- It’s Oricon charts time! Mr. Children scores their 27th consecutive number 1 single this week, while Glay’s latest EP could only get a 2nd place debut. As for the album chart, The Backstreet Boys’ comeback album manages to hold on to the top spot for the second week in a row, as Seamo’s latest manages a second place debut with 56,000 in sales. Go read more at Tokyograph.

- Despite delays and 7 minutes of cuts (though some of the sex scenes remain), Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is a hit in China and is expected to surpass the distributor’s forecast for its final gross. It’s even made people discuss film sexuality, though it couldn’t avoid the juvenile “shameless actors will do anything for money!” comments.

- As for South Korea, October 2007 box office is down 33% from October 2006. Before someone screams “piracy,” a possible explanation for the drop is because the Chuseok holiday occurred in September this year.

- It’s reviews time! Variety’s Derek Elley actually manages to survive the Mainland Chinese comedy Contract Lover and lives to tell about it. Elley also reviews Taiwan’s Academy Awards best foreign film entry Island Etude (also known as “the movie that replaced Lust, Caution”). Then Russell Edwards caught the hit “cell phone novel” adaptation Koizora (Sky of Love) at Tokyo International Film Festival.

Elsewhere, Lovehkfilm’s Kozo offers up reviews of the Hong Kong “relay” film Triangle, the small Hong Kong film Magic Boy, and the hit Japanese drama adaptation film Hero. Meanwhile, Sanjuro offers up reviews of another Japanese drama adaptation Unfair: The Movie and the Korean summer horror hit Black House.

- Both Ryuganji and Jason Gray write about the latest controversy regarding Toho actually asking people to give a standing ovation for the cast at an opening day event for the Japanese film Always 2. This comes after Toho had a PR nightmare on their hands when Erika Sawajiri ridiculed her latest film Closed Note at a similar event.

Jason Gray coverage
Ryuganji coverage

- The fifth Bangkok World Film Festival is over, and the Austrian film Import/Export won best film, while Taiwanese art film Help Me Eros managed to earn the special jury prize.

- Did I enjoy the comic adaptation film Honey and Clover? Not greatly. Was it a really big hit? Not really. That’s not stopping Fuji TV from bringing it to the drama world next season on Tuesdays at 9pm. Maybe it’d be better off there.

- With the possible exception of 28 Weeks Later, Fox Atomic hasn’t released one movie that can be considered “good.” However, that’s not stopping them from becoming the first Hollywood studio to produce a movie in South Korea. This one doesn’t sound any good, either.

- Under “Hong Kong people just like to complain, complain, complain” news today, after Batman realized Victoria Harbor’s water is too toxic to jump into, environmental groups and some tenants are complaining the producers’ request to keep the lights on at night for buildings along the waterfront.

To answer the group Green Sense: No, you cannot just “turn on” lights at night through post-production because there’s no light on the buildings themselves. For a group named “Green Sense,” you certainly don’t have much “common sense.”

- Under “most dubiously interesting idea” news today, Japan’s NTV is planning a “blog drama,” in which the path of a TV drama will be decided by fans who contribute to the drama’s blog.

- Let’s start with some AFM news:

CJ entertainment has already presold director Park Chan-Wook’s untitled vampire film to France and Russia before the director has even started shooting. Starring Song Kang-Ho, the film is about a priest who transforms into a vampire. I’m hoping it’ll be better than it sounds.

Fuji TV’s biggest movie of the market is the Stephen Chow-co-produced spin-off of Shaolin Soccer Shaolin Girl. The reason I used so many titles is because producer Chihiro Kameyama wants to make sure that no one sees it as Shaolin Soccer 2.

Thanks to the market, stills from Chung Siu-Tong’s The Empress and the Warriors, starring Kelly Chan, Leon Lai, and Donnie Yen, are popping up online. Hong Kong Film Blog points out that the armor designs seem to recall Jackie Chan’s The Myth. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I can’t get excited about big martial arts blockbusters anymore.

While Asian film companies go to the American Film Market hoping to get their films sold, they aren’t really biting at anything Hollywood has to offer this year.

- I’m not sure if this deal was done during the AFM, but several Japanese films are heading to North America thanks to those small distributors we love so much here at The Golden Rock.

- With the low budgets of Asian films, they really will let any company make a movie these days. That includes a certain Japanese multiplex that had a “Cinema Plot Competition”. The first winning film will star a newcomer and will be directed by Rainbow Song director Naoto Kumazawa.

- Like I wrote earlier, how can China’s official film award not name their pick for the best foreign film at the Academy Awards the best film? That’s why The Knot won 2.5 awards, including best film, half of best director, and best sound.

- The biggest CD now in Chinese-speaking record stores has to be Jay Chou’s latest album (with that horrible first single), and AP News says that it’s supposed to reflect his current life. Cue paparazzi listening to every song to make up stories.

- Speaking of Jay Chou, the teaser poster for his latest “film” Kung Fu Dunk is now in Hong Kong theatres, along with a teaser on Youtube. Just the title of Kung Fu Dunk and expecting audiences to be dumb enough to still buy a movie with a title like that is flat out insulting.

Of course, it’ll probably be a huge hit.

- Speaking of movies that will suck, Kaiju Shakedown has a bunch of movies Grady expect will suck.

On the other hand, he also names a few movies that might rock, although I’ve heard that Shamo is not one of them.

- As you all know if you read the blog yesterday, the Japanese sequel Always 2 opened this weekend, and it’s being commemorated with a diorama built by the film’s crew recreating the film’s set.

- Dave Spector, an American working actively in Japanese telelvision, says that Japanese drama suck quite a bit. There are still good dramas out there, just not most of them.

- The latest Batman film - The Dark Knight - is coming into Hong Kong to film this week, but apparently a scene of Batman jumping into the harbor has been canceled because it’s so damned dirty.

- The biggest news of the day is the announcement of the Golden Horse Awards. After getting rejected from two important film awards, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution finds a home in the Golden Horse with 11 nominations, including one in every major category (except for supporting acting roles, because let’s face it, Leehom Wang isn’t that good of an actor). Sadly, no Hong Kong films were deemed good enough to get a best picture, but it did get a nomination in all the other major categories.

Here are the nominees for the major categories:

Best film

What on Earth Have I Done Wrong?!
Tuya’s Marriage
Getting Home
Lust, Caution
The Home Song Stories

Best Director

Wong Quan An (Tuya’s Marriage)
Yau Nai Hoi (Eye in the Sky)
Ang Lee (Lust, Caution)
Li Yang (Blind Mountain)

Best Actor

Gurmit Singh (Just Follow Law)
Aaron Kwok (The Detective)
Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (Lust, Caution)
Zhao Ben Shan (Getting Home)

Best Actress

Yu Nan (Tuya’s Marriage)
Joan Chen (Home Song Stories)
Tang Wei (Lust, Caution)
Li Bing Bing (The Knot)

Best Supporting Actor

Tony Leung Ka-Fai (The Drummer)
Louis Koo (Protege)
Wu Jing (Invisible Target)
Joel Lok (The Home Song Stories)

Best Supporting Actress

Chang Chun Ning (What On Earth Have I Done?)
Maggie Shiu (Eye In the Sky)
Fan Bing Bing (The Matrimony)
Alice Tzeng (Secret)

Best Adapted Screenplay

Shamo
A Battle of Wits
The Sun Also Rises
Lust, Caution

Best Original Screenplay

Just Follow Law
Tuya’s Marriage
God Man Dog
The Home Song Stories

The complete list of nominees.

Hong Kong films (meaning the film is in Cantonese and/or the director originated from Hong Kong) accounted for a total of 22 nominations, although I’m somewhat disappointed that there are actually feature film categories with no Hong Kong films nominated at all.

Why the hell is Alice Tzeng nominate for Secret, but not lead actress Guey Lun-Mei?

Tony Leung Ka-Fai for The Drummer? Really? I swear half his scenes were leftover footage from Election.

The committee seems to love Aaron Kwok so much they should probably just give him an honorary lifetime achievement acting award already.

Thanks to the Hong Kong film blog for the link.

Let’s start off with some more news from the TIFF (That’s what the Tokyo International Film Festival calling themselves these days, despite Toronto having the same abbreviations):

- Jason Gray won’t be in the country for the rest of the TIFF, but he does have a link to the two-hour video of red carpet coverage and opening ceremony. I don’t think anyone is expected to watch all 2 hours of it, but you can see some interesting things, including finding out that Akiko Wada and Tokoro Joji are voicing Marge and Homer in the Japanese dub of the Simpsons movie, which will screen during the festival. D’oh!

For those not in the know, some fans protested to 20th Century Fox for not using the original Japanese voice actors for the film, but I guess Fox cared about getting non-fans in more than loyal fans.

- Meanwhile, the Winds of Asia section has a new programmer this year: Asian film scholar Kenji Ishizaka. Like many film scholars, he decided to bring lesser-known Asian films to the festival this year, particularly films from Islamic countries. The problem is even if you bring the movies, will people go see them?

Now, back to your regular news.

- Of course, we always start off with box office news around here. In the first seven months of 2007, local Japanese films have fallen to making up just 43% of the market, down 10 % from the same period in the previous year. Judging from this year’s output, the answer lies in the fact that there hasn’t been any huge blockbuster that reached the size of those last year. local megahit Hero opened in September, so we won’t know until the end of the year whether Japanese films will regain its strength. But there are still a few possible crowdpleasers on the way.

- The Daily Yomiuri’s Teleview column looks at two dramas where the Kanto and Kansai separation seems to be an issue: the new NHK morning drama Chiritotechin, which is getting much better ratings in the Kansai region than Kanto, and the Masami Nagasawa drama Hatachi no Koibito.

- Today’s Oriental Daily reports that some netizens are saying that the MTV for Jay Chou’s latest single “A Cowboy is Very Busy” (directed by Chou himself) is similar to the video for Christina Aguilera’s Candyman.

Jay Chou’s “A Cowboy is Very Busy” (try not to get too shocked)

Christina Aguilera’s Candyman

Personally, just because the diner images are similar don’t mean that one is copying the other, but what do you think?

- In more possible plagiarizing news in Chinese music, the Chinese blog 3cmusic reveals that netizens are saying that Hong Kong pop singer Paisley Wu’s “Don’t Think Just Do” has a similar arrangement (credited to veteran C.Y. Kong) to British singer Sophie Ellis Bextor’s “The Sun’s On Us.”

Don’t Think Just Do

The Sun’s On Us

Since “Don’t Think Just Do” seems to be a cover song, can anyone name the original track, and can that same person tell us whether that song has a similar arrangement as well?

- In more posting of Youtube clips, Chinese star pianist Li Yundi says in the an interview that he wonders out loud if treating classical musicians as pop idols (i.e. him) is the right thing to do. Probably not, but showing up on TVB promoting a Japanese drama that you have nothing to do with just seemed like such a right thing to do.

- In more TV news, Hotaru No Hikari, which averaged only a 13.6 rating on Wednesday nights during the Summer 2007 season, won four of the five awards at the Nikkan Sports Drama Grand Prix. The fifth award went to Arashi member Kazunari Ninomiya for his role in Yamada Taro Monogatari.

- Under “cut off one head, another one will pop up” news today, Taiwanese police arrested two people who run the website XYZ and confiscated 40,000 pirated discs of Hollywood movies. Yes, just two people and one of the many many websites that sell pirated discs.

- Under “what things will Jackie Chan say” news today, the action star, who is producing the Chinese reality show The Disciple in a search for the next martial artist, tells aspiring action stars to not bow the “old-fashioned way”. I hope he doesn’t mean greet your master with high-fives.

Three slow news days automatically add up to a slow news week in general. That means shorter entries. Expect short weekend entries if this keeps up. I may just post something in the spin-off instead.

- Lust, Caution’s chances at the Oscars has just decreased by quite a bit, as the Academy Awards foreign films committee disqualifies Ang Lee’s erotic drama as the Taiwanese entry because it’s not Taiwan enough. Essentially, the main gripe is that it doesn’t have enough Taiwanese involvement. That must suck for Lee, seeing that his Chinese movie for westerners, also known as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, manages to win best foreign film, while his Chinese movie for Chinese people gets disqualified.

Taiwan will submit Island Etude in its place.

- In another blow to the film (this ought to be the unofficial Lust, Caution blog), Chinese censors have apparently yet to screen the Mainland Chinese-safe version of the film, which means its November 1st opening date may get pushed further back. Meanwhile, pirated copies have finally gotten online, which may hurt the big chunk of change the film expected to make from the region.

- Meanwhile, Twitch has another update for the latest omnibus-film-in-a-city film Tokyo!. Apparently, Korean director Bong Joon-Ho’s section is done filming, with Michel Gondry’s getting ready to shoot later in the month. No idea when third director Leos Carax will be filming his, though.

Original Tokyograph story.

- Poor Twitch contributor Blake only got two questions with Park Chan-Wook because what was supposed to be a one-on-one interview became a roundtable with people asking about ridiculous rumors such as whether Park took a 5-year break to train being an astronaut. At least now you know he’s making a bat film for his next project.

- DVDTalk has a review for the American DVD of Kazuaki Kiriya’s Casshern, which boasts a so-called “director’s cut” that’s 25 minute shorter than the original Japanese cut. According to some poster on imdb, the DVD is missing not only scene selections, but the subtitles are also off-sync, and important bits are cut out.

- It’s no news, but Japan’s DVD market is still suffering, as sales for the first half year are down 2% from the same period last year.

There are days like these where there are so little news, I just decide to combine all the entries together.

- The numbers for the Japanese box office came out, and the rankings are pretty much the same as the admission rankings. However, what the rankings don’t tell you is what a quiet week it was. In fact, only one film made more than 100 million yen (number 1 film Hero), and the rest of the holdovers all saw fairly significant drops. Yes, that includes Closed Note, which is supposed to be doing pretty well, but actually doesn’t look to make that 1.5 billion yen mark Toho is setting.

Signs of Love (based on those Dreams Come True songs) actually lost only 25% of its audience in its second week, which is pretty typical in the pure love genre. It should wrap up with about 800 million yen. Not all that impressive, but it is what it is.

- Thanks to the success of Hero, Japanese distributor Toho is having their best September ever, which means expect more TV dramas going to a big screen near you in Japan.

- Two sites reported on the Sushi Ouji movie, so I’ll just use both links. Essentially, the drama that was the second worst-performer in the primetime ratings in the summer 2007 drama season (average 7.5 rating) was announced to have its own movie before the drama even began its broadcast. But now, TV Asahi has Warner Bros. Japan behind them and is planning to release it during next year’s Golden Week. They’re probably hoping for fans of the two stars’ respective boy groups to show up.

Tokyograph report.

Variety Asia report.

- The only reason I saved up this report was because I thought it was Tsai as in Tsai Chin.

Turns out it’s Jolin Tsai that’s doing a duet with Kylie Minogue in the Asian edition of her latest album. Actually, it would be so much more interesting if Tsai Chin, the songstress who brought us this, do a duet with Kylie Minogue, but that’s just what I think.

- Variety’s Richard Kuiper has a review for the highly successful Japanese animated film Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone.

- The Associated Press has an interview with Joan Chen, who’s been in the spotlight of recent Chinese cinema with her roles in Lust, Caution and The Sun Also Rises.

- Asian films are the big winners at this year’s Sitges Film Festival in Catalonia, including wins for Park Chan-Wook’s “I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK” and even Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django.

- The first still for the Pan-Asian film Blood: The Last Vampire, starring Gianna “Sassy Girl” Jun is up. Todd Brown says yes, I say no, thank you.

Tons more news Pusan Film Festival news today:

- The Asian Film Market is kicking off, but like we mentioned yesterday, both attendance and market screenings are going down.

- Meanwhile, a bunch of production/co-operation deals are going down: the Korean Film Council and the British Film Council have teamed up to help distribute each other’s movies in each other’s countries, namely in publicity support. Also, the film festival has become the launching pad for Taiwanese international sales firm Joint Entertainment, who hopes to bring Taiwanese films abroad to different film markets.

Also, from last week is a set of features about the Taiwanese film industry - a slate of upcoming releases, the slow action by the government to help the struggling film industry (sounds a bit like Hong Kong to me), and the industry’s own attempts to put away its arthouse label in recent years.

Other project announcements includes Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s latest project, a period martial arts film (12-minute long one-take fight scene?), and a Taiwan-Korean co-production from Eternal Summer director Leste Chen.

With so many Korean-another Asian country co-productions going on, it seems like the Korean industry is learning the only way to ensure its survival is to play nice with others.

Now, back to your regular programming:

- Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django has run into some problems with the Shintoists in Japan because of an image of people hanging from the shinto gate. While Sony has removed the offending image from all of its promotional materials, the shot remains in the film.

- There’s a bit of confusion going on about whether the Hong Kong relay-crime film Triangle was really re-edited after its Cannes screening. While the various reviews at Cannes put the film at 100 minutes (a running time they probably got from the booklet), Hong Kong’s Television and Entertainment Authority (who give ratings with exact running times on the certificates) puts the film at 93 minutes. I doubt the film runs exactly at 100 minutes, especially when the rules stipulated that each section needs to run at 30 minutes.

- Universal, who is already co-releasing the Japanese action flick Midnight Eagle in Japan, has also signed on to release the film in North America. However, the trailers have left me fairly cold, so how are they going to be selling in to American audiences?

(Yes, I know the trick answer is: they don’t try to tell it. They just keep in on the shelves a couple of years, then release it straight to DVD with some sexy woman on the cover)

- Lastly, Jackie Chan does something he doesn’t whine about on his blog: A Japanese commercial with model/actress/singer Aya Ueto.

More coverage of other people’s coverage of the Pusan Film Festival:

- I mentioned that New Taiwan Cinema filmmaker Edward Yang’s films are getting a retrospective in Pusan. I was wrong. He’s actually getting a posthumous Filmmaker of the Year award.

- Variety, meanwhile, has two new reviews from the festival - a rave by Derek Elley for the hit Japanese drama adaptation Hero, and a review by Russell Edwards for the Taiwanese coming-of-age film Summer’s Tail.

- Meanwhile, the attendance at this year’s Pusan film market may be around the same, but it seems like the decline in Korea’s film industry, not to mention Japan’s own Content Festival still underway, does seem to have an effect this year.

- Lastly, there’s an interview with David Shin, the head of Korea’s CJ Entertainment.

Now back to our regular coverage of the news:

- Fuji’s Saturday 11pm drama Life wins the satisfaction poll conducted by Oricon. Last season, the time slot’s first drama Liar Game won second place with an even higher score than Life, proving that putting edgier dramas there may equal to success. However, people don’t seem very excited about SP, this coming season’s drama in that time slot.

- In light of the Olympics next year, there will probably be a lot of “ethically inspiring” sports films coming out of China. There are already two basketball movies. In fact, someone should make a movie out of this, it’ll be called Olympic Fever Gone Wild.

- It may not be the final image, but Hong Kong animation firm Imagi’s Astro Boy is looking pretty good.

- Lastly, it seems like someone is trying to submit Lust, Caution as their region’s official representative for the best foreign film award at the Academy Awards, but China and Taiwan can’t seem to decide. Then again, Taiwan followed the rules and played the film for 7 days before submitting it, China didn’t. You snooze, you lose.

As the second round of filmmaking starts in film school, expect updates to be somewhat short in the next few days.

- The Pusan Film Festival is now fully under way. This year, there’s a retrospective on New Taiwan Cinema director Edward Yang, who passed away earlier this year from colon cancer. Variety Asia has a feature on Yang’s filmography and also another feature by Derek “Too Little Lust and Too Much Caution” Elley about his own experiences with Yang.

- There’s also a report on Variety Asia about the festival’s opening film The Assembly.

- Just as the film festival is starting, the Pusan (or Busan?) film critics are also taking the opportunities to give out their film and rising stars awards. Most of the awards have already been announced: Im Sang-Soo will win best director for The Old Garden, Song Kang-Ho will win best actor for The Show Must Go On, Yeh Ji-Won will win best actress for Old Miss Diary, and Tezza: The High Rollers will win for best screenplay. Also, Daniel Henney will win best actor at the rising star awards. I guess now I should check out My Father, I expect he would act better than he did in Seducing Mr. Perfect.

- Turns out the rumors out there about the Hong Kong “relay film” Triangle being brought back for a major re-edit after Cannes are not correct - the film only went back for audio remix and “print tuning,” which means everyone in Hong Kong will be seeing the Cannes version all the critics were panning about.

- It’s reviews time! Variety has a review for Singaporean best foreign film Academy Award entry 881 and a review for Yoichi Sai’s Korean debut Soo, which I also reviewed a while ago.

That’s it for today. No, really, it’s the weekend. I need to save some news for the rest of the weekend.

- The numbers for the Japanese weekend box office doesn’t come out until tomorrow, so we’ll just going a bit into audience admission rankings for now. For the third weekend in a row, the drama adaptation Hero starring Kimura Takuya lead the rankings, keeping newcomers
Fantastic Four and Arthur and the Invisibles at second and third place, respectively. Also, Naoko Ogigami’s Megane opened at 7th place, although I don’t know how many screens it opened on.

Despite opening at only 4th place the first weekend, turns out the family film Miss Potter is considered to be doing quite well in Japan, with it being the second-highest-grossing region in the world behind the UK.

- From the (in)famous Johnny’s Jimusho comes the newest disposable pop group Hey! Say! Jump! (Jump stands for Johnny’s Ultra Music Power. Glad they’re still about the music). As an expansion of Hey! Say! (Which debuted recently), there’s more of them than ever by making it 10 members.

- This is the closest they got to being right - Hong Kong has chosen Johnnie To’s modern western Exiled as Hong Kong’s representative for an Academy Award for foreign film.

- After the success of the Korean blockbuster D-War (7.8 million admissions in South Korea, and US$8.5 million and counting in North America as the most successful Korean film in North American box office ever), it’s inevitable that the filmmakers would do what every successful B-movie would do: the obligatory sequel!

- Did you know that it’s actually legal to download Japanese content from the internet for private use? Of course, it’s probably illegal to upload it, but it seems like the downloader carries no actualy legal responsibility. However, it might be too late to tell you this now, because the law is about to change.

- Under “your daily Lust, Caution news” today, Taiwan audiences apparently love Ang Lee’s 156-minute erotic thriller. It’s even expected to make more than Brokeback Mountain, which is Lee’s highest-grossing film in his native country. I should be taking the plunge this weekend.

- It’s trailers time! Both courtesy of Twitch. First, there’s yet another trailer for Kenta Fukasaku’s X-Cross, which finally locked down a release date of December 1st. Honestly, I don’t even think he had a say in releasing another trailer, but that’s just my opinion. Then there’s a trailer for Mamoru Oshii-produced omnibus film Shin Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden. However, it all just seems really silly when a woman in the trailer says with seriousness - “I would like to eat it once more.”

- There’s a silent fight going on between the Pang Brothers and Andrew Lau about who will make the it’s-taking-so-long-that-no-one-is-waiting-for-it-anymore sequel to the comic adaptation Storm Riders. With my hate for Andrew Lau, I would actually really like to see the Pangs take on something that’s not horror.

- Lastly, Kaiju Shakedown presents the alternate (read: not as good) ending to Wong Kar-Wai As Tears Go By. It’s worth watching just to see how Andy Lau can’t even eat an orange the right way.