- With no major opener this past weekend, Hong Kong box office was fairly quiet this past weekend. The apocalyptic thriller Doomsday performed the best, making HK$330,000 from 23 screens on Sunday for a 4-day weekend total of HK$1.25 million, despite being slapped with the category-III rating. Of course, Iron Man ruled for the third weekend in a row, making HK$724,000 from 41 screens on Sunday. After 19 days, the superhero film has already made HK$19.62 million. However, with Indiana Jones coming this week, it’s not likely to surpass the HK$25 million mark.

Meanwhile, What Happens in Vegas seemed to have been fueled by strong word-of-mouth, retaining much of its business for a second-place finish. On Sunday, the romantic comedy made HK$507,000 from 29 screens for a 11-day total of HK$4.97 million. As counter-programming, it may have a solid chance of hitting HK$10 million. On the other hand, Speed Racer suffered a far worse fate, making only HK$145,000 from 37 screens, and it has only made a depressing HK$2.53 million after 11 days.

Be Kind, Rewind did a lot better over the weekend, making HK$221,000 from just 11 screens for a 4-day total of HK$710,000. Hong Kong continues to prove their love for dog movies with A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies, which made another HK$317,000 from 24 screens for a 18-day total of HK$6.65 million. Too bad only one screen in Hong Kong (I think) is playing the original Japanese version. The dark comedy/horror film Teeth also did OK, making HK$128,000 from 8 screens for a 4-day total of HK$500,000.

- In Japanese cinema attendance figures, only Charlie Wilson’s War hit the top 10, debuting at 3rd place. This bumps everything below it down by at least one place, including The Last Princess, Shaolin Girl, and Crayon Chin-chan dropped from 6th place all the way to 9th. However, The Mist and The Sand Chronicles remain unaffected, staying at 7th and 8th place, respectively. More when the numbers are out.

- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! As I reported on Tuesday, Kimura Takuya’s much-anticipated drama CHANGE started a little disappointingly with just a 23.9% rating. Meanwhile, Muri Na Renai finally found its way up, getting a 6.9% rating after the season-low 6.2% in the previous week. The same applied for Ryoteki Na Kanojo (aka My Sassy Girl), which went up to 8.0% for this week’s episode after last week’s season-low 7% rating. In fact, only Kimi Hannin Janai yo ne is the only drama that reached a new season low this week.

Meanwhile, comic adaptation Rookies have recovered from its disappointing opening and scored a season-high rating of 16.4% rating this week. Hachi One Diver also recovered quite well, scoring a 11% rating for this week’s episode. Gokusen, Osen, Puzzle, and Hokaben all recovered slightly, scoring 25.3%, 9.5%, 10.2%, and 7.8%, respectively. Lastly, Last Friends is still doing well with a 17.2% rating for this week’s after scoring a season-high 19.9% last week.

-  While Hayao Miyasaki’s Ponyo on a Cliff is poised to take the top spot in this year Japan box office, Mark Schilling over at Variety also looks at a few other movies that may hit it big at the Japanese box office this summer. Believe it or not, Speed Racer is one of them.

- In light of last week’s earthquake in China, the government has set a three days’ mourning period, effective stopping all “public recreational activities” for three days, including variety shows and even cinema screenings. Hong Kong is also suspending the nightly laser show at Victoria Harbor, which sucks if you’re a tourist and you’re only in Hong Kong for these three days.

- Since I found it, I’ve already watched it 4 times: It’s the trailer for Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, The Bad, The Weird. Am I overzealous of thinking already that this can either be the most spectacular success or the most spectacular failure of 2008 Korean cinema? Anyway, time to pull out that A Bittersweet Life DVD again.

Note: The link from Kaiju Shakedown is already down. You can catch it here, before it gets deleted.

- It’s reviews time! Variety’s Derek Elley has two reviews from Cannes: First his not-positive-but-not-negative review of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, then his somewhat positive review of Jia Zhangke’s 24 City.

Also, Midnight Eye has been updating quite a bit, including reviews of Fine Totally Fine and Tokyo Sonata, so keeping checking that front page.

- With the Ashes of Time Redux cut having premiered at Cannes already, Grady Hendrix looks at what are some of the already known facts about it. Also, Oriental Daily already covered the premiere today, and reported not seeing much changes except for the new score and some color correction.

-Veteran Japanese pop group Southern All Stars (the originator of many hit Cantopop songs in the 80s and the 90s) are announcing an indefinite hiatus to start after their 30th anniversary concert.

- While Toshiba and Gaga Usen are closing shop as film distributors in Japan, a new distributor backed by record label Avex has popped up, and it will concentrate on directors rather than stars. “Cast and script quality are not enough,” the label’s new head says. Ouch.

- I didn’t see this coming: Actress Manami Konishi’s first single, the theme song for the Takeshi Kaneshiro-starrer Accuracy of Death, has hit the number 1 spot in Taiwan ahead of the film’s opening. Is it for the film, or is Konishi really that popular in Taiwan?

- Beast Cops was on TV this morning, and I was wondering what has happened to Gordon Chan? After finishing the latest Donnie Yen star vehicle Painted Skin, the Hong Kong director will be directing the film version of the classic video game King of Fighters. Worse of all, he’s now known in the West only as the director of The Medallion. How far the greats have fallen.

- Death Note star Kenichi Matsuyama has won the Grand Prize of the first annual Eigakan Taisho, which gathered 6,000 votes for Japan’s favorite actor or actress. Good for him, now his non-Death Note films just have to do better.

- It’s reviews time! First we have Justin Chang’s review of the omnibus film Tokyo!, which had its premiere in Cannes. Chang also reviews the hit Korean film The Chaser. Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has a review of Katsuhito Ishii’s Yama no Anata, which seems to be a shot-for-shot remake of the 1937 film Anma to Onna.

- This year’s Cannes market has quite a few two-part films, and that includes John Woo’s expensive upcoming epic Red Cliff, even though the film will be sold as one film outside of Asia.

- Director Herman Yau is now shooting his first film in 2008 since last year’s On the Edge, Gong Tau and Whispers and Moans. The crime film, made under Universe, stars Shawn Yue, Elaine Kong, Paul Wong, Jun Kung, Chapman To, and Ada Choi as a mob boss.

- I report this because I’m a Shiina Ringo fan - the rock star will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of her major label debut with not only two release, but also a concert in November. Man, I wish I can go to that.

- The aspiring film series about the Tokyo Tsukiji fish market (first installment coming in June) doesn’t have to worry about moving shooting locations for a while - the planned relocation is looking at a 3 years’ delay.

With Cannes underway, I’m trying to stay away from one acquisition news after another, though there are naturally always interesting things going on throughout the festival.

- On that note, a Hong Kong distributor has picked up the controversial Japanese documentary Yasukuni for international sales, and is currently being screened at the Cannes market.

- I’m sure this will open up more and more studies about youths today - A survey reports that 95% of Japanese fifth graders own a game console. Even more humorous is that the variety show London Hearts has been voted as the show parents don’t want their kids watching for the 5th year in a row.

- I reported earlier that ex-Morning Musume member Ai Kago will be in a Hong Kong film, and now it’s been revealed that the film co-stars Vanness Wu and Sammo Hung. Put in Daniel Lee, and you’ve got a trifecta.

- The Cannes market again attracted attention to Bollywood, whose studios have been branching at markets such as this.

- Poor Koda Kumi just can’t catch a break - the pop star recently returned to work on her concert tour after a suspension for making insensitive comments on the radio, but now she’s no longer as the spokeswoman for Kirin, who decided not to renew the contract. She will now replaced by Kyoko Fukada.

- It’s Taiwanese music charts time! Soda Green’s live CD tops the G-Music Charts in its first week, taking up over 10% of total sales. Meanwhile, Korean boy band Super Junior’s latest debuts at 2nd place, taking over 5% of total sales. June Chu’s debut album arrive on the chart at 8th place with just under 1% of total sales. Korean pop singer Jang Nara’s Mandarin album could only muster a 13th place debut with 0.75% of sales, but she still did better than Japanese pop duo WaT, whose latest debuted all the way down at 18th place with just 0.53% of total sales.

- This week’s Teleview column is all about Change, the upcoming Kimura Takuya drama where he plays an elementary school teacher who becomes the Prime Minister of Japan. Sounds like a real winner.

- Ryuganji has translated another interesting piece from Sai Yoichi, turns out he wrote an even more scathing piece about the making of Soo before the interview that Ryuganji translated about a week and a half ago.

- It’s trailers time! Twitch brings us all three of them today. First, it’s another trailer for Tokyo Gore Police that’s still, well, gory.  Then it’s a trailer for God’s Puzzle, a teen love story that you would’ve never guessed it’s made by Takashi “Ichi The Killer” Miike.  Lastly, there’s a trailer for Ryuichi Hiroki’s Your Friends, which I missed at the Hong Kong International Film Festival and will not even open in Japan until end of June.

- Korean director Na Hong-Jin is already planning for his next film after his megahit thriller The Chaser. The Murderer will be about a man forced to become a murderer to overcome starvation. Any cannibalism involved?

- The controversial documentary Yasukuni has reached the Kansai area after a week of sold-out screenings in Tokyo. The theater in Tokyo has also extended the film’s run after it was only set to play it for a week.

- A new powerful documentary about the issue of forced comfort women premiered at the Jeonju Film Festival this past week and presents evidence that clearly prove the existence of such women even outside of Japan and Korea.

- JJ Sonny Chiba (or the artist formerly known as Sonny Chiba) will take once again take on 7-Color Mask, a TV series role that Chiba took on as his screen debut all the way back in the 60s. After the death of the original writer last month, Chiba has decided to fulfill the actor’s wish by producing and starring in the film version of the series.

- The San Sebastian Film Festival this year will include a retrospective of old black and white Japanese film noir from Japan.

- Jason Gray shows us some of the promotional material Japan is seeing for Hayao Miyazaki’s latest, which is nice since we overseas get damn near nothing to see on the internet.

- Oh, there’s a new post at the spin-off.

- Let’s look at the Thursday opening day box office. The Wachowski’s Speed Racer is a major flop, making only HK$230,000 from 50 screens. Judging from the turnout at the screening I went to, it’s not going to do too much better this weekend. But honestly, it’s not that bad of a movie. Meanwhile, “counter-programming” romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas opened higher with HK$268,000 from 29 screens. Lastly, the doggie documenatary This Darling Life opened on just 8 screens with just under HK$30,000 on opening day. More on Monday with the weekend numbers.

- Thanks to Mr. Texas over at Eiga Consultant, we have some definitive numbers on how the controversial documentary Yasukuni did in its first weekend. In that one theater in Shibuya, the film attracted 3429 people over the first 4 days of screening, and with 8 showings a day in a theater that seats a little more than 100 people, this means every show was sold out. With screenings happening successfully without major protests, Mr. Texas also writes that those theaters that canceled the screenings must be hitting themselves on the head now.

- It’s reviews time! This week we play Rashomon with the Japanese blockbuster film The Last Princess. First it’s an all-out rave from The Daily Yomiuri’s Ikuko Kitagawa, who seemed to have really loved it. On the other hand, Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has his review as well, but he doesn’t quite like it so much.

-Former UFO director Lee Chi-Ngai finally has a new film, this time it’s a dance movie produced by companies from Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and Singapore, starring actors from Japan and Korea. The dancing film will be released early next year.

- Twitch’s Stefan brings to our attention a Singaporean film about….gangsters?

-  Meanwhile, Variety brings to our attention two Korean-other country co-production efforts: Korean and American companies are teaming up for The Aquarium of Pyongyang, about a family forced into a North Korean prison camp. Also, Beautiful Days director Kim Moon Saeng is adapting a popular French novel into a part-3D animation, part-life-action film produced by the two countries.

- While the movie version of the hit book Homeless Chugakusai just started shooting this March and won’t come out until October, Fuji TV just took a big leap ahead of it by announcing a TV drama version that will start shooting this month and begin airing in July.

- We’ve reported a few times about famous Hong Kong screenwriter Ivy Ho’s directorial debut Claustrophobia. The film, starring Karena Lam and Ekin Cheng, will get its premiere at Cannes…….but not at the festival, just at the market taking place at the festival.

- Finally got some Japanese box office numbers in, although it only covers Saturday and Sunday, which was the middle of the Golden Week holidays. As a result, most of the movies on the chart saw a rise from their previous weekend’s gross. For example, Shaolin Girl saw a 20% boost and has now grossed 715 million yen, despite a somewhat weak opening last weekend. But of course, the biggest boosts went to the kid-friendly films such as Conan (20.3%), Crayon Shin-Chan (27.7%), and The Spiderwick Chronicles (17.7%). However, the Masked Rider movie took a drop instead, losing 23.4% of business despite not losing any screens. Hollywood flick 10,000 B.C. also lost business, presumably because theaters put the more popular films on bigger screens and moved this to smaller ones.

- With its first hit in two years, Toei is now crossing their fingers on God’s Puzzle, Takashi Miike’s latest, to rebound them from what was their worst fiscal year in 20 years.

- Meanwhile, The Forbidden Kingdom has done solid business in China, making 150 million yuan since its release in late April already, partly thanks to the holiday last week.

- Things are not doing so well in Korea, where theaters saw April’s performance as the lowest monthly attendance figures since April 2003.

- However, local performance is not stopping them from taking their award-nominated films for a special showing in Japan.

- Earlier in the week, I mentioned that the Chinese distributor for the new Donnie fantasy film Painted Skin already estimated a final box office take simply based on screen counts. Now, the investors are so confident that not only did they already plan two sequels, they already assume they’re successful enough to raise the budget and get Zhang Ziyi for the second movie.

- The Asia Pacific Screen Awards, which had its first year in Australia last year, is now adding an academy, with all the nominees from last year’s awards being included with voting powers for this year’s awards.

-  There’s a short teaser for the omnibus movie Tokyo!, though it doesn’t really show anything from any of the three films, which will get their premiere at Cannes this year.

- A Spanish film buyer has bought their first Asian film, and…it’s Taiwanese torture porn?

-  Hollywood Reporter’s Maggie Lee turns in a review for Sylvia Chang’s Run Papa Run.

-  Chinese president Hu Jintao told Japanese reporters that his favorite Japanese TV drama is the popular 80s morning drama Oshin. It would’ve been great if he said anything with Kimura Takuya in it, but alas, that was not to be.

- My boy Jero has now joined the ranks of popular Japanese pop stars - he’ll be the spokesman for a new line of canned coffee.

- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! Muri Na Renai (the drama about the 60-year-old man in love with a woman 25 years younger) continues its freefall with a drop to 6.9% rating in the previous episode (we’ll talk about the latest episode next week(. Meanwhile, the Yu Aoi-led drama Osen drops quite a bit in its second week to an 8.7% rating. Last Friends continues to perform strongly, as its ratings went up to a 15.9% again for its 4th episode. However, it’s still the third installment of Gokusen that’s winning the season, though its ratings fell again for the second week in a row, now down to a 23.3%, although the Golden Week holidays may have something to do with it. Another freefalling drama to watch out for is Ryokiteki na Kanojo (aka the drama adaptation of Korean film My Sassy Girl), whose rating dropped by another 2.8% to only an 8.7% for its third episode.

Japanese drama info at Tokyograph.

- It’s Japan music charts time! On the Oricon charts, Koichi Domoto, under the name of his character in the movie Sushi Ouji got the number one single. Shuchishin (what is the big deal with these guys?) continue their stand at #2, beating all the other new releases of the week.

Meanwhile, Madonna topped the album charts with her latest album, as the other new release, the Sushi Ouji soundtrack barely got on the chart.

More at Tokyograph.

Meanwhile, the more comprehensive Billboard Japan 100 charts put British artist Leona Lewis’s “Bleeding Love” at the top and Hata Motohiro at 2nd place, with the latter due to radio play. Since the Billboard charts have different criteria such as radio play and surveying possibly a different number of stores, it’s interesting to see the different ways of gauging musical popularity.

Also, Thelma Aoyama’s hit single “Soba Ni Iru Ne” is now the top single of 2008…so far.

- No Japanese box office numbers yet, but different reports are coming in about Aibou’s phenomenal opening. Over the 5-day holiday weekend, the drama adaptation already racked up over 1.2 billion yen, and its attendance figures is at 150% of YAMATO’s opening, although I don’t think YAMATO opened on an extended weekend such as this.

report from Tokyograph.

report from Variety Asia.

- Hollywood Reporter’s Maggie Lee has a review of Daniel Lee’s Three Kingdoms - Resurrection of the Dragon. What, no mention of Maggie Q’s “when my men battle, I rock the ancient guitar” routine?

- The troubled Bangkok Film Festival is back this year, but it’s now been shifted from July to September, and it will probably be part of the new Bangkok Entertainment Expo, modeled after the successful Hong Kong Entertainment Expo.

- Question: How the hell do you pull off a concept single with “vivid” as a concept?

- Grady Hendrix looks at what’s wrong with Korean films this year just from looking at the trailer for The Legendary Libido.

- Under “your daily Edison Chen news” today, actor/director Stephen Fung confirmed that his latest film Jump is currently stuck in limbo while awaiting approval from China’s SARFT. Also, he said that he did not cut one frame of Edison’s role in the film.

- Lastly, Nippon Cinema gives us a look at just how hard it is to promote a blockbuster film in Japan these days.

-

Japan is at the tail end of its Golden Week holiday, so no Japanese drama numbers yet.

- However, we do have the Japan box office attendance figures for Saturday and Sunday (the “weekend” in Japanese box office terms since Saturday is opening day), and popular drama-now-movie Aibou (aka Partners The Movie) is at the top as expected. Meanwhile, 10,000 B.C. fell to 5th place already, Shaolin Girl hangs on at 3rd (despite poor English-language reviews), and Conan also hangs on by falling only to second place. Believe it or not, the only film that didn’t fall in placing is Nicholas Cage’s sci-fi thriller Next, which stayed at 8th place.

- Twitch also has the Korean attendance figures for the past weekend. Iron Man has already passed the 1 million mark, not including the Monday holiday. Also, The Legendary Libido attracts only 181,000 admissions, while the French action film Taken has already reached 1.7 million admissions.

- Kaiju Shakedown brings to our attention to the Kankuro Kudo-penned, so-crazy-it-might-be-good stage show Metal Macbeth. Its cast actually features Takako Matsu, who is actually quite an accomplished stage actress in addition to her success on TV dramas. Do I dare spend 6800 yen on a 210-minute stage with no subtitle at all on DVD?

- Twitch offers us the full-length trailer for the Japanese action film Chameleon, which I hope won’t have as much slow-mo hair moments as Donnie Yen movies often do. Actually, the behind the scenes video of star Tatsuya Fujiwara doing stunts were more interesting than the trailer.

There’s also a trailer for Kami ga Kari, the latest film from director Minoru Kawasaki, better known for cult favorites such as Crab Goalkeeper, Calamari Wrestler, and Everything but Japan Sinks. It seems to be a more mature film about…a magical stylist?

- Ahead of the release of his latest film, director M. Night Shyamalan will be receiving the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honors.

- It’s Cannes Film Market news time! First, Variety takes a look at the films Japanese studios will be taking to the market, including the second film by Kenji Uchida (Stranger of Mine) and Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers.

Also, the Thai-Singapore-Hong Kong co-produced horror film The Coffin will be premiering at the market. The film stars Hong Kong-based actress Karen Mok and has a Thai-based director.

- Bollywood, after remaking plenty of overseas films without buying any rights, are now talking with Warner Bros. about buying the rights to remake The Wedding Crashers.

- Remember a few months ago, Yuen Wo-Ping wanted to train people to kick ass? It may be for the film Iron Mask, the supposed sequel to Iron Monkey that will star Louis Koo and Shawn Yue that will start shooting in July.

- Lastly, I give you all the Stephen Colbert-Rain dance-off:

Remember, guys. It’s all played for laughs.

- Let’s look at Hong Kong Thursday opening day box office. Forbidden Kingdom had a huge opening day, making HK$1.03 million from 47 screens. Of course, the fact that over 90% of the screens playing it are the Cantonese-dubbed version helps boost the gross. Barbara Wong’s sequel to Sixth Floor Rear Flat debuts rather flat with just HK$270,000 from 30 screens and will have to look for a big boost over the weekend from the kids. Somehow, small romance ensemble film Love is Elsewhere made its way to third place with HK$107,000, beating Chocolate by about HK$2,000. The Hollywood comedy Over Her Dead Body opened with just HK$55,000 from 10 screens. More on Monday with the full chart.

-It’s Taiwan music charts time! Victor Wong’s latest album tops the chart in its first week, taking up 9.14% of total sales;Nicholas Teo’s compilation debuts at second place with roughly 5% of total sales; Korean boy band Shinhwa debuts at 4th place with 2.17%; Jordan Chan’s album drops from 8th place to 20th place in its second week, and Jeff Chang’s album didn’t see much improvement in its second week either.

- More on John Woo’s Red Cliff in today’s Ming Pao. Most importantly, the big battle scenes seen in the first trailer will be in the second film coming later this year rather than the first part coming out in July. According to the report, the first film will mostly set up the relationships while the second film will deliver the action.

- Variety’s John Hopewell writes more about the Asian selections at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, or the lack thereof.

- Ai Kago, most famous for being kicked out of Japanese pop collective Morning Musume, is back in show business and has announced that she will be in a Hong Kong film, even though she herself doesn’t know anything about the movie yet.

- Saitama, known as a “commute prefecture” where people who work in Tokyo live, is a prefecture I’ve frequented quite a bit in my recent trips to Japan, and it’s also the only prefecture that hasn’t been the setting for a NHK morning drama. Now it’ll be the setting of the network’s 60th morning drama, Tsubasa.

- Ming Pao also reports that producer Raymond Wong is planning to bring back the traditional Lunar New Year movie with All’s Well, Ends Well ‘09. It’ll be directed by Vincent Kuk with Sandra Ng and Raymond Wong on the cast so far. Producers are reportedly wooing Louis Koo for a major role as well.

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.