I could be watching E!’s 2-hour long coverage on the red carpet, but I honestly couldn’t care less about who’s showing up with who and who’s wearing what. Turner Movie Classics is showing Casablanca ’til 4:45 or so, and then maybe I’ll watch the rest of the pre-show. If I get tired of that, I just picked up 2 DVDs today, one of which can keep me entertained for a bit. Just no more red carpet, please.

And because it’s Hollywood’s biggest night (and also the fact that it was Sunday in Asia), there’s not really much news.

- The thing about Hong Kong entertainment news is that they only report celebrity matters. I knew Miki Mizuno is in Hong Kong shooting a movie with a Sam Lee and a bunch of B-list stars, but the news never mentions what type of movie or who’s directing (although the costumes looked real chessy). Now Ryuganji provides the details that it’s a new version of the “Female Convict Scorpion” series, and it’s a Japanese-Hong Kong co-production by Artport (who also did Dog Bite Dog, whose shooting process is described in a book by producer Sam Leung Tak-Sam that I bought in Hong Kong). Joe Ma is directing, which cannot be a good sign for the film.

Miki-san has a blog, and she writes about her shooting process in Hong Kong (which includes a Cantonese lesson on beer-drinking) here.

- Time Asia has an interview with Oscar nominee Rinko Kikuchi. Not much new information, but it’s a nice interview anyway.

- Jason Gray has some news on a few upcoming high-profile projects by directors Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Kore-eda today. He also announces that the release for the well-received Strawberry Shortcake will have Japanese subtitles (he knows that because he did the subtitles himself).

- I’m not a big fan of the cri English site because they stole one of the articles I wrote for Yesasia. But Lovehkfilm forum’s Dimsum99 provided a link about the beginning of shooting for the new Peter Chan film “The Assassination of Ma” starring Takeshi Kanshiro, Andy Lau, and Jet Li. So here, and I hope they didn’t steal that story from anyone else.

- Variety has a review for the first Finnish martial arts film Jade Warrior. Apparently it even did pretty well in China.

- As for the Oscars, instead of predicting who’ll win, I’ll just say who I want to win. a * means that I haven’t watched all the films in the category, so it’s a matter of personal preference. But it also means I’ll only comment on the categories where I’ve seen at least 3 of the films

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY*

Children of Men

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY*

Children of Men

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Pan’s Labyrinth

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS*

Adriana Barraza - Babel

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR*

Mark Whalberg - The Departed

BEST DIRECTOR

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu - Babel (although I want Scorsese to win, but not because of his work on The Departed)

BEST PICTURE

Babel

I’ll be posting thoughts and results later tonight, but until then, I’m hoping Ellen is better than Chris Rock (not a hard task at all).

Was watching the Independent Spirit Awards, where Little Miss Sunshine bagged at least 4 awards, including best picture and best director(s) because it might just be one of the few films those people actually saw when they voted. Even though I liked it immensely, it may be the next most undeserved best picture winner if it wins the Oscar tomorrow night. Just a fair warning.

And can Sarah Silverman just start hosting every film award show from now on with no bleeping?

Anyway, slow news day, but just as important.

- Pop singer/actress/part-time musician Candy Lo has uploaded her latest song on her website. Actually, the link for the download is what the entire website is, and it’s not bad at all.

- This is why there needs to be a free flow of information on the internet: A Hong Kong blog has an expose on Hong Kong’s so-called hottest MTV director, nicknamed “Jacky” (who has done MTVs for mostly EEG artists). In an interview for Easyfinder, he talks about his MTV for Yumiko Cheng’s single “Up and Down,” which is outright copied from Goldfrapp’s Strict Machine MTV. This is a (translated) excerpt about his “creative process”

“A lot of dance songs are just pure Music Video (earlier in the article, he mentions three types of music videos - pure music videos, ones with story, and ones for advertisements), because inserting a story would just be hackneyed. I use a lot of graphics and abstract color tones to package it. The record company already decided that Yumiko would wear Chinese-style red and green clothes to dance. I felt that the clothes is like a kaleidoscope, so I found a lot of vintage toys to create that kaleidoscope effect.”

Yeah, I’m sure he’s that much of a genius.

the blog entry is here (The pictures on the left are from the Goldfrapp video while the ones on the right are of Yumiko Cheng’s)

- YTSL, a writer for the site Hong Kong Cinema: View From the Brooklyn Bridge, has posted a top 10 list for 2006 Hong Kong films on her blog here. She amazingly includes McDull the Alumni, which I’ve always contend is Hong Kong’s answer to the Monty Python films and comes even with a hell of a monologue by Jim Chim.

- Twitch has a link to the 6-and-a-half minute trailer for Takeshi Miike’s film adaptation of the game Ryu Ga Gotoku (or in American better known as Yakuza). I’m not a huge fan of Miike, but might this actually be good?

- So the panel investigating the natto TV scandal in Japan has now found even more “undesirable content” in the program from the past. Blah blah blah.

- And a final piece of news just for gossip’s sake, Daily Dumpling has a report on why the Chinese people don’t like their biggest star at the moment - Zhang Ziyi. *Gasp!* People don’t like Zhang Ziyi?! Lies, all lies!

Tomorrow, Oscar predictions, but only the major one because I’m too lazy to predict them all.

Update’s a little late today, but that’s ok.

- Updating late enough means I caught Hong Kong’s Thursday box office numbers. Sometimes I think I need to live in Hong Kong to understand release patterns. Case in point - the Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore romcom Music and Lyrics have been on the top 10 since Valentine’s Day. Not very good results (actually the bottom spot among the new Lunar New Year films), but still respectable. But now it’s overtaken everything except Protege and Night at the Museum to take 3rd spot on its official opening day. It earned HK$450,000 on 31 screens for a HK$3.20 million total already.

As mentioned before, Night at the Museum and Protege continue to own the box office, taking in HK$2.18 million and $1.25 million respectively. Protege seems to be showing a bit of a slowdown, but business should pick up this weekend again, and at a total of 18.02 million so far, it’ll at least reach the 25 million mark, which would make it the Hong Kong film to beat for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, It’s a Wonderful Life closes in on the HK$6 million point with HK$410,000 on 33 screens on Thursday, and Twins Mission does HK$370,000 on 26 screens to get past the HK$4 million mark.

According to today’s Oriental Daily (no link because content changes daily)Gold Label’s head honcho Paco Wong is satisfied with It’s a Wonderful Life’s mediocre performance since it’s only Ronald Cheng’s directorial debut. Right, Paco, it has nothing to do with quality at all, I’m sure.

Source: mov3.com

- Speaking of Protege, Kozo at Lovehkfilm posted his long-awaited review, and simply said: it’s good. Not great, but pretty good.

- What I want to discuss more though, is his own Lovehkfilm 2006 awards. I didn’t come up with a top 10 for 2006 because 1) it was too late by the time I came back from vacation, and 2) As a film studies major trying to finish his degree in film studies, it’s tough to catch up on new films (although this is the first year in a long time that I’ve actually caught all 5 of the Academy Awards best picture nominee. More on that on Sunday).

Anyway, agreed on most of the top 10 (only mostly because I have yet to see My Wife is a Belly Dancer, and I’m only half way through After This Our Exile). Can’t agree on bottom 10 because I’ve only seen two of those (but no Love@First Note? Too charitable, I say). Most agreed on the special award to Gold Label (”For the dubious achievement of somehow making EEG look good”), and agreed on the best overacting award. Make your own judgments from there.

- Twitch has discovered a new database for those who just can’t seem to remember the faces of those HK actors that appear in every other movie. I say they need one for Korean films….

- I love the Hong Kong International Film Festival. They get all kinds of movies that I would not be able to catch here in the States (or in the case of my experience at the HKIFF, movies I couldn’t catch during my year in Japan). Too bad I live in San Francisco, not Hong Kong.

Anyway, this year’s lineup has been announced, and it seems like there are so many films that they can’t even fit in a closing film. I have a few personal picks myself - the opening films (Eye in the Sky and I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK), Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust, Sakuran, Woman on the Beach, Love and Honor, and almost everything in the Hong Kong Panorama section. They even have Berlin winner Tuya’s Marriage, and a Herman Yau tribute featuring the infamous Untold Story and Ebola Syndrome. I’m not saying I want to see those two, I’m just saying they should be very interesting screenings.

- It’s been floating around for a couple of days, but I didn’t want to report it because it’s such bad news. But now it’s been confirmed by auteur Rob Cohen (excuse while I vomit) that Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh will be in The Mummy 3. Jet Li will play a head mummy of the Terracotta Army. Excuse me while I go vomit some more.

- Personal favorite Shiina Ringo has a new album out that I posted an external review for a few days ago. Better news is that it debuted at number 1 on its first day of release. I’m gonna be ordering a copy of this myself when I dig up the 30 bucks needed to buy it, but rest assured, I’m gonna love it too.

- Oops, they did it again. Another Japanese TV station has admitted to presenting false data. Same old, same old.

- Top Japanese studio Toho’s chairman Isao Matsuoka will receive the lifetime achievement award at this year’s Showest convention. How about honoring him by putting more Japanese films on American screen?

Source: Variety Asia.

- If you haven’t checked out Japander, you really should. It features Hollywood star in all kinds of Japanese commercial ranging from awesome to strange to just plain mediocre. I mention this because Japan Zone has announced that Madonna will be advertising for some new apartment complexes set to open in 2009. Other stars mentioned in the report include Jean Reno, Leonardo Dicaprio, and Ken Watanabe. I myself saw one featuring Richard Gere in a subway station in Tokyo.

- Hoga Central just announced that the blockbuster Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea (just not as catchy as Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World or Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, or Norbit: From Unfunny to Plain Disgusting) has had its distribution rights sold to 60 countries, including Iraq (a film about a conqueror that wants to rule the world. hmm……). Of course, none of this is any indication that it’ll be any good.

- The Saturn Awards (Or Academy Awards for fantasy films) has recognized quite a few Asian films. For instance:

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM

Apocalypto (Buena Vista)
The Curse of the Golden Flower (Sony Pictures Classics)
Fearless (Rogue / Focus)
The Host (Magnolia Pictures)
Letters From Iwo Jima (Warner Bros.)
Pan’s Labyrinth (Picturehouse)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A YOUNGER ACTOR

Ko A-Sung (The Host) (Magnolia Pictures)
Ivana Baquero (Pan’s Labyrinth (Picturehouse)
Jodelle Ferland (Tideland) (ThinkFilm)
Tristan Lake Leabu (Superman Returns) (Warner Bros.)
Mitchel Tate Musso (Monster House) (Sony)
Edward Speleers (Eragon) (20^th Century Fox)

BEST COSTUME

Joan Bergin (The Prestige) (Buena Vista)
Yee Chung-Man (Curse of the Golden Flower) (Sony Classics)
Penny Rose (Pirates of the Caribbean:
Dead Man’s Chest) (Buena Vista)
Judianna Makovsky (X-Men: The Last Stand) (20^th Century Fox)
Nic Ede (Flyboys) (MGM)
Sammy Sheldon (V For Vendetta) (Warner Bros.)

A complete list is here

- Twitch also reports today on the societal impact of recent Korean blockbuster 200-Pound Beauty.

- Lastly, Variety has posted its review for David Fincher’s Zodiac. It’s sounding more and more like Memories of Murder, and that’s alright with me.

Whew, that was a lot of news. That should make up for the delay.

With the new year holidays coming to an end in Hong Kong, it’s time to get back to the down and dirty. That’s right, it’s box office round up time:

- Tuesday numbers (or the third day of new year and the last day of the public holidays) indicate that Night at the Museum overwhelmingly wins the battle with a HK$2.94 million take on Tuesday from 45 screens for a HK$19.94 million total (even though it got a $2.5 million head start with previews). On the Hong Kong side, Protege trumps its competitors by a mile with a HK$2.07 million Tuesday take from 40 screens for a HK$14.94 million total. Note that in multiplexes, it’s playing on smaller screens (because Night at the Museum took the one large screen in these theaters), and with a really good word-of mouth, it’s gonna do pretty well in the long run.

As for the other Hong Kong films, Ronald Cheng’s “directorial debut” It’s a Wonderful Life (review by LovehkFilm here) scored HK$810,000 on Tuesday from 33 screens for a total of HK$4.71 million total after 7 days. It’s the obligatory “fun lunar new year movie,” so expect business to be brisk past this week, but it will finish under $10 million, which is nowhere near the success of Dragon Loaded 2003, but still better than last years’ Lunar New Year offering The Shopaholics.

Not doing so hot are those cute Twins, whose Twins Mission (website still not working!) found HK$640,000 on 26 screens for only a HK$3.24 million total after 6 days. However, looking at per-screen average, it’s actually doing better than the Gold Label gang, so who knows?

Family films Open Season and Charlotte’s Web did acceptable business on Tuesday (HK$530, 000 on 27 screens and HK$560,000 on 28 screens, respectively) and are tied at HK$2.38 million for totals. And in limited release, Borat continues to be huge with HK$60,000 on 2 screens, and a HK$1.06 million total.

(US$1=HK$7.8)
Source: mov3.com

- South Korea also had its new year holidays, and according to Variety Asia (specifically, the always-reliable Darcy Paquet), box office is actually down overall, while Mark Russell over at Korea Pop Wars report the drop is attributed to new years being on a Sunday. Anyway, Mark’s analysis is here.

- In Japan, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has concluded that Japanese Variety shows need more fact-checking in a report about the investigation into the research process of such shows. Details from Variety Asia are here.

- On that note, the new years installment of TVB variety show Beautiful Cooking is up on Youtube (I’m not condoning piracy here, I’m just taking advantage of the free flow of information). Essentially, it’s a show where three females celebrities go on the show and test their cooking skills (or often, the lack thereof) for the male judges. Of course, it features the same old canned laughter and lame musical segments that only TVB can think of. Most amusing is Alex Fong Lik-Sun lip-syncing to the theme song to It’s a Wonderful Life, except he even lip-synced to Tony Leung Ka-Fai’s line.

Through further research on Youtube, I have found a long-running Japanese variety show called “Ai no Apron” (or the Apron of Love), and it’s basically where the cooking skills of female idols are tested for a male judge…wait a minute, that sounds like exactly what Beautiful Cooking is! This Wikipedia entry in Japanese shows that it at least goes back as far as 2005 (Beautiful cooking debuted in fall 2006)And here are those poor posters of Asian Fanatics Forum believing that TVB has come up with something original. Unless TVB’s got the rights to it, they better start preparing for a lawsuit.

This is why there should be free flow of information on the internet.

Note: looking up “Ai no Apron” or “愛のエプロン“( Japanese name) will not get you any result on youtube because of the copyright claims by Japan’s copyright people. Sorry.

- Back to more positive things, Twitch has a great interview with director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (whose new film Sakebi is coming out soon in Japan). But the interview isn’t about his new film, but rather about Japan’s response to Clint Eastwood’s critically acclaimed Letters From Iwo Jima (which has finally made its way to the imdb top 250!). It’s very informative, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

- According to Hollywood Elsewhere, Shakespeare in Love has been voted by British voters as the most undeserving Oscar best picture winner. I partially agree, since it should’ve gone to Saving Private Ryan, easily. But what about Chicago? Crash? even Gladiator (which I really love, but even I gotta face the truth some time)? Hell, what about Forrest Gump? or Driving Miss Daisy?

The point is the Academy Awards often make wrong calls more often than right ones. It’s not the first, it won’t be the last. It took me a while, but I got over Crash winning….eventually.

- A congratulations to Yee Chung Man for his winning the Costume Designers Guild award for Curse of the Golden Flower. The multi-talented Yee is a director, production designer, art director, and of course, a costume designer who made the enjoyable And I Hate You So and Anna Magdalena, but has also worked on dozens of Hong Kong films.

Source: Variety Asia

- Thank heavens for RSS feeds. I just got the news that the Japanese blockbuster Dororo is now headed down the trilogy road. According to Ryuganji, 2 back-to-back sequels for Dororo has just been green-lit and is set for a 2009 release with a 6 billion yen budget (that’s US$50 million, very huge for a Japanese film). The original hasn’t even made that much yet!

- Oh, and the Resident Evil 3 trailer is up. Looks like Mad Max crosses The Mummy. blah.

Lastly, visits have been going way up, and I would like to thank Hoga Central, r@sardonicsmile.com, and my friend Jason for linking the site and bringing more visitors over. You guys rule.

With the Lunar New Year holidays, there’s not much news coming out of Hong Kong, Korea, and China. But there are still some notable trailers released today:

- After Oxide Pang’s solo project Diary, it’s now Danny’s turn for his moment in the spotlight after the strange action flick Leave Me Alone with Forest of Death, starring Ekin Cheng and Shu Qi (a Young and Dangerous reunion!). The concept is based on the forest at the foot of Mt. Fuji that’s known for being a popular spot for people to hang themselves, especially after the economic bubble popped in the 1990s. Anyway, Twitch has a link to the new trailer, and….I don’t know.

Thanks to Twitch, I also found the Sina page for Kidnap, the new film by Law Chi-Leung, the sometimes talent director of Double Tap, Inner Senses and Koma. It stars Karena Lam (with a blond look seemingly inspired by Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, another film about kidnapping. See here for reference.) and Rene Liu, and the not-quite-promising teaser is not showing much. Kidnap will be released in June, and the trailer is here.

And today came the trailer for one of the most anticipated films in my lifetime. That’s right, it’s the full-length trailer for The Simpsons Movie is out, and it’s awesome. As always, HD versions are available on Dave’s Trailer Page, and the film (honestly, even if it’s 90 minutes of random gags, I’d be very happy) will be released in the States on July 27th.

- At the box office, Japan has this weekend’s rankings out already, and Dororo takes first place again, while Dreamgirls debut in 2nd place. More when the actual numbers come out.

- On the rest of the world, Variety reports that Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s Hot Fuzz scored US$11.6 million on its home turf in the UK this past weekend. Hopefully this will encourage Universal to push it further when the US release comes.

- Rounding up this Presidents Day is Japan drama ratings number. Kimura Takuya’s Karei Naru Ichizoku is back on top by rounding out the week with a 23.5 rating, while the Flower Boys continue at a 21.0 rating. More amazing is Haken No Hinkaku’s popularity. After showing its first decline in ratings last week, the comedy jumps up to its highest ratings yet again this week with a 20.7 rating. The average is now trailing very close behind those pesky Flower Boys. Even more amazing is the freefall Nakama Yukie’s drama this season, premiering with a 16.1, and now dropping to a new low with a 10.8 rating.

All the numbers are here (with drama titles in Japanese).

Update will come late or not at all tomorrow, so treasure this while you can.

The sun is out, the earth is warming up, let’s have some fun.

- First, trailer 2 for the highly-anticipated (at least among the male population of the country) self-masturbatory violent trash-fest Grindhouse. Hi-res version is here, but you can find the HD-versions at Dave’s Trailer Page.

I’ve been wanting to see Linda Linda Linda (essentially a rock version of Swing Girls, I presume) for a long time, but before it’s even going to be released on DVD here, the trailer for director Nobuhiro Yamashita’s new film is already out. I can’t read the title, but the trailer looks like a dark comedy set in the early 1990s about murder and some gold. Maybe a Japanese version of Fargo then? Trailer link, courtesy of the Japanese Trailer blog, is here (click on the first link).

- The Japanese Academy Awards results are out, and I was kind of right - Memories of Matsuko’s Tetsuya Nakashima did not get the best director’s award. Instead, it went to Hula Girl’s Lee Sang-Il. Apparently, since Hula Girls was not produced by the big three (Toho, Shochiku, and Toei), this is pointing to further diversity in the industry….even though Hula Girls’ fate was written in the wind when it was picked for Academy Award consideration last year.

Hoga Central analyzes the awards and has the winners list here.

- Follow-ups to two cases of the Japanese variety show scandals. TBS has apologized for a new case where they suggest Welfare Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa apologizing for the wrong comment! They made it seem like he was apologizing for suggesting that “healthy” families should have two children when he was apologizing for calling women “birth-giving machines.” Maybe TBS agrees with such sentiments…

Lest we not forget that TBS is already in trouble for the “misunderstanding” where they just brought some chimes to a rural school and did a report on how the school has used the chimes to help children study.

Then, Japan’s National Association of Commercial Broadcasters has suspended natto lovers Kansai Television’s membership for at least six months. What does it all mean?

“The suspension, which was unanimously approved by the board, means KTV will not be able to participate in org meetings and events, and its shows will not be eligible for NAB awards.”

but that means….what, exactly?

Both news courtesy of Variety Asia.

- Thursday numbers (and probably the last update for about a week or so thanks for Lunar New Year) are out for Hong Kong. Night at the Museum, as expected, ruled the theaters on 40 screens with HK$1.44 million for HK$6.10 million total already. Derek Yee’s Protege with a very solid 970,000 on 40 screens for a HK$4.19 million total. It should pass the 10 million mark by the end of the weekend, making it Yee’s highest grosser since One Night in Mongkok (which only did a very moderate just under 10 million in Hong Kong). Opening day for the other Hong Kong fares are not doing so well - the Twins’ homage (and I know I’m kind of pushing it there) to crappy 80s action films Twins Mission (whose website is impossible to find and it’s down) stole only HK$270,000 on 26 screens, while talented singer-songwriter turned class clown Ronald Cheng’s directorial debut It’s a Wonderful Life made only HK$220,000 on 33 screens on its second day, pointing to a not-too-bad 650,000 opening day. But the tremendous drop just got me thinking how many of these people don’t work for Gold Label? All the Western family movies are flopping with little signs of life until the weekend comes when the family may show up. We may just find out on Wednesday, after the public holidays are over.

Source: mov3.com

- Going over the China, it seems that the filmmakers behind the controversial Lost in Beijing has decided to screen the uncensored version for the public audience in Berlin, regardless of what the Chinese censors say. Ballsy move, indeed.

Source: Variety Asia

- I grew up watching movies by Hong Kong fallen giant Golden Harvest - I can still hum the jingle when the logo pops up. Even though they haven’t made any films for a while (I can claim that Vincent Kok brought it down, but that’d be mean), now they are coming back big time. Too bad, they seem like they’re going to be concentrating on the mainland market instead of making anymore real Hong Kong movies. Shame.

Source: Variety Asia

Speaking of Chinese new year, this blog may be taking a break on Sunday as well to observe Chinese new year, but unlike Hong Kong, I don’t push holidays back to weekdays, so rest assured (to you 22 people out there. yes, I check the visit stats), a day without me is all you can get.

While I’ll be staying at home with my DVD player tonight, many people out there are feeling the joy of Valentine’s Day:

- Hou Hsiao-Hsien is feeling the love because Film Distribution bought the rights to his new film The Red Balloon. Universe is feeling the love because someone bought the rights to Benny Chan’s still-filming “Invisible Target.” And the Pang Brothers continue the love they’re getting after the modest box office take of The Messengers by selling the rights to their new films “The Photo” and “Darling Lover”

Source: Variety Asia

- Production companies are loving Japan because distributors from there are not quite buying as many films this year, and they should be lucky to be able to tap into their market.

Source: Variety Asia

- Hong Kong is feeling the love because Korean superstar Rain is heading to Hong Kong again, this time for the screening of “I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK” because it will open the great Hong Kong International Film Festival in March.

Source: Variety Asia

- Chinese viewers are feeling the love because Access Hollywood is heading to Chinese screens, and it will probably be just as crappy and filled with trash gossips as the American version.

Source: Variety Asia

- Hong Kong audiences and Derek Yee are feeling the love because Protege opened to spectacular numbers on Tuesday night, scoring HK$950,000 on 45 screens. Remember that Protege only opened on Tuesday night, which means each theatre only played from 3 to maybe 5 shows at most that night. Look for its real test to come when everything else opens by tomorrow in Hong Kong.

Source: mov3.com

- The brother of a soldier who fought at Iwo Jima is feeling the love because a WWII veteran who picked up a box of letters 62 years ago has decided to return it after said sibling gave a long interview on Japanese television. Pardon me for being a cynic, but why wait 62 years? Maybe Clint Eastwood has something to do with it…

Source: recordonline.com

- and finally, DVD collectors like me are feeling the love because Hong Kong is seeing so many new releases these couple of days (ahead of Lunar New Year, I’m sure). Some of the major releases include:

Confession of Pain
Curse of the Golden Flower
After This, Our Exile (sadly, only the theatrical version)
Death Note (a cheap alternative to the uber-expensive Japanese set coming up)
Casino Royale
Jan Lam’s latest talk show (which I wish they use better production values for. Just because it’s someone talking doesn’t mean we don’t deserve serviceable video and audio quality, especially when you’re charging 27 bucks a pop)
There’s also a 2-disc special edition for James Yuen’s Heavenly Mission (which you won’t be able to find in Yesasia if you’re in the states because Tai Seng has the rights, sorry)

In the states, we also get Scorsese’s superior remake The Departed, and next week we see the masterpiece Babel. Feeling the love, indeed.

Lots of Japan news today:

- Japanese box office numbers are out, with Dororo and Pursuit of Happyness staying put at first place and second place, respectively. The big Japanese opening this weekend would be Ryoko Hirose’s Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust (or Bubble He Go! in Japanese), and it only mustered a 4th place opening with 140 million yen. According to Eiga Consultant, that’s only 49% of Shibasaki Kou and Yuji Oda’s “The Prefectural Star” (also currently flopping big time in Hong Kong so bad that it never appeared on the top 10 on mov3) and only 76% “Udon,” which grossed a total of 1.36 billion yen (121 yen=$1). Looks like it’ll struggle to the 1 billion yen mark, depending on word of mouth.

The other big Japanese opening “Tengoku wa Mattekureru” (Heaven Can Wait, Maybe) scored only a 9th place opening with 59 million yen.

As for other openings, Kevin Costner’s The Guardian (which has been advertised quite aggressively in Japan, at least when I was there) opened at 3rd with 178 million yen, which is quite auspicious, considering the domestic gross of only $55 million.

Source: Box Office Mojo

- Hoga Central reports that the Japanese Genghis Kahn film “Genghis Kahn: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea” will open on a record 425 screens come March 3rd. It’s also known to be one of the most expensive Japanese productions ever with a $30 million budget. Twitch has their own report, along with the strange looking trailer where Mongolians are now proficient in Japanese. Honestly, how do they write Japanese dialogue for a film that took place some thousands of years ago? Classical Japanese? As long as they don’t start suggesting that Genghis Kahn is actually Japanese, then I wouldn’t mind checking it out.

Source: Twitch, Hoga Central blog

- Twitch also reports that the official site for Takeshi Kitano’s new film “Kantoku, Banzai!” now has a teaser up. And it is what it is: a teaser.

- In Japanese drama ratings that not many people care about, Kimura Takuya’s family epic extravaganza “Karei Naru Ichizoku” found its lowest ratings with 21.3, closely followed by “Hana Yori Dango 2” (Or the sequel of the Japanese ’s own adaptation of the Meteor Garden series), with a 21.0 rating. This season’s surprise hit “Haken no Hinkaku,” which has seen rising ratings since its premiere (it’s a fairly rare case that a drama’s first episode ratings are its lowest) finally sees its first drop to a slightly below-average 18.6 rating. Looks like “Karei Naru Ichizoku” will have to find some way to pull in viewers or risk having to stand those “you lost to a group of boys with the word ‘flower’ in their name” jokes for a long time.

- In other parts of Asia, Twitch also has the first review for Derek Yee’s much anticipated Protege. And the good news is that it doesn’t sound much like Traffic. I’m really looking forward to it now.

- Johnnie To has also apparently signed a deal to make his English debut - a remake of the French film Le Cercle Rouge. Good news is the To is now asking legendary French star Alain Delon to be in the film (who is apparently quite interested), bad news is that it’ll be produced by the producer of Rush Hour Arthur Sarkissian. Judging from the plot of the French original, this seems like the perfect way for To to break into the West. Just don’t forget about Hong Kong!

Oh, John Woo is also making a film under this deal. After all the rumored projects he took up over the years, I don’t know what’s true and what’s not anymore.

Source: Variety Asia.

- In Korea, last week’s champ Voice of a Murderer drops about 50% this weekend, but still already has over 2 million viewers to become the top grossing film of the year so far. 200 Pound Beauty doesn’t count because it opened in December.

Source: Korea Pop Wars

- Finally, David Mamet has written a book about his experiences in Hollywood and advice for those who would like to enter that elite world. My favorite quote from the review on Yahoo News refers to film school: “One can study marching, the entry-level skill of the military, until one shines at it as has none other. This will not, however, make it more likely that one will be tapped to be the Secretary of the Army.” Mamet films are a bit of hit-and-miss for me, but you can’t deny that he’s a pretty damn good writer.

The review of the book is here.

Raining here hard in San Francisco means it’s time to watch some movies. And so last night, I popped in the HK DVD for Memories of Matsuko, the latest from Shimotsuma Monogatari (better known as Kamikaze Girls) director Tetsuya Nakashima. A Japanese online commenter wrote in allcinema.net wrote that it’s essentially a pop version of Dancer in the Dark, and it’s mostly true - Memories of Matsuko is a story of a woman who experiences an almost-constant downward spiral, but finds comfort in singing a little ditty here and there. The difference is that it’s not as pretentious, and there are actual pop stars involved.

Some may criticize it for things such as its gender politics (Matsuko makes some really bad decisions along the way because she just wants to be loved by a man) or its shallow MTV-style storytelling, but I find the MTV stuff done much better here than its Hong Kong counterparts. Hong Kong filmmakers often indulge in MTV-style editing for the sake of style, and they hinge on taking the film merely from one sequence to another to show off new visual tricks with no knowledge of pacing or fluidity between scenes. Here, Nakashima crams in decades of Matsuko’s life using this style, but he somehow manage to juggles style and storytelling at the same time, streamlining events along the way at an efficient pace, but also allowing the emotions to be felt at the same time. As for gender politics, Matsuko’s search for love isn’t simply out of her need for a man; that need comes from her family upbringing, out of her inability to be loved.

And the music - as a musical, Memories of Matsuko has some of the best integration of pop music last year. Unlike the recent musical, which cashes in on hit pop song cashing in on collective nostalgia, songs created for this film (by J-pop artists such as AI and Bonnie Pink, who both make appearances in the film) actually have things to do with what’s going on onscreen. It may be pop, but it’s pop with a meaning.

Behind the pretty pop stuff, though, there is a very tragic story in Memories of Matsuko, but the impact is lessen thanks to the blend of bubble gum pop and 50s technicolor Hollywood spectacle. Nevertheless, emotions are felt, and the senses are stimulated just the same. You buy it or you don’t. I did, and I think it’s one of the best Asian films of 2006.

A report of an interview with director Tetsuya Nakashima from back in May is here.

The Twitch review (written better, but tougher to read through) is here.

Buy the HK DVD here.

- The Hong Kong numbers are in, and as expected, Night at the Museum tops the box office with its advanced screenings with HK$1.43 million on Sunday from 55 screens (that includes most theatres who put it on at least two screens) for a $2.99 million total so far. I didn’t realized that the umpteenth computer-animated animal film Open Season (The Chinese version boasts the voice talents of Eason Chan and Jan Lam) also had its advance screenings this weekend, and it’s at number two with a very weak HK$220,000 Sunday on 27 screens. Repeating its fate from pretty much around the globe, Charlotte’s Web got only HK$160,000 on 29 screens for a total of HK$330,000 so far. These three films open next weekend before Lunar New Year.

Everything else is pretty meh around Hong Kong, with Borat having another strong Sunday showing with HK$70,000 on only two screens for a HK$650,000 total so far. Pretty good, considering it’s only been showing on two screens.

source: Mov3.com

- The controversial uncensored version of Lost in Beijing was screened in Berlin, and people are wondering what the hell the big deal is. The details here from Variety Asia.

Good news is that it’s also generally well-received. At least by Variety.

- Update on the Yellow Handkerchief remake I mentioned a couple of days ago thanks to Hoga Central. Apparently, imdb lists Udayan Prasad, who made the little-known, but timely My Son the Fanatic, as the director. Apparently, Yoji Yamada is understandably not directing this (but did hand over a script, apparently) because this is going to be a Hollywood film too.

- Midnight Eye has posted its results for the best of 2006 poll by readers. As great as it is that lesser known films (really, Miike isn’t all that huge in Japan) are recognized, I think some of the better mainstream films are getting left out simply because they’re….well, mainstream. Japan’s mainstream films are quite solid, even if they’re often made for commercial intentions. At least they don’t make movies like Norbit in Japan.

Midnight Eye reviewers’ own best-of lists are here.

I was hoping the Japanese drama ratings would be out by last night, but it wasn’t. That’s life.

Most of the major film blogs (understandably) don’t write on weekends, but I figured I should capture that niche of weekend blog writing, so here I am.

- Mostly reviews today.

The long-delayed Korean “blockbuster” D-War by Derek Elley, who describes the film as “the most expensive cult movie on DVD.”

Park Chan-Wook’s “I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK,” which I don’t care what anyone says, I’m looking forward to it immensely.

Yoji Yamada’s third film in the “Samurai Trilogy,” “Bushi no Ichibun” (or known internationally as “Love and Honor.”), which I look forward to reluctance because I’m not much for quiet samurai films, but I liked “The Hidden Blade,” so there.

This issue of Entertainment Weekly also provided a review of the Infernal Affairs trilogy (which is finally seeing its region-1 release thanks to the release of “The Departed.” It’s not on the EW website yet, so here are some quotes:

“(The two follow-ups) were produced and released within nine months of the original, with equally convoluted plotting - so whatever they’re putting in the coffee, can we import some? The first Infernal plays like The Departed on fast-forward; you get dozens of scenes nearly identitcal to Scorsese’s…Affairs 2 is a decent prequel (just decent?) that downplays its dueling moles while filling in an epic mod-war backstory. The more intimate finale…prepare to be baffled about why key players get whacked, and whether to cheer or cry.”

Infernal Affairs gets an A-, 2 gets a B, and 3 gets a B-. Personally, I would’ve given 1 a B/B+(I can’t stand MTV-style overdirecting, and the contrived female character in Sammi Cheng), 2 an A, and 3 an agreeable B-, but I don’t write for EW, so there.

I saw Pan’s Labyrinth yesterday. It’s a harrowing fantasy mixed with a brutal (and I mean BRUTAL) war drama. It’s hard to decide what to think of it; it is a towering achievement for Guillermo del Toro, as this is now my favorite film of his (but I’ve only seen Mimic, Blade 2, and Hellboy, and wasn’t terribly impressed by any of those), and the fantasy stuff is great. But the intense violence will literally scar people for life (I rarely resort to closing my eyes in the theatre, but that’s what I did at one point), and the tragic conclusion perhaps takes things a little too far. Nevertheless, it’s an involving and beautifully realized piece of filmmaking.

- Some trailers: One for Julie Taymor(who directed the awesome Titus)’s new musical Across The Universe (one of the more overlooked Beatles song that I know), a teaser for Ocean’s 13, which I think a lot of people have seen by now, and one for the interesting French comedy The Valet.

These trailers are the high-res versions, if you want to watch them in HD, go to Dave’s Trailer Page for them.

- MonkeyPeaches reports that Jia Jiangke’s film Still Life, which was shot and projected in Hong Kong in digital, was taken out of the Hong Kong Film Award best Asian film race because the award has a rule that stipulates films must be shot in 35mm. According to vice-chairman director Gordon Chan, the rule is to “protect movies” and that they are aware that more and more films are being shot in digital but they are “not ready to include them.” In other words, they’re trying to protect high-budget blockbusters produced by the committee members’ (quite a few of them producers and filmmakers themselves) bosses so they can get their next films funded. I’m not a fan of Jia Zhangke at all, and I don’t mean to be on a personal attack mode, but the man who made this movie shouldn’t talk about protecting movies anyway.