We’re kind of busy this week at The Golden Rock, but let’s do some number crunching anyway:

- Sad news from Hong Kong this morning: Actress and television personality Lydia Shum (better known as Fei Fei in Hong Kong) passed away at the age of 62. Fei Jei has been in poor health in recent years, and last appeared during local network TVB’s anniversary show in a surprise appearance.

Report from Variety

- Here’s an update on the box office for Lunar New Year films in Hong Kong (in order of release date), as of January 17th:

CJ7 - 18 days, HK$48.73 million

Sweeney Todd - 18 days, HK$8.28 million

L - Change the WorLd - 11 days (including previews), HK$7.25 million

Kung Fu Dunk - 11 days, HK$8.1 million

Enchanted - 11 days, HK$22.32 million

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (from 3 screens) - 11 days, HK$640,000

CJ7 is losing its momentum now, and it probably won’t make it to match Kung Fu Hustle’s take. Kung Fu Dunk is also slowing down considerably, and won’t get to HK$10 million, making it the flop of the season as the first Jay Chou film to not hit HK$10 million. Meanwhile, L will probably surpass Kung Fu Dunk in total take by the weekend, but I doubt that it’ll match the success of the two Death Note films. Nevertheless, it might have a chance for HK$10 million, which is a great take for a Japanese film. Enchanted is still topping the box office, so I think HK$30 million is not entirely unrealistic.

Meanwhile, the Hollywood sci-fi film Jumper made HK$6.13 million over 4 days from 38 screens. and Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood made HK$230,000 over 4 days from just 3 screens.

- No Japanese box office numbers yet. The audience attendance figures indicate that L took the top spot for a second weekend in a row (though I’m more interested to know how much business it lost), and the medical mystery The Glorious Team Batista also stayed at second place. It may surprise some, but Elizabeth: The Golden Age managed a 3rd place opening. However, that’s because the first film was a fairly big hit in Japan, taking over 1.5 billion yen back in 1999. Lastly, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium opened at 5th place.

-My mistake: The British documentary Earth may be the highest-grossing documentary in Japan in the last ten years after crossing the 2 billion yen-mark, but Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad will remain the all-time champion in attendance figures. With inflation, the 1964 documentary would’ve made 8.5 billion yen with today’s ticket prices.

- In Japanese drama ratings, this season’s ratings are so depressing that I don’t even feel like reporting them anymore. But here they are anyway: Honey and Clover, Saito-San, The Negotiator, and Sasaki Fusai No Jingi Naki Tatakai all hit their lowest ratings with 8.6%, 13.0%, 12.7%, and a measly 8.9, respectively.

In better news, Lost Time Life managed to rebound to a season-high 12.3% rating, and Mirai Koushi Meguru bounced back in a big way with a 10.5% rating.

- Kimutaku is back on Japanese TV drama! This time, Kimura Takuya play an elementary school teacher who somehow ends up becoming Japan’s Prime Minister. With not much positive support for the current Japanese government, I’m sure a fantasy world where a Smap member becomes their head honcho would be a nice change.

- I might’ve reported this before: Spring 2007’s hit drama Proposal Daisakusen is getting a special episode, and it’s now scheduled to air on March 25th (I think this is the news part).

- I was supposed to report on this a long time ago: Tokyo Tower was the big winner of the Japan Academy Awards, but it didn’t repeat the pattern of films in the past that were nominated in almost all the categories by winning only five awards. However, those awards were best supporting actor, best actress, best director, best screenplay, and best picture, so I don’t think the team is sad over it.

Meanwhile, Always 2 only won two awards: best actor and best sound recording. I Just Didn’t Do It won only won 3 awards, including best supporting actress, best art direction, and best film editing, which must’ve been disappointing to some, considering that it’s been sweeping the other awards.

Full list of winners here

- While only two Asian films in competition title won at Berlin (Wang Ziaoshuai for In Love We Trust and Reza Najie for the Iranian film The Song of Sparrows), Japanese film won many other awards at the festival. Those awards include United Red Army winning several awards, and Izuru Kamasaka winning Best First Feature for Park and Love Hotel.

All the details are at Jason Gray’s blog.

- Considering its controversial censorship system, it’s surprising that not one, but two films that deal with homosexuality managed to win major awards at Thailand’s Subhanahongsa Awards.

- It’s reviews time! Or rather, it’s time for a compilation of reviews for Johnnie To’s Sparrow, which got a far better reception in Europe than from English-speaking critics.

- I’m sure everyone is very interested in how Stephen Chow’s CJ7 did at the Hong Kong box office. Expanding to 102 screens over the weekend, the sci-fi comedy made HK$4.2 million on Sunday for a 4-day weekend total of HK$15.82 million. Even though I expressed what seemed to be disappointment about the opening day not breaking records, I will never called a HK$15.82 million opening weekend a disappointment.

Meanwhile, the adults-only-in-Hong-Kong Hollywood musical Sweeney Todd did OK, making HK$837,000 from 35 screens on Sunday for a weekend total of HK$3 million. Of course, OK is because it’s category-III, and word probably got out quickly that it’s a full-blown musical.

- In Japanese cinema attendance, last week’s 2nd place film Flowers in the Shadow managed to hit the first place, while Yoji Yamada’s Kabei went up one place as well to 3rd place this past weekend. Meanwhile, American Gangster opens at 2nd place, Kids could only manage an opening at 6th place (what happened to that day-and-date release in Hong Kong anyway?), and the family film The Water Horse opened at 7th place. More when the numbers come out.

- The Japanese drama ratings this season are getting to be flat-out depressing, as 11 dramas managed to hit their season lows last week. Honey and Clover remains in single-digit category with a 9.5% rating, The Negotiator saw a small rebound, then drops even more into a 13.1% rating, Daisuki!! drops down to a 9.1% rating, Edison No Haha suffers the biggest drop down to a 9.1% rating after hitting its season high 12.1% rating the previous week, and the high-profile Sunday night drama Sasaki Fusai No Jingi Naki Tatakai fails to recover from its phenomenal drop and remains at a 11.6% rating in its 3rd week.

Also, the new Saturday night 11pm drama Lost Time Life opened with a 11.4% rating, which is higher than the premiere for Summer 2007 drama Life, but lower than the first drama in that time slot Liar Game.

- Edison Chen has officially released a statement apologizing for the now-infamous sex pictures scandal. He recorded a short video, speaking in English, and calling this whole incident “a strange ordeal,” as police has now narrowed down the cause to a computer repair shop who was fixing a computer that had hundreds of these images.

- Park Chan-Wook’s latest vampire flick needs a leading lady. While a director of his caliber usually wouldn’t have a problem, it is this time for him because the actresses keep turning him down due to the need for explicit sex scenes in the film. I sound shallow, but I hope Song Kang-Ho isn’t the one doing them.

- Feng Xiaogang publicly said in Hong Kong that his latest film The Assembly is supposed to be somewhat critical of the Chinese government, although he knew that he had to tone it down to avoid getting banned. Looks like that tact got him an appointment as an adviser at the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Guess who else got appointed? Previously-banned director Zhang Yimou, though he was previously appointed as well.

- The Korean wave is slowing down, but it’s definitely not dead, as Japan’s Avex has picked up Lee Myung-Se’s M and Hur Jur-Ho’s Happiness. Hur Jin-Ho made the highest-grossing Korean film of all time in Japan with April Snow (though the film was a disappointment in its native land), which may explain the sale.

- Japanese pop star Koda Kumi has been suspended for a month just when her new album is being released because she actually joked that she wishes her manager’s new wife give birth before 35 because that’s when ” their amniotic fluid goes rotten.” Ha…..ha?

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.

Chart report from Tokyograph.

- 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.

- Didn’t get to cover the Japanese drama ratings, but I will report that the final episode of the Saturday night Fuji drama SP managed a damn good 18.9% rating, which is phenomenal for a series on Saturday night at 11 pm. Bring on the meaningless prime time special!

- An Inconvenient Truth, the global warming documentary featuring Al Gore, breaks Japanese box office records as it attracted roughly 60,000 admissions and a gross of 90 million yen during its run at one Tokyo theater.

- 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.

- Jason Gray looks at the Japanese films that will be heading to Berlin next week.

- And Grady Hendrix looks at some of his favorite films that will be looking for funding at the upcoming Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum.

- 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 Japanese drama ratings time! The first full week of the winter 2008 season is over, and the Shingo Katori-Yuko Takeuchi drama Bara No Nai Hanaya leads the pack with a 22.4% rating for its premiere episode. Not far behind is fellow Smap member Goro Inagaki and Koyuki’s starrer Sasaki Fusai No Jingi Naki Tatakai (Jason Gray writes about it here) with its premiere episode scoring a 17.3 rating last night. Binboman, starring Shun Oguri, also did pretty well in its first episode with a 16.5% rating.

Meanwhile, several dramas saw a rise in ratings after their premiere episode. Saito-san, which the Daily Yomiuri’s Teleview column wrote about last weekend, saw its second episode score a 17.4% rating, up from the 15.3% for its first episode. The Kenkuro Kudo-penned drama Mirai Koushi Meguru saw its second episode go up to a 10.6%, up from the 9.0% for its premiere episode.

However, other dramas took the usual fall. Last week’s big premiere The Negotiator dropped from the 16.7% for its first episode to a 13.8% for this past week, the boxing drama One-Pound Gospel dropped from 13.0% to 11.4%, and the manga adaptation Honey and Clover drops to 10% from its 12.9%-rated premiere.

All Winter 2008 drama information from Tokyograph

- The Hong Kong Film Critics Society has announced their 2007 awards, and they are not as nutty this year:

Best Picture: The Postmodern Life of My Aunt
Best Director: Ann Hui - The Postmodern Life of My Aunt
Best Screenplay: Wai Ka-Fai, Au Kin-Yee - Mad Detective
Best Actor: Tony Leung Ka-Fai - Eye in the Sky
Best Actress: Siqin Gaowa - The Postmodern Life of My Aunt
Recommended films (only 8 this year, as opposed to 10): Eye in the Sky, The Warlords, Whispers and Moans, Hooked On You, Mad Detective, Triangle, Protege, The Detective.

No Pang Ho-Cheung (no, he wasn’t even in the finalists list)? No Exodus? No Invisible Target? No Trivial Matters? At least no Wong Jing.

(courtesy of Hong Kong Film Blog)

- While the news of Johnnie To’s Sparrow heading to Berlin is not news, his assistant said that the possible English-language remake of The Red Circle is currently on hold because of the writer’s strike in America.

- While the Chinese government is admitting that the battle against piracy is a struggle, it’s interesting to read that people are downloading Hong Kong and Taiwanese television series that are usualy banned there. This means the government may be battling piracy not just because of copyright infringement, but to also keep the lid on banned materials.

- The teaser for Ping Pong director Fumihiko Sori’s Ichi, a re-imagining of the Zatoichi tale, is on the website. They’ve done something like this before, it was called Azumi, and it wasn’t that good.

- Meanwhile, the legendary Sonny Chiba has announced his first film under his new name Rindo Wachinaga. Za Toichi (The Toichi) will be about a blind moneylender. Chiba may act in the film under his acting name (as in Sonny Chiba).

- I already found this out on imdb: Ken Watanabe has signed up for his first Hollywood studio role since Letters From Iwo Jima for the vampire film Cirque du Freak. Of course, it’s probably just another supporting role with not much to do.

- Under “what the hell were they thinking?” news, an NHK crew was filming a drama when they attached a fake license plate to a background car in order to give the illusion that they are in another prefecture. However, they managed to take a break without removing the plate, and the car drove off with the fake license plate.  Always be careful with cars you’re not allowed to put fake license plates on, people.

- Thailand’s now-defunct iTV was first conceived as a fair and balance news network free of government influence. Ironically, its editorial control have now been given to the Thai military-run government after it was forced into bankruptcy.

- Meanwhile, Thai Airways stewardess are complaining about a new soap opera about air hostess that depicts immoral sexual relationships amongst stewardess and pilots. I guess the show isn’t sponsored by any major airlines then.

-  Kaiju Shakedown covers all the musicals going to South Korean stages that are based on movies. In fact, 30% of all musical on South Korean stages will be based on movies.

- The first week of the Winter 2008 season has gone by for Japanese dramas and the ratings are in. The Negotiator leads the way with its premiere episode hitting a 16.7 rating. The only other drama that beat that this past week was the long-running detective drama Aibou. The Misaki Ito-starring drama Edison No Haha premiered with just 11.0% rating; The Kenkuro Kudo-penned drama Mirai Koushi Meguru, starring Kyoko Fukada, started even weaker with just a 9.0 rating. However, an excuse for that is that it played at 11:15 Friday night, a time slot that usually see 12% as successful.

The boxing drama One-Point Gospel, starring one of the Kat-tun boys, premiered with a 13.0 rating; the first drama adaptation of the popular comic Honey and Clover also premiered with a relatively weak 12.9 rating (though it’s trying to attract audiences with the popularity of the comic rather than the cast); and the time limit-based drama Ashita no Kita Yoshio also only scored a 12.7 rating.

As Tokyograph reported, the Monday 9pm Fuji drama Bara No Nai Hanaya did open strong with a 22.4% rating, but that was last night, so we’ll talk about it next week.

All Winter 2008 drama information here.

- According to the Hong Kong Film Blog, a new Donnie Yen film is in the works. The name? Hong Kong Vice. Yen will play a mentor to a female detective. Not sure if this is indeed an approved remake of Miami Vice, or whether they just ripped off the name for someone cheap and quick.

- Variety’s Derek Elley has a fairly positive review for Peter Chan’s The Warlords.

- There’s a rumor out there in the Chinese press about John Woo getting ready to move on to his next project: A historical epic about Mao Tze-Tung’s rise to power and Chiang Kai-Shek’s move to Taiwan. With the sensitive political environment, I doubt China is going to let him pull this off.

- After Stephen Chow boasted about his intentions to make audiences cry when watching his latest film CJ7 because it’s “heartwarming,” now he’s boasting that the special effects by Menford will be up to international standards. In case you don’t know, Menford also did the special effects for The Legend of Zu and A Chinese Tall Story. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

- Oh, look, there’s a new post on the spin-off.

-  On my Japan trip report, I lamented missing the Nodame Cantabile special on TV, which was shown on the 4th and the 5th over two nights. The first night’s rating of 18.9% kept to the series’ average of 18.8%, and part 2 managed to hit 21%, which is lower than the finale, but would still qualify as the series’ second-highest episode.

- In related ratings news, the yearly Japanese New Year’s eve musical extravaganza Kohaku has seen its ratings slip year after year, and it continued to stay relatively low this year with an average rating of 36.15%, which is the second-lowest rated Kohaku on record. Just as the report writes, since NHK is a public broadcaster, ratings are simply a matter of pride, and as long as it continues to beat the competition (it seems to be the  highest-rated non-sports TV program of the year), it’ll stick around for a while.

Or they should just have Smap perform half the damn show.

- Last thing about Japanese TV ratings, I promise: Fuji Television reigns supreme again as the highest-rated network for the 4th year in a row, scoring the highest-rated program of the year with the figure skating championships. They also got the highest-rated drama of the year with the first episode of Galileo.

- Anyone who thinks China is slowly becoming progressive with their films because The Matrimony, The Warlords, or Assembly got made is bullshitting. No progressive country would ban local filmmakers for two years at a time.  And no progressive country would certainly play the morality police by starting a 3-month campaign to crack down on “vulgar” products.

- Then again, I would appreciate the Japanese government cracking down on crappy adaptations of classic Japanese cartoons.

-  Korea Pop Wars’ Mark Russell takes a look at the Korean horror film Hansel and Gratel, which promises a lot, but delivers seemingly very little.

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

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

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

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

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

Partial list on Variety Asia

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

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

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

More details at Tokyograph.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- In Japanese drama ratings (one day late), many of the dramas that hit their season-low managed to bounce back. That does include the gradually failing Hatachi No Koibito, which finally saw a week with improving ratings as it bounced back by 0.2%. Hell, even Joshi Deka finally saw a rise in rating, bouncing from an abysmal 7.8 last week to a 9.3 this week. The same goes for Iryu 2, which went up from a 14.1 to a 16.6 for its 8th episode. The hit Fuji Saturday night drama SP, however, dropped to its season-low this past weekend. A preview for next week: Galileo drops to its season-low.

- Just before Mad Detective had its massive opening weekend in Hong Kong, IFC (Independent Film Channel) picked up the North America distribution rights last Friday. They will show it in theaters, for also make it a day-and-date release for video on demand, which is wise since the Hong Kong DVD would be out by then.

- When you buy legit copes of American movies on Chinese DVDs, you’ll get a refrigerator magnet with Jackie Chan’s face thanking you for buying legit products. Wouldn’t that make me want to buy them less?

- In case anyone in Japan (or planning to download) wants to know, this is the full Kohaku lineup this new year’s eve.

- Let me ask a hypothetical question: say you’re a South Korean director and you would like to receive the French Legion of Honor. What do you do? Make over 100 movies and win a few prizes.

- The Taiwanese film The Wall picked up the best film prize at the India International Film Festival, which screened 176 films from 46 countries.

- Kaiju Shakedown, which was kind enough to recommend you all to this blog today, compiles a sample set of reviews for the Japanese failed blockbuster Midnight Eagle. Here’s also a compiled set of reviews from Rotten Tomatoes.

- According to Apple Daily in Hong Kong, Wong Kar-Wai’s English film debut My Blueberry Nights will open in Hong Kong on January 3rd, apparently a whole month ahead of the American release.  There’s even a real pretty website up now.

- An animation house named Animation Innovation Tokyo is doing what their name promises by setting up a new channel on Youtube to upload clips of potential anime series. Potential investors can watch these clips and decide to invest to make them into feature length films. They’re already asking for submissions for the 7th group of pilots.

-  While Yu Aoi getting cast in a Japanese TV drama is news, the bigger news here is it’s a 12-part series by 4 directors, and each director has complete freedom over the 3 episodes they’re in charge of - as long as they’re about lies.

- It’s reviews time! Variety has a review of Happily Ever After - or Jigyaku No Uta - by Russell Edwards.

- Takeshi Kitano appears on Japanese TV in variety shows often enough already, but audiences still can’t get enough of him: His latest acting role in a made-for-TV miniseries scored an average of 23.75 rating over Saturday and Sunday nights. That’s an even higher average rating than the highest-rated drama this season, and it was on the weekend.

- This isn’t a political blog, and this news isn’t meant to be political, but am I right in saying that a documentary that asserts the Japanese WWII war criminals are the equivalent of the seven samurais is probably a little absurd?

- It’s trailers time! Both courtesy of Twitch today- First, the English-subtitled trailer for the Thai action-fantasy film Siyama (yes, there’s supposed to be time traveling elements in the film that is completely ignored in the trailer). Then, the non-subtitled trailer for the gross-out Korean sex comedy Sex is Zero 2. You can already tell it’ll be grosser than the first film, which doesn’t necessarily make me want to watch it.

- Courtesy of Kaiju Shakedown are 5 clips from Pang Ho-Cheung’s latest film(s) Trivial Matters. With bong-smoking, swearing, and talk about oral sex, I’d be surprised if they can get away with a II-B this time.

- I’m starting to hate my vacation dates: Not only will I be missing Trivial Matters (unless it’s such a big hit and it plays through New Years), I’ll also be leaving Japan the day before the Nodame Cantabile special is scheduled to air on Japanese TV. D’oh!

- At least I’ll be back on time to see the new digital broadcast by Hong Kong free TV stations. Of course, I’ll have to first sink some money for a digital decoder or buy a HDTV. Which means I’ll probably be missing out anyway.

- Under “they mean really well” news today, the Beijing Film Academy produced a documentary about the China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe, and even took it to the American Film Market. However, despite some interest, it couldn’t find any buyers and it won’t even premiere in its homeland until March.

Meanwhile, Thai filmmakers are making their final protest calling for modification to the new Thai Film and Video Act, which could bring further censorship into the film system, despite the addition of a ratings system.

- Remember Lost in Beijing, the much-edited Chinese film that was forced to remove multiple scenes (including shots of dirty Beijing streets) before it cleared the censor board? The uncensored version was shown on Hong Kong screens (with a category III rating, which meant “no one under 18 allowed), and the censored version will finally be shown on Chinese screens with a wide release this week. Apparently, the critical nature of Chinese society remains in the film.

-  The European Union is getting more and more impatient with China over piracy, to the point that they’re threatening to go the principal’s office World Trade Organization about it.

- Huge Chinese blockbusters are not even going to premiere at the People’s Auditorium anymore: Now they’re going premiere in Olympic-sized venues!

- The Chinese father-and-son drama The Red Awn picked up the top prize at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece.