It’s Friday, so let’s make this quick for everyone:

- Berlin’s English newspaper Exberliner has a rather nonsensical blog about the Berlin Film Festival, which will run until the 18th. It seems to be written with such verbal vomit and nonsensical run-on sentences that I wonder if the writer is rather…influenced when he writes it.

For example: “When placed in comparison to the drudgery of my aging hipster lifestyle, the disease-filled, whorehouse-circus, heroin-blindness sufferings of La Môme’s Edith Piaf appear utterly galvanizing. And of course: an artist’s myth is more than just the vibration of talented muscle. Why is my life so insufferable when my father could be a contortionist? Wait, my father is a contortionist….anyway, the tears that streamed from my eyes during the first third of the film were neither entirely the result of the artistry of the filmmaker, nor the girth of the journalist sitting next to me.”

Maybe my English really sucks, but….what?

The blog is worth reading anyway, as it does offer some perspective about the festival and the films, and it’s right here.

- The new internet-only trailer for Hot Fuzz, from the makers of Shaun of the Dead, is out, and it’s special because it was edited by director Edgar Wright himself. There’s nothing new to see, but looks fun nevertheless.

- Hong Kong Thursday box office numbers are out, and it’s indicating a weak weekend. But that’s only because the big lunar new year films are all rolling out next week, starting with advance screenings for Charlotte’s Web and Night at the Museum throughout the weekend, then Derek Yee’s highly-anticipated Protege opens on the 13th, then Ronald Cheng’s directorial debut (I feel a bit of vomit saying that after watching the trailer in Hong Kong) It’s A Wonderful Life and the equally awful-looking Twins Mission (the title screen looks like a bad 80’s adventure film. Maybe it’s a homage!) opens on the 14th, and the two Western films see their openings on the 17th and the 15th, respectively. New Years (as in the official holiday) is on the 18th, so expect box office updates throughout next week.

Oh, Thursday numbers can be seen here. Expect the advance screenings of Charlotte’s Web and Night at the Museum to dominate the weekend.

- Cannes has enlisted the past winners of the Palme d’Or to each make a 2-3 minute short film for the festival’s 60th anniversary. The feature film is set to premiere, and will probably never be shown anywhere else, during the festival this May. Asian filmmakers include Wong Kar-Wai, Tsai Ming-Liang, Chan Kaige (who hopefully isn’t promising the return on the pimp finger stick), and Hou Hsiao-Hsien are expected to participate.

Source: Variety

- Japanese distributor Shochiku has made a deal with an American producer to remake Yoji Yamada’s classic film “The Yellow Handkerchief,” with no director named as of now. The original film, based on an American novel, was known as the first best picture winner in the Japanese Academy Awards in 1978. Considering Yoji Yamada is still alive and going strong (making a real actor out of Kimura Takuya in Bushi no Ichibun), and that Ichikawa Kon just remade his own film, why not have him do it? The film will begin shooting in New Orleans in March.

Source: Variety Asia

- Japan’s Kansai Television has revealed more false data in their now-canceled hit health show “Encyclopedia of Living.” After the much-covered scandal, in which producers gave false data that suggested natto (fermented soy beans that looks like held together with snot) can help people lose weight, setting off a natto-buying frenzy in Japan, now KTV has revealed at least two more cases where foreign experts’ testimonies were mistranslated on purpose.

I always approach these shows with caution myself, especially when they show these interviews, they dub over the English and show the subtitles of what the voiceover person is saying instead of showing what the experts actually said in English. I hope these scandals now bring greater transparency for these so-called health variety shows all around the world.

Source: Variety Asia

Today I’ll be watch Pan’s Labyrinth and I’ll receive my DVD for the great Paris Je T’aime tomorrow. Yup, it’ll be a good weekend. I might even post once or twice.

- Johnnie To seems like a far more productive version of Wong Kar-Wai; while he does put out up to two movies a year, he can’t seem to decide what to do. News reported that shooting for a PTU TV series have been underway with different directors, but now comes the announcement that Johnnie To himself is going be making 5 films under the PTU series, with one being a theatrical release and the others being straight-to-video releases. He’s also in post-production for two films - Sparrow, which he’s been shooting on-and-off for a while, and his third of “The Iron Triangle,” co-directed by Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam. He’s probably shooting three more films we don’t know about that has no script, but who cares? He’s Johnnie To. As long as he keeps churning out more Exiled than Yesterday Once More, I ain’t complaining.

Source: Variety Asia

- Zhang Yimou is always caught between a rock and a hard place. First, his movies kept getting banned because of “subversive elements,” now that he appeases to the party, the party bites right back. According to Yahoo News, the Communist Party training academy (what the hell is that anyway?) has publicly criticize Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower for leaving a “feeling of nausea that would not go away.” They even said “Fine art is not built on money. Good movies are not based on banquets of glitzy scenes and effects, and less so when violence and sex are involved.” Maybe they should watch Raise the Red Lantern, or better yet, To Live. Oh, wait, they banned both movies!

Source: Yahoo News

- Jason Gray has put up more news about Beat Takeshi(or Takeshi Kitano)’s new film “Kantoku, Banzai!” (Long Live the Director). It seems both more intriguing and mind-numbling at the same time.

Source: Jason Gray

- More on the Youtube-JASRAC negotiations from Variety Asia. Apparently now Youtube is planning on building a Japanese version of Youtube as well, and is negotiating with companies to put contents on their Japanese site. Good thing they’re rejecting JASRAC’s request to require users to register their addresses. If you want people to stop infringing copyrights, why not make them available yourself, and make some advertising bucks out of it? This is the country that won’t even let users from outside Japan watch the ads for their dramas on the internet, so they probably won’t listen to foreigners.

Source: Variety Asia

- It’s not really news, but apparently the new Eddie Murphy film Norbit is crappy. Really crappy.

Source: Hollywood Elsewhere

- Apparently Steven Soderbergh is not making only one Che Guevara film, but TWO. I like Steven Soderbergh when he’s making edgy mainstream films (that would include Ocean’s Twelve, mind you), not experimental art films. Then again, I like Paul Thomas Anderson, so maybe some people out there actually like Soderbergh’s stuff.

Source: Hollywood Elsewhere

- I’m gonna keep peddling Khalil Fong’s album “This Love” here. For film fans who need convincing, he even did a song named after Wong Kar-Wai’s broken-hearted protagonist Su Li-Zhan. Link’s here . This is a talented guy, so give him some love by buying the album here.

- A wag of the finger to Joy Sales for their pan-and-scanning of the VCD for Jackie Chan’s Rob-B-Hood (yes, a poor college student does have to resort to the VCD these days). It goes from widescreen during the credits to full screen for the opening sequence, then widescreen again for the rest of the credits. Why not just widescreen the entire film like everyone else does? It’s not like it costs extra money to leave the widescreen print on, it’s already on the DVD. And no, Rob-B-Hood was not shot on Super-35, so don’t even start that.

More of the widescreen-vs-pan and scan (also known as “full screen”) argument here.

Lastly, I’ve now gotten hooked on RSS feed, and was looking into how to set one up myself. Turns out a real RSS 2.0 feed is too complicated, and Blogger already set an atom one down at the bottom. So use your aggregator and click on the feed link on the bottom to subscribe. That is, if you are inclined to do so.

- Box Office Mojo posted its own official Japan box office numbers from this past weekend, and there’s a slight discrepancy - While yesterday’s Eiga Daisuki ranking shows Monster House at 10th place with Battle Of Wits at 3rd, the Box Office Mojo ranking shows the new film Dear Friends at 10th place, and Battle of Wits at 4th, behind Marie Antoinette. What gives?

Nevertheless, the Battle of Wits opening is weaker in numbers than I thought, since the release is fairly wide at 246 screens, it only took in 130 million yen (that’s about 1.09 million in US dollars, according to Mojo) for a 528500 yen average, which amounts to only about US$4400 per-screen. And average ticket prices in Japan is 1500 yen (adult price is 1800, but advanced tickets are sold at 1300 yen, and students are charged 1500 yen as well), so do the math. Since, according to Eiga Consultant, it did do 114% of The Promise’s opening weekend business (and possibly with considerably better word of mouth and a popular source material), it might do respectable business for a Hong Kong film. Then again, Hong Kong films usually don’t even see the top 10, so we’ll see.

Meanwhile, Japanese films are staying afloat quite well, with Dororo losing only 15% of its business, and Shall We Dance director Masayuki Suo’s “Soredemo Boku Wa Yattenai” losing only 14% and will probably stay strong thanks to word-of-mouth and recent promotion by the director himself. The multiple-Oscar nominated The Departed, however, not doing so well, losing another 40% of its business over the weekend, along with Letters From Iwo Jima, which finally seems to be dying down after an astonishing 9 weeks in the top 10.

Source: Box Office Mojo

- Takeshi Kitano (or known as Beat Takeshi) has recently completed his 13th film, which will supposedly with a mishmash of homages to Ozu, science fiction, and I guess whatever oddball stuff he can come up with. It will open in June.

Source: Japan Zone (please scroll down if you don’t see it)

- Twitch has been provided with stills from Soi Cheang’s new film Shamo. This time a manga adaptation, the presumably hardcore action flick will star former pretty boy Shawn Yue, whom I always thought has great potential as an actor. The original comic apparently featured many gay rape scenes (it does partially takes place in prison), but the director himself said that they have been left out of the film.

Source: Twitch

- The team behind the controversial “Lost in Beijing” is now prepared to defy the censors and show the film uncut in Berlin….at least for the market screenings. But they have yet to decide which version to go with for the public screening. Come on, stick it up to the man!

Source: Variety Asia

Having been lazy for the last couple of days about blogging, I feel somewhat obligated to deliver more news today.

- The Pang Bros.’ Hollywood debut The Messengers (although not completely their film - Producer Sam Raimi reportedly brought in another director to reshoot a couple of scenes after filming ended) debut at no. 1 with 14.7 million dollars at the box office, marking the 5th best Super Bowl opening of all time. Reviews have been mostly negative, even though I thought Variety’s review was leaning towards the positive side, and it still got a rotten tomato.

In other box office news, Letters From Iwo Jima sinks 9% this weekend, despite a screen expansion. Sadly, the multiple Oscar nominee will limp to get to the 10 million-mark, unless Flags of Our Fathers’ DVD release this week help boost box office takes. I doubt Warner Bros. is worried, though, since it’ll make 40 million dollars in Japan alone. That’s double its budget.

Meanwhile, Babel and Children of Men are in a virtual freefall now. Especially sad is Children of Men, which has gotten great acclaim, word-of-mouth, and even Oscar nominations, only to earn back less than half of its budget in the States. On the other hand, good news for Pan’s Labyrinth, which has now apparently becoming the highest-grossing Spanish-language film in the States (sans inflation).

Source: Box Office Mojo.

- Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, new opener House of Mahjong has inexplicably become the number 1 film this weekend, earning HK$410,000 on 29 screens on Sunday for a 1.52 million gross after 4 days. Even the Project Greenlight film Feast opened at third place with a solid 260,000 on 23 screens on Sunday for a 1.01 million total so far, even though the version in Hong Kong theatres is reportedly only 87 minutes long, suggesting a 8-minute trim for a friendlier category II-B rating.

Blood Diamond continues to stay strong at second place with a inflated 370,000 take on 31 screens on Sunday with a 7.71 million total as it draws closer to being first 2007 10-million earner in Hong Kong. It might happen, it might not, who cares?

In limited releases, Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering, which is also doing decent but not great limited release business in the States, managed to make HK$150,000 on 7 screens on Sunday for a HK$560,000 total. The biggest limited release opener, though, is the 2-screen opening of Borat. It made an extraordinary 90,000 on only 2 screens for a 280,000 total so far.

Source: Mov3.com, Broadway Cinemas

- There was a test screening for Derek Yee’s new work Protege last week, and results were generally positive. In the post-screening Q&A, Yee also laments the decline of Hong Kong films, citing the recent incident where citizens called in to complain about a broadcast of the classic film An Autumn’s Tale because of the scene where the Chow Yun-Fat character swears in a scene of road rage played for laughs.

Source is from the Oriental Daily newspaper from Hong Kong, but they change their online content everyday, so there’s no longer any official source.

- Additional review for Japanese blockbuster Dororo. Last week I posted a negative review, so now here comes a positive review for the usually-reliable (at least when it comes to Japanese films) Mark Schilling at Japan Times.

- Speaking of reviews, four new reviews for the month are up:
Joey Yung - Close Up (music)
Miriam Yeung - Unlimited (music)
Like a Virgin (Korea)
Live Good (aka: Mission Sex Control) (Korea)

- I like the Colbert Report. Unlike The Daily Show’s sometimes-liberal slant on its skewering of news, The Colbert Report is a sharp satire of the so-called fair and balanced Fox News and other right-wing news shows. So why am I talking about Colbert, you ask? Because he recently did a segment on this year’s Academy Awards and how it’s destroying America. Trust me, it’s funnier than it sounds.

Watch it here.

More tomorrow, hopefully, when the Japanese box office results may come out. What can I say? I live by Box Office Mojo, and so should you.

Back at my alma mater UC Davis for a few days on official business, but there are just too much news in the Asian film world that I just have to post.

- The Hong Kong Film Award nominations are in (curiously, not on their official website yet, so a full list is available on MonkeyPeaches here), and Zhang Yimou’s barely-a-Hong-Kong-film Curse of the Golden Flower gets 14 nominations, including one inexplicable supporting actor nom for Jay Chou. He also scored two nominations for original songs in CURSE and Fearless. Yes, Jay Chou has now been nominated for more Hong Kong film awards than Martin Scorsese.

In other news, Patrick Tam’s After This, Our Exile is second with 10 nominations. Johnnie To is celebrating twin nominations in both Best Picture and Best director for Election 2 and Exiled (also deservedly nominated for best editing and cinematography). Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung’s Isabella, a personal favorite of mine, is sadly shut out of the major categories (replaced by Happy Birthday and Confession of Pain in the best screenplay category. WHAT?!), with a few in the technical departments and Isabella Leong for best actress. In another case of injustice, Dog Bite Dog not only gets the shaft from the Hong Kong critics society as a recommended film (it got nothing, even though Soi Cheang’s The Death Curse was a recommended film), now only gets one nomination for best new actor. Considering the fact that I can find so many films shafted probably means it must’ve been a pretty good year after all for Hong Kong cinema. Yeah, let’s keep telling myself that.

- Japanese congomerate Kadokawa will start selling their films via Bittorrent technology. Here’s hoping they don’t waste their technology on a slew of mediocre J-horror films.

source: Variety Asia

- Hong Kong will gets its first IMAX cinema (probably after seeing the technology used on major theatrical releases) along with a UA multiplex in Kowloon Bay this summer. I live near Kowloon Bay, I’ve ridden the buses past the area, but I see no major mall being constructed. The fact that you can’t see a mall from the MTR station may spell a bit of doom for the overpriced Hong Kong UA chain. Broadway Cyberport cinema, anyone?

source: Variaty Asia.

- Results are out for the first weekend for Dororo, and Eiga Consultant himself was quite excited, and for a good reason. The major blockbuster, co-produced by TBS and Universal Japan (among others), made 450 million Yen over the weekend, and is the first hit for Toho (the distributor) in a half year after a string of flops in Nana 2 and Murder of the Inugami Clan. English version of analysis can be found in Hoga Central here.

- Twitch reports that the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society has announced its nominees for the first ever Asian Film Awards, which is to run along with the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

The official list of nominees at the official site is here. The report from Twitch is here.

Nice to see Exiled getting the love, but sadly only in the best film and best director categories (I thought the editing was top-notch, more later), and there’re even political choices like Curse of the Golden Flower’s best picture nomination. At least it’s not Rob-B-Hood.

- Saw Exiled over the weekend, and it simply rocks. Johnnie To channeling Sergio Leone is an exhilarating thing to watch.

Sorry, the fanboy in me just had to post some stills.

- The new My Little Airport single “Graduation turns to Unemployment” is pricking my thin school-less jobless skin very hard. One of the verses goes like this:

I had 39 job interviews in 7 months/Finding a job is harder than finding a husband/I only want to stay at home today.

You can download it on their official site here. Click on the headphone icon (I suggest using some kind of download program like getright because it’s kind of an unstable server.)

- American Box Office estimates are out with Epic Movie on top (honestly, why?). Forget the top 3 films, they’re too depressing (Epic Movie, Smokin’ Aces (I expected more from Joe Carnahan after Narc), and Night at the Museum, in case anyone wanted to know). Pan’s Labyrinth is holding up well after the added screens, The Departed gets a surprisingly over-2000-per-screen-average after a rerelease thanks to its Oscar nominations, Letters From Iwo Jima (which more people should be watching) is up 29% after its added screens, Babel (which I still think is an incredible film) also holding up very well after its nominations were announced. Children of Men, unfortunately, dropped another 45% despite its 3 nominations and just being a generally great film. And yet, the top movie in America is a lame recreation of every other blockbuster that doesn’t even follow the type of parody its title suggests to do.

Looks like Curse of the Golden Flower figure in the states will stay around 6 million, falling even lower than House of Flying Daggers (11 million)and far below Hero (53 million).

Source: Box office Mojo

- Hong Kong box office for Sunday also out. As with last weekend, Blood Diamond and Happy Birthday take the top spots again, with Blood Diamond holding up really well, scoring HK$650,000 on 31 screens (not a spectacular Sunday gross, but really good for a second week film) with the over-140-minute-inflation-ticket-price for a HK$5.82 million total. Look for it to cross the HK$ 10 million line. Happy Birthday does HK$470,000 on 33 screens for HK$5.34 million so far, and it may hit up to 8 million. Not bad for a film with just Louis Koo and Rene Liu. Babel is making a comeback with HK$220,000 on 14 screens (none of which probably is playing more than 2 or 3 showings a day) for 2.93 million so far. As for the new releases, Perfume - The Story of a Murderer is in third place, slightly up from the Thursday gross with HK$340,000 on 21 screens for a HK$1.21 million total so far. It’ll be one of the higher grossing German films in recent years, but don’t expect it to pass the HK$4 million line. Midnight Sun is DOA with just 160,000 on 16 screens for 550,000 so far. Eternal Summer not as up as I thought with just 80,000 on 8 screens (as opposed to 70,000 on 8 screens on Thursday). Marie Antoinette, however, is holding up very well with 80,000 on just 4 screens. Its total is at 760,000 after 8 days. It’s not exactly a Japan-sized success, but it’s pretty damn good for a 4-theater release.

Source: Mov3.com

- In the Japanese box office this past weekend, the biggest Japanese film opening was “Shall We Dance” director Masayuki Suo’s first film in 11 years “Soredemo Boku wa yattenai” (Even then, I Still Didn’t Do It). It’s gotten some strong reviews , but it garnered only a 116 million yen opening on 203 screens for a 5th place opening. However, Hoga Central reports that it’s expected to hit that ever-important billion yen mark. We’ll see if the power of word of mouth will work as well as it has for Yoji Yamada’s “Bushi no Ichibun”

source: Box Office Mojo, Hoga Central.

- Meanwhile, Johnnie To’s Election is being released is one theatre in Japan, and Japan Times has a very positive review for it.

source: Japan Times.

- Thursday numbers are out for Hong Kong. Look for Blood Diamond and Happy Birthday to lead the pack again. The biggest performer of this week’s opening, and the widest release, is Tom Tykwer’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, which did HK$160,000 on 21 screens (with a 7619 per-screen average) for third place. The Japanese film “Taiyo no Uta” (or called Midnight Sun in Hong Kong) opened with only $90,000 on 16 screens, despite advertising around the city and radio play for the theme song. Taiwanese film “Eternal Summer” (nicknamed as the male version of “Blue Gate Crossing”) opened with a decent HK$70,000 on 8 screens (a decent 8750 per-screen), bringing its total to $HK100,000 (including the advance screenings this past weekend). It’ll do strong but limited numbers for the weekend, thanks to the category-III rating and the limited amount of theatres.

source: mov3.com

So the winner of the Hong Kong box office holiday battle is actually Casino Royale. However, this is only winner in dollar amount because it seems that any films longer than 140 minutes would mean an increase of HK$10 in admissions (Casino Royale runs a hefty 146 minutes, and Babel gets the same treatment since its running time is 142 minutes). If an average ticket price in Hong Kong is HK$50, this would mean the final gross have been inflated as much as 20%. If the actual attendance number is counted a la Korean box office figures, Curse of the Golden Flower may’ve won the final battle. We’ll never know.

Back from a very long vacation to find a few shocking things happened in the Asian film world:

- The death of Grady Hendrix’s Kaiju Shakedown. This is probably one of favorite sites on the net, and major news outlet for this blog. Grady, I hope you’re on the way to bigger and better things as I type. Rest assured, though, the news reported on this website should not decrease by much, thanks for strong sites such as Twitch and the newly discovered Variety Asia. The link section will be duly corrected.

- The choices for This year’s Hong Kong Critics Society Awards seems rather strange, with a Mainland sweep of the acting awards, and some strange omissions of excellent films such as Isabella and My Name is Fame (for Confession of Pain and Wo Hu instead?)

- Marie Antoinette getting second place in the first weekend’s box office in Japan with the highest per-screen average for a wide release (The Departed may be the box office winner, but it’s in a limited 61-screen release). It’s also doing very well in limited release in Hong Kong, where I watched a 2:50 pm show on a tuesday afternoon in an almost-full house. As of Tuesday the 23rd, it’s earned HK$440,000 after 4 days of release on 4 screens.

That’s it for now. Tomorrow, some reviews of the 8 movies I saw on this trip, and some more number crunching.

First of all, happy new year to everyone out there. I’m currently in Japan, and since I’m staying with my girlfriend’s family, and it’s new years in Japan, I don’t have much chance to write entries. Which is also why I won’t be elborating on much of the news today:

-Hong Kong holiday box office is dying down a little bit, and after the lead by Curse of the Golden Flowers, Confession of Pain is making a bit of a comeback. As of Tuesday’s numbers, Confession of Pain is leading with HK$560,000 on 41 screens versus CURSE’s HK$450,000 on 44 screens. The total, however, is still led by CURSE’s 17.25 million vs. CONFESSION 16.26 million. The overall winner of the holiday box office race is so far Casino Royale, still going strong on Tuesday with HK$530,000 on 34 screens and a HK$18.16 million total.

Of course, all of could, but not likely, change with the release of The Holiday, Deja Vu, and Nana 2. The two American films may impact the Casino Royale business, and since the first NANA only did moderate numbers when it opened in Hong Kong, it should simply place a small wedge between the current leaders.

-Went to a half-full English-subtitled showing of Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima. While it needed some editing towards the end, and a bit more historical context (maybe the American print would have this?), I thought it was a very powerful exploration into the futility of both war and the glorification of it. It asks question of what is honor at the time of war, and it is fairly diplomatic by not asking which side is more evil. Overall a good film with very strong acting, very strong directing, but albeit a slightly detaching film as well. I’m glad it’s doing well in Japan, but a little disappointed the numbers aren’t better in America. This deserves to be seen in a big screen and loud speakers. I will also try and catch Flags of Our Fathers in Hong Kong.

In conclusion, it’s not better than Babel, but it’s still one of the best films of the year.