As usual, there’s not really much news on Thursdays, and there’s even a bit of a Hong Kong slant on things today.

- Most of the Toronto International Festival lineup has been announced, and the Asian selection looks real yummy. This year we have Ang Lee, Edmond Pang, Alexi Tan’s Blood Brothers (although the words “cautionary tale” has me cautious), Nobuhiro Yamashita, Hur Jin-Ho, Johnnie To/Wai Ka-Fai, Takeshi Kitano, Aoyama Shinji, and Im Kwon-Taek.

- Forgot to mention this for a few days, but Lovehkfilm has a review of Wilson Yip’s loving tribute to Donnie Yen and his bloody face Flash Point.

- Writer/director Koki Mitani, who last wrote and directed the chaotic and often funny The Uchoten Hotel, has upgraded his predictions for his next film The Magic Hour. Now he’s promising 10 laughs in three minutes instead of his earlier prediction of 3 laughs a minute. I’ll be counting, ok?

- After Monkey Magic became the widest release for a live-action Japanese film, that record is about to be quickly broken, and by another SMAP member, no less. Kimura Takuya’s drama adaptation film Hero is set to open on 470 screens (again, the blog post says it’s the widest for a Japanese film, period, but who can confirm this?). With ratings topping at over 30%, can the film’s demand meet the supply come September?

- Under “it’s worse than I thought” news today, a full page ad for that Eric Tsang/Wong Jing collaboration, now named Beauty and the 7 Beasts, was on the pages of Hong Kong newspapers today. The woman on the poster, according to the comment section, is Meng Yao, who played DJ Sammy’s wife/manager in the comedy shitter Super Fans. According to the ad, that is the woman that is supposed to “make your mouth dry, have a fever, suffer from increased heartbeats, make your body grow stiff, and cause your nose to bleed.” Is it just me, or is Hong Kong cinema getting increasingly out of touch with reality?

- Remember Lost in Beijing? The film by Chinese director Li Yu that suffered a bunch of cuts for its Chinese release, but even is uncut version as found to be not that big of a deal. Nevertheless, even though the film has cleared the censors, its release is still being put off to “create a healthy and harmonious environment” ahead of the Chinese communist party’s congress. They ought to know that to really bury a film is to release it in so little screens that no one cares, not allow such news to go out.

- On the other hand, China has finally cleared the Japanese disaster film The Sinking of Japan for theatrical release. It’s a movie where Japan sinks, so why wouldn’t China allow it?

- A trailer for Asian-American star Daniel Henney’s latest film My Father is out. This one looks pretty demanding in terms of acting skills, but after Seducing Mr. Perfect, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a trailer to convince me that Henney might be able to act.

- In more “silly Chinese censors” news, the government television agency killed off a talent show called “The First Time I was Touched.” I think the word touched is to mean emotionally, not physically. Still, censors says the show create a negative social effect and is damaging the medium of television. How fucking ironic is that?

- When I signed up for internet/broadband TV last week, the service was promoting the new English Premier League service. That’s why I don’t blame Hong Kong pay TV for going after bars that not only steal cable, but use it to make money.

- Apparently, the latest Lee Myung-Se film M is finished. For those that don’t know, Lee made a huge splash with Nowhere to Hide, but pissed a lot of people off with Duelist, so let’s see how this one goes.

- Let’s start today with the Japanese Oricon charts. The singles chart was pretty packed this week, with 17 of the top 30 singles being new releases. Leading the pack is Johnny’s Entertainment pop duo Takki and Tsubasa with their latest single, selling 57,700 copies to get the number 1 spot. The rest of the chart see fairly weak sales, including Leah Dizon’s 3rd single all the way down in 16th place, selling only 12,500 copies. However, that could be due to the announcement of the release of her debut album for next month, meaning fans can wait a month for their 14-track studio modified fix of Dizon’s singing. Expect next week’s sales on the charts to be pretty low, with Tokio and Kazumasa Oda vying for the top spot.

The album chart is even quieter, with Sukima Switch’s compilation album still ruling the charts with another 145,000 copies sold. The two Orange Range compilations continue to sell strongly, with a combined sales of 73,000 copies to take second and third place. Def Tech member Micro’s debut solo album only sold 33,000 copies for a 4th place debut, and looks like band Greeeen’s hit debut album will finally drop from the top 10 next week. Next week, the profit from the death of the pop artist Zard continues as two compilations will share the first and second spot.

- They keep reporting it, and I keep linking it. Korean distributor Showbox announces that dragon in LA film D-War has now officially become the 10th best-selling Korean film of all time, proving again that cinematic quality doesn’t necessarily have a correlation with financial success. Also, Korea Pop Wars report that the success of the film might be going over the head of director Shim Hyung-Rae a little bit.

- The Thai horror film Alone, which was a minor hit in Korea last month, is coming soon to Hong Kong, but not without its controversies. The TELA (these guys again!) said the trailers and posters are too disturbing for public display, and has forced the distributors to cut and silence the trailer for theatre lobbies, as well as changing the posters.

Then again, the original trailer, which is now cut in all its forms, was pretty disturbing.

Original Chinese report

- I can probably link any site for this report - the lineup for the upcoming Pusan Promotion Plan, where filmmakers take their upcoming projects to meet with possible financiers, has been announced. This year, we have high-profile filmmakers (i.e. those that I’ve heard of) such as Fruit Chan, Hong Sang-Soo, Sono Sion, and Daniel Yu.

- Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke, who has made a string of films that were banned by the government before straightening up, sees his latest film Tattoo Age shelved because of the sensitive subject matter of the Cultural Revolution and they were unable to cast Asian superstar Jay Chou in a role. Jay Chou in a Jia Zhangke movie? He sure has come a long way from Xiao Wu.

- Speaking of ultra art films, Variety has a review of Locarno Film Festival winner The Rebirth (Ai No Yokan)

- In China’s never-ending attempts to please the foreigners about intellectual copyrights before the 2008 Olympics (how can a country that held a huge ceremony to celebrate the one-year countdown to the actual opening date not be excited about it?), the government will look to shutting down websites that allow illegal download of copyright materials, which would give them an excuse to go after those banned books too.

- Johnnie To and Lau Ching-Wan are teaming up for a long-awaited dramatic effort that I predict will probably be loved by film fans, but not make much money. Sorry, Lau Ching-Wan, as much as I love him as an actor, actually isn’t that great of a box office draw….neither is Andy On and Kelly Lin.

- Let’s start today with the Japanese Oricon charts. The singles chart was pretty packed this week, with 17 of the top 30 singles being new releases. Leading the pack is Johnny’s Entertainment pop duo Takki and Tsubasa with their latest single, selling 57,700 copies to get the number 1 spot. The rest of the chart see fairly weak sales, including Leah Dizon’s 3rd single all the way down in 16th place, selling only 12,500 copies. However, that could be due to the announcement of the release of her debut album for next month, meaning fans can wait a month for their 14-track studio modified fix of Dizon’s singing. Expect next week’s sales on the charts to be pretty low, with Tokio and Kazumasa Oda vying for the top spot.

The album chart is even quieter, with Sukima Switch’s compilation album still ruling the charts with another 145,000 copies sold. The two Orange Range compilations continue to sell strongly, with a combined sales of 73,000 copies to take second and third place. Def Tech member Micro’s debut solo album only sold 33,000 copies for a 4th place debut, and looks like band Greeeen’s hit debut album will finally drop from the top 10 next week. Next week, the profit from the death of the pop artist Zard continues as two compilations will share the first and second spot.

- They keep reporting it, and I keep linking it. Korean distributor Showbox announces that dragon in LA film D-War has now officially become the 10th best-selling Korean film of all time, proving again that cinematic quality doesn’t necessarily have a correlation with financial success. Also, Korea Pop Wars report that the success of the film might be going over the head of director Shim Hyung-Rae a little bit.

- The Thai horror film Alone, which was a minor hit in Korea last month, is coming soon to Hong Kong, but not without its controversies. The TELA (these guys again!) said the trailers and posters are too disturbing for public display, and has forced the distributors to cut and silence the trailer for theatre lobbies, as well as changing the posters.

Then again, the original trailer, which is now cut in all its forms, was pretty disturbing.

Original Chinese report

- I can probably link any site for this report - the lineup for the upcoming Pusan Promotion Plan, where filmmakers take their upcoming projects to meet with possible financiers, has been announced. This year, we have high-profile filmmakers (i.e. those that I’ve heard of) such as Fruit Chan, Hong Sang-Soo, Sono Sion, and Daniel Yu.

- Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke, who has made a string of films that were banned by the government before straightening up, sees his latest film Tattoo Age shelved because of the sensitive subject matter of the Cultural Revolution and they were unable to cast Asian superstar Jay Chou in a role. Jay Chou in a Jia Zhangke movie? He sure has come a long way from Xiao Wu.

- Speaking of ultra art films, Variety has a review of Locarno Film Festival winner The Rebirth (Ai No Yokan)

- In China’s never-ending attempts to please the foreigners about intellectual copyrights before the 2008 Olympics (how can a country that held a huge ceremony to celebrate the one-year countdown to the actual opening date not be excited about it?), the government will look to shutting down websites that allow illegal download of copyright materials, which would give them an excuse to go after those banned books too.

- Johnnie To and Lau Ching-Wan are teaming up for a long-awaited dramatic effort that I predict will probably be loved by film fans, but not make much money. Sorry, Lau Ching-Wan, as much as I love him as an actor, actually isn’t that great of a box office draw….neither is Andy On and Kelly Lin.

- The Japanese box office numbers are out, showing that Ocean’s Thirteen opened fairly well with 496 million yen, and Transformers dropping 36.5% in its second week, which again is somewhat surprising considering how well it has done with word-of-mouth elsewhere. Of course, its drop to third place is also because Harry Potter dropped only by 7% to keep its second-place spot.

However, the biggest drop in the top 10 goes to the latest Naruto movie, which lost 47% of its audience, while the smallest drop belongs to - and I’m almost kind of sad to say this - Monkey Magic, which lost only 3% of its audience to make 2.98 billion yen total, inching ever closer for Fuji TV to break even.

- According to Mark Russell’s Korea Pop Wars, turns out D-War is actually close to getting 5.71 million admissions and has already passed the break-even point at the standards of the reported budget.

- My new favorite weekly feature these days is the Teleview column on the Daily Yomiuri website. This week, writer Wm. Penn writes about what’s on Japanese TV this week and a possible ratings crisis on stations’ hands.

- And yet, Japan are still rolling out one drama adaptation film after another. The latest is the hit Kimura Takuya drama Hero, and a trailer is floating around online. Honestly, it’s not doing much for me, but that’s because I’ve never seen Hero…..Oriental 188 Mall, here I come.

- My bad. I totally forgot to acknowledge that Grady Hendrix’s informative Asian cinema blog Kaiju Shakedown is back, and in a much more complicated link. The link section shall be updated. Anyway, Grady reports today that Hong Kong video distributor Mei Ah’s remastered version of Patrick Tam Ka-Ming’s Nomad is actually not the director’s cut, and that the “corrected” version will be out in 2008.

- After a Tokyo multiplex found success with weekly showing of Korean star Bae Yong-Joon’s dramas, a smaller independent theater is doing the same with Korean star So Ji Sub’s Choa Choa (is that the real name? Or just the Japanese name?). If this is a success as well, then looks like the Korean wave isn’t so dead after all in Japan.

- The Japanese song “Sen No Kaze Ni Natte,” based on an English poem found at the World Trade Center in New York, has finally sold one million copies after becoming a huge hit the first half of the year.

- I don’t know if this can be considered a compliment to someone that’s already been in the business for 20 years - Director Peter Chan Ho-Sun said his biggest surprise from making the period action film The Warlords is Jet Li’s dramatic acting ability. Actually, that moment came for me while watching Fearless.

- I’m going to make a small private confession - I consider my most creative time in terms of scriptwriting to be right after I got dumped by my second girlfriend. During that period, I actually wrote 3 or 4 short film scripts, none of which I ended up making. I mention this because Kazuaki Kiriya, better known perhaps as ex-Mr. Utada Hikaru, seems to be going through a similar thing. Not only is he currently shooting a Japanese film, it’s actually confirmed that he also have his Hollywood debut lined up.

- In casting news today, Koyuki, whose most famous role is in The Last Samurai, has signed up to for Blood: The Last Vampire alongside Jeon Ji-Hyun (to be credited as Gianna Jun). These international Pan-Asian co-production in English just don’t seem to turn out very well (Dragon Squad, anyone?), so I don’t expect much.

Meanwhile, the television remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High And Low has signed up high-profile young actor Satoshi Tsumabuki as the kidnapper.

- The United States government’s bullying continues, as they have asked the World Trade Organization to put together a panel to settle their complaint against China over piracy of their films. Just what exactly are they expecting the Chinese government to do, ask for a couple of bucks from every Chinese citizen to pay off the MPA?

Oh, they want to work bilaterally, so that means they want to actually go into China and take down every single pirate vendors themselves.

- One place America doesn’t need to go to is Shenzhen, where crackdown on pirate vendors have caused the number of vendors to go from 1,000 to 50 in the last few years. Is that enough result for you, America?

- The Japanese box office numbers are out, showing that Ocean’s Thirteen opened fairly well with 496 million yen, and Transformers dropping 36.5% in its second week, which again is somewhat surprising considering how well it has done with word-of-mouth elsewhere. Of course, its drop to third place is also because Harry Potter dropped only by 7% to keep its second-place spot.

However, the biggest drop in the top 10 goes to the latest Naruto movie, which lost 47% of its audience, while the smallest drop belongs to - and I’m almost kind of sad to say this - Monkey Magic, which lost only 3% of its audience to make 2.98 billion yen total, inching ever closer for Fuji TV to break even.

- According to Mark Russell’s Korea Pop Wars, turns out D-War is actually close to getting 5.71 million admissions and has already passed the break-even point at the standards of the reported budget.

- My new favorite weekly feature these days is the Teleview column on the Daily Yomiuri website. This week, writer Wm. Penn writes about what’s on Japanese TV this week and a possible ratings crisis on stations’ hands.

- And yet, Japan are still rolling out one drama adaptation film after another. The latest is the hit Kimura Takuya drama Hero, and a trailer is floating around online. Honestly, it’s not doing much for me, but that’s because I’ve never seen Hero…..Oriental 188 Mall, here I come.

- My bad. I totally forgot to acknowledge that Grady Hendrix’s informative Asian cinema blog Kaiju Shakedown is back, and in a much more complicated link. The link section shall be updated. Anyway, Grady reports today that Hong Kong video distributor Mei Ah’s remastered version of Patrick Tam Ka-Ming’s Nomad is actually not the director’s cut, and that the “corrected” version will be out in 2008.

- After a Tokyo multiplex found success with weekly showing of Korean star Bae Yong-Joon’s dramas, a smaller independent theater is doing the same with Korean star So Ji Sub’s Choa Choa (is that the real name? Or just the Japanese name?). If this is a success as well, then looks like the Korean wave isn’t so dead after all in Japan.

- The Japanese song “Sen No Kaze Ni Natte,” based on an English poem found at the World Trade Center in New York, has finally sold one million copies after becoming a huge hit the first half of the year.

- I don’t know if this can be considered a compliment to someone that’s already been in the business for 20 years - Director Peter Chan Ho-Sun said his biggest surprise from making the period action film The Warlords is Jet Li’s dramatic acting ability. Actually, that moment came for me while watching Fearless.

- I’m going to make a small private confession - I consider my most creative time in terms of scriptwriting to be right after I got dumped by my second girlfriend. During that period, I actually wrote 3 or 4 short film scripts, none of which I ended up making. I mention this because Kazuaki Kiriya, better known perhaps as ex-Mr. Utada Hikaru, seems to be going through a similar thing. Not only is he currently shooting a Japanese film, it’s actually confirmed that he also have his Hollywood debut lined up.

- In casting news today, Koyuki, whose most famous role is in The Last Samurai, has signed up to for Blood: The Last Vampire alongside Jeon Ji-Hyun (to be credited as Gianna Jun). These international Pan-Asian co-production in English just don’t seem to turn out very well (Dragon Squad, anyone?), so I don’t expect much.

Meanwhile, the television remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High And Low has signed up high-profile young actor Satoshi Tsumabuki as the kidnapper.

- The United States government’s bullying continues, as they have asked the World Trade Organization to put together a panel to settle their complaint against China over piracy of their films. Just what exactly are they expecting the Chinese government to do, ask for a couple of bucks from every Chinese citizen to pay off the MPA?

Oh, they want to work bilaterally, so that means they want to actually go into China and take down every single pirate vendors themselves.

- One place America doesn’t need to go to is Shenzhen, where crackdown on pirate vendors have caused the number of vendors to go from 1,000 to 50 in the last few years. Is that enough result for you, America?

The Golden Rock is back, around the same size and hopefully the same quality. Now reporting from Hong Kong, posting times will naturally be different, but hopefully still daily.

- As always, let’s look at the Hong Kong Sunday box office. Pixar’s Ratatouille has a very strong second weekend, making HK$1.63 million on only 34 screens for a 14-day total of HK14.81 million already. This should have no problem getting past the HK$25 million mark set by The Incredibles. Meanwhile, the three opening films opened neck-to-neck, with The Simpsons Movie (whose Hong Kong dub version features Josie Ho, Wyman Wong, Denise “HOCC” Ho, and pop star Ivana Wong) leading the pack, making HK$1.24 million on 37 screens for a 4-day total of HK$3.92 million. While The Bourne Supremacy is in third of the three films in total 4-day box office (HK$3.8 million), it was just under The Simpsons with HK$1.1 million on 31 screens. This means Wilson Yip’s Donnie Yen lovefest Flashpoint made HK$1.01 million on 33 screens, but did better overall this weekend with the 4-day total of HK$3.89 million(although this actually include the HK$200,000 from previews last weekend). With fairly positive word-of-mouth amongst Hong Kong moviegoers, this should cross the HK$10 million mark.

Don’t count those leftover films out, though. Transformers is already near the HK$35 million mark after 18 days by making HK$940,000 on 34 screens; Jay Chou’s Jay Chou lovefest Secret actually continues to hang on (probably thanks to the Jay Chou fans) with HK$640,000 on 31 screens (Variety Asia reports its box office success elsewhere in Asia here); even Harry Potter made HK$230,000 on 17 screens for a 33-day total of HK$49.98 million. Invisible Target, which pretty much got pushed out of theaters, looks to end its run with HK$13.19 million. All in all, this was a pretty huge weekend at the box office, which was probably helped by the passing typhoon and just generally crappy weather.

- In Japanese audience rankings, Transformers got pushed all the way down to third place for its second week by Ocean’s 13 and Harry Potter, which is somewhat surprising because it’s done so well with word-of-mouth elsewhere. Ocean’s 13 is the only new film in the top 10.

This week, Hideo Nakata’s Kaidan dropped from 8th place to 10th place in its second week, meaning that despite being somewhat well-reviewed, it’ll go away quickly amidst the late-Summer box office. It’s also the only adult-oriented Japanese blockbuster this summer. Kaidan’s opening is only 51% compared to the star’s last film The Murder of the Inugami Clan
and only 81% of Nakata’s The Ring 2 (although I don’t know why Eiga Consultant chose to compare with that). Looks like summer is just not the time for this type of films.

- In the Korean box office, D-War wins its second weekend with a total 5.06 million viewers already after a roughly 50% drop in attendance. Don’t count May 18 out, though, as it has already attracted over 4.5 million viewers. These two films have already surpassed Voice of a Murderer as the two best-grossing Korean films of the year.

- While it’s cool that the American animated series Afro Samurai will see all 5 of its episodes in Japanese theaters, the cooler part of this report is that Samuel L. Jackson will be in a planned live-action version.

- Under “This cannot be good” news today, Eric Tsang (a producer that can be said to have pretty low taste - look at what he did to the ending of Men Suddenly in Black 2) is teaming up with Wong Jing (an even cheaper producer who’s intelligent but makes movies of low taste and lack of originality - look at all of his movies) to remake the 1970 film The Seven Colour Wolf (I can’t confirm this English title because of the Yesasia name for it. Can anyone?), with Chung Su-Kei (who has made shit like Feel 100% 2003 and Nine Girls and a Ghost) taking the director’s seat. No word yet on who will star, I believe.

- Again, an artsy Japanese film that drove audiences away has taken a major award at an European film festival. Masahiro Kobayashi’s The Rebirth won the top award The Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. However, with two Asian films taking the top prize, the festival is apparently moving into the elitist artsy film festival that is drawing less interest from buyers.

- The Hong Kong entertainment news programs have been reporting for several days about Chung Siu-Tung’s latest period martial arts film (another one?!), this time with Kelly Chan in her first period role in a long time, Leon Lai, and Donnie Yen. It’s not very likely, however, that Yen will go topless in this one.

- In China, people are so insistent on seeing movies illegally and for free that they’re moving off the streets and into internet cafes.

- Under “who died and made him boss?” news today, Jackie Chan says that he hopes to finish the animated film Taiwanese director Edward Yang started working on for years before his death. Then again, the film IS based on Chan’s life, so I guess that would make him the new boss.

- Lastly, two major Thai directors are planning on developing the country’s first script development project, taking on 30 aspiring screenwriters on workshops and pitch meetings. This could, in the long run, breathe new life into the slowly-expanding Thai film industry.

Song of the Day will return some time this week, and expect something new with The Golden Rock this week as well.

The Golden Rock is back, around the same size and hopefully the same quality. Now reporting from Hong Kong, posting times will naturally be different, but hopefully still daily.

- As always, let’s look at the Hong Kong Sunday box office. Pixar’s Ratatouille has a very strong second weekend, making HK$1.63 million on only 34 screens for a 14-day total of HK14.81 million already. This should have no problem getting past the HK$25 million mark set by The Incredibles. Meanwhile, the three opening films opened neck-to-neck, with The Simpsons Movie (whose Hong Kong dub version features Josie Ho, Wyman Wong, Denise “HOCC” Ho, and pop star Ivana Wong) leading the pack, making HK$1.24 million on 37 screens for a 4-day total of HK$3.92 million. While The Bourne Supremacy is in third of the three films in total 4-day box office (HK$3.8 million), it was just under The Simpsons with HK$1.1 million on 31 screens. This means Wilson Yip’s Donnie Yen lovefest Flashpoint made HK$1.01 million on 33 screens, but did better overall this weekend with the 4-day total of HK$3.89 million(although this actually include the HK$200,000 from previews last weekend). With fairly positive word-of-mouth amongst Hong Kong moviegoers, this should cross the HK$10 million mark.

Don’t count those leftover films out, though. Transformers is already near the HK$35 million mark after 18 days by making HK$940,000 on 34 screens; Jay Chou’s Jay Chou lovefest Secret actually continues to hang on (probably thanks to the Jay Chou fans) with HK$640,000 on 31 screens (Variety Asia reports its box office success elsewhere in Asia here); even Harry Potter made HK$230,000 on 17 screens for a 33-day total of HK$49.98 million. Invisible Target, which pretty much got pushed out of theaters, looks to end its run with HK$13.19 million. All in all, this was a pretty huge weekend at the box office, which was probably helped by the passing typhoon and just generally crappy weather.

- In Japanese audience rankings, Transformers got pushed all the way down to third place for its second week by Ocean’s 13 and Harry Potter, which is somewhat surprising because it’s done so well with word-of-mouth elsewhere. Ocean’s 13 is the only new film in the top 10.

This week, Hideo Nakata’s Kaidan dropped from 8th place to 10th place in its second week, meaning that despite being somewhat well-reviewed, it’ll go away quickly amidst the late-Summer box office. It’s also the only adult-oriented Japanese blockbuster this summer. Kaidan’s opening is only 51% compared to the star’s last film The Murder of the Inugami Clan
and only 81% of Nakata’s The Ring 2 (although I don’t know why Eiga Consultant chose to compare with that). Looks like summer is just not the time for this type of films.

- In the Korean box office, D-War wins its second weekend with a total 5.06 million viewers already after a roughly 50% drop in attendance. Don’t count May 18 out, though, as it has already attracted over 4.5 million viewers. These two films have already surpassed Voice of a Murderer as the two best-grossing Korean films of the year.

- While it’s cool that the American animated series Afro Samurai will see all 5 of its episodes in Japanese theaters, the cooler part of this report is that Samuel L. Jackson will be in a planned live-action version.

- Under “This cannot be good” news today, Eric Tsang (a producer that can be said to have pretty low taste - look at what he did to the ending of Men Suddenly in Black 2) is teaming up with Wong Jing (an even cheaper producer who’s intelligent but makes movies of low taste and lack of originality - look at all of his movies) to remake the 1970 film The Seven Colour Wolf (I can’t confirm this English title because of the Yesasia name for it. Can anyone?), with Chung Su-Kei (who has made shit like Feel 100% 2003 and Nine Girls and a Ghost) taking the director’s seat. No word yet on who will star, I believe.

- Again, an artsy Japanese film that drove audiences away has taken a major award at an European film festival. Masahiro Kobayashi’s The Rebirth won the top award The Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. However, with two Asian films taking the top prize, the festival is apparently moving into the elitist artsy film festival that is drawing less interest from buyers.

- The Hong Kong entertainment news programs have been reporting for several days about Chung Siu-Tung’s latest period martial arts film (another one?!), this time with Kelly Chan in her first period role in a long time, Leon Lai, and Donnie Yen. It’s not very likely, however, that Yen will go topless in this one.

- In China, people are so insistent on seeing movies illegally and for free that they’re moving off the streets and into internet cafes.

- Under “who died and made him boss?” news today, Jackie Chan says that he hopes to finish the animated film Taiwanese director Edward Yang started working on for years before his death. Then again, the film IS based on Chan’s life, so I guess that would make him the new boss.

- Lastly, two major Thai directors are planning on developing the country’s first script development project, taking on 30 aspiring screenwriters on workshops and pitch meetings. This could, in the long run, breathe new life into the slowly-expanding Thai film industry.

Song of the Day will return some time this week, and expect something new with The Golden Rock this week as well.

Today’s the day. Your favorite blogger is heading to Hong Kong tonight, so this would be the final entry for a week or two. As a result, today’s entry is a little longer than usual.

- In Hong Kong on Thursday opening day, Jay Chou’s directorial debut Secret (with a BC Magazine review here and a fluff piece/review from AP here) opens pretty well with HK$720,000 on 35 screens for a total HK$870,000 already, including previews. Rely on the teens to show up to this one, and maybe it’ll go past the HK$10 million mark. Meanwhile, Pixar’s Ratatouille, whose Hong Kong version feature the voices of Ronald Cheng, Edmond Leung, and Cecilia Cheung, opened on 35 screens for a much better HK$1.11 million.

But the winner of opening day remains Michael Bay’s Transformers, which picked up another HK$1.34 million from 63 screens for an 8-day total of HK$21.32 million. However, with the ticket price inflation, the amount of admissions is probably around the same as Ratatouille. On the Hong Kong film front, Invisible Target passed the HK$10 million mark on Tuesday. Despite some multiplexes already playing less shows each day, it still managed to make HK$310,000 on just 18 screens for a 15-day total of HK$11.23 million. Will this make it to the HK$15 million mark and beat Love is Not All Around?

- It’s a miracle! The Korean monster film D-War, which took forever for a wide release in its home Korea despite being the touted as the most expensive Korean film ever made, has grossed US$2.9 million on its opening day. According to Korea Pop Wars, its two-day total is now US$6.1 million and should reach 2-2.5 million admissions by the end of the weekend. However, despite praises for the special effects, everything else is being panned, so word-of-mouth might not be too good on this one. By the way, the official budget of the film was locked at US$35 million, though about $40 million has been spent to start up a new special effects house that did this film. I’m sure distributor Showbox is kind of breathing a sigh of relief, though they still have plenty of money to make back.

- Yawn. Japanese copyright organizations continue in their endless effort to pressure Youtube Japan to weed out copyright violators. How about they work to make legitimate content easier to access before they cut all supplies? This stuff is like drugs - you cut them off, people will do anything for a fix.

- Meanwhile, The Computer & Communication Industry Association, which includes Google and Microsoft, has lodged a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission to protest copyright holders putting misleading warnings against copyright infringement that fail to educate consumers on fair use laws. Those named in the complaint include major movie studios, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and of course, the MPAA.

- Director Edward Yang, who recently passed away at his home in the United States, is expected to be honored at this year’s Golden Horse Awards. Is it just me, or is the claim that he’s an “American” director going to piss off some people, seeing he’s one of the pioneers of NEW TAIWAN CINEMA?

- reviews time! We have Japan Times’ review of Hideo Nakata’s Kaidan by Mark Schilling, the Variety review of the hit Korean horror film Black House by Derek Elley, and I’m partially translating the very very limited release (one theater in my old neighborhood of Kwun Tong, to be exact) Hong Kong film Bar Paradise:

First, a little background: Bar Paradise is a 2005 film directed by Wing-Lun Mak, who’s directed some low-budget DV productions. It stars Julian Cheung, Gordon Lam, Candy Yu, and Eric Tsang. The original Chinese post in full is here. The following are excerpts translated -

在設計上，電影可算是十分趕客，單要觀眾適應片中對白的語言已經幾乎令人神經錯亂。泰語、粵語和普通話互通。其中余安安對著曾志偉，明明兩人懂粵語也在片中有粵語對白，偏要講出泰語來。張智霖和林家棟時國時粵時泰，看來買多數部「靈格風」也未必有耐性去理解。想看字幕？錯字大量供應，例如「道歉」因倉頡選碼誤選為「道欺」比比皆是。

In design, the film seems to be made to drive audiences away. Understanding the languages in the dialogue is enough drive audiences crazy. It switches between Thai, Cantonese, and Mandarin. For instance, Even though both Candy Yu and Eric Tsang speak Cantonese in the film and understand the language, they still speak Thai; Julian Cheung and Gordon Lam switch between Mandarin, Cantonese, and Thai, even buying an electronic dictionary won’t mean you’d have the patience to understand. Want to read subtitles? There’s a large supply of wrong words, such as “doh heep” (apologize) becomes “doh hei” (the second Chinese character looks alike, but oh so utterly wrong).

至於曾志偉，則在電影中飾演一名泰國軍閥政客，而附上「韓琛」式的例湯演繹。而余安安則佔戲不多，但又奇怪地加入一場穿黑色內衣褲色誘曾志偉的場面。中午時份播放，難怪股市也曾出現一陣「獲利回吐」，慶幸戲院並沒有出現嘔吐物。

As for Eric Tsang, he plays a Thai warlord politician in the performance style of the usual “Sam Han” (his character from Infernal Affairs). Candy Yu doesn’t have much screen time, but there is a strange addition in the form of a scene in which she seduces Eric Tsang in black panties. No wonder even the stock market experienced a “resurgence of profits” during its noon screening. Thankfully, no vomit appeared in the theatre.

劇情和演員拿出零分之餘，電影在拍攝技巧亦仿如恐佈片一樣，突然時跳到下一場不連配樂的情況也常出現。莫怪乎零五年的電影至今才出現。電影結局亦不明所以，令觀眾在大量無奈下離場。

With no effort from the plot and the actors, the film’s technique resembles a horror film, and sudden jumps to the next scene where the music don’t even match happen often. No wonder this 2005 film took this long to show up. Even the ending is incomprehensible, making the audience leave in a state of helplessness.

So in other words….this movie stinks.

- Along with the Kaidan review is Jason Gray’s interview with director Hideo Nakata, who made the original “Ring” film and is directing the Death Note spinoff L. Jason has more about the interview itself in his blog.

- Another film off the “milking the Nanking massacre for all its worth” assembly line, Simon West’s Purple Mountain, has started filming. This film is an adaptation of the controversial book “The Rape of Nanjing” by Iris Chang, and is the most expensive of the productions. West apparently wants to create the same type of impact as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List.

Let’s see - Tomb Raider and Con Air vs. Indiana Jones and Saving Private Ryan. Don’t think that’ll happen.

- In a continuing lack of creativity in the world of Japanese television dramas (as is the case in television drama circles around the world), there are more comic adaptations coming to your small screens.

- Japan Times has a look at movies that deal with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in light of the release of Steven Okazaki’s White Light/Black Rain.

- Twitch mistakenly links the website for Miki Satoshi’s latest Tenten, starring Satoshi favorite Joe Odagiri as the website for Odagiri’s directorial debut. Still, Tenten looks pretty interesting, and since the film is about two men walking across Tokyo, the advance ticket actually comes with a map of the locations they visit in the film. Now there’s a souvenir worth buying.

That’s it for now. The Golden Rock will be back in 1-2 weeks, with The Song of the Day feature continuing (wished more of you voted, though). There might be a few surprises and additions coming, so keep checking in starting next weekend. See you all on the other side of the world!

Today’s the day. Your favorite blogger is heading to Hong Kong tonight, so this would be the final entry for a week or two. As a result, today’s entry is a little longer than usual.

- In Hong Kong on Thursday opening day, Jay Chou’s directorial debut Secret (with a BC Magazine review here and a fluff piece/review from AP here) opens pretty well with HK$720,000 on 35 screens for a total HK$870,000 already, including previews. Rely on the teens to show up to this one, and maybe it’ll go past the HK$10 million mark. Meanwhile, Pixar’s Ratatouille, whose Hong Kong version feature the voices of Ronald Cheng, Edmond Leung, and Cecilia Cheung, opened on 35 screens for a much better HK$1.11 million.

But the winner of opening day remains Michael Bay’s Transformers, which picked up another HK$1.34 million from 63 screens for an 8-day total of HK$21.32 million. However, with the ticket price inflation, the amount of admissions is probably around the same as Ratatouille. On the Hong Kong film front, Invisible Target passed the HK$10 million mark on Tuesday. Despite some multiplexes already playing less shows each day, it still managed to make HK$310,000 on just 18 screens for a 15-day total of HK$11.23 million. Will this make it to the HK$15 million mark and beat Love is Not All Around?

- It’s a miracle! The Korean monster film D-War, which took forever for a wide release in its home Korea despite being the touted as the most expensive Korean film ever made, has grossed US$2.9 million on its opening day. According to Korea Pop Wars, its two-day total is now US$6.1 million and should reach 2-2.5 million admissions by the end of the weekend. However, despite praises for the special effects, everything else is being panned, so word-of-mouth might not be too good on this one. By the way, the official budget of the film was locked at US$35 million, though about $40 million has been spent to start up a new special effects house that did this film. I’m sure distributor Showbox is kind of breathing a sigh of relief, though they still have plenty of money to make back.

- Yawn. Japanese copyright organizations continue in their endless effort to pressure Youtube Japan to weed out copyright violators. How about they work to make legitimate content easier to access before they cut all supplies? This stuff is like drugs - you cut them off, people will do anything for a fix.

- Meanwhile, The Computer & Communication Industry Association, which includes Google and Microsoft, has lodged a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission to protest copyright holders putting misleading warnings against copyright infringement that fail to educate consumers on fair use laws. Those named in the complaint include major movie studios, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and of course, the MPAA.

- Director Edward Yang, who recently passed away at his home in the United States, is expected to be honored at this year’s Golden Horse Awards. Is it just me, or is the claim that he’s an “American” director going to piss off some people, seeing he’s one of the pioneers of NEW TAIWAN CINEMA?

- reviews time! We have Japan Times’ review of Hideo Nakata’s Kaidan by Mark Schilling, the Variety review of the hit Korean horror film Black House by Derek Elley, and I’m partially translating the very very limited release (one theater in my old neighborhood of Kwun Tong, to be exact) Hong Kong film Bar Paradise:

First, a little background: Bar Paradise is a 2005 film directed by Wing-Lun Mak, who’s directed some low-budget DV productions. It stars Julian Cheung, Gordon Lam, Candy Yu, and Eric Tsang. The original Chinese post in full is here. The following are excerpts translated -

在設計上，電影可算是十分趕客，單要觀眾適應片中對白的語言已經幾乎令人神經錯亂。泰語、粵語和普通話互通。其中余安安對著曾志偉，明明兩人懂粵語也在片中有粵語對白，偏要講出泰語來。張智霖和林家棟時國時粵時泰，看來買多數部「靈格風」也未必有耐性去理解。想看字幕？錯字大量供應，例如「道歉」因倉頡選碼誤選為「道欺」比比皆是。

In design, the film seems to be made to drive audiences away. Understanding the languages in the dialogue is enough drive audiences crazy. It switches between Thai, Cantonese, and Mandarin. For instance, Even though both Candy Yu and Eric Tsang speak Cantonese in the film and understand the language, they still speak Thai; Julian Cheung and Gordon Lam switch between Mandarin, Cantonese, and Thai, even buying an electronic dictionary won’t mean you’d have the patience to understand. Want to read subtitles? There’s a large supply of wrong words, such as “doh heep” (apologize) becomes “doh hei” (the second Chinese character looks alike, but oh so utterly wrong).

至於曾志偉，則在電影中飾演一名泰國軍閥政客，而附上「韓琛」式的例湯演繹。而余安安則佔戲不多，但又奇怪地加入一場穿黑色內衣褲色誘曾志偉的場面。中午時份播放，難怪股市也曾出現一陣「獲利回吐」，慶幸戲院並沒有出現嘔吐物。

As for Eric Tsang, he plays a Thai warlord politician in the performance style of the usual “Sam Han” (his character from Infernal Affairs). Candy Yu doesn’t have much screen time, but there is a strange addition in the form of a scene in which she seduces Eric Tsang in black panties. No wonder even the stock market experienced a “resurgence of profits” during its noon screening. Thankfully, no vomit appeared in the theatre.

劇情和演員拿出零分之餘，電影在拍攝技巧亦仿如恐佈片一樣，突然時跳到下一場不連配樂的情況也常出現。莫怪乎零五年的電影至今才出現。電影結局亦不明所以，令觀眾在大量無奈下離場。

With no effort from the plot and the actors, the film’s technique resembles a horror film, and sudden jumps to the next scene where the music don’t even match happen often. No wonder this 2005 film took this long to show up. Even the ending is incomprehensible, making the audience leave in a state of helplessness.

So in other words….this movie stinks.

- Along with the Kaidan review is Jason Gray’s interview with director Hideo Nakata, who made the original “Ring” film and is directing the Death Note spinoff L. Jason has more about the interview itself in his blog.

- Another film off the “milking the Nanking massacre for all its worth” assembly line, Simon West’s Purple Mountain, has started filming. This film is an adaptation of the controversial book “The Rape of Nanjing” by Iris Chang, and is the most expensive of the productions. West apparently wants to create the same type of impact as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List.

Let’s see - Tomb Raider and Con Air vs. Indiana Jones and Saving Private Ryan. Don’t think that’ll happen.

- In a continuing lack of creativity in the world of Japanese television dramas (as is the case in television drama circles around the world), there are more comic adaptations coming to your small screens.

- Japan Times has a look at movies that deal with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in light of the release of Steven Okazaki’s White Light/Black Rain.

- Twitch mistakenly links the website for Miki Satoshi’s latest Tenten, starring Satoshi favorite Joe Odagiri as the website for Odagiri’s directorial debut. Still, Tenten looks pretty interesting, and since the film is about two men walking across Tokyo, the advance ticket actually comes with a map of the locations they visit in the film. Now there’s a souvenir worth buying.

That’s it for now. The Golden Rock will be back in 1-2 weeks, with The Song of the Day feature continuing (wished more of you voted, though). There might be a few surprises and additions coming, so keep checking in starting next weekend. See you all on the other side of the world!

- Looks like another case of misreporting box office figures in Japan. The latest Pixar film Ratatouille supposedly earned about 489 million over two days this past weekend. However, what Disney didn’t report is that the actual earning is actually 360 million yen, and the rest were made during the special sneak previews last weekend. That would make the opening a bit of a disappointment, as it’s only 95% of the opening for the last Pixar film Cars. However, the word-of-mouth for the film is actually batter than Cars (at least in the States), so it might come out earning more in the long run.

- It’s official, China has decided to not let the latest Jackie Chan Hollywood star vehicle Rush Hour 3 on Chinese movies screens. There are a couple of possible reasons for this - 1) China doesn’t like the content, especially the presence of the triads. However, how can that be true when the first two films featured triad villains? 2) China simply can’t stand all these Hollywood films dominating the box office and has implemented the usual summer policy of getting rid of Hollywood films to let Chinese films have their day. 3) It just got unlucky and couldn’t be secured as one of the 20 American films allowed to be shown in Chinese theatres each year. 4) The movie sucks, and the Chinese people shouldn’t be exposed to that type of crap. I got five bucks on numbers 2 and 3.

- Meanwhile, the trade reviews are out. Hollywood Reporter’s Michael Rechtshaffen says the routine goes awfully stale, while Variety’s Robert Koehler says that the adrenaline rush just isn’t there anymore.

- Variety has a few more Asian film reviews, one for the 2007 Korean hit Voice of a Murderer, Fumihiko Sori’s Vexville, and the Thai horror film Alone, which is currently a hit at the Korean box office.

- Kabuki’s bad boy Shido Nakamura has followed the steps of Last Samurai actress Koyuki and signed with Avex. With that, he has also officially joined the cast of John Woo’s The Battle of Red Cliff, which would make this his second Chinese blockbuster after Jet Li’s Fearless.

- If you’ll indulge me another game of multiple degrees of separation, Tony Leung Chiu-wai also stars in the Battle of Red Cliff, but he originally withdrew from the film because of the fatigue he suffered after making Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution. The film, almost or already completed, will compete in the upcoming Venice Film Festival. Though the film was originally submitted as a USA-China entry because there’s where the money came from. However, it almost brewed a small controversy when the nationality was changed to Taiwan due to director Ang Lee’s nationality.

- A nation at war turns to TV soap operas, culinary shows, and idol competitions. Surprisingly, it’s not the United States.

- Japan will be the first to see a MTV-created mobile social network, which will also feature pages created by Japanese pop stars. Do we really need to be THAT connected?

- Speaking of embracing the new media, another Japanese media producer has signed a deal with Youtube to upload promo clips and various content on the video site.

- Avril Lavinge’s album has sold a million copies in Japan, making her the first foreign artist to sell more than one million copies of each of her three albums. They’ll find a record for anything in Japan, especially when it comes to music.

- Twitch has an interview with director Steven Okazaki, whose latest film is the documentary White Light/Black Rain, about the fallout of nuclear warfare including the bombings of Hiroshim and Nagasaki.

- Japanese R&B/A Capella group Gospellers is teaming up with forgotten Backstreet Boys member Howie D for their latest single. Not to be a party pooper, but I think Howie needs the Gospellers more than they need Howie.

- With the 2008 Olympics approaching in a year, China has still yet to deliver the full media freedom they promised foreign journalists there. 95% of those who responded to the survey by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China says China’s reporting conditions are not up to what they call an “international standard.”

By the way, remember to vote for our poll. The future of The Song of the Day depends on all of you.