Note: This blog expresses only the opinions of the blog owner, and does not represent the opinion of any organization or blog that is associated with The Golden Rock.
- The Japanese attendance report have come in, and Earth, the feature film version of the BBC documentary Planet Earth, managed to top the box office. I don’t know if it was the stunning imagery or Ken Watanabe’s narration, but Eiga Consultant seemed to have predicted that it would win this weekend, leaving me as the only person that’s surprised that a documentary can top the box office. Meanwhile, the sports film Giniro No Season (or Season of Snow) opens at third place. More when the numbers come in.
- Korea Pop Wars have decided to go with original Korean won figures for its box office report, so now we can use multiple sources for the Korean box office report - one with the original won figure, and one with admissions statistics (which I still think is relevant). This week: only 3 movies in the top 10 are Korean, but two of them took not only the top 2 spots, but also have fairly impressive opening weekends.
- Before Peter Chan Ho-Sun’s The Warlords opened, Chan declared that if Feng Xiaogang’s The Assembly would make 2 billion yuan in China, The Warlords would make 2.5 billion yuan. Guess what? The latest Chinese box office figures show that The Assembly has surpassed The Warlords in total box office figures with no signs of slowing down. Note that The Assembly also costs considerably less to make.
- An interesting discovery today that borders on lame. A Hong Kong cram school commercial that parodies the CJ7 teaser with a guy walking around a dump looking for A’s. Isn’t it a little too early to be parodying it already?
- Another Asian film is heading to Berlin. This time it’s Shin Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden, the omnibus film co-directed by Momoru Oshii along with five other directors. I didn’t even know it opened in Japan already.
- This week, a new music chart to cover: The Taiwan G-Music chart, which makes up the retail sales of three retail chains in Taiwan. It’s updated every Friday night, so I’ll be covering them in the weekend entries.
This week, three debuts lead the charts: The new album from Taiwanese boy band Fahrenheit gets 10% of total sales, Japanese diva Ayumi Hamasaki’s latest takes up 6.7%, and another boy band 5566’s latest album takes up 4.4% of total sales. Last week’s winner, TV-made boy band Lollipop (yes, I do have Channel V at home), drops down to 4th place this week with only 4% of total sales. Hong Kong-based Mandarin artist Khalil Fong’s first album in Taiwan actually went up one spot this week from a quiet 16th place debut last week, making up 0.92% of total sales (up from 0.84 % last week).
- The Hong Kong press is reporting today that Lust, Caution will not be going uncut in Japan. With strict laws about showing the pubic regions, Ang Lee’s erotic drama will go still out with an R-18 rating (no one under 18 admitted), despite suffering 6 cuts that include the now-infamous shot of Tony Leung and shots where pubic hair can be seen. While they don’t really kill the impact of the film (I suspect some shots will simply cut before it reaches the offending regions), it’s sad when any film cannot be shown in their entirety.
Source: Oriental Daily (no link), Apple Daily (who inexplicably link it with a story about the WGA awards. Maybe they ran out of space in the paper)
- In box office news, I want to correct my earlier report that Trivial Matters only made HK$2.37 million. A friend corrected me that it had made HK$3.33 million when it dropped out of the top 10. Also, some theaters previously showing the horror flop Yes, I Can See Dead People are now taking it off screens and replacing it back with more showings of Pang’s omnibus comedy. Hell, I didn’t even expect it to be playing after two weeks, which makes me happy that it’s enjoying good enough word-of-mouth to have such legs after the crowded Christmas market.
Because of the lack of news for the weekend, I’m padding this entry with a Hong Kong box office report as well.
- It was a fairly weak Thursday opening day at the Hong Kong box office, as all the top 10 films’ gross range from HK$63,000 to HK$124,000. It’s so weak that an European horror film, The Deaths of Ian Stone, managed to take the top spot screening on 12 screens. Meanwhile, Johnnie To’s somber romantic-supernatural-drama Linger (whose Mandarin version seems to be completely missing from Hong Kong theatres, despite it being the version Johnnie To prefers) opened on 22 screens and made only HK$112,706. I don’t see it getting past HK$2 million. Lastly, the Hollywood family film Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium has the second-best per-screen average, making HK$90,000 from 10 screens.
More about the weekend next Monday or Tuesday in the Box Office report.
HK$7.8=US$1
- Speaking of Johnnie To, actor Simon Yam is reportedly ecstatic about Sparrow heading to Berlin and competing for best actor, as he should be. What you should note is what he says about the movie:
「當然開心，這部片跟阿杜以前的電影很不同，是部很有人情味的輕鬆喜劇，我亦從來沒有做過這種角色。」
“Of course I’m happy. This film is very different from To’s earlier movies, it’s a relaxing human comedy, and I’ve never done that kind of character.”
1) Linger was supposed to be very different from To’s earlier movies. It was bad.
- Someone first passed this story to me in a email, but Screen Daily has a subscription system, so I’m relying on Variety Asia. Hong Kong box office has risen overall, though it has again fallen for Chinese films. This reports also says that there are now 192 screens for 42 theaters in Hong Kong. So now you know what a big deal it was when Spiderman 3 took 100 screens.
- Zhang Yuan is one of the few Mainland Chinese directors whose work I watch out for. Though I’ve only seen one of his films (Seventeen Years), I’ve been intrigued at a lot of his other films. That’s why it was a bit of a shocker to not only read about his supposed drug arrest, but to read that it was broadcast on national television in China. However, I smell a staged arrest to serve as an example here…
A fairly short entry today, since this blogger is still recovering from the trauma that was Johnnie To’s Linger.
- Though To’s latest Linger is not likely to see any festival play, another seemingly finished film of his (I say seemingly because he’s been shooting the damn thing for years), Sparrow, will be heading to the competition section of the Berlin Film Festival. Another Asian film heading there is Yoji Yamada’s latest Kabei. The festival will run from February 7th to the 17th, and this blog will of course follow any news from the festival.
- Japanese film magazine Kimema Junpo has announced their list of the top 10 films of 2007. To no one’s surprise, films like Soredemo Boku wa Yattenai (”I Just Didn’t Do It) and Sad Vacation are on the list, but one inclusion that did surprise me is the quiet comedy-drama Shaberedomo Shaberedomo, which I reviewed here. I thought Sakuran is a more accomplished film (Despite its weakness in storytelling), but I guess they’re a conservative bunch.
It was also good to see Zodiac and Babel on the foreign films list as well.
- The year’s first Oricon charts see the “Kohaku effect,” as songs there were feature in the annual musical showcase tend to enjoy a boost in sales afterwards. Only one of the top 3 singles is actually new, and the other two were favorites of this year’s show (I know, because my mother called all the way from America during my trip to ask me to pick up the Masato Sugimoto single). Even Kobukuro’s Tsubomi, which was released in March last year, saw it being boosted back up to the top 20.
The other big news of the charts is Ayumi Hamasaki’s latest album making only a second place debut behind Kobukuro’s album, though the 20,000-copy loss may be because the album was released on New Year’s day.
- Lust, Caution has been placed in Top Ten Hall of Shame by America’s Women Film Critics Circle. Specifically, it’s there because of its depiction of: “Adam and Eve in Old Shanghai. Female-assisted destruction of a nation while falling in love with torturer/rapist.” At least now Ang Lee can’t complain that it didn’t win anything in America.
- A random search on Youtube have led me to the final trailer for Stephen Chow’s CJ7. While the voiceover is in English, the dialogue are all Cantonese. For some reason, I’m not quite excited about this one. Maybe it’s the over-reliance on special effects, though Kung-Fu Hustle suffered from that as well.
- Someone who attended one of the early screenings for Lawrence Lau’s new film Besieged City (his first since My Name Is Fame) submitted a review to Kaiju Shakedown. The review starts off promising (the writer gave it a standing ovation at the screening), but then ultimately decides that he/she doesn’t really like it. Ouch.
- Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul might have been bullied around by the Thai government last year for his film Syndromes and a Century, but no government censorship is going to keep a man down, as he has produced a short video on Youtube called Prosperity for 2008.
- The Japanese box office numbers have come out, though there’s no percentages because there were no numbers from last week. Worth noticing is that no film on the top 10 has a significantly good per-screen average because they are all holdover films. The first major releases of the year are coming this weekend (including Giniro No Season, the new film from Eichiro Hasumi, who last directed the surprise megahit Umizaru: Limit of Love), so things should be more interesting then.
Yesterday, I noted the bouncing back of period flick Chacha. Eiga Consultant has more details on its disastrous opening weekend: On 274 screens, Chacha made only 44 million yen on its opening weekend, which is only 18% of previous year’s O-Oku, which opened around the same time. Some possible explanations for such a disappointing opening (though it’s hanging around long enough to enter the top 10) are: 1) No TV station produces it, 2) The star is not well-known enough, or 3) The production time seems too short, which suggests not enough impressive production values. But period flicks attract older audiences, and they ended up showing up during the New Year’s holiday instead of before it.
- In Korea, the year’s first Korean release manage to make a number 1 debut with over 300,000 audiences, while the holdover Christmas films are still hanging on. It’s damn near inexplicable to see August Rush with over 2 million viewers and counting. The full chart at Korea Pop Wars.
- On my Japan trip report, I lamented missing the Nodame Cantabile special on TV, which was shown on the 4th and the 5th over two nights. The first night’s rating of 18.9% kept to the series’ average of 18.8%, and part 2 managed to hit 21%, which is lower than the finale, but would still qualify as the series’ second-highest episode.
- In related ratings news, the yearly Japanese New Year’s eve musical extravaganza Kohaku has seen its ratings slip year after year, and it continued to stay relatively low this year with an average rating of 36.15%, which is the second-lowest rated Kohaku on record. Just as the report writes, since NHK is a public broadcaster, ratings are simply a matter of pride, and as long as it continues to beat the competition (it seems to be the highest-rated non-sports TV program of the year), it’ll stick around for a while.
- Hong Kong had a real busy weekend at the box office, with the leftover Christmas films competing with five opening films on Sunday, only two of which opened on more than 20 screens. Last weekend’s winner Alien Vs. Predator 2 wins this weekend again, making HK$460,001 from 40 screens on Sunday for a 11-day total of HK$12.83 million. Among the opening films, Ridley Scott’s American Gangster came out on top, making HK$1.49 million over 4 days from 25 screens (that’s a typo on now.com). The other wide release, the Hong Kong horror film Yes, I See Dead People (a major contender for “Worst Title of the Year” already.), opened on Friday instead of the usual Thursday on 26 screens and has since only made HK$510,000 over 3 days.
Wong Kar-Wai’s English-language debut My Blueberry Nights opened on only 14 screens, but made a not-bad HK$268,445 for a 4-day total of HK$1.02 million. All the WKW fans probably will finish showing up this coming weekend, and will wrap things up at around 3-4 million. The Korean-American co-production August Rush opened on 12 screens and did not too bad with HK$133,491 on Sunday for a HK$490,000 total. Lastly, Feng Xiaogang’s The Assembly opened on only 11 screens in Hong Kong. With only HK$430,000 in the bank, it’s not likely to match its performance in Mainland China, where it will somewhat surprisingly gross more than Peter Chan’s The Warlords.
Speaking of The Warlords, it’s still hanging in there by making HK$356,662 from 33 screens for a 25-day total of HK$25.38 million, making it the official winner of the 2007 Christmas season…..unless Alien VS. Predator decides to catch up. National Treasure: Book of Secrets sees a strong third weekend with HK$408,600 from 31 screens, putting HK$15.72 million in the bank after 18 days. Another film with a solid 18-day take is the North American flop The Golden Compass with HK$13.94 million total after a Sunday gross of HK$244,267 from 30 screens.
Sadly, the only Cantonese film of the Christmas market, Pang Ho-Cheung’s Trivial Matters, dropped out of the top 10 with less than a HK$3 million gross total.
- As for Japanese box office attendance rankings, I Am Legend takes the top spot for the 4th time at the end of the New Years holiday. The surprise is the surge by the puppy film A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies, which climbed back to 2nd place after dropping to 4th last weekend. Two other films that surprisingly climbed back up are Tsubaki Sanjuro (9th this week from 11th last week) and the Japanese period film Chacha (from a disastrous 12th place opening to 15th, then back to 10th this week). More as the numbers come in.
A little over a year ago, I started a small blog on Blogger as a random news blog, highlighting random going-ons of Asian films and box office numbers. Eventually, the daily posts, which used to only share news that share a common theme, got longer and longer. Then it simply became what is now The Golden Rock: An (almost) daily news aggregation blog really inspired by the old daily news post by Japan Probe.
Slowly, the blog began getting attention from those who cover the same field such as Jason Gray, Don Brown (of Ryuganji), Kaiju Shakedown’s Grady Hendrix, and of course, my boss at lovehkfilm, who has been a great enough supporter to make this blog legit by bringing it on board this site. For this past year’s support, I thank all these people, plus my average of 100 daily readers and those who have commented, sincerely from the bottom of my heart.
And so I ask myself, what are my goals for this upcoming year?
- Continue developing the right format for the blog, which is an ongoing process.
- Try and stay grammatically correct in every entry. That’s reaching a little bit.
- Update the spin-off more often. That might not happen until I’m out of school.
- More picture posts. People like pictures.
- Write entries more efficiently. Aggregating news means I would waste time looking at other sites while I’m writing.
- Now that there’s no more podcast (no time), bring back the Best of the Week entries.
And of course, I’ll think of some more as the year goes by. As they say in Japan: 今年もよろしくお願いします！ (if someone can translate that in English, that’d be great).
And now, more random discoveries in Japan that I forgot to cover last time:
Don’t mistaken this as an actual sequel for Bae Yong-Joon’s (or Yong-sama) classic drama Winter Sonata. It’s actually an ad for a new pachinko machine (the steel marble game). I guess to attract more housewives to pachinko parlor?
A picture of the blogger with his own blog. No, seriously, I got it at a temple on New Years day and just don’t feel like eating it.
And then there’s the biggest discovery of the trip: The ass-biting bug (this is a PG-13 blog, so forget the kid-friendly names). I first discovered this catchy and addictive tune at a display in the “practical life store” Tokyu Hands, where this song was playing on loop:
It has no real melody, it has a bug that bites people’s asses, and he even goes under the waterfall training seen in The Storm Riders.
So of course I had to buy one for myself.
Because really, how can you not like a bug that bites asses to bring people closer together? Thank you, NHK.
Just in case you haven’t had enough, here’s a live version:
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