- Suddenly the Hong Kong film slate this year just got a lot more packed, with new films by Johnnie To, Pang Ho-Cheung, Derek Chiu Sung-Kei, and now the Pang Brothers have a new film coming next month. Starring Aaron Kwok and directed by Oxide Pang, who last made the OK Diary, The Detective looks like it might be more darkly humorous in the vein of Leave Me Alone, and also marks the first major role by Kwok since his best actor win with After This, Our Exile.

- There’s a trailer for Jia Zhangke’s latest documentary Useless, which follows a piece of cloth from the Chinese factory to the catwalks of Paris. The trailer only covers the factory section, but it looks pretty interesting.

- Someone told me before that Japanese pop diva Ayumi Hamasaki actually vowed to her fans that she would never write English lyrics in her songs (although she’s used plenty of English song titles). And I noticed that it was true until last year’s Bold and Delicious. However, I would only call it half-English because unless she means something very dirty, Bold and Delicious doesn’t really make a bit of fucking sense.

Despite Hamasaki going all English and foreign, apparently Japanese music are using less foreign language in their lyrics these days, seeing a reversal back to more Japanese lyrics. I personally haven’t seen a reversal of that trend, but I’m a selective J-pop listener, so what do I know?

- Speaking of J-pop, it’s time for those Oricon charts. On the fairly active singles chart, the latest Keisuke Kuwata single, the theme song for the film Tengoku De Kimi ni Aetara, debuts at number 1 with 93,000 copies sold. Meanwhile, Aiko is not too far behind with her latest, selling 76,000 copies for second place. Mika Nakashima is further behind at 3rd place with her latest single after selling 56,000 copies. Lastly, Tokyo Jihen’s latest only sold under 33,000 copies for a 5th place debut. Next week, expect L’Arc~en~ciel’s latest to take the top spot, and Utada Hikaru’s latest (which I again don’t think is all that great) won’t have a chance at the top spot.

On the album chart, Hideaki Tokunaga’s cover album not only holds the number 1 spot, losing only 30% of sales, the other two cover albums also saw a sales boost to 13th and 16th places, respectively. Other than that, the album chart was pretty quiet, with Sukima Switch still selling a lot of their latest album. Next week, look for Ketsumeishi’s latest album to do really really well.

- Everyone wins! The Seoul Drama Award gave away its awards to dramas from China, Japan, AND Korea. Hell, even the UK’s Prime Suspect won an award. Wait a minute, is “A Dwarf Launches a Small Ball” the same thing as “A Ball Shot By a Midget?” It can’t be!

- Turns out Hong Kong’s TVB (who make some of the most popular mediocre TV dramas in the world) got even more nominations at the International Emmy Awards, this time they’re for acting.

- Under “Oh, silly China!” news today, turns out Charlene Choi’s character in the Hong Kong comedy Simply Actors has been changed for its upcoming Mainland Chinese release. While in the original version, she plays a softcore porn actress from the Mainland, she’ll be an actress that specializes in bad movies with some regional dialect of Mandarin. Apparently, even Choi herself doesn’t mind, saying that she’s not qualified to make softcore porn. Just give it a few more years, Charlene…

- Korean auteur Hong Sang-Soo is looking for extras to act in his latest film. The catch? You should probably be living in France to do it, since he’s shooting there.

- Heroes actor/whiz kid Masi Oka (whose interview in better-than-when-he’s-acting Japanese is here) says that Lost actually paved the way for Asian-American actors in American television. There WAS Sammo Hung’s Martial Law, but I think he’s actually right that it took this long.

- A few days ago, I said to take the news of Peter Chan Ho-Sun’s latest film “Deng Dai” with a grain of salt, but I guess it’s OK to trust it now that Variety Asia is reporting it.

- I didn’t mean for this news to be last, but Feng Xiaogang’s average-looking war flick The Assembly will be opening the Pusan film festival next month. Isn’t this not even set to come out until Lunar New Year? Still, props to Feng for not taking the easy way with making some World War II film, instead focusing on the Chinese civil war.

- Suddenly the Hong Kong film slate this year just got a lot more packed, with new films by Johnnie To, Pang Ho-Cheung, Derek Chiu Sung-Kei, and now the Pang Brothers have a new film coming next month. Starring Aaron Kwok and directed by Oxide Pang, who last made the OK Diary, The Detective looks like it might be more darkly humorous in the vein of Leave Me Alone, and also marks the first major role by Kwok since his best actor win with After This, Our Exile.

- There’s a trailer for Jia Zhangke’s latest documentary Useless, which follows a piece of cloth from the Chinese factory to the catwalks of Paris. The trailer only covers the factory section, but it looks pretty interesting.

- Someone told me before that Japanese pop diva Ayumi Hamasaki actually vowed to her fans that she would never write English lyrics in her songs (although she’s used plenty of English song titles). And I noticed that it was true until last year’s Bold and Delicious. However, I would only call it half-English because unless she means something very dirty, Bold and Delicious doesn’t really make a bit of fucking sense.

Despite Hamasaki going all English and foreign, apparently Japanese music are using less foreign language in their lyrics these days, seeing a reversal back to more Japanese lyrics. I personally haven’t seen a reversal of that trend, but I’m a selective J-pop listener, so what do I know?

- Speaking of J-pop, it’s time for those Oricon charts. On the fairly active singles chart, the latest Keisuke Kuwata single, the theme song for the film Tengoku De Kimi ni Aetara, debuts at number 1 with 93,000 copies sold. Meanwhile, Aiko is not too far behind with her latest, selling 76,000 copies for second place. Mika Nakashima is further behind at 3rd place with her latest single after selling 56,000 copies. Lastly, Tokyo Jihen’s latest only sold under 33,000 copies for a 5th place debut. Next week, expect L’Arc~en~ciel’s latest to take the top spot, and Utada Hikaru’s latest (which I again don’t think is all that great) won’t have a chance at the top spot.

On the album chart, Hideaki Tokunaga’s cover album not only holds the number 1 spot, losing only 30% of sales, the other two cover albums also saw a sales boost to 13th and 16th places, respectively. Other than that, the album chart was pretty quiet, with Sukima Switch still selling a lot of their latest album. Next week, look for Ketsumeishi’s latest album to do really really well.

- Everyone wins! The Seoul Drama Award gave away its awards to dramas from China, Japan, AND Korea. Hell, even the UK’s Prime Suspect won an award. Wait a minute, is “A Dwarf Launches a Small Ball” the same thing as “A Ball Shot By a Midget?” It can’t be!

- Turns out Hong Kong’s TVB (who make some of the most popular mediocre TV dramas in the world) got even more nominations at the International Emmy Awards, this time they’re for acting.

- Under “Oh, silly China!” news today, turns out Charlene Choi’s character in the Hong Kong comedy Simply Actors has been changed for its upcoming Mainland Chinese release. While in the original version, she plays a softcore porn actress from the Mainland, she’ll be an actress that specializes in bad movies with some regional dialect of Mandarin. Apparently, even Choi herself doesn’t mind, saying that she’s not qualified to make softcore porn. Just give it a few more years, Charlene…

- Korean auteur Hong Sang-Soo is looking for extras to act in his latest film. The catch? You should probably be living in France to do it, since he’s shooting there.

- Heroes actor/whiz kid Masi Oka (whose interview in better-than-when-he’s-acting Japanese is here) says that Lost actually paved the way for Asian-American actors in American television. There WAS Sammo Hung’s Martial Law, but I think he’s actually right that it took this long.

- A few days ago, I said to take the news of Peter Chan Ho-Sun’s latest film “Deng Dai” with a grain of salt, but I guess it’s OK to trust it now that Variety Asia is reporting it.

- I didn’t mean for this news to be last, but Feng Xiaogang’s average-looking war flick The Assembly will be opening the Pusan film festival next month. Isn’t this not even set to come out until Lunar New Year? Still, props to Feng for not taking the easy way with making some World War II film, instead focusing on the Chinese civil war.

- The independent 20-something drama Koisuru Madori, starring Yui Aragaki (who also stars in the recently-wrapped Papa To Musume No Nanakakan) and Oscar-nominated actress Rinko Kikuchi, opened on 13 screens last weekend, attracting just 4931 admissions and 7.77 million yen on its opening Saturday and Sunday. However, one theater in Tokyo’s Shibuya district actually accounted for 37% of the admissions with 1806 admissions and 2.85 million yen. That makes attendance at the rest of the 12 screens even worse.

Personally, I like these sunny urban 20-something romance pieces, and these usually attract a good number of audiences, so what’s up?

- With the deadline for submitting films for the best foreign film at the Academy Awards coming up, Asian countries are moving quick to find their best to represent them. While Peter Chan Ho-Sun is trying finish Warlords to get it into the Oscars (where I expect period epic fatigue to stop it from getting anywhere), three films from South Korea has been admitted, and Thailand has decided to submit the second film out of a trilogy about a legendary king.

- Twitch has a review of Asian-American director Justin Lin’s latest film Finishing the Game from the Dallas Asian Film Festival. The “review” is more of a review of the screening than a review of the movie, though.

- Speaking of reviews, Japan Times’ Mark Schilling reviews “J.J.” Sonny Chiba’s directorial debut Oyaji. My favorite part is his continuing description of how much Chiba still kicks ass in this movie, despite being 67 years old.

- A film that didn’t come out with reviews is Jet Li’s latest Hollywood B-movie War (named Rouge Assassin here in Asia). On the day of its opening, the two big trade papers already have reviews of it already. Variety’s Joy Leydon calls it a flabby and formulaic programmer. Meanwhile, Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck calls it a thoroughly forgettable exploitationer that will not enhance its stars’ resumes. The saddest part is that I will probably go see it anyway.

- Two pirate DVD retailers in China have been ordered to over $27,00o to 6 Hollywood studios for selling pirated copies of their movies. Great, now these studios can cover their coffee cost for the month.

- Under “do we really need this?” news today, American pop duo Aly & AJ (umm…they’d actually have to be known to be “pop”) will be singing the theme for for Kenta Fukasaku’s horror flick XX (or X-Cross). Note to producers: Not every Japanese film needs a theme song.

- The independent 20-something drama Koisuru Madori, starring Yui Aragaki (who also stars in the recently-wrapped Papa To Musume No Nanakakan) and Oscar-nominated actress Rinko Kikuchi, opened on 13 screens last weekend, attracting just 4931 admissions and 7.77 million yen on its opening Saturday and Sunday. However, one theater in Tokyo’s Shibuya district actually accounted for 37% of the admissions with 1806 admissions and 2.85 million yen. That makes attendance at the rest of the 12 screens even worse.

Personally, I like these sunny urban 20-something romance pieces, and these usually attract a good number of audiences, so what’s up?

- With the deadline for submitting films for the best foreign film at the Academy Awards coming up, Asian countries are moving quick to find their best to represent them. While Peter Chan Ho-Sun is trying finish Warlords to get it into the Oscars (where I expect period epic fatigue to stop it from getting anywhere), three films from South Korea has been admitted, and Thailand has decided to submit the second film out of a trilogy about a legendary king.

- Twitch has a review of Asian-American director Justin Lin’s latest film Finishing the Game from the Dallas Asian Film Festival. The “review” is more of a review of the screening than a review of the movie, though.

- Speaking of reviews, Japan Times’ Mark Schilling reviews “J.J.” Sonny Chiba’s directorial debut Oyaji. My favorite part is his continuing description of how much Chiba still kicks ass in this movie, despite being 67 years old.

- A film that didn’t come out with reviews is Jet Li’s latest Hollywood B-movie War (named Rouge Assassin here in Asia). On the day of its opening, the two big trade papers already have reviews of it already. Variety’s Joy Leydon calls it a flabby and formulaic programmer. Meanwhile, Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck calls it a thoroughly forgettable exploitationer that will not enhance its stars’ resumes. The saddest part is that I will probably go see it anyway.

- Two pirate DVD retailers in China have been ordered to over $27,00o to 6 Hollywood studios for selling pirated copies of their movies. Great, now these studios can cover their coffee cost for the month.

- Under “do we really need this?” news today, American pop duo Aly & AJ (umm…they’d actually have to be known to be “pop”) will be singing the theme for for Kenta Fukasaku’s horror flick XX (or X-Cross). Note to producers: Not every Japanese film needs a theme song.

- Jia Zhangke’s award-winning Still Life finally hit the arthouse screen of Japan. In the 204-seat theater, the film attracted 1811 people and 2.34 million yen in its opening Saturday and Sunday. With 5 shows a day, that’s 181.1 people per show, and apparently all shows on Sunday (except the last one) were sold out. I never knew Jia Zhangke had that many fans in Japan.

- Some reports are reporting that two stations under the Japanese satellite TV provider SkyPerfect TV has been ordered to pay copyright owners of some Chinese dramas because they were shown without any permission or compensation. However, those two stations are actually revealed to be China-based TV stations, not Japanese.

- Eiren, or the Motion Pictures Producers Association of Japan, have started a Japanese movie database containing information on all Japanese films made after the year 2000. Don’t worry, they’re working to make an even more complete database in the future. The only problem is that the database is in Japanese, so no luck to my fellow foreign Japanese film fans.

- the first teaser for Lee Myung-Se’s M is up, and while it looks really beautiful (shot in digital?), I’m always afraid of films that look beautiful because they turn out crappy (Natural City, anyone?).

- On the heels of the resurgence of local films in South Korea, thanks to D-War and May 18, the upcoming Sookmyeong is now the most expensive distribution deal for a Korean film to Japan this year. Don’t pop the champagne open yet, though, its US$2 million price tag is only half of what Korean films got at the height of the Korean wave in Japan.

- To complete a trifecta of Korean film news, Kaiju Shakedown introduces an overdue Korean film about cooking.

- After Wild Mama, there’s another dubiously named character-based drama coming this fall. This time it’s Mop Girl, which is about exactly what the title suggests.

- Despite being reported this week, the badly named Zhang Ziyi/Jang Dong-gun starrer Laundry Warrior has not been shooting since May because Jang is injured, and Zhang is already off shooting the new Chen Kaige movie. However, the star of Chen Kaige’s film Leon Lai is off shooting the latest Chang Siu-Tung film with Kelly Chan and Donnie Yen, so who’s where?

- Under “films we don’t really care about” today, some Asian actors has joined the cast of The Pink Panther 2, where they will most likely just play some type of Asian stereotype.

- The complete lineup for the Toronto International Film Festival is out, but it’s way too long for me to pick out what’s worth mentioning, so I’ll leave that to you all.

- Taiwanese New Wave director Edward Yang, who recently passed away, will receive the Filmmaker of the Year award at the Pusan International Film Festival. There will also be a retrospective of Yang’s films as well.

I don’t like to pimp out the new Spin-off blog, The Golden Gate Meets The Lion Rock, but I just wrote a brief review of Alexi Tan’s Blood Brothers there, so check it out.

- Jia Zhangke’s award-winning Still Life finally hit the arthouse screen of Japan. In the 204-seat theater, the film attracted 1811 people and 2.34 million yen in its opening Saturday and Sunday. With 5 shows a day, that’s 181.1 people per show, and apparently all shows on Sunday (except the last one) were sold out. I never knew Jia Zhangke had that many fans in Japan.

- Some reports are reporting that two stations under the Japanese satellite TV provider SkyPerfect TV has been ordered to pay copyright owners of some Chinese dramas because they were shown without any permission or compensation. However, those two stations are actually revealed to be China-based TV stations, not Japanese.

- Eiren, or the Motion Pictures Producers Association of Japan, have started a Japanese movie database containing information on all Japanese films made after the year 2000. Don’t worry, they’re working to make an even more complete database in the future. The only problem is that the database is in Japanese, so no luck to my fellow foreign Japanese film fans.

- the first teaser for Lee Myung-Se’s M is up, and while it looks really beautiful (shot in digital?), I’m always afraid of films that look beautiful because they turn out crappy (Natural City, anyone?).

- On the heels of the resurgence of local films in South Korea, thanks to D-War and May 18, the upcoming Sookmyeong is now the most expensive distribution deal for a Korean film to Japan this year. Don’t pop the champagne open yet, though, its US$2 million price tag is only half of what Korean films got at the height of the Korean wave in Japan.

- To complete a trifecta of Korean film news, Kaiju Shakedown introduces an overdue Korean film about cooking.

- After Wild Mama, there’s another dubiously named character-based drama coming this fall. This time it’s Mop Girl, which is about exactly what the title suggests.

- Despite being reported this week, the badly named Zhang Ziyi/Jang Dong-gun starrer Laundry Warrior has not been shooting since May because Jang is injured, and Zhang is already off shooting the new Chen Kaige movie. However, the star of Chen Kaige’s film Leon Lai is off shooting the latest Chang Siu-Tung film with Kelly Chan and Donnie Yen, so who’s where?

- Under “films we don’t really care about” today, some Asian actors has joined the cast of The Pink Panther 2, where they will most likely just play some type of Asian stereotype.

- The complete lineup for the Toronto International Film Festival is out, but it’s way too long for me to pick out what’s worth mentioning, so I’ll leave that to you all.

- Taiwanese New Wave director Edward Yang, who recently passed away, will receive the Filmmaker of the Year award at the Pusan International Film Festival. There will also be a retrospective of Yang’s films as well.

I don’t like to pimp out the new Spin-off blog, The Golden Gate Meets The Lion Rock, but I just wrote a brief review of Alexi Tan’s Blood Brothers there, so check it out.

- I reported earlier in the week that Ocean’s Thirteen opened fairly huge in Japan last weekend, bumping Transformers all the way from first to third place. Turns out its 380 million yen opening is only 70% of Ocean’s Twelve and 54% of Ocean’s Eleven. However, the film did open just before the weeklong Obon holidays in Japan, which means it might catch during the week and for this weekend as well. With no big Hollywood blockbusters opening this weekend, that is certainly seeming more likely now. We shall know by Tuesday.

- As reported yesterday, four of the five Hong Kong TVB Tigers of the late 80s (sans Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) are reuniting for the latest film by director Derek Chiu Sung-Kei. Now we can report that Brothers will be coming in October, and the Chinese-language Hong Kong film blog has pictures from the press conference showing the all-male cast.

- After scoring 10 nominations at the Golden Bauhinia Awards (without screening it at all anywhere publicly), there’s a trailer out for Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung’s Exodus. It might just be a teaser, but this is looking to be easily the strangest Pang film yet. Add the poster now in HK cinemas, this is lining up to be one of the most intriguing-looking Hong Kong film in a long time.

- This week’s Teleview column on the Daily Yomiuri talks about the dramas Japanese television networks have for the fall to try and push the ratings back up. I don’t know, three detective dramas in one season looks to be a bit much.

- Yu Ha, who made the adult drama Marriage is a Crazy Thing in 2002, made two violent gangster dramas in a row- Once Upon a Time in High School and A Dirty Carnival. Now the poet/filmmaker is dipping his hand into the historical and possibly gay romance drama genre. Apparently, the director simply describes it as “a love story between men,” which would probably be a good pitch for Donnie Yen’s Flash Point.

- Japanese mega-producer Haruki Kadokawa and director Takashi Miike are teaming up (how many movies does Miike have in the pipe now? I count 3 including this one) for a sci-fi film named Kamisama no Puzzle (God’s Puzzle). I can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be a comedy or drama.

- Was anyone wondering how Andrew Lau’s Hollywood debut The Flock did in Japan (I believe it’s the first territory in the world to have it in theaters, but I could be wrong)? Along with The Pang Brothers’ The Messengers, The Flock opened on around 20-50 screens and ended up making less than 100 million yen. Yes, in Japan, they won’t even watch Hollywood films by Hong Kong directors.

100 million yen isn’t even US$1 million, by the way.

- Johnnie To’s Mad Detective (formerly named The Detective) is going to the Venice Film Festival after all. To refresh your memory, Mad Detective marks the first dramatic collaboration between Johnnie To and best actor winner Lau Ching-Wan since…..well, in a long ass time. That automatically should make it a film to look forward to.

- Hey, Australia. Don’t pirate movies and end up getting nothing like Canada.

Expect the Podcast to be back next week, and maybe that promised new feature tomorrow.

- I reported earlier in the week that Ocean’s Thirteen opened fairly huge in Japan last weekend, bumping Transformers all the way from first to third place. Turns out its 380 million yen opening is only 70% of Ocean’s Twelve and 54% of Ocean’s Eleven. However, the film did open just before the weeklong Obon holidays in Japan, which means it might catch during the week and for this weekend as well. With no big Hollywood blockbusters opening this weekend, that is certainly seeming more likely now. We shall know by Tuesday.

- As reported yesterday, four of the five Hong Kong TVB Tigers of the late 80s (sans Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) are reuniting for the latest film by director Derek Chiu Sung-Kei. Now we can report that Brothers will be coming in October, and the Chinese-language Hong Kong film blog has pictures from the press conference showing the all-male cast.

- After scoring 10 nominations at the Golden Bauhinia Awards (without screening it at all anywhere publicly), there’s a trailer out for Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung’s Exodus. It might just be a teaser, but this is looking to be easily the strangest Pang film yet. Add the poster now in HK cinemas, this is lining up to be one of the most intriguing-looking Hong Kong film in a long time.

- This week’s Teleview column on the Daily Yomiuri talks about the dramas Japanese television networks have for the fall to try and push the ratings back up. I don’t know, three detective dramas in one season looks to be a bit much.

- Yu Ha, who made the adult drama Marriage is a Crazy Thing in 2002, made two violent gangster dramas in a row- Once Upon a Time in High School and A Dirty Carnival. Now the poet/filmmaker is dipping his hand into the historical and possibly gay romance drama genre. Apparently, the director simply describes it as “a love story between men,” which would probably be a good pitch for Donnie Yen’s Flash Point.

- Japanese mega-producer Haruki Kadokawa and director Takashi Miike are teaming up (how many movies does Miike have in the pipe now? I count 3 including this one) for a sci-fi film named Kamisama no Puzzle (God’s Puzzle). I can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be a comedy or drama.

- Was anyone wondering how Andrew Lau’s Hollywood debut The Flock did in Japan (I believe it’s the first territory in the world to have it in theaters, but I could be wrong)? Along with The Pang Brothers’ The Messengers, The Flock opened on around 20-50 screens and ended up making less than 100 million yen. Yes, in Japan, they won’t even watch Hollywood films by Hong Kong directors.

100 million yen isn’t even US$1 million, by the way.

- Johnnie To’s Mad Detective (formerly named The Detective) is going to the Venice Film Festival after all. To refresh your memory, Mad Detective marks the first dramatic collaboration between Johnnie To and best actor winner Lau Ching-Wan since…..well, in a long ass time. That automatically should make it a film to look forward to.

- Hey, Australia. Don’t pirate movies and end up getting nothing like Canada.

Expect the Podcast to be back next week, and maybe that promised new feature tomorrow.

- Under “where did this movie come from?” news today, director Derek Chiu Sung-Kei is actually working on a new film called Brothers that reunite four of the five TVB Tigers from the 80s (they were previously in a film called….The Tigers in 1991). This time, Tony Leung is the missing one. Some has rumored that it’s because his salary is too high, which doesn’t make sense because I suspect Andy Lau’s asking price would be just as high, and the official excuse is that Leung couldn’t be in it because of the schedule. Who’s replacing the role meant for Leung? Eason Chan. I think I hear some collective groans, but I remain optimistic.

By the way, the five TVB Tigers were Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Miu Kiu-Wai, Felix Wong Yut-Wah, and Ken Tong Chun-Yip.

- For those in Japan that wanted to see Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodridguez’s Grindhouse films in their original double feature form, the U.S. version will be playing for a week in Tokyo and Osaka start August 24th. Those that want to see the director’s cut can wait until next month. Don’t think you’re saving money watching the double features - they’re charging 3000 yen, or the price of two student tickets, for the 3-hour film.

- Speaking of Hollywood in Japan, it’s no secret that Japanese films have been doing worse than last year at the local box office. Thanks to that, Hollywood films have taken back the reins, with box office for Hollywood films in Japan up 22% from the same period last year. On the other hand, the box office for films by the Japanese big 3 is down 13%. Ouch.

- Sadly, some of the biggest films of the year have been drama adaptations such as Unfair the Movie and Monkey Magic. In addition to Hero with Kimura Takuya in September, now we have Hana Yori Dango coming to a big screen near you next summer. To retain objectivity, I shall avoid cursing and hoping for the film’s failure, because we know that just won’t work. The least I can hope is that it won’t offer scenes such as this.

- Opening this weekend in Japan is the animated film Vexvile, the latest by Fumihiko Sori (who directed the live-action Ping Pong and produced the cult favorite Appleseed). It looked pretty promising, but the review in Japan Times by Mark Schilling might change my expectations a bit. Still, one negative review won’t stop it from getting its distribution rights sold to 129 countries.

- Yesterday’s Hong Kong newspapers offer a second full-page ad for the Wong Jing/Eric Tsang-produced remake comedy Beauty and the 7 Beasts. In addition to the femme fatale Meng Yao (whom the poster describes as a cross between Ti Na and Miriam Yeung), the “seven beasts” will be Eric Tsang, Nat Chan, Gordon Lam, Eddie Cheung Siu-Fai, Chin Kar-Lok, Lam Chi-Shin, and Wong Cho-Lam. We can expect this soon-to-be-appreciated-only-in-Europe masterpiece by the mid-autumn festival, which is around the end of September. What we don’t know is how many people will pay to watch it. Well, that’s at least one here……

- They’re break-dance fighting! MTV China is teaming up with an Italian apparel company for a reality show that would give the best dancer in China an all-expenses-paid trip to go meet Justin Timberlake. To show the amount of quality expected from the show, Edison Chen will be one of the on-air commentators.

That’s it for today. Expect some (relatively) good news from Hong Kong films tomorrow, and some other stuff, I guess. In case someone happens to be reading out there.

- Under “where did this movie come from?” news today, director Derek Chiu Sung-Kei is actually working on a new film called Brothers that reunite four of the five TVB Tigers from the 80s (they were previously in a film called….The Tigers in 1991). This time, Tony Leung is the missing one. Some has rumored that it’s because his salary is too high, which doesn’t make sense because I suspect Andy Lau’s asking price would be just as high, and the official excuse is that Leung couldn’t be in it because of the schedule. Who’s replacing the role meant for Leung? Eason Chan. I think I hear some collective groans, but I remain optimistic.

By the way, the five TVB Tigers were Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Miu Kiu-Wai, Felix Wong Yut-Wah, and Ken Tong Chun-Yip.

- For those in Japan that wanted to see Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodridguez’s Grindhouse films in their original double feature form, the U.S. version will be playing for a week in Tokyo and Osaka start August 24th. Those that want to see the director’s cut can wait until next month. Don’t think you’re saving money watching the double features - they’re charging 3000 yen, or the price of two student tickets, for the 3-hour film.

- Speaking of Hollywood in Japan, it’s no secret that Japanese films have been doing worse than last year at the local box office. Thanks to that, Hollywood films have taken back the reins, with box office for Hollywood films in Japan up 22% from the same period last year. On the other hand, the box office for films by the Japanese big 3 is down 13%. Ouch.

- Sadly, some of the biggest films of the year have been drama adaptations such as Unfair the Movie and Monkey Magic. In addition to Hero with Kimura Takuya in September, now we have Hana Yori Dango coming to a big screen near you next summer. To retain objectivity, I shall avoid cursing and hoping for the film’s failure, because we know that just won’t work. The least I can hope is that it won’t offer scenes such as this.

- Opening this weekend in Japan is the animated film Vexvile, the latest by Fumihiko Sori (who directed the live-action Ping Pong and produced the cult favorite Appleseed). It looked pretty promising, but the review in Japan Times by Mark Schilling might change my expectations a bit. Still, one negative review won’t stop it from getting its distribution rights sold to 129 countries.

- Yesterday’s Hong Kong newspapers offer a second full-page ad for the Wong Jing/Eric Tsang-produced remake comedy Beauty and the 7 Beasts. In addition to the femme fatale Meng Yao (whom the poster describes as a cross between Ti Na and Miriam Yeung), the “seven beasts” will be Eric Tsang, Nat Chan, Gordon Lam, Eddie Cheung Siu-Fai, Chin Kar-Lok, Lam Chi-Shin, and Wong Cho-Lam. We can expect this soon-to-be-appreciated-only-in-Europe masterpiece by the mid-autumn festival, which is around the end of September. What we don’t know is how many people will pay to watch it. Well, that’s at least one here……

- They’re break-dance fighting! MTV China is teaming up with an Italian apparel company for a reality show that would give the best dancer in China an all-expenses-paid trip to go meet Justin Timberlake. To show the amount of quality expected from the show, Edison Chen will be one of the on-air commentators.

That’s it for today. Expect some (relatively) good news from Hong Kong films tomorrow, and some other stuff, I guess. In case someone happens to be reading out there.