- It was a crowded weekend at the Hong Kong box office, though Sunday grosses were a bit lower than that of last Thursday’s public holiday. As expected, Iron Man topped the chart with HK$1.6 million from 60 screens on Sunday. After its opening last Wednesday, the superhero flick has now made HK$9.2 million, which is good though not exactly phenomenal. Meanwhile, Japanese doggie flick The Tale of Mari and Three Puppies made another HK$670,000 from 26 screens for a weekend total of HK$2.56 million. Wong Jing’s My Wife is a Gambling Maestro made HK$312,000 from 27 screens for a not-so-good weekend total of HK$1.35 million. The big limited release hit is the British melodrama The Other Boleyn Girl made another HK$193,000 from just 8 screens for a weekend total of HK$850,000. The film reportedly will expand to even more screens over the weekend. The crocodile thriller Rogue flops with HK$50,000 from 7 screens, and a weekend total of just HK$230,000. Lawrence Lau’s Besieged City, which opened on 7 screens, didn’t even make the top 10 on Sunday.

Meanwhile, The Forbidden Kingdom has passed the HK$10 million mark on Sunday with HK$559,000 from 38 screens. Barbara Wong’s Happy Funeral is hanging in with another HK$188,000 from 24 screens, many of which are only playing it only 1 or 2 shows a day.

HK$7.8=US$1

- Japan had a national holiday today (getting to the end of Golden Week), so box office figures won’t come out until tomorrow.  Same for the drama numbers.

-  After some very stupid word on radio earlier in the year, Japanese pop queen Koda Kumi is back. She’s now on tour, and she’s now the spokeswoman for a brand of razors. Insert inappropriate comment here.

- After Rinko Kikuchi had to drop out of the manga adaptation film The Legend of Kamui because of an injury, The Last Samurai’s Koyuki is now stepping in to take over her role in the Yoichi Sai-directed film.

- Variety has Robert Koehler’s review of The Children of Huang Shi, featuring Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat in supporting roles.

- There’s also a review of the Japanese film The Last Princess (aka remake of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress) in UCLA’s Asia Pacific Arts magazine after the film had its premiere at USC.  It’s an extremely interesting read.

- In case you don’t know, American television satirist Stephen Colbert has been in a battle with Korean superstar Rain to become Time’s most influential person two years in a role, which culminated into this video. Now,most likely as part of his promotion for Speed Racer, he will be on today’s The Colbert Report for a special dance-off. By the way, they both lost the poll, though Rain did beat Colbert at the end.

- There’s no confirmation for this, but CCTV supposedly boycotted performers who were part of the Chinese talent shows Super Girl and Happy Boy during a show featuring the latest Olympic songs by intentionally not giving them any close-ups. Since this is supposedly from the blog of a CCTV director, no one knows whether the entry or the policy is true.

- Lastly, The Daily Yomiuri focuses on the audience response to the controversial Japanese documentary Yasukuni.

- Drama adaptation Aibou opened this past week in the middle of Golden Week in Japan, and its opening day has already surpassed the opening day gross of distributor Toei’s biggest earner YAMATO. Since it opened in the middle of a week of holidays, it’s a possibility that its opening will surpass YAMATO, but may not have the legs to surpass it in total gross.

- Controversial documentary Yasukuni finally opened in Tokyo, and the first day showings were packed and thankfully without those pesky protests.

- The Japanese animated film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which I fairly enjoyed, is getting a limited release in the United States, but only in Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle.

- Apparently, you don’t need a dictatorship to take away human rights: Foreign reporters in China have not only experienced interference with their Tibet coverage, but they’re now also receiving death threats. Yes, that’s how you show your country has progressed in the last 30 years.

- Ryuganji translates a very interesting interview with Korean-Japanese director Yoichi Sai about his Korean production Soo and other stuff.

- This week’s Teleview column on the Daily Yomiuri looks at the several manga-based dramas on Japanese TV this season.

- Donnie “I have hair and I’m not afraid to show ‘em with my pumped abs!” Yen is set to invade over 1000 Chinese cinema screens come September with his latest film Painted Skin. How the hell did they already know how much money they can get from people’s pockets based on the number of screens?

- Five film distributors and three multiplex chains in South Korea has been fined by the Fair Trade Commission there for price collusion. Specifically, the film distributors sent a letter to the multiplexes, telling them to not offer discounts without consulting each other. Funny, Hong Kong multiplexes have been doing that with ticket price increases, so why don’t they get called on it?

- Jason Gray has a short review of Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers, which sounds like a hell of a movie.

- Grady Hendrix wrote a while ago about Lawrence Lau’s film about the attempted assassination of ex-Taiwanese president Chan Sui-Bian. Now, there are actual stills from the movie and even an official blog for it. The film, starring Simon Yam, is set for release in August. It will be the third film released this year by the director after Besieged City and City Without Baseball.

- It’s reviews time! From Japan Times is Mark Schilling’s take on Berlin Film Festival winner Park and Love Hotel. From the Daily Yomiuri’s Ikuko Kitagawa’s review of the Japanese blockbuster Shaolin Girl. Twitch’s Todd Brown delivers a review of Ryuichi Hiroki’s Your Friends, which hasn’t opened in its native Japan yet, if I’m not mistaken. Lastly, there’s Jason Gray’s pseudo-early review of the new Japanese film Flavor of Happiness, starring Miki Nakatani.

- State regulators in Singapore have imposed a fine on a TV network there for a broadcasting a home decorating show that reportedly “normalized and promoted a homosexual lifestyle”. Now, why aren’t there anyone protesting against Singapore?

- On the other hand, the Nobel Foundation dropped their official broadcaster in Sweden because their award ceremony was censored in China, which means the network didn’t follow the terms it had with the foundation when they drew up their agreement with the Chinese networks.

- Instead of risking downloading films in their own home, some Chinese people have been going to illegally-operated internet cafes to watch screening of movies that were downloaded illegally by the cafes. While Chinese producer Huayi Brothers have won a lawsuit against three of these cafes, I doubt that people will be scared into stop downloading. Hell, even film school students here download the movies they watch, which may be one of the most depressing things happening to the industry today.

-This week’s Televiews column on the Daily Yomiuri gives a big big thumbs down to the Japanese drama adaptation of the hit Korean romantic comedy My Sassy Girl. There are also short one-sentence reviews of current dramas as well.

- Grady has already linked one teaser this week (the new Tetsuya Nakashima film Paco and the Magic Book), and now he delivers one for the new Tsui Hark film Missing, which is a…….horror flick?! Could this be Tsui Hark’s Linger?

- Also, Jason Gray delivers a trailer for the abused-children-in-third-world-country drama Children of the Dark.

No, Gabriel, I’m not in Udine with Kozo. I’ve just been too busy to write

- And since I missed the Sunday box office on now.com, this week’s Hong Kong weekend box office report comes from the Hong Kong Film blog. Muay Thai action film Chocolate retained its lead with a boost, making HK$710,000 from 33 screens for a 4-day weekend total of HK$2.25 million. With The Forbidden Kingdom opening next week to fill the action gap, Chocolate may not have a chance in passing the HK$5 million mark. Meanwhile, Run Papa Run overtook Street Kings‘ 2nd place opening with HK$550,000 from 28 screens thanks to good word-of-mouth (but those last 10 damn minutes…). After 2 weekends, Sylvia Chang’s comedy-drama has made HK$5.34 million. Three Kingdoms is still in the game with HK$420,000 from 37 screens for an 18-day total of HK$16.28 million. This proves that yes, Hong Kong people will watching anything with Andy Lau. Lastly, the idols-filled Love is Elsewhere didn’t get that huge boost over the weekend with only HK$340,000 from 27 screens on Sunday for a weekend total of HK$1.26 million.

In foreign films, Street Kings did only OK with HK$542,000 from 29 screens and a weekend total of HK$1.81 million. Rambo has already made HK$3.14 million after 11 days, despite the category III rating and the lack of box office appeal for Stallone movies in Hong Kong. We Own the Night lost the “Hollywood cop dramas” battle hands-down with only HK$33,000 from 4 screens for a 4-day total of about HK$130,000.

- In Japanese box office attendance figures, the latest Conan the Detective film is at the top, as expected. Crayon Shin-Chan’s latest is right behind it, while Lions For Lambs opened at 4th place. The TV drama adaptation film Sushi Ouji (greenlit before the drama was even aired) opened only at 6th place, which must’ve been a disappointment to Warner Bros. Japan. More when the numbers come out.

- Not much excitement from the Korean box office, except that Three Kingdoms is inching slowly towards that one million admissions mark. Oh, hi, The Chaser, you’re still around. Good for you.

More at Korea Pop Wars.

- Time for Japanese drama ratings! The big news is the third installment of Gokusen premiering at 26.4%, which is almost a full point higher than the premiere of the last installment. Meanwhile, Last Friends recovered slightly from its disappointing premiere episode with a 15.9% rating. I think it has something to do with either Masami Nagasawa getting beat up, or Juri Ueno giving her a long peck on the lips. This week’s disappointing premiere is probably Ryoki teki na Kanojo, aka the Japanese drama remake of the Korean film My Sassy Girl. Despite the popularity of the original and starring popular SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, the comedy only scored a 13.5% rating in its prime Sunday night spot. Lastly, I predict this season’s freefall drama to be Muri Na Renai, which lost 30% of its audience in its second week. It was a little creepy to begin with anyway.

Info on this season’s Japanese dramas on Tokyograph

- The all-powerful State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television is planning to continue reforms through changes in the market. Hey, how about working on getting movies like Summer Palace and Lost in Beijing unbanned first?

- Apparently, Hong Kong pop duo Twins member Gillian “So naive, so foolish” Chung has been cut out of Chen Kaige’s latest film. Co-star Sun Honglei was quoted as saying that Ah Gil has not been in the right shape to work ever since “Sexy Photos Gate” broke. Don’t worry, we got a bit of Edison in this here post too.

- Jason Gray writes about the three possible Japanese candidates this year at the Cannes Film Festival, all of them I am now looking forward to immensely. I hope I can catch Kore-eda’s film when I’m in Japan in June and actually come out understanding at least a portion of it (with it being un-subtitled and all).

- Japanese film distributor Gaga Usen was slowly becoming one of the big boys with foreign acquisition such as Earth and The Golden Compass making some money in Japan. However, they weren’t enough to keep it alive, and now Gaga will no longer be involved in film production or distribution, presumably after they release their planned slate. No longer Gaga for Japanese films, indeed.

- (via Japan Probe) There’s a trailer out for the animated version of Winter Sonata. Can anyone confirm that Yon-Sama was actually say nice things, or did he just say “What the hell am I doing here again” for a minute and a half in Korean.

- Also, viz Ryuganji’s awesome news feed is the teaser trailer for Detroit Metal City, which looks………..metally?

- Argo, the distributor for the controversial Japanese documentary Yasukuni, has finally found 8 theaters nationwide that found some balls to show the film starting in early May.

- There’s a teaser out for mega-sized Japanese blockbuster 20th Century Boys, but it fulfills the definition of a teaser extremely well, as in it only teases.

- Under “the stupidest thing you will see on TV over the next 3 years” news today, Japanese TV stations may have a warning across the screens of their programs starting from July telling people that they are watching their programs in analog.

- If you want to make movies in Korea, be sure to watch out for CJ Entertainment head Kim Soo-Jung - he’s literally the most powerful man in the Korean film industry right now.

- There’s a second teaser out for the second Gegege no Kitaro film. They really are trying to sell this as more than the kids film the first installment was. I really hope that’s true, but it probably isn’t.

- Who would’ve thunk that the top-grossing Canadian-English film this month is a documentary about a dam in China without even a trailer as part of its advertising campaign?

- Japanese band B’z will be releasing two compilations albums this year to rip off their fans celebrate their 20th anniversary.

- Hey, I told you there will be Edison Chen in this entry.

Yay, the Golden Rock is back at least for the weekend. Can’t guarantee that daily updates will continue, as this blogger is still fairly busy these days. But take what you can get, folks.

- On Hong Kong Thursday opening day, Daniel Lee’s overhyper and overdubbed Andy Lau period extravaganza Three Kingdoms will likely take the weekend again after taking in about HK$460,000 from 39 screens on its 8th day. Now it has already taken in HK$11.28 million, with HK$15 million possibly within reach. The weekend’s widest opener, Sylvia Chang’s Run Papa Run, made an OK HK$380,000 from 29 screens, and will probably have about HK$2 million when the weekend’s over. The weekend’s widest foreign language opener, John Rambo, made HK$317,000 on its opening day, possibly hurt by its category-III rating here. Lastly, the British comedy Run Fat Boy Run with Simon Pegg made about HK$35,000 from 9 screens on its opening day. I’ll be paying my 55 bucks to see this as soon as I can. Ouch.

-  Hayao Miyazaki’s long-awaited latest work, Ponyo on a Cliff, now has a release date for Japan: July 19th. Damn, I was hoping it would be about 2 weeks earlier than that.

- Drama News Net updates the latest Japanese drama ratings everyday. In a preview of next Monday’s report, the much-hyped Last Friends, starring Juri “Nodame” Ueno and Masami “The Sick Girl in Crying Out For Love In the Center of the World” Nagasawa flopped with just a 13.9% rating for its premiere episode.

- As Jason Gray’s blog, I’m a little “Yasukuni‘d out” as well from reading all this news about the controversial documentary. However, this news is a little frustrating: a sword maker who is a major part of the documentary has asked director Li Ying to remove all of his footage from the film after a right-wing Japanese Diet member reportedly spoke to him about his appearance in the film. Now I’m really beginning to regret not catching this at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, it was one of the only chances to see it uncut.

-  The China Fim Archive will begin restoring historic films that survived up to the last 102 years. I hope they don’t have to be communist-friendly to qualify restoration.

- The 2007 Spring drama Watashi Tachi no Kyokasho just picked up the best screenwriter award for its writer Yuji Sakamoto. Did that pique up my interest a little bit? Yes. Is that going to compel me to buy a copy right away? Not exactly.

First, more news from the wrapping Hong Kong Filmart:

- The American economy is on its way down, but the Asian film industry says it ain’t got nothing to do with them.

- After 11 years, Filmart is now a viable launching pad for Chinese blockbusters, though the Chinese censoring body has spoiled the party for everyone. Sylvia Chang revealed herself to Oriental Daily that the film that was told to re-apply as an import rather than a co-production.

- Professor David Bordwell writes about the films he’s seen and the people he’s met at this year’s events.

- One of the events at Filmart is the Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum, and Pang Ho-Cheung has won top Hong Kong Project award again this year for his proposed project The Bus (However, his other two awarded projects appear yet to be made).

- Bey Logan says Japanese movies should open themselves up to the world so that they can survive when the bubble bursts. I have my own doubts about the need for that.

- Twitch’s Todd Brown roams and share the promos he’s seen at the film market.

- Variety’s Grady Hendrix also shares info about the promos he’s seen at the film market.

- In fact, I waited so long to post this entry that Hollywood Reporter has already posted their wrap-up of the market.

And now, some number crunching:

- Japanese box office numbers have come out, showing that Enchanted scored a fairly huge opening (more on that later). Also, the other three family films on the top 10 (not counting The Golden Compass) dropped fairly little between 24.7% to 32% or so.

Oscar winner No Country For Old Men made 43.46 million yen from 41 screens on its opening weekend, which is damn good. It’s so good that it’s actually 152% of the opening for An Inconvenient Truth (which I’m sure is an inconvenient truth for that film’s distributor. Yes, I know it’s a bad pun).

Actually, Enchanted’s reported opening also includes last weekend’s preview screenings, so the 583 million yen gross isn’t exactly a three-day gross. However, Eiga Consultant did compare it with Ratatouille, which had the same release pattern. Turns out Enchanted still comes out on top, opening at 107% of the Pixar film’s gross.

- It’s Japanese music charts time! The Oricon and the Billboard Hot 100 charts are fairly similar, except Tetsuro Yamashita’s single got a bit of a bump on the Billboard because of its high position on the Radio Airplay chart. On the singles chart, Johnny’s Kanjani takes the top spot, as Namie Amuro’s latest stays fairly behind at 2nd, though it sold quite well. On the album chart, Kou Shibasaki’s compilation wins the day, while Ken Hirai scores a second place debut with his latest.

More over at Tokyograph.

- Doraemon has been picked as Japan’s animation ambassador, which I think it’s pretty damn cool as a lifelong Doraemon fan.

- Music show is a major part of many major Japanese TV networks: Fuji TV has Hey Hey Hey, and TBS has Music Station. However, NTV has apparently been without one with its primetime lineup for 18 years, though now that’s about to change. It even answers a question that I forgot to ask for years: What happened to Noriko Sakai?

By the way, keep checking the spin-off for those HKIFF reports.

Thanks to Filmart here in Hong Kong, there’s a ton of news happening out there.

Oh, look, new entry on the spinoff

- Of course, the big news is the Asian Film Awards, which seems to be less sloppily delivered this year (no David Wu and Fiona Sit trading quips), even though the star wattage has now dropped to the host from that entertainment news show on TVB. Also, there are reports that the awards were only half full, and that post-award interviews with Best Actress winner Jeon Do-Yeon were somehow moved to a back alley.

Oh, of course, there were awards passed out too.

- Anyway, time for number crunching!

At the Hong Kong box office, it’s no surprise, but it’s hard to report anyway: Patrick Kong’s L for Love, L for Lies made HK$1 million from 40 screens on Sunday and made HK$3.99 million over the 4-day weekend. With the Easter holiday next weekend, this is likely going to go past the HK$10 million mark (I somehow don’t think the same target audience will decide to flock to An Empress and the Warriors). Meanwhile, the animated film Horton Hears a Who! draws HK$320,000 from the first 2 days of previews on 31 screens, One Missed Call made HK$650,000 from 17 screens over 4 days, Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream made HK$99,000 from 9 screens over 4 days, and Dan in Real Life made only HK$270,000 from 10 screens over 4 days.

With holdovers, 10,000BC passed the HK$10 million mark with HK$700,000 from 45 screens on Sunday, Shamo made HK$165,000 from 20 screens(the total is wrong on the now.com page), suffering a pretty significant drop, and Juno managed to pass the HK$4 million mark on Sunday as well.

In Japan audience attendance figures, Enchanted opens at number 1 amidst a very crowded family film market. If you count the dog movie, at least half the movies on the top 10 are aimed for a family audience (and I already didn’t count The Golden Compass). That’s because it’s Spring break when schools are out until April. More when the numbers are out.

- And now, news from Filmart:

China’s government is clamping down on co-productions, but that’s OK - Asian filmmakers will simply look elsewhere.

And experts at another panel believe that there will be one integrated Asian market, and that filmmakers are not really interested in challenging China’s censorship rules.

Oh, dear: The Pang Brothers are intending their Storm Riders sequel to be the Hong Kong equivalent of the Hollywood film 300, with the entire film shot in front of digital backdrops. Still, overseas buyers seem to be eating it up, so more power to them.

Meanwhile, Namson Shi, who seems to have a part in distributing Stephen Fung’s troubled dance film Jump, says that the film has not been sent for Chinese approval, nor has there been a decision made about keeping its troubled star Edison Chen.

Hong Kong’s Big Media promised to make 100 films in their first 5 years. Hell, we should just be lucky that they’re making 10-12 this year, even if one of them will be Marriage With a Fool 2.

Japanese director Sabu is in town trying to get funding for one of his latest films, a horror-romance set in Hong Kong.

For other Filmart coverage, go over to the Variety Filmart blog.

And now, back to your regular programming

- One of the few cinemas in Japan (in fact, the biggest one) planning to show the controversial documentary Yasukuni has backed off, citing that it might cause disruptions for the building’s fellow tenants. Then blame the right-wingers, not general courtesy.

- It’s Maggie Lee’s reviews time! All three from Lee are her takes on An Empress and the Warriors, her take on Fine, Totally Fine, and also her review for the Taiwanese youth film Orz Boys.

- In addition to wrapping up its run in Hong Kong, Karei Naru Ichizoku just picked up the award for Best Drama from TVNavi Magazine. Its star Kimura Takuya (AKA. Kimutaku) also picked up Best Actor for the drama.

Kimutaku is on a bit of a streak, as his new drama Change (the one where he becomes Prime Minister of Japan) now has Madonna providing it with a theme song.

- There’s a trailer for the horror prequel Kuchisake Onna 2 (The Slit-Mouth Woman 2).

- The story was first on Variety Asia, but I’ll reference Twitch because the story has simply disappeared at the time of writing: D-War director Shim Hyung-rae was a comedian before he became a director, and now that D-War was a big hit, he’s relying on cgi to make the next big comedy featuring himself. Specifically, he’s bringing back his old popular character and make him act opposite a cgi-created Marlon Brando playing the godfather Vito Corleone. Someone stop this man, please.

- Those looking oh so forward to the potentially-disastrous Dragonball live-action film will just have to wait a little longer: The film has been delayed from an August release date to next April. Unless you’re in Japan, then you get to see it a month earlier.

- Yet another country has picked up the rights to the hit Colombian telenovela for their own remake, and guess what that country is going to be naming it?

- Detroit Metal City, the high-profile comic adaptation starring Kenichi Matsuyama hopefully walking straight with less eyeliner this time, has finally started filming and is scheduled to open this summer. They’ve been talking about this movie so long, I thought they’re done shooting the damn thing already.

- With the recent scandal and controversy and the various failures, organizers of the Bangkok International Film Festival are still trying to keep on truckin’ for this July….even though no programming work has been done, and they don’t really have enough money.

- New artist Thelma Aoyama’s hit single “Soba Ni Iru Ne” has broken a record of being downloaded one million times to cell phones in the quickest time. With a catchy song hitting popularity this fast, let’s hope she’s not a one-hit wonder.

- Ryuganji’s Don Brown gives us his own thoughts on Yoji Yamada’s Kabei. I’m still on the fence over whether I want to catch this at the Hong Kong Film Festival.

- Both Variety and Hollywood Reporter are covering Ang Lee and James Schamus’ win of the Freedom of Expression Award by the National Association of Theater Owners for Lust, Caution. Variety reports that the film’s release in America went extremely smooth, despite the NC-17 rating, and The Hollywood Reporter even got an interview.

- Speaking of which, Jason Gray writes about a Japanese AV star who seems to have some breakout potential.

- Courtesy of EastSouthWestNorth, Danwei asks a question, and my answer is a definite yes.

- On the other hand, English literature about China is apparently the big thing right now, though the writers don’t exactly expect it to last.

- While the previously planned Justin Lin’s remake of Oldboy seems to have stalled, Charlize Theron is looking to produce and star in another installment of Park Chan-Wook’s classic revenge trilogy.

- There may be hope for band members everywhere who aren’t lead singers: Tokio keyboardist Taichi Kokubun now has a show on all six of the major networks in Tokyo. For most bands’ keyboardist. they’re lucky if they get their own show on public access.

- There’s another review of Singaporean director Kelvin Tong’s Rule #1, starring Shawn Yue and Ekin Cheng.

- The Nikkan Sports Drama Grand Prix for the Winter 2007 season has been announced, even though the season isn’t even over yet. Shikaotoko Aoniyoshi ended up winning 3 awards: Best Drama, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. However, the drama has been struggling in the ratings, averaging only a 9.9% rating throughout the season.

- There’s a very interesting feature on Japan Times this weekend, which transcribes a panel discussing the Japanese war trial film Ashita He No Yuigon (Best Wishes For Tomorrow)  featuring Japan Times critic Mark Schilling and the film’s co-writer.  With two other contributors, the four discuss the impact of another war film on the Japanese, the message, and about its intents were successful.

- Yesterday we mentioned Mika Nakashima making the cover of Rolling Stone Japan, and now Oscar-nominated actress Rinko Kikuchi is on the cover of the British i-D Magazine.  She is not the first Japanese actress to appear on the cover, though: Chiaki Kuriyama made the cover back in 2004 thanks to her role in Kill Bill.

- It’s reviews time! Twitch offers a review of Kelvin Tong’s Rule #1, starring Shawn Yue and Ekin Cheng in their first official screen collaboration (they had an unofficial partnership in Shamo. You’ll know what I mean).  Then Variety’s Ronnie Schieb offers a review of Makoto Shinkai’s Five Centimeter Per Second, which I almost immediately dismissed because he dismissed the song in the film before he even bothered to understand it. Japan Times’ Mark Schilling offers a review for Gachi Boy (Wrestling with a Memory), the latest from the director of Song of the Sun. There’s also an interview featuring the director, who apparently made his actors perform their own wrestling stunts.

- Wrestling With a Memory will have its Asian premiere at the Hong Kong International Festival, and I already have a ticket to one of its showings. Not sure to what it can be credited to, but the festival is seeing an incredible 40% surge in online ticket sales from last year. Then again, after hearing horror stories of the festival’s ticketing system last year, no wonder more people decided to buy it the year the system happens to work.

- Eiga Consultant also looked at the box office performance of Wrestling with a Memory’s opening weekend. From 284 screens, the wrestling comedy/drama made 67.87 million yen, which is only 55% of another Toho + Fuji teen comedy Check It Out Yo!

Meanwhile, The Golden Compass made 550 million yen from 667 screens, which is 70% of The Chronicles of Narnia. Considering that Narnia made 6.85 billion yen, will The Golden Compass make it to 5 billion yen? Also, the ratio of the box office take for the subtitled version to the dubbed version is 53:47, which supposedly means that the film is attracting people of all demographics (in film market jargon, we say “demographics,” not “age”). Also, in case you’re wondering why the Box Office Mojo reported gross is so high, that’s because they included last weekend’s preview screenings.

- I think this would qualify as self-promotion: The Foreign Film Importer-Distributor Association of Japan will be giving its top award to Gaga Communications, who imported hits such as Babel, Earth, and the current box office topper The Golden Compass.

- Under “yet another comic going to TV” news today, the comedy comic Tokyo Ghost Trip is getting the live-action treatment.

- It’s trailers time! First, there’s the Japanese teaser for John Woo’s Battle of Red Cliff, and it still just looks really expensive, but not much else. Next is the trailer for the Mainland Chinese film Pk.com.cn, which may be the weirdest trailer I’ve seen all year. Considering that it’s from the conservative Mainland (more later), that’s kind of a good thing.

- With the National People’s Congress happening in Beijing right now (an ironic title, by the way), the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television of China are restating their rules on what movies are OK and what movies are not. In simple words: Most movies are not OK, but simple peasant stories with subtle allegories of government dictatorship will probably be. Zhang Yimou, you’re not out of work yet!

- Speaking of a filmmaker not out of work in China, Twitch has an interview with Stephen Chow and the star of his latest film CJ7.

-  Hayao Miyazaki spoke about his latest film Ponyo on a Cliff this week, and reading him describing the film just makes me look incredibly forward to it already. It seems like it’ll be a return to simpler fantasy tales like Totoro.

-  Kaiju Shakedown looks at another one of Takashi Miike’s latest films, which producer Haruki Kadokawa says is based on a novel that he read while he was in prison. Prison may be a good place to find films to adapt, but I still wouldn’t want to go there.

- Jason Gray looks at the lineup for the upcoming Nippon Connection Festival in Frankfurt, Germany. Man, that’s one hell of a lineup.

- Japanese artist/attitude girl/real-life Nana Mika Nakashima will be the first Japanese artist to appear on the cover of Rolling Stones Japan. The question is, why did it take a year for Rolling Stones Japan to put a Japanese musician on its cover?

-  Twitch brings us the first teaser for Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest Aruitemo Aruitemo, which looks like a return to modern drama after his previous outing Hana.

- The global domination of Walt Disney continues: Disney Japan will be using Japanese animation houses to produce animation targeted at a Japanese and Greater Asia audience. Theese will start broadcasting in Japan in April.

-  While the information aren’t exactly all straight, and it lacks true balance, The Hollywood Reporter Asia has a feature on China-Hong Kong co-productions that’s fairly worth reading.

- This week on the Daily Yomiuri Teleview column, columnist Wm Penn looks at more dramas coming on Japanese TV come the Spring season, including the one where Kimura Takuya becomes the Prime Minister of Japan. In case you don’t know what that equates to, imagine an entire drama where Andy Lau plays the Chief Executive of Hong Kong.

- Despite saying the wrong thing on radio and people saying she apologized the wrong way, Koda Kumi will most likely open her nationwide tour on schedule.

Again a short entry, but that’s it for today. We’ll wrap the weekend up tomorrow