- Reviews for this year’s Venice surprise film - Johnnie To’s Mad Detective starring Lau Ching-Wan - are out from the two big trade papers. Variety’s Derek Elley calls it a neat idea that doesn’t quite hit the bull’s eye, and that it’s a rewrite or two away from achieving the rigor of a To movie. On the other hand, Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett, who can’t seem to spell “Johnnie” right, is a lot kinder, calling it concise and artful.

- Sony is changing their focus, putting more emphasis on foreign films when they realized that these foreign films don’t need investors, but rather a widespread distribution network that Sony can offer.

- Takashi Miike’s latest Sukiyaki Western Django had its screening at Venice. However, responses from journalists and festival audiences are quite different. Sorry, guys, I can’t get excited about a Takashi Miike film as some of you may do.

- Leah Dizon is really starting to get huge not just in Japan (forget the fact that her last single didn’t sell much), but in the rest of Asia as well. Her debut album, which will no doubt feature lots of easy-to-sing song with carefully pronounced Japanese, will be released simultaneously in 9 countries. However, I doubt a number of her fans are fans because of her singing. I suspect this might have something to do with it.

- It saw a screening at Venice, and it opens this weekend at home: Japan Times’s March Schilling has a review of Shinji Aoyama’s latest Sad Vacation, which supposedly wraps up a Kita Kyushu Saga. Along with that, Japan Times also has an interview with Aoyama himself. In addition, it’s been out for a while, but there’s also a review of the documentary The Cats of Mirikitani.

- Twitch has a review of Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution from Toronto, calling it the most disappointing film at the festival so far. Ouch.

- By the way, Jacky Cheung is singing the theme song for Lust, Caution, presumably before he got sick and canceled his concerts

- The Singapore-based Asian Film Archive is getting a donation of 90 Malaysian classic films that will be restored and archived (but of course. That’s what an archive is for).

- They never succeed, but they keep trying: a Hong Kong-based sports media company has signed a deal to broadcast National Football League (American football) games across Asia. This comes after several hurdles to bring NFL outside the United States, including the postponement of an exhibition game in China and the closure of the NFL European League.

- They’re outsourcing everything to India these days. Even Sony is outsourcing the production of their direct-to-video sequel to the animated film Open Season to India and New Mexico (that’s in America, not Mexico).

- 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.

Today’s the day. Your favorite blogger is heading to Hong Kong tonight, so this would be the final entry for a week or two. As a result, today’s entry is a little longer than usual.

- In Hong Kong on Thursday opening day, Jay Chou’s directorial debut Secret (with a BC Magazine review here and a fluff piece/review from AP here) opens pretty well with HK$720,000 on 35 screens for a total HK$870,000 already, including previews. Rely on the teens to show up to this one, and maybe it’ll go past the HK$10 million mark. Meanwhile, Pixar’s Ratatouille, whose Hong Kong version feature the voices of Ronald Cheng, Edmond Leung, and Cecilia Cheung, opened on 35 screens for a much better HK$1.11 million.

But the winner of opening day remains Michael Bay’s Transformers, which picked up another HK$1.34 million from 63 screens for an 8-day total of HK$21.32 million. However, with the ticket price inflation, the amount of admissions is probably around the same as Ratatouille. On the Hong Kong film front, Invisible Target passed the HK$10 million mark on Tuesday. Despite some multiplexes already playing less shows each day, it still managed to make HK$310,000 on just 18 screens for a 15-day total of HK$11.23 million. Will this make it to the HK$15 million mark and beat Love is Not All Around?

- It’s a miracle! The Korean monster film D-War, which took forever for a wide release in its home Korea despite being the touted as the most expensive Korean film ever made, has grossed US$2.9 million on its opening day. According to Korea Pop Wars, its two-day total is now US$6.1 million and should reach 2-2.5 million admissions by the end of the weekend. However, despite praises for the special effects, everything else is being panned, so word-of-mouth might not be too good on this one. By the way, the official budget of the film was locked at US$35 million, though about $40 million has been spent to start up a new special effects house that did this film. I’m sure distributor Showbox is kind of breathing a sigh of relief, though they still have plenty of money to make back.

- Yawn. Japanese copyright organizations continue in their endless effort to pressure Youtube Japan to weed out copyright violators. How about they work to make legitimate content easier to access before they cut all supplies? This stuff is like drugs - you cut them off, people will do anything for a fix.

- Meanwhile, The Computer & Communication Industry Association, which includes Google and Microsoft, has lodged a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission to protest copyright holders putting misleading warnings against copyright infringement that fail to educate consumers on fair use laws. Those named in the complaint include major movie studios, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and of course, the MPAA.

- Director Edward Yang, who recently passed away at his home in the United States, is expected to be honored at this year’s Golden Horse Awards. Is it just me, or is the claim that he’s an “American” director going to piss off some people, seeing he’s one of the pioneers of NEW TAIWAN CINEMA?

- reviews time! We have Japan Times’ review of Hideo Nakata’s Kaidan by Mark Schilling, the Variety review of the hit Korean horror film Black House by Derek Elley, and I’m partially translating the very very limited release (one theater in my old neighborhood of Kwun Tong, to be exact) Hong Kong film Bar Paradise:

First, a little background: Bar Paradise is a 2005 film directed by Wing-Lun Mak, who’s directed some low-budget DV productions. It stars Julian Cheung, Gordon Lam, Candy Yu, and Eric Tsang. The original Chinese post in full is here. The following are excerpts translated -

在設計上，電影可算是十分趕客，單要觀眾適應片中對白的語言已經幾乎令人神經錯亂。泰語、粵語和普通話互通。其中余安安對著曾志偉，明明兩人懂粵語也在片中有粵語對白，偏要講出泰語來。張智霖和林家棟時國時粵時泰，看來買多數部「靈格風」也未必有耐性去理解。想看字幕？錯字大量供應，例如「道歉」因倉頡選碼誤選為「道欺」比比皆是。

In design, the film seems to be made to drive audiences away. Understanding the languages in the dialogue is enough drive audiences crazy. It switches between Thai, Cantonese, and Mandarin. For instance, Even though both Candy Yu and Eric Tsang speak Cantonese in the film and understand the language, they still speak Thai; Julian Cheung and Gordon Lam switch between Mandarin, Cantonese, and Thai, even buying an electronic dictionary won’t mean you’d have the patience to understand. Want to read subtitles? There’s a large supply of wrong words, such as “doh heep” (apologize) becomes “doh hei” (the second Chinese character looks alike, but oh so utterly wrong).

至於曾志偉，則在電影中飾演一名泰國軍閥政客，而附上「韓琛」式的例湯演繹。而余安安則佔戲不多，但又奇怪地加入一場穿黑色內衣褲色誘曾志偉的場面。中午時份播放，難怪股市也曾出現一陣「獲利回吐」，慶幸戲院並沒有出現嘔吐物。

As for Eric Tsang, he plays a Thai warlord politician in the performance style of the usual “Sam Han” (his character from Infernal Affairs). Candy Yu doesn’t have much screen time, but there is a strange addition in the form of a scene in which she seduces Eric Tsang in black panties. No wonder even the stock market experienced a “resurgence of profits” during its noon screening. Thankfully, no vomit appeared in the theatre.

劇情和演員拿出零分之餘，電影在拍攝技巧亦仿如恐佈片一樣，突然時跳到下一場不連配樂的情況也常出現。莫怪乎零五年的電影至今才出現。電影結局亦不明所以，令觀眾在大量無奈下離場。

With no effort from the plot and the actors, the film’s technique resembles a horror film, and sudden jumps to the next scene where the music don’t even match happen often. No wonder this 2005 film took this long to show up. Even the ending is incomprehensible, making the audience leave in a state of helplessness.

So in other words….this movie stinks.

- Along with the Kaidan review is Jason Gray’s interview with director Hideo Nakata, who made the original “Ring” film and is directing the Death Note spinoff L. Jason has more about the interview itself in his blog.

- Another film off the “milking the Nanking massacre for all its worth” assembly line, Simon West’s Purple Mountain, has started filming. This film is an adaptation of the controversial book “The Rape of Nanjing” by Iris Chang, and is the most expensive of the productions. West apparently wants to create the same type of impact as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List.

Let’s see - Tomb Raider and Con Air vs. Indiana Jones and Saving Private Ryan. Don’t think that’ll happen.

- In a continuing lack of creativity in the world of Japanese television dramas (as is the case in television drama circles around the world), there are more comic adaptations coming to your small screens.

- Japan Times has a look at movies that deal with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in light of the release of Steven Okazaki’s White Light/Black Rain.

- Twitch mistakenly links the website for Miki Satoshi’s latest Tenten, starring Satoshi favorite Joe Odagiri as the website for Odagiri’s directorial debut. Still, Tenten looks pretty interesting, and since the film is about two men walking across Tokyo, the advance ticket actually comes with a map of the locations they visit in the film. Now there’s a souvenir worth buying.

That’s it for now. The Golden Rock will be back in 1-2 weeks, with The Song of the Day feature continuing (wished more of you voted, though). There might be a few surprises and additions coming, so keep checking in starting next weekend. See you all on the other side of the world!

Today’s the day. Your favorite blogger is heading to Hong Kong tonight, so this would be the final entry for a week or two. As a result, today’s entry is a little longer than usual.

- In Hong Kong on Thursday opening day, Jay Chou’s directorial debut Secret (with a BC Magazine review here and a fluff piece/review from AP here) opens pretty well with HK$720,000 on 35 screens for a total HK$870,000 already, including previews. Rely on the teens to show up to this one, and maybe it’ll go past the HK$10 million mark. Meanwhile, Pixar’s Ratatouille, whose Hong Kong version feature the voices of Ronald Cheng, Edmond Leung, and Cecilia Cheung, opened on 35 screens for a much better HK$1.11 million.

But the winner of opening day remains Michael Bay’s Transformers, which picked up another HK$1.34 million from 63 screens for an 8-day total of HK$21.32 million. However, with the ticket price inflation, the amount of admissions is probably around the same as Ratatouille. On the Hong Kong film front, Invisible Target passed the HK$10 million mark on Tuesday. Despite some multiplexes already playing less shows each day, it still managed to make HK$310,000 on just 18 screens for a 15-day total of HK$11.23 million. Will this make it to the HK$15 million mark and beat Love is Not All Around?

- It’s a miracle! The Korean monster film D-War, which took forever for a wide release in its home Korea despite being the touted as the most expensive Korean film ever made, has grossed US$2.9 million on its opening day. According to Korea Pop Wars, its two-day total is now US$6.1 million and should reach 2-2.5 million admissions by the end of the weekend. However, despite praises for the special effects, everything else is being panned, so word-of-mouth might not be too good on this one. By the way, the official budget of the film was locked at US$35 million, though about $40 million has been spent to start up a new special effects house that did this film. I’m sure distributor Showbox is kind of breathing a sigh of relief, though they still have plenty of money to make back.

- Yawn. Japanese copyright organizations continue in their endless effort to pressure Youtube Japan to weed out copyright violators. How about they work to make legitimate content easier to access before they cut all supplies? This stuff is like drugs - you cut them off, people will do anything for a fix.

- Meanwhile, The Computer & Communication Industry Association, which includes Google and Microsoft, has lodged a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission to protest copyright holders putting misleading warnings against copyright infringement that fail to educate consumers on fair use laws. Those named in the complaint include major movie studios, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and of course, the MPAA.

- Director Edward Yang, who recently passed away at his home in the United States, is expected to be honored at this year’s Golden Horse Awards. Is it just me, or is the claim that he’s an “American” director going to piss off some people, seeing he’s one of the pioneers of NEW TAIWAN CINEMA?

- reviews time! We have Japan Times’ review of Hideo Nakata’s Kaidan by Mark Schilling, the Variety review of the hit Korean horror film Black House by Derek Elley, and I’m partially translating the very very limited release (one theater in my old neighborhood of Kwun Tong, to be exact) Hong Kong film Bar Paradise:

First, a little background: Bar Paradise is a 2005 film directed by Wing-Lun Mak, who’s directed some low-budget DV productions. It stars Julian Cheung, Gordon Lam, Candy Yu, and Eric Tsang. The original Chinese post in full is here. The following are excerpts translated -

在設計上，電影可算是十分趕客，單要觀眾適應片中對白的語言已經幾乎令人神經錯亂。泰語、粵語和普通話互通。其中余安安對著曾志偉，明明兩人懂粵語也在片中有粵語對白，偏要講出泰語來。張智霖和林家棟時國時粵時泰，看來買多數部「靈格風」也未必有耐性去理解。想看字幕？錯字大量供應，例如「道歉」因倉頡選碼誤選為「道欺」比比皆是。

In design, the film seems to be made to drive audiences away. Understanding the languages in the dialogue is enough drive audiences crazy. It switches between Thai, Cantonese, and Mandarin. For instance, Even though both Candy Yu and Eric Tsang speak Cantonese in the film and understand the language, they still speak Thai; Julian Cheung and Gordon Lam switch between Mandarin, Cantonese, and Thai, even buying an electronic dictionary won’t mean you’d have the patience to understand. Want to read subtitles? There’s a large supply of wrong words, such as “doh heep” (apologize) becomes “doh hei” (the second Chinese character looks alike, but oh so utterly wrong).

至於曾志偉，則在電影中飾演一名泰國軍閥政客，而附上「韓琛」式的例湯演繹。而余安安則佔戲不多，但又奇怪地加入一場穿黑色內衣褲色誘曾志偉的場面。中午時份播放，難怪股市也曾出現一陣「獲利回吐」，慶幸戲院並沒有出現嘔吐物。

As for Eric Tsang, he plays a Thai warlord politician in the performance style of the usual “Sam Han” (his character from Infernal Affairs). Candy Yu doesn’t have much screen time, but there is a strange addition in the form of a scene in which she seduces Eric Tsang in black panties. No wonder even the stock market experienced a “resurgence of profits” during its noon screening. Thankfully, no vomit appeared in the theatre.

劇情和演員拿出零分之餘，電影在拍攝技巧亦仿如恐佈片一樣，突然時跳到下一場不連配樂的情況也常出現。莫怪乎零五年的電影至今才出現。電影結局亦不明所以，令觀眾在大量無奈下離場。

With no effort from the plot and the actors, the film’s technique resembles a horror film, and sudden jumps to the next scene where the music don’t even match happen often. No wonder this 2005 film took this long to show up. Even the ending is incomprehensible, making the audience leave in a state of helplessness.

So in other words….this movie stinks.

- Along with the Kaidan review is Jason Gray’s interview with director Hideo Nakata, who made the original “Ring” film and is directing the Death Note spinoff L. Jason has more about the interview itself in his blog.

- Another film off the “milking the Nanking massacre for all its worth” assembly line, Simon West’s Purple Mountain, has started filming. This film is an adaptation of the controversial book “The Rape of Nanjing” by Iris Chang, and is the most expensive of the productions. West apparently wants to create the same type of impact as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List.

Let’s see - Tomb Raider and Con Air vs. Indiana Jones and Saving Private Ryan. Don’t think that’ll happen.

- In a continuing lack of creativity in the world of Japanese television dramas (as is the case in television drama circles around the world), there are more comic adaptations coming to your small screens.

- Japan Times has a look at movies that deal with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in light of the release of Steven Okazaki’s White Light/Black Rain.

- Twitch mistakenly links the website for Miki Satoshi’s latest Tenten, starring Satoshi favorite Joe Odagiri as the website for Odagiri’s directorial debut. Still, Tenten looks pretty interesting, and since the film is about two men walking across Tokyo, the advance ticket actually comes with a map of the locations they visit in the film. Now there’s a souvenir worth buying.

That’s it for now. The Golden Rock will be back in 1-2 weeks, with The Song of the Day feature continuing (wished more of you voted, though). There might be a few surprises and additions coming, so keep checking in starting next weekend. See you all on the other side of the world!

- Looks like another case of misreporting box office figures in Japan. The latest Pixar film Ratatouille supposedly earned about 489 million over two days this past weekend. However, what Disney didn’t report is that the actual earning is actually 360 million yen, and the rest were made during the special sneak previews last weekend. That would make the opening a bit of a disappointment, as it’s only 95% of the opening for the last Pixar film Cars. However, the word-of-mouth for the film is actually batter than Cars (at least in the States), so it might come out earning more in the long run.

- It’s official, China has decided to not let the latest Jackie Chan Hollywood star vehicle Rush Hour 3 on Chinese movies screens. There are a couple of possible reasons for this - 1) China doesn’t like the content, especially the presence of the triads. However, how can that be true when the first two films featured triad villains? 2) China simply can’t stand all these Hollywood films dominating the box office and has implemented the usual summer policy of getting rid of Hollywood films to let Chinese films have their day. 3) It just got unlucky and couldn’t be secured as one of the 20 American films allowed to be shown in Chinese theatres each year. 4) The movie sucks, and the Chinese people shouldn’t be exposed to that type of crap. I got five bucks on numbers 2 and 3.

- Meanwhile, the trade reviews are out. Hollywood Reporter’s Michael Rechtshaffen says the routine goes awfully stale, while Variety’s Robert Koehler says that the adrenaline rush just isn’t there anymore.

- Variety has a few more Asian film reviews, one for the 2007 Korean hit Voice of a Murderer, Fumihiko Sori’s Vexville, and the Thai horror film Alone, which is currently a hit at the Korean box office.

- Kabuki’s bad boy Shido Nakamura has followed the steps of Last Samurai actress Koyuki and signed with Avex. With that, he has also officially joined the cast of John Woo’s The Battle of Red Cliff, which would make this his second Chinese blockbuster after Jet Li’s Fearless.

- If you’ll indulge me another game of multiple degrees of separation, Tony Leung Chiu-wai also stars in the Battle of Red Cliff, but he originally withdrew from the film because of the fatigue he suffered after making Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution. The film, almost or already completed, will compete in the upcoming Venice Film Festival. Though the film was originally submitted as a USA-China entry because there’s where the money came from. However, it almost brewed a small controversy when the nationality was changed to Taiwan due to director Ang Lee’s nationality.

- A nation at war turns to TV soap operas, culinary shows, and idol competitions. Surprisingly, it’s not the United States.

- Japan will be the first to see a MTV-created mobile social network, which will also feature pages created by Japanese pop stars. Do we really need to be THAT connected?

- Speaking of embracing the new media, another Japanese media producer has signed a deal with Youtube to upload promo clips and various content on the video site.

- Avril Lavinge’s album has sold a million copies in Japan, making her the first foreign artist to sell more than one million copies of each of her three albums. They’ll find a record for anything in Japan, especially when it comes to music.

- Twitch has an interview with director Steven Okazaki, whose latest film is the documentary White Light/Black Rain, about the fallout of nuclear warfare including the bombings of Hiroshim and Nagasaki.

- Japanese R&B/A Capella group Gospellers is teaming up with forgotten Backstreet Boys member Howie D for their latest single. Not to be a party pooper, but I think Howie needs the Gospellers more than they need Howie.

- With the 2008 Olympics approaching in a year, China has still yet to deliver the full media freedom they promised foreign journalists there. 95% of those who responded to the survey by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China says China’s reporting conditions are not up to what they call an “international standard.”

By the way, remember to vote for our poll. The future of The Song of the Day depends on all of you.

- Looks like another case of misreporting box office figures in Japan. The latest Pixar film Ratatouille supposedly earned about 489 million over two days this past weekend. However, what Disney didn’t report is that the actual earning is actually 360 million yen, and the rest were made during the special sneak previews last weekend. That would make the opening a bit of a disappointment, as it’s only 95% of the opening for the last Pixar film Cars. However, the word-of-mouth for the film is actually batter than Cars (at least in the States), so it might come out earning more in the long run.

- It’s official, China has decided to not let the latest Jackie Chan Hollywood star vehicle Rush Hour 3 on Chinese movies screens. There are a couple of possible reasons for this - 1) China doesn’t like the content, especially the presence of the triads. However, how can that be true when the first two films featured triad villains? 2) China simply can’t stand all these Hollywood films dominating the box office and has implemented the usual summer policy of getting rid of Hollywood films to let Chinese films have their day. 3) It just got unlucky and couldn’t be secured as one of the 20 American films allowed to be shown in Chinese theatres each year. 4) The movie sucks, and the Chinese people shouldn’t be exposed to that type of crap. I got five bucks on numbers 2 and 3.

- Meanwhile, the trade reviews are out. Hollywood Reporter’s Michael Rechtshaffen says the routine goes awfully stale, while Variety’s Robert Koehler says that the adrenaline rush just isn’t there anymore.

- Variety has a few more Asian film reviews, one for the 2007 Korean hit Voice of a Murderer, Fumihiko Sori’s Vexville, and the Thai horror film Alone, which is currently a hit at the Korean box office.

- Kabuki’s bad boy Shido Nakamura has followed the steps of Last Samurai actress Koyuki and signed with Avex. With that, he has also officially joined the cast of John Woo’s The Battle of Red Cliff, which would make this his second Chinese blockbuster after Jet Li’s Fearless.

- If you’ll indulge me another game of multiple degrees of separation, Tony Leung Chiu-wai also stars in the Battle of Red Cliff, but he originally withdrew from the film because of the fatigue he suffered after making Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution. The film, almost or already completed, will compete in the upcoming Venice Film Festival. Though the film was originally submitted as a USA-China entry because there’s where the money came from. However, it almost brewed a small controversy when the nationality was changed to Taiwan due to director Ang Lee’s nationality.

- A nation at war turns to TV soap operas, culinary shows, and idol competitions. Surprisingly, it’s not the United States.

- Japan will be the first to see a MTV-created mobile social network, which will also feature pages created by Japanese pop stars. Do we really need to be THAT connected?

- Speaking of embracing the new media, another Japanese media producer has signed a deal with Youtube to upload promo clips and various content on the video site.

- Avril Lavinge’s album has sold a million copies in Japan, making her the first foreign artist to sell more than one million copies of each of her three albums. They’ll find a record for anything in Japan, especially when it comes to music.

- Twitch has an interview with director Steven Okazaki, whose latest film is the documentary White Light/Black Rain, about the fallout of nuclear warfare including the bombings of Hiroshim and Nagasaki.

- Japanese R&B/A Capella group Gospellers is teaming up with forgotten Backstreet Boys member Howie D for their latest single. Not to be a party pooper, but I think Howie needs the Gospellers more than they need Howie.

- With the 2008 Olympics approaching in a year, China has still yet to deliver the full media freedom they promised foreign journalists there. 95% of those who responded to the survey by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China says China’s reporting conditions are not up to what they call an “international standard.”

By the way, remember to vote for our poll. The future of The Song of the Day depends on all of you.

- The numbers for the Japanese box office is out from Box Office Mojo, but just as Warner Bros. has done in the past, it seems like they’re over-reporting their gross again. Box Office Mojo reports that the film made 2.27 billion yen, including supposedly 2.05 billion yen over the two-day period of July 21-22 because it opened on a Friday. Now, those who read Eiga Consultant (i.e., me) know that just ain’t true, because Potter made 1.12 billion yen from three days of previews last week (cue WB spokesperson - “Our wizardry will fight any typhoon that comes our way.”), so Potter actually made just roughly over 1.1 billion yen. While the gross after the first weekend beats the previous film, hence making it the highest-opening Harry Potter film, the 2-day gross is actually only 84% of the previous film. Then again, why am I painting a movie that opened with over 1.1 billion yen as disappointing anyway? It’s the misreporting that pisses me off more.

In the rest of the top 10, Pokemon suffers the largest drop of 50%, while Monkey Magic’s near-40% drop isn’t boding well for those early estimates, and even Indie dark comedy hit Kisaragi somehow made it to the top 10, thanks to the convenient omission of the Anpanman movie from the Box Office Mojo charts.

- I feel like I’m just repeating myself in saying that foreign films have yet again dominated the South Korean box office. There’s a bright spot, though - a Thai horror movie has managed to score 295,000 admissions to the 4th place of the top 10. I’ll let Mark Russell at Korea Pop Wars do the work again.

- Speaking of Mr. Russell, there’s an interview by him with Jeong Tae-Song, the head of Korean blockbuster distributor Showbox. A little disappointing, however, that Jeong couldn’t dish out more explanation towards his company’s actions, including why it pulled out of Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, The Bad, and the Weird.

- Don’t worry, Korean cinema, Japanese distributors are still buying your movies.

- There’s word out there that Andy Lau is signing on to star in the remake of the 1967 version of a Better Tomorrow, which inspired the John Woo classic. Don’t mistaken this for the Big Media-backed Another Better Tomorrow. In other news surrounding the film, Stephen Fung is in talks to direct, I assume after he finishes the Stephen Chow-produced Jump.

- And who stars in Jump? None other than Hong Kong’s handsomest and richest bad boy Edison Chen. Over the years, he’s had his run-ins with the paparazzi and the generally unfriendly Hong Kong print press. On his blog, he finally decided to fight back and snap a couple of pictures of his tormentors. Of course, I wouldn’t be as stupid as to tell people to “piss or spit in they food” (jeez, thanks for promoting the stereotypes of bad Asian English), but I’m mildly entertained by this. The blog post even ended up on Oriental Daily’s Entertainment page’s top story (probably because the photographers in the blog post aren’t theirs), but you know the reporting isn’t going to be fair and balanced….just like this blog.

Is it just me, or isn’t it kind of ironic that he asks people to support the “underground” when he’s always pimping out mainstream hip-hop fashion and artists from Japan and the States?

- Everyone watch out, Andrew Lau is directing again! At least he usually goes away in just two hours when he’s making movies, but now he’s making a television series.

- A subsidiary of Japanese public broadcaster NHK has taken getting copyrights a little too seriously by registering the trademark of the name for a drama they haven’t even started showing yet. By trademarking the name, they want to collect 3% from each business that wants to use the name in the future. And they wonder why youths don’t respect intellectual property.

- There’s another review for the Hong Kong action film Invisible Target by Benny Chan.

- EastSouthWestNorth wants to remind everyone that there’s no active censorship in Hong Kong. Perhaps I’ve been a little rash in my opinions, when I’m really just mad at the lack of flexibility and common sense on the part of the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority of Hong Kong when classifying “indecent” material.

- I swear I thought that AZN Television, the American cable network targeted towards an Asian American audience, was all but dead, especially when there’s no more new original programming coming out. But perhaps they’re not quite going away for a while after all.

- Lastly, as a matter of personal interest, the trailer for the new Wes Anderson film The Darjeeling Limited is out. I’m a big fan, so I’m already looking forward to this even before the trailer’s out.

- The numbers for the Japanese box office is out from Box Office Mojo, but just as Warner Bros. has done in the past, it seems like they’re over-reporting their gross again. Box Office Mojo reports that the film made 2.27 billion yen, including supposedly 2.05 billion yen over the two-day period of July 21-22 because it opened on a Friday. Now, those who read Eiga Consultant (i.e., me) know that just ain’t true, because Potter made 1.12 billion yen from three days of previews last week (cue WB spokesperson - “Our wizardry will fight any typhoon that comes our way.”), so Potter actually made just roughly over 1.1 billion yen. While the gross after the first weekend beats the previous film, hence making it the highest-opening Harry Potter film, the 2-day gross is actually only 84% of the previous film. Then again, why am I painting a movie that opened with over 1.1 billion yen as disappointing anyway? It’s the misreporting that pisses me off more.

In the rest of the top 10, Pokemon suffers the largest drop of 50%, while Monkey Magic’s near-40% drop isn’t boding well for those early estimates, and even Indie dark comedy hit Kisaragi somehow made it to the top 10, thanks to the convenient omission of the Anpanman movie from the Box Office Mojo charts.

- I feel like I’m just repeating myself in saying that foreign films have yet again dominated the South Korean box office. There’s a bright spot, though - a Thai horror movie has managed to score 295,000 admissions to the 4th place of the top 10. I’ll let Mark Russell at Korea Pop Wars do the work again.

- Speaking of Mr. Russell, there’s an interview by him with Jeong Tae-Song, the head of Korean blockbuster distributor Showbox. A little disappointing, however, that Jeong couldn’t dish out more explanation towards his company’s actions, including why it pulled out of Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, The Bad, and the Weird.

- Don’t worry, Korean cinema, Japanese distributors are still buying your movies.

- There’s word out there that Andy Lau is signing on to star in the remake of the 1967 version of a Better Tomorrow, which inspired the John Woo classic. Don’t mistaken this for the Big Media-backed Another Better Tomorrow. In other news surrounding the film, Stephen Fung is in talks to direct, I assume after he finishes the Stephen Chow-produced Jump.

- And who stars in Jump? None other than Hong Kong’s handsomest and richest bad boy Edison Chen. Over the years, he’s had his run-ins with the paparazzi and the generally unfriendly Hong Kong print press. On his blog, he finally decided to fight back and snap a couple of pictures of his tormentors. Of course, I wouldn’t be as stupid as to tell people to “piss or spit in they food” (jeez, thanks for promoting the stereotypes of bad Asian English), but I’m mildly entertained by this. The blog post even ended up on Oriental Daily’s Entertainment page’s top story (probably because the photographers in the blog post aren’t theirs), but you know the reporting isn’t going to be fair and balanced….just like this blog.

Is it just me, or isn’t it kind of ironic that he asks people to support the “underground” when he’s always pimping out mainstream hip-hop fashion and artists from Japan and the States?

- Everyone watch out, Andrew Lau is directing again! At least he usually goes away in just two hours when he’s making movies, but now he’s making a television series.

- A subsidiary of Japanese public broadcaster NHK has taken getting copyrights a little too seriously by registering the trademark of the name for a drama they haven’t even started showing yet. By trademarking the name, they want to collect 3% from each business that wants to use the name in the future. And they wonder why youths don’t respect intellectual property.

- There’s another review for the Hong Kong action film Invisible Target by Benny Chan.

- EastSouthWestNorth wants to remind everyone that there’s no active censorship in Hong Kong. Perhaps I’ve been a little rash in my opinions, when I’m really just mad at the lack of flexibility and common sense on the part of the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority of Hong Kong when classifying “indecent” material.

- I swear I thought that AZN Television, the American cable network targeted towards an Asian American audience, was all but dead, especially when there’s no more new original programming coming out. But perhaps they’re not quite going away for a while after all.

- Lastly, as a matter of personal interest, the trailer for the new Wes Anderson film The Darjeeling Limited is out. I’m a big fan, so I’m already looking forward to this even before the trailer’s out.

I found this site via Hollywood Elsewhere today, and my blog is apparently:

What the fuck? I’m only as good as Shrek 3?

- Then again, maybe it’s not so bad to be Shrek 3 in Hong Kong. On Sunday of the 4-day holiday weekend, the animated sequel made HK$3.01 million on 54 screens for a impressive 4-day total of HK$8.2 million, and probably crossed the HK$10 million mark on Sunday already. Die Hard 4.0 is far behind, making HK$1.28 million on 36 screens on its 4th day of previews. It has made HK$3.58 million and will officially open on naturally July 4th. The biggest local performer, meanwhile, is the Milkyway comedy-drama-handover commemoration film Hooked On You. On Sunday, it made HK$960,000 on 34 screens for a 40-day total of HK$3.14 million.

Golden Scene should be happy that Simply Actors managed to hang on this weekend, making HK$500,000 on 30 screen for a HK$7.81 million cume after 13 days. However, Milkyway’s other release Eye in the Sky failed to retain the male audience, making only HK$210,000 on 25 screens for a 11-day total of just HK$3.4 million. Lastly, the only limited release arthouse film on the top 10 is Julie Delpy’s Two Days in Paris, which made HK$100,000 on 4 screens for a 4-day total of HK$300,000.

- Meanwhile, South Korea saw a invasion of Michael Bay’s Transformers, as it scored 75% of all ticket sales this past weekend. It also attracted 1.3 million people on an unknown number of screens (though I suspect that number is pretty high up there). Meanwhile, Black House (which Korean Film Page’s Kyu Kyun Kim, who teaches at alma mater UC Davis but I have not met before, recently reviewed) stays at second place and has nearly attracted a million admissions already. Go to Korea Pop Wars for the rest of the rankings.

- Global music sales are down, and the industry goes after its favorite scapegoat - piracy. However, not only has digital music sales now responsible for 11% of all music sales, Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, and even China saw growth in sales. So much for blaming Asia.

- My new favorite film distributor in North America is Viz Media, who brought non-AzN xtreme Japanese films such as Linda Linda Linda and The Taste of Tea here. Now, they are bringing award-winning crowdpleaser Hula Girl to the States.

- Speaking of picking up aZn-xtreme movies, Media Blasters just picked up Takeshi Miike’s yet-t0-be-finished Crows Zero and a few more cult flicks for North America.

- Takeshi Miike’s all-English “Sukiyaki Western Django” now has a release date of September 15th. Sony financed and will be distributing this one, so Miike doesn’t have to worry.

- My role model Takeshi Kaneshiro (despite my appearance and charisma nowhere near his in any way) is back to Japanese cinema after 2002’s Returner in Shinagami No Seido, which according to Ryuganji, most definitely sounds like a Japanese version of Wings of Desire.

- Japan’s Docomo just started a movie download service for your mobile phones, in their attempt to get people to stop typing so damn much on their phone while riding the trains. Too bad the service is nowhere near free, though.

- In “News that everyone already knows before it got reported” today, Hong Kong’s Big Media, who promises to make 100 films in the next 5 years, is in a co-production deal with Mei-Ah. I kind of figured that out when I found Big Media’s sales fliers through Mei-Ah’s website.

- The Wii has now outsold the Playstation 3 in a ratio of 6:1 in Japan, increased from the 5:1 ratio last month. I suspect PS3 sales will increase when television standards turns completely to digital broadcasting, but that would also mean Sony has a tough couple of years to go.

- Michael Wells checks in with Twitch with yet another set of reviews from the New York Film Festival. This time, he includes major South Korean films Dasepo Naughty Girls, The Show Must Go On, and I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK.

- Hollywood Reporter checks in with two Asian film reviews that I missed out on. First it’s Isshin Inudou’s big commercial release Bizan, which did respectable business in Japan, then the other is the J-horror flick Ghost Train, which somehow got itself a North American distribution deal. It’s worth watching just to see the ridiculously over-the-top finale.

- Moving their efforts away from Japan, the Korean Film Council has opened their first office in North America in Los Angeles. The office will help coordinate festival screenings, do research on the North American market, and of course, give information about Korean cinema in general.

- Speaking of Korean films, Twitch has the first trailer for Korean horror film Epitaph. Honestly, the only thing that might make this film promising is the fact that the director used to work for Park Chan-Wook.

- Salon Film have established itself for many years as THE provider of film equipment throughout Asia. Now they’re taking on the business of selling Asian things back to the rest of the world by taking on international sales. Their first film will be the “supernatural action” film The Painted Skin, the 4th collaboration between Donnie Yen and Wilson Yip.

- Twitch has an interview with Death Note series director Shusuke Kaneko. Am I the only one who still doesn’t think he was fit to direct the Death Note films?

We may be taking a break tomorrow since it’s the Independence Day holiday in the States. At least expect a late entry.