- It’s reviews time! Variety catches up with some Hong Kong film reviews from Toronto, including a disappointingly short review by Scott Foundas for Pang Ho Cheung’s Exodus (why the hell do they keep calling it The Exodus?), and a review by Robert Koehler for Wilson Yip/Donnie Yen’s Flash Point.

- Korean director Lee So-Yeon’s Uninvited might have been a commercial flop in South Korea, but that doesn’t mean he’s not talented. His latest screenplay Hwan Gung, about a man who believes himself to be a warrior sent to send a woman who thinks she is a mermaid back to the sea, won the Busan Screenwriting Competition, which gives him a grant of 20 million won (roughly US$20,000).

- Under “I just can’t get interested in this” news today, Taiwanese idol Wu Chun will be joining the cast of Jingle Ma’s Wu Xia Liang Zhu (or a martial arts version of the classic tale Butterfly Lovers). Twins’ Charlene Choi will be playing the other ill-fated lover, and Nicholas Tse is also in talks to join as another potential suitor for Charlene’s cross-dressing character who will probably fight while hooked on some wire.

Honestly, this sounds like it’ll be a pretty shitty movie already.

- From Variety Asia is a short profile of China Film Group head Han Sanping. He’s the one that said China needs more “ethically inspiring movies” and said any China-basher is “mentally challenged.” Actually, Quentin Tarantino is still saying dumber things (look at the second-to-the-last paragraph).

- From Twitch is a few small paragraphs devoted to the Japanese comedy Maiko Haaaan!!!, which I’ll be catching this Friday night.

- Before you in the West go watch it, Ang Lee would like to tell you that his latest film will probably disappoint you and whomever you go watch it with in your local American arthouse.

- EastSouthWestNorth writes about a set of commercials for a Hong Kong theme park not named Disneyland that are freaking some people out. True, the version with both ads on Youtube isn’t all that scary, but the original version of one of them is actually pretty freaky stuff.

We apologize for skipping yesterday’s entry, but school and movie stuff reared its ugly head at the same time, and this blogger chose to write a 3-page script for school than a really long entry in a news blog not enough people read. Plus waiting almost 3 hours to not be able to get Eason Chan tickets this morning really pissed us off. But we’ll make it up in a bit.

- Let’s go over the Oricon charts really quickly. On the single chart, L’Arc~en~ciel’s latest got its number 1 debut, selling over 110,000 copies. The second and third places were close, with Exile finally winning out Utada Hikaru’s latest by only 1,700 copies in total weekly sales. Exile (which really is just two guys singing and a bunch of people dancing) sold 95,299, and Utada Hikaru sold 93, 518. See how close that was? Next week, expect me to possibly not report the number 1 debut of Arashi’s latest single.

As expected, pop rap group Ketsumeishi (imagine a hybrid of reggae, hip-hop, and pop influence blended into one) saw yet another huge debut for their 5th album on the album chart. Selling 430,000 copies (this might be a decrease from their previous album), this makes the group’s 4th number 1 album debut in a row. Hell, I’ll eventually pick up a copy too. Meanwhile, rock-pop group Porno Graffiti’s latest did an impressive 140,000 copies, but could only muster a second place when up against the Ketsumeishi boys. Hideaki Tokunaga’s cover album continues to sell well enough to drop by just one spot. Next week, expect Dragon Ash’s two compilations (I really hate this new trend of releasing one compilation as two albums) to rule the chart.

- It’s reviews time! LoveHKfilm’s Kozo reviews romantic comedy stinker Contract Lover, Jingle Ma’s “where the hell did that come from” romance Love in the City, and the Japanese comedy Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust. Sanjuro reviews the classic martial arts insult New Game of Death and the Japanese “pure love” film Angel’s Egg (Erika Sawajiri again??). There’s also a review of the Korean satire The President’s Last Bang by yours truly.

Hollywood Reporter has Ray Bennett’s reviews of Jiang Wen’s The Sun Also Rises and Lee Kang-Sheng’s Help Me Eros, the sole “Taiwan” representative at Venice. Lastly, Variety has reviews of Help Me Eros and Jia Zhangke’s latest documentary Useless.

- Speaking of Help Me Eros, Twitch has a link to the trailer. However, everything in that trailer feel so Tsai Ming-Liang, including the detached eroticism, that I’m honestly not all that interested.

- I first thought it was just a really funny rumor, but looks like Kirk Wong’s remake of The Five Venoms looks like it’s on. The funny part? It’ll star Edison Chen, Maggie Q, Leehom Wang, and Wu Jing.

- Under “silly China!” news today, the expected blackout date for non-Chinese/non-communist-patriotic films is coming up, as China comes up to its October Party Congress/Party establishment anniversary date. While it was expected that Hollywood would get blocked out, even Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is getting delayed until the end of the Party Congress.

- Thanks to D-War and May 18, Korean films just had its biggest month, with the highest recorded amount of admissions within a month. Just August alone, Korean films took up 79.6% of the market.

- While Korean special effects blockbuster The Host took its special effects to Hollywood, a Hollywood film just took its special effects to Korea. OK, China/Hollywood co-production and all, but my point about the reversal remains.

- After news that Fruit Chan is making a film about a young Bruce Lee that’ll be produced by Terence Chang, another piece of news has come out reporting that Hong Kong’s favorite indie director will be directing an English remake of a Japanese horror film. According to the report, this is Chan’s attempt to no longer be labeled as an art-house director. He could’ve made a better choice, though.

Last, but definitely not least; Miyoshi Umeki, the first Asian to win an Academy Award for performance, has passed away. Our condolences to her family.

Coming up on the spin-off tomorrow: Review of Pang Ho-Cheung’s latest, and why the hell did i spend 3 hours to end up not getting any Eason Chan concert tickets.

We apologize for skipping yesterday’s entry, but school and movie stuff reared its ugly head at the same time, and this blogger chose to write a 3-page script for school than a really long entry in a news blog not enough people read. Plus waiting almost 3 hours to not be able to get Eason Chan tickets this morning really pissed us off. But we’ll make it up in a bit.

- Let’s go over the Oricon charts really quickly. On the single chart, L’Arc~en~ciel’s latest got its number 1 debut, selling over 110,000 copies. The second and third places were close, with Exile finally winning out Utada Hikaru’s latest by only 1,700 copies in total weekly sales. Exile (which really is just two guys singing and a bunch of people dancing) sold 95,299, and Utada Hikaru sold 93, 518. See how close that was? Next week, expect me to possibly not report the number 1 debut of Arashi’s latest single.

As expected, pop rap group Ketsumeishi (imagine a hybrid of reggae, hip-hop, and pop influence blended into one) saw yet another huge debut for their 5th album on the album chart. Selling 430,000 copies (this might be a decrease from their previous album), this makes the group’s 4th number 1 album debut in a row. Hell, I’ll eventually pick up a copy too. Meanwhile, rock-pop group Porno Graffiti’s latest did an impressive 140,000 copies, but could only muster a second place when up against the Ketsumeishi boys. Hideaki Tokunaga’s cover album continues to sell well enough to drop by just one spot. Next week, expect Dragon Ash’s two compilations (I really hate this new trend of releasing one compilation as two albums) to rule the chart.

- It’s reviews time! LoveHKfilm’s Kozo reviews romantic comedy stinker Contract Lover, Jingle Ma’s “where the hell did that come from” romance Love in the City, and the Japanese comedy Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust. Sanjuro reviews the classic martial arts insult New Game of Death and the Japanese “pure love” film Angel’s Egg (Erika Sawajiri again??). There’s also a review of the Korean satire The President’s Last Bang by yours truly.

Hollywood Reporter has Ray Bennett’s reviews of Jiang Wen’s The Sun Also Rises and Lee Kang-Sheng’s Help Me Eros, the sole “Taiwan” representative at Venice. Lastly, Variety has reviews of Help Me Eros and Jia Zhangke’s latest documentary Useless.

- Speaking of Help Me Eros, Twitch has a link to the trailer. However, everything in that trailer feel so Tsai Ming-Liang, including the detached eroticism, that I’m honestly not all that interested.

- I first thought it was just a really funny rumor, but looks like Kirk Wong’s remake of The Five Venoms looks like it’s on. The funny part? It’ll star Edison Chen, Maggie Q, Leehom Wang, and Wu Jing.

- Under “silly China!” news today, the expected blackout date for non-Chinese/non-communist-patriotic films is coming up, as China comes up to its October Party Congress/Party establishment anniversary date. While it was expected that Hollywood would get blocked out, even Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is getting delayed until the end of the Party Congress.

- Thanks to D-War and May 18, Korean films just had its biggest month, with the highest recorded amount of admissions within a month. Just August alone, Korean films took up 79.6% of the market.

- While Korean special effects blockbuster The Host took its special effects to Hollywood, a Hollywood film just took its special effects to Korea. OK, China/Hollywood co-production and all, but my point about the reversal remains.

- After news that Fruit Chan is making a film about a young Bruce Lee that’ll be produced by Terence Chang, another piece of news has come out reporting that Hong Kong’s favorite indie director will be directing an English remake of a Japanese horror film. According to the report, this is Chan’s attempt to no longer be labeled as an art-house director. He could’ve made a better choice, though.

Last, but definitely not least; Miyoshi Umeki, the first Asian to win an Academy Award for performance, has passed away. Our condolences to her family.

Coming up on the spin-off tomorrow: Review of Pang Ho-Cheung’s latest, and why the hell did i spend 3 hours to end up not getting any Eason Chan concert tickets.

- The reviews for Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is out, and the two big Hollywood trade papers are not too kind to it. Variety’s Derek Elley say that it’s a two and a half-hour period drama that’s a long haul for relatively little returns, and Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett says the film has long period of boredom relieved by moments of extremely heightened excitement. Honestly, I never expected Ang Lee to pull off an espionage thriller, and it seems like he didn’t here. Are there any actually any good reviews to earn the film the reported “standing ovation” it got?

- We know that Hollywood is no good at adapting games, but what about the Japanese? The popular Nintendo DS game “Professor Layton and the Curious Village” will be turned into a movie, and the game is just the first in a trilogy too.

-Twitch has more on the shooting progress of Hong Sang-Soo’s Night and Day in France. If you remember, Hong is actually looking for volunteers to appear as extra, but you should probably be in France and speak Korean and/or French.

- Johnnie To is getting to be an even harder-working man than Andy Lau. Not only did he just bring The Mad Detective (probably not named The Detective anymore because Aaron Kwok’s The Detective is coming), he also wrapped up the Mainland Chinese romance Linger, finishing up The Sparrow (another one of the Johnnie To films made on a Wong Kar-Wai schedule), the remake of the French film The Red Circle, AND now he’s going to produce a trilogy of films about tomb-raiding. I am almost sure they will suck less that those Tomb Raider movies.

- Speaking of Mad Detective, Kaiju Shakedown has a few more stills from the film. Looks like vintage To to me.

- Japan finally passes a law making camcording movies in movie theaters illegal. How come those annoying MPA people didn’t go and push for it more. And why didn’t the US go and make a complaint about that with the World Trade Organization?

- The reviews for Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is out, and the two big Hollywood trade papers are not too kind to it. Variety’s Derek Elley say that it’s a two and a half-hour period drama that’s a long haul for relatively little returns, and Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett says the film has long period of boredom relieved by moments of extremely heightened excitement. Honestly, I never expected Ang Lee to pull off an espionage thriller, and it seems like he didn’t here. Are there any actually any good reviews to earn the film the reported “standing ovation” it got?

- We know that Hollywood is no good at adapting games, but what about the Japanese? The popular Nintendo DS game “Professor Layton and the Curious Village” will be turned into a movie, and the game is just the first in a trilogy too.

-Twitch has more on the shooting progress of Hong Sang-Soo’s Night and Day in France. If you remember, Hong is actually looking for volunteers to appear as extra, but you should probably be in France and speak Korean and/or French.

- Johnnie To is getting to be an even harder-working man than Andy Lau. Not only did he just bring The Mad Detective (probably not named The Detective anymore because Aaron Kwok’s The Detective is coming), he also wrapped up the Mainland Chinese romance Linger, finishing up The Sparrow (another one of the Johnnie To films made on a Wong Kar-Wai schedule), the remake of the French film The Red Circle, AND now he’s going to produce a trilogy of films about tomb-raiding. I am almost sure they will suck less that those Tomb Raider movies.

- Speaking of Mad Detective, Kaiju Shakedown has a few more stills from the film. Looks like vintage To to me.

- Japan finally passes a law making camcording movies in movie theaters illegal. How come those annoying MPA people didn’t go and push for it more. And why didn’t the US go and make a complaint about that with the World Trade Organization?

Call me lazy, call me tired, or just call it plain Thursday syndrome, but there’s again not all that much news out there.

- Everyone is trying to break into that China market, and the only way is co-produce them with China, and the only way to do that is to get Chinese government approval. The first successful Australian production to pull this off will be Roger Spottiswoode’s The Children of Huang Shi, co-starring Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh. In traditional ethnographic gaze, the film will be about a British journalist who team up with an Austrlian nurse to rescue Chinese children oppressed by the Japanese during World War II.

- The Hong Kong Asian Film Festival (smaller than the Hong Kong International Film Festival and a different organizer) will feature some pretty huge films this year, including Ang Lee’s Lust Caution (which is opening the festival), Lee Chang-Dong’s Secret Sunshine, Jiang Wen’s The Sun Also Rises, and Jia Zhangke’s Useless.

- Speaking of Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, Lee said that while his film did get the most restrictive rating the American censors could give (NC-17 - no one under 17 may be admitted), he hopes to use it to change perceptions about the rating itself. While I would like to see Lee pull that off, I doubt it would be an Asian espionage triller that will do it. An NC-17 itself means that it won’t reach beyond the urban areas because newspapers won’t even advertise them, and theaterowners are too conservative to show them.

On the other hand, category-III films (no one under 18 may be admitted) are able to get wide advertising and theater bookings here in Hong Kong. And yet, society is somewhat more conservative. What’s the deal here?

- This all sounds a little complicated (it’s easy to get broadband TV here in Hong Kong, but how do you do it in the states, where all kinds of infrastructure problems can prevent it), but there is now a new way to get Asian programming into your American homes, thanks to (for once) American Chinese video content distributor Tai Seng.

- Jason Gray continues to try to spread word-of-mouth for the Pia festival winning film This World of Ours. I just requested for a copy of the film with the director Ryo Nakajima, so I’ll be checking it out and hopefully help him spread word. Why? Because I believe in good karma, especially for an aspiring director like myself.

- About freaking time. NHK chairman actually asks at a committee meeting to reduce license fee by 10%. That way, corrupted producers will have less money to pocket.

- Remember that “Sing this song and you’ll die” movie with the creative advertising? Densen Uta opened this past weekend in Japan on 106 screens and managed to make only 31.21 million yen, outside of the top 10. That opening is only 74% of the opening for the last teen girl-infected horror film Ghost Train.

Call me lazy, call me tired, or just call it plain Thursday syndrome, but there’s again not all that much news out there.

- Everyone is trying to break into that China market, and the only way is co-produce them with China, and the only way to do that is to get Chinese government approval. The first successful Australian production to pull this off will be Roger Spottiswoode’s The Children of Huang Shi, co-starring Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh. In traditional ethnographic gaze, the film will be about a British journalist who team up with an Austrlian nurse to rescue Chinese children oppressed by the Japanese during World War II.

- The Hong Kong Asian Film Festival (smaller than the Hong Kong International Film Festival and a different organizer) will feature some pretty huge films this year, including Ang Lee’s Lust Caution (which is opening the festival), Lee Chang-Dong’s Secret Sunshine, Jiang Wen’s The Sun Also Rises, and Jia Zhangke’s Useless.

- Speaking of Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, Lee said that while his film did get the most restrictive rating the American censors could give (NC-17 - no one under 17 may be admitted), he hopes to use it to change perceptions about the rating itself. While I would like to see Lee pull that off, I doubt it would be an Asian espionage triller that will do it. An NC-17 itself means that it won’t reach beyond the urban areas because newspapers won’t even advertise them, and theaterowners are too conservative to show them.

On the other hand, category-III films (no one under 18 may be admitted) are able to get wide advertising and theater bookings here in Hong Kong. And yet, society is somewhat more conservative. What’s the deal here?

- This all sounds a little complicated (it’s easy to get broadband TV here in Hong Kong, but how do you do it in the states, where all kinds of infrastructure problems can prevent it), but there is now a new way to get Asian programming into your American homes, thanks to (for once) American Chinese video content distributor Tai Seng.

- Jason Gray continues to try to spread word-of-mouth for the Pia festival winning film This World of Ours. I just requested for a copy of the film with the director Ryo Nakajima, so I’ll be checking it out and hopefully help him spread word. Why? Because I believe in good karma, especially for an aspiring director like myself.

- About freaking time. NHK chairman actually asks at a committee meeting to reduce license fee by 10%. That way, corrupted producers will have less money to pocket.

- Remember that “Sing this song and you’ll die” movie with the creative advertising? Densen Uta opened this past weekend in Japan on 106 screens and managed to make only 31.21 million yen, outside of the top 10. That opening is only 74% of the opening for the last teen girl-infected horror film Ghost Train.

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!