- 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.

- Jackie Chan is an unpredictable man - He bashes his own movies on his blog, justifying their existence and his appearance in them with the “I need the money” excuse. Next thing you know, he’s starting a production company with the director of one of those hack films. Why, Jackie, why do you do this to us?

- Under “TV dramas no one asked for” news today, China’s Huayi Brothers reportedly bought the rights to make a 30-episode adaptation of Ang Lee’s erotic espionage drama Lust, Caution after they realize even the censored version is making a ton of money. No other details have emerged so far.

- Speaking of Chinese TV cashing in, advertisers are bidding for spots up on CCTV 9 months early for the Olympics, including foreign advertisers such as KFC, Johnson & Johnson, and Red Bull.

- Hong Kong and Malaysian police, in what seems to be separate operations, raided and arrested pirated disc producers. Among the films confiscated in the Hong Kong bust? Lust, Caution, the movie with the ultra-high-security policy set in for Hong Kong cinemas.

It’s hard to believe, but I still see pirate vendors actually standing on sidewalks selling DVDs here in Hong Kong. Basically, they have a portable fold-out box with several guys standing around the vicinity as lookouts while they sell in front of high-volume areas.

- That Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung certainly works fast: After seeing his somewhat controversial-but-intentionally-underwhelming dark comedy Exodus released in September, his omnibus film Trivial Matters already has a release date of December 20th. By “his” omnibus film, I mean it’s a collection of 7 stories that Pang wrote himself and will be adapting to film all by himself. That’s 3 semesters’ worth of film school projects right there.

The “bad news” part of all this? I’m going on vacation ON December 20th for 2 weeks. That means I’ll be sadly missing it for sure.

- There’s no huge high-profile world premiere, but the first Kuala Lampur International Film Festival has 22 films from 18 countries, living up to their intention of “celebrating cultural diversity”.

- Sonny Chiba, who co-directed a film earlier in the year under his Japanese name Shinichi Chiba, has announced he will not only start directing movies under a different name from now on, he will also continue his acting career under yet another name.

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.

- Courtesy of Twitch, the first real teaser for the Death Note spinoff Change the WorLd is now out with actual clips from the movie. However, it won’t be released until February 9th in Japan, so I guess it’s too early to get excited about what’s on screen. Then again, my Japanese isn’t that good.

- In “they’re getting ahead of themselves” news today, America’s Summit Entertainment bought up the remake rights for the Korean film Seven Days, about a lawyer who must save a man on death row to save her own daughter, before it even opened in Korea. Sounds like a derivative thriller only Hollywood can make, so why don’t they just make the damn thing themselves? Oh, wait….

- It’s reviews time! Japan Times’ Mark Schilling reviews the low-budget V-Cinema film Sundome, which actually managed to get play in a hip Shibuya theater.

- Grady Hendrix writes about the current media situation in Pakistan during the current government repression. Case in point: they’re still releasing the country’s exploitation gory horror film.

- The Daily Yomiuri’s weekly Teleview column bashes the hell out of flopping drama Joshi Deka and writes about the sad sad ways Japanese comedians can make money through spelling simple English.

- According to usual Tony Jaa collaborator director Prachya Pinkaew, him and the action star had a falling out, and their future collaborations have been canceled. Did Pinkaew get pissed because Jaa’s directorial debut Ong Bak 2 has even less story than Ong Bak 1?

- The MTV concert series unplugged is finally going to China. Too bad I have no idea who the hell those two first artists are, and we know that Cantopop tend to suck too much to attract that kind of talent.

- Actress Rie Miyazawa talks about her latest film with the Daily Yomiuri. Miyazawa plays a woman who works with her late husband’s apprentice to keep a small town theatre running in the 1950s after the husband’s death.

- Earlier in the week I wrote that the Japanese film Always 2 opened at 150% of its sequel’s opening. Thanks to Eiga Consultant, I now realize I was wrong. At 550 million yen, its opening is actually 256% of the original’s opening, which means if the word-of-mouth holds up, Always 2 may be heading for the 5 billion yen mark to become the second-biggest film of the year behind Hero.

- Speaking of Always 2, the Daily Yomiuri devotes some time to the blockbuster sequel, first with what seems like a pseudo-review for the film, then with a short feature on star Hidetaka Yoshioka.

- Under “big TV network exploits small town troubles” news today, Japanese network TBS will produce a drama about the troubles of Yubari, Hokkaido when the town literally went bankrupt. Who knows? Maybe it might turn out good. It probably won’t.

- The Academy has announced their final list of qualified films for the best animated film awards - Japan’s Tekkonkinkreet and the Hong Kong-produced TMNT are on that final list. Note that this does not mean they are now Oscar-nominated films; it just means they may be.

- In more Imagi news, the Hong Kong animation firm has acquired screenplay rights for Fluorescent Black, an original story that will first be adapted as a “graphic novel” before becoming an animated film. This is the first Imagi project that isn’t based on an established story.

- Lust, Caution is not only a commercial hit in Mainland China, the censored version, which still has several nudity-less sex scenes, has touched off a massive internet debate about sexuality on screen and even Mainland censorship.

- Speaking of Chinese censorship, the Canadian Broadcasting Company has reportedly pulled a documentary on the persecution of Falun Gong members in China after pressure from Chinese diplomats. It’s hard to believe that Canada has to be afraid of China when Hong Kong police don’t even stop Falun Gong demonstrators from putting up a huge sign saying “Destroy the Chinese Communist Party” in the middle of the busiest district in Hong Kong.

- In Hong Kong, director Christopher Nolan says that he did not take out a scene in which Batman jumps into Victoria Harbor due to pollution, but because of a script change. In fact, he said he would have no problems dumping actors into pollution anyway. Christian Bale must be thanking someone that it didn’t happen.

- Independent Korean directors are celebrating the opening of Indie Space, the first theater in South Korea dedicated to showing Korean independent feature films and short films.

- The Yomiuri’s Teleview column writes about the role of the middle-aged people working in Japanese television.

The Golden Rock will be going away for a few days. This blogger will be shooting his final project this weekend while some administrative stuff gets taken care of. We’ll be back on Monday, when we might have a little surprise.

- 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.

- Let’s start with some AFM news:

CJ entertainment has already presold director Park Chan-Wook’s untitled vampire film to France and Russia before the director has even started shooting. Starring Song Kang-Ho, the film is about a priest who transforms into a vampire. I’m hoping it’ll be better than it sounds.

Fuji TV’s biggest movie of the market is the Stephen Chow-co-produced spin-off of Shaolin Soccer Shaolin Girl. The reason I used so many titles is because producer Chihiro Kameyama wants to make sure that no one sees it as Shaolin Soccer 2.

Thanks to the market, stills from Chung Siu-Tong’s The Empress and the Warriors, starring Kelly Chan, Leon Lai, and Donnie Yen, are popping up online. Hong Kong Film Blog points out that the armor designs seem to recall Jackie Chan’s The Myth. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I can’t get excited about big martial arts blockbusters anymore.

While Asian film companies go to the American Film Market hoping to get their films sold, they aren’t really biting at anything Hollywood has to offer this year.

- I’m not sure if this deal was done during the AFM, but several Japanese films are heading to North America thanks to those small distributors we love so much here at The Golden Rock.

- With the low budgets of Asian films, they really will let any company make a movie these days. That includes a certain Japanese multiplex that had a “Cinema Plot Competition”. The first winning film will star a newcomer and will be directed by Rainbow Song director Naoto Kumazawa.

- Like I wrote earlier, how can China’s official film award not name their pick for the best foreign film at the Academy Awards the best film? That’s why The Knot won 2.5 awards, including best film, half of best director, and best sound.

- The biggest CD now in Chinese-speaking record stores has to be Jay Chou’s latest album (with that horrible first single), and AP News says that it’s supposed to reflect his current life. Cue paparazzi listening to every song to make up stories.

- Speaking of Jay Chou, the teaser poster for his latest “film” Kung Fu Dunk is now in Hong Kong theatres, along with a teaser on Youtube. Just the title of Kung Fu Dunk and expecting audiences to be dumb enough to still buy a movie with a title like that is flat out insulting.

Of course, it’ll probably be a huge hit.

- Speaking of movies that will suck, Kaiju Shakedown has a bunch of movies Grady expect will suck.

On the other hand, he also names a few movies that might rock, although I’ve heard that Shamo is not one of them.

- As you all know if you read the blog yesterday, the Japanese sequel Always 2 opened this weekend, and it’s being commemorated with a diorama built by the film’s crew recreating the film’s set.

- Dave Spector, an American working actively in Japanese telelvision, says that Japanese drama suck quite a bit. There are still good dramas out there, just not most of them.

- The latest Batman film - The Dark Knight - is coming into Hong Kong to film this week, but apparently a scene of Batman jumping into the harbor has been canceled because it’s so damned dirty.

- Variety Asia, after their “10 actors to watch out for” feature, now has a “10 cinematographers to watch for” feature. While three of them are Asian, none of them work in Asian films.

Rain Li
Tetsuo Nagata
Larry Fong

- It’s reviews time! Jason Gray has a review of Takashi Miike’s box office hit Crows: Episode Zero, which he seemed to have enjoyed. Meanwhile, Variety has a few reviews for films from the Tokyo International Film Festival: Russell Edward’s reviews for Bloody Snake Under the Sun and Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge. Working busier than ever, there’s also Edwards’ review for festival winner United Red Army.

- After making a failed attempt into Hollywood (considering it’s been done forever, was finished by its star, and still hasn’t seen a release date in North America, The Flock is a failure already), Andrew Lau manages to continue conning Media Asia into giving his a ton of money for a movie. This time he will direct the first of a trilogy of films based on the famed Chinese novel The Water Margin, with him producing the second film, to be directed by Johnnie To (Andrew Lau producing for Johnnie To?). Maybe I’m being really cynical about this, but it’s really hard for me to get excited about a big-budget Andrew Lau film.

- In more Lust, Caution news, the Mainland Chinese version, cut by Ang Lee himself and took 6 revisions before it passed, finally opened in China. EastSouthWestNorth has a translation of a Mainland Chinese article that discusses the difference between the two, despite a rumored mandate from the Central Publicity Department to not discuss the differences.

- Lastly (to save news for the rest of the weekend), there’s a third and probably final trailer for Peter Chan Ho-Sun’s The Warlords, which currently seems to be the only Chinese film in the Hong Kong market for Christmas. As expensive and star-packed as it seems, I can’t get myself excited for this one either for some reason.

- The biggest news of the day is the announcement of the Golden Horse Awards. After getting rejected from two important film awards, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution finds a home in the Golden Horse with 11 nominations, including one in every major category (except for supporting acting roles, because let’s face it, Leehom Wang isn’t that good of an actor). Sadly, no Hong Kong films were deemed good enough to get a best picture, but it did get a nomination in all the other major categories.

Here are the nominees for the major categories:

Best film

What on Earth Have I Done Wrong?!
Tuya’s Marriage
Getting Home
Lust, Caution
The Home Song Stories

Best Director

Wong Quan An (Tuya’s Marriage)
Yau Nai Hoi (Eye in the Sky)
Ang Lee (Lust, Caution)
Li Yang (Blind Mountain)

Best Actor

Gurmit Singh (Just Follow Law)
Aaron Kwok (The Detective)
Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (Lust, Caution)
Zhao Ben Shan (Getting Home)

Best Actress

Yu Nan (Tuya’s Marriage)
Joan Chen (Home Song Stories)
Tang Wei (Lust, Caution)
Li Bing Bing (The Knot)

Best Supporting Actor

Tony Leung Ka-Fai (The Drummer)
Louis Koo (Protege)
Wu Jing (Invisible Target)
Joel Lok (The Home Song Stories)

Best Supporting Actress

Chang Chun Ning (What On Earth Have I Done?)
Maggie Shiu (Eye In the Sky)
Fan Bing Bing (The Matrimony)
Alice Tzeng (Secret)

Best Adapted Screenplay

Shamo
A Battle of Wits
The Sun Also Rises
Lust, Caution

Best Original Screenplay

Just Follow Law
Tuya’s Marriage
God Man Dog
The Home Song Stories

The complete list of nominees.

Hong Kong films (meaning the film is in Cantonese and/or the director originated from Hong Kong) accounted for a total of 22 nominations, although I’m somewhat disappointed that there are actually feature film categories with no Hong Kong films nominated at all.

Why the hell is Alice Tzeng nominate for Secret, but not lead actress Guey Lun-Mei?

Tony Leung Ka-Fai for The Drummer? Really? I swear half his scenes were leftover footage from Election.

The committee seems to love Aaron Kwok so much they should probably just give him an honorary lifetime achievement acting award already.

Thanks to the Hong Kong film blog for the link.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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