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.
As much as we would like to provide daily coverage of the so-called Edison-Bobo-Gillian-Cecilia incident on the Golden Rock, you’re better off checking out the coverage of the media coverage over at the always-informative EastSouthWestNorth.
- It’s Oricon charts time! On the singles chart, artists whose singles usually debut on top failed to do so this week, as Ketsumeishi and Koda Kumi could only secure 2nd and 4th place debuts. Meanwhile, the group Radwimps got their first number 1 single instead.
On the albums chart, ZARD can still hit the number one with a new compilation put together by fan votes (ZARD may be the new Tupac in Japan). Meanwhile TVXQ couldn’t repeat their success on the single charts with a 4th place debut.
- As expected, Eiga Consultant did analyze the opening of Yoji Yamada’s Kaabei. However, Mr. Texas compared its opening with star Sayuri Yoshinaga’s previous film Kita No Zero Nen instead of Yoji Yamada’s previous films. Anyway, Kaabei’s opening was at 65% of Kita No Zero Nen’s opening, which led to a total gross of 2.7 billion yen. However, Kaabei is not a spectacle-filled historic epic, and may end up having longer legs than it. Still, the lack of Kimura Takuya means it probably won’t make as much money as Love and Honor did.
- Korean actor Choi Min-Shik, who reportedly declared that he would not be doing any more film work until the screen quota was restored, has signed up to be in a film. He will be playing a company director who takes his Nepalese worker’s remains back to the Himalayas in a yet-to-be-titled film. I don’t think he was doing it for money, either: the film is only budgeted at $500,000.
- Meanwhile, things don’t look too well for Korean films, as a new report claims that an average Korean film lost 1.9 million in 2007, with nearly 80% of its revenue made from theatrical release, signaling a fairly weak home video market.
- This is kind of an old news worth reporting, seeing this is a Hong Kong film website and all: Mei Ah, one of the big investors of relatively new Hong Kong film distributor Big Media, has sold most of its stakes to a Mainland Chinese investor. However, Mei Ah will still handle distribution and acquire their films for their TV channels.
- It’s Oricon charts time! This week, the Korean boy band TVXQ managed to become the first foreign male artist to score a number one song on the singles chart by selling 40,000 copies of their latest single. The girl group Perfume is not far behind at 3rd place, and I wonder if them being human clocks have anything to do with it. Meanwhile, The Bank Band owned the albums chart, while Kobukuro’s latest album has already passed the million mark (I should probably buy a copy somewhere to see what the big deal is).
6. The Tokyo Trial: HK$8,420
5. Fear Factors: HK$7,740
4. Lethal Angels: HK$3,630
3. Sweet Revenge: HK$3,255
2. Fight For Love: HK$1,620
1. Bar Paradise: roughly HK$540
In perspective: HK$7.8=US$1
In perspective, part 2: Hong Kong’s lowest-grossing foreign film in 2007 was My Wife is A Gangster 3, but it still grossed HK$15,000.
- This past weekend, Japan Times reviewed the new indie film Don’t Laugh At My Romance (Trailer here), starring L himself Kenichi Matsuyama. Opening at one theater in Tokyo, the film saw full houses almost at every single show during opening weekend, making 4.03 million yen at that theater alone, with the male-female audience ratio at 1:9 during the day and a large number of audience in their 30s and couples showing up. Its nationwide expansion will now likely be quickened.
- The Blue Ribbon Awards winners have been announced, with the dark comedy Kisaragi taking best film, though Masayuki Suo did end up taking home best director for I Just Didn’t Do It, which also won best actor.
- No Japanese box office numbers yet, but we now know that Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd made a killing (ha ha!) at the box office, making 398 million yen from 400 screens on its opening weekend. Warner Bros. expects the film to make about 3 billion yen, nearly matching the film’s box office gross in the US.
- Turns out Atonement will not be the first film released in China at the end of the Hollywood blackout. Instead, the family film The Water Horse will beat it to the punch by opening a week earlier on February 16th.
- Under “let’s make up a story out of tragedy for ratings” news today, Fuji Television will bring to the small screen a documentary drama about a heroic policeman who died while saving a woman who was trying to commit suicide at the train tracks.
- Taiwanese music charts time! This week, 7 new albums entered the top 20, pushing out quite a few albums. Amazingly, Aska Yang’s new album debuts on top with nearly 23% of total sales, followed by Wang Yue Xin taking up 6.79% of sales, and Rene Liu’s latest follows him closely at third place with 5.22%. Meanwhile, last week’s leaders Fahrenheit and Ayumi Hamasaki see huge drops to 11th place (with 1.21% of sales) and 8th place (with 1.37% of sales), respectively.
- Kaiju Shakedown has a link to the Zhang Yuan arrest video. To those who haven’t kept up: Chinese 6th generation director Zhang Yuan was not only arrested in his home for using drugs, his arrest was also captured on camera by a CCTV crew, and used as a story to warn people that China is taking a zero tolerance policy towards drugs ahead of the Olympics. Of course, only with a camera crew would cops start moralizing to people they arrest about using drugs.
- The blackout of foreign films in China is just about ready to end (If you don’t count the limited release of The Pursuit of Happyness), with the British film Atonement to open on February 22nd. However, the film has reportedly been edited to make it suitable for all audiences in China. What did they take out, the war?
Looks like Earth’s opening was actually pretty huge. From 275 screens, the nature documentary made 349 million yen, and will definitely have no trouble hitting the 1 billion yen mark. This being a holiday weekend, no film on the top 10 except Tamagotchi took a real huge drop. The third place opener Giniro no Season probably did not report its numbers, which threw off the top 10 a little bit, and the pseudo-Western drama The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford opens outside the top 10 with 23.7 million yen from 69 screens.
By the way, Tsubaki Sanjuro finally made 1.05 billion yen after 7 weekends. I knew you could do it, Oda-san!
It’s all because of the horses!
- Time for this week’s Oricon charts. On the singles side, the pop group AAA got their first number 1 single, though it only sold 25,000 copies, narrowing beating this year’s Kohaku favorite Sugimoto Masato. On the album side, even a full week couldn’t lift Ayumi Hamasaki’s latest album back up to the top spot, letting Kobukuro maintain their number 1 for another week.
- Two pieces of news from Hong Kong newspapers, one with a link, and one without:
The Pang Brothers-directed Storm Riders sequel is now set to shoot next month not only with original stars Ekin Cheng and Aaron Kwok (so THAT’S why the Pangs have been casting them lately!), but also with Twin’s Charlene Choi and Nicholas Tse signed up for supporting roles. The team will go to the Cannes market in May.
(From Oriental Daily)
Screenwriter Ivy Ho is working on her directorial debut, starring Ekin Cheng and Karena Lam.
(From Apple Daily)
- Lust, Caution has lost its chances at winning a best foreign film Oscar. Then again, it has plenty of company, as heavy favorites such as Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, and Persepolis all did not make the final 9-film short list. On the other hand, Kazakhstan’s Mongol, starring Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano, did end up on the shortlist.
- An interesting discovery today that borders on lame. A Hong Kong cram school commercial that parodies the CJ7 teaser with a guy walking around a dump looking for A’s. Isn’t it a little too early to be parodying it already?
- Another Asian film is heading to Berlin. This time it’s Shin Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden, the omnibus film co-directed by Momoru Oshii along with five other directors. I didn’t even know it opened in Japan already.
- This week, a new music chart to cover: The Taiwan G-Music chart, which makes up the retail sales of three retail chains in Taiwan. It’s updated every Friday night, so I’ll be covering them in the weekend entries.
This week, three debuts lead the charts: The new album from Taiwanese boy band Fahrenheit gets 10% of total sales, Japanese diva Ayumi Hamasaki’s latest takes up 6.7%, and another boy band 5566’s latest album takes up 4.4% of total sales. Last week’s winner, TV-made boy band Lollipop (yes, I do have Channel V at home), drops down to 4th place this week with only 4% of total sales. Hong Kong-based Mandarin artist Khalil Fong’s first album in Taiwan actually went up one spot this week from a quiet 16th place debut last week, making up 0.92% of total sales (up from 0.84 % last week).
- The Hong Kong press is reporting today that Lust, Caution will not be going uncut in Japan. With strict laws about showing the pubic regions, Ang Lee’s erotic drama will go still out with an R-18 rating (no one under 18 admitted), despite suffering 6 cuts that include the now-infamous shot of Tony Leung and shots where pubic hair can be seen. While they don’t really kill the impact of the film (I suspect some shots will simply cut before it reaches the offending regions), it’s sad when any film cannot be shown in their entirety.
Source: Oriental Daily (no link), Apple Daily (who inexplicably link it with a story about the WGA awards. Maybe they ran out of space in the paper)
- In box office news, I want to correct my earlier report that Trivial Matters only made HK$2.37 million. A friend corrected me that it had made HK$3.33 million when it dropped out of the top 10. Also, some theaters previously showing the horror flop Yes, I Can See Dead People are now taking it off screens and replacing it back with more showings of Pang’s omnibus comedy. Hell, I didn’t even expect it to be playing after two weeks, which makes me happy that it’s enjoying good enough word-of-mouth to have such legs after the crowded Christmas market.
A fairly short entry today, since this blogger is still recovering from the trauma that was Johnnie To’s Linger.
- Though To’s latest Linger is not likely to see any festival play, another seemingly finished film of his (I say seemingly because he’s been shooting the damn thing for years), Sparrow, will be heading to the competition section of the Berlin Film Festival. Another Asian film heading there is Yoji Yamada’s latest Kabei. The festival will run from February 7th to the 17th, and this blog will of course follow any news from the festival.
- Japanese film magazine Kimema Junpo has announced their list of the top 10 films of 2007. To no one’s surprise, films like Soredemo Boku wa Yattenai (”I Just Didn’t Do It) and Sad Vacation are on the list, but one inclusion that did surprise me is the quiet comedy-drama Shaberedomo Shaberedomo, which I reviewed here. I thought Sakuran is a more accomplished film (Despite its weakness in storytelling), but I guess they’re a conservative bunch.
It was also good to see Zodiac and Babel on the foreign films list as well.
- The year’s first Oricon charts see the “Kohaku effect,” as songs there were feature in the annual musical showcase tend to enjoy a boost in sales afterwards. Only one of the top 3 singles is actually new, and the other two were favorites of this year’s show (I know, because my mother called all the way from America during my trip to ask me to pick up the Masato Sugimoto single). Even Kobukuro’s Tsubomi, which was released in March last year, saw it being boosted back up to the top 20.
The other big news of the charts is Ayumi Hamasaki’s latest album making only a second place debut behind Kobukuro’s album, though the 20,000-copy loss may be because the album was released on New Year’s day.
- Lust, Caution has been placed in Top Ten Hall of Shame by America’s Women Film Critics Circle. Specifically, it’s there because of its depiction of: “Adam and Eve in Old Shanghai. Female-assisted destruction of a nation while falling in love with torturer/rapist.” At least now Ang Lee can’t complain that it didn’t win anything in America.
- A random search on Youtube have led me to the final trailer for Stephen Chow’s CJ7. While the voiceover is in English, the dialogue are all Cantonese. For some reason, I’m not quite excited about this one. Maybe it’s the over-reliance on special effects, though Kung-Fu Hustle suffered from that as well.
- Someone who attended one of the early screenings for Lawrence Lau’s new film Besieged City (his first since My Name Is Fame) submitted a review to Kaiju Shakedown. The review starts off promising (the writer gave it a standing ovation at the screening), but then ultimately decides that he/she doesn’t really like it. Ouch.
- Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul might have been bullied around by the Thai government last year for his film Syndromes and a Century, but no government censorship is going to keep a man down, as he has produced a short video on Youtube called Prosperity for 2008.
A little over a year ago, I started a small blog on Blogger as a random news blog, highlighting random going-ons of Asian films and box office numbers. Eventually, the daily posts, which used to only share news that share a common theme, got longer and longer. Then it simply became what is now The Golden Rock: An (almost) daily news aggregation blog really inspired by the old daily news post by Japan Probe.
Slowly, the blog began getting attention from those who cover the same field such as Jason Gray, Don Brown (of Ryuganji), Kaiju Shakedown’s Grady Hendrix, and of course, my boss at lovehkfilm, who has been a great enough supporter to make this blog legit by bringing it on board this site. For this past year’s support, I thank all these people, plus my average of 100 daily readers and those who have commented, sincerely from the bottom of my heart.
And so I ask myself, what are my goals for this upcoming year?
- Continue developing the right format for the blog, which is an ongoing process.
- Try and stay grammatically correct in every entry. That’s reaching a little bit.
- Update the spin-off more often. That might not happen until I’m out of school.
- More picture posts. People like pictures.
- Write entries more efficiently. Aggregating news means I would waste time looking at other sites while I’m writing.
- Now that there’s no more podcast (no time), bring back the Best of the Week entries.
And of course, I’ll think of some more as the year goes by. As they say in Japan: 今年もよろしくお願いします！ (if someone can translate that in English, that’d be great).
And now, more random discoveries in Japan that I forgot to cover last time:
Don’t mistaken this as an actual sequel for Bae Yong-Joon’s (or Yong-sama) classic drama Winter Sonata. It’s actually an ad for a new pachinko machine (the steel marble game). I guess to attract more housewives to pachinko parlor?
A picture of the blogger with his own blog. No, seriously, I got it at a temple on New Years day and just don’t feel like eating it.
And then there’s the biggest discovery of the trip: The ass-biting bug (this is a PG-13 blog, so forget the kid-friendly names). I first discovered this catchy and addictive tune at a display in the “practical life store” Tokyu Hands, where this song was playing on loop:
It has no real melody, it has a bug that bites people’s asses, and he even goes under the waterfall training seen in The Storm Riders.
So of course I had to buy one for myself.
Because really, how can you not like a bug that bites asses to bring people closer together? Thank you, NHK.
Just in case you haven’t had enough, here’s a live version:
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