With a bit of cash, a suitcase weighed 15 kg, my passport, and a tired body, this blogger took a 2-week vacation to Japan. The trip is mainly for personal reasons (see the girlfriend, be a tour guide for family members), but this blog did not stray far away in my mind. Then again, even Variety Asia took a vacation, and a lot of box office updating sites did as well, so there wasn’t going to be much to report anyway.

Anyway, here are some observations to current Japanese pop culture:

Celebrities selling stupid things:

Celebrities spokesmanship is huge in Asia, and I usually don’t mind that (The Tommy Lee Jones coffee commercial is one of my favorite set of commercials in recent years. However, there are some things that I wonder really needs to be sold by certain celebrities:

Of course, everyone knows about Cameron Diaz and the cell phone service provider Softbank (which is not a bank, contrary to certain beliefs).

But there’s also Kiyoshi Hikawa (I call him the Bae Yong-Joon of enka) selling what seems to be life insurance.

The one that takes the cake, though, has to be the Japanese Horse Racing Association. Not only did I see that these guys got Yu Aoi and Yo Oizumi selling horse racing to the train-riding public:

They even dragged Yuji Oda into this mess:

“If Tsubaki Sanjuro didn’t flop, I wouldn’t have had to do this!”

What can I say? I spent a lot of time on the train.

I also got to go one movie in Japan, but sadly it was National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I know I could’ve spent 1500 yen on a better movie, but then I wouldn’t have been able to do it at a theater with this view:

I did manage to go to a lot of theaters and grab different chirashi (small Japanese movie poster that can be picked up for free) - about 10-20 at a time. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

A lot of these are self-explanatory. I almost went to see The Rebirth because I knew it had almost no dialogue. I especially like the poster for Fine, Totally Fine, and of course, Persepolis.

From top to bottom: American Gangster, Sweeney Todd, and No Country for Old Men

The two L Spinoff movie posters and Lust, Caution. Both versions are not that great in my opinion, though.

In terms of purchases, I spent about 5000 yen at my favorite second-hand CD shop in Shibuya on these (and this is after giving up two CDs I really wanted):

I bought Zazen Boys because I really like their song Kimochi (even better with Shiina Ringo), so I figure I would check it out:

Honestly, I know it won’t be that good.

The Casshern soundtrack is something I always liked after I rented it during my time in Japan. With it being a double CD (one with a lot of the songs in the movie, and the other with the instrumentals):

The Music Menu is a mix of old jazz tracks that was a risk because I had no idea how it would turn out. But the several tracks I’ve heard so far is quite good.

I also broke down and bought Sakuran on DVD, but I’m too lazy to take out the memory card and take a picture of it now.

All in all, I’d say it was a good trip because I managed to avoid movies. I’ve been burnt out, and was somewhat glad to be away from it all for 2 weeks. Of course, the length of the post means I wasn’t that far away from them after all.

My biggest regret? I’m missing this on Japanese TV.

At least neither of them are selling horse racing.

We took a short break with the news stuff because of the general lack of news this week. But now we’re back.

- In Japanese drama ratings, several dramas have already wrapped up. Sadly, no drama has wrapped on their season-high ratings yet. Especially disappointing is the finale to this season’s hit drama Galileo, which wrapped up with a season-low 19.6 rating, which makes me wonder what they did to piss of the viewers. Nevertheless, it’s by far the hit of the season with a 21.9 average rating overall. Abarenbo Mama also wrapped up with an OK 14.2 rating after hitting a season low last week. Meanwhile, Dream Again and Mop Girl also saw a rebound in their ratings for their final episodes, wrapping up with 11.9 and 9.4, respectively. Even the super disappointment of the season, Hatachi No Koibito, managed to recover slightly for an 8.2 rating for its finale.

That should wrap up The Golden Rock’s coverage of this disappointing Japanese drama season.

-  The nominations for the Japanese Academy Awards were announced. I was wondering where Tokyo Tower was when those other small awards were being announced, and now it shows up with a leading 13 nominations. That means it was nominated in every single category it was eligible for. While these type of films tend to end up sweeping the awards, this year there’s also Always 2, whose first installment swept that year’s awards. The hit sequel scored 12 nominations, with it not nominated only in the best actress category.

Also, there’s the current awards favorite, Masayuki Suo’s I Just Didn’t Do It, which picked up 11 nominations. With no clear leaders in the nominations (they tend to just nominate the same movies in every category, regardless whether the lighting direction in Tokyo Tower is good or not), these three will probably be be very close in awards count by award night.

Partial list on Variety Asia

Complete list (in Japanese) at the website.  I’ll try and translate it in a few days if I have time.

- Honestly, this news is even more exciting than the Japanese Academy Awards: Chow Yun Fat has just signed on to the live-action Dragonball movie to be produced by Stephen Chow. This movie just got itself some street cred.

- Almost forgot those Oricon charts. Exile ends up selling 670,000 copies of their latest album after they announced a million copies were shipped (as in shipped to stores, not sold, while V6 wins the singles chart, though Zard’s posthumous single managed to be right behind at 2nd place. Don’t be surprised if “Tupac”-like rumor starts popping up about Zard.

More details at Tokyograph.

Forget Exile, Koda Kumi is still the queen of the Oricon charts, selling 7.3 billion yen worth of CDs and DVDs in 2007. Meanwhile, Sen No Kaze Ni Natte wins best-selling single, and Mr. Children has the year’s best-selling Japanese album.

- Hong Kong’s new Film Development Council is working on greelighting the first project to use their pool of US$38.5 million. However, while the conditions about the major talents being from Hong Kong are reasonable, the ones about having at least 50% financed by private sector and the director/producer having released at least two films in the last ten years….not so fair. Oh, and they’re not even judging on artistic merit, which means a Jingle Ma comedy - commercially appealing, but probably artistically vomit-inducing - can potentially get government funding.

-While TBS opens up another new slot for drama on Saturday night at 8pm (not a prime drama slot if you ask me), Fuji TV has named their next drama at the breakout Saturday 11pm slot. Lost Time Life will be made up of 9 separate stories (running, I assume, for 9 episodes), each about how a person would choose make up the time they waste in their lives. Interesting, but potential cheesy.

That’s it, The Golden Rock is going on vacation. That means daily posts will not happen until after the new year. There’s still a few entries coming up, but this will be the last news post of the year, unless something big comes up.

I decided not to write an entry last night because 1) There wasn’t enough news to cover, and 2) Most box office figures weren’t out yet, especially for the I am Legend vs. The Warlords battle in Hong Kong. Turns out those Sunday box office figures came out later last night, after I decided not to write an entry and did something more worthwhile with my time (read: stuff I get paid to do with deadlines attached). Then it was too late, as now.com has already posted the Monday numbers. It’s ok, though, because I was blessed with the gift of subtraction.

-  Thanks to the sheer number of screens, The Warlords win over I am Legend by making HK$8.55 million over 4 days from 68-71 screens. Meanwhile, the Will Smith apocalyptic drama made HK$7.77 million from 55-61 screens (how these films gain and lose screens I have no idea). So in per-screen averages, I am Legend actually beats The Warlords. However, one excuse for that is that The Warlords runs half an hour longer than I Am Legend, hence one less show per day. That means these two are actually pretty much neck-to-neck in terms of box office success. Of course, with 10 more screens, The Warlords is going to win in pure cash, and it has much more positive word-of-mouth that Legend right now. So in the long run, I predict The Warlords will be the winner of the season, unless The Golden Compass has some latent potential.

Do remember that at least half the theaters in Hong Kong have a price inflation system for both Legend and Warlords, which means their grosses are inflated by about 5-10% than a film at normal ticket prices.

Looking at other opening films, Alvin and the Chipmunks managed to make HK$1.31 million over 4 days from about 30 screens, with business seeing a significant rise over the weekend. Considering that it already saw decreased shows per screen (I don’t remember seeing any showings for it after 8 pm), it’s a respectable figure. The French animated film Persepolis (saw this yesterday and liked it) opened on 2 screens (one with the French version, one with the English) and made a respectable HK$137,000 over 4 days.

As for holdovers, Mad Detective is hanging on, with HK$10.79 million in the bank as of Monday, and so did Lust, Caution, which still managed a HK$10,000-and-above per-screen average on Monday, despite it being released on DVD this week. Lastly, Tokyo Tower passed the HK$5 million mark, while Danny Pang’s In Love With the Dead will likely not get there with just HK$4.85 million and counting.

HK$7.8=US$1

-  Variety Asia has a report on how The Warlords did in the other territories, including a pretty huge opening in China.

- I am Legend, meanwhile, opened on top of the Japanese box office with 580 million yen over two days from 422 screens. That opening is 115% of I, Robot’s opening, which led to a final gross of 3.75 billion yen. However, the word-of-mouth on it isn’t very good (scroll slightly down to see the vote results), but big Hollywood blockbusters tend to have some legs, and it’ll pass the 2 billion yen mark anyway.

Meanwhile, the Tamagotchi movie (yes, that Tamagotchi) opens at third place, while last week’s winner Mari and the Three Puppies loses only 18% of last week’s business. On the other hand, major fall hits Koizora and Always 2 both drop by nearly 40%. With big year-end movies opening, Tsubaki Sanjuro and Beowulf are losing their businesses big time, dropping by 36% and 53%, respectively. Neither films are likely to each the 1 billion yen mark now. Lastly, the Korean hit comedy 200 Pounds Beauty opened fairly weak at 12th place and a per-screen average of less than $1,200.

- In Korea, I Am Legend opened at first with nearly one million admissions, while Sex is Zero 2 opens at second place with a fairly impressive gross (no pun intended) as well. More details at Korea Pop Wars.

Meanwhile, in box office-related news from Korea, producers have been suffering from low ancillary income (DVD, TV, etc) as well as foreign sales. So now they’re turning to the last resort: raise ticket prices.

- I’ve been trying to post this for days - it’s the first trailer for Empress and and the Warriors, starring Donnie Yen, Kelly Chan, and Leon Lai. I’ve been suffering from big-budget period film fatigue since I saw The Warlords on Thursday so badly that I really wish a few of these things flop so we’d see something new. Then again, this will probably be a hit anyway, and we’ll probably see more big-budget martial arts flick co-produced with China for years to come, keeping famous action choreographers working. At least this one looks like it’ll be in Cantonese.

- Jason Gray checks out the Japanese indie comedy Zenzen Daijobu, starring Arakawa Yoshiyoshi, and he seems to like it. Too bad it won’t be in theaters when I’m in Japan.

- The cast list for the Stephen Chow-produced Hollywood version of Dragonball is shaping up, with Emmy Rossom having just signed on. Sorry, I still have quite a bit of doubts about whether this movie is going to work or not.

- Japan Times has an interview with Ken Watanabe, who just took a year off and is coming back out to do the Japanese narration for the documentary Planet Earth.

- Meanwhile, Twitch has an interview with Pen-ek Ratanaruang, the director of Last Life in the Universe and Ploy.

- There’s also a feature on Korean actress Kim Yun-Jin, who has hit it big in both Korea and America since her role in the series Lost.

- I’m assuming that Takeshi Kaneshiro is done with his latest film about death, because he has just signed on to star in Fiend With Twenty Faces with Takako Matsu. Kaneshiro will play a master criminal and Matsu his victim. Does that mean he’ll be playing a villain? Interesting….

- Another Japanese movie you can look forward to is Homeless Chugakusei (Homeless Middle Schooler), an autobiography by a comedian recalling his days in poverty. The book achieved one million sales within two months, which would explain why the movie was announced within three months of the book’s release.

- Apparently, Jackie Chan has finally arrived in Japan to start work on Derek Yee’s latest The Shinjuku Incident. No word, however, on when the film will start filming or how long it will take.

- Korean director Im Kwon-taek is in Dubai recieving a lifetime achievement award at the local film festival.

- In a preview of Wednesday’s report on the Oricon charts, Exile (which is just two guys singing and 4 backup dancers) announces their latest album has shipped one million copies, and has sold hundreds of thousands of those copies since its release on Wednesday.

I apologize for the incomprehensible front page blurb yesterday, and kids: remember to actually click “publish,” even when you’re too sleepy.

-  It’s review time! Twitch has two reviews of Peter Chan’s The Warlords: review one, review two.

I know no one wants to know what I think about The Warlords, but I’ll say it anyway: Battle of Wits was a better war movie. The Warlords had better drama. You know what that means? Peter Chan: Stick to what you know best.

Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has a review for the Japanese tearjerker Little DJ, and Kaori Shoji reviews the French-Chinese film Les Filles du botaniste, which is actually banned in China for its depiction of homosexuality.

The review of the last film also comes with an interview with the director.

- From the Daily Yomiuri is the Teleview column’s yearlong Teleview Awards, who gives the best drama award to the Winter 2007 hit drama Haken No Hinkaku.

- One drama that will probably not end up winning a Teleview Award is the Japanese drama adaptation of My Sassy Girl coming in the Spring starring SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi and Rena Tanaka. Still, it might actually be entertaining for what it is, or it could contrived and needlessly melodramatic. In case of most Japanese dramas, it’ll probably be both. They’ve got a SMAP member playing a Marine Biology Professor, for crying out loud.

That’s it for today. Tomorrow - perhaps a short review of Pang Ho-Cheung’s latest Trivial Matters. We’ll see how we recover.

- Let’s start with a wrap up of this past weekend’s Japanese box office. A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies opens pretty big with 280 million yen, which is actually 118% of the opening for another hit puppy film Quills (which grossed 2.22 billion yen). Meanwhile, it’s revealed that Always 2 lost its position because it lost 39% of its business while Koizora lost only 27% of its business. However, Always 2 still has the higher gross, and Koizora is not likely to beat it.

In holdovers from last week, Beowulf dropped 41% from the last weekend, and 1 billion yen is going to be a bit of a climb. The Sanjuro remake dropped by a little less, but still suffered a loss of 38%, and will also have a tough climb to that 1 billion yen mark.

Kenta Fukasaku’s X Cross finally showed up to the box office charts, except it doesn’t look good: It’s all the way down in 14th place, despite opening on 148 screens.

- How about them Oricon charts? In summary - B’z wins again, Yui Aragaki scores an OK debut album, Keisuke Kuwata finds another reason to stay a solo artist, and DJ Ozma still has a music career? More over at Tokyograph.

- Peter Chan’s Warlords finally opens tomorrow in Hong Kong. It’s the big-budget action war epic of the season (worthy of a ticket price bump is most Hong Kong theaters, even), but Chan says he actually wanted to make a movie about something.

- Under “big celebrity news” today, Hong Kong film star Rosamund Kwan has announced that she is officially retiring from film work and will concentrate of working outside the entertainment industry. This was kind of expected, considering that her last film was all the way back in 2005, but I thought she was just taking it easy.

Sorry for the short update. This blogger is really sleepy tonight. Posting will resume as soon as possible.

 Since we did do that minute-by-minute coverage of The Golden Horse Awards, I guess we should probably link you to the complete list of winners.

- Ahead of the award ceremony, Ang Lee also admitted that he made one important edit in the Mainland Chinese version of Lust, Caution at the request of the Chinese censors to make the heroine seem less sympathetic to Chinese traitors.

- Let’s look at the Japanese TV drama ratings. As previewed last week, Galileo dipped below 20% rating for the first time all season, though only to a 19.9 rating. It’s no disaster yet, but it’s still the lowest rating of the season, though its average rating is still at 22%. Other dramas that saw their season-lows this past week: Abarebo Mama (at 11.0), Suwan No Baka (at 6.8), Hataraki Man (which dropped ALL THE WAY to 7.9 from 13.2 the previous week), Kimpachi Sensei (at 7.1), Joshi Deka (at 7.1), Mop Girl (at 9.2), and as always - Hatachi No Koibito (at 6.4).

On a positive note, Iryu 2 is on an upswing, with its ratings going up for a second week in a row. Utahime is also climbing a slow road up, and SP is still as solid as ever with a 14.6 rating.

- As I report once in a while in my box office reports, Hong Kong theatres inflate ticket prices for films that run longer than 135-140 minutes (because it means less shows). It seems like they will be doing the same for the holiday season for films that don’t even run at that length. According to Hong Kong Film Blog, one theater is setting a policy where all ticket prices will go up by 5 dollars from the 18th to January 1st. While this theater is enacting the policy because of theater policy, another theater chain is only increasing ticket prices for the two biggest films of the season and blames the distributor for the increase. So who’s the villain? Theater chains or distributors?

- I saw Maiko Haaaan!!! at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival and thought it was hilarious (A real review is still in the works).  However, not all of its humor will translate outside of the Japanese language (which is probably why there’s no Hong Kong distributor for it yet), Nevertheless, American distributor/champion of eccentric Japanese films Viz Pictures will be releasing the films in the United States in March.

- John Woo’s enormous and troubled epic The Battle of Red Cliff finally wrapped principal photography, though second unit photography is continuing until February. And by troubled, we mean there were rumors of deaths on the set, though producer Terence Cheng denies them.

- As the Korean Wave begins to recede, a new Japanese wave is slowly hitting the shore of Korea, as 21 films in the past 2 years were actually based on original Japanese content, much higher than the 5 produced between 2001-2005. Does it have anything to do with cramming too much into a marketplace that doesn’t have enough talents to begin with?

- Similar to the Animatrix project, Three Japanese animation house will produce several short animated films ahead of the release for that latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight.

- The Hong Kong Sunday numbers are out (seemingly coming out earlier and earlier after mov3.com went down for good), and Mad Detective takes the weekend again. It didn’t see a very big drop, as the Johnnie To/Wai Ka-Fai film made another HK$806,000 from 36 screens on Sunday for an 11-day total of HK$8.55 million. It’s extremely likely that the film will pass the HK$10 million mark, making it Milkyway’s most successful film since the Election flicks, which were also the last Milkyway category III (no one under 18 admitted) films.

In Love With the Dead, the latest from Danny Pang (of the Pang Brothers), also managed to hang on to second place in the second weekend. However, it only made HK$290,000 from 31 screens on Sunday for an 11-day total of HK$4.29 million. It will likely wrap up its run with a take similar to brother Oxide’s The Detective (I predicted last week that it wouldn’t). More astonishing is the staying power of the Japanese tearjerker Tokyo Tower, which made another HK$220,000 from 12 screens for a 25-day total of HK$4.56 million. With steady word-of-mouth, it may even surpass the Hong Kong gross for Kimura Takuya’s Hero when it’s all over. Meanwhile, the Hollywood comedy The Heartbreak Kid is also enjoying a healthy run as it stays in 3rd place on Sunday with HK$247,000 from 25 screens for an 18-day gross of HK$5.15 million.

The weekend’s only opener on the top 10 is Robert Benton’s Feast of Love, which did OK with HK$124,000 from 10 screens for a 4-day total of HK$450,000. Golden Horse winner Lust, Caution is still alive and well with HK$133,000 from 10 screens on Sunday for a 75-day total of HK$47.65 million, inching ever-so-slowly to HK$48 million. Still, I don’t expect it to pass the HK$50 million mark. Lastly, Andrew Lau’s Hollywood debut The Flock made just HK$42,000 from 16 screens for a 11-day total of just HK$650,000.

Speaking of Hong Kong directors in Hollywood, the Hong Kong Film blog actually mentions that Hong Kong directors’ Hollywood debut don’t fare well in Hong Kong anyway. For instance:

John Woo’s Hard Target - HK$2.56 million

Ringo Lam’s Maximum Risk - HK$2.38 million

Tsui Hark’s Double Team - HK$3.79 million

Ronny Yu’s Warriors of Virtue - HK$430,000

Kirk Wong’s The Big Hit - HK$1.32 million

Peter Chan’s Love Letter - HK$870,000

and of course, to add my own figures - The Pang Brothers’ The Messengers made around HK$4-5 million earlier in the year.

- In South Korea, the Hollywood family flick August Rush (partly financed by CJ Entertainment) made the top spot again, now with 826,000 admissions after two weekends. Lust, Caution continues to roll with over 1.6 million admissions, and expected to continue growing after its wins at the Golden Horse Awards. More over at Korea Pop Wars.

- In Japanese attendance charts, Always 2 have been bumped off its number 1 spot to third place by the new family film A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies (A family film with dogs in natural disasters), while Koizora stays at number 2.  Everything below that moves down one place. We’ll see how much business they lost in a day or two.

- It’s reviews time! Japan Times’ Mark Schilling looks at Yoshimitsu Morita’s remake of Tsubaki Sanjuro, which he says passes the grade, though Kurosawa did it better. Twitch’s Todd Brown reviews Makoto Shinkai’s 5 Centimeters Per Second, which I loved even when I saw the trailer. I might review this when I have the time.

I don’t know if it counts as a review, but Daily Yomiuri has a report about the hit Japanese teen romance Koizora, though it seems like a hybrid of a plot description and a film review. The fact that my girlfriend hated the original “cell phone novel” doesn’t seem promising to me.

- The Korea Export Insurance Corp. will apparently now offer partial compensation through an export insurance policy for films targeted at an international market and/or has secured pre-sale deals that flops. I assume D-War doesn’t need that insurance.

- Japanese short film Frank Kafka’s A Country Doctor by Koji Yamamura picks up the Grand Prize at the animation festival I Castelli Animati in Italy.

- This weekend in Japan is the first film festival to feature films made entirely on cell phones. I expect the whole festival either to be on very small screens or on big screens filled with pixelated images.

- Somewhat related is the Daily Yomiuri’s Wm Penn pointing out the importance of cell phones in Japanese dramas this past year, including rescue tool, romantic triangle symbol, and character coding device.

- According to the official website,  Stephen Chow’s latest CJ7 is opening in North America 2 weeks earlier than Hong Kong. I know they want to open it in time for Lunar New Year in Hong Kong, but what’s up with that?

- If you’re in Los Angeles, be sure to check out the Toho Festival, featuring old Japanese monster flicks 4 weeks in a row!

- Japan Times’ David McNeill has a 2-part feature on the slew of films looking at the Nanjing Massacre this year from Chinese, Japanese, and Western perspective. Too bad the only Japanese perspective one seems like it might be a right-wing nut job (Seeing how “Japanese people don’t mistreat corpses like that, it is not in our culture” isn’t exactly the best evidence against the massacre). Then again, it’s not like the Chinese ones are going to be completely fair either.

Stay reading for the blog’s live coverage of the Golden Horse Awards.

- Let’s look at the Thursday opening numbers from Hong Kong to predict the weekend. Johnnie To/Wai Ka Fai’s Mad Detective wins the day again with HK$518,000 from 36 screens for an 8-day total of HK$6.07 million. If this keeps up, it should wrap the weekend with nearly 8 million, though its chances of hitting 10 million is getting slim with The Warlords coming up this coming Wednesday night. Danny Pang’s out-there romantic horror In Love With the Dead will probably be able to stay at second place with a current 8-day total of HK$3.27 million. However, it should come short of brother Oxide’s The Detective’s gross of near HK$6 million.

Meanwhile, the only opening film that hit the top 10 is Robert Benton’s Feast of Love. From 10 screens, it made HK$60,000. It’s going to be a very quiet weekend at the movies.

- From Twitch is the first trailer for the Japanese cult film Machine Girl that looks really cool in that adrenaline rush way. Be aware, though - it’s not really safe for work.

- Yet another Japanese film awards has given the best film honor to Masayuki Suo’s I Just Didn’t Do It. This time it’s the Nikkan Sports Film Awards, who also gave Suo the best director award. Kimura Takuya, meanwhile, won best actor for Yoji Yamada’s Love and Honor, Yuko Takeuchi picks up another best actress award for Sidecar ni Inu, Tokyo Tower’s Kirin Kiki picked up best supporting actress, Takashi Sasano picked up best supporting actor for Love and Honor, and Yui Aragaki picked up best newcomer for her two films this year - Warubobo and Koizora.

- Earlier (as in when we were still at Blogger), we reported that Donnie Yen and Wilson Yip are working on their 4th film together, the supernatural film Painted Skin. However, now that has changed, with Gordon Chan taking over. Donnie Yen will apparently play a ghost catcher. More exciting is the fact that this will be the first fantasy-horror film that is actually about the supernatural that was approved by the Chinese government.

-  While China did greenlight a ghost movie, Variety reported that they are starting their 3-month Hollywood film blackout period tomorrow. However, the Associated Press got right to Chinese film officials, who denied the report.  Then again, the Hollywood blockbuster I am Legend still hasn’t secured a release in China, despite opening in much of the world next week. The worse news is that Smith said he is meeting Stephen Chow this weekend, and that he is exploring the idea of setting his Karate Kid remake in Hong Kong.

More over the weekend.