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.

After a small break yesterday, it’s time to catch up - in a big way.

- As always, let’s start with box office reports. Japan had the beginning of its Golden Week holiday this past weekend (Tuesday and Wednesday are technically business days, but people take them off anyway), so obviously numbers are gonna be pretty huge. However, Box Office Mojo doesn’t have their charts updated yet, so I’m relying on audience ranking for now. The big battle for this Golden Week weekend is the highly anticipated-Babel (due to the Academy Award nominated performance of Rinko Kikuchi) and the classic cartoon adaptation “Gegege Kitaro.” And the winner is…..neither. Conan the child detective film won the weekend at number 1, while “Gegege” does win the duel at number 2, and Babel still manages a number 3 opening. All the other top 10 movies stayed pretty close to their rankings last week, but expect Spiderman 3, which already opened today Japan time, to come and wipe them all out this coming weekend. Hell, its first day already attracted 400,000 people, which far surpassed the opening days of the last two films (248,000 for the first film, 301,000 for the second film). That’s OK, Babel was never meant to be a crowd-pleasing hit anyway.

- Speaking of Babel, after the negative press it got earlier in the year when the deaf community in Japan rightfully complained the lack of Japanese subtitles made the film hard to understand for them, the film is under fire again for making people sick. In one theater in Nagoya (funny how the press is only covering one of the some-300 screens it’s playing at), several moviegoers complained of feeling sick during the club scene, which features strobe lights. I rewatched the film recently, and having seen it on the big screen, I can see why that scene would be a problem, especially for those sensitive to such effects. But when I got uncomfortable, I just turned away for a second, which I think any sensible person would do….right?

Of course, it’s funny to see how comments on various Japan blogs that carry the story would go off-topic and take the opportunity to blast the film.

- Another weak weekend at the South Korean box office, as Paradise Murdered rules again. My Tutor Friend 2 (which I hear has nothing to do with My Tutor Friend 1, which I wished I enjoyed more, but didn’t) is a flop.

- I had thought that Election 2 (renamed Triad Election in the United States) would not do very well, even in a cinephile city like New York. But look - at 71st place, it actually made a very impressive $10,811 on just one screen! I wonder if the theater is counting Election and Election 2 as one film, and since the two films require separate admission, it just happened that people stuck around for both films, thus inflating the gross? Who cares, the numbers look good either way.

- The Tarantino/Rodridguez flop Grindhouse was originally going to be released as a double feature in many European regions (apparently, Asia doesn’t “get” the idea of double features.). Looks like the Weinsteins are changing their tune now.

- Someone correct me if I get this wrong, but looks like both the big Japanese comedies expected this summer - Takeshi Kitano’s “Kantoku Banzai” and Hitoshi Matsumoto’s “Dai Nipponjin” - are both going to Cannes. “Kantoku” was previously reported to be in competition, and “Dai Nipponjin” had just been invited into the Director’s Week lineup. According to the report, Matsumoto was not intending to join the Cannes lineup, but seems to be changing his mind now.

- Twitch reports 2 upcoming DVD releases - the region 1 DVD for Katsuhito Ishii’s A Taste of Tea, which I marked down as a film I should have saw when I was in Japan, but just couldn’t get the motivation to rent the damn thing (or was it because the rental DVD didn’t have English subtitles?) on July 3rd, and Danny Pang’s Forest of Death (LoveHKFilm review) on May 10th.

- The Udine Far East Film Festival wrapped up on Saturday, and the Korean film No Mercy For the Rude won the audience prize, with After This, Our Exile at 2nd place and Memories of Matsuko at 3rd.

- With that, Variety Asia also covers the Udine Far East Festival as part of a trend that’s seeing Asian films penetrating into the mainstream market in Europe.

- File this under “idiotic Asian pop decisions”: The huge Taiwanese boy pop group F4 (the F stands for Flower), which got its name from their drama Meteor Garden, which was based on the Japanese comic Hana Yori Dango anyway (still following me?), is now changing their name to…..you ready for this? JVKV. The new name is comprised of the first letters of the members’ respective names - Jerry, Vic, Ken, and Vanness (which is a name I’ll never take seriously, seeing how we have a Van Ness Ave. in San Francisco). Just because I filed this under humor, don’t think that I made it up. I totally didn’t.

- And file this one under “bad gimmicks”: The second trailer for Takeshi Miike’s so-called “Sukiyaki Western” film “Django” is on the website (I suggest watching the Windows Media Player version), and it honestly looks pretty bad. The trailer itself is ridden with horrible English narration (I swear it sounds like it comes from a mock Grindhouse trailer), and the trailer shows that the film is actually completely in English (The problem lies in that the film has an all-Japanese cast). Yikes.

- Professor David Bordwell and Dr. Kristin Thompson go to Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival (which apparently will be renamed Ebertfest next year), where Ebert himself made an appearance, despite his recent condition. Oh, and they watch a couple of movies too.

- This is nothing new, but the U.S. decides to remind which Asian countries suck at protecting copyright.

- Daniel Wu and the alive boys really DID show up at the San Francisco International Film Festival. And SF360 has an interview with them that the Hong Kong media might have a field day with.

An interesting thing to note - there were quite a few Chinese people at the After This, Our Exile screening on Sunday, but at 22, I think I was the youngest person in the entire screening. As I was leaving, the line for The Heavenly Kings rush tickets, which was to be shown in about half an hour after that, was forming. Instead of the mature crowd that was at my screening, the people in line were much younger in comparison. I could see it already: screaming ABC girls as Daniel Wu comes out to introduce the film. That wouldn’t have been very pleasant. Who knows, there’s still one more chance to see the Alive boys….nah, probably not.

Instead of the song of the day, there will be a feature coming up.

Watched The Break-Up starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston last night, and was a little pleasantly surprised. I was only going to watch it for about 40 minutes before going to bed and ended up watching the whole thing until almost 3 in the morning. Anyone expecting a light romantic comedy can probably stay away from this, because the title itself should suggest that this movie isn’t gonna be romantic, and this sucker can really sting. While the trailer may suggest this to be a fluffy battle of the sexes, it actually gets pretty down and dirty. The film pretty much chronicles the ugly break-up of a couple and the brief aftermath, and there are even some hidden truths in it. Sure, Vaughn plays his character a little too much on the creep side (even when he’s actually one of the producers and helped craft the story), but he begins to grow on you at the end. And who knew Jennifer Aniston had a mean side to her? Looks like a mainstream commercial comedy, tries to be a commercial comedy, but at the heart of it, it’s a little too close to comfort for the masses. It’s good, it’s occasionally funny, it’s entertaining, just don’t expect to come out too happy.

SPOILER WARNING

Actually, I would rather see the alternate ending where the two characters meet again, only to find that they’re both dating people that look like them (Vaughn’s new girlfriend looks like Aniston, and vice versa). The ending now seems too tacked on.

SPOILER END

- The big news out of Hollywood is the death of former MPAA head Jack Valenti, who is known as the father of the American rating system. Some may blast him for that rating system, but considering that this is the man who helped eliminate the Hays code, he deserves all the respect he can get.

- Despite all the hoopla about Kenichi Matsuyama’s rising popularity thanks to the Death Note movies, it seems like that guy just can’t catch a break. After the abysmal ratings for his new drama “Sexy Voice and Robo,” his new film, Koji Hagiuda’s musical prodigy drama “Shindo,” opened on 35 screens in Japan this past weekend with only 15.68 million yen. According to Eiga Consultant, that’s 26% of Honey and Clover’s opening, although Honey and Clover opened on 110 screens. Still, for a limited release with a rising star, it’s not a real impressive opening at all.

- Meanwhile, it’s another opening Thursday at the Hong Kong box office. As expected, Love is Not All Around is at the top again with HK$380,000 on 35 screens for an 8-day total of HK$7.16 million. It’s going to surpass the total for the team’s last film Marriage with a Fool (sounds like a metaphor for the viewing experience itself). Meanwhile, the “modern wuxia” flick Ming Ming by MTV director Susie Au opens real weak with only HK$110,000 on 12 screens. That’s probably because the hipster who wanted to see it already saw it at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Francis Ng/Marco Mak’s Dancing Lion flops on its opening day with just HK$70,000 on 20 screens. Ouch.

As for limited releases, the Genghis Kahn movie flops even worse in Hong Kong than it did in Japan, with only HK$30,000 on 8 screens. Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book does slightly better with HK$20,000 on 2 screens. Looks like it’ll be a pretty boring weekend at Hong Kong cinemas this weekend.

- Twitch has a friendly reminder that the DVD for Park Chan-Wook’s I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK is coming out on DVD next Friday, May 4th. Expect a Hong Kong edition to come within the month.

- The new film Dark Matter, starring Chinese actor Liu Ye and Hollywood legend Meryl Streep, is being delayed indefinitely due to the film’s subject matter being too close to the Virginia Tech Shootings. OK, let’s delay all war movies from release until the war’s over too, while you’re at it, Hollywood, in respect for the 200 people killed in Iraq during that same week.

- A huge move in the gaming world, as Sony Game Unit CEO Ken Kutaragi, the man credited as the creator of the Playstation console, has stepped down as a way of taking responsibility for the failure of the Playstation 3. Meanwhile, Nintendo has reported soaring profits for 2006 thanks to the DS and the launch of the Wii.

- Sony has something else up its sleeves, though. They just announced the Sony eyeVio, a Youtube-like service that allows people to post videos 24 hours at a time for free. It’s not exactly what people are asking for, but it’s a good start.

That’s it for today. Gotta save some of these news for the weekend.

Just watched Hot Fuzz, the latest from Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg of “Spaced” and “Shaun of the Dead” fame. As many know, this time Wright and Pegg take on the action genre, and as expected, it’s a ton of fun. Unlike spoofs, which mocks the cliches of the genre it’s taking on, Hot Fuzz embraces the action genre, taking every editing, sound, visual cliche from Hollywood and blows them up to the max. It’s so into it that audiences who aren’t in on the joke will probably love it at face value, when the filmmakers are probably making fun of them for buying into its Hollywood counterparts. On the other hand, those who “get it” would probably still find it pretty cool.

- Continuing with the previously-reported story about the appearance of pirated Spiderman 3 DVDs on the streets of China, Sony has confirmed that cheap suckers have been scammed by those amateur entrepreneurs. That’s right, the poor bastards who thought they got a chance to watch Spiderman 3 before everyone else in the comforts of their own home spent their hard-earned renminbi for just another copy of Spiderman 2 packaged as Spiderman 3. Ha-ha!

- It’s time for Oricon rankings. On the singles chart, concocted pop boy duo Takki and Tsubasa’s latest single gets the number one spot with only 65000 copies sold. As predicted, all but two on the top 10 happen to be new singles, including the new single by AAA, SEAMO (who hit it big with his 2006 single Mada Aimasho), and Spitz, all selling less than 35,000 copies in their first week. Next week’s sales should be healthier, as KinKi Kids’ latest already sold over 40,000 copies on its first day.

As for the albums chart, Kat-tun’s second album rule the charts with 270,000 copies sold. The surprise, at least for me, was Avril Lavigne’s second place debut with her latest “The Best Damn Thing,” selling 220,000 copies and making her an even richer woman for having not all that much talent. Why?! How?! Which?!

- Japan has a new pop group, which features a former Morning Musume member (I suspect there are a lot of them out there floating in the J-pop world anyway). This time, the gimmick is the “gyaru” image, and the pop group name is - you guessed it - “Gyaruru.” I’ve seen these “gyarus” in Tokyo before, and they’re not really all that appealing to me. Who wants to guess that they’re not gonna go very far?

- In something that comes as absolutely no surprise, Hollywood has come out saying that they are backing the United States government’s complaint against China for intellectual copyright. In fact, they’re even threatening a ban, which means it might just rescue China from crappy Hollywood films, only to be replaced by more happy Chinese blockbusters promoting messages of peace and communism.

- To show those Americans that China takes copyright very seriously, a Chinese courts just found Yahoo! China guilty of copyright violation because the site provide links to sites with unauthorized MP3 downloads and lyrics.

- On the other hand, Chinese public television broadcaster CCTV has nothing to complain about, seeing how they just found a distributor for their content, thanks to the BBC.

- But then, the Asian media is not quite happy about how they are always in the shadow of Western media. They complain about how Western media only represents 1/7 of the world’s population, yet they control 2/3 of the world’s media, blah blah blah. Well, guess what, this report is right: Asian media does kind of suck. When they decide to stop sensationalist, inaccurate, and xenophobic reporting, then maybe someone will pay attention to you.

- Those who loved Hong Kong director Soi Cheang’s Dog Bite Dog are surely looking forward to the director’s latest, the Japanese comic adaptation Shamo. Even though it’s not being released in Hong Kong until September, the film will be shown at the Cannes film festival for potential overseas buyers. The bad news? Unlike Dog Bite Dog, which is category III due to violence and subject matter (meaning no one under 18 may be admitted, PERIOD), Shamo will only be category IIB (which is the equivalent of an R, except anyone can get in).

- When people watch Hong Kong film credits, they usually see the same guy for sound: Kinson Tsang. Honestly, I don’t know how that guy manages to do sound for almost every single Hong Kong film, but guess what? There’s actually another sound guy out there in the Hong Kong film world, and his name is Martin Chappell. KFC Cinema has an interview with him, and it’s quite informative.

- Director Mira Nair, who’s made films from Mississippi Masala to Monsoon Wedding, is getting the Pride of India award at the Bollywood Film Awards next month. Good for her.

- Lastly, in light of the “surprise” success of Hong Kong film Love is Not All Around, Ming Pao has a column on possible direction Hong Kong films can go:

青春愛情片在日本、韓國很流行，香港則甚少見也少有好票房，其實是傳統市場計算的問題。理論上，影市萎縮，餘下入場看電影的觀眾群，以青少年為主，是拍拖的主要活動，但港片偏就缺乏青春愛情片。

Youth romances are popular in Korea and Japan, but those in Hong Kong have seen low box office gross. That’s because there’s a problem with market calculations. Theoretically, the market has shrunk, and the audience that remains are mostly teens, who see moviegoing as a date activity. But Hong Kong film lacks youth romance.

最主要原因，是愛情片從來是港片的弱項，不是沒有，是少之又少，較有這方面才華的創作人，年紀已大，心態也大了，拍出來的作品，成熟觀眾喜歡，青少年沒有共鳴。可惜成熟觀眾多半已不入場看戲。

The primarily reason is that romance is a weakness of Hong Kong films. It’s not that they don’t exists, they just amount to very little. The artists that have talent in that aspect have grown old, and their mentalities have matured. Older audiences like those films, but youths can’t connect with it. Sadly, mature audiences mostly don’t go to cinemas anymore.

港片最有市場的是動作片，在香港可能只收幾百萬，但內地有市場，歐美也要這些片，拍幾千萬不是問題，再貴些都可以。黑社會片也可以，或者鬼片，一樣有埠。

Hong Kong’s biggest market is in action films. It may only earn a couple of million Hong Kong dollars locally, but there’s an audience for them in the Mainland, Europe, and America. The budget can go to tens of million dollars. Triad films and horror films have overseas markets as well.

在香港拍青春愛情片市場太窄，成本不能高，否則風險大。成本不高，可以請的卡士也不能太大，大也不一定好，因為當今的一線明星，個個年紀有番咁上下。

The market for youth romance in Hong Kong is too narrow; budget can’t be high, or the risk is too much. With a small budget, the cast can’t be too great. Even if they attract the big stars, all the big stars are past their prime.

韓、日動作片不及香港，愛情片反而有市，製作費也較高，無論畫面、美術、音樂各方面也做得比港片好，浪漫感也更強。愛情片拍得好，其實有很大空間，可惜香港電影公司把投資放在更有把握的片種上，不拍青春愛情片，也就少培養這方面的創作人才。

Korean and Japanese action films aren’t as huge as Hong Kong’s, but the market for romance exists. The budget is higher, hence visuals, production values, music, etc. are done better than Hong Kong films. The romantic feeling is stronger. Actually there is quite a bit of space to make good romance, but Hong Kong film studios put their investments in films they are more confident in instead of making romances. This prevents the cultivation of talents for those type of films.

《十分愛》的成功，希望可為香港年輕觀眾帶來更多有共鳴的電影。

Hopefully, the success of “Love is Not All Around” can bring more films that can connect with the young audiences of Hong Kong.

Original Chinese article

There are quite a few romances aimed at youths. Too bad the ones that exist - My Sweetie, Love@ First Note, and Super Fans - happen to be really crappy and manufactured to please record companies/Karaoke joints. Thing is, are the Japanese and Korean youth romance films all that much better?

You guessed it, folks, it’s box office time.

- For Hong Kong’s Sunday numbers, there was plenty of love for the cynical Gold Label pop stars vehicle Love is Not All Around. On 37 screens, the film made HK$1.22 million on Sunday for a very healthy HK5.19 million total (including previews). Look for this one to actually have a chance to pass the $10 million mark with two fairly weak HK competition films this weekend - Susie Au’s Ming Ming, which will attract the cool art 20s crowd, and Francis Ng’s Dancing Lions, which might attract the slightly older crowd.

In other openings, Hollywood crap fests Epic Movie and Shooter gets 3rd and 4th place, respectively. On 26 screens, Epic Movie made HK$330,000 for a 4-day total of HK$1.25 million. As for Shooter, it made a healthier HK$310,000 on just 19 screens for a HK$1.11 million 4-day total. As expected, The Painted Veil saw a bit of a surge, making HK$100,000 on 5 screens with a 4-day total of HK400,000. One place ahead is the lesbian drama Spider Lilies in its second weekend, making HK$160,000 on 10 screens on Sunday for a 11-day total of HK$2.44 million.

- Speaking of Ming Ming, Lovehkfilm actually has a review of it already, but many of you probably know that already since you probably found this blog from it. For those who’s been tracking the Hong Kong box office and has no idea what the hell is Easter box office flop Super Fans all about, Kozo has a review of that as well. I knew Eric Kot sold out with this movie, but I didn’t know he sold out to a Karaoke chain.

- In Japan audience rankings, the kids ruled the cinemas as two newly-opened animated films top the box office. The latest Conan (the child detective, not the barbarian) film opened up on top as expected, while Crayon Shinchan opened on 2nd. Three foreign films also joined the fray - Rocky Balboa performed the best after this week’s screen expansion, scoring fourth place, while the unworthy sequel Hannibal Rising scored fifth place. Performing even worse is Hugh Grant/Drew Berrymore’s Music and Lyrics, managing only an 8th place opening. Meanwhile, Box office Mojo seems to have some discrepancy again with the numbers, so we’ll go into that tomorrow when they have the entire top 10.

- Just about all the Spring Japanese drama has started, and the ratings are nowhere near the numbers networks enjoyed last season or even last year, for that matter. This season, the most anticipated new dramas are “Proposal Daisakusen,” starring boy band NEWS member Tomohisa Yamashita and Masami Nagasawa taking over Fuji’s best drama time slot, “the food drama “Banbino,” and Yuji Oda/Juri Ueno’s May-September romance “Joudan Janai!” After one full week, Joudan Janai opened strong with a 19.4 rating for its first episode, but has since fallen to a disastrous 14.7 rating for its second week. Proposal Daisakusen is in a close second place with a 19.3 opening episode with its second episode just aired a few hours ago in Japan. As for Banbino, it opened at an OK 16.6 rating.

Other dramas this Spring include the Japanese adaptation of the hit Korean drama Hotelier, starring idol Aya Ueto and a cameo by original star Bae Yong Joon (better known as Yonsama in Japan). It opened at a weak 11.1 rating in its first week. Even Death Note star Kenichi Matsuyama can’t help comic adaptation Sexy Voice and Robo, which had a weak first-week rating of 12.5, only to slip further into an 8.7 rating for its second week.

- In the North American box office, Disturbia, or better known as “Rear Window for Gen-Y,” topped the box office again. Grindhouse continues its freefall for its third weekend, and Hot Fuzz opens with an impressive $7,089 per-screen average on just 825 screens. In Asian film news, while Mark Cuban may be pissed about his Dallas Mavericks losing to the Golden State Warriors in their first game in the NBA playoffs (go Warriors!), he should be happy to know that The Host is now his Magnolia Picture’s 8th highest-grossing film ever. It’s only a little over $2 million in box office, but Cuban needs a little consolation prize right now, so there.

- That was fast. The recent commercial South Korean disappointment The Show Must Go On, starring Song Kang-Ho and directed by Rules of Dating’s Han Jae-Rim, is already seeing a DVD release date. According to Twitch, the DVD is coming out on July 30th, which isn’t that small of a theatrical-to-DVD window, but I’m surprised they’re announcing it so quickly. Funny enough, Paradise Murdered, the film that took The Show Must Go On off its box office throne, is also coming to DVD on July 30th.

- Everyone is picking on poor China. After the United States filed a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization over China’s rampant piracy of Hollywood films, Japan is now planning to file their own complaint against China as well. Oh, and sources say the EU is planning to do the same. Talk about the dirty Capitalists ganging up on the poor giant Communist.

- In true Japan fashion, while they blame the Chinese for not doing enough, the Japanese also have to praise themselves for cracking down piracy the right way. Oh, and they’re blaming foreigners for that too! I wonder if those Japanese street vendors at Osaka’s Electronic Street are still working the streets as if nothing is happening….

- Speaking of Hollywood and Japan, after the successful premiere of Spiderman 3 last week in Tokyo, Warner Bros. is now planning a similar rote for their summer tentpole film - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Hoping to continue their over-10 billion yen box office streak in Japan for the franchise, Warner Bros. will hold its premiere in Tokyo on June 28th, while the rest of the world will start seeing the film on the weekend of July 11th. Oh, except Japan, where it’ll actually open a week late.

- British Airway wants to provide the latest hit movies for their passengers, but it doesn’t want to do it if a rival airline and its chairman show up in it. In a petty immature fashion, BA decided to cut out Virgin Atlantic chairman Richard Branson’s cameo in the latest James Bond film Casino Royale. They also blurred out the appearance of a Virgin Atlantic plane in the film. Oh, behave!

- The biggest news out there, as I started teasing yesterday, is Tony Leung Chiu-Wai signing back onto John Woo’s troubled production of Battle on Red Cliff. As mentioned, Oriental Daily first broke the news without official confirmation. Ming Pao waited until this morning Hong Kong time to do it. Excerpt as follows:

昨晚《赤壁》監製透過網上承認此消息，他說﹕「經與梁朝偉先生聯絡後，梁朝偉先生基於與吳宇森導演20多年的友誼，又見到周潤發離開了《赤壁》劇組，《赤壁》又是一部令人期待的作品，必須要拍下去，所以當吳宇森邀請他重返劇組時，他一口答應，替吳宇森解決燃眉之急。」

Last night, “Red Cliff” producer admitted to the news via the internet: “After communication with Mr. Leung Chiu-Wai, based on his 20-year friendship with John Woo, Chow Yun-Fat’s departure, and the need to continue shooting the much-anticipated film, he decided to rejoin the film after John Woo invited him, helping John Woo due to the pressing need.

張家振表示，因偉仔已經熟讀劇本（去年初第一稿出時，已經給了偉仔）不會有發哥最介意的劇本問題（究竟發哥最介意的劇本問題是什麼，張家振未有回答）

Terence Chang said, since Tony have already read the script thoroughly (The first draft was given to him early last year), Chow’s problem with the script will not occur (But Chang has not responded to the question of what specific script problem Chow had).

Original Chinese report.

Variety Asia also has an English report.

- The other big story is the geniuses at New York Times finding what drove Virginia Tech student Cho Seung-Hui to kill 32 of his peers. Apparently, a package he sent to NBC just before he killed 30 students in a school building contained a picture of him holding a hammer that looks like he’s trying to imitate an image from Park Chan-Wook’s Oldboy. You know, it’s obvious because he’s a Korean, so of course violent Korean films would drive this poor disturbed bastard to murder.

OK, so how long before the American press starts blaming John Woo movies for the murders too?

Oh, wait, they’re not Korean, so Cho cannot possibly be influenced by those movies. Personally, I think anyone that blames movies for real-life crimes are just looking for false scapegoats so they can avoid dealing with real problems with society, like why he was mentally disturbed in the first place, and why he wasn’t properly treated by the authorities.

Plus, if Cho knew how fucking silly he looks with that hammer, maybe he would’ve woken up, but that’s just me.

In related media news, not only has there been reports of South Koreans coming out and apologizing for Cho’s rampage (what the hell for? They’re just feeding into this racial scapegoating the media is doing. The man has been in America so long he’s more Americanized than I am, for crying out loud), the Korean media has also taken a “it’s America’s fault” approach as well. (Thanks to Japan Probe for the link)

- Back to more relevant news to this blog, the Cannes 2007 lineup has been announced. As predicted, Wong Kar-Wai’s English-language debut My Blueberry Nights will be opening the festival, assuming that Wong is actually done with post-production. Representing Asia in competition will be South Korea’s Kim Ki-Duk with “Breath,” South Korea’s Lee Chang-Dong’s “Secret Sunshine,” and Japan’s Naomi Kawase with “Mogari No Mor.” Except for Wong, no Hong Kong films will be screened in or out of competition, despite predictions that Tsui Hark-Ringo Lam-Johnnie To actioner Triangle might make it. Nevertheless, the lineup looks pretty solid.

- Speaking of Korean films, Asian Cinema - While on the Road has reviews of a few Korean gangster films that are sure to corrupt another Korean-American youth’s mind (that was sarcasm, by the way).

- With the Hong Kong Entertainment Expo being a huge success, who can resist holding another film market in Hong Kong? That’s right, another film market event is going to Hong Kong, this time it’s Amazia, and it will open in November 2008. Yay.

- However, I don’t think the Amazia folks would be very happy to find what Hong Kong celebrities are doing with their Nintendo DS - some publicity photos have caught these celebrities playing their DS’s with an add-on that’s designed to enable the DS to play pirated games.

- I’ve never pushed box office news this far down an entry before, but I don’t want seem like I’m beating a dead horse. Eiga Consultant analyzes just exactly how bad Sunshine has done in Japan. According to his figures, it only grossed 52% of The Promise in its opening week in Japan. 52%?! I’m pretty damn sure Sunshine is better than The Promise based on this photograph alone.

- Ryuganji apparently has this report as well, but I saw it on Twitch first, so I gotta be fair. Anyway, Takeshi Miike is working on another new film, and apparently it’s a manga adaptation. I don’t care much for Miike, so you can find out more for yourself here as well.

- The troubled Bangkok Film Festival is making progress on its comeback, and this year they’re promising more Asian films. Good for them.

- I consider myself a fairly big fan of Japanese films. Sure, I’ve missed out on a lot of classics (I.have.not.seen.Seven.Samurai.), but I’m still a fan. So who’d know when Japanese people what 10 films they would recommend to foreigners, they would not only recommend a non-Japanese film (Letters From Iwo Jima), but they would actually recommended 57 films instead (the Tora-san series contains 48 films. I assume the Japanese people want us to watch them all)?

- Japanese new artist Ayaka has become the first female artist in over 4 years to sell more than 1 million copies of her album. Good for her too.

- I discovered Kon Ichikawa’s work when I took a Japanese cinema class last year. I discovered Shunji Iwai’s genius when I followed up my first viewing of Swallowtail with Love Letter. Too bad Iwai hasn’t done a new narrative film since Hana and Alice, but at least he made a documentary about Ichikawa, and it’s coming on DVD.

- Aside from making his war film The Assembly, Chinese director Feng Xiaogang is making a short film for China’s anti-piracy campaign. It even features one of the best metaphors for pirated films I’ve ever read.

- Jeffrey Wells has a link the the first legit review of Spiderman 3, and the verdict isn’t good.

- So remember over the weekend, Shochiku announced that the opening day box office was so high for the film version of Tokyo Tower that they expect it to surpass Kimura Takuya X Yoji Yamada’s 4 billion yen hit “Love and Honor?” Well, the Japan box office numbers are out, and Eiga Consultant can’t see how that’s possible. On its opening day, Tokyo Tower made only 196 million yen, which is 90% of the 1.41 billion yen-grossing Shinobi. In fact, its opening day gross was only 65% of what Love and Honor made on its opening day. You can compare the results yourself for Love and Honor and Tokyo Tower with those links. My own calculation (following the exchange rate BOM used for the respective weeks) actually showed that Tokyo Tower only made 53% of Love and Honor’s opening weekend, but that only furthers the point that Shochiku is lying out of their asses. This isn’t the first time Japanese distributors overestimated final grosses anyway; remember the Genghis Kahn movie? Exactly.

Elsewhere on the top 10, Blood Diamond seems to be hanging on thanks to word-of-mouth, and Sunshine opened weaker than I thought with only roughly $500,000. Otherwise, it’s been a pretty quiet weekend in Japan again.

- Meanwhile, South Korea had a fairly quiet weekend at the box office as well, with The Show Must Go On falling a sad 58% in its second week.

- The South Korean box office isn’t really looking all that bright for the summer either, with Hollywood offering Spiderman, pirates, and transformers, while Korea is offering horror flicks and….D-War?!

- The big news out of Hong Kong is not only Lau Ching-Wan’s best actor win at the Hong Kong Film Awards, but also fellow nominee Chow Yun-Fat withdrawing from John Woo’s epic The Battle of Red Cliff. It’s another “he-said-he-said” (there’s no she in this story) type of situation - producer Terence Chang said that the financiers can’t acquiesce to Chow’s request to pay his salary of US$5 million at once (which is reportedly 3 times the salary he got for Curse of the Golden Flower), while Chow’s side says that he got the script too late, which meant he couldn’t prepare early enough for a role that requires him to speak in Mandarin (Chow’s native tongue is Cantonese). He also said he already took a pay cut for not demanding a raise after the decision was make to split the films in two (um….they’re shooting it at the same time anyway). This is the second major blow to Woo’s ambitious US$70-million project after star Tony Leung Chiu-Wai dropped out due to the 6-month shooting schedule. Of course, the bigger question is whether Chow’s withdrawal will affect Woo and Chow’s legendary friendship.

- I read about this about a week ago in Oriental Daily, but I don’t remember reporting it. Anyone waiting for a Shaolin Soccer sequel can release half their breath. The good news is that there is a Stephen Chow-involved sequel being made, the bad news is that it probably won’t have anything to do with the first film. Fuji TV has teamed up with Chow to make a pseudo-sequel called “Shorin Shoujo” (Or Shaolin Girl) starring Ko Shibasaki as the title character and Bayside Shakedown helmer Katsuyuki Motohiro directing. It’ll be about a young girl returning from Japan after training at the Shaolin Temple and ends up helping out a college Lacrosse team. Shaolin Soccer co-stars Lam Chi-Chung and Tin Kai-Man will appear, Chow will apparently not. While in anyone else’s hands, this might be a bad idea, but I like Robot Productions and Motohiro enough that it might turn out to be a good popcorn flick.

- The big news coming out of Tokyo is the world premiere of Spiderman 3. Honestly, the only interesting part about the report is how making sequels actually keep down marketing costs and allow the studio to leave that for the production instead. Other than that, there’s no advance review out yet.

- Reading Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” (for a Comparative Literature class) and Kobo Abe’s “Woman in the Dunes” in the same quarter put me in a huge existential crisis. In other words, it was one of the greatest academic periods of my life. Anyway, I mention this because Criterion is releasing Teshigahara’s surprisingly faithful adaptation of Woman in the Dunes in July on DVD as part of a Teshigahara boxset. Anyone looking to get into an existential funk should check out this surreal classic.

- Like Warner Bros. in Japan, 20th Century Fox has struck a deal with Showbox (who distributed The Host) to finance and distribute South Korean films. This comes as no surprise to me since my Kick the Moon DVD was actually released by Fox already. Is this good news or not? Look at what Warner Bros. did in Japan and you might have an idea.

- Professor Bordwell is back from Hong Kong, and his first entry since returning tackles a subject that I, as a wannabe filmmaker, is actually immensely interested in. Many film viewers may not notice, but for me, the toughest part of editing a film is dialog scenes. Editing rely on a capturing a certain beat, and shooting dialog scenes are particularly tough because when you only have one camera, you have to shoot the scene many times at different angles, which can be tough for actors AND directors. Then when you have all that footage, you have to decide when to cut to which angle without ruining the pace of the scene. The cutting-in-between technique in dialog scenes is called “reverse shots,” meaning you start on one angle, then you cut to where the opposite angle where the camera shows where the initial shot was from.

Anyway, Professor Bordwell goes into how certain directors don’t use reverse shots. For me, it’s fascinating. Maybe for me only though.

- I’m sure many have heard about the Virginia Tech shooting allegedly committed by a disturbed neutralized South Korean student (please let it be known that he is a naturalized American citizen, not just some foreigner that went crazy on Americans) that killed 32 people, including himself. At one point, the Chinese press got a hold of reports that a Chinese student actually did the deed and ran with it (the local Chinese papers I saw today all have it on their headlines). During that time, the Chinese press ran into chaos, trying to decide whether to run the story or not, while the netizens reacted very quickly on the message boards. This is their story.

In Cantonese, we call the best actor and best actress winners at film awards “King” and “Queen,” respectively. This year’s Hong Kong Film Awards was held a few hours ago, and while I’ll be watching the show tonight SF time, I can’t help but looking up the winners list. Turns out I got 4 right, and the one I wanted to win best actor - Lau Ching-Wan for My Name is Fame - actually won.

Why is Lau Ching-Wan winning the “King” such a big deal? He’s a great actor, and everyone knows that. That’s what made it such a big deal - despite being a great actor and having been nominated many times, he has actually never won a best actor award at the HK Film Awards. After some 20 years of acting, one of Hong Kong’s greatest finally wins. I hope that this will encourage LCW to do even more movies.

More on the show itself and the winners list tomorrow.

- North American box office actual numbers are out tomorrow, but estimates show Grindhouse dropping by 63% and barely hanging on to the top 10. In addition to the “let’s split the movies up in director’s cut” plan (which would not be financially viable since it means striking up new prints), I wonder what else do the Weinsteins have up their sleeves.

- Speaking of another failure, Sony has decided to stop selling the cheaper 20gb model of the Playstation 3 in the United States. The more expensive 60gb model remains in the market, which shows which market they’re really aiming at these days.

- This weekend Japan sees the third adaptation of the novel Tokyo Tower in a year opening in its cinemas. This time, it stars Joe Odagiri and Kirin Kiki. Despite the excess dose of the popular novel about a young man venturing to Tokyo from his rural town and the mother who supported him every step of the way, Hoga News reports that its opening day box office is huge enough that it’s expected to pass the 4 billion mark that Yoji Yamada’s Love and Honor did this past winter. Joe Odagiri>Kimura Takuya???

- Japanese video market is still flat. More people are buying DVDs, but they’re individually buying and spending less on them. zzzzzzz…….

- I was going to talk about how pirates put Chinese subtitles on those foreign shows that allows people to download the show and understand the whole thing within only a few days’ time. That was yesterday’s lost entry. Today, I offer Korea Pop Wars’ Mark Russell’s look at the ongoing struggles of vendors that sell pirated discs, only to find out that it’s all about location, location, location.

- Meanwhile, Twitch introduces Driving With My Wife’s Lover, a Korean film that sounds really interesting with a title that’s as tell-all as it gets.

- Lastly, thought the events in the Peter Chan-produced/Fruit Chan-directed film Dumplings can’t happen? Think again (warning, content may potentially gross you out.).

Being Wednesday, hump is being used here as a noun, not a verb.

- Let’s start with some rankings. Today it’s the Japanese Oricon (To answer a question that has never been asked, I only go over the Oricon because it’s the most widely-known easy-access general ranking in Asian music. Of course, I’m only saying that because I know Japanese and I don’t know Korean. Plus, I don’t know much about Taiwanese music anyway to go over rankings there). It was a slow week on both fronts - on the singles side, Glay leads the chart with their latest single, selling only 67,000 copies. By that number, you can tell how badly the rest of the singles are selling.

The album chart was fairly weak this week as well, with rock-pop songstress YUI taking the top spot with her second album, selling 290,000 copies. It’s also her first number 1 album, thanks to weak albums sales overall this week. Unlike the crowded album market last month, only 4 new releases found its way on the top 10, and 3 of them are ranked 5th and below.

- In case anyone still cares, Hong Kong Tuesday numbers are out. Mr. Bean still ruled the Hong Kong Easter box office, and Super Fan still flopped.

Several follow-ups from previous reported news:

- In response to Eason Chan’s comments about Ayumi Hamasaki lip-syncing part of her way through her Hong Kong concert, fans in Hong Kong have suggested they boycott Eason’s albums. Excerpt from Chinese report below:

陳奕迅（Eason）因公然指濱崎步在演唱會「咪嘴」而惹步姐迷不滿，昨日就有網友發起罷買Eason的唱片。

Eason Chan’s claim that Ayumi Hamasaki was lip-syncing at her concert has angered her fans. Yesterday, netizens were initiating boycotts of Eason’s albums.

Eason心情未受影響。但談到步姐和網友發起罷買其唱片，他就顯得很避忌，不欲多談，只強調當日接受訪問，大讚步姐是個聲色藝俱全歌手，其他事情不作回應了，免得事件愈鬧愈大。

Eason’s mood did not seemed to be affected, but when the boycott issue was brought up, he appeared wanting to avoid the issue and refused to comment. He only emphasized that during the interview, he complimented Ayumi as an all-around talented singer. He didn’t want to respond to other issues as to not blow things out of proportion.

Original Chinese report is here.

This isn’t the first time he said the wrong thing anyway. A few years ago, he said among the four Heavenly Kings of Cantopop (Leon Lai, Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, and Aaron Kwok), he only bought Jacky’s albums, which set off another media/fan storm that eventually blew over. As one of Hong Kong’s top pop acts, I don’t think Eason has to worry about any type of boycott.

- Yesterday, I reported that the United States formally filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization about China’s rampant piracy. In response, China pretty much gives the U.S. a very gentle middle finger.

- Park Chan-Wook’s latest I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK is finally coming to DVD on April 30th. I’ll assume that a Hong Kong edition (that will be wiped out by the legions of screaming Rain fans, including those that didn’t show up for the theatrical release) is coming soon after that as well.

- I hated Kim Tae-Kyun’s A Romance of Their Own. It represented everything that was bad about Korean teen cinema - the posing, the melodrama, the tragic twist. I barely made it to the ending. Asian Cinema - While on the Road has a review of his latest, and it seems like it’s more formulaic melodrama that I would hate. Shame, I thought Volcano High was a solid film.

- On that note, Korean films seemed to have hit a slump for March, taking only 21.6% of the market. But the fact that the big picture shows that Korean films is still enjoying a 55.3% share for the year, the reports may be blowing it out of proportion a little bit. Hong Kong would kill for that kind of number, people.

- Japanese production company Nikkatsu has announced its line-up for 2007-2008. The most notable films include the cgi-animated film of popular 70s toon “Gatchaman,” to be made by Hong Kong firm Imagi and directed by Kevin Munroe, who teamed up for the recently-released TMNT. They also announced the Death Note spinoff film based on the detective character L, which will be shot later this year and distributed by Warner Bros. Japan.

- Japan Probe offers a look at what shooting on Kill Bill Volume 1 might have been like. It even offers a Quentin Tarantino impersonator that’s close enough, as far as Japanese impersonation goes.

- The Hong Kong International Film Festival is coming to an end, with the Hong Kong Film Awards on Sunday (I’ll be watching it on Sunday night on the tape-delay broadcast by the local TVB channel in San Francisco), which means Professor Bordwell is leaving. But before he leaves, he shares a ton of pictures, and even mentions this blog! Thanks, Professor, I enjoyed your coverage of the HKIFF!

- While I can’t really gauge how the Easter weekend went in Hong Kong until the midweek numbers come out later tonight (since Monday was also a public holiday), Mov3.com uploaded the Sunday numbers, which was a surprisingly clear indicator of who won the weekend. With a HK$2.16 million gross on Sunday from just 32 screens and a 4-day HK$9.43 million total, Mr. Bean’s Holiday ruled the holiday box office. This result is extremely surprisingly, at least for me, considering that the TV show is long over, Rowan Atkinson’s films aren’t huge draws at the box office (Johnny English excluded), and that it’s been 10 years since the last Mr. Bean movie. Its gross is as huge as Night at the Museum, and that made over HK$40 million, so how far will Mr. Bean go, especially with that amazing per-screen average?

As for the other movies, my predictions were pretty far off. I said Sunshine would do moderate business, but it actually did worse than Disney’s Meet the Robinsons (Easter IS a family holiday, after all) and the biblical horror film The Reaping, which has 4-day totals of HK$3.33 million and HK$2.51 million, respective. As for Sunshine, it made HK$430,000 on 30 screens, which is OK, but not spectacular. After 4 days, it’s made HK$2.07 million. Hong Kong’s sole representative, the Eric Kot-directed Super Fans, was a pretty big loser with only HK$270,000 from 29 screens on Sunday, and after 5 days, it’s only made HK$1.65 million. Good thing it was only a moderately-sized production, which might’ve been what killed it.

- Box Office Mojo also posted the top 6 at the Japanese box office, this week at the exchange rate of 119 yen=$1. Even without the small change, one can see that the top 10 films all fell by fairly large percentages, which only helped show how weak Blood Diamond’s opening was. In case it’s not apparent to you enough, Eiga Consultant puts it all in perspective - it was only 52% of the Japanese opening for The Departed (which ended with a 1.6 billion yen total) and only 92% of The Aviator (which had a 1.07 billion yen total).

- Korea Pop Wars also has the Korean box office, and The Show Must Go On starring Song Gang-Ho obviously made the number 1 spot. More analysis over there courtesy of Mark Russell.

- Plagiarism is a plague in the Asian music industry - everyone is copying off each other, and they’re only spread around like urban legend on the net while it continues. That’s why I’m happy to see one of these cases go to court, as a South Korean court ruled that a MTV for a song by Korean pop singer Ivy was illegally copied off a scene from the movie Final Fantasy: Advent Children. According to the comments there, representatives for Ivy’s side are just blaming it on some Chinese guy. Riiiigggght.

Look for the rip-off of the song by Mark Lui for the HK pop market in the coming months.

- Even the Chinese are in legal trouble, as the U.S. has officially filed a complaint with the W.T.O. over the rampant piracy of Hollywood films in China. That’s probably because Chinese censors keep banning the damn things that people have to find other ways to watch them.

- Funny that on the same day, Variety Asia also has a report about China’s effort to cut down on piracy, which is true since I saw a report of a raid by Chinese officials on the Hong Kong news a few days ago.

- If anyone still cares, the creator of Ghost Rider is suing Sony over copyright infringement for its film adaptation. Wait, wasn’t this produced by Marvel?

- Anyone in for a blockbuster comedy that promotes plastic surgery can turn to 200 Pound Beauty, which is being released on DVD on April 20th. I’m not a big fan of plastic surgeries, but hey, it might be worth a look.

- More on the Jackie Chan successor show - apparently, over 100,000 people have already signed up for a chance at martial arts stardom. Not clear is whether son Jaycee is one of those 100,000.

- Hoga News has some info on new films coming out, one of which is the sequel to the successful drama about ethnic Koreans in Japan “Pacchigi!”

- Just because you pay to watch TV in China doesn’t mean you can watch anything you want, alright? At least that’s what those damn watchdogs say.