- In less than 24 hours, the Cannes Film Festival will open with Wong Kar-Wai’s English feature debut My Blueberry Nights. I’m not going to be in France, and as an example of positive thinking, I don’t think I’ll ever be at the Cannes Film Festival. Nevertheless, I will try and keep track of the Asian films playing and selling there over the next 12 days.

The Hollywood Reporter has a roundup of the Asian presence at Cannes this year(not including the marketplace).

- The promotion for opening film My Blueberry Nights is getting out there. I found a promotional kit floating online that offers some beautiful stills(link is .pdf), and Twitch has the poster, which for some inexplicable reason places star Norah Jones in the little corner.

- Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, and Johnnie To’s Triangle is no slouch either, as Twitch has also found the film’s own promotional kit online. It’s definitely worth a look.

- Enough with festival stuff for now, let’s get to some box office.

Variety Asia reports that the Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara-penned war drama “For Those We Love” opened pretty big this weekend, when that’s actually not really the case. Eiga Consultant reports that the film actually opened a lot weaker than similar war films. Compared to “Otoko Tachi No Yamato,” which opened on less screens, “For Those We Love” made only 53% of its opening in December 2005. When compared to “Letters From Iwo Jima,” which Ishihara panned to make his own film sound better, the opening is only 37% of Iwo Jima’s. Both films opened around the same year-end period and had similar final gross. At least it might make back its budget.

- In other Japanese box office news, seems like Gegege no Kitaro is now poised to be the highest-grossing film in the “Yokai” genre(I guess mythical creatures would be the best way to translate that).

- In Japanese drama ratings, it stabilized slightly after the Golden Week holiday in Japan.

See here for all drama information.

Proposal Daisakuen (also known as Operation Love) regains its footing for its 4th episode with a 16.4 rating. As you can see, the rating for this week’s episode even went up (more on that next week). It’s now currently the highest-rated drama this season.

Looks like Sexy Voice and Robo found a fan base, as the ratings are now floating around the 7.0 range for 3 weeks now. We’ll see if that happens for the 4th week later tonight when the Tuesday ratings are up.

The biggest disappointment of the season Joudan Janai! (which sounds like it would fit right in as an American sitcom) also seem to have found a fan base, as the ratings are now staying around the 14.0 range. Considering that Yuji Oda’s last TV Drama Last Christmas had a 21.5 average, this does not bode well for Yuji Oda’s future career in TV.

The Oricon website has compiled a ranking of the satisfaction rate for the current dramas. So far, it’s the returning drama Kaette Kita Jikou Keisatsu, followed by the comic adaptation Liar Game, and Operation Love in 3rd place. Sexy Voice and Robo and Joudan Janai are at 8th and 9th place, respectively.

- Korea Pop Wars has a pretty thorough analysis of Korea’s box office this past weekend. Spiderman 3 continues to reign, but it’s not reigning very well - the opening boom was there, but staying power simply isn’t. This actually gave a chance for Asian films to perform pretty well at the box office.

- In today’s “bad idea” file, director Kirk Wong is possibly casting his remake of the classic Hong Kong martial arts film “Five Deadly Venoms” with Jay Chou, Edison Chen, and Maggie Q. I haven’t seen the original, and I’m already dreading this.

- This weekend, 7 films will try and bring down Spiderman 3, including two of the Herman Yau films I mentioned yesterday. Another one of them is the Mainland Chinese thriller “The Matrimony,” starring Leon Lai and Rene Liu. Variety already has a review.

- In case anyone cares, Universal Studios Japan in Osaka is finally making money.

- The MPA is launching a new anti-piracy campaign in Asia with new trailers in theatres. Which makes me wonder whether those trailers in America with the explosion expert talking about how hard he worked for the movies worked in the first place, when every opinion I’ve read of it has been overwhelmingly negative? And what makes them think that the guilt mentality is going to work?

- In other stupid media tactics, the New York Post talks about how American broadcasters are trying to keep viewers tuned in during commercials. I have to say I had no idea what was going on in that Fox cab driver thing, but it sure was annoying.

Today’s entry title refers to the Japanese punk band The Blue Hearts, who has a huge presence in the film I saw last night. Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Linda Linda Linda doesn’t play out like a crowdpleaser - it doesn’t have the dramatic flair of the usual high school girls films, nor is it outrageously hilarious like Shinobu Yaguchi’s Swing Girls - and yet, it’s so easy to get excited about it. The basic plot is fairly formulaic, with 4 girls overcoming obstacles to play in the big school fair, but its approach is so subdued and natural that I was surprised that I could muster up such enthusiasm for a film that intentionally doesn’t have much of a climax. The girls work hard, they bond, some kind of screw-up happens (which actually was such a natural thing to happen that I’m surprised I didn’t think of it), and they still play in the big show. There’s no time for big dramatic moments, and that helps to capture an authentic sense of reality rarely seen in American teen films without appearing artistically pretentious. And best of all: The movie has no montages.

Naturally, the standout is Korean actress Bae Doona playing Korean exchange student/lead vocalist that was randomly recruited. Speaking very little Japanese, Bae captures the simple charm in her character, an outcast that finds real friends through pure coincidence. Scenes involving her interacting with unsuspecting characters, including a crush that managed to learn a bit of Korean for his confession to her, are often the funniest scenes in the film. Too bad the subtitles couldn’t capture when Bae is actually speaking Japanese or Korean when it was crucial to getting the joke of said confession scene.

Anyway, it’s a different creature from Swing Girls, but it’s great just the same. It’s not the most entertaining, but Linda Linda Linda is simply one of the better teen films from Asia in recent years, period. And even though I’m about 12 years late, I’ve just become a Blue Hearts fan. I’m gonna have to check out the lead singer’s latest works too.

- The story this weekend at the box office is again Spiderman 3. But unlike last weekend’s “holy shit!” reactions, this week is about disappointment.

At the Hong Kong Sunday box office, Spiderman 3 still scored an impressive HK$2.86 million on 88 screens, bringing its 13-day total to HK$42.8 million, smashing Night at the Museum’s record as the highest-grosser this year so far. AND it still has the upcoming weekend to dominate before those pirates come and sweep the box office away.

In Japan, it still made 593 million yen this past weekend, with a 51% drop (which is perfectly natural since last week was part of a major public holiday period. If you look closely, just about every remaining film on the top 6 dropped over 50%) for a 13-day total of over 4.3 billion yen. This already way surpassed the track record of the previous film in Japan.

On the other hand, North America actually saw quite a huge drop on the gross, even though it still made a very large US$58 million, because it suffered a 61% drop from last weekend. In comparison, Pirates of the Caribbean only saw a 54% drop in its second weekend after its record-breaking opening.

And in worldwide box office overall, it took an even bigger tumble, losing 63.5% of its business, despite still making $85 million total. It’s not good, but how can anyone ever call a film that’s made over US$600 million a commercial failure?

- That was fast. While Kiroi Namida is putting people in small theaters, Isshin Inudou also has a more commercial film just opening in theaters. Bizan, starring Nansko Natsushima, opened in 291 screens this past weekend, making 135 million yen for a 4th place opening, right behind “For Those We Love,” which made an unspectacular 178 million yen. But that’s another story.

Anyway, according to Eiga Consultant, Bizan’s opening is 104% of the opening for Natsushima’s previous film Inugamike no Ichizoku and 125% of Gege, the previous adaptation of the author’s work. However, for the past 3 years, Toho opened huge hits Umizaru: Limit of Love, Negotiator(The Bayside Shakwdown spinoff), and Crying Out for Love in the Center of the World around this period, so that makes Bizan’s opening a bit of a disappointment.

- Another pretty big news today surrounds John Woo’s Battle of Red Cliff yet again. According to Oriental Daily, and now pretty much around several Asian Entertainment news site, Chow Yun-Fat, who suddenly dropped out due to reasons that had people screaming “prima donna,” has rejoined the cast, but only in a cameo role that will have scenes opposite Tony Leung Chiu-Wai’s character. This, ladies and gentlemen, is called an act public relations damage control.

- In Hollywood, there are also rumors flying around that Korean pop star Rain is joining the cast of the Wachowski Brother’s Speed Racer. After the free publicity Stephen Colbert gave him last week on the Colbert Report, I wouldn’t be surprised.

- Herman Yau may just be the low-budget genre version of Johnnie To. Aside from Gong Tau opening this Thursday, he also have 2 more movies coming up - Whispers and Moans, which was shown at the Hong Kong International Film Festival and was just reviewed by Kozo of Lovehkfilm, and Mob Story, which I’m sorry to say looks kind of bad. Twitch has links to all three trailers.

- Instead of more real news, Variety Asia posted reports on Asia’s current three biggest film regions - Japan, which is seeing independent distributors growing, China, where small distributors are beginning to take on the state-run China Films, and South Korea, where indie films are sadly getting bruised by the big bad Hollywood blockbusters.

- Malaysian native Tsai Ming-Liang is back in Malaysia with his latest film I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, but it ran into trouble with its censors. Tsai managed to make a compromise, making five cuts from the film himself, though the film will only be screened in one theater for two weeks. Good thing Tsai is also very good at selling his movie.

But Tsai isn’t going to take this lying down. He believes that now I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone will play in Malaysia in its truncated version, it’ll open up talks about censorship. He argues that wouldn’t have happened if the film had simply gotten banned. The Twitch link above has links to the two reports in the local press.

- Somewhere out there, Asian film fans are about to pull their hairs out because Jeffrey Wells doesn’t realize what he’s missing out on just because he can’t stay up for an extra couple of hours. Hell, I would’ve caught a 3 am screening if it meant being able to watch the world premiere of Triangle.

- A film that I’ve grown to look forward to is Hong Kong director/UFO staple Samson Chiu’s latest film Call Me Left, which chronicles the journey of a middle-aged man through the ten post-handover years of Hong Kong. It looks like a male version of Golden Chicken without the sex, but with parodies of Communist propaganda.

- Lastly, Twitch looks ahead to the summer months in Singaporean cinema, including the latest from I Not Stupid director Jack Neo.

Updating a little early today because of a meeting during the day, and i wanted to get the rest of the weekend news out of the way before they get outdated.

- As mentioned yesterday, Tsui Hark/Ringo Lam/Johnnie To’s Triangle has been approved to go to Cannes. Now Twitch not only has that sexy film noir-ish poster (look in the comments for a full-sized version), but also a plot sypnosis and stills. For the life of me, I can’t figure out who that guy in the glasses is, though.

- While France is seeing decreased admissions in its cinema, every cloud has a silver lining. It’s not French cinema that’s failing in France, it’s the Americans! I suppose they might be quite happy about that.

- “For Those We Love,” the Japanese WWII film about kamikaze pilots written by Tokyo’s ultra-nationalistic governor Shintaro Ishihara, opened on Saturday in Japan. I was afraid the film would glorify people who were essentially government-sanctioned suicide bombers in a time of war. Turns out the film may not be the right-wing-lovefest people were afraid that it was going to be.

- In related news, looks like the film itself will be a moderate hit. Apparently, Toei is already predicting a 2 million total admission and 2.5 billion yen final box office gross, which doesn’t make it that big of a hit, considering the film took 1.8 billion yen to make.

- Twitch has compiled a round-up of impressive cgi battle scenes, which included a personal guilty pleasure Starship Troopers. I honestly don’t understand why this movie is so hated in the court of cinematic crimes.

- Paramount once had a park here in the bay area - Paramount’s Great America. The park is still open, but the report I’ll be linking below says that Viacom, Paramount’s parent company, gave the parks to CBS, who ended up selling those to another company, which means Great America isn’t really a Paramount park anymore.

Anyway, my point is that Paramount is looking to get into the theme park business again, this time in Korea, and this time not really investing into it. I had really hoped Paramount would’ve done something like Universal studios in terms of creating a movie-like experience. Instead, it turned into just another theme park with roller coasters and irrelevantly cute fluffy animal characters.

Before I get into the Japan news, let’s get into some Hong Kong box office business first -

- A total of five films opened in Hong Kong on Thursday opening day, and that would naturally take away quite a few screens from Spiderman 3. Losing about 40 screens, Spidey still made HK$1.12 million on 81 screens for a 10-day total of HK$34.71 million. Expect another fairly big weekend (maybe 2-3 million per day?) and smooth sailing for the $50 million record mark until those pirates come along.

The biggest opening this week is the sequel 28 Weeks Later. On 27 screens, the zombie horror film made $300,000, and may do OK for the weekend with about HK$500,000 per day. The Japanese blockbuster Umizaru: Limit of Love (which made an astonishing US$60 million-plus box office take last year, despite the ratings for the drama and the original film’s gross not all that spectacular.), which is playing in Hong Kong right after the end of the drama’s run on TV, made only HK$120,000 on 14 screens. Expect TV fans either having already downloaded this or just waiting to catch this on home video instead. Fracture also opened on 15 screens with only $100,000 on opening day, Priceless, starring Audrey Tautou and just opened last month here in the United States, made HK$60,000 on 7 screens, and the Singaporean blockbuster “Just Follow the Law” crashes and burn with just HK$10,000 on 7 screens.

Lastly, Herman Yau’s Gong Tau, which has a strange release date of Tuesday the 15th (I think it might be a Chinese thing), did OK with its advance midnight shows. On 15 screens, it made only HK$50,000, which is decent, considering it’s only one show on a weeknight. There will be more midnight shows through the weekend, which might help earn some buzz that it desperately needs.

- A Japanese streaming video site has the teaser for Hitoshi Matsumoto’s “Dai Nipponjin,” which just joined the Director’s Fortnight lineup at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s OK, I have no idea what the hell was going on in that teaser either.

- The previously-mentioned “King of Foreign Otaku” contest was on TV in Japan two nights ago, and Japan Probe has a report on it with short clips (the link he provides to the contest on Youtube is already gone. Well-played, TV Tokyo). And the winner is from Hong Kong! Represent!

Wait. Upon closer inspection, the guy’s name is Cheng Ga Fai….isn’t that the former radio host who specializes in Japanese pop culture?! I actually have one of his Tokyo guidebooks. Crazy…

- Kiroi Namida, starring boy band Arashi, opened April 14th at just one theater in Tokyo. After its expansion on April 28th to 31 screens nationwide (considering this is starring a fairly popular pop group, why not open it wider?). Eiga Consultant reports that it has since recorded over 107,000 viewers after 4 weeks (that’s a good thing), and that it’s pretty much attracting everyone from their 20s to their 60s (thanks to Arashi, director Isshin Inudou, and the writers of both the screenplay and the original novel.). The trailer actually looks pretty good, proving that boy bands in Japan don’t necessarily always make bad movies.

- Sakuran is coming to DVD on August 3rd, and this time, it has English subtitles! As much as I am looking forward to this one, too bad I won’t be able to afford it.

- This took a while. The Broadcasting Ethics & Program Improvement Organization in Japan (did anyone actually know this existed?) formed a new Broadcasting Ethics Verification Committee that will investigate false information on factual TV programs. Call me a cynic, but I predict bureaucracy and politics to get in the way of getting any actual work done on this committee.

- Do they really need to do this? The head of the Motion Pictures Association John G. Malcolm is going all the way to Japan to encourage crackdowns on piracy and to congratulate Osaka police for taking down groups that produce and sell pirated films in the region. Of course, what Malcolm doesn’t know is that he’s thanking the worst police force in the country.

- With at least four Chinese films and one Japanese documentary being made about the Nanjing Massacre, a Japanese government official is saying to make sure the facts are “not distorted.” What part does he not want distorted, he didn’t specify, but I have a feeling it might the part that has something to do with Japanese soldiers killing Chinese people.

That’s it for today. More tomorrow, including Japan Times reviews.

Not much news today, and since I haven’t talked much about the films I’ve seen lately, this would be a good place to start.

Thanks to the Netflix streaming “Watch Now” option, I managed to check out the Japanese film “Who’s Camus Anyway?” It’s so hard to find that it’s not even available on Japanese DVD (If anyone can find one, great, but I looked through Yesasia and CDJapan and found nothing, but you can find the American DVD easily). Anyway, it’s a comedy-drama chronicling a week before the shoot of a student film. The ambitious 9-minute opening shot, which whips through a real Japanese college campus (I believe it’s Rikkyo University) introduces all the major characters - the promiscuous director, his conflicted assistant director, the new lead, the widowed professor, and members of the crew that love to talk about opening shots.

Inserting references to Camus, Death in Venice, Tarantino, and who knows how many more, you don’t exactly need to understand what the film is really about to “get” Who’s Camus Anyway. Confidently written and directed by Mitsuo Yanagimachi (I honestly thought a much younger director made this), anyone remotely interested in filmmaking would find the film interesting at just how tedious the whole process can be. Egos collide, romantic entanglements ensue, and someone’s eventually going to get hurt. Of course, those who aren’t interested might be wondering why art students are so in love with themselves, but as one of them, I can just say that’s the way it is.

It’s not much of a review, but call this a recommendation: Who’s Camus Anyway is well-written and directed enough to be entertaining, even when you can’t quite pick up every layer of the story.

- They’ve done it before, and now they’re doing it again. After the Weinsteins infamously gave up their rights to Chen Kaige’s stinker The Promise (sadly, rightfully so too), they decided to give up the outside-Asia/UK worldwide rights they got for Ong Bak 2 a year ago, except they’ll still hold North America rights. So good news: Weinstein no longer in charge of Western distribution of Ong Bak 2. Bad News: They’re still in charge of it in America.

- Looks like Hollywood is singing the tune “blame Canada” these days after Warner Bros. found that 70% of the camera-recorded pirated versions of their films come from Canada. Since then, Warner Bros. have canceled all advanced screenings of their films, and 20th Century Fox is contemplating delaying releases for major films in Canada. Believe it or not, since Canada has no laws banning recording films in cinemas, it’s now one of the major piracy nations in the world.

- On the other hand, Warner Bros. have secured a video-on-demand program deal in Hong Kong, which may or may not help combat piracy. Now let’s see whether they can make it accessible enough for people to actually take advantage of it.

- Speaking of Hong Kong and piracy, Hongkie Town reviews two reports of the same trial - the appeals hearing of the first person to be convicted of uploading films using Bittorrent. I’ll have to say, though, that the defense is really stretching why this guy might be innocent.

- Speaking of internet behavior, bloggers and forum posters beware - Your hyperlinks can get you in trouble with the law.

- I can’t believe I paid 35 bucks for this. I originally didn’t think that Ken Watanabe’s “Memories of Tomorrow” would actually get anywhere beyond Japan. Character dramas, especially those not produced by the big three - Toho, Shochiku, and Toei, don’t usually see their day outside the region. So I bought the English-subtitle-less Japanese DVD for my mother when I was in Japan, and I hoped that I can understand at least 50% of it with the subtitles on. Then they released it in Hong Kong, and now they’re even releasing it in America theatrically, thanks to Watanabe’s star power. I should be thankful that a film like this got international distribution, but what took them so damn long?

- I knew it was a pretty big hit, but who would’ve guessed that Gegege No Kitaro would actually be breaking box office records? That’s right, the film’s first full week take just over 1 billion yen is actually a record for distributor Shochiku.

- The first trailer for Benny Chan’s Invisible Targets is up, and wow. It’s not a very long clip, but it has a lot of crap blowing up, people jumping off stuff, and even has Nicholas Tse getting hit by a bus. It’ll probably have a crappy story with overacting everywhere, but this looks like a pretty promising action flick.

- Just when you think it’s out, they pull ‘em back in. After the so-so Terminator 3 promised to take the franchise to a brand-new level while also providing a satisfying yet grim end to the series, another private firm has bought the rights, intending to continue the franchise. Shall we file this under “bad idea”………

- Lastly, Korea Pop Wars looked at the Korean Film Council’s Korean film history book for you, and Mark lets you know whether you should read it or not.

I started playing the game The Movies again today, and I remember why I stopped in the first place - this game is addictive as hell. Maybe I just have a thing for sim games, but once i start, I couldn’t stop playing for well over an hour (an hour that i didn’t really have to spare). Good thing I stopped playing, went out and grabbed two books - Haruki Murakami’s After Dark and David Mamet’s Bambi VS. Gozilla. Otherwise, I would’ve never got myself to start today’s entry.

- Japan’s music charts continue to be weak, which might mean that Golden Week isn’t much of a shopping week. On the singles chart, Arashi’s latest gets the number 1 spot again, selling 150,000 copies. That might not sound too bad, but the number 2 singles. a solo effort from a Morning Musume member, sold only 27,000 copies. You can imagine how the rest of the charts go. This week, B’z releases their brand-new single, and they’ll probably debut at number 1 (again for the umpteenth time) on next week’s chart.

The albums chart is somewhat stronger, though not for Japanese music. Pop group mihimaru GT’s compilation album managed to debut at number 1 selling just 146,000 copies, but American pop albums from Avril Lavigne and Ne-Yo take the second and third spots with their albums, selling 118, 000 copies and 58,800 copies, respectively. Wait a minute, how the hell did Kat-tun fall to 13th place already? Ouch. There are no major album releases this week (at least none that is making a huge dent on the charts), so it’ll be kind of boring next week.

- Under kind of exciting news, Kenta Fukusaku announced that his latest film will be more like the hardcore masculine action movie his father Kinji Fukusaku used to make and a “real fight movie.” If it’s going to be anything like Kinji’s Yakuza Papers series, I can already tell it’s going to be quite good. Just look at who he has for his star.

- The Japanese string puppet film “Strings,” which is kind of like Team America: World Police except not, opened two weekends ago in Japan (the first half of Golden Week) in one theater. According to Eiga Consultant, in the opening 3 days, it attracted 2738 people and 4.65 million yen. For one screen, that’s really really good. However, it seems like the gender ratio of the audience is 2 males for 8 females, and most of the audience seems to be 20-30s females. Perhaps it’s not the gimmick that’s attracting people, but rather the presence of two of the Smap members in the voice cast.

- Korean films may still have a market in Asia, as plastic surgery comedy (I guess a new genre has just been invented!) 200 Pound Beauty hits it big in Singapore.

- In Hong Kong, Spiderman isn’t wasting his 120 screens, as the first hit of the summer makes another HK$1.9 million on Tuesday to an 8-day total of HK$32.28 million. I might go watch this tomorrow.

- Even though a lot of people are buying season pass to the Hong Kong Disneyland, it looks like it’s still struggling since its opening in fall 2005.

- Twitch introduces Funukedomo, Kanashimino Ai Wo Misero, one of the Japanese films going to Cannes’ Critics’ Week. It looks like a messy and twisted little family drama that might turn a couple of heads….or it might be another pretentious digital film that show maybe not everyone that can hold a digital camera can make a movie. I think it’s more likely to go the first route, though.

- Holy crap, it’s the trailer for Wilson Yip/Donnie Yen’s Flash Point. Dig it. (Thanks to Beat TG on the Lovehkfilm Forum for the link)

- India is trying to simultaneous release strategy, where a film opens in theater is also available in other formats almost instantly. “Life in a Metro,” starring Shilpa Shetty, who not only attracted attention from her win at the British Big Brother this past winter, but also from her PDA with Richard Gere two weeks ago, will open in several countries at the same time and also be made available on the internet for at least US$9.99 for a low-resolution version for only 72 hours.

- Darcy Paquet over at Koreanfilm.org updated his site with his thoughts on 2007 Korean cinema so far. It just made me more excited about Sai Yaichi’s Soo.

- Hong Kong’s Mandarin Films (When’s the last time they actually made profitable movie again?) has signed on to be a distributor for Tsui Hark’s latest film “Missing,” about a man diving into an ancient ruins underwater to retrieve his engagement ring. It’s a romantic thriller, folks.

- Anyone in Japan be sure to watch the Foreigner Otaku Champion on the night of May 10th Japan time! This ought to be interesting, to say the lease. More details from Japan Probe.

Been gone for a bit, now I’m back, hopefully sticking to a regular posting schedule again.

- Obviously, the big story is the domination of Spiderman 3 pretty much all over the world. In North America alone, the second sequel to the popular franchise made US$151 million. I’ll break down the individual Asian box office results (at least the ones I have) later, but after 5 days of release, it has already shattered all types of box office records (though the Box Office Mojo article suggests that’s due to the super expanded release.) AND well on the way to recuperating its US$250 million budget (plus at least 150 million for advertising and print, minus 50% for exhibitors, actors’ back end salaries, etc.), or dare I say - make a healthy profit.

- And when Box Office Mojo meant super expanded release, they mean Sony pretty much took up a majority of the screens available in the countries they invaded. Case in point - the film made another HK$5.78 million from 127 screens on Sunday in Hong Kong, bringing the 6-day total to an amazing HK$28.6 million already. This sucker is on the way to an at least HK$50 million take, which will be the biggest performer in Hong Kong since Initial D back in 2005. But don’t expect it to surpass the HK$60 million box office take set by Kung Fu Hustle.

With 127 screens taken up already, there’s not much room for anything else - Love is Not All Around (which Ming Pao columns are treating like it’s the second coming) continues to succeed with HK$240,000 on 31 screens for a 18-day total of HK$11.41 million, Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book continues to perform strongly on its 2 screens with HK$40,000 on Sunday, and well….everything else is just kinda embarrassing.

(US$1=HK$7.8)

- The same thing happened in South Korea, where Spidey took up 816 screens and attracted 2.56 million viewers (just a tad under The Host). And just like Hong Kong, everything else got left in the dust.

- In Japan, on the other hand, Spiderman still made a boatload of money, but since people in Japan got the entire week off, the box office was quite strong. After 6 days, Spidey managed to make 3.18 billion yen and recording 2.57 million viewers already. But most films on the top 10, such as Gegege no Kitaro and Conan, actually managed to record increasing box office for the latter half of Golden Week (Gegege actually recorded the biggest increase). Last weekend’s other big opener Babel lost about 20% of its audience, but still scored a strong 218 million yen and has already passed the 1 billion yen mark.

In fact, remember last weekend, when Gegege no Kitaro opened, and Shochiku proclaimed that it’ll make 3 billion because The Great Yokai War made 2 billion? Turns out they were right! Eiga Consultant realized that the opening weekend for Gegege was actually 175% of The Great Yokai War, which means it’s now on the way to make at least 3.5 billion yen. Wow, they got it right for once.

(US$1=120 yen)

- Since many in Japan travel during Golden Week, TV ratings also went further down for a bit. Last week’s ratings winner Proposal Daisakusen takes a huge dive because of its Monday time slot, losing 21% of its audience for a 13.4 rating. However, ratings for other dramas also stabilized a little bit - ratings disaster Sexy Voice and Robo steadies with a 7.0 rating, Bambino falls a little bit for its third episode with a 13.7 rating, sequel Kui-Tan 2 drops to its lowest rating with 11.8, and ratings disappointment Joudan Janai goes up a little bit again with 14.4, up from 13. 2 last week, when it was the beginning of Golden Week.

- Anyone that doesn’t feel like shelling out a lot of money for a book on Korean history can now just get the official version. According to Twitch, the Korean Film Council now has an English version of a book of Korean film history on their website.

- Johnnie To is no longer under the control of Dennis Law. Milky Way Image, which is under Law, can no longer afford To’s movies, so To decided to just buy his way out, taking two subsidiaries, which includes his own Milkyway Image, and his production team with him. Once the split is approved, Law’s company will no longer be Milkyway, but Brilliant Arts (which is just plain ironic, considering Law’s quality of work).

- I still haven’t seen War of Flowers (or Tezza: The High Rollers), and they’re already making a sequel. Even though the sequel won’t be made by the director of the original, they were creative enough to bring on Jang Joon-Hwan, the man who made the cult favorite Save the Green Planet (file this under “like, but don’t love” category for me), to do it instead. Like I just wrote, I haven’t seen the original, but is a director who made something as crazy as Save the Green Planet really up for a high-profile sequel for a blockbuster film?

- The Thailand film censorship issue continues, this time with Variety Asia writing about Thai filmmakers’ petitions for a new Film Act that allows freedom of expression.

This type of irregular schedule of posting will probably continue until next Monday, but I’ll try to deliver as much as I can each time i post.

- I read a column on Ming Pao yesterday (that I’m not going to translate) and contributes to Spiderman 3’s current success in Asia to a weak market. Well, how can you have any type of market when Spiderman 3 is taking up 102 screens in Hong Kong? The usual Hollywood blockbusters opens on 50 screens at most. That’s probably why Spiderman managed a huge HK$2.35 million on Thursday’s opening day (technically it’s opening day for all films, but the only major release this week opened on Tuesday), which is a lot less than the record-breaking HK$7 million it made on Tuesday’s public holiday (the previous holder for opening day was Kung Fu Hustle with over HK$4.5 million), but still very huge. After 3 days, Spiderman 3 has already made HK$12.68 million, and expect it to pass the HK$25 million mark by the end of the weekend.

The films from 3rd place all the way down to the 10th all made under HK$50,000 on Thursday. That’s so sad I’m not even going to analyze it.

- Reporting this a little late here, but ratings for Japanese dramas was dealt with another blow last week as ratings continue to plummet overall. Sunday prime time drama Joudan janai drops further to a 13.2 rating, while second place Proposal Daisakusen drops only by 2.2 % in its second week for a 17.1 rating, which makes it now the number 1 drama this season. Kenichi Matsuyama’s Sexy Voice and Robo drops to a desparate 6.9 rating its third week. In fact, Proposal Daisakusen is the only drama that cracked the 15.0 rating, and no drama this season has cracked the 20 rating line, a line that 3 dramas crossed last season. Sad state of affairs, indeed.

- After the complaints received because of Hong Kong broadcaster TVB’s uncensored broadcast of the classic film An Autumn’s Tale, TVB is looking to get in trouble again, this time because of a protester’s foul mouth during a live broadcast.

- Korea Pop Wars has a story on how the Korean distributor of John Cameron Mitchell’s sexually explicit film Shortbus found a way to get around the Korean film board to get a general release.

- Anyone in Los Angeles heads up: The Visual Communications Film Festival is happening now, and it includes a screening of John Woo’s Hard Boiled, the Japanese film What the Snow Brings, and Korean blockbuster King and the Clown, among many more.

- Jason Gray has a few more tidbits, including the first photos of Yoji Yamada’s latest film, and Asian film- destroy…er, I mean remaker Roy Lee’s decision to scrap a remake of Battle Royale.

- Why, oh, why do they bother? First it’s Sin City, then it’s 300, and now, the latest Frank Miller graphic novel (a glorified way to say comics) ready for adaptation is “Ronin,” about mutants, thugs, and a ronin duking it out in modern New York for a sword, or something like that. And the directors’ pedigree continues to slip too - first it’s Robert Rodridguez, then Zack Synder (in all fairness, I surprisingly liked Dawn of the Dead), and now it’s the director of “Stomp the Yard.”

- Speaking of “why do they bother,” the trailer for Rush Hour 3 is up, and it just looks like a sillier version of Kiss of the Dragon with an annoying-as-usual Chris Tucker. Even Jackie Chan once said he was baffled at the success of Rush Hour.

- Hong Kong gets film development council to figure out what to do with the US$38 million film fund - good. Council then establishes four other committees to figure out more stuff in more detail - bad. This fund is in serious danger of being held up by bureaucracy.

- At least the man has the good sense to finally announce that he’s retiring in next 5 years. I wonder if that’s just action films, or all filmmaking, period.

- Continuing on “why do they bother” news, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh will be in auteur of crap Rob Cohen’s latest film “The Mummy 3.” Apparently they signed on a young actor named Luke Ford in order to have him carry the franchise. Just read the plot description for yourself.

- In more screen development news, the big discovery in 2007 for Japanese music is the song “Sen No Kaze ni natte” sung by tenor Misafumi Akikawa, based on the poem, “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep.” The supposed history of how this song came about is that a Japanese author read the anonymous poem at Ground Zero in New York, translated it into Japanese, and wrote a song out of it. The song was sung at the annual Kohaku Singing Contest on New Year’s Eve this past year, and the single has now sold 920,000 copies to date. Anyway, I’m mentioning this song because Japan’s fascination with the song–>screen process is kicking in again, with a mini-series based on the song to be shown on TV in August.

- Want to know who are the most powerful people in Korean cinema? Look no further than this report.

- Twitch also has a trailer for Lee Chang-Dong’s first film since Oasis - Secret Sunshine.

- Be proud, Asia. Even though we’re not well-represented at Cannes this year, we still have three spots at Director’s Fortnight.

That’s it for now. When will I be back? I have no idea. Just keep reading, m’kay? Thanks.

With the pending issue solved, looks like I do have some time for a bit of news.

- As reported yesterday, Babel opened at 3rd place over the weekend in Japan. The numbers are out, and despite the 3rd place opening, the grosses are actually quite high. While Eiga Consultant reports the opening is only 94% of The Departed (1.6 billion yen total) and 55% of Letters From Iwo Jima (5.5 billion yen total), it’s probably more fair to compare to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s previous outing 21 Grams. Babel opened with roughly 272 million yen on 353 screens, while 21 Grams opened back in June 2004 with 49 million yen on 158 screens, which is only 18% of Babel’s opening. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty good to me.

- Spiderman 3, meanwhile, opens big everywhere in Asia, breaking records wherever it’s going. In fact, in Hong Kong (where opening day May 1st was a holiday), it made an amazing HK$7.39 million on an equally amazing 122 screens. Man, this movie IS going to be huge, isn’t it?

- The largest Japanese girl pop group of all time Morning Musume is also now the best-selling Japanese girl pop group of all time. They’ve hit a slump lately with sales, but the fact that they’ve managed to hit this mark must mean that they were HUGE way back when (obviously, I’m not a fan).

- The blame game continues between China and the United States over piracy. Now a Chinese organization is saying that piracy in China is because Hollywood isn’t doing enough to spread legal versions of films in the country. Hmm, what about its stringent censorship laws?

- Twitch warns that the Hong Kong region 3 DVD of a recently-released Japanese animated film may not be worth buying after all.

Lots and lots of news today, because I’m going to be participating in this tomorrow:

- Hong Kong’s BC Magazine - THE magazine for foreigners in Hong Kong - has not only an article of Dancing Lion co-director Marco Mak, but if you scroll down, you’ll also see an interview with Ming Ming director and Hong Kong MTV legend Susie Au.

- Too bad Ming Ming is flopping in Hong Kong. According to those nasty Sunday numbers, Ming Ming only made HK$140,000 on 12 screens for a 4-day total of HK$570,000. At least Ming Ming isn’t doing as bad as Dancing Lion, which only made HK$100,000 on 19 screens on Sunday for a 4-day total of HK$350,000. As expected, Love is Not All Around (Which Lovehkfilm’s Kozo is already calling one of the worst of the year) rules the weekend again with HK$660,000 on 38 screens for a 11-day total of HK9.36 million, which can only suggest that the HK teen audience is only as shallow as Hollywood’s teen audience.

Meanwhile, Spider Lilies, which Kozo also reviewed this week, is beginning to die down a little bit with only HK$80,000 on 9 screens for a 18-day total of HK$3.01 million, which is pretty good for a limited-release Taiwanese film. The Painted Veil actually shows some staying power with HK$100,000 on 5 screens for a 11-day total of HK$910,000. This week’s best limited release goes to opener Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, which made HK$70,000 on just 2 screens for a 4-day total of HK$180,000.

For reference: US$1=HK$7.8

- In my attempt to do what Hoga News did with its translation of Japanese news site Sanspo, the new adaptation of the classic cartoon Gegege No Kitaro opened on Saturday just in time for Golden Week in Japan. Shochiku, not embarrassed enough from their miscalculation of Tokyo Tower’s box office, saw opening day’s audience number was 150% of the opening day for Takeshi Miike’s The Great Yokai War, which made 2 billion yen. So they decided to declare that Gegege is going to make 3 billion yen. Should I buy into that estimate? I think not…

- In other Japanese box office news, the trend of small animated films making it big continues with the 9-screen opening last weekend of the “Dengeki Bunko Movie Festival.” According to Eiga Consultant, the Tokyo theater it played in found 4155 people over its opening 2 days. That’s 415.5 people per show, which is pretty good, considering the biggest screen on the multiplex holds 426 people. On 9 screens, the film opened with a 15.82 million yen, which seems to be encouraging the distributor to expand it all that much more.

On the other hand, Eiga Consultant also looks at the first wide weekend of Rocky Balboa last weekend. While the film opened to around the same numbers as Sylvester Stallone’s last starring role in Driven in North America, it ended up making more than double Driven’s final gross. On the other hand, Rocky Balboa only opened in Japan at 58% of Driven, which grossed 1.6 billion yen. Can Rocky stay a few more rounds in Japan, or will it always remain the film that “only almost beat Driven?”

- A while ago, I reported Korean star Lee Byung-Hun putting a cameo in Kimura Takuya’s latest film, the film adaptation of the drama Hero. Now, see the man on the set for yourself.

- The 43rd Baeksang Film Awards in Korea happened last week, and if an award can make it to its 43rd installment, it’s gotta be pretty respectable, right? Twitch has the results.

- New news source Filmphilia has details about personal favorite Edmond Pang’s latest film Exodus, which sounds like a dark comedy in the vein of Men Suddenly in Black. But his next film, which he recently got funding for at Filmart, sounds even better.

- Apparently, Quentin Tarantino is going to be bringing more of his “Grindhouse” installment Death Proof to Cannes - 30 minutes more???!!!! As if Tarantino didn’t have enough self-indulgent show-off dialog already, he actually managed to find more to put more into what is essentially a self-masturbatory short film with no plot and a kick-ass car chase. With that said, I still would like to check it out.

- Oh, and there’s a review for the modern Japanese pink film The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai.

Next, best of the week, and look for a revised report of the my SFIFF experience. By the way, because of the feature, there’s no song of the day today.