Today we’re starting a new feature called “How much money is Red Cliff making in Hong Kong?” Why, you ask? Because we’re into fanning the hype around here.

According to Now.com, as of Tuesday, July 15th, John Woo’s Red Cliff has made:

HK$13.52 million after 6 days

In comparison, the dance-unintentional-howler Kung Fu Hip Hop (also the only other Chinese-language film playing in Hong Kong right now. No, I don’t count Kung Fu Panda) has made HK$80,000 after 6 days, and already lost 4 of its 13 screens on Monday.

- Time to report on what we really do here at Lovehkfilm. Boss Kozo has three reviews, including mega-super-duper moneymaker Red Cliff, Yoji Yamada’s Kabei - Our Mother, and the Western film Children of Huang Shi, which co-stars Chow Yun Fat in a supporting role. Yours truly turns in reviews of the wrestling comedy Gachi Boy - Wrestling with a Memory and the independent award-winning comedy Bare-Assed Japan.

Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett also turns in a review for the Singaporean film The Photograph.

- As reported before, John Woo’s Red Cliff topped the Korean box office. It’s scored the highest opening ever for a Chinese film, and distributor Showbox (who cut the film by 9 minutes) is aiming at 3 million admissions. However, that depends on how The Good, The Bad, and The Weird will do next week.

More from Korea Pop Wars.

Meanwhile, The Good, the Bad, and the Weird has sold its American rights to IFC, who will be rolling the film out in a limited release early next year. No word on whether this will be the Korean cut or the cut that Kim said will include more references to classic Western flicks.  If i live in America, this would be exciting news indeed.

- For some reason, Box Office Mojo isn’t updating their Japanese box office numbers, which means I’m left in the cold for the second weekend in a row for number crunching. Thankfully, Mr. Texas over at Eiga Consultant is reporting the opening weekend gross for Gegege no Kitaro 2. Even though the last film went up against Spiderman 3 in its second weekend, the first film also opened a week before Golden Week, which boosted the film’s second weekend take, and it’s a luxury that the sequel didn’t get. The yokai fantasy film made 230 million yen from 313 screens, and it’s only 73% of the first film’s opening.  Mr. Texas contributes the comparatively lower opening to its seemingly darker tone, though I doubt that there’s an audience conflict with Hana Yori Dango (except for young WaT fans?).

Meanwhile, Ryuganji looks at the relative success of the Japanese newsroom drama Climber’s High, which is aiming for a 1.5-2 billion yen, and is a much-needed hit for all involved.

To no one’s surprise, major Japanese distributor Toho takes the top spot as the top Japanese studio for the first half of 2008, with 13 films passing the 1 billion yen mark.

- Gaga should also be slightly relieved that Climber’s High will probably make its money back, because they wouldn’t have to add it to the approximately USD$18.8 million losses they are forecasting from content alone.

- It’s Japanese Oricon charts time! Girl trio group Perfume gets their first #1 single, which is also the first #1 single for a technopop track. Meanwhile, Thelma Aoyama’s follow-up single to her mega-hit Soba ni Iru yo could garner only a 6th place debut. As for the album chart, Orange Range’s latest debuts as expected at first place, while the week’s only other new entry debuts all the way down at 9th place.

More at Tokyograph

- The Kimura Takuya drama CHANGE managed to gain one victory at the end of the Spring 2008 season. While it did not beat Gokusen for the top-rated drama of the season, it got the highest rating for any single episode all season with a 27.4% rating, and it even reached as high as 31.2% during its second half. Reportedly, the finale included a 22-minute speech by Kimutaku the Prime Minister, which sounds like a pretty ballsy move for a TV drama, and will likely be the most long-winded monologue ever recorded in a Japanese TV drama, and there are tons of those.

-  Universal is breathing a sigh of relief now, as The Mummy 3 has been officially cleared by Chinese censors after changes that, according to producer Bill Kong, were supposed “so minor that they scarcely amounted to a cut”, hinting that it may’ve simply cut some shots to make it suitable for all audiences. The film is expected to be released in China after the Olympics to increase its commercial potential.

- Hong Kong broadcaster TVB has signed a deal with Walt Disney to stream some of Disney’s American content on the TVB website free of charge 12 hours after their television broadcast in Hong Kong. Such shows may also include dramas from the Disney-owned ABC network such as Lost and Desperate Housewives. This, however, is not likely to prevent people from downloading shows within hours of their broadcast in America.

-  Ryuganji has more on director Akira Ogata’s first film since the 80s, which will begin shooting this month.

- (via Twitch) The Star Malaysia talks to John Woo about Red Cliff, in which he admits that he modeled some of his past action heroes after Three Kingdoms character Zhao Zilong.

-  Kaiju Shakedown reveals that when not making his “shit, piss, fart” comedies, Wong Jing actually produces some quality films. One of them is Ann Hui’s latest The Way We Are.

- A Japanese novel about a kid who bikes to search for his long-lost mother is coming to the big screen.

- Meanwhile, chalk one up for China, as a Chinese author has become the first winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize that is not a native speaker of Japanese.  The Akutagawa Prize is the top literary prize in Japan.

- I have no idea where the Hong Kong Film blog get their Hong Kong box office stats from, but that’s who we’re going with today. John Woo’s Red Cliff continued to perform extremely well over the weekend, making HK$3.14 million from 57 screens (didn’t it open on 60?) for a 4-day weekend total of HK$10.69 million. I don’t remember a Chinese film performing this well since CJ7, which made HK$15 million from over 100 screens during its opening weekend during Chinese New Years. With somewhat positive word-of-mouth around the city (some are complaining about the unintentional hilarity, some are complaining about the two-part format), it has a good chance at hitting HK$40 million, despite competition from numerous Hollywood films. I don’t know how the complaint about less shows is relevant, as people will just show up some other time if they can’t get into certain showings. But of course, the endless barrage of Hollywood blockbuster means theaters will have to take something off their screens.

The other opener, the animated film Keroro 3, continues to do well with the kids audience, making HK$850,000 from 30 screens for a 4-day total of HK$2.95 million. It apparently didn’t take too much away from Kung Fu Panda, which still managed to make HK$1.25 million from 50 screens for a current 16-day total of HK$25.8 million, and heading straight to beat Enchanted as the highest-grossing foreign film this year. Hancock didn’t do all that badly in its second weekend, either, with HK$1.52 million from 43 screens with a 11-day total of HK$19.62 million. Wanted has passed the HK$20 million mark after 19 days, making 420,000 from 33 screens, though those screens are only giving the film two to three shows a day.

Kung Fu Hip-hop managed to stay on 13 screens, but it made only HK$17,000 for a 4-day total of HK$60,000. I’ll still be catching this…for some reason.

- Red Cliff has made a total of over USD$25 million in its opening weekend all over Asia, including over 800,000 admissions in Korea and over 100 million RMB from China. Remember the film will need to make roughly USD$160 million to even recoup its cost (much of it will have to come from foreign sales).

- And the Japanese attendance figures for this weekend just came in. Hana Yori Dango Final (which has now passed the 3 million viewer mark, which means it’s passed 3.6 billion yen) and Indiana Jones again take the top 2 spots, with Gegege No Kitaro 2 debuted at 3rd place. Climber’s High dropped slightly to 4th place, and the new Anpan Man movie saw a 6th place opening. Speed Racer slowly fades to obscurity at 7th place, and Ponyo will probably wipe the other weaker performers from the multiplexes this weekend. I hope Box Office Mojo will be updating some numbers soon.

Meanwhile, Eiga Consultant revealed that Speed Racer a similar fate in Japan as it has around the world. On 450 screens (some dubbed, some subbed), the overlooked racing film made only 105 million yen. Actually, Japanese audiences have reacted quite well to both subbed and dubbed versions of the film, so it may stick around a little longer.

- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! Remaining Spring 2008 drama CHANGE performed very well ahead of its final episode with a 22.3% rating. However, the finale will have to score over 35% for its final episode to beat Gokusen in season average, which means this will be the first Kimura Takuya drama to not take the top spot that season since 1997’s Gift. Meanwhile, Rookie was apparently not on the air this past weekend, and Hachi-One Diver stayed around its average rating with a 8.5% for its second-to-last episode.

As for the current Summer 2008 season,  Monday night drama Ando Natsu (at a rare Monday 8pm time slot) premiered with a 11.6% rating. Detective drama Shibatora premiered with 13%. Seigi no Mikata got started with a 13.2 rating, Yottsu no Uso started with 11.8% rating, and Yasuko to Kenji saw a 12.3% rating for its premiere. For ongoing dramas, Monster Parents failed to hold onto its audience with a drop to 11.6% in its second week. The same went for last week’s ratings winner Code Blue, which dropped down to a 16% rating after a spectacular 21% premiere. The biggest drop went to the lottery drama Loto 6 de 3 Oku 2 Senmanen Ateta Otoko with ex-GTO Takashi Sorimachi, which lost almost half its audience with a 6.8% rating for its second episode. Tomorrow saw a bit of a drop as well, with a 13.9% second episode after its debut saw a 16.8% rating.

All Japanese drama sypnosis can be found at Tokyograph.

- The people behind the Shanghai International Film Festival and the Shanghai World Expo will be setting up a database of young talents around the world.

- Mark Russell over at Korea Pop Wars gives his mini-review of Kim Jee-Woon’s The Good, The Bad, and the Weird. He also compares the Cannes and Korean versions of the film.

- Hiroyuki Ikeuchi joined the cast of Wilson Yip-Donnie Yen’s Yip Man. In the film, he plays a Japanese soldier who has a showdown with the Yenster himself.

In other casting news, Hiroshi Tamaki will star in another one of those Japanese nationalistic war film, playing a submarine captain during World War II.

- Japanese distributor Movie Eye has announced their release schedule for the rest of 2008 and 2009, one of which includes Nightmare Detective II, which has been pushed to 2009.

- Wanted to post this yesterday: Million Dollar Girl with Yu Aoi will be heading abroad for a festival screening before opening in Japan. Also, there are apparently rumors of Aoi’s behavior on set her TV drama Osen.

- Twitch has a teaser for the Japanese horror flick End Call. What the hell is that all about?

- Some new Hong Kong trailers out there. First is the Stephy underwear flick La Lingerie, then it’s the Charlene Choi starrer Butterfly Lovers, directed by Jingle Ma.

- A Japanese television documentary show that follows celebrities doing homestay abroad is coming to an end, as producers have decided that the show has fulfilled its purpose.

- New York Asian Film Festival co-organizer Brian Naas posts his thoughts about the festival, as well as reveal the results of the audience award, which went (deservedly) to Fine Totally Fine.

- And it was a huge opening day for John Woo’s Red Cliff here at the Hong Kong box office. Despite a running time of 140 minutes (which means less shows, despite an inflated ticket price), the historical epic made HK$2 million from 60 screens, and newspapers are even reporting sold-out shows in the afternoon. Shows will likely be added over the weekend, and it’ll also likely hit the HK$10 million mark by the end of the weekend.

For kids who don’t care about the Three Kingdoms, Japanese animated film Keroro did fairly well also, opening on 30 screens for an opening day take of HK$776,000, and will also see a fair boost in business over the weekend, as kids films often do. It will also take away a chunk of audience for Kung Fu Panda, which made HK$569,000 from 54 screens on its 13th day of release. More on Monday.

Variety also looks at Red Cliff’s openings in other Asian countries.

- Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has posted what must be the first English-language review of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea.

- It first broke on Ryuganji, and now it’s pretty much everywhere: Japanese detective drama Aibou, whose film adapatation is the biggest hit for the first half of 2008, will be going the Bayside Shakedown route already with a spinoff film for one of its supporting characters.

- The latest Mummy film, shot and set in China as one of the highest-profile Chinese co-productions to date, is reportedly having its release held up by Chinese censorship authories, even though they shot with an approved script.

Saving more news for the weekend entries. See you then.

-

- It’s Japanese Oricon charts time! GReeeN!!! rules the album charts for the second week in a row, fending off newcomers Ellegarden and Shiina Ringo (debuting at 2nd and 4th place, respectively). Meanwhile, YUI’s latest takes the top spot at the singles chart in its first week.

More over at Tokyograph.

- Not surprisingly, Kung Fu Panda has now made 135 million yuan in China, making it the highest-grossing animated film in China ever.

- Ryuganji translate an editorial that puts into simple numbers why TV drama adaptations will continue in Japanese cinema as long as just a fraction of its audience goes to see the films.

- Grady Hendrix of Kaiju Shakedown writes about Asian actors participation in the latest Batman flick, including thespian/photo-addict Edison Chen’s one line in the film.

- Under “casting news” today, Jun Matsumoto will be starring in a drama special that is part of Nippon TV’s annual charity program. Matsumoto, hot off the success of Hana Yori Dango Final, is one of the two hosts of the 24-hour program.

Meanwhile, Takako Matsu will be starring alongside Tananobu Asano in a new film based on a story by Osamu Daza. Actually, I don’t believe this is Matsu’s first starring role, since she did star in April Story, which runs just barely over feature film running time of 60 minutes.

Lastly, Hideaki Ito will be playing the villain in the troubled Yoichi Sai production The Legend of Kamui. Wait a minute, Ekin Cheng is in it too!

- Major Japanese film distributor Shochiku has finally started its own Youtube channel for their own trailers. My Youtube source got shut down recently, but trailers are not hard to come by if one searches harder for them anyway. They’re at least on official website (with the exception of Ponyo and many Hong Kong films, of course).

- Speaking of trailers, Nippon Cinema has the full-length trailer for Tetsuya Nakashima’s Paco and the Magic Picture Book, and I’d say it makes the film look a lot more promising than its teasers did.

-  China will be the shooting location for a new film that will be shot using the innovative 4k digital technology, which holds 4 times the data of a usual digital movie. Of course, the word “dragon” is required to be in the title.

-The poor 400 orphan films that lost their home when UK distributor Tartan went under 2 weeks ago have found a new home with a new distributor, who will continue to buy films with the Tartan name attached.

- As expected, Hancock topped the Korean box office, as Hollywood films dominate for another weekend. However, Public Enemy Returns is reaching the 3 million admissions mark, though Crossing isn’t making much of a dent.

More at Korea Pop Wars

- Korea is not the only place where local films are suffering at the box office, as Bollywood is also posting a loss of about USD$37.5 million for the first 6 months of 2008.

- The controversy surrounding the “Waiwai” column on the English version of the Manichi Daily News website continues. Apparently, the newspaper is caving to those obsessed Japanese netizens by not only punishing those involved with the column, which translates Japanese tabloid magazine articles to English, but also carrying a thorough investigation into the column. I did read Waiwai, and I enjoyed reading it as trashy fun. While those responsible should’ve made it more clear about its sensational nature, isn’t it becoming a bit of a witch hunt now?

- With Kung Fu Panda now a major hit in China, Chinese filmmakers are asking why they can’t make that same type of film in their own country. Somewhat surprisingly, they get blame the government and live to tell about it.

- Danny Glover made a public appearance in Tokyo to talk about his latest film, the Japan-American co-production The Harimaya Bridge. He said that he hopes the film will bridge Japanese and American prejudices. I assume that means for America, they should get rid of stuff like I Survived a Japanese Game Show. As for Japan, they should probably not do something like this:

Yes, those are two Japanese actors doing Driving Miss Daisy in full make-up.

- It’s reviews time! First up is Variety’s Derek Elley’s very positive review for the Chinese comedy Two Stupid Eggs. He obviously liked it more than I did.  Hollywood Reporter has a few new reviews for some Bollywood flicks, but the one I’m most interested in is Lisa Tsering’s review for the sci-fi epic Love Story 2050.

- The life of Japanese boxer Daisuke Naito, which include being bullied at school and a period of isolation at home, will be turned into a TV movie. It will be shown at the end of the month.

- Jang Dong-Gun will supposedly be starring in Korean director Lee Myung-Se’s next film. However, the report may be talking about the documentary Earth, which is the shortened film version of the TV documentary Planet Earth. In Japan, the film was narrated by Ken Watanabe, and it was definitely not directed by Lee Myung-Se.

Correction: Turns out maybe the report, seems to be badly translated, is reporting that Jang will be narrating Earth after starring in Lee’s latest film M. Maybe.

- A Brazilian telenovela (the South American version of a soap opera) will be shooting in Indonesia. Wait, do they mean the whole thing?

- Another Japanese drama is going to the big screen. However, unlike your usual adaptations, this drama was shown on TV after midnight because it features nudity. No word on whether said gratuitous nudity will be translated to the big screen as well.

- Some netizens have pointed out that parts of the poster for John Woo’s Red Cliff resemble the poster for the Hollywood film 300. Who’s surprised that an Asian film would rip off Hollywood designs, and who’s surprised that there will be people complaining about it? I don’t see any hands raised.

- With Will Smith’s Hancock getting thrown into the mix, three Hollywood films took up a bulk of the Hong Kong box office over this past weekend. As expected, the superhero comedy took the top spot with HK$2.97 million from 58 screens on Sunday for a 4-day total of $HK10 million. Kung Fu Panda wasn’t far behind, either, with HK$2.43 million from 60 screens for a 11-day total of HK$19.45 million. Wanted is down at third place with HK$1.19 million from 41 screens for an impressive 11-day total of HK$17.43 million. This far outdoes Universal’s previous release, The Incredible Hulk, which has made only HK$12.02 million after 25 days.

Nim’s Island, which didn’t have a very impressive opening day on Thursday, saw a siginificant boost from the family business, making HK$206,000 from 19 screens. It doesn’t sound very good, but that’s more than double the opening day gross. After 4 days, the adventure film has made HK$600,000. The French film Ensemble is also still doing very good limited release business, making HK$44,000 from 4 screens on Sunday, and has since made HK$600,000 after 11 days.

-  In Japanese box office attendance figures, (insert adjective here) Hana Yori Dango Final tops the box office again, with Indiana Jones remaining in second place as well. The newsroom film Climber’s High managed to hit third place, while Speed Racer repeats its fate seen around the world with only a 5th place opening. They tried. More when the numbers come out.

- The new Summer 2008 Japanese drama season has started, and the number one show so far (by a mile) is Code Blue, the medical drama about lots of unbelievable pretty people aseembled into one team of helicopter doctors. On Thursday night, it scored a 21.2% rating, making it the highest number for a Summer drama at the Thursday 10 pm slot, and the 7th highest in the time slot’s history since it Fuji started showing dramas then in 1984. Meanwhile, the over-sensational Monster Parents (I saw the premiere episode in Japan. More on its sensational advertising in the future) premiered with a respectable 14.2% rating, especially when Muri Na Renai had that slot last season. This season’s Japanese remake of a Korean source material, Maou, debut with a 14% rating, which is not bad considering its Friday night slot. Doing not as well on the same night is the lottery drama Loto 6 de 3 Oku 2 Senmanen Ateta Otoko with ex-GTO Takashi Sorimachi, as it debut with a 12.4% rating. It wasn’t a very good show either. The latest drama with Beach Boys co-star Yotaka Takenouchi, the medical drama Tomorrow, did much better than Ryoteki Na Kanojo with its premiere episode, scoring a 16.8% rating.

Go to Tokyograph to see the description of Summer 2008 dramas.

As for Spring 2008 dramas still on air, CHANGE took a slight drop to under 20% again, and becoming less and less likely to beat Gokusen in the season average. Rookies has a very loyal fanbase, as its ratings continue to hover around 14-15%, and Hachi-One Diver got a big boost to a 9.4% for its 9th episode after the previous episode got only a 6.9% rating.

- John Woo’s Red Cliff is finally being unveiled this weekend throughout Asia, as its 140-minute part 1 will open in Hong Kong, China, Korea, and Taiwan this Thursday.

However, Korea will be getting a shorter version of the film, with distributor Showbox cutting 9 minutes of the film with Woo’s permission (though not necessarily blessings). If the film was so damn meaningful, then why cut even one minute of it?

- Meanwhile, Kaiju Shakedown looks at the slate of super patriotic Chinese films that will probably never sell at film markets around the world.

- A little late, but Jason Gray has posted what is probably the first English-language reaction to the potentially creepy Kodomo no Kodomo (”A Child’s Child”), and apparently it’s really not that bad.

- The Thai government is planning to attract more foreign productions with tax breaks that should come into effect next year. Currently, three high-profile films - one of them Hong Kong - are shooting there.

- The Korean brotherhood classic Friend is coming to television, with original director Kwak Kyung-Taek said to be including new stories that were not included in the original film. Still being written, the drama plans to be on TV early next year.

- Herman Yau, fresh off his latest gangland flick, is already starting work on a new film. This time, the film will be more in the vein of his 2007 film Whispers and Moans. About Hong Kong prostitutes, the film stars 80s-90s pop star Prudence Lau, Anthony Wong, Race Wong, and DJ Sammy. The current Chinese title of the flick directly translate to “I Don’t Sell My Body, I Only Sell my Uterus”.

- According to a producer at Milkyway, Johnnie To has considerably slowed down on productions and will not be following his usual schedule of 2-3 films a year after Sparrow.

- Our first and foremost jobs here at Lovehkfilm is to review movies, and we got some of those for you today. Boss Kozo has a review of Lawrence Lau/Scud’s City Without Baseball, a review of Korean hand ball flick Forever the Moment, a review of the Taiwanese film Soul of a Demon, and a review of Japanese dark comedy Funuke, Show Some Love, You Losers!. JMaruyama offers a review of Kwak Jae-Young’s Cyborg She, which he insists is a remake of Park Chan Wook’s I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK, and that’s OK too. I myself offer a review of Don’t Laugh at My Romance and a review of cute puppy film A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies.

- It’s Japanese Oricon charts time! As expected, Arashi’s theme for the Hana Yori Dango movie debuted at the top, with an impressive 300,000+ copies sold. Shuchishin (aka the “stupid boy band”.  Really, that’s their nickname) not only survived to their second single, but also manage to sell 200,000+ copies of it. The album chart was also fairly crowded, with GReeeN!!! taking the top position for the first week of their second album, Ayaka’s 2nd following close behind, and Ketsumeishi debuting at a somewhat disappointing 3rd place. My newest idol Jero debuts at 5th with his first album.

More at Tokyograph.

- China loves Kung Fu Panda, as it has already become the most successful animated film ever in China with a box office take nearing 100 million yuan after 10 days. I don’t get that two days’ delay in Sichuan, though, which sounds more like distributor’s indecision more than anything else.

The earthquake didn’t exactly affect people’s moviegoing mood anyway, as May’s box office is up 26% from the previous year, prompting China Film Group to post a cryptic message that seem to spell either showing off or amazement.

- The Japanese news shows were all over a Wall Street Journal story this morning, which compared the rather unpopular Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda with current TV Prime Minister Kimura Takuya. Click on the first link, since going directly to the site won’t let you read the whole story.

-  Kaiju Shakedown’s Grady Hendrix looks at what’s going with The Warlords‘ western distribution ambitions, which has now dwindled down to a butchered DVD release.

- A bit late: Jason Gray offers a look by Midnight Eye’s Jasper Sharp on how Tartan UK came to meet their current fate of closing down.

- Lionsgate will be working with CJ Entertainment for Korean Wedding, aka “How Another White Man Falls in Love with Asian Girl and Finds Asian Culture Funny”.

- Taiwan may take a very significant step in continuing to improve relations with China by lifting their ban on Mainland Chinese performers, even though Taiwanese performers have been performing in the Mainland for years.

- An ad sales slump for Japanese television is causing board member of these TV stations to go from earning tons of money to earning just lots of money.

- After the success of the Ayaka-Kobukuro duet Winding Road, their record company is back for round two with another duet to be released.

Not much time today, so I’m leaving the number crunching for tomorrow.

- Something has captured the premiere of the first trailer for Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on a Cliff By the Sea from the NTV morning show. Yukie Nakama is onscreen because she was on the show to promote the final episode of Gokusen, hence the Yankumi look and all. There’s also a second longer trailer in Japanese theaters that I saw, but for now, I dare you to try get that song out of your head.

Also in the world of Japanese trailers, there’s an official trailer for the mega-budget 20th Century Boys, which already has advertisements on TV several times a day, and actually shows off more than this trailer.  There’s also the second teaser for Tetsuya Nakashima’s latest Paco and the Magic Picture Book. On the other hand, from the well-known assemble cast to the screenful of cgi, this seems to have the ingredient for a mega-disaster, even if I’m a big fan of Nakashima’s work.

- Nippon cinema has a write-up on the release of the Hana Yori Dango movie, and even reports that the first day attendance seems to point to a mega 10 billion yen take. More when the numbers do come out.

- The Korean Grand Bell Awards happened last night, and The Chaser was the big winner by taking home six awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor. Meanwhile, Yunjin Kim picked up the Best Actress Award for the thriller Seven Days, which somehow managed to pick up the Best Editing Award too. Andrew Lau must be proud.

- This all comes on the heels of a critical summer season for Korean films. With The Public Enemy Returns as the first Korean film to top the box office in 3 months, the major studios are now turning to tentpole blockbusters instead of horror films to battle the Hollywood monsters.

- Korean Star Song Hye-Kyo has not only signed up to star in John Woo’s latest film; she’s also joining producer Terence Cheng’s newly-formed talent agency. It’s no surprise, as Song has made a name for herself in the Chinese-speaking region for her roles in several well-known Korean dramas. This is also the agency co-founded by Michelle Yeoh and reportedly took on Isabella Leung, resulting in the current legal debacle.

- The sale of Universe Entertainment by major stockholder Daneil Lam has reported been canceled, though not much else is known.

- After announcing their move into talent management and film, major Japanese record label Avex will be producing their own musical that will feature 21 classic songs from the label’s artists.

- The controversial Chinese search engine Baidu has signed up for a major partnership with three major record companies to provide legal music streaming on its site. Now the Western record labels just need to learn how to play nice.

Catching up on weekend number crunching:

- Time for Japanese box office. As expected, Paramount included last week’s sneak preview numbers to boost their opening weekend figures for Indiana Jones. After deducting the 597 million yen figure reported by Eiga Consultant last week, the actual opening weekend number is actually roughly USD$7,890,000, or 847 million yen from 789 screens. Meanwhile, The Magic Hour continues to do well, losing only 12% of business and now passed the 2 billion yen mark. Aibou continues to have similar holding power, losing only 13.7% of business and is now past the 4 billion yen mark at the box office. In fact, nothing on the top 10 dropped by more than 26% at the box office this weekend, making for quite a healthy weekend in Japan.

In the battle of the two family-friendly films, the music-themed August Rush did much better with a 3rd place debut, thanks to the shameless advertisement, which literally asks potential audience to “please cry”. The other film, the Japanese-language The Witch of the West is Dead, debut all the way down at 6th place, and was actually on less screens to begin with.

- Finally some good news from Korean cinema, as The Public Enemy Returns rocketed to the top of South Korean box office with 1.6 million, outdoing Hollywood challengers Get Smart and 21.

More at Korea Pop Wars

- Despite some nonsensical complaints against it, Hollywood’s Kung Fu Panda reached the earthquake-strickened Sichuan Prefecture in China and is expected to do quite well. In fact, it already made about 10 million RMB this past weekend. The fact that the performance artist who complained against the film includes panda images in his work just says so much about his motives anyway.

- It’s Japanese TV drama ratings time! As previously mentioned, this season’s bona-fide hit Last Friends scored a season-high 22.8% rating for its last episode, after a tough start at the beginning of the season. The much talked-about drama has cliched a third-place finish with an average rating of 17.7%. That leaves Gokusen and CHANGE fighting out for first and second place. With Gokusen’s ratings still hovering below 20% this week (a slight rebound to 18.1%, actually), CHANGE may have a chance as it nears its climax these several weeks. Right now, Gokusen has an average of 22.5% (mostly likely to go up with its finale this week), and CHANGE has an average of 21.2%, which means CHANGE is still within reachable distance to a ratings victory this season.

In other ending dramas, Muri Na Renai rebounded with a 7.7% for its final episode, the third season of Keishichou Sousa Ikka 9 Gakari ends with a season-high 15.4%, Around 40 ends with a 15.1%, and Hokaben ends with an 8.9%. More next week, when many of the remaining dramas wrap up.

- Good news for Hins Cheung, and depressing news for Hong Kong music, as Hin Cheung’s first compilation album became the best-selling album in Hong Kong for the first half of 2008 with only 50,000 copies sold. In fact, the top selling Hong Kong albums are either concerts (Andy Lau, Eason Chan), compilations (Joey Yung, Hins Cheung), or cover albums (Alan Tam). The only original album on the chart is Taiwanese artist Joanna Wang’s debut album, which sold a measly 20,000 copies. This proves the problem in Hong Kong that illegal downloading is so prevalent that an artist’s popularity far precedes their sales figures. Just think: Denise Ho sold out all 7 of her concerts in 2006-2007, which adds up to over 70,000 people. However, her compilation sold only 20,000 copies so far.

Here’s the translated list of the top 10 best-selling albums in Hong Kong from January to May 2008, from this picture on Hong Kong’s Ming Pao:

Hins Cheung’s my 1st Best Collection
Andy Lau’s Wonderful World concert
Eason Chan’s Moving On Stage 1 concert
Love 07 compilation
Joey Yung’s Like Joey compilation
Beyond’s 25th Anniversary compilation
Alan Tam’s The Best Sound Ever Reborn
This is Classical Music compilation
Joanna Wang’s Start From Here
Denise Ho’s Goo Music Collection

-  (via Ryuganji)Ghibli World has a write-up on the latest trailer for Hayao Miyazaki’s latest Ponyo On a Cliff By the Sea, (that’s the official title on the poster), though it followed Ghibli’s policy of providing no video content for the internet. I saw the trailer yesterday, and it looks like a return to simplicity for the master.

- Just as Japan is finished being swept up by promotional wave for The Magic Hour, TBS is now filling their screen with Hana Yori Dango all day just ahead of the film version’s opening this Saturday. After their major promotional event at the Budokan, now it’s a one-hour special on TV just before opening day.

- Despite Japan’s aggressive policy to push people to get into digital broadcasting (the previously-mentioned “analog” screen text will begin next month), a survey reveals that only about 43% of all Japanese TV-watching households are digital-ready.

- The Chinese government has enacted a law requiring all media to give the government’s emergency response efforts free publicity, part of a larger law that requires more efficient emergency reporting during large-scale disasters.

- What kind of TV actually otdoes Japan is doing low-brow reality shows? America’s ABC, for actually putting the words “holy sushi” in the ad for a xenophoblic show like “I Survived a Japanese Game Show”.

- Twitch has an interview with director Ryo Iwamatsu, whose latest film premiered at the New York Asian Film Festival.

- After the surprise success of Dai Nipponjin, comedian/director/actor Hitoshi Matsumoto is reportedly already polishing the script for his follow-up film, while a possible sequel for Dai Nipponjin is also being discussed.

- While the Hollywood blockbusters took over the weekend at the Hong Kong box office, the big story is the impressive performance for Johnnie To’s Sparrow. With no real box office draw (Trust me, Simon Yam is not a considered a box office draw by himself in Hong Kong), the film saw a boost over the weekend with the adult audience, making HK$800,000 from 31 screens for a 4-day weekend total of HK$2.82 million. This already nearly matches the box office total for PTU, To’s last film with such an extended shoot. As for the Hollywood films, Narnia made HK$1.01 million from 47 screens for an 18-day total of HK$22.07 million, which means it has now surpassed Iron Man and is aiming to match Indiana Jones‘ HK$26 million take in Hong Kong. At second place is The Incredible Hulk, with HK$852,000 from 33 screens for a 11-day total of HK$9.96 million. Business is proving to be a little slow, though that could be because of its relatively low screen count.

Hollywood parody flick Superhero Movie is doing much better than Meet the Spartans, with HK$582,000 from 21 screens on Sunday for a 4-day total of HK$2.11 million. As for limited releases, 21 did very well with its 2-screen release, making HK$64,000 for a 4-day total of HK$190,000. However, the Lawrence Lau co-directed film City Without Baseball did even worse over the weekend, with only HK$36,000 from 8 screens on Sunday for a 4-day total of HK$170,000. Similarly painful is Tsui Hark’s Missing, with only HK$74,000 from 15 screens and a 11-day total of HK$1.17 million. However, it supposedly managed to make nearly 10 million RMB over its opening weekend in China, making it a psuedo-hit (I emphasize psuedo because the budget is surely higher than that.).

- Still waiting for the relevant numbers from Japan and Korea. Meanwhile, Koki Mitani is still working hard to pimp his hit film The Magic Hour, which has now made 2 billion yen and attracted 1.6 million admissions, by running around 5 different theaters to do meet-and-greet sessions at 8 different shows over a course of 24 hours over the weekend (the last show being a 1:20 am show). Hong Kong film should promote themselves like that.

- A Russian film took the top prize at the Shanghai Internatonal Film Festival, while a local film took home the Jury Grand Prix and Best Actor. Taiwanese director Leste Chen also managed to win the Most Creative Award with the pitch for his latest film.

Also, Chinese director Wang Chao also managed to get enough funding to start shooting his next film at the same marketplace during the SIFF.

- Meanwhile, the New York Asian Film Festival has kicked off, with Hollywood Reporter giving it coverage for its first day. You can also keep up with the festival happenings from the Subway Cinema news blog.

- The Death Note films have won the DVD Data award in the Japanese films category. The hit comic-based films sold 260,000 copies as a set, making it the 10th best-selling DVD of 2007. Similar sales are expected for spin-off film L, coming out this week in Japan.

-  Last week, I included a link to the latest trailer for the animated version Storm Riders, and now the Hollywood Reporter reports that the film is complete and is set for a 200-screen release next month. 200 screens seem a little small, though, even for an animated film.

- The Japanese comic Kodomo no Kodomo is being brought to live-action from the director of last year’s Shindo. I saw a short teaser for this when I went to watch Yasukuni and have to say I was already a little disturbed. Now I’m even more disturbed to know that they actually did a series of comics with this story.  The Japanese name translate to “A Child’s Child”. Obviously, this isn’t a major studio-funded film.