This is the 99th post of the Golden Rock, which I am quite proud of. I suppose a state of the blog is in order as well, then:

The blog started in mid-December of 2006, with a goal to be a source of just news that interests me and some number crunching that not a lot of Asian cinema blogs do. It started at an average of only a few readers a day (when I was on vacation, there was actually a day when nobody visited), and now it’s averaging roughly 60. It’s not a particularly huge number, but it’s a pretty good increase over 3 months, considering about 50% of my visitors are new. I’m glad to have started this blog, and I’m glad to keep doing it. Thanks for reading, and let’s keep on truckin’.

- Watched the second half of the Death Note saga last night. Again, having no knowledge of the manga nor the anime whatsoever, I am only judging this as a film. Maybe that makes me more qualified, or that makes me less qualified, I don’t know. I don’t care that they’re trying to cram in from the source material to satisfy fans, I just wanted to watch a movie. And with that:

Why didn’t they just make a drama out of this?

Death Note has a pretty cool Gothic concept - Notebook dumped onto earth by a God of Death, self-righteous human picks it up and begins to kill people with it. It inspires fear for criminals and hope for people. How dark, how bizarre, how cool. Then they had to add the detective elements; the mind games, the chess-playing, and the talking. The endless talking. If I were to sum up all the scenes between our bad/good guy Kira (owner of the Death Notebook) and strange detective L, it might go like this:

Kira: “I want to capture Kira.”
L: “But you are Kira.”
Kira: “I am not.”
L: “I hope you’re not”
Kira: “Great, let’s capture Kira together.”
L: “….but you are Kira.”
Kira: “…..and I’m going to kill you.”

In the first film, it took director Shusuke Kaneko 2 hours of screen time to set up the heart of the story - the head-to-head match between Kira and L. In the second film, it took him 2 hours and 15 minutes to, well…..make it not much of anything. One of the more suspenseful parts of the first film was seeing how Kira’s clever scheming helped him get away, although I mentioned I didn’t know whether that was the original creators’ work or the film’s screenwriters’. In “The Last Name” (That’s the title of the second film), a second and third (!) Kira are established, killing more people than ever, but it all gets a bit tiresome. How many more scenes of people talking about the ethics of Kira do we need before the filmmakers can pat themselves on the back for asking “the tough questions?”

Back to the schemings. “The Last Name” takes Kira’s schemes to a whole new level - he would do something, and you won’t even find out until 30 minutes of screen time later just what the hell he was up to. It was clever in the first film when it didn’t take that long to find out what really happened, but it just seems a bit too much in the second film. True, the stakes are higher, so the schemes need to go further, but how unbelievably smart are these people supposed to be for them to do so much damn scheming? The review linked above pointed out that nearly everything that happens in the film happened in the manga, but is that needed? While an adaptation can satisfy fans by including everything, if you still can’t include everything with 4 and a half hours of screen time, you just have to get creative and get the story across in a simpler way. Cramming everything from the original shows that you like the manga, but a more creative filmmaker would make the adaptation stand on its own.

So is Death Note: The Last Name better than its predecessor? Can’t really answer that, since they’re really one film split into two, but the Death Note saga as a whole is only a pleasing commercial effort thanks to its concept. It’s a routine adaptation with uninspired acting, directing, and some clever screenwriting in between. It’s not something worth running out to see if you have no familiarity with the original work, but it’s not a bad way to occupy a couple of hours just to see that Japanese commercial cinema can be just as mediocre as American ones.

And now, on to the news:

- There’s still reports coming from Variety about Hong Kong’s Filmart (which wrapped last week), mostly just new distribution deals. If you’re in Japan, you’ll be glad to know the Daniel Henney invasion is coming your way in the form of Seducing Mr. Perfect, one of the films I reviewed for Yesasia this month.

- Los Angeles is a great down for movies (duh), and here are a few reasons why.

- Yunjin Kim, who many may know as the Korean woman from Lost, really caught my eye from the Korean blockbuster Shiri. For some reason, I never really saw her in another film until she showed up on Lost (she did appear in Korean films before that - just ones I haven’t seen). Anyway, in a bit of homecoming, she’s been casted in the Korean crime thriller Seven Days. I don’t know if the film will be any good, but I wonder if Lost will make this film any more successful that it would’ve been.

- So what’s the best way to beat a movie you want to protest against? In India, they seem to have found the answer to be: Just ignore it.

- Apparently, The Host has become the fastest Korean film to reach the $1 million mark in the United States box office. That’s because Korean films have a history of not doing too well here. Oh, well, a good thing is a good thing, I guess.

- Oricon rankings are out. On the singles side, Utada Hikaru’s Flavor of Life, as predicted, fell to third place behind new singles by boy band News and pop group (I think they’re a man band) Kobukuro’s latest, which also served as the theme song for the drama version of Tokyo Tower.

As for the album ranking, Mr. Children hangs on for the second week, but after a huge drop to 180,000 copies after last week’s 680,000 copies sold. Mika Nakashima’s latest also hangs on for a third place for its second week, while Koda Kumi’s compilation (the album that beat Mika last week) drops to 5th behind Exile. After the firing of one of its own, Morning Musume’s latest, the creepily named “Sexy 8 Beat” (considering most of the members are even adults yet), could only muster an 8th place debut.

- Eiga Consultant analyzed the flop that is the fable Argentine Hag (Japan Times reviewed it two weekends ago). Hoga News has a translation, so I’ll let it speak for itself.

- Hoga News also reports about the directorial debut of comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto (half of the comedy duo Downtown that hosts the hit music show Hey Hey Hey AND does those “No laugh or get beat” games). Details are sparse, but the title is “Dai Nippon Jin” (or Big Japanese Person, or Super Japanese Person. Either way, the translation is open to interpretation), and it’ll open on the same day as Takeshi Kitano’s latest “Kantoku Banzai!” Joint marketing, I smell…

- Twitch has a clip to the press conference done for Donnie Yen/Wilson Yip’s latest Flashpoint. Don’t worry, the only reason I’m mentioning it is because it has footage. Good ones, too! It’s looking like this will be Wilson Yip’s attempt to emulate John Woo, so it might just be a lot of fun.

- India has started its own version of the Academy Awards, and what do they do at the launch? Talk about global warming, of course.

- A few weeks ago, Lovehkfilm mentioned that their “most underrated performance” award to Andrew Lin Hoi for The Heavenly Kings was actually noticed by the man himself. Turns out it didn’t stop there - they actually met up and Kozo presented him with a real award!

- I waited for a few days to post this - not on purpose, of course, I simply forgot - but here’s Jeffery Wells’ well-written review (certainly far better than what I wrote up there for Death Note) of the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino trashfest Grindhouse.

- I enjoyed Brian Helgeland’s revenge flick Payback, starring Mel Gibson. I didn’t think it was a masterpiece or anything, but it was enjoyable enough. Turns out it was meant to be a complete thing altogether, as apparent by the review of the soon-to-be-released director’s cut on DVD. It’s not just another one of those director’s cut that adds a couple of minutes. No, the entire palate was redone, the whole third act was redone, and it’s like another movie altogether. It might just be worth checking out.

Next, the 100th entry, which is the song of the day.

Skipped a day yesterday, which was kind of good because I wouldn’t have had enough news to fill up the weekend anyway. Plus I have a lot of backed up freelance work, so today, a review and a roundup of the last day of Filmart.

Watched 300 last night (regrettably not on IMAX because tickets were gone by the time we got there), and just couldn’t get out of my head at just how much it supported Mulvey’s male gaze. Basically, Mulvey proposed that films are made in the view of a Caucasian male gaze acting as a voyeur, thus women are often shot in more glamorous way in order to appeal to the male viewer. But what Mulvey didn’t (and maybe wasn’t about to find at the time the theory was developed) realize was that the male viewers aren’t necessarily looking for a female image, but that they are also looking for a perfected version of men.

Much like women and their supposed “images of perfection” driving them to strive to match this image, 300 presents a perfected men with warrior figure and ultimate bravery that appeals to men because it’s what they strive for. Its testosterone-driven tone means to boil up the blood of male viewers (I can go into it being meant for a Caucasian audiences, considering it’s a bunch of European Whites fighting an army of various minority races, but I shan’t because it’s more divided along gender lines than race lines anyway) and get them coming out high-fiving each other as they go “hoo-ha” and screaming “Spartans!!!” And for that, it does the job. There were some impressing long takes of battle scenes, and the first battle was particular impressive. Anyone tired of the shaky-cam effect in battle scenes will be happy to see the carnage not only shot with a refreshing relative stability, but in lots of slow-motion as well.

But that’s about it - the slow-motions seems way too showy and “looking cool” just for the sake of looking cool, and even as an action film, it surprisingly breezes past the battles (perhaps due to the budget limitations, I don’t know) so that it felt like the Spartans have been fighting for a while when history shows that it only lasted three days….and actually had way more than 300 Spartan soldiers. The redundant pep speeches and the excessive amount of slow-motions (I think by some unscientific measure that 1/3 of the film’s action was probably played at slower speed), and forget about any type of historical accuracy, although considering it’s more based on the Frank Miller comic than Greek history, maybe it’s not really a complaint.

I suppose in the end it’s a pretty-looking and well-paced popcorn film, but I am honestly surprised that people think anything beyond that (It’s already on the imdb top 250. Which I suppose would make sense considering the number of geek fanboys on imdb). Even producer Gianni Nunnari said in Entertainment Weekly that he would be “surprised if even one person from the audience is watching this movie and thinking of Bush and Iraq. That would be a disaster - it would mean that people were bored.” Well, I did think about Bush and Iraq, and I was bored at points, but fortunate for Mr. Nunnari, 300 was far from a disaster.

And now, news from Filmart:

- The Hong Kong-Asian Film Financing Forum also ended with seven awards handed to Asian filmmakers, and better yet, it came with cold hard cash. Kim Jee Woon’s upcoming western film “The Good, the Bad, and the Weird,” Clara Law’s “The Messenger,” Mabel Cheung’s “Romance of the Three Kindgoms: Red Rose and Black Rose” all got $13,000 awards to go towards production (it sounds like not much, especially for bigger budget films like “The Good, the Bad, and the Weird,” but the buzz the grant comes with is worth more than the money itself). The biggest winner is probably Edmond Pang Ho Cheung, who went into the HAF with no money for his upcoming film “Now Showing,” and now he’s found enough financing to start shooting in June.

- On the other hand, while business was slow for Korean films and Filmart, Korean distributors still managed to make a few deals so they don’t go home empty. However, Korean dramas are hitting the jackpot in the market.

- Five people, including Raman Hui, who worked on the Shrek films at Dreamworks and help solidify Hong Kong’s status in the digital animation world, were awarded the “Digital Person of the Year” awards.

In other news:

- Professor Bordwell has a first-hand look at the set of Johnnie To’s portion of “Triangle” with a very insightful look at To’s special form of cinematography. This just fueled my desire to be in the Hong Kong industry even further.

- Ryuganji has a look at Asmik Ace’s upcoming films, which include some potentially interesting projects.

- In addition to the Asian Contents Market, this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival will also include a market featuring animation showcases.

- Lovehkfilm has two reviews up - one for Ann Hui’s The Postmodern Life of My Aunt by head reviewer Kozo and one for Korean nationalist commercial/critical disappointment Hanbando by Sanjuro.

Tomorrow, news translations from Hong Kong, Japan Times review, and let’s see what else we can come up with.

There’s a bit less news than yesterday, which is good, because it’s taking longer and longer to write this thing everyday lately.

First, round-up from Hong Kong Filmart:

- A new production company has been unveiled, and it’s Big Media, backed mostly by sometimes-film producer but mostly video distributor Mei Ah. The company has announced that it will produce 100 movies in 5 years, which means I better get those screenplays written STAT! It’s too bad the films they’ve announced so far are creatively-drained pseudo-sequels like “Young Man Suddenly in Black” and “Another Better Tomorrow”

- A seminar on talent management of Asian stars crossing over into Hollywood finds a “let’s please everyone” answer of “we need to network…..and network some more.”

- The Digital Forum was also held today in light of the upcoming release of TMNT, which was produced by Hong Kong firm Imagi. The goal of increasing Asian computer animation is apparently telling Asian stories with Western storytelling. What if they can just capture audiences again with simple 2-D animation that the West has chosen to abandon?

- Professor Bordwell has also wrote a new entry, including his experience of watching Twins Mission (why oh why that one movie), getting free stuff from the Korean Film Council (man, I need to get that type of connection….even if it means some 30 years of film scholarship), meeting the incomparable Grady Hendrix and HKMDB’s Ryan Law, and also previews his visit to Johnnie To’s set of his portion of “Triangle” (can’t.breath.due.to.jealousy!!!!!!!!!!).

In other news:

- Ryuganji now has even more details about Kantoku Banzai, the latest from Takeshi Kitano (or Beat Takeshi, I guess). Apparently it’ll be a film more from his comedian side than his art side. My favorite quote? When asked whether the film will be submitted to the Cannes Film Festival, Kitano says, “Well, bits of it are are little embarrassing…”

- “Triangle,” which I thought has finished shooting, actually hasn’t because I saw the report of an opening shooting ceremony and Johnnie To joking that Ringo Lam took too long to shoot his portion on Ming Pao yesterday. Variety Asia has more details on the highly-anticipated project, including who’s gonna be distributing it in China (an HK film being approved for China, to me, is like the HK film version of watering down a movie to PG-13 in America).

- Asian Film - While on the Road has a review of two Kadokawa idol films - Sailor Suit and Machine Gun and The Young Girl who Conquered Time, starring two different idols that actually look quite alike and still do solid work in Japanese films today. It’s too bad I have seen neither, I almost bought Sailor Suit and Machine Gun on my last day in Hong Kong, but thought I already had too many DVDs to bring back. Shame.

- There’s still hope that Jet Li won’t be in Mummy 3! Official reports state that he’s still “in negotiations” to play the main villain in the Rob Cohen-directed cash-milking sequel. Even the original stars haven’t agreed to appear yet!

Of course “in negotiations” in Hollywood means he already said yes, he’s just holding out for more money.

- The problem that the Chinese government has with those idol music shows such as “Supergirl” is the entire idea behind the winners chosen is based on votes. You basically tell your viewers that you may not be able to vote on say, who leads your country or the direction your country is going, but at least you can choose who’ll become rich and famous!

Apparently, that’s not the only problem they have. They can’t seem to get over the fact that the word “super” is used for someone that’s democratically voted, as in someone that is actually liked by the people instead of telling the people who they should like, because “super” has powerful connotations.

So this season, the word “super” is out……so is the word “girl.” Now it’ll be named “Happy Boy” instead. D’oh.

My main news source Variety Asia is flooded with Hong Kong Filmart news, and here’s a small round-up from the first day:

- On the heels of HK Filmart’s successful expansion into the Hong Kong Entertainment Expo, Japan will have its first Asia Contents Market in Osaka and Kyoto at the end of September. The market will be focused on CG, animation, and digital cinema, catering mostly to the domestic market. It will be part of the Japan International Contents Festival, which include the Tokyo Game Show and the Tokyo International Film Festival (which starting last year, have begun to focus on exhibiting more obscure films).

- HK film production company Universe, having just joined the international sellers market at Berlin, is a huge presence at the Filmart. With at least Benny Chan’s latest, Johnnie To’s “Sparrow,” and new films by the Pang Brothers, it has added two mores films to its slate at Filmart - both medium-budgeted films by lesser-known talents, which has got to be a good thing.

- In addition to Universe, Emperor Motion Pictures has also announced a myriad of projects, many of which are Chinese co-productions (gags). It has also announced the hiring of Peggy Chiao, who is widely recognized as the mother of New Taiwan Cinema, as Production Controller. Does quality control come with that title?

- Variety Asia also rounds up the first seminar at Filmart, which was about the profitability of low-to-mid budget films, in light of the Hong Kong government’s recently-announced subsidy for these low-to-mid-budget films in order to encourage new talent. For those who are interested in the future of Hong Kong films, this is a good read.

In other news:

- I mentioned Susie Au and Ming Ming here before, though not in detail. It’s shown at the Hong Kong Filmart, and Twitch has what is probably its first English review. From this quote, I thought I was going to hate it: “Rather than surpress her stylistic urges she has further developed them, using every trick in her extensive book to try and create a new language of cinema.” But as I read along, it got gradually more promising, and now I’m honestly kinda looking forward to how it turns out.

- People who have followed this blog knows how critical I can be of Chinese censorship (Then again, I’m critical of a lot of other things too), so I hope that I never have to write this blog from China, because it seems like the government is going arrest-crazy again with cyber dissidents. Educators who blog criticizing the education system gets fired, editors of online news sites get 6 years of jail time, and so on and so on. Just how many more lives will the government have to ruin and how much authority has to be abused before China turns into total fascism?

- Lovehkfilm’s Sanjuro has a look at what’s in store in the Lovehkfilm pipeline. I have a few reviews coming up myself as well, most of them being Korean films that is already on Yesasia and, except for Ad Lib Night, aren’t really anything to get excited about.

- Meanwhile, Sanney Leung, former webmaster of Hong Kong Entertainment News in Review, chimed in with his review of Edmond Pang’s Isabella - in diary form! I don’t agree totally (I felt the emotions, but maybe it just pushed a button in me or something, or because I was just really wanted to like it for Edmond Pang’s sake).

- I mentioned Justin Lin’s latest Finishing the Game a few entries ago, and now Twitch has a report on its premiere at the opening night of the San Francisco Asian Film Festival. It features an interview with Survivor winner Yul Kwon and the cast and crew. Quite a good read, particularly about Asian American issues.

- And just how many films about the Nanjing massacre has to be made? Apparently now the count is up to 4 - you got the International co-production based on the Iris Chang book, the Japanese documentary set to present the “truth” about the massacre, the documentary that premiered at Sundance, and now China has approved one more Nanjing film to be made by director Yim Ho, whose Pavilion of Women I watched for about 10 minutes before I couldn’t stood it any longer and called it quits. I bet all of these movies will balance each other out and just make no money whatsoever.

- Moving to Hollywood, we have Variety’s review of the horribly titled Disturbia, which is essentially an uncredited Rear Window update in suburbia with less talented actors and none of that Mulvey male gaze stuff that Rear Window was made famous for. I’m honestly surprised it got a good review. I still won’t go watch it though.

- I’m a fan of Kevin Smith, and if that gives me less credibility as a film scholar, then so be it. Anyway, it’s no secret that he wrote a script for a Green Hornet movie that he turned down the directing job for. Now that it’s no longer at the Weinstein company, Sony has picked it up, and it will NOT be using the Kevin Smith script. I’ve never read Smith’s comics, but knowing that Smith is the big comic fan that he is, I would think that he probably crafted a pretty solid script (although being a loyal subject of the Weinstein regime it probably helped it get greenlit too). It’s too bad it’ll never see the light of day.

- Lastly, as an off-topic kind of thing. If you want to know how young Japanese women from age 20-34 think, you should at least go to their favorite websites. You’ll thank me later.

-Let’s start with those Thursday opening day numbers from Hong Kong. Following suit from America’s surprise success, 300 opened huge on Thursday with a HK$1 million from 33 screens. This will probably be one of Warner Bros’ biggest opening weekends in the region when it’s all said and done.

Too bad the same can’t be said for anything else opening, even Japanese blockbuster Dororo, which was so heavily promoted that even the rumored romancing stars showed up to Hong Kong for the premiere, opened only with HK$60,000 on 18 screens. Maybe business will pick up by the weekend, but I believe the fork is almost stuck into it already. Even cheap Hong Kong horror flick The Haunted School (produced by shitmaster Andrew Lau), which opened with HK$50,000 on 14 screens, got a higher per-screen average!

Some of the better (and I only mean that in a relative sense) openings include Hannibal Rising, which made HK$200,000 on 21 screens (look for it to get past the HK$10,000 per-screen this weekend), and Pan’s Labyrinth (which I think they should’ve opened before the Oscars) got HK$60,000 on 4 screens for the best per-screen in limited release right now. Last week’s champ Ghost Rider looks to suffer a heavy drop with only HK$ 190,000 on 34 screens.

- Speaking of hits, looks like after a string of failed foreign runs, The Host has finally become a hit in China, where it topped the box office in its opening weekend and praised by critics (it was praised by critics in the States too, so what’s with that crappy opening weekend?). Meanwhile, Variety Asia has a more solid report on its financing process and just how big of a hit it really is (for an Asian film to have a net profit of double its production cost is pretty damn amazing).

- I found a funny Youtube clip last night of a commercial featuring Kimura Takuya and Babel star Rinko Kikuchi (whose nude scenes were deemed too “sexually explicit” and cut by the Chinese censors, deeming that entire section pointless. Yay for destroying films.). Basically, the screen looks so nice that the moon on the screen was enough to turn KimuTaku into a werewolf.

- What happens when you can’t make a sequel to your hit film because your talents won’t commit? Animate them! The hit fantasy film Storm Riders is getting the sequel treatment through the magic of 2D and 3D animation. Directed by Dante Lam (who co-directed the masterpiece Beast Cops but also responsible for the huge pile of shit called The Twins Effect), it will presumably follow the natural progression of the story as set by creator Ma Wing Shing. It’ll open in 2008 (which is probably the trailer is pretty crappy so far), and there were so many mistakes in that trailer with the English narration that I don’t even have time to go into it. I just hope the final product isn’t as boring.

- Speaking of trailers, Twitch also introduces the trailer for Lovedeath, the latest by Ryuhei Kitamura (Azumi, Versus). The trailer isn’t promising more than style over substance (what is up with that stupid two-gun twirl? And what’s up with that horribly written exchange at the end where the woman offers sex? It feels like it’s written by a third-year student of Japanese), which is pretty much what I’ve expected from Kitamura after the tolerable but overlong Azumi and the style-for-style’s sake hit-and-miss Versus.

- Variety Asia, in their continuing coverage of the Hong Kong Entertainment Expo (the more I read it, the more I want to go), has posted a preview of the first ever Asian Film Awards. But why it is on a Tuesday, I have NO idea.

- Like many Hollywood actors, Oldboy’s Choi Min Sik is heading to the stage for the play The Pillowman after announcing that he would not be appearing in any more films (nooooooo!) until South Korea restores its screen quota. Sounds like it should be another intense performance.

- There are two new members to the pop collective (it’s a better name than record-company-built cute young girls pop group) Morning Musume, and they’re Chinese (dun-dun-dun!). One of them actually auditioned to be on one of those pop idols show in China, and Japan Probe has the clip. Well, we can forget about her being the one with singing skills (the judge at the end, by the way, says that she sings like a child. No kidding).

- Lastly, Variety has posted a review of The Godfather (yes, that Godfather). Of course, a review now would use words like “masterpiece” “and “classic” (which I agree with), and not words like “overlong” and “confusing.” That’s because this review was written in 1972 when the film first came out. I wonder if that critic ever changed his mind about it eventually.

Just came back from a showing of The Host. Even though I already have the HK DVD, I wanted to pop in my 7 bucks to Magnolia for having the balls to bring the film over here and distributing it. However, I have a huge huge gripe: I’m not sure if it was a bad print (which can’t be because the film was made last year), a bad theater, or a combination of both, but the audio was absolutely horrible in the theater. The trailers were played at a good volume, but when the movie started, the volume was toned down by notches, and the sound field was reversed (what happens on the left sounds like it’s from the right, and vice versa). And I’m guessing they couldn’t turn up the volume anyway because whenever the movie gets loud, the audio cracks like a kung-fu movie from the 80s. I got better audio from my headphones on DVD than from the big screen, and that’s sad, because a horror movie like The Host deserves much better.

Props to Magnolia for giving away posters at the theater lobby, though.

Saw Hans Canosa’s Conversations with Other Women on DVD. It’s essentially a talky two-character drama about how two old flames reunite at a wedding, talk about old times, have sex, and regret, regret, regret. What’s so special about that, you say? The entire movie is done on split screen; so instead of cutting to different angles to capture emotions, the two screens show both actors at the same time, allowing them to be in the moment. It also allows little stylistic touches, like going to flashbacks or scenes the characters imagine on one screen while showing the current happening on the other. It’s a gimmick that sometimes seems too stylish for style’s sake, and most of the time it works.

Naturally, the performances are great, especially when the camera is literally on these two the entire time, and the script, while not groundbreaking, is fluid and clever enough to sustain all 85 minutes without being boring (but that’s only because I like talky scripts). However, it has that bit of contrivance where the characters hide a little too much for the big reveal towards the end, so the structure of the dialogue itself just doesn’t seem quite convincing at points. But overall it’s an interesting film worth checking out.

- Utada Hikaru’s Flavor of Life single tops the Oricon chart for the second week in a row with about 140k sold. It’s now the 14th best-selling Utada Hikaru single ever, and poised to climb further up in the coming weeks. On the album side, Exile’s latest album (don’t let the cover art fool you, they are definitely not that hardcore. They sing mostly ballads, for crying out loud!) sold 300k for first place, Ayumi Hamasaki’s duel best-of albums take 2nd and 3rd, respectively. Interesting thing is that every album from 4th place all the way down to 12th place are all new albums. Next week should also be interesting as Mr. Children, Koda Kumi, and Mika Nakashima threw in their new albums into the mix, and Mr. Children is currently winning by a mile.

- the Death Note DVD set i talked about yesterday made the top spot on its first day of release in Japan, although there are no numbers to go with that figure as to how much of those shipped were sold.

- Speaking of DVD, Derek Yee’s Protege is finally coming to DVD on April 4th, courtesy of Deltamac. No technical specs yet, but probably the usual Dolby Digital/DTS treatment, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a Derek Yee-Peter Chan commentary.

- The Hong Kong Entertainment Expo is just about to get started, and the major event is Filmart, where international distributors take their films and hopefully sell it for international distribution. Even though it’s next week, Variety Asia’s already got two reports: Five films that could make a splash (including Kim Jee Woon’s latest, which I absolutely can’t wait to see), and Filmart’s new status as an important pre-Cannes film market.

- Sammi Cheng is back in the spotlight starting in May with 4 concerts in Hong Kong. Apparently fans are so hungry for tickets that 12,000 early bird tickets offered to a certain credit card’s users were wiped out within a day. Kozo, you buy your ticket yet?

The original Chinese news source is here.

- A blog on all things Japan uncovered an interesting Japanese independent film that is nationalist, but not in that right-wing way. Sounds interesting on paper, but it looks a bit boring.

- Lastly, Twitch has new behind-the-scenes footage for the latest Wilson Yip-Donnie Yen (SPL, Dragon Tiger Gate) collaboration Flash Point (it’s a better title than Killzone), starring Donnie Yen and Louis Koo. Looks good so far, now let’s just make it be better than Dragon Tiger Gate, yeah?

“More people die on the East Bay commute than this idiot’s ever killed…”

Just came back from watching Zodiac, the latest from director David Fincher about the unsolved Zodiac serial murder case in the 1970s. I once said that if it was anything like the Korean film Memories of Murder, I’d be extremely happy. Well, I can say that it’s both like and not like Memories of Murder, but I’m extremely happy anyway, because it’s the first masterpiece of 2007.

Like Memories of Murder, Zodiac is about a real-life unsolved murder case from decades past. Specifically, a chain of murders occurred in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 60s and early 70s. He sent a bunch of letters to different newspapers in towns where these murders took place, taunting the police and threatening to kill school children. Fincher was a child living in Marin County at the time (fairly close to where one of the murders took place), so he probably captured the period fairly well. Having lived in SF for only 14 years, I wouldn’t know much about it back then, but I even recognized some of the locations, including a glaring mistake where a scene that was supposed to be in neighboring Daly City was shot in the Sunset District. How do I know this? The local Chinese supermarket, which has only been around in the last 10 years, is placed prominently in the background. Its name? Sunset Super.

Anyway, Zodiac follows two different paths in the investigation: the police, led by Dave Toschi (brilliantly played by Mark Ruffalo), and the San Francisco Chronicle, with reporter Paul Avery and cartoonist Robert Graysmith (whose books are the source of the film). While one may expect their paths to cross and they collaborate just like a Hollywood buddy film, they rarely do and only does so when Avery becomes a distraction. The film, at 158 minutes, is a meticulous look at existing files regarding the case. Graysmith is the natural protagonist not only because he was the only person that remained obsessed until he wrote a damn book about it, but also because it’s obvious that Fincher and writer James Vanderbilt were both equally obsessed with the subject as well. It may not be as sensational or have the emotional resonance of Memories of Murder (this is where they differ), but Fincher makes up the lack of emotions with tons and tons of details. Critics have compared watching Zodiac as reading case files for 2 and a half hours. I’d say that’s half-true - reading files for 2 and a half hours is boring, and Zodiac is certainly not boring. It’s an involving look at obsession, how man can continuously gnaw at something as long as they cannot make it go away. It’s Fincher’s most mature work to date, and it’s a masterpiece. If you think you can’t sit through the 2 and a half hours in a theatre (and you will feel those 2 and a half hours, no doubt), you owe it to yourself to at least check it out on home video.

A friend said that he felt Fincher didn’t know whether Zodiac should be a thriller or a procedural because they stopped showing the murders halfway through - that’s because the Zodiac killer has only confirmed to have committed 4 murders, and three of them were shown onscreen, while quite a few of the other murders that were not shown were simply speculations.

And now, more news:

- The Death Note films are finally finding their home video release this week (rental versions have been out in Japan for the first film, though, which allowed the HK version to be released as well), and Warner Bros is shipping 500,000 copies of the two-film set on the release date. It’s not a huge launch, considering that it’s the second highest-grossing film market in the world. But since they are charging over 60 bucks for each set, and that this is the highest shipment for a domestic Japanese release in 2006, maybe it is a pretty big deal after all.

One note to correct in that story - Death Note part 1 was shown on TV in a director’s cut (which, according to an imdb poster - so take it with a grain of salt - it took out footage rather than added) before part 2’s release (it even scored an excellent 24.5 rating), part 2 was never shown on TV - NTV has no reason to since it would just take away from the video sales.

- Twitch mentions today about Rinko Kikuchi’s first Japanese film after her encounter with the Oscars in Babel. But give credit where credit is due - Ryuganji actually picked up this story a few days ago first. Judging from the description and the trailer, it doesn’t seem to be a particularly appealing film, so watch at your own risk.

- Speaking of watch it at your own risk, Palm Picture has a red-band trailer for their latest acquisition - The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai. Twitch has picked up the trailer, and it’s weird as hell, just like the plot sypnosis. Do I dare go watch this?

- Anyone who has more faith in their reading Japanese than their listening can go watch Sakuran with Japanese subtitles all day this Saturday and Sunday at this theater in Tokyo. I might’ve gone, but I would have to live in Tokyo first.

- Looks like the Academy Award isn’t much of a commercial factor when the film arrives in Japan. Last year’s winning film for best actor, Capote, opened on 4 screens and eventually made 100 million yen (117 yen=$1, at least for today). Eiga Consultant analyzes the 12.1 million yen opening of this year’s winner, The Last King of Scotland, and while it did open with 200% of Capote’s opening weekend, it also opened on 12 times the screen Capote opened at, so the per-screen average is actually only 16.7% of Capote’s.

- Apparently, seeing South Korean entertainment’s boom in the last decade, Variety Asia thinks that the rest of Asia would like to do that. While I do see the point of the Singapore part, Hong Kong already has a full-grown entertainment industry that, while absorbing some of South Korea into its mainstream, is much in need of a revival more than a boom, and maybe that’s what this new government grant is for.

- The new 3D animation trend is so huge that even Hong Kong is joining in on the fun, and the person doing it is none other than Brian Tse, who carved out Hong Kong’s most famous contemporary animated franchise with McDull. According to Twitch, he’s developing a 3D animated feature about a duck liver sausage that finds out he’s a piece of poop. No kidding. At least the duck liver sausage idea is pure original HK humor.

- With increasingly successful Chinese films being funded from foreign funding, the Film Bureau realizes that they should modernize their existing government funding system. Insteading of finding government subsidies or a rich financier, an official at the Film Bureau says, “We now urgently need film producers who are politically sensitive, aesthetically sophisticated and have a flair for marketing.” Politically sensitive means communist, right?

- I mentioned about those Southern boys trying to do awesomely bad Japanese rap a while ago on this blog, and that they were putting a show in a Shibuya club. Well, their gigs already happened, and Japan Probe is awesome enough to provide a video of those Kokujin Tensai (literally means Black Person Genius, or a grammatically correct title of Black Genius). I searched on Youtube, and trust me, this is the best quality one can find of that show. Believe me, I don’t think the Japanese people who are there are laughing with them. They’re probably laughing at them. I know I would, and I’m not even Japanese!

Song of the day coming up after this entry.

Today comes with even less news (or maybe less interesting news) and less surprises, so try and hang in there.

- Those continuously changing Japanese box office numbers are out, courtesy of Box Office Mojo. This week’s box office is at an exchange rate of 118.384 yen per dollar, so the box office earned less money overall. The big winner is the latest Doraemon movie, which took it a huge 560 million yen. According to Eiga Consultant, that’s 130% of the last Doraemon film’s opening weekend, and 111% of the last Pokemon movie (yes, Pokemon actually still attract audiences). Considering a lot of the ticket sales are from cheaper-than-usual kids tickets, the attendance is pretty amazing. The final take may even be 4 billion yen, which means Doraemon is going to be a viable franchise for a long time to come, and it will still make me feel really young because Doraemon is my childhood idol.

The Genghis Khan movie earned 154 million yen this week, signaling a 22% drop from last week’s 198 million yen take. The rest of last week’s openers all dropped 20-something percent from their opening week, except for Ghost Rider, which dropped nearly 40% from last week, and won’t be repeating America’s surprise performance.

- Sales of Japanese home video have been sliding, as Japanese animation (which takes up the biggest piece of the pie with 24.5% of sales….why am I not surprised by this?) drops by 14.5 %, foreign films (which takes up 20% of sales) drop by some 40% this past year, while Jpanese films performs better with a 5.8% gain and a 9.8% share of total sales. Sales overall has fallen by 10%, although a Japan Video Association Manager has said that they can definitely recover from a 10% drop.

Actually, one interesting portion is that sales of television dramas have risen. Perhaps with a long-term trend, this would encourage television stations to begin to branch out to international market, as the Korean drama has over the last few years.

- Or they can learn from America, who is seeing a decline of theatrical window in the past year. Basically, theaterowners are worrying that the window between theatrical exhibition and home video release is getting smaller and smaller (this year, the average shortened by 10 days), making this an even bigger problem than piracy. Even though films do make a bulk of their money from theatrical exhibition, the home video market is still a very very viable way of making money, and the studios have no idea whom to please these days.

Hong Kong adapted this shortening of theatrical window years ago to combat piracy, only to find the emergence of bittorrent to actually take a huge chunk of money away from home video sales. Of course, the distributors got smart and decided to amp up the technical specs to appeal to home theater fanatics, but it seems like now studios are asserting more pressure to release region-coded DVDs for Hong Kong films in order to protect oversea distribution deals. This doesn’t help the home video market, since a huge amount of these downloaders are actually overseas Chinese who have no idea what region codes are, and just flat out get pissed off when they can’t play the DVDs they buy. So sales are down, more people download, and only the film studio wins because they can squeeze more money out of those rich overseas company.

And does that have anything to do with theatrical window? Not really, I was just digressing.

- And who was the first filmmaker in Hong Kong to push the shortening of theatrical window? That would be Wong Jing, Hong Kong’s answer to cheap, fast comedy entertainment-making. His ability to quickly take whatever is popular in Hong Kong at the moment and milk as much cash out of audiences has allowed him to survive in Hong Kong for over 20 years, and his idea of releasing theatrical releases into the video market as quick as he could (The news of this tactic was first broken when customs seized those early releases, mistaking them for bootlegs) has given him the idea of making shitty comedies with TVB stars (why? Just pay them slightly higher than TVB salary, which is pretty much shit anyway, and they’ll do anything) and throw them into video stores after short theatrical runs.

Lovehkfilm’s Kozo has a review of his latest concoction The Lady Iron Chef, a rip-off of the TVB cooking contest Beautiful Cooking, which they ripped off from Japan’s Ai No Apron by adding crappy musical performance and canned laughter.

- If you read my profile on the right, you’d know that my main interest is the new “Panasian” films and their effect on national cinema. In light of the upcoming Hong Kong entertainment expo, Variety Asia’s Patrick Frater has turned in a report on the new Asian style of film finance. Very very informative if you’re into that kind of stuff like I am.

- And it looks like the expanded scale of the Hong Kong Entertainment Expo this year has attracted the attention of Hollywood Reporter, who chimes in with this report.

- Of course, their competitor Variety also has this report on this year’s Asian Film Awards and its plan to honor veteran actress Josephine Siao Fong Fong and film theorist David Bordwell for their contributions to Asian cinema (although for Ms. Siao, it’s more Hong Kong than Asia).

- Speaking of film festivals, Twitch has a preview of the upcoming San Francisco Asian American film festival, which I probably won’t be going because the films I want to see aren’t at ideal times, and at the ideal times, there aren’t any films I’m interested in. Nevertheless, it looks to be a fairly interesting festival, and I regret not being to able to attend it this year. Then again, there’s always the higher-profile San Francisco Film Festival later this year.

- Variety Asia also has more about the Wong Kar Wai/Stanley Kwan lesbian film collaboration, but they’re not even sure what Wong Kar Wai is doing with it.

- Lastly, Variety also has its first review of Judd Apatow’s latest Knocked Up, and critic Joe Leydon seems to have enjoyed it immensely. And I don’t blame him, it does look hilarious, and I can’t wait for a sweet comedy like this opening amidst the hyped-up and amped-up sequels this summer.

The suitable-for-all-audience trailer is here

The red-band-contains-strong-language-but-far-funnier-trailer is here too.

We have quite a bit to go through today, so let’s start with what I promised yesterday first.

- Turns out Japan Times have some good reviews this weekend, starting with Linda Linda director Nobuhiro Yamashita’s new film Matsugane Potshot Affair and Mark Schilling giving a kind-of negative review. Then Kaori Shoji goes and gives a pretty positive review for Paris Je T’aime, a film that I saw in Hong Kong on my trip, loved, and even bought the DVD. It opens in the States on May 4th, so do me a favor and check it out, will ya?

The best part of the Japan Times Film Section update, however, is the interview they have with Letters From Iwo Jima screenwriter Iris Yamashita. It’s not especially insightful, but considering I haven’t seen much press with Yamashita (the press seem to go to Paul Haggis more, for the obvious reasons), it’s something worth checking out.

- Hong Kong Thursday (opening day) numbers are out, and it looks be a pretty weak weekend. The weekend’s widest opening, the Pangs’ The Messengers, opened on 29 screens and got HK$270,000 for third place behind Night at the Museum and Protege. Among limited releases, The Queen opened to a very healthy HK$230,000 on 14 screens towards a very healthy weekend, Dreamgirls opened on 10 screens and got HK$90,000, and Letters From Iwo Jima opened on 5 screens with an HK$80,000 gross (with a 10% ticket price inflation due to length). Advance ticket sales are looking pretty weak, so The Messengers may come up from behind to pass Protege as second place, but overall the weekend doesn’t look to be very strong in ticket sales anyway.

- Sakuran seems to be doing so well even during the week (According to Cinema Cafe, after 5 days on 51 screens, the total admission so far is 63402 people) that it should reach 110 million yen (according to today’s exchange rate of $1=117 yen, that’s about $940,000) by Friday. For those of you in Tokyo, this Shibuya theater is promoting a special where a group of 3 or more can get in for 1000 yen each if the entire group (men AND women) shows up wearing kimono (that include yukata, guys). So get that cheap Uniqlo yukata (seriously, I really did it see one when I was there) out and head down to Shibuya.

Thanks to Hoga Central for the news.

- I reported about the box office for the film Bubble He Go! (which is a minor box office success now in Japan) for a few weeks now without actually talking about the film itself. Now Japundit has an introduction, in case you wanted to know more. I’m not that attracted by the idea, since I missed out on the pop culture explosion in the early 90s (I was too young to get it), but it seems interesting nevertheless.

- The lucky people in Japan will be the first in the world to be able to watch Spider Man 3 (a film that, despite my sometimes holier-than-thou taste, I have to admit to be looking forward to very much). Not only the film will get the world premiere at the Roppongi Hill cinema (what the allure to that theater is, I don’t seem to know) on April 16th, AND it will now open on May 1st, 4 days before the US debut and the first in the world to receive a wide release.

- Media Asia (who as I reported a few days ago admitted that Infernal Affairs is actually based on a Japanese comic) will be pouring HK$500 million for 2007, including several new films by Milkyway (they distributed Breaking News, Exiled, and 2 Become 1, to name a few) and the new Peter Chan film, now titled “The Warlords” (can there be a more generic title than that?). They also struck multi-film deals with Dog Bite Dog director Soi Cheang and Johnnie To.

- A poster at the Mobius forum found three articles by local free paper The Guardian about Bong Joon Ho and The Host. I also seem to have mistaken that the showcase coming on Monday will include The Host. It will only feature Barking Dogs Never Bite and Memories of Murder, both are worth watching anyway.

- Just in case anyone has a couple of million dollars to spend, the Hong Kong Entertainment Expo (which include Filmart for international buyers, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and the debut of the Asian Film Awards this year) will be expanding by a quite a bit this year.

- Twitch today has an impressive set of reviews for all the mainstream American DVD releases in February….except for Flags of Our Fathers. You can read it all, or just read the ones that you care about, like I did. It’s your choice, and it’s an impressive report regardless.

- Lastly, Hong Kong televised its first chief executive debate, and why am I talking about it, you ask? Because it sounds pretty damn entertaining. Of course, it would mean more if Hong Kong citizens actually get to vote for their chief executive, because there’s not really a point for this debate when the “election” is decided by 800 middle-aged to old Chinese men. For now, it just feels like a “Who wants to be a Communist ass-kisser” popularity contest.

Updates may be sparse in the next week. Well, just maybe, you can’t get rid of me that quickly.

Not much of a news day, but still lots of different types of news going around.

- The Chinese media watchdog (better known as the government) has set up 20 rules to the press ahead of a major meeting of communist leaders. Some of them include a ban on talking about censorship in the media (I’m sure I’m not the only one who see the irony in this), a ban on discussing the cultural revolution, and just to be redundant, any discussion about the mistakes made during the cultural revolution should not deny the accomplishments by the party or Mao Zedong.

What the fuck?

Anyway, these are nothing new to those who have seen years of this type of censorship, and details from Variety Asia are here.

- The U.S. government isn’t quite helping when they just decided to cut broadcast aid to Tibet and reduce broadcasting hours by 50%. Many of the Tibetan exiles listen to these broadcast, and now many people inside Tibet can only listen to the official Chinese radio instead.

Variety Asia report here.

- Just to show that I don’t just criticize the Chinese government (because the wrath of the Chinese internet community is, honestly, kinda scary), the same agency that impose those new media rules also decided to bring cinemas to rural areas so poor farmers in those areas can watch the latest government-approved communists lovefest. Oh, there I go again. I ought to be happier that more people get to discover the magic of movies.

Again, Variety Asia has the report.

- And don’t think I’m just talking about China, the censors in Malaysia and Indonesia has also went and banned two documentaries, although for slightly better reasons than China, I suppose.

- After the Oscar win for The Departed (it’s from Hong Kong! Not Japan, Ms. Tuttle!), Warner Bros. have apparently been suckered into buying the rights for another Andrew Lau/Alan Mak movie - Confession of Pain (I mentioned the possibility of this 2 months ago here). Just as Hollywood Reporter reports, it’s about a former police detective investigating the death of his old superior’s father-in-law, and I’m puzzled why Hollywood even needs to spend 2.75 million dollars (a figure I heard Andrew Lau’s production company is charging) for a script any post-film school screenwriting grad can write. Maybe William Monahan is so pissed about people saying how much Infernal Affairs was better, so he decided to buy a crappy script to make himself look better (even though he has an Oscar to prove himself already…)

- Meanwhile, over in Japan, I don’t have those box office numbers yet, but Eiga Consultant does round up the results of Sakuran. On just 51 screens in the Kanto area (kind of like the opening weekend for The Departed in Japan, except 68 screens), it scored 44.83 million yen (that’s roughly US$374,000 on a $1=120 yen scale), meaning about 880,000 yen per-screen, which is about $7300. Not spectacular, but still a fairly good start, considering it’s been on fairly small screens in multiplex or single-screen theaters. It’s also 125% ahead of Honey and Clover, which had a similar rollout. It’ll open on 129 screens this weekend, so expect it to climb slightly up the top 10.

- NTV, who found a lot of yen last year with the Death Note movies, has bought stakes in a comic publisher. They’ve been kind of behind on those comic adaptations (TBS has Nana, and even Asmik Ace has Honey and Clover), so maybe now they can get more rolling, but to whose joy, I have no idea.

- For those in San Francisco, Bong Joon Ho, the director of The Host and Memories of Murder (both are now two of my Korean films) will be coming here for a showing of his three films at the Clay Theater on March 5th. I won’t be able to make it personally, but I encourage everyone to catch all three films, they’re all great in their own way. Of course, I will be catching The Host when it opens here on March 9th.

Anyway, details by Twitch here.

- I’ve got some new (and not as well-written as I’d like them to be) reviews on Yesasia, and they are as follows:

Love Me Not

Ad Lib Night

Hot For Teacher (aka Sexy Teacher, aka Who Slept with Her?)

Bye June

Jacky Cheung - By Your Side

- A new rapper has popped up in the hip-hop world, and guess what? He’s black, and he raps in Japanese! That’s right, it’s Kokujin Tenzai down from the dirrrrty South. Japan Probe has an entire post on this guy, and it reports that he’ll be holding a concert in Shibuya where a ticket cost 3000 yen. Would you pay 3000 yen to see this? I wouldn’t.

Although I do have to give him credit for learning the language AND getting his buddies to rap along with him. But I don’t think he quite has the finger on how conversational Japanese works, and in the words of Crocodile Dundee himself: That isn’t Japanese rap, THIS is Japanese rap.

Plus I don’t think Japanese people appreciate hearing a foreigner bragging going to Japan and “fucking yo’ bitches” and having “Gats in the Cadillac.”

On one last note: I’ve been checking who reads this blog, and what the heck are people at Circuit City, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo doing reading this blog? Get to work, guys!