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.
- It seems like I made a mistake last week in predicting this week’s Oricon charts because the daily charts at the time had not included the new singles yet. So the predictions from last week are completely wrong. On the singles chart, YUI’s latest, the theme song for the film Closed Note, debut at number one with about 87,500 copies sold. BoA’s latest is far far behind at 3rd place with about 28.400 copies sold. Ayumi Hamasaki’s latest actually did not top the charts again, falling to 4th place with just 18,700 copies sold. Next week (and this should be correct), expect rock superstar band B’z’s latest single to top the chart.
As Tokyograph predicted, Ai Otsuka’s latest album topped the albums chart with about 208,000 copies sold. Not too close behind at second place is personal favorite Tokyo Jihen’s 3rd album, which sold about 101,000 copies in its first week. Angela Aki’s album falls to 3rd place in its second week, and I can’t believe Hideaki Tokunaga’s cover album is still going this strong at 4th place. Next week, expect the album chart battle to be between Yuki’s or Yuzu’s compilation albums.
- I’m combining the box office and the regular entry into one today. The Japanese box office numbers came out, and there are a bunch of discrepancies between the numbers and the admissions ranking. Apparently the Isao Yukisada film Closed Note may have attracted less people than Perfect Stranger, but it make more cold, hard cash, putting it at 2nd place. The same thing happened between Fantastic 4 and No Reservations. Also, La Vie En Rose actually opened on 196 screens, which makes it 8th place opening kind of disappointing.
Actually, Closed Note’s second place opening isn’t all that swell, either. While it is 176% of the opening for Sugar And Spice ~ Fumi Zekka, it’s only 94% of the opening for Yukisada’s Haru no Yuki, which means the film will barely pass the 1 billion yen mark in box office.
- As a young aspiring filmmaker, this news is quite disappointing: The new Film Development Council of Hong Kong has announced their terms for disburse the HK$300 million film fund - by giving it to commercially-appealing films made by experienced filmmakers/producers. That means your director or producer has to have made at least 2 films, but yet your budget has to be kept under US$1.55 million (HK$12.1 million). Not that they’ll actually give you more than 30% of your budget anyway.
Do these people actually know how much it cost to make an audience-friendly, commercially-appealing movie these days? Your average movie star take at least HK$4 million already, and what commercially successful HK movie this year actually cost just HK$12 million? Obviously, the money should’ve gone more to developing young talents, but what can I say? I go to film school in Hong Kong, so that makes me biased by default.
- Creepy news coming out of Belgium, it seems like a note was found near where severed body parks were found in a park that may be connected to the Death Note comics. I think the killer forgot the part where he’s not supposed to do the murdering himself.
- Grady Hendrix has picked up on the Jackie Chan blog posts controversy. It kind of started when he wrote in his own blog telling audiences to not have much expectation for his latest Hollywood film The Forbidden Kingdom. Then the press picked up an “old post” where he even admit that he doesn’t care much for the Rush Hour films (I don’t blame him for that at all). However, Jackie also admitted that he only did them for money, which begs the question: Why is he just settling for lots of money instead of trying to make better movies?
Following it is Chiritotechin, which did not premiere to the worst ratings in NHK morning drama history. Instead, it scored an average of 16.5% rating, which is only the third worst morning drama rating in history.
- I’m actually a big fan of the film Rendan, actor Naoto Takenaka’s directorial effort from a few years ago, which is why I’m somewhat excited that he’s making a new film, this time a zombie comedy. However, I’m not as excited as I should be because it’s a zombie comedy.
You can say I took a break because it was a public holiday yesterday. You can say I was lazy. Or you can even say I was waiting to the Hong Kong weekend box office numbers to come out. Either way, we’re back for now.
- The Hong Kong Sunday box office was very strong because of the holiday weekend. Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is dying down slightly after the hype has passed, but it still made an impressive HK$2.47 million from 64 screens. After 5 days, the sometime-erotic espionage thriller has made HK$11.29 million, and will probably not make the HK$15-18 million target distributor Edko had hoped for by the end of the weekend. Please note that the film did have ticket price inflation of HK$10, so the gross is about 10-20% higher than your usual film that runs shorter than 135 minutes.
In other Hong Kong movies, Oxide Pang’s entertaining mystery thriller The Detective made just HK$570,000 from 28 screens, and will wrap the weekend with around HK$3 million (it’ll be lucky if it gets to HK$6 million when it’s all over). Beauty and the 7 Beasts gets bumped down all the way to 5th place with just HK$290,000 from 25 screens on Sunday. After 5 days, the tedious dumbfest has made only HK$1.49 million.
Foreign releases saw a pretty big bump over the weekend, as Matthew “I quit X3 to work with Robert DeNiro and Michelle Pfeiffer” Vaughn’s Stardust made HK$520,000 from 21 screens for a HK$2.09 million 4-day total, and The Nanny Diaries starring Scarlett Johannson also made a not-too-bad HK$420,000 from 21 screens for a 4-day total of HK$1.67 million.
- In South Korean box office, Love tops the box office for the second weekend in a row after an extended holiday. Otherwise, nothing seemed to have opened wide, and everything on the top 10 are holdovers.
- In Japan, since not all the numbers are out yet, I’ll let the admissions ranking tell the story so far - the Halle Berry-Bruce Willis-starrer Perfect Stranger is the highest debut at 2nd place, Isao Yukisada’s latest (that was fast) Closed Note, starring the not-very-friendly Erika Sawajiri, opens at 3rd place. The French biopic La Vie En Rose opens at 7th (on an unknown number of screens). Oh, and Hero’s at number one again. Who’s surprised at that, really?
- I guess I should start off and tell you that there’s a new review/observation post at the spin-off about Maiko Haaaan!!! and Beauty and the 7 Beasts. I can give you a preview and say that Beauty and the 7 Beasts is the worse HK mainstream movie I’ve seen this year…and I saw Contract Lover.
- Stephen Chow’s A Hope has finally locked a release date of January 31st, 2008, although I’m not sure if that opening date also applies to Hong Kong. As for the alien, Chow reportedly told Oriental Daily that the design is a homage to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, not a rip-off. You can probably only use the word “homage” for films more than 20 years old.
- While Stephen Chow takes three years to make his follow-up to Kung Fu Hustle, Takashi Miike is already releasing his third theatrical release of the year. More information from Twitch and Ryuganji.
- Speaking of TV, Japan national broadcaster NHK, which charges pretty much every Japanese household a mandatory fee, saw its latest business plans rejected by the government because they’re making too much money. Making too much money means they are charging too much.
- On a personal note of interest, one of my favorite directors Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film There Will Be Blood was the surprise closing film of the Fantastic Fest, and the enthusiastic word-of-mouth are pouring in, first from the Hollywood Reporter, then from Twitch’s Peter Martin. I’m extremely excited to see this, but I know I probably won’t get to for a long long long time. Instead, I’ll probably go watch another Pang Brothers movie or something.
By the way, look for a new post or two at the spin-off this weekend.
- First comes the news that any blogger who cares about Japanese films is blogging about - the reveal of the FilmEx lineup. First a general report from Variety Asia, then Ryuganji reveals the Japanese selections, and Jason Gray has a comprehensive report. As much as I liked Eye in the Sky (good execution for two-thirds, then a contrived ending), it probably doesn’t stand much of a chance. The festival will run from November 17th to the 25th.
- Apparently Seven Swords wasn’t enough for him. After Missing, which is supposed to have something to do with a ring underwater, Tsui Hark will be working on what is being called his “comeback film.” The 13 Regiments will apparently group 13 stars together - including Simon Yam, Donnie Yen, and Nicholas Tse - and have them going around the world to recover Chinese relics scattered during “the war.” When the hell was Tsui Hark ever gone? He still has Triangle coming out, and he’s already working on one film before going on to this one.
- In a continuing crackdown of the media following that ridiculous mandate regarding talent shows, the Chinese government has shut down 1,466 ads that may contain offensive materials such as scantily-dressed women or sexually suggestive language. They even censored ads for underwears. Everyone wears underwears, people. Even communists.
- One director trying to fight against that is Chinese-American director Wayne Wang. According to him, a Chinese investor pulled out because Wang refused to cut a line in his latest film A Thousand Year of Prayers that says “Communism is good. It just fell into the wrong hands.” Any film that criticizes the Chinese government is of course a no-no, so the investor was forced to back out, taking away half the film’s budget.
- For those who has seen the Hong Kong action flick Invisible Target, do you remember the blonde guy who’s involved in two of the chase scenes in the first hour? I know, I don’t remember much about him either, but apparently he’s going to Hollywood. Are they really paying him “seven digits”? It’s probably in yen, right?
- After the moderate success of TMNT, Hong Kong-based Imagi Animation Studio will team up with the Weinstein Company and Warner Bros. again for two more projects, the Japanese comic adaptations Gatchaman and Astro Boy. This should put Hong Kong computer animation on the map. This means Centro better get on its ass and make something better than The Magic Gourd. Still…American studios producing an adaptation of Astro Boy just doesn’t sound very promising to me anyway.
- As we usually do on Wednesdays, let’s look at the Oricon charts. As expected, Ayumi Hamasaki’s latest topped the singles chart in its first week, selling just over 70,000 copies. However, that actually seems pretty spectacular when its closest competition, the latest from boy group Dong Bang Shin Ki, only had to sell 33,000 copies to get to second place. Looking further down, You Hitoto’s latest could only muster a 10th place debut after selling just over 12,800 copies of her latest. Expect the charts to be extremely quiet next week, with Ayumi Hamasaki winning the chart for a second week in a row.
Things were a little better on the albums chart, where Angela Aki’s second album topped the charts with 88,000 copies sold. Young enka star Kiyoshi Hikawa’s latest album is far behind at second place with almost 42,000 copies sold for his latest album. Leah Dizon’s debut album is already all the way to 24th place from 9th place last week, and expect things to be very quiet here as well next week when Angela Aki will probably lead the chart again.
- Hero, the Japanese drama whose film version is filling seats at movie theaters these days, remains a hit on TV. It’s not a new TV special, but a new cut of the TV special Fuji TV aired this past weekend. While it didn’t hit the original rating of 30.9 from last year, a 22% rating is still pretty damn good, considering how weak TV ratings have been overall these days.
- India decided to pick the commercial flop Eklavya: The Royal Guard to compete with films around the world for one of those final five spots in the Academy Award for best foreign film. Theoretically, it needs to be better than Laagan, the last Indian Oscar nominee in that category. Will a guy named Eklavya beat the 4-hour cricket drama?
- Today is Japanese commercial day at The Golden Rock.
First, we present the latest Softbank ad featuring Brad Pitt. In case you don’t know, this series of ads for the mobile phone service provider feature a Hollywood star walking down a street talking on their cool Softbank phone (for example, here’s one with Cameron Diaz, who’s in at least 3 of these things). This ad is no different, except this one is directed by Wong Kar-Wai. According to Apple Daily, the shooting of the “long take” (the cutting point is the pole, in case you don’t notice) took 3 days and 200 extras.
Second, Japan Probe brings us an ad for a Nagano newspaper by animation Makoto Shinkai, who scored a minor hit with his latest 5 Centimeters per Second. The animation is quite stunning, considering the plot is damn near non-existent.
Lastly, Japan Probe also has all 10 commercials Hollywood actor Tommy Lee Jones starred in for a brand of Japanese coffee. They are very very funny stuff, especially number 6.
The Japanese box office numbers came out, and as it is always the case with family films, Miss Potter got dropped one place from the admissions ranking when the numbers came out because family films attract more people that buy cheaper tickets. So Naoko Ogigami’s Megane got bumped up to 6th place, beating the British film by a mere 592,000 yen in ticket sales. But it did open on just 72 screens, and Eiga Consultant reports that the film is breaking records and selling out on its Tokyo screens, so its debut is actually quite impressive.
While it’s the second holiday weekend in a row, the gross for most films were actually quite significant, with every film in the top 10 losing at least 30% of their business from the previous weekend. Even Harry Potter’s hopes of reaching that 10 billion yen mark doesn’t look too good right now.
- It was a public holiday today in Hong Kong, so no way of knowing how the Tuesday night shows were for the competing films. We’ll know more on Friday night.
- The numbers for the Japanese weekend box office doesn’t come out until tomorrow, so we’ll just going a bit into audience admission rankings for now. For the third weekend in a row, the drama adaptation Hero starring Kimura Takuya lead the rankings, keeping newcomers Fantastic Four and Arthur and the Invisibles at second and third place, respectively. Also, Naoko Ogigami’s Megane opened at 7th place, although I don’t know how many screens it opened on.
- From the (in)famous Johnny’s Jimusho comes the newest disposable pop group Hey! Say! Jump! (Jump stands for Johnny’s Ultra Music Power. Glad they’re still about the music). As an expansion of Hey! Say! (Which debuted recently), there’s more of them than ever by making it 10 members.
- After the success of the Korean blockbuster D-War (7.8 million admissions in South Korea, and US$8.5 million and counting in North America as the most successful Korean film in North American box office ever), it’s inevitable that the filmmakers would do what every successful B-movie would do: the obligatory sequel!
- Did you know that it’s actually legal to download Japanese content from the internet for private use? Of course, it’s probably illegal to upload it, but it seems like the downloader carries no actualy legal responsibility. However, it might be too late to tell you this now, because the law is about to change.
- Under “your daily Lust, Caution news” today, Taiwan audiences apparently love Ang Lee’s 156-minute erotic thriller. It’s even expected to make more than Brokeback Mountain, which is Lee’s highest-grossing film in his native country. I should be taking the plunge this weekend.
- There’s a silent fight going on between the Pang Brothers and Andrew Lau about who will make the it’s-taking-so-long-that-no-one-is-waiting-for-it-anymore sequel to the comic adaptation Storm Riders. With my hate for Andrew Lau, I would actually really like to see the Pangs take on something that’s not horror.
- Korean director Lee So-Yeon’s Uninvited might have been a commercial flop in South Korea, but that doesn’t mean he’s not talented. His latest screenplay Hwan Gung, about a man who believes himself to be a warrior sent to send a woman who thinks she is a mermaid back to the sea, won the Busan Screenwriting Competition, which gives him a grant of 20 million won (roughly US$20,000).
- Under “I just can’t get interested in this” news today, Taiwanese idol Wu Chun will be joining the cast of Jingle Ma’s Wu Xia Liang Zhu (or a martial arts version of the classic tale Butterfly Lovers). Twins’ Charlene Choi will be playing the other ill-fated lover, and Nicholas Tse is also in talks to join as another potential suitor for Charlene’s cross-dressing character who will probably fight while hooked on some wire.
Honestly, this sounds like it’ll be a pretty shitty movie already.
- Before you in the West go watch it, Ang Lee would like to tell you that his latest film will probably disappoint you and whomever you go watch it with in your local American arthouse.
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