Note: This blog expresses only the opinions of the blog owner, and does not represent the opinion of any organization or blog that is associated with The Golden Rock.
- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! A total of 12 dramas hit their season-low ratings. They include Joshi Deka (season-high: 13.4, season-low: 7.8), Iryu 2 (season-high: 21.0, season-low: 14.1), Uta Hime (season-high: 9.8, season-low: 6.7), Dream Again (season-high: 12.9, season-low: 8.4), Hatachi No Koibito (season-high: 13.0, season-low: 6.4), and Abarenbo Mama (season-high: 15.3, season-low: 11.1).
On the other hand, Fuji dramas Galileo and SP remain fairly strong, and NTV’s Hataraki Man saw a pretty big rebound from last week’s 10.1 to this week’s 12.7. Still, things are pretty bleak overall.
- It’s OK, Don, you did get this news first. Bayside Shakedown producer Chihiro Kameyama, who seems to be the only hitmaker for Fuji TV these days, will be teaming up with Bayside Shakedown screenwriter Ryoichi Kimizuka for a new police drama that does not have anything to do with the Bayside Shakedown series (contrary to the image on the main Variety Asia website). Dare Mo Mamotte Kurenai will star Japan’s favorite 14 year-old (fictional) mother Mirai Shida as the sister of a suspected murderer who is being protected by the cop who is also gathering evidence against her brother.
Kimizuka will be directing, his second film after the Bayside Shakedown spinoff The Suspect.
- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! Galileo saw another small decline in its 3rd week, though it’s still very strong at 21.3 rating (yes, I realize that the 4th week has already been shown, and we’ll look at that next week). Fuji’s 3rd Saturday 11pm drama SP premiered to a fairly strong 14.5 rating, which makes it the strongest premiere ratings for that time slot (Liar Game premiered at 12.3 and Life premiered at a 11 rating.). The challenge now is whether word-of-mouth will carry like the previous two dramas have.
Meanwhile, Iryu 2 rebounded slightly to a 15.8 for the 4th week, Hatachi No Koibito dipped all the way to a 7.4 rating, Joshi Deka continues its fall to an 8.4 rating for its 3rd week, but Takashi Sorimachi’s Dream Again does manage to rebound slightly to a 10.0 rating in its 4th week.
Meanwhile, since I’m a Hong Kong blogger, why would I not include a link about a panel on Hong Kong? Of course, it’s going to be about lots and lots of co-productions.
- Another Monday, another look at Japanese drama ratings this past week. Galileo holds on to its strong premiere ratings with a 22.1 rating for its second episode. Abanrenbo Mama with Aya Ueto also managed to hold on well, dropping only to a 14.2 rating after its 15.3 premiere episode.
Several episodes saw its ratings increased - Hataraki Man went up to a 13 rating from the previous week’s 12.3, Friday night TBS drama Utahime went up to a season-high 9.8 after a dip to 7.5, and Mop Girl’s ratings have risen for the second week in a row.
The season’s biggest disappointment (and there are quite a few already) may be the sequel Iryu 2. After premiering with a strong 21 rating, its rating has fallen dramatically to a 15.5 rating by its third week, despite the first installment being voted the favorite drama that season.
- After this year’s TV remake of High and Low, another Kurosawa film is going down the remake route: this time it’s Hidden Fortress, starring Arashi member Jun Matsumoto and Masami Nagasawa. Directed by Shinji Higuchi, who last directed the disaster spectacle The Sinking of Japan, the remake will start filming next month and set for a Golden Week 2008 release.
- Speaking of festival, the Cannes anniversary commemoration omnibus film To Each His Own Cinema will actually be released theatrically in France. Twitch has a link to the trailer, though it only features one still from each film. In case you don’t know, the omnibus features quite a few Asian directors, including Takeshi Kitano, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, and Zhang Yimou, among others.
Try not to be shocked - most of today’s news come from only Variety Asia and Tokyograph.
- Let’s do the Japanese drama ratings first (All drama information on Tokyograph) - a few more dramas premiered this past week, including the Monday 9 pm Fuji drama Galileo. With the hottest prime time drama spot, the Masaharu Fukuyama/Kou Shibasaki-starrer with a terrible theme song scored a very impressive 24.7 rating for the first episode. Meanwhile, the Aya Ueto drama Abarenbou Mama did OK in its premiere with a 15.3 rating.
Last week’s winner Iryu 2 (which may be getting its own movie with its strong ratings) saw a pretty big drop from its 21-rating premiere to a 16.8 rating for its second episode. Joshi Deka, the latest drama with Yukie Nakama, opened weakly with just a 13.4 rating playing at the same time as Iryu 2. Hatachi No Koibito, which the Daily Yomiuri’s Teleview column recommended this past weekend, saw its ratings drop even further to a 10.4 on Sunday night.
- Fuji TV is so happy about Galileo’s premiere ratings (the strongest since Saiyuki’s premiere back in January ‘06 for that time slot) that they’ve already greenlighted the movie version. The source material, a series of novels about a math genius, is probably all ready to be adapted, as soon as the movie makes Fuji a ton of cash.
- If you stop by a certain chain of love hotels in Tokyo, you’ll get to watch the Hollywood thriller Vacancy for free in your room. Apparently, these people got the idea that watching a movie about a couple trapped by maniacs in a run-down hotel room with hidden cameras and snuff tapes will “deepen the love”. I think they’ll probably just have sex instead.
- The new drama season started in Japan last week (Fall 2007 drama information from Tokyograph), and Iryu 2, the sequel to the hit drama from Spring 2006, got off to an excellent start with a 21 rating on the ratings chart. Meanwhile, Dream Again, starring Takashi “Genghis Khan” Sorimachi could only score a 12.9 rating for its premiere. Another star who might not be such a star is Masami Nagasawa, as her latest drama Hatachi No Koibito got only a 13.5 rating for its first episode. More premieres to come this coming week, so look for a slightly more comprehensive wrap-up next week. It all depends how tired I’ll be, really.
Now, the wrap-up from Pusan International Film Festival:
- The competition section of Pusan, called New Currents, actually has the least well-known films. This is probably because the jury tends to pick heavy art films with social messages, and Variety reports that history has repeated again this year.
- Wong Kar-Wai was supposed to make a biopic about Bruce Lee’s master and it was supposed to star Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, who reportedly spend the last few years getting physically prepared for the role. However, his 5-year rights is expiring and Raymond Wong’s Mandarin Films (who last made the Donnie Yen lovefest Flash Point) is stepping in and make their own film about Bruce Lee’s master.
This is in addition to the planned film by Fruit Chan about two childhood friends in 1950s Hong Kong who split up on their own roads, one of them being Bruce Lee.
- And yet, they decided to allow a shorter version of Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, which was edited by Lee himself and is a few minutes longer than the Malaysian version, to play nationwide starting November 1st. Can someone tell me whether Lam Ka Tung makes an appearance at the end of the Mainland version? Someone who’s seen both Infernal Affairs and Lust, Caution should get this.
- China may seem pretty bad, but then the head of the Thai ministry of culture came out and pretty much says: 1) Thai audiences are not educated, and 2) just because said audience doesn’t understand a movie, it should be be classified and/or banned.
- Grady Hendrix has picked up on the Jackie Chan blog posts controversy. It kind of started when he wrote in his own blog telling audiences to not have much expectation for his latest Hollywood film The Forbidden Kingdom. Then the press picked up an “old post” where he even admit that he doesn’t care much for the Rush Hour films (I don’t blame him for that at all). However, Jackie also admitted that he only did them for money, which begs the question: Why is he just settling for lots of money instead of trying to make better movies?
Following it is Chiritotechin, which did not premiere to the worst ratings in NHK morning drama history. Instead, it scored an average of 16.5% rating, which is only the third worst morning drama rating in history.
- I’m actually a big fan of the film Rendan, actor Naoto Takenaka’s directorial effort from a few years ago, which is why I’m somewhat excited that he’s making a new film, this time a zombie comedy. However, I’m not as excited as I should be because it’s a zombie comedy.
- As we usually do on Wednesdays, let’s look at the Oricon charts. As expected, Ayumi Hamasaki’s latest topped the singles chart in its first week, selling just over 70,000 copies. However, that actually seems pretty spectacular when its closest competition, the latest from boy group Dong Bang Shin Ki, only had to sell 33,000 copies to get to second place. Looking further down, You Hitoto’s latest could only muster a 10th place debut after selling just over 12,800 copies of her latest. Expect the charts to be extremely quiet next week, with Ayumi Hamasaki winning the chart for a second week in a row.
Things were a little better on the albums chart, where Angela Aki’s second album topped the charts with 88,000 copies sold. Young enka star Kiyoshi Hikawa’s latest album is far behind at second place with almost 42,000 copies sold for his latest album. Leah Dizon’s debut album is already all the way to 24th place from 9th place last week, and expect things to be very quiet here as well next week when Angela Aki will probably lead the chart again.
- Hero, the Japanese drama whose film version is filling seats at movie theaters these days, remains a hit on TV. It’s not a new TV special, but a new cut of the TV special Fuji TV aired this past weekend. While it didn’t hit the original rating of 30.9 from last year, a 22% rating is still pretty damn good, considering how weak TV ratings have been overall these days.
- India decided to pick the commercial flop Eklavya: The Royal Guard to compete with films around the world for one of those final five spots in the Academy Award for best foreign film. Theoretically, it needs to be better than Laagan, the last Indian Oscar nominee in that category. Will a guy named Eklavya beat the 4-hour cricket drama?
- Today is Japanese commercial day at The Golden Rock.
First, we present the latest Softbank ad featuring Brad Pitt. In case you don’t know, this series of ads for the mobile phone service provider feature a Hollywood star walking down a street talking on their cool Softbank phone (for example, here’s one with Cameron Diaz, who’s in at least 3 of these things). This ad is no different, except this one is directed by Wong Kar-Wai. According to Apple Daily, the shooting of the “long take” (the cutting point is the pole, in case you don’t notice) took 3 days and 200 extras.
Second, Japan Probe brings us an ad for a Nagano newspaper by animation Makoto Shinkai, who scored a minor hit with his latest 5 Centimeters per Second. The animation is quite stunning, considering the plot is damn near non-existent.
Lastly, Japan Probe also has all 10 commercials Hollywood actor Tommy Lee Jones starred in for a brand of Japanese coffee. They are very very funny stuff, especially number 6.
- I know I didn’t really follow the rest of the Summer 2007 drama season, but now that’s it’s one or two finales away from being officially over, let’s look at how they did.
The highest-rated drama of the season is the comic-based Hanazakari No Kimi Tachi He, which ran into a bit of a tough spot in the middle, but came out on top with a 21.0-rated finale and a 17.0 average rating. The biggest disappointment is the Monday 9pm Fuji drama First Kiss, which started strong with a 19.7 rating but fell quickly to a 12.4-rating finale and only a 14.1 average. On the other hand, Fuji continues to find success in their new experimental Saturday nights 11 pm period with second drama Life. It started with just a 11.0 rating, but it kept up over the course of the season. In the end, it scored a 17.0 rating finale (extremely good for that time slot) and a 12.2 average. That’s actually even better than last season’s Liar Game.
With an average of 7.5, I have no idea who’s going to be showing up for the Sushi Ouji movie.
Tokyograph also has a preview of the Fall 2007 dramas already, so start your engines and get to picking which ones to downl…buy in a legitimate fashion when they come out with English subtitles.
- This is for real - apparently the South Korean government is planning to present North Korea dictator Kim Jong-il, an avid movie buff himself, not only a home theater set, but also a bunch of South Korean movies. One of the possible flicks? D-Wars.
- American home video distributor Viz Media has picked up the theatrical and home video distribution rights for the two Death Note movies. This is a surprise to me in that I wonder why Warner Bros., whose Japanese division co-produced the film, didn’t sell the hell out of it for the American release themselves. Then again, Viz Media were great enough to bring Linda Linda Linda and The Taste of Tea to the United States, so maybe they’ll do ok with this one. But no DVD release until Summer 2008? That’s a mighty long wait.
- Lastly, Variety has the reviews for Chinese-American director Wayne Wang’s latest two films, which see the director returning to his indie roots, and both shown at the Toronto Film Festival - The Princess of Nebraska and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.
- We have a tradition of starting each post with number crunching. But now that the box office reports have moved on to their own posts, we’ll start with Japanese drama ratings instead. In a rebound from disappointing weeks, the idol drama Hana Zakari no Kimi Tachi He have gone up to its season-high 18.2 rating in its 9th week. The Monday 9 pm Fuji drama First Kiss is not quite back up to its premiere rating, but still seeing a small rebound, going up to a 14.6 from last week’s 12.8 rating. The other idol drama, Yamada Taro Monogatari, also sees an increase from last week’s 13.6 to this week’s 14.6 for its 8th episode.
In outside-primetime category, the Saturday 11 pm Fuji high school bully drama Life also saw a season-high of 14.2 for its 9th week, and the Friday 11 pm TV Asahi drama Sushi Ouji (which you may remember also has a film version on the way) is climbing back up with an 8.1 rating, close to its season-high.
In “someone asked me to follow it” category, Yama Onna Kabe Onna (how many episodes can they go with a drama about breasts?) is just there, with this week’s ratings following the current season average of 12.2.
I was going to try something new with Hong Kong ratings for biggest broadcaster TVB, but that would just seem lazy (without the ATV rating, that is). So consider it forgotten.
- As mentioned yesterday, the Japanese drama adaptation Hero is expected to be the big thing this year, surpassing Dororo as the highest-grossing Japanese film of the year and also surpassing Fuji’s own Monkey Magic (also a drama adaptation) to be the widest release for a Japanese film (or only widest live-action? Anyone?). Knowing that everyone in Asia has probably already bought bootlegs or downloaded the drama, Hero will also get a fairly wide Asia release in October, including the widest release for a Japanese film in South Korea.
- This news is kind of a spoiler on its own, but the Hong Kong-based distributor for Jet Li’s latest Hollywood flick War (or known as Rouge Assassin in Hong Kong) says he intends to submit the film to Chinese censors, and he expects them to let it in with a few cuts too. Yeah, good luck there.
- The Seiun Awards for Japanese science fiction writers was announced. The most curious winners were “Japan Sinks, Part 2″ (How much more of Japan was left to sink at the end of that movie?) and the media award going to Toki wo Kakeru Shojo - better known as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
- Despite the recent global credit problems, experts believe that media financing will not be badly affected. Sorry, I posted this to assure myself that I will have a future in the business.
- We have a tradition of starting each post with number crunching. But now that the box office reports have moved on to their own posts, we’ll start with Japanese drama ratings instead. In a rebound from disappointing weeks, the idol drama Hana Zakari no Kimi Tachi He have gone up to its season-high 18.2 rating in its 9th week. The Monday 9 pm Fuji drama First Kiss is not quite back up to its premiere rating, but still seeing a small rebound, going up to a 14.6 from last week’s 12.8 rating. The other idol drama, Yamada Taro Monogatari, also sees an increase from last week’s 13.6 to this week’s 14.6 for its 8th episode.
In outside-primetime category, the Saturday 11 pm Fuji high school bully drama Life also saw a season-high of 14.2 for its 9th week, and the Friday 11 pm TV Asahi drama Sushi Ouji (which you may remember also has a film version on the way) is climbing back up with an 8.1 rating, close to its season-high.
In “someone asked me to follow it” category, Yama Onna Kabe Onna (how many episodes can they go with a drama about breasts?) is just there, with this week’s ratings following the current season average of 12.2.
I was going to try something new with Hong Kong ratings for biggest broadcaster TVB, but that would just seem lazy (without the ATV rating, that is). So consider it forgotten.
- As mentioned yesterday, the Japanese drama adaptation Hero is expected to be the big thing this year, surpassing Dororo as the highest-grossing Japanese film of the year and also surpassing Fuji’s own Monkey Magic (also a drama adaptation) to be the widest release for a Japanese film (or only widest live-action? Anyone?). Knowing that everyone in Asia has probably already bought bootlegs or downloaded the drama, Hero will also get a fairly wide Asia release in October, including the widest release for a Japanese film in South Korea.
- This news is kind of a spoiler on its own, but the Hong Kong-based distributor for Jet Li’s latest Hollywood flick War (or known as Rouge Assassin in Hong Kong) says he intends to submit the film to Chinese censors, and he expects them to let it in with a few cuts too. Yeah, good luck there.
- The Seiun Awards for Japanese science fiction writers was announced. The most curious winners were “Japan Sinks, Part 2″ (How much more of Japan was left to sink at the end of that movie?) and the media award going to Toki wo Kakeru Shojo - better known as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
- Despite the recent global credit problems, experts believe that media financing will not be badly affected. Sorry, I posted this to assure myself that I will have a future in the business.
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