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because of a meeting during the day, and i wanted to get the rest of the weekend news out of the way before they get outdated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bit of everything today, but actually quite a bit of reviews.

- Japan Times offers us three reviews this weekend. The most intriguing one is Tony Takitani director Jun Ishikawa’s latest Ashita No Watashi Tsukurikata, which from the plot description and trailer sounds like a pretty good movie. It’s currently playing on limited release at these theaters (if you are in Japan and is interested in this movie, you ought to be able to read it anyway). Kaori Shoji, meanwhile, reviews Panasian film Invisible Waves by Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang. Lastly, they also have a review of the MTV-affiliated documentary Just For Kicks, which is about hip-hop and sneakers……I guess?

- Thanks to the Trailer Blog, we have our first look at Ang Lee’s Lust Caution, starring Tony Leung Chiu-Wai. It’s part of a reel from Focus Features, who also distributed Lee’s previous film Brokeback Mountain. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. Lust Caution is expected to be released in the United States in September. No word on the Asia release date, though.

- I had previously expressed my disappointment that the Tsui Hark/Ringo Lam/Johnnie To collaboration Triangle didn’t get invited to the Canne official lineup. Turns out they were waiting for the Chinese censors to clear the film (which they didn’t do with last year’s Summer Palace by Lou Ye), which was likely because of its “uncontroversial content.” Now it’s been cleared, and it’s part of the out of competition lineup. No idea when this will be released in Hong Kong, though. More news on Triangle tomorrow.

- I recently saw a link on Mobius Home Theater Forum to the results of a readers’ poll on they consider to be the 40 best foreign films of all time. I agree with one of the posters on the board that says it’s unfair to place all non-English films as simply foreign films. Maybe I’m just the resident Asian film fanatic who doesn’t know better, but I’m more bothered by the fact that 32 of the films are made by the Western world than the fact that Amelie actually got second place.

- With the surge of Korean national cinema, it’s about time that they recognize some of the classics. For the first time, several classic Korean films will be registered as national cultural heritage materials. Considering film restoration was virtually non-existent in Korean, it’s amazing that these films survived through the war.

That’s it for today. A few more news tidbits tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

For reference: US$1=HK$7.8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- The San Francisco International Film Festival is coming around the corner, and the local San Francisco newspapers have been running features for a while now, so I figure I should probably at least link one of them. From the San Francisco Bay Guardian, there’s a feature dedicated to Daniel Wu’s recent award-winning mockumentary The Heavenly Kings. Too bad I haven’t seen one mention of Patrick Tam’s After This, Our Exile in these features, considering that it’s the heralded return of Wong Kar-Wai’s mentor.

- Remember, Johnnie To’s Election and Election 2 us currently under a 2-week run at New York’s Film Forum. They even decided to add one more showing of Election starting tomorrow, Friday the 27th! Greencine has a round-up of reviews around the net, which seems to be generally positive, even though no one seems to be picking up the political implication in especially Election 2.

- Jason Gray writes about his recent contributions to Screen International, all of which I will actually link to the Variety or Hollywood Reporter version (sorry, Jason!). He also has some new tidbits about Japanese cinema, including a new title for “For You I Go To My Death,” and even a shoutout to this here blog.

- As Jason mentioned in his entry, Shochiku is sending three more films over to the Cannes market - a horror movie, a romantic drama from the director of “Trick,” and most notable for me: A film based on the songs “Mirai Yosouzu” I and II (it’s misspelled in the Variety report) by the pop group Dreams Come True. Probably thanks to the success of “Nada Sousou” (Tears for You), looks like Shochiku decided to cash in on Toho’s idea with a hit “pop song adaptation” of their own with Hiroshi Chono making his feature debut. Look at The Song of the Day to see why this is such a big deal to me.

- The other news in Jason’s entry, and obviously good news again, is about the first Doraemon film to ever be shown legally in China. The comics have been hits for years in the region (I myself own all the comics from the Hong Kong version when it was still called “Ding Dong.”), but the films have never gotten a decent release in China. Finally, someone got off their ass and decide to actually release one of these things in Chinese theaters come July. Too bad it’ll be the movie from last year, not the recent hit.

- It was previously thought that Asian films might be a tad underrepresented this year at the Cannes Film Festival. Well, turns out Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s latest film “Looking For the Red Balloon” is getting a chance by opening the Un Certain Regard Section. It’s only kind of an Asian film, seeing how it’s more French than Asian and it stars Juliette Binoche, but hell, we’ll take what we can get.

- It has nothing to do with Asian films, but since we’re writing about Europe, and this happens to be an European film I liked, it’s worth talking about. Apparently, there’s a debate going on in Germany about the critically-acclaimed film The Lives of Others. The film portrays a captain for East Germany’s secret police that becomes sympathetic to the man he’s assigned to investigate, but a former Stasi member has come out and criticize the film for portraying something that couldn’t possibly have happened. Of course, while that takes away some of the credibility of the film (at least in the latter half. The stasi member still praises the film’s first half as being an accurate portrayal of the former communist government), but The Lives of Others is still a great movie worth watching.

- Back in Asia, Korea Pop Wars have the latest box office chart for last weekend. Paradise Murdered, as reported earlier, tops the chart, and Danny Boyle’s Sunshine continues its disappointing Asian run with just 68,100 viewers nationwide for its first weekend.

- Another film with a disappointing run pretty much all over the world is the prequel that no one asked for - Hannibal Rising. According to Eiga Consultant, the film opened with 150 million yen for a 5th place opening (wow, Box Office Mojo has a pretty comprehensive ranking this week). While that’s a sad 46% of Red Dragon’s opening (another Hannibal Lecter film), it’s still 126% of the opening weekend for the Black Dahlia, which earned 650 million yen in Japan. It’ll make a decent 800 million yen or so, but it’s definitely not a hit.

- Poor Hong Kong Disneyland - it was made fun of as the smallest member of the family, it was overcrowded with tourists who don’t know what “no spitting” means, then employee scandals popped up all over the place. That’s OK, Hong Kong Disneyland is actually still quite popular - in fact, people enjoy it so much that they’re buying up annual passes.

- The first two Pirates of the Caribbean films were banned in China, and the third one was threatened with banishment as well (you’d think Disney would stop trying by then). But lucky for them, it’s looking like it’s passed the censor board (though it didn’t come out unscathed) and will open in China in June. Disney sure isn’t worried about people not getting the film - its audience probably saw the first two films on pirated discs already! Anyway, Chinese report excerpts as follows:

昨日網上有消息指出，此片終於拿到公映許可證，暫定6月15日於全國各大戲院。就此事求證香港迪士尼發行部，負責人表示仍未收到批文，當收到落實批文後，必會正式向外公布。

Reports on the internet last night say that the film has gotten a permit to screen and is tentatively set to open nationwide on June 15th. When asked for confirmation from Hong Kong Disney, the spokesman says he hasn’t heard the news. Once he can confirm the news, he will officially report it to the public.

而發行商為免重遇第2集被禁的命運，一度刪減了部分的內容作遷就。

The distributor, in order to avoid the fate that fell upon the first two films, has made cuts as a compromise.

Original Chinese report

Not that Pirates of the Caribbean should be mistaken as “art,” (you know it’s a cash cow meant to show off the latest digital effects Hollywood can offer and how crazy can Johnny Depp act without seeming like he sold his soul to Hollywood) but it’s always a shame to see films get censored.

- Twitch has a teaser poster for the remake of Tsubaki Sanjuro. Why just a teaser? The film isn’t even opening until December.

- 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.

As mentioned yesterday, there aren’t many news coming out, even Variety Asia seems to be taking a break. But there are still news elsewhere, and I’ll just even them out for the weekend. I might even go into my own collection a do a bit of a feature.

Watched The Prestige on DVD, better known as Christopher Nolan’s break between the Batman movies. It’s a hell of a mind-bender about two magician’s relentless pursuit to top each other. You might expect them to eventually band together and become friends, but no such luck. They get dirty all the way to the end, and they really know how to duke it out. While there’s not much real thrills to be had (much of the thrills are in the complicated puzzle the Nolan brothers and novelist Christopher Priest put together), the movie moves at a constant pace, moving forward and backward in time enough that audience participation is guaranteed. The movie is well-shot, well-acted, well-written, and even most of the final twists work (even though the sci-fi twist was a bit of a stretch). It makes me wish Nolan would do another small personal film like this before spending 2 years of huge blockbusters.

- This weekend is kind of considered a holiday weekend here in the United States, although Easter is not an official holiday. But in Hong Kong, it’s a 5-day weekend, and that means a huge weekend at the movies too. At least 7 movies open this weekend - Mr. Bean’s Holiday (which dominated world box office last weekend), Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, Luc Besson’s Arthur and the Minimoys, Happily N’ever After, Disney’s Meet the Robinsons, The Reaping (which also opens in the US this weekend), and the sole Hong Kong entry is Eric Kot’s idol comedy Super Fans.

As far as ticket sales go, my unscientific research method is showing that Mr Bean is selling like hotcakes, and Sunshine seems to be doing moderate business (probably because it’s being put on smaller screens). Super Fans seems to be doing ok as well, although I doubt it’ll make a huge dent. We’ll know the results on Tuesday.

- China has this silly rule where they would block foreign films from opening in order to allow domestic films to thrive at the box office. This happened to The Da Vinci Code last year, although some say it was pulled because the government didn’t want to piss off the Catholics, which I wouldn’t be surprised at. This year, Spiderman 3 is lucky enough to squeeze in on May 1st before the July blackout period, and they’re gonna open it on a record 500 screens. That still won’t stop the millions of pirated disc soon to flood the streets of China, though.

- Are you ready for more Self-Defense Force Zombie? I am.

- Brian’s Asian Cinama - While on the Road has two entries of reviews. For chronological order’s sake, here’s his review of the Japanese hair scare thriller Exte.

- One reason for this film scholar to go to France this May? To see Martin Scorsese give a masters class in filmmaking at the Cannes Film Festival.

- Speaking of which, Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily (which means it should be taken with a grain of salt) reports that they have asked Jet Tone directly about the status of Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, and apparently the representative has responded it has been officially invited to open the festival, which would be an enormous honor for a Chinese director to go through. But apparently people are liking it so much that they think it should be going into competition, and that now it’s undergoing post-production. More as this develops, but it seems like no English media has picked this story up yet, so no idea how credible the report is yet.

- New York Times has a guide to Hong Kong, although it’s certainly a little to bourgeois for my taste. But hey, if it rocks your boat, go for it.

That’s it for today, hopefully more tomorrow.

I usually talk about wide releases, so I figure it’s time we recognize some films in limited release around the world.

Olivier Marchal’s 36 Quai des Orfevres, which I saw in Hong Kong in March 2005 (and was quick to be compared to Infernal Affairs), is currently in fairly successful limited run in Tokyo. Playing in one theater, it found an audience of 1200 over its two-day opening weekend, earning 1,700,000 yen. If that doesn’t sound very impressive by pure numbers, look at the theater - one-screen, 150-seat theater, showing the film 4 times a day. 1200 people, divided by 8 shows (over two days), and that an average of 150 people per showing. Personally, I think the film had a very good script supported by strong performances, but bogged down by a lack of fluid pacing and distracting music cues. Still, it’s great to see any film score such a strong opening weekend.

(source: Eiga Consultant)

Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima and Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower also faced off in limited release this past weekend in America. Since CURSE was on 60 screens and LETTERS was only on 5, the only way to declare a winner is to look at per-screen average. While the estimates show a LETTERS win with a US$15, 300 per-screen average (and CURSE getting only 8,150), both films can be considered disappointments. LETTERS is nowhere near some of the biggest limited opening weekends for foreign films - Motorcycle Diaries had a 53, 273 per-screen, and even House of Flying Daggers had a 26498 per-screen in 15 theaters. Maybe as the awards continue to roll in for LETTERS, its performance will get better. I would’ve seen it on Wednesday, but I didn’t even know it had come out in San Francisco because I haven’t seen one ad for it.

(source: Box Office Mojo)