- Now.com.hk is a little late in their report of the Sunday numbers in Hong Kong, but Thursday numbers show that the Hollywood comedy The Heartbreak Kid and the Hollywood action flick The Kingdom will be duking it out for the top spot this weekend. Unless the Japanese tearjerker Tokyo Tower (which I saw today and liked) pulls off another rebound for the weekend, Beowulf will probably hold at third place, despite suffering a fairly big drop. One thing that’s for sure is that Aubrey Lam’s Anna & Anna is a bona-fide flop with only HK$12,000 from 5 screens on opening day.

- In Japanese attendance figures, Always 2 finally takes the top spot 4 weeks after its opening, exchanging spots with teen romance Koizora. Meanwhile, Resident Evil 3 stays at 3rd place. The big news is Midnight Eagle’s opening at only 5th place. Originally expected to be THE next Japanese blockbuster with day-and-date release in America, a 5th place place opening is damn near embarrassing for Shochiku and Universal. More when the actual numbers are released.

- In South Korea box office, Seven Days actually saw an increase in audience to climb up to the number 1 spot, and Lust, Caution becomes a 1 million admissions-plus hit thanks to female audiences. All that and more from Korea Pop Wars.

- This week on the Oricon charts - the new badly named Johnny’s boy band Hey! Say! Jump! debuts at number 1 with their very first single, which is also similarly badly named (A pop boy band singing a song named “Ultra Music Power” is like Tom Cruise talking about psychology - neither has any business to talk/sing about it). Meanwhile, KinKi Kids’ latest album debuts at number 1 for a Johnny’s two-fer on the Oricon. Also, voice actress Nana Mizuki scores the highest debut album for a voice actress.

More details at Tokyograph

- Despite the military crackdown and the tortures, the Korean embassy in the capital city of Myanmar is still planning to hold a Korean film festival in the city featuring films such as Taeguki, Welcome to Dongmakgol, and The Host. Yes, movies about miltary occupations or such undertones will surely get the people in the mood to forget their current situation.

- I reported on Monday that Saw 4’s opening weekend gross in Japan is about on par with the rest of the series. Specifically, Eiga Consultant reports that on par means it’s at 92% of the previous film’s opening. However, they also pointed out that this is the first time opening on additional screens led to a decrease in opening gross.

- Variety Asia has a feature on the power of the Oscars on the Chinese audience.

This year, China’s official submission is The Knot, but I’m sure the people know that Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution has the most chance of getting into the race, with some American magazines naming star Tang Wei as a front-runner to get a best actress nomination, if not at categories such as adapted screenplay, music, and cinematography.

- According to Twitch, the first teaser for Stephen Chow’s A Hope will be on several Yahoo Asia sites, though it may just be for a limited period of time. I’m hoping to catch it when I get home tomorrow night, but I’m really not expecting to see much in the teaser.

- What does a Japanese rock band have to do to be inducted into the Hollywood Rock Walk? Sell 70 million copies of singles and albums combined, just like B’z did.

- With digital singles selling better than ever, even the Japanese diva herself Ayumi Hamasaki will be releasing her latest single in digital form only, even though she will shoot a MTV and a cover jacket. Her record company even said that its results may determine how they release her singles in the future.

- The Father of the Playstation Ken Kutaragi will be honored at the Interactive Achievement Awards, despite the fact that he had to resign from Sony due to the disappointing sales of Playstation 3.

- The Japanese group Fumido will be releasing a single next month that was actually ready to go a year ago - except they had to wait for a year for the MTV to be completed, because it’ll be made up of one year’s worth of pictures from a married couple’s life.

- Those Hong Kong Sunday box office numbers are out, and at least two of my predictions were correct. Beowulf did indeed take the top spot with a strong HK$1 million from 40 screens, although the IMAX and 3D showings, which account for at least 4 screens in Hong Kong, are charging people double the money for the film. The animated film has a respectable 4-day total of HK$3.72 million.

I was right about Bullet and Brain, which didn’t see any significant rise in box office with a HK$210,000 take from 27 screens on Sunday, making its weekend take HK$940,000. This caused it to be bumped to 4th place, thanks to a dramatic increase for Tokyo Tower (HK$330,000 from 13 screens with no ticket price inflation for a 4-day total of HK$1.06 million) and the continuing strong showing by Lust, Caution. With another HK$250,000 from 31 screens in the bank, Ang Lee’s erotic espionage drama managed to cross the HK$45 million line on Sunday.

Derek Kwok’s The Pye-Dog (which I saw today and sadly was not blown away by) did slightly better during the weekend with just HK$130,000 from 28 screens on Sunday. After 4 days, the character drama with Eason Chan has made only HK$750,000, including previews. The weekend’s other limited release is David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises did OK, with HK$62,000 from 5 screens on Sunday for a 4-day take of HK$200,000. I’m contemplating whether to go watch it as I type now.

(HK$7.8=US$1)

- Japanese box office figures also came out from Box Office Mojo. At roughly the same exchange rate from last week (anything less than a 1 yen-difference would be considered roughly the same around here), The Sky of Love dropped by only a modest 23%. It’s set to pass the 2 billion yen mark probably by yesterday, and on par to pass the 3 billion yen mark as well. Meanwhile, now I realized that I screwed up with reading the rankings yesterday and reported that Always 2 is at 3rd place. With a drop of 34%, the hit sequel is actually at 2nd place with a current total of 2.19 billion yen and will definitely surpass the first film’s gross.

With a drop of 44%, I may be wrong about The Bourne Ultimatum being a big hit, but at least I’ll be right about it passing the 1 billion yen-mark. A number someone should verify is the screen count of the Yakusho Koji starrer Zo No Naka. Somehow, the film managed to lose 260 screens and now has a huge per-screen average.

Usually, I would separate the box office report into its own entry, but there are so little news out there that I decided to cram both into one

- Since my usual box office source hasn’t updated its latest box office figures, we’ll just have to predict what’s going to happen when someone updates some figures. Thursday opening day figures put Beowulf on top with a solid-but-unspectacular HK$630,000 on 40 screens. However, I have no idea whether that includes the 3D and IMAX numbers. Nevertheless, it should do sizable business over the weekend, despite its final gross now dependent on word-of-mouth.

The Wong Jing-written/produced action flick Bullet & Brain managed to make HK$200,000 from 27 screens, which means it might stay at second place. Of course, that would only happen if Tokyo Tower doesn’t see a jump from a fairly strong opening day gross of HK$146,000 from 12 screens. There’s also Lust, Caution, which is heading to the HK$45 million mark and may have already reached it by today.

Down for the count is Derek Kwok’s The Pye-Dog. Despite the “we have a good movie on our hands!” advertising campaign (which is actually true, according to the boss), the film only made HK$80,000 on 28 screens and looks to disappear from Hong Kong screens by next week. We’ll leave everything else for when the numbers come out.

- In Japanese attendance rankings, the teen relationship drama Sky of Love takes the top spot again, with Resident Evil III, Always 2, and Bourne Ultimatum holding on to their spots. But don’t let the rankings fool you, though: Bourne Ultimatum’s opening is actually 124% of the original’s and 158% of the second film, so expect it to be an over-1 billion yen hit. The only new entry is Saw 4 at 7th place, which is on par with the franchise’s take in Japan.

- In South Korean box office, Le Grand Chef tops the box office for a third week in a row, Once is a limited release hit,  Seven Days couldn’t get the huge opening it might’ve wanted, and a Korean film with 400-screen release could only muster a 5th place opening.

Korea Pop Wars also has a write-up of the October music charts, except I don’t listen to Korean music and have no idea who those artists are.

- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! Not much has changed in the fall 2007 - Galileo is still a big hit with a 22.9 rating average, Iryu 2 is now slumming in the mid-10’s (although it rebounded to a 17.6 from 15 rating last week), and Hatachi No Koibito continues its seemingly endless freefall, hopefully without dragging down Masami Nagasawa’s career along with it. At least Yukie Nakama’s Joshi Deka is keeping it company with its own failing ratings, and Dream Again featuring Takashi Sorimachi managed a small rebound just when it seems to be going down that path as well.

The hit network of the season is again Fuji TV, who not only has Galileo, but also the Saturday 11pm drama SP, which has been scoring in the mid-10s, a fairly impressive figure in that time slot. Then again, who wouldn’t want to watch a drama that has an end credit sequence that starts with a slow-motion jump kick done to a boy band pop ballad on Saturday night at 11 pm?

(Check out Tokyograph for all drama sypnosis)

-  On the other hand, TBS has the biggest flops of the season, which doesn’t look too good for a network that has experienced a decline in advertising income for the first half of the fiscal year (which started in April).

-  Two Chinese TV stations are jointly producing a 100-episode animated series based on Confucius’ life. I hope at the end the philosopher doesn’t come to a realization that media censorship and communism are great things.

- Bae Yong-Joon has suffered an injury while filming a big fight scene for his hit drama Taewangsasingi that he’s currently “treating” with painkillers and tape supports because of the tight shooting schedule. Despite his reputation, Yong-sama still sounds like a bad ass.

One of the most consistent features of this blog is the box office reports - first it just started as the opener for every entry, and now it belongs in its own section. To this day, I cannot explain why analyzing box office figures is such a big thing for me, though I think it has something to do with box office numbers getting misread all the time. For example, just because a movie opened at 8th place doesn’t necessarily means it’s bad. If the movie opened at 8th place on just 5 screens with a US$200,000 per-screen average, that’s an amazing opening. On the other hand, if your movie opened on 3000 screens with just a US$1,500 per-screen average, not so amazing.

Since I never went in-depth into what all those box office numbers mean, I’ll take the opportunity to do this after only getting 3 hours of sleep. Hopefully all those screen counts and whatnot would make a bit of sense in the future:

Hong Kong:

Screens: Roughly 150 (much of them from multiplexes)

Exchange rate: HK$7.8=$1. This is solid, trust me. The Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the United States dollars.

Measure of success: HK$10 million.

I live in Hong Kong, so my analysis of Hong Kong box office will always be more detailed. In this city, a usual wide release would be anything that opens on more than 20 screens and under 45 screens. A major blockbuster, of course, would get a lot more screens (Spiderman 3 got 105 at one point). Many films used to go past the HK$10 million point back then, but this is the post-BT post-pirated VCD world, so 10 million’s a high enough bar to set.

If you look at the top 10 right now, only two films are past the HK$10 million mark: Lust, Caution at HK$43.65 million and Brothers at HK$11.15 million. They’re both hits, and everything else is probably not until we look at their release pattern and their per-screen average.

For example, and this is not from the chart, a movie opens on just 4 screens. The basic standard for an “ok” per-screen average is at least HK$10,000. For this 4-screen release film, it should at least have HK$80,000 for that day’s box office take to be considered good.

Japan

Screens: roughly a few thousand

Exchange rate: 110-120 yen=US$1. It jumps often, which is why I often report the figures in yen instead of dollars.

Measure of success: 1 billion yen.

Japan is the second-biggest market in the world for Hollywood films, and it’s pretty clear why: They charge people 1800 yen a ticket, and Japan has more people than The United Kingdom. Here, the success of a film can be hard to determined because first there’s an attendance ranking out (whose actual figures I believe should be incorporated for all box office charts), then I rely on Box Office Mojo’s figures for percentage drops and per-screen averages.

That method has two problems: 1) There are discrepancies between the attendance ranking and the Box Office Mojo numbers because films that attract kids and older audiences often mean less money is earned because their tickets are 300 yen cheaper (that’s roughly 3 dollars per person, which makes a difference). So a kids’ film would rank high on attendance, but may drop a place or two in the chart with numbers; 2) Box Office Mojo’s exchange rate changes every week, which means I have to calculate everything back to yen to get an accurate number.

In Japan, anything around 100-350 screens would be considered a wide release. However, they tend to put foreign films for wider release (Spiderman 3 for a crazy 700-screen release), while the biggest live-action Japanese wide release is Hero at 475 screens. Also, while per-screen average can be high at US$10,000, remember that’s partly because the ticket prices are so damn high. That’s why we have blogs like Eiga Consultant, who sometimes look at actual attendance record for smaller limited releases.

South Korea

Screens: Roughly 1800 (according to Korea Pop Wars)

Measure of success: 1.5-2 million admissions

I started following South Korean box office when crossing the one million admissions mark was considered record-breaking, which should tell you how much Korean films have changed over the years. Now, a film has to get to at least 1.5 million admissions to be considered a genuine success. And if you have a blockbuster on your hands, it better gets past the 2 million mark - even D-War got to 8.4 million admissions, people.

I don’t track South Korean box office very much because I don’t know the language, I’ve never been to the country, and Mark Russell’s Korea Pop Wars already covers it well enough that I don’t have to go too much into detail about the figures.

Now, this is the part where I’m asking for help. I would like to start tracking Taiwan box office numbers, so I’m hoping a kind reader out there can help me out with a Chinese site with actual Taiwan box office figures. Also, what’s the measure of success, and a rough total screen count figure.

Then again, I figure many of you out there may not care, but it never hurts to be comprehensive.

Next time: Hopefully some real news reporting

- It’s Oricon charts time! Mr. Children scores their 27th consecutive number 1 single this week, while Glay’s latest EP could only get a 2nd place debut. As for the album chart, The Backstreet Boys’ comeback album manages to hold on to the top spot for the second week in a row, as Seamo’s latest manages a second place debut with 56,000 in sales. Go read more at Tokyograph.

- Despite delays and 7 minutes of cuts (though some of the sex scenes remain), Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is a hit in China and is expected to surpass the distributor’s forecast for its final gross. It’s even made people discuss film sexuality, though it couldn’t avoid the juvenile “shameless actors will do anything for money!” comments.

- As for South Korea, October 2007 box office is down 33% from October 2006. Before someone screams “piracy,” a possible explanation for the drop is because the Chuseok holiday occurred in September this year.

- It’s reviews time! Variety’s Derek Elley actually manages to survive the Mainland Chinese comedy Contract Lover and lives to tell about it. Elley also reviews Taiwan’s Academy Awards best foreign film entry Island Etude (also known as “the movie that replaced Lust, Caution”). Then Russell Edwards caught the hit “cell phone novel” adaptation Koizora (Sky of Love) at Tokyo International Film Festival.

Elsewhere, Lovehkfilm’s Kozo offers up reviews of the Hong Kong “relay” film Triangle, the small Hong Kong film Magic Boy, and the hit Japanese drama adaptation film Hero. Meanwhile, Sanjuro offers up reviews of another Japanese drama adaptation Unfair: The Movie and the Korean summer horror hit Black House.

- Both Ryuganji and Jason Gray write about the latest controversy regarding Toho actually asking people to give a standing ovation for the cast at an opening day event for the Japanese film Always 2. This comes after Toho had a PR nightmare on their hands when Erika Sawajiri ridiculed her latest film Closed Note at a similar event.

Jason Gray coverage
Ryuganji coverage

- The fifth Bangkok World Film Festival is over, and the Austrian film Import/Export won best film, while Taiwanese art film Help Me Eros managed to earn the special jury prize.

- Did I enjoy the comic adaptation film Honey and Clover? Not greatly. Was it a really big hit? Not really. That’s not stopping Fuji TV from bringing it to the drama world next season on Tuesdays at 9pm. Maybe it’d be better off there.

- With the possible exception of 28 Weeks Later, Fox Atomic hasn’t released one movie that can be considered “good.” However, that’s not stopping them from becoming the first Hollywood studio to produce a movie in South Korea. This one doesn’t sound any good, either.

- Under “Hong Kong people just like to complain, complain, complain” news today, after Batman realized Victoria Harbor’s water is too toxic to jump into, environmental groups and some tenants are complaining the producers’ request to keep the lights on at night for buildings along the waterfront.

To answer the group Green Sense: No, you cannot just “turn on” lights at night through post-production because there’s no light on the buildings themselves. For a group named “Green Sense,” you certainly don’t have much “common sense.”

- Under “most dubiously interesting idea” news today, Japan’s NTV is planning a “blog drama,” in which the path of a TV drama will be decided by fans who contribute to the drama’s blog.

- The Hong Kong websites couldn’t deliver the Hong Kong box office stats in time, so I’ll just do it myself thanks to Box Office Mojo. As predicted from the opening day gross, the relay film Triangle was a weak number 1 opener with almost HK$2.4 million from 36 screens over Thursday to Sunday. Considering the film opened with only HK$420,000 on Thursday, this means the adult audience (read: older film buffs) showed up over the weekend.

Lust, Caution passed the HK$40 million mark. Yawn.

Not sure if this is accurate, but Brothers apparently lost another 71% of its business, but at least it has gone past the HK$10 million that would qualify this as a moderate hit.

Anyone cares about how the limited releases did? Good, me neither.

- The Japanese box office was pretty huge this past weekend, as Eiga Consultant predicted correctly that Resident Evil 3 would indeed win the weekend. In fact, the third movie actually opened at 117% of the opening for the second film with 598 million yen. However, the opening for Always 2, while only at second place, was actually stronger in terms of comparing it with the series. At 474 million yen, the opening for the second film is nearly 150% of the opening of the first film, which became both a critical and a commercial hit.

The surprise is “cell phone novel” adaptation Koizora, which opened at 3rd place with 476 million yen. This is not only thanks to a dominant female audience (88% of total audience), but it was also thanks to the 10 to 20-year-old demographic, which made up 78.2% of the total audience.

Despite three big movies dominating, Takashi Miike’s Crows: Episode Zero only lost 26.5% of its audience in its second week. Blockbuster Hero is starting to lose its audience fast, losing 40% in box office gross. With 7.8 billion yen in the bank, it’s not likely the drama adaptation will hit the 10 billion yen mark Fuji had hope for, and the 15 billion forecast producer Chihiro Kameyama wants is something he made up while stoned.

- In South Korean box office, Hero opened with the highest amount of screens for a Japanese film in Korea, but with a limited target audience (read: People who know the established characters), it was nowhere near the opening for Sinking of Japan at only 128,000 admissions. Meanwhile, Le Grand Chef, which I guess you can make the vague Tezza connection because it shares the same original comic author, opens at number 1.

Once again, the top 3 films are Korean films, which suggests Korean films are taking back the year, but of course, there will always be people ready to blame the industry downturn on piracy. Still, give them credit for finally using “lack of creativity” as one of the reasons.

- When I went to the showing of Tsui Hark/Ringo Lam/Johnnie To crime film Triangle, the theater wasn’t even half-full. Looking at other theaters’ bookings on the internet, I really thought it would be a flop. However, looking at its Thursday opening day box office, it actually did alright. From 36 screens (seriously, did it deserve 36 screens?), the relay film made HK$435,000. With any luck, it may go past HK$2 million by the end of the weekend, but I doubt it’ll do any better than your usual Milkyway film.

Meanwhile, the only other wide release is the Hollywood action flick Shoot ‘Em Up, which made only HK$60,000 from 20 screens. As for the limited releases, the European arthouse flick Silk made HK$30,000 from 4 screens, and the Taiwanese youth pic Summer’s Tail only made HK$20,000 from 7 screens.

Lust, Caution, meanwhile, has probably passed the HK$40 million mark by now, and will probably remain the highest-grossing Chinese film of the year unless The Warlords comes in and beat it. However, that’s not all that likely at this point.

- In Japan, Eiga Consultant predicts that Resident Evil 3 will actually beat Always 2, the sequel to the hit Japanese nostalgia film, this weekend. This is because Resident Evil 2 had a far better opening than Always 1. For realz? What about the power of Always as an established franchise?

- Let’s first go over the Japanese box office numbers. Takashi Miike’s Crows Zero was quite a hit, making 397 million yen over the first two days from 259 screens, which was way more than enough to knock Hero off the top spot after holding it for 7 weeks. The drama adaptation is no slouch, though - it only lost under 18% of its business and is still on 475 screens. This is probably Fuji’s way of trying to push it to the 1- billion yen mark.

The other newcomers all found spots in the top 10, with Jigyaku No Uta (also known as Happily N’ever After) starring Miki Nakatani and Hiroshi Abe opening somewhat disappointingly at 8th place on 147 screens. Even more disappointing is Neil Jordan’s The Brave One starring Jodie Foster, which found only a 5th place opening after opening it on 294 screens and a big Hollywood-size premiere in Japan.

- The blog is now leaving the Oricon charts reporting to Tokyograph’s weekly reports because it seems like people don’t quite care about analysis of Japanese music charts. I care about numbers, but I deliver what people want, and I skip what people don’t. So, Bump of Chicken has two singles on the top 10, and a Morning Musume compilation album can only muster a 6th place debut.

- It’s reviews time! All from Variety this time are Russell Edwards’ review of the Tokyo International Film Festival opener Midnight Eagle, which is supposed to open day-and-date in Japan and North America, though it sounds kind of crappy. There’s also Robert Koehler’s review of Ryo Nakajima’s This World Of Ours, which is revealing plot details I’ve never heard of. Lastly, Derek Elley has a review of the Korean blockbuster May 18.

- Twitch has more about Danny Pang’s latest film In Love With the Dead. After reading the convoluted plot description, I honestly wonder if it’ll be able to top brother Oxide Pang’s The Detective.

By the way, I couldn’t get the trailer to work, but good luck to you.

- Just like The Forbidden Kingdom, Jet Li would like to tell you that The Mummy 3 may not be a very good movie.

- I know i should not judge a book based on its title, but why would anyone give $40 million for a film with a title like Laundry Warriors? I think it was the “We will deliver a stylized, partly anime feel, with the techniques of ‘300,’ but a look that is brighter” line that inspired their confidence. Their confidence, not mine.

Anyway, they’ll be shooting this thing in New Zealand.

- NHK will be airing a special of actress Takako Matsu’s singing career. For Hong Kong Japanese entertainment fans, Takako is known as half of the golden duo (with Kimura Takuya) that started the Japanese drama fever in the late 90s with the drama Love Generation. Perhaps that’s why I can’t really buy the idea of her being a singer.

- Kaiju Shakedown writes about Japanese director Masato Harada’s two latest movies. One of them happens to be that suicide song movie from earlier in the year that had advertisements in Japanese toilets.

- After the live-action franchise has proven to be a hit (though not very good in quality), Capcom and Sony will be working on a CG 3D feature animated film based on the Biohazard franchise set to be released in the second half of next year. For those not in the know, Biohazard is better known as Resident Evil outside Japan.

- Last but not least, director Senkichi Taniguchi, who directed several screenplays written by Akira Kurosawa, has passed away at 95.

- The Hong Kong box office numbers are back. On Sunday in Hong Kong, the crime drama Brothers topped the charts with HK$590,000 from 34 screens for a 11-day total of HK$9.18 million. That means it will indeed reach the targeted box office producer Andy Lau hoped for, making it a qualified hit. Still hanging on at second place is Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, which actually almost beat Brothers with HK$568,000 from 34 screens. After 33 days, the erotic thriller has made an astounding HK$38.81 million.

Newcomer-wise, Saw 4 opened day-and-date to the United States, but didn’t open as impressively as it did in North America. From 26 screens, the horror sequel made HK$346,000 for a 3-day total of HK$1.12 million. The other horror opening this weekend was Rob Zombie’s “reimagining” of Halloween. However, it made only HK$70,000 from 13 screens for a 4-day total of just HK$300,000.

Other flops that opened include the British historical drama Amazing Grace with only HK$176,000 from 15 screens for a HK$610,000 4-day total. There’s also the Communist propagandistic animated film Sparking Stars, which made just HK$88,000 from 10 screens for a 4-day total of HK$170,000.

- Some Japanese box office numbers are out, but I’ll wait another day for the full numbers to come out before I report what happened.