- Finally got some Japanese box office numbers in, although it only covers Saturday and Sunday, which was the middle of the Golden Week holidays. As a result, most of the movies on the chart saw a rise from their previous weekend’s gross. For example, Shaolin Girl saw a 20% boost and has now grossed 715 million yen, despite a somewhat weak opening last weekend. But of course, the biggest boosts went to the kid-friendly films such as Conan (20.3%), Crayon Shin-Chan (27.7%), and The Spiderwick Chronicles (17.7%). However, the Masked Rider movie took a drop instead, losing 23.4% of business despite not losing any screens. Hollywood flick 10,000 B.C. also lost business, presumably because theaters put the more popular films on bigger screens and moved this to smaller ones.

- With its first hit in two years, Toei is now crossing their fingers on God’s Puzzle, Takashi Miike’s latest, to rebound them from what was their worst fiscal year in 20 years.

- Meanwhile, The Forbidden Kingdom has done solid business in China, making 150 million yuan since its release in late April already, partly thanks to the holiday last week.

- Things are not doing so well in Korea, where theaters saw April’s performance as the lowest monthly attendance figures since April 2003.

- However, local performance is not stopping them from taking their award-nominated films for a special showing in Japan.

- Earlier in the week, I mentioned that the Chinese distributor for the new Donnie fantasy film Painted Skin already estimated a final box office take simply based on screen counts. Now, the investors are so confident that not only did they already plan two sequels, they already assume they’re successful enough to raise the budget and get Zhang Ziyi for the second movie.

- The Asia Pacific Screen Awards, which had its first year in Australia last year, is now adding an academy, with all the nominees from last year’s awards being included with voting powers for this year’s awards.

-  There’s a short teaser for the omnibus movie Tokyo!, though it doesn’t really show anything from any of the three films, which will get their premiere at Cannes this year.

- A Spanish film buyer has bought their first Asian film, and…it’s Taiwanese torture porn?

-  Hollywood Reporter’s Maggie Lee turns in a review for Sylvia Chang’s Run Papa Run.

-  Chinese president Hu Jintao told Japanese reporters that his favorite Japanese TV drama is the popular 80s morning drama Oshin. It would’ve been great if he said anything with Kimura Takuya in it, but alas, that was not to be.

- My boy Jero has now joined the ranks of popular Japanese pop stars - he’ll be the spokesman for a new line of canned coffee.

- 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.

-

- It was a crowded weekend at the Hong Kong box office, though Sunday grosses were a bit lower than that of last Thursday’s public holiday. As expected, Iron Man topped the chart with HK$1.6 million from 60 screens on Sunday. After its opening last Wednesday, the superhero flick has now made HK$9.2 million, which is good though not exactly phenomenal. Meanwhile, Japanese doggie flick The Tale of Mari and Three Puppies made another HK$670,000 from 26 screens for a weekend total of HK$2.56 million. Wong Jing’s My Wife is a Gambling Maestro made HK$312,000 from 27 screens for a not-so-good weekend total of HK$1.35 million. The big limited release hit is the British melodrama The Other Boleyn Girl made another HK$193,000 from just 8 screens for a weekend total of HK$850,000. The film reportedly will expand to even more screens over the weekend. The crocodile thriller Rogue flops with HK$50,000 from 7 screens, and a weekend total of just HK$230,000. Lawrence Lau’s Besieged City, which opened on 7 screens, didn’t even make the top 10 on Sunday.

Meanwhile, The Forbidden Kingdom has passed the HK$10 million mark on Sunday with HK$559,000 from 38 screens. Barbara Wong’s Happy Funeral is hanging in with another HK$188,000 from 24 screens, many of which are only playing it only 1 or 2 shows a day.

HK$7.8=US$1

- Japan had a national holiday today (getting to the end of Golden Week), so box office figures won’t come out until tomorrow.  Same for the drama numbers.

-  After some very stupid word on radio earlier in the year, Japanese pop queen Koda Kumi is back. She’s now on tour, and she’s now the spokeswoman for a brand of razors. Insert inappropriate comment here.

- After Rinko Kikuchi had to drop out of the manga adaptation film The Legend of Kamui because of an injury, The Last Samurai’s Koyuki is now stepping in to take over her role in the Yoichi Sai-directed film.

- Variety has Robert Koehler’s review of The Children of Huang Shi, featuring Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat in supporting roles.

- There’s also a review of the Japanese film The Last Princess (aka remake of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress) in UCLA’s Asia Pacific Arts magazine after the film had its premiere at USC.  It’s an extremely interesting read.

- In case you don’t know, American television satirist Stephen Colbert has been in a battle with Korean superstar Rain to become Time’s most influential person two years in a role, which culminated into this video. Now,most likely as part of his promotion for Speed Racer, he will be on today’s The Colbert Report for a special dance-off. By the way, they both lost the poll, though Rain did beat Colbert at the end.

- There’s no confirmation for this, but CCTV supposedly boycotted performers who were part of the Chinese talent shows Super Girl and Happy Boy during a show featuring the latest Olympic songs by intentionally not giving them any close-ups. Since this is supposedly from the blog of a CCTV director, no one knows whether the entry or the policy is true.

- Lastly, The Daily Yomiuri focuses on the audience response to the controversial Japanese documentary Yasukuni.

- Drama adaptation Aibou opened this past week in the middle of Golden Week in Japan, and its opening day has already surpassed the opening day gross of distributor Toei’s biggest earner YAMATO. Since it opened in the middle of a week of holidays, it’s a possibility that its opening will surpass YAMATO, but may not have the legs to surpass it in total gross.

- Controversial documentary Yasukuni finally opened in Tokyo, and the first day showings were packed and thankfully without those pesky protests.

- The Japanese animated film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which I fairly enjoyed, is getting a limited release in the United States, but only in Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle.

- Apparently, you don’t need a dictatorship to take away human rights: Foreign reporters in China have not only experienced interference with their Tibet coverage, but they’re now also receiving death threats. Yes, that’s how you show your country has progressed in the last 30 years.

- Ryuganji translates a very interesting interview with Korean-Japanese director Yoichi Sai about his Korean production Soo and other stuff.

- This week’s Teleview column on the Daily Yomiuri looks at the several manga-based dramas on Japanese TV this season.

- Donnie “I have hair and I’m not afraid to show ‘em with my pumped abs!” Yen is set to invade over 1000 Chinese cinema screens come September with his latest film Painted Skin. How the hell did they already know how much money they can get from people’s pockets based on the number of screens?

- Five film distributors and three multiplex chains in South Korea has been fined by the Fair Trade Commission there for price collusion. Specifically, the film distributors sent a letter to the multiplexes, telling them to not offer discounts without consulting each other. Funny, Hong Kong multiplexes have been doing that with ticket price increases, so why don’t they get called on it?

- Jason Gray has a short review of Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers, which sounds like a hell of a movie.

- Grady Hendrix wrote a while ago about Lawrence Lau’s film about the attempted assassination of ex-Taiwanese president Chan Sui-Bian. Now, there are actual stills from the movie and even an official blog for it. The film, starring Simon Yam, is set for release in August. It will be the third film released this year by the director after Besieged City and City Without Baseball.

- It’s reviews time! From Japan Times is Mark Schilling’s take on Berlin Film Festival winner Park and Love Hotel. From the Daily Yomiuri’s Ikuko Kitagawa’s review of the Japanese blockbuster Shaolin Girl. Twitch’s Todd Brown delivers a review of Ryuichi Hiroki’s Your Friends, which hasn’t opened in its native Japan yet, if I’m not mistaken. Lastly, there’s Jason Gray’s pseudo-early review of the new Japanese film Flavor of Happiness, starring Miki Nakatani.

- State regulators in Singapore have imposed a fine on a TV network there for a broadcasting a home decorating show that reportedly “normalized and promoted a homosexual lifestyle”. Now, why aren’t there anyone protesting against Singapore?

- On the other hand, the Nobel Foundation dropped their official broadcaster in Sweden because their award ceremony was censored in China, which means the network didn’t follow the terms it had with the foundation when they drew up their agreement with the Chinese networks.

- Instead of risking downloading films in their own home, some Chinese people have been going to illegally-operated internet cafes to watch screening of movies that were downloaded illegally by the cafes. While Chinese producer Huayi Brothers have won a lawsuit against three of these cafes, I doubt that people will be scared into stop downloading. Hell, even film school students here download the movies they watch, which may be one of the most depressing things happening to the industry today.

-This week’s Televiews column on the Daily Yomiuri gives a big big thumbs down to the Japanese drama adaptation of the hit Korean romantic comedy My Sassy Girl. There are also short one-sentence reviews of current dramas as well.

- Grady has already linked one teaser this week (the new Tetsuya Nakashima film Paco and the Magic Book), and now he delivers one for the new Tsui Hark film Missing, which is a…….horror flick?! Could this be Tsui Hark’s Linger?

- Also, Jason Gray delivers a trailer for the abused-children-in-third-world-country drama Children of the Dark.

- 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.

- In South Korean box office, it’s amazing that Three Kingdoms has managed two weekends at second place (the power of Andy Lau, ladies and gentlemen), while An Empress and the Warriors flopped on its opening weekend. Also, The Chaser is still on the top 10, 2 months after its release. More over at Korea Pop Wars.

- It’s reviews time! All of them are from Variety this time and from Derek Elley, who offers his take on Pang Ho-Cheung’s Trivial Matters, as well as his take on Oxide Pang’s The Detective.

- After the success of the cell phone novel adaptation Koizora last year, Shochiku and Fuji television are teaming up to bring another successful cell phone novel to both the big and small screens. This time it’s Akai Ito, which apparently will feature more drugs, rape, and suicide involving teenagers. Do Japanese kids really like watching this stuff?

- Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks are planning to bring the classic animated film Ghost in the Shell into a live-action 3D feature. This feels kind of redundant, especially when I felt like I already reported this, except it turns out that I was thinking of the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced Akira.

- More animation news: The voice talent cast has been announced for Mamoru Oshii’s Sky Crawlers, and it features Oscar-nominated actress Rinko Kikuchi and Ryo Kase. With recent animated films choosing stars over experience, are Japanese animated films starting to become more and more like American ones?

-  The short animated film Megumi, based on a true story about a girl abducted by North Korean agents and produced by a government agency, can now be downloaded for free. Er….I’ll get to watching it sooner or later, I guess.

- The Weinstein Company has revealed some of the films they’ll be making with their so-called “Asian fund,” and while we all know about Shanghai by know, I did a mental spit take when I saw the other film they announced.

- I like well-done parodies, especially when they capture something that’s timely in a sharp manner without being childish. But do we really need a parody of a blockbuster film a month within its release?

Was just watching the Hong Kong Film Awards on (delayed broadcast) TV. I haven’t tallied everything because I missed over an hour of it, but I can report that The Warlords took most of the major awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Yes, Jet Li is now a bona-fide actor.), Best Director. In fact, Peter Chan was the big winner, with wins for Protege as well (including one for Andy Lau as Best Supporting Actor. Sorry, Nick Cheung). Meanwhile, it’s “time to hand the torch to the young ‘uns” night at Milkyway, with Eye in the Sky taking 2 of Milkyway’s 3 awards. Also: Love Is Not All Around: 1. Exodus: 0 More when the reports come out.

- It’s Taiwanese music charts time! Kenji Wu’s latest album spends another week at the top, while the highest ranked “new release” is Khalil Fong’s Hong Kong concert, which was released along with his debut album as well. Oh, the reason that Jordan Chan debuted all the way at 20th place is because his album was released a day before the cut-off date for the charts. Expect him to be at a much higher place next week.

- It’s also reviews time! Variety’s Dennis Harvey has an early review of The Forbidden Kingdom with Jet “Best Actor” Li and Jackie “I’m gonna be a serious actor to take that award next year” Chan. Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has a review of the kids-and-parents-friendly film Chesuto, which he wasn’t too thrilled about. From BC Magazine review Yvonne Teh are her reviews of Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh’s latest acting effort Escape From Huang Shi (Children of Huang Shi sounds better in that self-important way, though) and the Daniel Lee MTV-style epic extravaganza Three Kingdoms. The magazine also offers reviews of Sylvia Chang’s Run Papa Run by James Marsh and the Muay Thai action flick Chocolate by Brian “Asian Cinema - While On the Road” Naas.

- Just to show that some people do what I do better than I do, Ryuganji has a entry filled with useful snippets of recent Japanese cinema news.

- New Korean film producer Motion 101 is now headed for closure - before it even got started on its first project. Is the Korean film industry doing that bad, or was it just bad management?

- Takeshi Kitano has revealed his latest film Achilles and the Tortoise - another self-referential film about the making of art. Apparently, now Kitano has his own “trilogy”

- This week’s Televiews column on the Daily Yomiuri looks at new baseball drama Battery and the latest installment of the long-running drama Wataru Seken wa Oni Bakari. Oh, the writer also manage to work in a reference to Takashii Miike Cell Phone Detective, which only scored a 3.8% rating for its premiere (though it did only premiere on TV Tokyo, or is that a National network now?)

- Lastly, Jason Gray discovers another promising young filmmaker with an excellent debut feature at the Nippon Connection Film Festival in Germany.

The blogger has been extremely busy during the holiday weekend, which would explain the lack of posts. Maybe.

- Before we go over the Hong Kong box office tomorrow, let’s look at how things were on Thursday opening day. Patrick Kong’s L for Love, L For Lies actually remained on top with HK$680,000 from 35 screens. As for opening films, Spiderwick Chronicles opened on 35 screens with HK$650,000 and should do well for the weekend, Charlie Wilson’s War opened at just 19 screens and made HK$350,000. Under “possible disappointments” is the opening for Ching Siu-Tung’s An Empress and the Warriors, which opened on 35 screens with only HK$600,000. One of the possible reasons may be the audience not being able to find a Cantonese version (even though the trailers were dubbed in Cantonese and the film features actors based in Hong Kong), but I’m just guessing. Either way, it’s not poised to pass the HK$10 million mark at this point. We’ll know more during the week.

- The Winter 2007 Japanese drama season is pretty much over (with two dramas having yet to wrap up), and the highest-rated series of the season is the Monday 9pm Fuji drama Bara No Nai Hanaya with an average 18.2 rating a week ahead of its finale. In a far-off second is Saito-san with an average 15.5 rating. The disappointment of the season has to be Sasaki Fusai No Jingi Naki Tatakai, which opened with a strong 17.3 rating, but ends up averaging only 10.9 by the end of the season. Hell, even The Negotiator could recover for an average 13.4 rating by the time it ended. However, the lowest-rated drama this season belongs to Yon Shimai Tantei, which saw an average 7.0 rating and even saw one of its episodes get only a 3.5 rating. On the other hand, with an average 7.1 rating, Ashita No Kita Yoshio performed more consistently bad and had the lowest-rated finale of the bunch.

There ends another bad season for dramas, but with KimuTaku returning this coming season, perhaps ratings will pick up a little bit.

- Speaking of Japanese TV, this week’s Televiews column on the Yomiuri is about the various “Monagatari” (The Japanese word for “story) on the Japanese TV these days.

- While the usual big-time surely got what they wanted at Filmart this year, Malaysia companies also managed to strike some big-time deals on their own, especially in animation.

- It’s reviews time! This weekend, Japan Times’ Mark Schilling looks at actor Jiro Sato’s directorial debut Memo. Meanwhile, Japan Times’ Giovanni Fazio looks at Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights. In fact, the Yomiuri’s Ikuko Kitagawa also looks at My Blueberry Nights, although she seems to like it more than Fazio did. From the Hollywood Reporter, Elizabeth Karr looks at Joe Ma’s Sasori and calls it “vile” and “lacking in wit, irony and wisdom.” Meanwhile, Maggie Lee looks at the Korean film Man Who Was Superman, starring Jeon Ji-Hyun.

- Please, can someone tell me why the world needs an animated version of the hit Korean drama Winter Sonata? Oh, well, at least they got Yon-sama himself to dub the voice.

-  It’s trailers time! First, Twitch has a trailer for Katsuhito Ishii’s latest film Yama No Anata, with Smap member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi as a blind masseur who doesn’t kill people. They also have the final theatrical trailer for the Stephen Chow-produced blockbuster junk food Shaolin Girl. It’s not only Lacrosse with Shaolin kung-fu: it also has villains kicking ass.

- The comeback edition of the Yubari Fantastic Film Festival ended on Sunday successfully, and the short film Daichi o Tataku Onna picked up the competition prize.

-  Shin Ka-Hyun is now joining Song Kang-Ho for Park Chan-Wook’s latest Thirst. You know what that means? When Bae Doo Na’s in, we have ourself a Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance reunion!

- Lastly, the Yomiuri does a feature on African-American enka singer Jero, who has hit the big time with the young using an old-fashioned genre.

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.