- I had no idea that the public holiday in Hong Kong ended up being on Tuesday the 19th, not Monday the 18th. That would explain why Fantastic Four ended up making another HK$2.12 million on 60 screens Tuesday in Hong Kong, bringing a 6-day total of HK$11.14 million. Simply Actors, starring Jim Chim and Charlene Choi, is a hit with HK$970,000 on 29 screens on its first full day of screenings (it made an additional HK$250,000 the previous night). Mr. Cinema continues to do weakly with just HK$300,000 on 27 screens for a 6-day total of HK$1.7 million. It has now surpassed Kidnap, which made only HK$230,000 on 25 screens on Tuesday for a HK$1.56 million after 6 days plus previews. Milkyway’s Eye in the Sky has accumulated a total of HK$340,000 after 4 nights of preview screenings. It opens officially on Thursday. 4 Hong Kong movies on the top 10 - that’s a rare sight for sore eyes.

- Oricon released the rankings for music and DVDs sold in the first half of 2007. On the singles chart, Sen No Kaze Ni Natte is the number one top-seller with 916,000 copies sold. Released late last year, sales for the single rocketed after Masafumi Akikawa appeared on the year-end Kohaku Uta Gassen, and has been steady through the first six months of the year. In a far-off second is Utada Hikaru’s Flavor of Life, which in my opinion is easily Utada’s most mediocre single ever released (And I’m speaking as a fan who has shelled out 30+ dollars for her stuff since her first album); it has sold nearly 630,000 copies. Arashi’s Love So Sweet rounds out the top 3, selling nearly 421,000 copies. It’s official: Hana Yori Dango 2 ruled the music world.

In albums, Mr. Children not so surprisingly tops the chart, selling over 1.12 million copies of their album Home. I was a little surprised that Koda Kumi managed to sell 998,000 copies of her album Black Cherry, and Ayumi Hamasaki rounds out the top 3rd and 4th place with her compilation albums A BEST 2 WHITE and A BEST 2 BLACK. More surprising is the third best-selling non-compilation Japanese album would not show up until 7th place with YUI’s Can’t Buy My Love. Even Avril Lavigne managed to sell 656,000 copies of the album with that annoying Girlfriend song. Someone save J-pop.

In the DVD charts, the best selling DVD so far this year is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (which I’m sure was helped by the follow-up At World’s End), selling 430,000 copies. Second place is Hitoshi Matsumoto’s roundtable discussion DVD with 310,000 copies, and third place is the best-selling Japanese film so far this year, Umizaru 2: Limit of Love, with 267,000 copies. Even the huge pop culture event of last year, Death Note, has only sold 244,000 copies of its complete set since March. The reason why the sales seem bad is because Japan has a very active rental market due the gap between the price of a rental (400-500 yen) and the price of a DVD (2500-4000 yen for a single movie). With such a huge price difference, it’s understandable why people would rather rent than buy.

- In the weekly charts, Sen No Kaze Ni Natte is still selling strong in the singles chart. This week, it’s at 16th place, selling 7,300 copies as it inches slowly towards that million mark. Meanwhile, YUI rules the chart with the debut of her new single, selling just 79,000 copies. The Korean boy band Dong Bang Shin Ki (TVXQ) managed to sell 35,000 copies of their latest single for a second place debut. Dreams Come True’s latest disappoints slightly at third place, with only 31,000 copies sold of their latest single. Even a wedding didn’t help troublemaker DJ Ozma’s latest single, debuting at 14th place selling only 7,400 copies. Gackt’s Japanese theme for Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige is expected to win the charts next week, as shown in the daily rankings.

On the albums chart, Bon Jovi’s album hits a very surprising first place, selling 73,000 copies. ZARD’s Golden Best compilation continues to sell very well as it remains at second place with another 54,000 copies sold. There’s no real major Japanese album release this past week, so it all looks a bit quiet. Next week, Crystal Kay may earn her first number one album, if the daily rankings hold up.

- In Taiwan, three Hong Kong/Macau university students decided to show how ineffective news reporting is by creating fake news items and forwarding them to television stations. And those stations actually ended up running the stories without any verification. Someone’s in the big trouble, and it’s not the students.

- Sales are down this year at the Shanghai Television Festival, especially historical dramas. Good news is that over 40% of the stall holders were from outside Mainland China, which means it’s no longer just a place for the Chinese market. However, only 1.2% of the buyers were from Europe and the U.S..

Meanwhile, the German film March of Millions took the top TV Film Award at the Shanghai TV Festival. The strangest win in my mind was the best TV Series Award to Living, based on the same novel as Zhang Yimou’s To Live. To Live gets banned, but the drama version wins an award in China?

- Twitch has a longer trailer to new director Carl Zhang’s Lovers. It looks real pretty with the filters and all, but all it says is that the guy has some style. Let’s hope his directing and writing will back it up.

- Since Japan’s United International Pictures is packing up, Hollywood studio Paramount just flat out decided to do things themselves by distributing their own films in Japan.

- Reviews, reviews, reviews. Variety surprisingly already has a review of current Japanese blockbuster Maiko Haaaan!!! up already, while the Daily Yomiuri has a review of Naomi Kawase’s The Mourning Forest. On the same note, Japan Times has a feature on the French translator who helped translate the scenario and the script to get French funding for The Mourning Forest, which makes the fact that he still hasn’t met the director somewhat strange.

- A government-appointed advisory panel in Singapore is urging the authorities to embrace the new media by finding new ways to take advantage of traditional forms of entertainment. Then there’s a bunch of vague official suggestions that look like English, but not really.

- Shanghai finally has their first full-fledged art house theater. Hong Kong had so many of them that they had to get rid of them one by one. OK, that’s not why they’re diminishing, but Hong Kong still has plenty of them.

- Andy Lau pisses off a CCTV program by refusing to appear on their human interest show. But then they piss off the people by complaining about it. This comment is my favorite: “If Andy Lau won’t come, you criticize him. What if Andy Lau criticizes you directly? Are you going to give him a physical beating?”

- Wilson Yip is making yet another Donnie Yen movie, but at least it’s not just another action movie. It’ll be a supernatural action movie. I thought China doesn’t like ghost and supernatural tales.

- Takeshi Kitano (Beat Takeshi is fine too) is returning to the TV drama world, except it’ll only be a two-part made-for-TV film.

- The Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (I think they mean Fantasy rather than boasting that the films will be fantastic) has announced its lineup, which includes Oxide Pang’s Diary, Yamashita Nobuhiro’s The Matsugane Potshot Affair, and a special program of films by Herman Yau.

- The international hit drama “Jewel in the Palace” (Dae Jang Geum) is going to the stage in Japan after it was successful adapted as a musical earlier this year in Korea. Performance will begin this December.

- The Daily Yomiuri has a feature on the Japanese documentary Election, which has seen very good word-of-mouth.

- Director Mamoru Oshii, best known for the animated film Ghost in the Shell, announced that his next film will be The Sky Crawlers, based on the novel by Hiroshi Mori. I haven’t seen any of his work, so I can’t really comment on this.

- Twitch has a set of reviews for the films playing at the upcoming New York Asian Film Festival in case you can’t decide what to watch. The festival starts this weekend.

We’re surprisingly busy here for the rest of the week, but we gotta get through all this news anyway, so let’s do it quickly:

- Japanese box office numbers are out at a much higher exchange rate than last week (US$1=123.495 yen this week vs 121.775 yen last week), which means they seem to be earning less in American dollars in addition to the drop. I really wish they’d just stick to a consistent rate to show the true week-to-week drop each week.

Anyway, except for Pirates of the Caribbean and Apocalypto (which saw a screen increase), looks like almost all the films took a pretty big hit, with 300 leading the way by losing 56% of its audience. That almost never happens in the top 10 in Japan.

Yesterday, I mentioned that Maiko Haaaan!!! opened pretty big at second place with 230 million yen. However, Eiga Consultant gets it straight and points out that it actually only opened at 76% of writer Kenkuro Kudo’s last film Kisarazu Cat’s Eye World Series (which ended up with an 1.8 billion yen total) and 80% of Kou Shibasaki’s last comedy Star Reformer (2 billion yen total). Mr. Texas also points out that this year seems to lack the huge hits such as Umizaru 2, Suite Dreams, and even Star Reformer. In fact, the highest-grossing Japanese film this year, Dororo, only grossed less than half of Umizaru’s final gross. Is the Hoga resurrection that short-lived?

Meanwhile, the May-September romance Last Love, starring Masakazu Tamura and Misaki Ito, opened pretty weakly at 8th place with only 45 million yen. That’s only 29% of Love Never to End, another drama that aimed at an older crowd, though the latter film did have the sex scenes to bring in more of the older crowd.

- Jason Gray got it first, as he reported that Tsukamoto Shinya’s Nightmare Detective is headed for a sequel less than half a year after the first film was released. Less than a day later, Ryuganji has plenty of expanded information about what the sequel will be like. According to the website, the DVD of the first film will be out this weekend. Did anyone know how well this film did? I don’t even remember it ever hitting the top 10.

This was a clothing store in Harajuku that happened to also be promoting the film at its storefront, January 2007.

- The Melody Awards was handed out in Taiwan recently. Nicky Lee and Jolin Tsai, both pop stars that I don’t particular care for, picked up best male and female awards, respectively. And David Tao, who delivered a fairly underwhelming album last year, still managed to pick up an award for best duet.

- There are some creative ways to meet your favorite celebrity, this is not one of them.

- Under “most surprising news” today, a sequel to the mega Korean blockbuster The Host is now in pre-production. I know monster flicks are prone to sequels, but there’s almost no way this is going to top the original.

- A Chinese documentary about a school class election picked up the top feature award at the AFI/Discovery Channel Docufest. Good for them.

- The website for Feng Xiaogeng’s latest film The Assembly, which seems to be next year’s big Chinese New Year film in China, just uploaded a trailer. It looks technically accomplished, but it still seems pretty derivative to me.

- Twitch also has a trailer for the Korean film May 18th, about the Kwangju uprising. It looks pretty intense, considering its director made Mokpo, Gangster’s Paradise. But there’s something about that overdramatic music towards the end…

- With the latest chapter of the China-vs-Japan-history saga taking a turn for the worse, it’s good to see some people still acting pretty sane. Toho/UniJapan and China film are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding for cinematic cooperation. What does that mean? It means China and Japan are now one step closer to collaboration on film, strengthening the role of Asian films around the world, politics be damned.

- Unlike Hong Kong, Shanghai’s ongoing film market is currently still only seen as a work-in-progress.

- After teaching Hong Kong a lesson, Hollywood went up to Shanghai and taught the Chinese film industry how to emulate Hollywood too.

- The Dragon Dynasty two-disc DVD for John Woo’s Hard Boiled is up for pre-order. I’m very happy with my Mei-Ah remastered DVD (which I guess isn’t the best in the market), so unless it has some mind-blowing feature, I’m skipping it. Still, if you haven’t seen this amazing action flick, this is probably the chance to see it.

- Lastly, looks like they’re trying to really give the newly reset James Bond franchise some class by signing up Monster’s Ball director Marc Forster to direct the next film. The last time they tried that with Michael Apted ended up with The World is Not Enough. Might not be such a good idea.

The Golden Rock is back for another month and a half of continuous blogging. Yes, I did miss compiling a ton of news everyday, as I still kept up on Variety Asia and Twitch from 70 miles away. Anyway, the weekend’s over now, so let’s do this thing.

- Hong Kong box office was pretty disappointing over the holiday weekend, at least for Hong Kong. The two Hong Kong openings - Mr. Cinema and Kidnap, both opened to very weak openings. On Sunday, Samson Chiu’s Mr. Cinema made only HK$350,000 on 27 screens for a 4-day total of HK$1.16 million, while Law Chi-Leung’s Kidnap made only HK$230,000 on 25 screens for a 4-day (plus previews the previous weekend) total of HK$1.16 million. Patrick Leung and Chan Hing-Ka’s Simply Actors, starring Jim Chim and Twins’ Charlene Choi, opens today in Hong Kong, and we’ll see how it does on Wednesday. Yau Nai-Hoi’s Milkyway production of Eye on the Sky didn’t do too well either, making only HK$80,000 on 26 screens of advanced preview showings, and HK$170,000 after two nights. Either way, Hong Kong cinema’s summer season isn’t having a very good start so far.

In other box office rankings, Fantastic Four naturally opens in first place, making HK$2.07 million on 62 screens (I don’t even remember the first film doing that well in Hong Kong) for a HK$7.71 million after 4 days, Ocean’s Thirteen hangs on with HK$630,000 on 38 screens for an11-day total of HK$9.3 million, and British film Cashback stays strong with HK$40,000 on 2 screens. There are no huge Hollywood openings this weekend (Wild Hogs and Zodiac), so maybe it’s time for Hong Kong films to bounce back. One can only hope.

- Meanwhile, Lovehkfilm updates with a few reviews - Law Chi-Leung’s Kidnap, Billy Chung’s straight-to-video Undercover, the Korean fantasy extravaganza The Restless, and the J-horror film Ghost Train (written by yours truly).

- The audience rankings for Japan is also up, as Pirates continues its rampage across Japan as the number one movie. Japanese comedy Maiko Haaaan!!! is a hit, debuting at second place; Zodiac opens weakly at 5th place, but not as weakly as the Japanese romance Last Love (more on its weekend performance tomorrow), and Apocalypto jumps up to 9th place in the first weekend of wide release. Numbers and analysis tomorrow.

- In Japanese drama rankings, the Japanese remake of the Korean drama Hotelier starring Aya Ueto wrapped up its lackluster run with only a 9.1 rating, which is just above the season average rating of 8.5, but below the highest rating of 11.1. Sexy Voice and Robo continues to limp at 6.5 (I’m guessing episode 7 will never be broadcasted), train nerd drama Tokkyu Tanaka 3 Go took a huge drop to a 6.8 from last week’s 9.7, Kodoku No Kake has dropped from the season-opening 11.2 to a sad sad 5.1, losing more than half of its initial audience (Even Sexy Voice and Robo managed to avoid that). Speaking of disappointments, Joudan Janai goes back down a little bit this week with a 12.0 rating.

The season, which has been pretty sad in terms of ratings, will wrap in the next two weeks. I think we all know that Operation Love will come out on top in two weeks (the big question is if it will break the 20.0 mark), but what about Banbino, Watashi Tachi No Kyokasho, both which have seen pretty stable ratings all season? How will audience favorite Liar Game wrap up after seeing a ratings decrease this week? Will Joudan Janai and Sexy Voice and Robo fight off their “disappointment” label by attracting more viewers next week? We shall know by next Monday.

Part 2 of today’s entry is about little controversies in recent Chinese medias.

- I’ve never been a fan of Jia Zhangke. In fact, I have a legit copy of Still Life sitting here, waiting to be watched. Recently, director Jia was asked to write an editorial about the word “perplexity,” and he chose to write about Xiao Wu’s banishment due to someone in the film industry denouncing it. Since then, it has stirred a controversy because the media found its suspect. I might not have liked Ziao Wu, but I am certainly sympathetic with the ridiculous treatment of the film.

- r@sardonicsmile warns that if you’re a celebrity in Hong Kong and you have a personal blog, you might want to watch what you even dare to hint at, because the Hong Kong media will jump on you like a shark looking for even the slightest hint of red. One thing: Is the Storm in a teacup reference to the old Commercial Radio Hong Kong talk show, or is it actually a pretty widely-used phrase?

- Doing my part to spread the word, a Hong Kong blogger realizes that one of his posts was recently plagiarized by a writer for Hong Kong pop culture magazine Milk. However, the editor was confronted, only to say that it was entirely coincidental that the feature happens to match the original entry 90% of the time (even the two glaring mistakes in the entry was carried over). I’m even ashamed now to admit that I do read Milk Magazine with some enjoyment, which makes the disappointment even greater.

Now to regular news:

- I’m only reporting this for rachael: Aoi Miyasaki, better known as the cute Nana in the first Nana movie, announced her surprise marriage this past weekend. Yeah, usually I wouldn’t report something like this, but anything to keep them readers happy.

- The Jackie Chan/Jet Li historical family film Forbidden Kingdom has delivered its progress report, and they might as well have not reported it if they just say something like “it’s going well.” Jackie Chan apparently did offer promising words about the Chan/Li fight, but I’m still being very very skeptical about this English production passed off as a Chinese film.

- The Shanghai International Film Festival has officially opened, but it opened fairly low-key with very little business being done and a lack of real Panasian stars.

Meanwhile, Geoff Gilmore, the head of the Sundance Film Festival, took the Shanghai festival as an opportunity to blast the International Federation of Film Producers Association for their ratings of film festivals around the world. Might not matter to you, but it does to me.

- Japan Times reviewed Miki Satoshi’s Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia, probably most notable outside Japan for being Kinko Kikuchi’s first film after her Oscar nomination for Babel.

And they also liked The Prestige very much too.

- Dai Nipponjin is hitting the festival circuits, and they’re the major ones. The most exciting one in Hong Kong because I’ll actually be there next year, but Toronto is pretty damn exciting too.

- Speaking of exciting, the teaser for P.T. Anderson’s There Will be Blood is up and running. It looks different than anything he’s done, but he’s one of my favorite filmmakers, so I’m looking forward to it big time.

- Noruhiro Koizumi, the director of Midnight Sun, is taking on Gachi Boy, the adaptation of a play about a professional wrestler with a memory problem. I can’t tell if this is supposed to be an inspiring sports story or a comedy yet.

- Also working on a new film is Jeff Lau. His new comedy The Fantastic Waterbabes will star Gillian Chung and Alex Fong (seems natural to have an ex-olympics swimmer turned pop star to be in a movie about swimming), and will be released in time for the Beijing Olympics. I like Jeff Lau, but I don’t like EEG and movies that cash in on current events. What to do, what to do…

- Twitch write about the new Korean film The Wonder Years, about a young girl who is so sure that her mom is a famous rock star that she goes out in search of her in Seoul…with a little help from her friends(That was a Wonder Years reference, by the way). Plot sounds interesting, but after Ice Bar, I am approaching Korean films about searching for biological parents with caution.

- Doesn’t really have anything to do with Asian entertainment, but Jean Reno has a new commercial in Japan, and it’s pretty awesome. Who knew that he’s such a cool romantic lead?

- There’s gonna be another Godzilla movie…….in 3D!

- The somewhat incomplete Japanese box office numbers are in. I say incomplete because either Kantoku Banzai has fallen below 15th place, or Office Kitano has flat out decided not to report its grosses anymore, and the opening weekend of 300 is not as spectacular as the numbers report. Box Office Mojo reports that 300 made about US$3.4 million, or 415 million yen. But the total indicates that it included the previous week’s previews into its total gross, which means that as Eiga Consultant reports, 300 made 330 million yen, or roughly US$2.71 million with a per-screen average of US$5,995. Of course, that still makes a very impressive opening, and it’s still 209% of Sin City’s opening, but it’s still overshadowed by Pirates of the Caribbean.

Unlike most of the world, Pirates is actually enjoying a very healthy long-term run, dropping just 20% from the previous week for another 941 million yen. After three weekends, Pirates has already made almost 6.2 billion yen, and will pass Spiderman 3’s gross mid-week. Still, Spidey 3 has already surpassed the previous movie’s gross, and as indicated by its slow 25-30% drop, it should end up making just a little more than the first film, too.

Everywhere else on the top 10 looks pretty stable, with only the Hollywood flick Shooter seeing a considerable drop. Even Dai Nipponjin survived its lackluster word-of-mouth, losing only about 28% of its business (Knocked Up lost more than that in its second weekend, and it’s an audience favorite). In a one-theater limited release, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto made a promising 1.8 million yen. It’ll go on wide release this coming weekend. NOTE: It will not feature English subtitles.

- Speaking of Pirates of the Caribbean, the notorious Chinese censors have approved the third film to play in Chinese theaters. However, they banned the first two movies (which are kind of crucial to understand the third one, no?), and they cut out half of Chow Yun-Fat’s scenes. Now people are not only utterly confused, they even lost much of the their main reason for buying a ticket to watch it in theaters. Disney is wasting their money, this one is pretty likely to flop in China.

- In Thailand, director Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Ploy opened only modestly. However, its first weekend gross has already surpassed the total domestic gross of his last film, Invisible Waves. For a filmmaker associated with the words “arthouse cinema,” I would say that’s pretty good.

- I have honestly seen very few Japanese films that actually have original screenplays. Many of them are adapted from novels (so much that I took a whole class of Japanese films adapted from novels), comics, video games, or continuation of TV dramas. Then again, a bulk of Hollywood films is made the same way. However, Ryuganji points out that it’s getting a little out of hand these days in Japan.

- Elizabeth Banks has signed on to play the young stepmother role in the American remake of A Tale of Two Sisters. I liked her in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but like all American remakes of Asian films, I remain very very skeptical about this.

- China is getting ready to fight back at the United States after they filed two cases against China with the World Trade Organization. However, with the complaint, China is now less likely to open up its film market any quicker just to get on Hollywood’s nerves.

On the other hand, the EU is warning that it will “go to trade war” with China if they don’t improve cracking down on piracy. Who needs who more these days anyway? You try stopping a billion people from making pirated versions of your overpriced goods.

- Meanwhile, Hong Kong seems to have a thing or two to complain about Japan too. TV Asahi showed its made-for-TV biopic of Asian superstar Teresa Tang on June 2nd, which was shown simultaneously in Hong Kong as well. Since Tang did spend a huge chunk of her career in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong press would naturally put how the Japanese portray Hong Kong under a lot of scrutiny. As a result, Ming Pao had a field day pointing out how much the show screwed up:

1) The movie starts in 1973, when a Japanese talent manager discovered Tang in Hong Kong still under British colonial rule. Yet, the Hong Kong Special Administraive Region flag was seen at the location, instead of the colonial flag.
2) In the scenes that take place during the 80s, the Bank of China Tower (built in 1989) and the International Finance Center (built in 2003) were seen in the background from the Peak.
3) The Murray House was not restored in Stanley, where Tang lived, until 1998. However, it appeared in the film’s 80s scenes as well.

There are a bunch of other nitpicks in that report as well. While I can’t blame Ming Pao for nitpicking (”ha ha! Japanese TV crews suck just as much!”), TV Asahi just didn’t have the money to reproduce all these historical locations with cgi. Plus, it’s not like Hong Kong productions are very good at conveying foreign locations either.

- Disney has signed a deal with an Indian studio to produce several computer-animated features aimed for the region. No word on whether Disney will ever plan to release these films outside the region.

- Ryuganji also has news on upcoming and ongoing projects from Miki Satoshi, all of them starring Joe Odagiri. He also adds on another upcoming Odagiri project as well. It’s all a little complicated, you should go read it yourself, since Joe Odagiri may soon be the male version of Erika Sawajiri. These Japanese stars just never rest.

- Andy Lau really is the hardest working man in Chinese entertainment: When he’s done filming Daniel Lee’s historical epic this month, he’ll do a cameo for a Focus Films production that he’s investing in, then an album and concert tour. All by the end of the year.

- Considering that the film will be entirely in English, it’s so surprise that there’s an English website up for Takeshi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django. However, the trailer remains on the original website, so just go to Twitch instead of getting confused.

Jason Gray also reports that Quentin Tarantino showed up in Japan at the end of the shoot to film his cameo, which would explain why he was not in the trailer and why he showed up at the wrap-up ceremony.

- Do we really need an Asian version of Oprah? Apparently someone thought so.

- Lastly, Tokyograph left a comment yesterday with more about Tea Fight, starring Erika Toda. They had this to say:

“About “Tea Fight” - there actually is a director named, but I know nothing about Taiwanese or Chinese names. The Japanese form is ワン・イェミン, which seems to be something like Wang Ye-Ming, but the closest I could find is an actor. The article says the person was an assistant director for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” but none of the credits I could find (imdb or elsewhere) match the name.

Here’s what another article said about the story (roughly): “The father runs an old tea shop, and he closes shop after his wife dies from what he believes to be a ‘tea curse.’ Through the internet, the daughter finds out about a legendary tea and travels to Taiwan in search of it. The father then follows her, concerned that it may be a trap by Taiwanese tea-makers.” There’s also mention of Taiwanese mafia being involved in the story somehow.”

I can’t seem to find the name through various variations on that name either. But still, that’s more than helpful. Thanks!

Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long entry to read and an even longer entry for me to write:

- As expected, Ocean’s Thirteen led the pack on Sunday box office in Hong Kong. On 59 screens (still a fairly high number), Ocean’s Thirteen made HK$1.57 million for a current 4-day total of HK$5.41 million, which puts it just slightly ahead of Ocean’s Twelve, even though Twelve opened only 44 screens. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End slows down by just a bit with HK$1.02 million on 51 screens (a HK$20,000 per-screen average for a film in its third weekend is pretty good in my book) for a 18-day total of HK$38.33 million. It probably won’t hit Spiderman 3’s current gross of HK$54.94 million, but it’ll pass the HK$40 million mark pretty easily.

Meanwhile, Norbits makes a better-than-expected HK$360,000 on 16 screens to get a 4-day total of HK$1.18 million (I guess I was wrong about that), Japanese sports film Rough made only HK$30,000 on 7 screens for a very weak 4-day total of HK$140,000; and British film Cashback continues to be strong in limited release with another HK$60,000 on just 2 screens for an 11-day total of HK$510,000;

- In Japan, the attendance ranking shows Pirates taking the weekend again as 300 opens at second place and the Prestige opens at 5th. Dai Nipponjin also continues strong at 3rd place, as Kantoku Banzai has fallen off the top 10 already. Number crunching to come tomorrow.

On the other hand, Eiga Consultant reports that two limited releases have done quite well in Tokyo. Notes on a Scandal, starring Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench, opened in two theaters on June 2nd and saw 2006 admissions for a 2.78 million yen opening. With nine shows that day for two theaters combined, that’s an average of 223 people per showing, which would be impossible in one theater and a full house in the other (not sure if these theaters offer standing room, which some Tokyo theaters do). Apparently, good word-of-mouth is spreading as it expanded this weekend, though it seems like it didn’t make it into the top 10.

The other movie is Sydney Pollack’s documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry. At one theater in Shibuya, the opening day saw 1500 admissions for 2.32 million yen and full houses of mostly design freaks and art students. However, it seems like attendance has died down, as the theater recommends that getting there 10-30 minutes before the show is fine now.

- In South Korea, Shrek 3 came in and took care of business by opening with 1.6 million admissions since Wednesday, which is a pretty damn good opening by any count. Hwang Jin-Yi isn’t doing so well with just roughly 700,000 admissions since Wednesday. Pirates took another pretty big tumble with only 75,000 admissions in Seoul, although it might end up doing better than Spiderman 3, which only saw 600 admissions in Seoul this week. You can see the rest of the top 10 yourself.

Oh, and Mark Russell went and watched Michael Bay’s “Best Summer Movie You Haven’t Seen Yet” Transformers (By the way, MTV is owned by Viacom. Transformers home studio is Paramount. Also owned by Viacom. See the coincidence?) and he can’t say anything yet, except that he liked it.

- This past week in Japanese TV dramas (see here for all drama introductions), we see the audience favorite Kaette Kita Jikou Keisatsu wrapped up to its highest rating of 13.5, Proposal Daisakusen (or Operation Love) saw its biggest ratings hike from 14.6 in the past week to 19.1 for its 8th episode, nearing the season high of 19.3. It remains the season’s highest-rated drama with an average of 16.8, and will likely to keep its place unless some type of divine intervention comes in. Joudan Janai also continues its slow climb back to respectability with a 12.8 rating, while Sexy Voice and Robo finds another new low with a 6.4 rating as it nears its end within these two weeks. Liar Game, Bambino, and Hotelier also see rebounds this week, as the weakest spring season in years begin to come to a close.

- Erika Toda, currently starring in Liar Game, has been casted in Tea Fight, a Japanese-Taiwanese co-production scheduled to shoot late this year mostly in Taiwan. Not much details on the film (not even director), but I can imagine the film would include tea and/or fighting.

- Apparently Bollywood has so many movies that they needed six hours to pass out all of its awards. The youth film Rang de Basanti, which is seeing its shorter cut released soon, won ten of the 15 cetegories, including best film.

- My favorite Japanese band is probably Love Psychedelico, especially after I saw them in concert back in 2005. At the end of June, they’re finally getting their own “Bokura No Ongaku” special. Considering their 60s Hippie rock influence, I’m not at all surprised that they would invite Yoko Ono. I’m just surprised that she actually agreed.

- Hong Kong’s Big Media Group, which announced its opening during the Hong Kong International Film Festival back in March, has unveiled its initial slate of films. They include mid-budget films by Wilson Yip, Wong Ching-Po, Joe ma, Jingle Ma (no relations), anc Vincent Kok, among others. Their only big-budget production so far is “Another Better Tomorrow, which will not be a remake and is trying to cast both Hong Kong and Korean stars. Except for the whole “Another Better Tomorrow” thing, I really like that they’re trying to do mid-budget productions with new talents, boasting production values instead.

- Still, looks like America thinks it has a thing or two to teach Hong Kong. Actually, I would like to sit in one of these things.

- Twitch laments for Isao Yukisada’s career, although I still think his comparatively subdued handling of a melodrama like Crying Out For Love in the Center of the World is top-notch commercial filmmaking (OK, it’s a little long, but a lot of Japanese films are). Oh, they also have a link to the trailer of his latest film, which seems like a children’s melodrama about building something for space.

- Jason Gray offers his own take on the Matsumoto-vs-Kitano comedian battle after seeing both Kantoku Banzai and Dai Nipponjin. The latter still sounds like quite a film.

- Meanwhile, Hollywood Reporter has finally chimed in with a review of Naomi Kawase’s The Mourning Forest, calling it a slow-moving film that might have worked better as a 30-minute short.

- I’m only reporting this because I know some people that like the Japanese pop collective (it’s too large to just be called a group) AAA. One of its member, Yukari Goto, is leaving the group due to health reasons, and will leave the pop collective with “only” seven members.

- The Shanghai Television is getting underway today, followed by the film festival, and this is the first year that the Shanghai Television Festival is operating on its own, before the actual film festival commences. On the other hand, the film festival will run its first SIFF market, which should do fairly well with the increasing reputation of Chinese films today.

- This is a strange and even somewhat contrived way of marketing a film - Saiyuki, the Japanese bastardiz….re-imagination of the famous Chinese tale Journey to the West, is promoting its film version with a fake cast, including another SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi and pop star Koda Kumi, on its poster.

- Ratings for Japanese animations is dropping overall due to a decreasing number of children, more extracurricular activities, more Wii playing (which is better exercise than watch cartoon anyway), and other reasons that seem to have nothing to do with quality.

- Since I already started following it, I might as well keep reporting it. Netizens in Hong Kong have found a new way to attack Hong Kong’s Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority - by complaining about a porn hyperlink seen on a government website.

- After proving to be a talented actress, Yu Aoi has a chance to prove her worth as a voice actress as the lead in a new high-budget animation special for Fuji Television.

- Twitch has the link to the full trailer for The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia, Rinko Kikuchi’s first Japanese film after her Oscar-nominated performance in Babel. It looks weird.

- After winning the week at the Oricon singles chart last week, L’Arc~en~Ciel announces that they will release one single each month for five months starting August, as well as a new album and a concert DVD.

- Two NHK mini-dramas were recently announced, but the reason we care here is because one of them is a milestone of sorts. The six-episode drama Shanghai Typhoon will be the first NHK drama to have a non-Japanese lead with Taiwanese star Peter Ho. Apparently, he will plays a Chinese exchange student in Japan that will be a romantic interest for the female lead, played by Tae Kimura. According to Ming Pao, it’ll play at the very time slot that the hit Korean drama Winter Sonata played in 3 years ago, and Ho said like Winter Sonata star Bae Yong-Joon brought on the Korean Wave, he hopes to bring in the Chinese Wave. I doubt it, but go for it, Peter.

- The winners of the 44th Grand Bell Awards have been announced (didn’t I just write about the nominees last week?). Family Ties picked up best picture, while The Host still managed to grab best director. My favorite win of the whole award, though, is Ryu Deok-Hwan’s best newcomer award for Like a Virgin. It’s most definitely well-deserved!

- Lovehkfilm has a couple of new reviews, including one for the Hong Kong romantic comedy Single Blog, the “where the hell did that come from” Chinese film Sweet Revenge, and the delightful Japanese girl power music film Linda Linda Linda.

- Speaking of Linda Linda Linda, the songs the girls cover are by the Japanese punk band The Blue Hearts. Two of its members - vocalist Hiroto Komoto and guitarist Masatoshi Mashima - actually went on to form The High-Lows, and since last year, they have been playing as the Cro-Magnons. So even though the Blue Hearts have been broken up for 12 years now, their spirit is still very much alive. Anyway, the Cro-Magnons will be doing their first movie theme for the film Waruboro, though it’s not clear if The High-Low or The Blue Hearts have done any movie themes before.

- Twitch offers us another review of the over-the-top Singaporean horror comedy Men in White, and the conclusion is pretty much the same as last time.

- The Fujimoto prize, which recognizes producers and directors, was recently given in Japan. TBS has now officially shown their strength over Fuji Television as its producers picked up an award for their ten films last year, including the hit films Tears For You and The Sinking of Japan.

- The restructuring Bangkok International Film Festival has announced a preliminary lineup for its competition, which includes the Chinese film Lost in Beijing and two Thai films as well, one of which is Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s latest Ploy.

- The region 1 DVD of Hot Fuzz is coming July 31st!

- It’s getting more and more dangerous to be an otaku these days in Japan, as crimes in Akihabara has gone on the rise after extensive construction to change the face of the electronic town has brought out more otakus than ever. Of course, it seems like another concern would be whether these otakus would do their part to stop crime (that’s two links there at the end).

- The latest trailer for Ping Pong director Fumihiko Sori’s Vexville is up, and it still looks very technically impressive. I might even be tempted into checking this one out.

- As random as it sounds, Korea Pop Wars has some random notes, including the poor start for the hyped historical epic Hwang Jin-Yi. We’ll find out more about Hwang’s weekend in the next few days.

- Jason Gray reports that Japanese director Sabu’s (whose Dead Run I sort of liked) first foreign language film Arrested Memories, which Gray did the English translation for, has been green-lit.

- After a week, there are finally more English reviews of Hitoshi Matsumoto’s deadpan superhero comedy Dai Nipponjin. Variety’s Russell Edwards (who also wrote a too-short review for the film version of Tokyo Tower) calls it tears-down-the-face funny and a genuine jaw-dropping oddity.

Mark Schilling of Japan Times reviewed both Dai Nipponjin and Takeshi Kitano’s Kantoku Banzai, and he declares a clear winner.

It seems like the Western reviewers are really loving Dai Nipponjin, but why is the Japanese audience ripping it to pieces? The most popular film review blog in the Japanese blogosphere gives the film only 915 yen out of a full score of 1800, and 38% of votes at Walkerplus are one star out of five. Perhaps that goes to show that general audience’s disdain for cult films aren’t all that different across cultures.

Japan Times also bashed David Fincher’s Zodiac and praised Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto.

- The Global Film Initiative, a nonprofit distributor of foreign independent films, have announced their awards for six promising film projects from around the world. These funds will provide the filmmakers with a way of paying for their respective films’ post-production, which these independent projects surely need.

- After the United States government squealed to the World Trade Organization about rampant policy in China, the Chinese government is now officially cooperating with the USA by setting in tougher policies and increased raids by customs.

- Meanwhile, the leaders at the G-8 summit are also talking about ways to fight piracy, especially now China is the new whipping boy in the piracy problem. Still, I doubt they actually managed to reach any conclusion except that they need to fight it.

- Twitch has some new posters - one for Benny Chan’s Invisible Targets (which looks like they’re ready to push these pretty boys to get down and dirty with the violence) and one for Alexi Tan’s Blood Brothers.

- The Korean film Failan, the story about a low-life gangster investigating the life of the wife he never met, was a hell of a heartbreaker. Finally someone seems to have appreciated it enough to pick it up for a remake, and the plot seems pretty faithful to the original, too. However, the revenge thing seems to indicated that it might even be more violent.

- Seijun Suzuki’s frequent collaborator Takeo Kimura’s third film (which actually features Suzuki in a seemingly major role) has a first trailer. I haven’t seen any Suzuki film, so I don’t know if this resembles his style or not. But it does remind me of Hitler - A Film From Germany (which you can watch here free and completely legally). That’s not a good thing.

- The trailer for the New York Asian Film Festival is up (thanks to Asian Cinema - While on the Road for the link), and I think in my humble opinion that it’s quite awesome.

That’s it today. We’ll finish up the weekend roundup tomorrow.

I rarely watch a Japanese drama that I was really sorry to see end, but Kekkon Dekinai Otoko (He Who Can’t Marry) has become one of them. It’s a relaxing and charming little show that can best be described as the Japanese version of James L. Brooks’ As Good as It Gets. Hiroshi Abe stars as Shinsuke, a talented 40-year-old architect who thrives on living the good life in solitude - steak for one, followed by a glass of milk and some loud classical music in his unusually large Tokyo apartment. He’s committed to keeping that life of solitude by being generally unkind to everyone he runs across, even his own mother. However, when his all-meat diet causes him a trip to the hospital, Shinsuke finds his life slowly becoming a John Donne meditation. Will he stop being so mean and eccentric? When will the people around up get fed up? And in a society where unmarried 40-year-old man are not seen in a very good light, will he meet his match and finally get married like everyone else?

That’s about the gist of the drama, which plays out more like an American TV show with a mostly episodic structure rather than a serial one. Each episode deals with an aspect of Shinsuke’s lifestyle being questioned (the title of each episode is “So What if I______?!”, and they are often hilarious as they are insightful. The writer also managed to craft one of the most interesting protagonists in recent Japanese drama with Shinsuke, thanks to a great performance by a deadpan Hiroshi Abe. Yui Natsukawa is also great as Natsumi, Shinsuke’s new doctor that makes up the second half of the unlikely couple. Yes, traces of the great As Good as It Gets are apparent - the cute dog (and the dog is REALLY cute), the rude protagonist, and the apartment setting. Still, the whole thing plays much more to a younger urban crowd, as well as the middle age crowd; the Tokyo cityscapes are nicely captured, and if the whole thing doesn’t make you want to live in Tokyo, I don’t know what else can.

I watched this on a Chinese-subtitled DVD bought in Hong Kong by a family member. If I’m not mistaken, an English-subtitled version was shown on Hong Kong TVB Pearl a while back, and the (sadly) unsubtitled DVD from Japan will set you back a good 200 dollars (I really wish Fuji would release their dramas with subtitles like TBS has done in Hong Kong). Still, I encourage you to seek this one out - it’s really the best Japanese drama I’ve seen in the past year.

- Looking at Hong Kong’s Thursday opening day numbers, this weekend is shaping up to be a little more balanced than the month of May. The big opening this week is Steven Soderbergh’s big heist flick Ocean’s Thirteen. On 57 screens (Spiderman 3 opened to double that number in Hong Kong!), the star-studded film made HK$930,000 on its first day (If you put it at Pirate’s ticket price inflation of 30%, that’s about HK$1.2 million). With Pirates already fading away at the opening of its third weekend (HK$440,000 on 53 screens), Ocean’s should do fairly healthy, though unspectacular business over the weekend, probably making about HK$5 million at the end of Sunday, just about on par with Ocean’s Twelve’s opening 2 and a half years ago.

If anyone cares (I sure don’t), Eddie Murphy’s Norbit opened with HK$170,000 on 16 screens. It probably won’t even make HK$1 million by the end of the weekend. Good riddance. Japanese sports comic adaptation Rough (by Nana director Kentaro Otani) opens weak with only HK20,000 on 7 screens. British film Cashback stays strong with HK$30,000 on 2 screens at the start of its second weekend with an 8-day total of HK$360,000. And the only Hong Kong film in the top 10 is Single Blog, taking in just HK$80,000 on 18 screens with the 8-day total of HK$1.84 million.

- As reported on this blog before, Naomi Kawase (director of the Cannes Grand Prix-winning The Mourning Forest) announced at Cannes that her next film will be a romantic comedy. Now more details have emerged that it’ll be shot in Thailand with Japanese drama star Kyoko Hasegawa. According to Ryuganji, just because Kawase is using a major actress for the first time doesn’t mean she’s going to be any easier on Hasegawa. She also wants to be among the ranks of Akira Kuroasawa and Nagisa Oshima as the “Japan’s Kawase” by the next generation and that she’ll win the Palme d’Or next time, though The Daily Yomiuri adds that she said it with a smile, suggesting that she might have just been half joking. Because, you know, I half-joke about winning the Palme d’Or all the time.

- The trouble is over, as Midway has now rejoined the New York Asian Film Festival as a sponsor. However, they are no longer the main sponsor, as Dragon Dynasty has taken that spot while they were gone. Maybe someone can now afford to fly me to New York to cover this as an official assignment for The Golden Rock…

- If you’re in Japan this weekend with limited Japanese ability (being able to read katakana is just fine), then your movie choice this weekend ought to be Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. It’s a hell of a movie I wrote about back in April that’s damn well worth your time. Even the Daily Yomiuri gives it five stars.

- China is suspending the issuing of internet cafe licenses as they do a thorough investigation to make sure the customers are behaving properly, as in they’re not playing violent games, looking up porn, or speaking ill of the nation. In other words, what Americans do on the internet most of the time.

- Tartan has picked up the US rights for Kim Ki-Duk’s latest Breath, starring Cheng Chen. Meanwhile, Kim’s previous film Time will open in New York mid-July.

- In related Tartan news, they also picked up Park Chan-Wook’s I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK and prebought Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, The Bad, and The Weird. Since Tartan originates from the UK, no word if this means that they’ll also be releasing these films through their USA divisions as well.

- BET is sending a weekly version of their countdown show “106&Park” to MTV Japan, further signaling the growing hip-hop culture there.

- In a piece of more serious news, the erotic pages of major Hong Kong newspapers were sent to the Obscene Articles Tribunal recently for classification after some accused the TELA of having a double standard in the classification process, especially in the handling of the Chinese University of Hong Kong student newspaper case. Well, it seems like these erotic pages were classified as category I: Neither obscene nor indecent, which is baffling to me, since they are saying that kids are allowed to read erotic pages of mainstream newspapers without any warning printed on its pages.

Oh, I got it, they must’ve figured out that since Apple Daily, The Sun Daily, Oriental Daily have some of the least credibility among Hong Kong newspapers, no one would take them seriously anyway, right?

More news tomorrow.

There’s so much news from Japan today that this entry might as well be called “Nippon Thursday.”

- Having been one of the top 5 dramas of the 2006 Spring season, Kurosagi is being turned into a feature film. Starring boy band NEWS’ Tomohisa Yamashita (currently in the hit drama Proposal Daisakusen), this will be his first feature film lead role, and the film is scheduled to be released next Spring.

- More on the opening of Kantoku Banzai. It’s 40 million yen opening on 113 screens is merely 72% of Takeshis’, which only made 280 million yen. Just like Takeshis’, the alienating nature of the film will probably mean that word of mouth won’t be good. On the other hand, like Takeshis’, Office Kitano should make its money back through foreign sales.

- Ryuganji has a really interesting commentary on a Japan Times commentary about the state of Japanese films. One is bleak about the state of Japanese films, the other says “hey, it ain’t so bad out here.” Guess which is which.

- One of the filmmakers mentioned in the Japan Times commentary is Cannes winner Naomi Kawase. Thanks to her Cannes win, she was recently able to go to the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry to try and convince the government in helping out the film industry. Why? Because her film is playing on only 28 screens in Japan when it’ll open on 70 of them in France.

- Fans of Hong Kong films in Japan: Milkyway screenwriter Yau Nai-Hoi’s Eye in the Sky is heading your way. Fans of Cheng Chen in North America: The Go Master is heading your way, too, but only if you have Netflix.

- On Monday, I wrote about the successful limited release performance of British film Cashback in Hong Kong. Today, Twitch offers us a trailer, as well as the original short film that led to the feature film. It actually looks pretty good.

- Toho-Towa, a major foreign film distributor in Japan, has signed up to release 14 movies for Universal, including about one film per month in 2008. I thought Universal is already trying their hand at investing Japanese films, but looks like they still need some help from one of the big three.

- Until recent years, martial arts films were actually banned from being made in China. Now that the ban has been lifted, it seems like studios are trying to catch up. Yuen Woo-Ping is rumored to be getting back into the director’s chair after years of working in major films in both Hollywood and China, and it might be a sequel to Iron Monkey starring Andy Lau. Yawn.

- Hollywood Reporter has a review of Memories of Tomorrow, starring Ken Watanabe as an Alzheimer’s patient. The film is due to be shown in different cities around America in the coming months.

- Young singer-songwriter Ayaka (whose first official single was already her first bona-fide hit) is now the first Japanese artist to have a video debut as a world premiere on the iTunes store. No big deal, you say? She’s only the third artist in the world to have such a privilege. Her new single Jewelry Day will be released on July 4th, as her first album will also be sold in 22 regions around the world after already selling over one million copies in Japan alone.

- Professor Bordwell writes about the recent wave of omnibus films, especially the Cannese 60th Anniversary anthology film To Each His Own Cinema.

- I’ve been looking forward to Shoot ‘Em Up since Jeffrey Wells wrote about its development on Hollywood Elsewhere, and now a trailer is finally up. It’s not as crazy as I thought it would be, but considering it’s just a trailer, it looks like quite a bit of fun to me already. But what the hell is a classy lady like Monica Bellucci doing in a film like this?

- Someone is suing Universal and director Judd Apatow because she believes his new hit film Knocked Up, about an up-and-coming reporter having a one-night stand that leads to an unplanned pregnancy, was obviously based on her book, about an up-and-coming reporter’s night at her engagement party that leads to an unplanned pregnancy. This one could go either way.

There’s not much news today, so let’s do a short overdue review:

Took a bit of time to check out Kinji Fukasaku’s classic gangster film Battle Without Honor or Humanity. The 99-minute epic (which easily packs a story double its length) opens right after World War II, where Japan is a recovering nation out of control. We’re introduced to at least 5 characters who would play important roles in the narrative later on. If you’re not taking notes, then just follow one guy: Hirono (played by Bunta Sugawara), whose rise in the syndicates is probably the closest thing to a central plot. As the film rolls along, we are treated to subplots about internal yakuza feuds, assassinations, betrayals - all done in a pseudo-documentary style that tells so much story that even a narrator is needed. And don’t worry if you don’t remember the names, you’ll know who dies from the matter-of-fact on-screen texts.

Needless to say, Battle Without Honor or Humanity can be brutal, but if you can manage to follow Hirono’s storyline, you’ll be treated to an engaging, powerful, and even somewhat affecting story of a man trying live by the code, only to realize his world is changing even before he entered it. The style is revolutionary (almost always shot with a handheld camera at canted angles), and the action is refreshingly real, even though the handheld camera seems to be foreshadowing the current way of shooting action scenes far too closely. If you’re a fan of triad films (I honestly believe the Young and Dangerous series from Hong Kong learned a thing or two from here) or gritty gangster flicks, then this is the one to watch. What a classic.

- Before doing the regular news stuff, another outward shout to Tokyograph, who mentioned The Golden Rock in their blog. They’ve been providing translated Japanese entertainment news that’s certainly far more trustworthy than this blogger’s own translations (trust me, my Japanese isn’t that good), and will remain a very important source of news for all interested in Japanese entertainment. My e-hat is off to you, Tokyograph.

- Time for a look at the Oricon music charts this week. The singles chart is livening up a little bit, as L’Arc~en~Ciel’s latest single sells 112,000 copies to debut at number 1. Aiko follows not too close behind with her latest, selling 70,000 copies at number 2. Chihiro Onitsuka’s comeback single everyhome debuts only at number 9 with 18,800 copies sold. Even more depressing is Aya Ueto’s latest, selling only 8900 copies for a 17th place debut. Next week, expect Kat-Tun to rule the charts.

As reported by the Japan Times, the solo “group” ZARD’s albums are seeing a sales surge following the accidental death of lead singer Izumi Sakai last week. While Mariya Takeuchi’s latest album rules the album chart for the second week in a row by selling 76,000 copies, ZARD’s last album, the compilation Golden Best ~ 15th Anniversary, jumped all the way back up to 3rd place with 41,000 copies sold. Their 1999 compilation also jumped back up to 18th place with 8,400 copies sold. Don’t be surprised if their record company decides to release more compilations in the future. Meanwhile, American pop artist Rihanna fails to duplicate the recent success of other American albums with her latest album, debuting only at 8th place with 24,700 copies sold. Looking at the daily rankings, don’t be surprised if the ZARD compilation shows up on the top 10 again next week.

- Korea Pop Wars is providing us with a mini-version of the box office charts this week, so let’s do some analysis ourselves. This week, seems like Pirates took a 63% drop in Seoul admissions, while Secret Sunshine saw a significant increase in Seoul, probably thanks to Jeon Do-Yeon’s win at Cannes. I was also surprised to see Confessions of Pain debuting at third place, even though it seemed to have done not as well outside of Seoul. Anyway, seems like Pirates is following somewhat close behind Spiderman, and both films will probably pass the 5 million mark.

- The first English review for Takeshi Kitano’s Kantoku Banzai (Glory to the Filmmaker) is out, and with a 3.4 stars out of 5…..I guess it’s good, right?

- Twitch has a link to two more fragmented trailers to Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights. In line with the episodic structure of the film, the first trailer, released just before Cannes, showed the Jude Law subplot, while the second trailer is about Rachel Weisz’s subplot, and the third trailer is on Natalie Portman’s. It still looks pretty, but I’m not so sure about Portman’s country accent myself. By the way, you have to click on the French yellow button under that poster of Wild Hogs to get to the trailers.

- Japanese TV just seems to get in trouble all the time - this time it’s TBS employees trying to put microphones on participants of an amateur golf tournament just to pick up what the new golf teen sensation Ryo Ishikawa is saying. TBS has since apologized for making the request, which was obviously denied.

- After a bit of rescheduling and whatnot, the New York Asian Film Festival finally announces its lineup, and it’s looking real good (so good that I wish I can fly to New York for it).

Looking even better is Japan Society’s own film festival Japan Cuts, which has quite a lineup this year as well, some of which is part of the New York Asian Film Festival.

- I first picked it up here, which somewhat wrongly translated the article. John Cameron Mitchell’s controversial film Shortbus is finally making its way to Japan, but not without a few modifications. According to the director, he personally supervised the placing of mosiac at 100 different places for the Japanese theatrical release due to the watchdog Eirin, who is basically the MPAA of Japan. Still, it’s not exactly the kiss of death, because unlike America, about 100 films are rated R-18 each year, including American Beauty. In fact, this news might even attract more people to see Shortbus in its limited run. Then again, Eirin is kind of weird, because even a violent war film like Letters of Iwo Jima got away with a general rating, while Flags of Our Fathers was a PG-12.

- Because of the size, there are essentially only two free TV stations in Hong Kong - TVB and ATV. They each run a main channel with Chinese programming and another channel mainly for English and foreign television shows. TVB pretty much takes up about 80% of viewership, which in American standards would make them NBC, CBS, ABC, and maybe even FOX combined, while ATV is like the CW with maybe the crappy side of FOX. This means ATV is only struggling to stay alive so TVB doesn’t get sued for monopoly. Lucky for ATV, they just got themselves a new investor. However, and this is from Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily rather than Variety Asia, the Cha family is known for their support of the Mainland Chinese communist government. With that in mind, there was an internal memo issued that promised ATV’s staff that despite the new investor’s political affiliations, freedom of speech and unbiased new reporting will continue to be upheld. And I say I’ll believe it when I see it.

- Good news for Orange Range fans (I am not one of them, by the way) - the Okinawan version of Limp Biskit is putting out two new albums this summer. Bad news for Orange Range fans - they are both compilation albums - one is a singles collection, and the other is a compilation of “fan favorites.”

- Election and Triad Election is heading to LA this weekend, so do go check it out. Me, I missed out on its one-week San Francisco engagement because they played it in a kind of inconvenient location, considering where I live, and they only showed Triad Election without the first film.