- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! Muri Na Renai (the drama about the 60-year-old man in love with a woman 25 years younger) continues its freefall with a drop to 6.9% rating in the previous episode (we’ll talk about the latest episode next week(. Meanwhile, the Yu Aoi-led drama Osen drops quite a bit in its second week to an 8.7% rating. Last Friends continues to perform strongly, as its ratings went up to a 15.9% again for its 4th episode. However, it’s still the third installment of Gokusen that’s winning the season, though its ratings fell again for the second week in a row, now down to a 23.3%, although the Golden Week holidays may have something to do with it. Another freefalling drama to watch out for is Ryokiteki na Kanojo (aka the drama adaptation of Korean film My Sassy Girl), whose rating dropped by another 2.8% to only an 8.7% for its third episode.

Japanese drama info at Tokyograph.

- It’s Japan music charts time! On the Oricon charts, Koichi Domoto, under the name of his character in the movie Sushi Ouji got the number one single. Shuchishin (what is the big deal with these guys?) continue their stand at #2, beating all the other new releases of the week.

Meanwhile, Madonna topped the album charts with her latest album, as the other new release, the Sushi Ouji soundtrack barely got on the chart.

More at Tokyograph.

Meanwhile, the more comprehensive Billboard Japan 100 charts put British artist Leona Lewis’s “Bleeding Love” at the top and Hata Motohiro at 2nd place, with the latter due to radio play. Since the Billboard charts have different criteria such as radio play and surveying possibly a different number of stores, it’s interesting to see the different ways of gauging musical popularity.

Also, Thelma Aoyama’s hit single “Soba Ni Iru Ne” is now the top single of 2008…so far.

- No Japanese box office numbers yet, but different reports are coming in about Aibou’s phenomenal opening. Over the 5-day holiday weekend, the drama adaptation already racked up over 1.2 billion yen, and its attendance figures is at 150% of YAMATO’s opening, although I don’t think YAMATO opened on an extended weekend such as this.

report from Tokyograph.

report from Variety Asia.

- Hollywood Reporter’s Maggie Lee has a review of Daniel Lee’s Three Kingdoms - Resurrection of the Dragon. What, no mention of Maggie Q’s “when my men battle, I rock the ancient guitar” routine?

- The troubled Bangkok Film Festival is back this year, but it’s now been shifted from July to September, and it will probably be part of the new Bangkok Entertainment Expo, modeled after the successful Hong Kong Entertainment Expo.

- Question: How the hell do you pull off a concept single with “vivid” as a concept?

- Grady Hendrix looks at what’s wrong with Korean films this year just from looking at the trailer for The Legendary Libido.

- Under “your daily Edison Chen news” today, actor/director Stephen Fung confirmed that his latest film Jump is currently stuck in limbo while awaiting approval from China’s SARFT. Also, he said that he did not cut one frame of Edison’s role in the film.

- Lastly, Nippon Cinema gives us a look at just how hard it is to promote a blockbuster film in Japan these days.

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- It was a public holiday in Hong Kong on Thursday opening day, so the box office gross were fairly high.Iron Man, which opened on April 30th here, had a pretty big May Day with HK$2.6 million from 57 screens for a 2-day total of HK$4.09 million. It should have no problem with hitting that HK$10 million mark by the end of the weekend. Another film with an impressive per-screen average is the period drama The Other Boleyn Girl, which made HK$254,000 from just 6 screens on its opening day. There’s also the Japanese film Mari and Her Three Puppies, which made HK$772,000 from 22 screens (with only one playing the original Japanese version). Wong Jing’s latest My Wife is a Gambling Maestro got past the HK$10,000 per-screen average as well with HK$371,000 from 27 screens on opening day. Hell, even crocodile thriller Rogue made HK$73,000 from 7 screens. Sadly, Lawrence Lau’s Besieged City made only HK$38,000 from 6 screens.

- It’s Oricon charts time! Korean boy band TVXQ’s latest single debuts on top yet again, with male trio Shuchishin staying at 2nd place. Meanwhile, Arashi’a latest album tops the albums chart, with Bennie K’s compilation debuting far behind at 2nd place.

More over at Tokyograph.

- On the heels of L For Love, L For Lies‘ success, writer/director Patrick Kong is already shooting his next film, though with the cast of Alice Tzeng and Andy On instead of Stephy Tang and Alex Fong Lik-Sun. Is he trying to move into auteur territory here?

- In related news, Stephy Tang has just started work on her latest film, a Chan Hing-Ka-directed comedy in which she plays an underwear inspector. The film also features Ronald Cheng, Andy On (the man’s got a lot of work lately), and the Shine Boys. Didn’t Chan Hing-Ka already make a comedy about underwear?

- Japanese newspaper Nikkan Sports have been revealing the winners for their yearly drama Grand Prix all week. Here are the winners:

Best Drama: Yukan Club
Best Actor: Jin Nakaishi - Yukan Club
Best Actress: Maki Horikita - Hanazakari no Kimitachi e
Best Supporting Actor: Shuichi Nakatsu - Hanazakari no Kimitachi e
Best Supporting Actress: Yu Kashii - Yukan Club

Be sure to remember that the winners were voted by the general public, and both these dramas feature popular idols. This means the result may not reflect the true quality of these shows.

- Organizers at the Cannes Film Festival have announced Blindness, the latest from City of God director Fernando Meirelles, as the opening film. This marks the first time a Japanese film has been selected as the opening film at Cannes because the film is actually a co-production between Brazilian, Canadian, and Japanese production companies. It also features Japanese actors Yoshino Kimura and Yusuke Iseya. Jason Gray has more details about the co-production deal.

- Under “various Korean film news” today, Twitch has a teaser for King and the Clown director Lee Jun-i’s latest Sunny, about a Korean woman who joins the entertainment troupe to find her husband fighting in the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, a Korean dance group will join the production of the latest Hollywood teen-oriented dance movie Hype Nation, with 60% of the film to be shot in South Korea. Tezza director Choi Dong-Hoon is now working on a big-budget superhero film. Lastly (because it’s only somewhat related), the horribly-titled multi-national martial arts film Laundry Warriors has wrapped filming.

- Emperor Motion Pictures hasn’t really had it hit in a while, so I’m just wondering, where did they get the money to finance in a major Hollywood production?

- In a recent visit to The University of Southern California, Chinese director Feng Xiaogang talks about how much he hated Forbidden Kingdom. These are his words translated (original Chinese text from Apple Daily):

“The film’s story itself is already problematic. It’s a mess. I just couldn’t keep watching. I don’t know why it’s doing so well at the American box office. I would not dumb down something to simply please the American audience. ”

I didn’t like the film either, but dyamn!

- Let’s look at Hong Kong Thursday opening day box office. Forbidden Kingdom had a huge opening day, making HK$1.03 million from 47 screens. Of course, the fact that over 90% of the screens playing it are the Cantonese-dubbed version helps boost the gross. Barbara Wong’s sequel to Sixth Floor Rear Flat debuts rather flat with just HK$270,000 from 30 screens and will have to look for a big boost over the weekend from the kids. Somehow, small romance ensemble film Love is Elsewhere made its way to third place with HK$107,000, beating Chocolate by about HK$2,000. The Hollywood comedy Over Her Dead Body opened with just HK$55,000 from 10 screens. More on Monday with the full chart.

-It’s Taiwan music charts time! Victor Wong’s latest album tops the chart in its first week, taking up 9.14% of total sales;Nicholas Teo’s compilation debuts at second place with roughly 5% of total sales; Korean boy band Shinhwa debuts at 4th place with 2.17%; Jordan Chan’s album drops from 8th place to 20th place in its second week, and Jeff Chang’s album didn’t see much improvement in its second week either.

- More on John Woo’s Red Cliff in today’s Ming Pao. Most importantly, the big battle scenes seen in the first trailer will be in the second film coming later this year rather than the first part coming out in July. According to the report, the first film will mostly set up the relationships while the second film will deliver the action.

- Variety’s John Hopewell writes more about the Asian selections at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, or the lack thereof.

- Ai Kago, most famous for being kicked out of Japanese pop collective Morning Musume, is back in show business and has announced that she will be in a Hong Kong film, even though she herself doesn’t know anything about the movie yet.

- Saitama, known as a “commute prefecture” where people who work in Tokyo live, is a prefecture I’ve frequented quite a bit in my recent trips to Japan, and it’s also the only prefecture that hasn’t been the setting for a NHK morning drama. Now it’ll be the setting of the network’s 60th morning drama, Tsubasa.

- Ming Pao also reports that producer Raymond Wong is planning to bring back the traditional Lunar New Year movie with All’s Well, Ends Well ‘09. It’ll be directed by Vincent Kuk with Sandra Ng and Raymond Wong on the cast so far. Producers are reportedly wooing Louis Koo for a major role as well.

- It’s Oricon charts time! As expected, Ayumi Hamasaki’s latest single tops the singles chart in its debut week, but only beating out the male group Shuchishin by only about 5,000 copies in sales (in fact, the Billboard 100 Japan tells the opposite story; more in a bit). Zard (aka Japan’s Tupac) sees her latest release debut at 3rd place. Meanwhile, YUI’s latest album debuts at first place on the album chart, while Hideaki Tokunaga’s box set debuts at 6th place.

More over at Tokyograph.

On the Billboard 100 Japan, Shuchishin takes the top spot purely based on sales alone, which would make it probably a rare occurrence in which the Billboard sales chart is in discrepancy with the Oricon sales chart. The Billboard 100 also count foreign singles (thanks to the radio airplay chart), so foreign acts such as The Hoosiers and Leona Lewis found themselves on the top 10 of the Billboard 100.

- Japan Zone introduces the next wannabe big R&B female singer in Japan, and she is Miho Fukuhara. But watching her video, she only seems like this year’s version of Ayaka more than her own thing.

- Twitch has a 5-minute preview of Tran Ahn Hung’s international thriller I Come With the Rain. I’m really surprised how good it looks and how much my expectation just shot up for this movie.

- I think I just found new plans tomorrow: Bandai just opened their first Asian game center in Hong Kong that will feature games that have not been released outside of Japan.

- This might get messy: A Korean production company signed a deal with a Japanese production company to make a live-action adaptation of the Japanese comic Captain Harlock. However, the comic’s creator has come out saying that he did not approve the film even though he knows about it. So what now? Lawsuits? Boycotts?

- It’s reviews time! Both from Hollywood Reporter today. First, Stephen Farber has his review of Forbidden Kingdom, which he claims “won’t enthrall anyone over 16.” Oh dear.

Then, Maggie Lee offers her review of Peter Chan’s award-winning The Warlords, though with a reported running time of 110 minutes, I suspect that it’s the non-director-approved international cut that Chan mentioned several months ago. Caution: it’s the cut that will be playing at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

- I only link this because I’m a fan: Japundit has a link to a very good interview with my favorite author Haruki Murakami.

- Japanese documentary filmmaker Tatsuya Mori writes an editorial in the Asahi Shimbun about the dangers of self-censorship, especially with the recent controversy about the documentary Yasukuni.

First, more news from the wrapping Hong Kong Filmart:

- The American economy is on its way down, but the Asian film industry says it ain’t got nothing to do with them.

- After 11 years, Filmart is now a viable launching pad for Chinese blockbusters, though the Chinese censoring body has spoiled the party for everyone. Sylvia Chang revealed herself to Oriental Daily that the film that was told to re-apply as an import rather than a co-production.

- Professor David Bordwell writes about the films he’s seen and the people he’s met at this year’s events.

- One of the events at Filmart is the Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum, and Pang Ho-Cheung has won top Hong Kong Project award again this year for his proposed project The Bus (However, his other two awarded projects appear yet to be made).

- Bey Logan says Japanese movies should open themselves up to the world so that they can survive when the bubble bursts. I have my own doubts about the need for that.

- Twitch’s Todd Brown roams and share the promos he’s seen at the film market.

- Variety’s Grady Hendrix also shares info about the promos he’s seen at the film market.

- In fact, I waited so long to post this entry that Hollywood Reporter has already posted their wrap-up of the market.

And now, some number crunching:

- Japanese box office numbers have come out, showing that Enchanted scored a fairly huge opening (more on that later). Also, the other three family films on the top 10 (not counting The Golden Compass) dropped fairly little between 24.7% to 32% or so.

Oscar winner No Country For Old Men made 43.46 million yen from 41 screens on its opening weekend, which is damn good. It’s so good that it’s actually 152% of the opening for An Inconvenient Truth (which I’m sure is an inconvenient truth for that film’s distributor. Yes, I know it’s a bad pun).

Actually, Enchanted’s reported opening also includes last weekend’s preview screenings, so the 583 million yen gross isn’t exactly a three-day gross. However, Eiga Consultant did compare it with Ratatouille, which had the same release pattern. Turns out Enchanted still comes out on top, opening at 107% of the Pixar film’s gross.

- It’s Japanese music charts time! The Oricon and the Billboard Hot 100 charts are fairly similar, except Tetsuro Yamashita’s single got a bit of a bump on the Billboard because of its high position on the Radio Airplay chart. On the singles chart, Johnny’s Kanjani takes the top spot, as Namie Amuro’s latest stays fairly behind at 2nd, though it sold quite well. On the album chart, Kou Shibasaki’s compilation wins the day, while Ken Hirai scores a second place debut with his latest.

More over at Tokyograph.

- Doraemon has been picked as Japan’s animation ambassador, which I think it’s pretty damn cool as a lifelong Doraemon fan.

- Music show is a major part of many major Japanese TV networks: Fuji TV has Hey Hey Hey, and TBS has Music Station. However, NTV has apparently been without one with its primetime lineup for 18 years, though now that’s about to change. It even answers a question that I forgot to ask for years: What happened to Noriko Sakai?

By the way, keep checking the spin-off for those HKIFF reports.

- The 17th Japan Movie Critic Awards were announced, and the comic adaptation Yunagi No Machi Sakura No Kuni won Best Picture, though Kichitaro Negishi picked up best director for Sidecar Ni Inu. Why can’t Art Port co-produce something that classy with Hong Kong (instead of Dog Bite Dog and Shamo).

Full list over at Tokyograph

- The multi-nation production (Japanese and American financed with a Hong Kong director) remake of Japanese horror film Don’t Look Up has found its cast. Just reading who’s involved in it made me slightly dizzy.

- This weekend on Daily Yomiuri’s Teleview column, Wm. Penn looks at the upcoming quiz shows on Spring Japanese TV. Now the blogger will lament that Trivia No Izumi (Fountain of Trivia) is no longer on.

- The latest version of the Gegege No Kitaro anime has set the record for the highest-rated episode of the Thursday night 12:45-1:15 am animation block on Fuji TV.

- The potential disaster also known as the new Street Fighter movie (now named The Legend of Chun Li?!) has just dragged another actor into its mess. This time it’s Hong Kong Film Award-nominated actress Josie Ho.

- It’s reviews time! This weekend, Japan Times’ Mark Schilling looks at the sci-fi/horror/just plain weird double feature Ghost vs. Aliens by Takashi Shimizu and Keisuke Toyoshima. Menawhile, Twitch’s Mike McStay looks at the hit Korean thriller The Chaser. I’m glad to hear that Golden Scene in Hong Kong has picked up the rights for this.

- With the Korean wave slowly dying, new Korean president Lee Myung-bak still hopes Korean cultural exports will increase by over 400% in the next 3 years?

- Under “not very significant, but major awards” news today, Japanese group Bump of Chicken picked up three awards at the Space Shower Awards. In return, they have to explain clearly what the hell Bump of Chicken means.

- Wanna have Yuen Wo Ping teach you how to kick ass? Find out how.

- Under “not significant nor major awards” news today, Yui Aragaki, who starred in the Japanese breakout hit Koizora, was named the Best Girl of 2007 by Tokyo Girl Collection.

-  I left the best for last: a trailer for the new drama Cell Phone Detectives, directed by Takashi Miike. I sure as hell hope Miike got paid a ton of money to do this, or I’d think he’s kinda a crappy director.

Happy White Day!

With no new news coming for the weekend, we’ll do mostly number crunching today.

- As expected in Hong Kong box office, Patrick Kong’s bitter “romantic” drama L For Love, L For Lies shot straight to the top of the box office on opening day. From 37 screens, it made HK$668,000 and will probably see close to HK$1 million per day over the weekend as the kids get out of school for the weekend. The weekend’s other wide opener, the Hollywood remake of the Japanese horror film One Missed Call, opened with only HK$111,000 from 17 screens.  As for limited openers, Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream opened on 9 screens with just HK$52,000. Expect this to get a small boost from the adult audience over the weekend.

- It’s Japanese music charts time! On the Oricon singles chart, Smap scores another number 1 single, making this their 42nd consecutive single to debut at the top ten, tying the record with Southern All Stars. Meanwhile, Asian Kung-Fu Generation’s latest album debut at the top on the album chart, while Every Little Thing and Hitoto Yo are down at second and third place. More details at Tokyograph.

As for the Billboard Japan Hot 100 charts, the rankings are a little different, as airplay managed to lift Ayaka’s single all the way to 2nd place. Radio play also helped the foreign single by Adele get on the top 100, as well as some songs that were not released as singles, such as Keisuke Kuwata’s latest.

- On the Taiwanese G-music chart, Aska Yang seems to never leave the top, especially when sales are this weak. He only had to take up 2.46% of total sales to get that spot, which also helped Joanna Wang’s album as well. However, Gary Chaw drops straight down 12th place, though another new edition of the CD will perk those sales right up. The weak sales also helped Yui Aragaki’s album, which actually took up a bigger share of the sales this week.

- Hong Kong director Pang Ho-Cheung, whom I consider one of my favorites, has directed a trailer for the latest installment of the Udine Far East Festival. Hollywood Reporter has the story, and Twitch has the link.

- It’s like repeating the same story again and again: Japanese total video sales was down by 3.7% in 2007. On the other hand, rental store sales have actually risen.

That’s it for today, y’all

- The story was first on Variety Asia, but I’ll reference Twitch because the story has simply disappeared at the time of writing: D-War director Shim Hyung-rae was a comedian before he became a director, and now that D-War was a big hit, he’s relying on cgi to make the next big comedy featuring himself. Specifically, he’s bringing back his old popular character and make him act opposite a cgi-created Marlon Brando playing the godfather Vito Corleone. Someone stop this man, please.

- Those looking oh so forward to the potentially-disastrous Dragonball live-action film will just have to wait a little longer: The film has been delayed from an August release date to next April. Unless you’re in Japan, then you get to see it a month earlier.

- Yet another country has picked up the rights to the hit Colombian telenovela for their own remake, and guess what that country is going to be naming it?

- Detroit Metal City, the high-profile comic adaptation starring Kenichi Matsuyama hopefully walking straight with less eyeliner this time, has finally started filming and is scheduled to open this summer. They’ve been talking about this movie so long, I thought they’re done shooting the damn thing already.

- With the recent scandal and controversy and the various failures, organizers of the Bangkok International Film Festival are still trying to keep on truckin’ for this July….even though no programming work has been done, and they don’t really have enough money.

- New artist Thelma Aoyama’s hit single “Soba Ni Iru Ne” has broken a record of being downloaded one million times to cell phones in the quickest time. With a catchy song hitting popularity this fast, let’s hope she’s not a one-hit wonder.

- Ryuganji’s Don Brown gives us his own thoughts on Yoji Yamada’s Kabei. I’m still on the fence over whether I want to catch this at the Hong Kong Film Festival.

- Both Variety and Hollywood Reporter are covering Ang Lee and James Schamus’ win of the Freedom of Expression Award by the National Association of Theater Owners for Lust, Caution. Variety reports that the film’s release in America went extremely smooth, despite the NC-17 rating, and The Hollywood Reporter even got an interview.

- Speaking of which, Jason Gray writes about a Japanese AV star who seems to have some breakout potential.

- Courtesy of EastSouthWestNorth, Danwei asks a question, and my answer is a definite yes.

- On the other hand, English literature about China is apparently the big thing right now, though the writers don’t exactly expect it to last.

- While the previously planned Justin Lin’s remake of Oldboy seems to have stalled, Charlize Theron is looking to produce and star in another installment of Park Chan-Wook’s classic revenge trilogy.

- There may be hope for band members everywhere who aren’t lead singers: Tokio keyboardist Taichi Kokubun now has a show on all six of the major networks in Tokyo. For most bands’ keyboardist. they’re lucky if they get their own show on public access.

- There’s another review of Singaporean director Kelvin Tong’s Rule #1, starring Shawn Yue and Ekin Cheng.

- The Nikkan Sports Drama Grand Prix for the Winter 2007 season has been announced, even though the season isn’t even over yet. Shikaotoko Aoniyoshi ended up winning 3 awards: Best Drama, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. However, the drama has been struggling in the ratings, averaging only a 9.9% rating throughout the season.

- Japanese artist/attitude girl/real-life Nana Mika Nakashima will be the first Japanese artist to appear on the cover of Rolling Stones Japan. The question is, why did it take a year for Rolling Stones Japan to put a Japanese musician on its cover?

-  Twitch brings us the first teaser for Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest Aruitemo Aruitemo, which looks like a return to modern drama after his previous outing Hana.

- The global domination of Walt Disney continues: Disney Japan will be using Japanese animation houses to produce animation targeted at a Japanese and Greater Asia audience. Theese will start broadcasting in Japan in April.

-  While the information aren’t exactly all straight, and it lacks true balance, The Hollywood Reporter Asia has a feature on China-Hong Kong co-productions that’s fairly worth reading.

- This week on the Daily Yomiuri Teleview column, columnist Wm Penn looks at more dramas coming on Japanese TV come the Spring season, including the one where Kimura Takuya becomes the Prime Minister of Japan. In case you don’t know what that equates to, imagine an entire drama where Andy Lau plays the Chief Executive of Hong Kong.

- Despite saying the wrong thing on radio and people saying she apologized the wrong way, Koda Kumi will most likely open her nationwide tour on schedule.

Again a short entry, but that’s it for today. We’ll wrap the weekend up tomorrow

- In Korean box office, The Chaser took the top spot for a third week. It now has past the 3 million admission mark, and has not much signs of stopping. Meanwhile, art films and Oscar films flop. More details at Korea Pop Wars.

- It’s Oricon charts time! While the usual popsters such as News (with their 8th consecutive #1 single) and Exile top the single chart, African-American enka singer Jero managed to sell even more copies of his debut single than its first week in stores. However, because of the crowded market, he still fell one place on the chart.

On the album side, BoA sees her 6th consecutive #1 album, while a bunch of foreign acts join her in the top 10.

See the full report at Tokyograph.

- It’s also the Billboard Japan charts time! This one is a little different because the chart also adds in radio airplay to gauge a song’s popularity. As a result, Jero is all the way down at 13th place, because enka doesn’t usually get much radio play. That’s also the reason why Hikaru Utada’s latest is placed higher, because it’s on the top of the airplay chart for the second week in a row. Other than that, the charts are mostly similar.

- The always informative Eiga Consultant looks at how several films did in Japan over the weekend.

First, the latest One Piece movie opened at only 98% of the previous One Piece film, which made 900 million yen. Looks like this film will probably not get to the 1 billion yen mark either.

On the other hand, the third and latest Keroro movie outdid its previous installment and the first film by 117 and 103%, respectively.

Lastly, the war trial film Ashita He No Yuigon opened 6th place with 77.68 million yen, which is only 66% of director Takashi Koizumi’s previous film Hakase No Ashita sushiki.

- A Chinese senior official says that China cannot have a ratings system for films because it would be like “legalizing the mass production of pornographic publications.” Er…you guys won’t be allowing porn in anyway, so what’s there to worry about?

“China had yet to build a mature and orderly film market.” I think replacing “market” with “audience” would be a more accurate way of putting it.

- The Korean Film Archive managed to find a copy of the 1934 silent film The Crossroads of Youth, now known as the oldest Korean film in existence. Thankfully, 8 of the 9 reels are still in playable condition, and I sure hope it’s not the reel with twist ending.

- Chinese director Chen Kaige has wrapped up filming for his latest biopic Mei Lanfang, starring Leon Lai and Zhang Ziyi. However, the film has no expected release date or upcoming participation in any film festival.

The biggest doubts to Chinese press, on the other hand, is whether Twins member Gillian Chung, which is taking a public opinion beating in Hong Kong, will still be in the film. She plays the younger version of titular character Mei Lanfang’s second wife.

- Under “various Japanese awards” news today, Exile picked up Artist of the Year at the Japan Gold Disc Awards, unseating Koda Kumi. They also won the Album of the Year award. GReeen picked up the Best New Artist of the year award, while Hikaru Utada picked up Single of the Year with Flavor of Life, even though this fan thought it was her most mediocre hit.

Meanwhile, Yui Aragaki picked up the film prize at the 45th Golden Arrow Awards. Meanwhile, Rinko Kikichi somehow managed to pick up one of the Best Newcomer Awards, which is sad because she’s actually been in Japanese films for a few years now. Then again, they’ve been around for 45 years, so they must have credibility.

- It’s reviews by Russell Edwards time! Variety’s Russell Edwards coincidentally reviews all the films covered by the blog today: First, he reviews Chocolate, the new muay Thai action film from the director of Ong Bak. Then he reviews the documentary Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking. Lastly, he looks at the Thai gay teen romance film The Love of Siam.

Meanwhile, Hollywood Reporter’s Maggie Lee takes a look at Stephen Chow’s CJ7, which goes on limited release this weekend in the United States.

- In related news, The Love of Siam picked up six awards at the Bangkok Critics Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay.

- Another reason to put a film in this year’s Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival: The winner of the Off-Theater competition will win 2 million yen.

- Jet Li and Jackie Chan reportedly had a hand in changing the script for their latest Hollywood film Forbidden Kingdom, changing the “traveling back in time” element to simply part of the main character’s dream. Good, that means one less movie where a foreign kid goes to China and save the world.

- In case you need another reason to see Koki Mitani’s latest film The Magic Hour, the film will feature a ton of cameos, including director Kon Ichikawa in his final film appearance.