. He’s actually getting a posthumous Filmmaker of the Year award.

- Variety, meanwhile, has two new reviews from the festival - a rave by Derek Elley for the hit Japanese drama adaptation Hero, and a review by Russell Edwards for the Taiwanese coming-of-age film Summer’s Tail.

- Meanwhile, the attendance at this year’s Pusan film market may be around the same, but it seems like the decline in Korea’s film industry, not to mention Japan’s own Content Festival still underway, does seem to have an effect this year.

- Lastly, there’s an interview with David Shin, the head of Korea’s CJ Entertainment.

Now back to our regular coverage of the news:

- Fuji’s Saturday 11pm drama Life wins the satisfaction poll conducted by Oricon. Last season, the time slot’s first drama Liar Game won second place with an even higher score than Life, proving that putting edgier dramas there may equal to success. However, people don’t seem very excited about SP, this coming season’s drama in that time slot.

- In light of the Olympics next year, there will probably be a lot of “ethically inspiring” sports films coming out of China. There are already two basketball movies. In fact, someone should make a movie out of this, it’ll be called Olympic Fever Gone Wild.

- It may not be the final image, but Hong Kong animation firm Imagi’s Astro Boy is looking pretty good.

- Lastly, it seems like someone is trying to submit Lust, Caution as their region’s official representative for the best foreign film award at the Academy Awards, but China and Taiwan can’t seem to decide. Then again, Taiwan followed the rules and played the film for 7 days before submitting it, China didn’t. You snooze, you lose.

As the second round of filmmaking starts in film school, expect updates to be somewhat short in the next few days.

- The Pusan Film Festival is now fully under way. This year, there’s a retrospective on New Taiwan Cinema director Edward Yang, who passed away earlier this year from colon cancer. Variety Asia has a feature on Yang’s filmography and also another feature by Derek “Too Little Lust and Too Much Caution” Elley about his own experiences with Yang.

- There’s also a report on Variety Asia about the festival’s opening film The Assembly.

- Just as the film festival is starting, the Pusan (or Busan?) film critics are also taking the opportunities to give out their film and rising stars awards. Most of the awards have already been announced: Im Sang-Soo will win best director for The Old Garden, Song Kang-Ho will win best actor for The Show Must Go On, Yeh Ji-Won will win best actress for Old Miss Diary, and Tezza: The High Rollers will win for best screenplay. Also, Daniel Henney will win best actor at the rising star awards. I guess now I should check out My Father, I expect he would act better than he did in Seducing Mr. Perfect.

- Turns out the rumors out there about the Hong Kong “relay film” Triangle being brought back for a major re-edit after Cannes are not correct - the film only went back for audio remix and “print tuning,” which means everyone in Hong Kong will be seeing the Cannes version all the critics were panning about.

- It’s reviews time! Variety has a review for Singaporean best foreign film Academy Award entry 881 and a review for Yoichi Sai’s Korean debut Soo, which I also reviewed a while ago.

That’s it for today. No, really, it’s the weekend. I need to save some news for the rest of the weekend.

- I’m sure you all now know how well the uncensored prints of Lust, Caution have done in Asia, but what about the censored versions? As far as I know, a version that’s been cut by 11 minutes have been playing in at least Malaysia and Singapore. However, Malay censors went ahead and cut and another 3 minutes and barred anyone under 18 from seeing it anyway. Still, the formerly-erotic espionage drama. According to the distributor, the film is still doing rather well considering the genre, despite netizens aware and complaining about the censorship.

- Speaking of censorship, how will they pull this off? China’s Shenzhen Golden Coast Film had just optioned the remake rights for a Spanish comedy about an encyclopedia salesman who turns to making porn. The film is due to start production in the fall, and will of course have to be clean enough to clear Chinese censors.

- Eiga Consultant, in light of the recent controversy surrounding actress Erika Sawajiri, posted poll results to why people showed up to her latest film Closed Note. The ratio of male to female audience is 37 to 63, and a majority of audiences are in their 20s and under. When asked why they decided to go watch the film, 26.8% said the content seemed interesting, and the second biggest reason, with 14.4% of audience choosing it, is actually because they were fans of Sawajiri (as opposed to fans of Yuko Takeuchi, which only made up 10.8% of the audience). How come no one says it’s because of the director, especially since he made one of the biggest Japanese romantic blockbusters in recent years?

- The first Asia Pacific Screen Awards, which isn’t even taking place in Asia, has announced its nominees. The fact that I don’t know most of the nominated films means that they really are trying to look for the best Asian films out there, rather than your usual crowd favorites. An especially pleasant surprise for me is Ryu Deok-Hwan’s best actor nomination for Like a Virgin. Who says you can’t give a great performance in a comedy?

- Under your daily Pusan Film Festival news today, Japanese broadcaster TBS (TV networks are actually the biggest film producers in Japan) is sending quite a few interesting films to the festival. While many people are surely interested in Takashi Miike’s Crow Zero, I myself find Kenji Uchida’s After School the most interesting after his promising debut A Stranger of Mine. Is it really not coming out until May?

- On the other hand, meet Korea’s latest export to Hong Kong - Korean idol Lee Jun-Ki has just signed with Hong Kong entertainment conglomerate EEG. Unless he speaks really good Cantonese already, I have no idea what EEG will be doing with him, except making movies where his voice will be dubbed anyway.

- Also, yet another Korean-Chinese-Hong Kong co-production is on the way. This time it’s the Chinese comedy Let’s Fall in Love, with no actors or directors announced yet. That makes this news a bit of a waste of space.

- After D-War/Dragon Wars have made millions and millions of dollars around Korea and North America, director Shim Hyung-Rae has announced several follow-up projects, including the film’s sequel and a movie called Fish Wars. Really, I’m not shitting you.

- This blogger’s idol Hikaru Utada has broken yet another record - she is now the first artist in the world to break the 10 million-mark in digital sales within a year. Too bad her works this year just haven’t been up to par.

- Forget about remaking films based on novels, Hollywood is now going straight to the source, as Fox is planning to adapt the Japanese novel Goth with publisher Kadokawa Shoten producing. At least now they don’t have to worry about people comparing it with the original Japanese film because it doesn’t exist.

- There’s an English-subtitled trailer for the Korean film Le Grand Chef, a film based on the comic by the same author of the comic Tezza: The High Rollers. It’s a bit of a stretch, yes, but it still looks pretty interesting.

- There’s a review for Feng Xiaogang’s war film The Assembly by Variety’s Derek Elley (aka the guy who inexplicably panned Lust, Caution), which just had its world premiere today at the Pusan Film Festival.

- I guess I should start off and tell you that there’s a new review/observation post at the spin-off about Maiko Haaaan!!! and Beauty and the 7 Beasts. I can give you a preview and say that Beauty and the 7 Beasts is the worse HK mainstream movie I’ve seen this year…and I saw Contract Lover.

- It’s reviews time! Twitch has a review of India’s best foreign film Academy Award contender Eklavya, and Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has a review of the Japanese indie film Baum Kuchen, which is currently playing at one Tokyo theater for one show a night.

- Stephen Chow’s A Hope has finally locked a release date of January 31st, 2008, although I’m not sure if that opening date also applies to Hong Kong. As for the alien, Chow reportedly told Oriental Daily that the design is a homage to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, not a rip-off. You can probably only use the word “homage” for films more than 20 years old.

- While Stephen Chow takes three years to make his follow-up to Kung Fu Hustle, Takashi Miike is already releasing his third theatrical release of the year. More information from Twitch and Ryuganji.

- Under “Korean actress casting” news today, Gianna Jun (the artist formerly known as Jeon “My Sassy Girl” Ji-Hyun) is done with her first non-Korean film Blood the Last Vampire and back in Korea for the mid-budget comedy drama The Guy Who Was Once Superman. Meanwhile, Cannes best actress winner Jeon Do-Yeon has already decided on her next film, A Fine Day by director Lee Yoon-Ki (who last made the quiet gem Ad-Lib Night.) Guess which one I’m looking forward to more.

- Satoshi Kon’s Paprika picked up the Theatrical Film Award at the 12th annual Animation Kobe Award.

- Also, Wayne Wang’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayer picked up the prizes for best film and best actor at the San Sebastian Film Festival. If you remember, Wang admitted that a Chinese investor pulled out of the film because the director refused to take out a line that was critical of the Chinese communist government.

- With it crashing and burning in Chinese theaters, the distributor for Jiang Wen’s The Sun Also Rises is trying hard to boost business for the weeklong public holiday period.