- Director Satoshi Miki’s The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia (review by Japan Times, and more info from Ryuganji) first got attention because it’s Oscar nominated actress Rinko Kikuchi’s first post-Oscar role (more on her later). But as the release date approached, the film picked up attention due to its director. Miki Satoshi got his start on TV doing variety shows. While he made his film debut in 2005, he went back to TV, writing and directing the cult favorite drama Jikou Keisatsu. At least it was popular enough to bring it back for a second run this past Spring season, and it became the most “satisfying” drama of the season (trust me, those rankings held up throughout the season, although the ranking came from right after its start). The popularity of the show has now come to explain the film’s relative success at one Tokyo theater. Opening on June 23rd, the opening day drew 772 admissions and grossed 1.19 million yen(4 shows a day, with a capacity of 218). For the entire week, it drew 2842 admissions, grossing 4.17 million yen at that theater alone. Even though it’s nowhere near full capacity, this is still better than Miki’s debut film Into the Pool.

- In addition to Insects, Rinko Kikuchi also stars in a new “web movie” for a popular cosmetics brand. However, the idea itself is better than the actual film, and try not to let Rinko’s hair distract you too much.

- In “Who cares Hollywood hasn’t sold us the rights yet?” news today, China’s Zonbo Media is going ahead with production for the Chinese version of the American series Prison Break, except 1) The production company states that it has nothing to do with the hit Fox series, and 2) Fox has denied ever selling the rights to China, even though Zonbo Media said they bought it. Huh…..

- The Bangkok International Film Festival, who hit yet another snag when the government took away its opening film Persepolis to maintain friendly relations with Iran and stave off the Muslim insurgency, decided to put in the Children of Glory as its new opening film. Apparently it’s about “the bloodiest water polo match in history.” What?

- Kenji Uchida, who made a brilliant debut with Unmei Janai Hito (Stranger of Mine), is moving on up with his follow-up film After School, about a teacher who searches for her childhood friend with a private detective. Just started shooting last week, the film has 7 times the budget of Stranger of Mine, though it’s still at a fairly small 180 million yen.

- The first Kansai Film Festival is starting late next month. Don’t worry, you don’t have to make a film about the Kansai region to get in, you just have to be a foreign director making a film in or about Japan.

- In DVD news today, Twitch announces the pre-order for the South Korean sleeper hit Paradise Murdered, and the Hong Kong editions for Japanese films Retribution and Studio Ghibli’s Tales from Earthsea.

- I should have seen this coming. Fuji Television, who managed to milk the novel Tokyo Tower for all its worth by making a made-for-TV movie, a 11-episode drama, and a hit movie, is now bringing the 11 billion yen-hit family drama Bizan(review by Hollywood Reporter) to TV. Starring Takako Tokiwa, Bizan the mini-series will start shooting at the end of the month with no broadcasting date set.

- The South Korean theatre chain Megabox just opened its first multiplex in China, and plans to open two more in Bejing. Sorry, I’m just a nerd for theatre openings everywhere.

- Associated Press’s entertainment writer Min Lee reviews the new Milkyway thriller Eye in the Sky.

- The Cinefan festival in India is putting a focus on Japanese and Arabic films this year, including a tribute to director Kenji Mizoguchi.

- I posted a long time ago that even Japanese music tend to copy each other, but I couldn’t even find the songs. Now I have - check out Porno Graffiti’s Sister, Undergraph’s Tsubasa, and BoA’s Everlasting. I posted these in the order of the release - one copies the same musical pattern, and the other copies the chorus of another. All three were pop hits, and all three are kind of crappy. Then again, the point is that it happens everywhere.

- Let’s go over the Oricon charts first. On the singles chart, the new Koda Kumi “maxi-single” debuts at the top spot with a strong sales figure of 108,000, while “hip-pop” group Ketsumeishi’s latest is fairly far behind in second place with 78,000 sold. However, Monkey Majik’s theme song for the Saiyuki movie (a little more on that later) dies on arrival with a 20th place debut and selling only 5,400 copies. If the daily rankings hold up, then expect Erika Sawajiri’s first single to top the charts next week.

Things are a little more exciting over on the albums side, as Namie Amuro’s new album sells a solid 250,600 copies on its first week of release, making it her first number one album since 2000’s “Genius 2000.” Meanwhile, new band Greeeen, comprised of current dentistry students (That’s what the Oricon website wrote), saw their first album debut at number 2 with 130,000 copies sold, which is pretty damn good for a debut album’s debut (However, Oricon also calls them a hip-hop group, which doesn’t seem right). Also, Zard’s Golden Best compilation album actually saw its sales go up from last week to 52,600 this week despite a drop in ranking, possibly because of the memorial for Izumi Sakai last week. Lastly, Love Psychedelico’s 4th album debuted at 5th place, selling only 48,000 copies probably due to the lack of any notable single this time around. If the daily charts serve as any indication, the album charts next week should be fairly quiet.

- Kumi Koda’s album “Cherry Girl” has now sold over one million copies, and she is the first female artist since Utada Hikaru to have three consecutive million-selling albums. Not to rain on her parade, but two of those albums are technically compilations…

- Eiga Consultant reports about how The Mourning Forest is doing in its limited release, particularly in Cinema Angelica in Shibuya, Tokyo. On the opening weekend of the 23rd, the film only attracted 905 people for a gross of 1.34 million yen. Considering there are 10 shows that wekeend (5 each day), and the capacity is 104 seats, that means the weekend capacity was only 87%. This is fairly disappointing, considering the film’s success at the Cannes Film Festival. Is it because of the art film stigma? The hi-definition broadcast on NHK? How is it doing elsewhere? We’ll explore this a little bit this weekend on the podcast.

- While a Thai court has overruled the ruling government’s ability to shut down websites at will, the Thai cabinet has sadly approved the new film act which actually still allow the film committee to ban films, despite the establishment of a film rating system. Now the legislation will now go to the parliament, where it will be even harder for activists to continue their cause.

- Thanks to Comingsoon.net, I found out that Andrew Lau’s first Hollywood film The Flock will actually open in Japan on August 4th (it has yet to secure an exact release date in the United States), and the Japanese site for it. There’s a trailer on it, which seems to play up the reportedly extended cameo by pop star Avril Lavigne. As for the movie, it just looks like an Andrew Lau movie with better production values. Blah.

- Speaking of websites for potentially crappy movies, no one has really reported on Saiyuki, the big summer film adapted from the “hit” drama. I didn’t even bother seeking it out because it takes a well-known Chinese fairy tale and twists it for cheap entertainment (Jeff Lau would be just as guilty if I didn’t enjoy the Chinese Odyssey films…but he DID make a Chinese Tall Story). Mostly I just didn’t bother looking for it because I hear it’s flat out not very good. Anyway, the website reports that the movie is coming out next weekend, and it has a trailer if you click on 予告.

- Production for the Korean horror film G.P. 506 has been suspended after 70% of shooting has been completed due to the lawsuit and management battles within the production firm. Film is, after all, a business.

Hong Kong was on public holiday Monday, which means no weekend box office figure until later tonight Pacific Time (Tuesday in HK) or even tomorrow night.

- On the other hand, the Japanese box office numbers are already out, and Box Office Mojo already has the comprehensive chart. Die Hard 4.0 takes the top spot with a strong 603 million yen from 741 screens. Adding the Saturday’s preview screenings’ take of 289 million yen, it has already made 892 million yen to date. However, its 814,000 yen per-screen average is kind of weak for an opening this wide (Spiderman 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean saw higher per-screen average on even higher screen counts). Meanwhile, Shrek 3 opens at third, making 363.8 million yen on 543 screens, which is much higher than Shrek 2’s opening of 284.8 million yen on 551 screens in 2004. If the performance pattern is similar to Shrek 2, this one should end up doing better than the previous film by about 25%.

Except for The Haunted Samurai, Maiko Haaaan!!!, and Pirates of the Caribbean, everything else took a pretty big hit, especially Spiderman 3’s 52.2% hit, Zodiac’s 40.1% hit, and Dai Nipponjin’s 43% drop (at least it passed the 1 billion yen mark). Lastly, Pedro Almodovar’s Volver missed the top 10 because it’s only playing on 40 screens. It only make 19 million yen.

- By the way, I forgot to report that the Akihi To Kamo No Coin Locker opening in Tokyo also marked the best opening for a Japanese film at that theater after last year’s Mamiya Brothers, and is the 7th best opening ever at the theater.

- After the financial failure of Ichikawa Kon’s self-remake of The Inugami Family earlier in the year, director Nobuhiko Oobayashi’s self-remake of his 1982 film Exchange Students also failed in its limited release. Originally the first part of the “Onomichi Trilogy” (the director’s hometown), the remake, named Tenkousei - Sayonara Anata, takes the film out of its original location to Nagano. On 30 screens, the film made only 5 million yen with only a 166,666 yen per-screen average. Perhaps these self-remakes aren’t very good ideas.

- Meanwhile, Kiroi Namida, the Isshin Inusou film starring Johnny’s boy group Arashi, opened in South Korea to a seemingly weak 16,000 admissions, only because it’s compared to Memories of Tomorrow’s 38,000 admissions and Tears For You’s 64,000 admissions for their respective opening weekends. However, there’s nothing about how many screens it opened on, considering that the film is considered less mainstream than its counterparts in Japan. However, Eiga Consultant also points out that the film actually didn’t even do all that well in Japan. While the film has finally broke the 200 million yen barrier, other films starring individual members of Arashi (such as Letters From Iwo Jima and Honey and Clover) has actually done much better.

- It’s kind of been reported before, but Pirates of the Caribbean has officially surpassed Spiderman 3 in worldwide gross. I’m reporting this because a bulk of that cash comes from Asia.

- Get it here first, the first full-length trailer for Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, starring Tony Leung, Joan Chen, Leehom Wang, and newcomer Tang Wei, is everywhere on Youtube. A Chinese neonoir/political thriller? Sign me up.

Speaking of trailer, the full-length trailer for Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum is up, and it’s looking good. Could this deliver even better old-school movie magic action than Live Free or Die Hard? (HD links can be found at Dave’s Trailer Page)

- Since Shinya Tsukamoto’s Nightmare Detective was recently announced to be in production, I should probably link the latest review for the first film here.

- Lovehkfilm has updated with some reviews. First, Derek Kwok’s directorial debut The Pye-Dog with Eason Chan, then a review for Herman Yau’s direct-to-video film A True Mob Story (also his third release this year), and one for the Japanese heist/romance/true story First Love.

OK, there’s also one for sleazy low-budget exploitation flick Lethal Angels.

- Jason Gray has more about the Japanese documentary Campaign, including his interview with the director on The Midnight Eye and news of nightly English-subtitled screenings.

- Eason Chan and Miriam Yeung win big at the 7th Chinese Music Media Awards in Hong Kong. I’ve never even heard of this award in the first place, let alone the winners for the first 6 ceremonies.

- Naked News, the show where reporters literally remove pieces of clothing while reporting the latest news, is on an adult-oriented channel in Japan. Guess what? It’s also subsidized by the government.

- Variety has a review of the action film Dynamite Warrior, which Michael Wells wrote about after it screened at the New York Asian Film Festival.

- Associated Press, via the Daily Yomiuri, reports further about the death of master filmmaker Edward Yang.

- A while ago I reported about yet another censorship case involving Hong Kong’s Television and Entertainment Licensing Council. An essay in Hong Kong’s inMediaHK site included a picture from Flickr with nudity, prompting a warning from TELA that it might be sent to be classified as a category II indecent material. However, the writer refuses to budge (the irony is that the essay is actually about this Hong Kong witch-hunt of “indecent” material by conservative groups), and a month later, the essay has been classified as category II material, with the writer now at risk to pay fines and serve jail time.

Now, EastSouthWestNorth has translated the latest interview with the writer, who still refuses to give in to the ridiculous and ineffective censorship this government council is doing.

- Reuters introduces the Singaporean documentary Invisible City, featuring footages of a forgotten Singapore from the 1950s.

- Universal Music, one of the few record companies that is actually uploading their own artists’ music videos onto Youtube voluntarily, is refusing to draw a long-term licensing deal with Apple’s iTunes, which takes up 70% of the digital music market, because they pretty much want more money. According to Hongkie Town, Universal Music feels that iTunes isn’t charging enough for songs and is looking for another provider that would make them more money. And corporations wonder why people don’t like giving money to them.

- The Japanese box office numbers just came out on Box Office Mojo, except they didn’t provide the exchange rate they used this week, so we’ll just simply have to trust their number. Anyway, Pirates of the Caribbean drops another moderate 23% for a current total of roughly 8.36 billion yen already (and this monster is still making more than 500 million yen a weekend!) , so it should go well past the 10 billion mark Sony couldn’t get Spiderman 3 to hit. More amazingly, the comedy Maiko Haaaan!!! drops only 3.1% from last weekend’s gross to make roughly 738 million yen already and should go past the 1 billion mark pretty easily as well.

Other than Spiderman 3’s slow but consistent drop (only 25% this week, but a weak per-screen average means its pulse is quickly growing weak) and the small 20% drop for Sono Toki Kare Ni Yoroshiku, everything else on the top 10 are dropping at the usual 30-40% rate. Furthermore, this weekend’s double whammy of Shrek 3 and Die Hard 4.0 should give the box office a knock on its ass.

There’s an interesting addition this week on the chart worth mentioning that didn’t show up last week . The dark comedy-suspense-one-set film Kusaragi opened on the weekend on the 15th on only 28 screens and still managed to make 20.4 million yen. While that’s only 49% of the opening for star Oguri Shun’s last film Ghost Train. To be fair, Kusaragi opened only on 30% of the screens Ghost Train opened with, so this opening of 729,000 yen per-screen is pretty impressive. As for its second week, it seemed to have played even stronger with a roughly 839,000 yen per-screen average for 30 screens. I have to admit, a film about 6 guys coming together to mourn the death of their D-grade youth idol does sound pretty interesting, even if it’s from the writer of a commercial heart tugger like Always - Sunset on Third Street.

One movie that did open this past weekend but didn’t show up is Yuko Takeuchi’s return to the big screen with Side Car Ni Inu(more info from Hoga News). What’s the big deal, you might ask? The big deal is (and I’m afraid this involves a bit of geinou gossip) that this is Takeuchi’s first film role since her rather ugly divorce with Kabuki bad boy Shidou Nakamura (which got set off when he got caught drunk-driving with another woman in the car). To add irony into this, she actually plays the mistress of a married man who moves in to the family home one 80s summer.

Anyway, the film actually seems like a lot more innocent than it sounds, and it just opened in a limited release. I look forward to Eiga Consultant’s analysis of it (with a star like Takeuchi, it’s bound to come sooner or later), though some theaters seem to be reporting that it’s not bringing in a lot of audiences. Meanwhile, check out the official site for a trailer (click on 予告編)

- In Korea, the win by horror film Black House in nationwide attendance marks the first time a Korean film has taken the top spot at the box office in eight weeks.

- The hit drama of the Spring season Proposal Daisakusen (Operation Love) wrapped up its run Monday night Japan time, and it managed to score a season-high 20.9 rating (roughly 13.56 million viewers), effectively saving the season from total embarrassment. It’s also by far the winner of the season with a season average of 17.3 (roughly 11.23 million).

- Nielsen EDI, a firm that tracks box office and TV ratings, is expanding their box office tracking service to South Korea and Japan. Too bad a little blog like mine won’t benefit from it.

- The Tribeca Festival, started after the 2001 World Trade Center attack to revive New York, is bringing a mini-version to Beijing?! So, will it be more overpriced movie tickets and glamourous superstars, or will there actually be quality movies shown there?

- Yoji Yamada’s Love and Honor was released on DVD with English subtitles earlier this month in Japan. Now the people who didn’t want to shell out 3000 yen for it can get the Hong Kong edition in a few days.

- The Bangkok International Film Festival was forced to drop the Cannes jury award winner Persepolis as its opening film after the Iranian government called to complain. The animated film is directed by Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian living in France, and the film is an autobiographical work based on her childhood in Tehran. Another ugly example of politics unreasonably intervening in art.

- As I was browsing around the Tokyo movie theater websites, I found the new films by Yukihiko Tsutsumi, who made Trick the Movie, Memories of Tomorrow, AND Sairen in 2006. This year he’s off making three more with the already-released Taitei No Ken, Hotai Club (with Yuya Yagira), and Jigyaku no Uta (starring Hiroshi Abe and Miki Nakatani). Click on トレーラ to see the trailers in their respective official sites.

Anyway, this goes to show that Japanese directors work surprisingly hard, mostly regardless of the reaction to their work. Tsutsumi is not the only one that has made three films in a year: Isshin Inudou saw three films released in 2005, Takeshi Miike often see 3-4 releases each year, and Isao Yukisada even follows up the biggest blockbuster of the year in summer 2004 with a huge historical blockbuster in time for New Years 2005. Of course, the film industry has to be healthy enough to enable these filmmakers to make so many films, which would explain why people are so impressed that Johnnie To can work on so many films at once.

- This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China, and Vancouver, which has been named mini-Hong Kong by some, is holding a small film series as a part of the Vancouver International Film Festival to celebrate it. For some reason, they managed to pick both the Election films by Johnnie To to be part of the screening. Considering those films are known to be allegories for the relationship between mainland China and Hong Kong, it’s like showing Wag the Dog to celebrate Independence Day in the United States.

- In Hong Kong, one pop culture way to celebrate the handover anniversary is getting a bunch of pop stars together and sing a song! “Have You After All” features Andy Lau, Alan Tam, Hacken Lee, Eason Chan, Joey Yong, Leo Ku and even some Chinese opera singers pretty much praising how great Hong Kong has been in the last ten years. Especially cringe-inducing in its ass-kissing is the line about “Lion Rock connecting with the Great Wall/It can be felt in the veins” and the random Mandarin lines towards the end.

Then some Hong Kong netizens come along and make a spoof of the song (a version with English lyrics here), not only writing satirical lyrics to lampoon the Hong Kong government with a pro-democracy slant, but also finding buddies to imitate the singers in the original song (especially spot-on are the Alan Tam and Chinese opera singer impressions). The best part is that the spoof got 10 times more viewers than the original song on Youtube.

It has become such a pop culture phenomenon that a RTHK program (RTHK is the government-run radio station with television production as well) would use the spoof as a way to mock the government (At one point, the host says everyone should get a “Don’t Speak Taboo face mask” and a “Don’t Hear Taboo ear plug”) and the Chief Executive. Of course, there’s also the anti-democracy spoof of the spoof, which just goes to show how much freedom of speech people still have in Hong Kong.

(Thanks to EastSouthWestNorth for the idea)

- Lastly, Christina Aguilera says that she has been reading scripts to find the right role for her acting debut. I hope she never finds that script.

- The somewhat incomplete Japanese box office numbers are in. I say incomplete because either Kantoku Banzai has fallen below 15th place, or Office Kitano has flat out decided not to report its grosses anymore, and the opening weekend of 300 is not as spectacular as the numbers report. Box Office Mojo reports that 300 made about US$3.4 million, or 415 million yen. But the total indicates that it included the previous week’s previews into its total gross, which means that as Eiga Consultant reports, 300 made 330 million yen, or roughly US$2.71 million with a per-screen average of US$5,995. Of course, that still makes a very impressive opening, and it’s still 209% of Sin City’s opening, but it’s still overshadowed by Pirates of the Caribbean.

Unlike most of the world, Pirates is actually enjoying a very healthy long-term run, dropping just 20% from the previous week for another 941 million yen. After three weekends, Pirates has already made almost 6.2 billion yen, and will pass Spiderman 3’s gross mid-week. Still, Spidey 3 has already surpassed the previous movie’s gross, and as indicated by its slow 25-30% drop, it should end up making just a little more than the first film, too.

Everywhere else on the top 10 looks pretty stable, with only the Hollywood flick Shooter seeing a considerable drop. Even Dai Nipponjin survived its lackluster word-of-mouth, losing only about 28% of its business (Knocked Up lost more than that in its second weekend, and it’s an audience favorite). In a one-theater limited release, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto made a promising 1.8 million yen. It’ll go on wide release this coming weekend. NOTE: It will not feature English subtitles.

- Speaking of Pirates of the Caribbean, the notorious Chinese censors have approved the third film to play in Chinese theaters. However, they banned the first two movies (which are kind of crucial to understand the third one, no?), and they cut out half of Chow Yun-Fat’s scenes. Now people are not only utterly confused, they even lost much of the their main reason for buying a ticket to watch it in theaters. Disney is wasting their money, this one is pretty likely to flop in China.

- In Thailand, director Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Ploy opened only modestly. However, its first weekend gross has already surpassed the total domestic gross of his last film, Invisible Waves. For a filmmaker associated with the words “arthouse cinema,” I would say that’s pretty good.

- I have honestly seen very few Japanese films that actually have original screenplays. Many of them are adapted from novels (so much that I took a whole class of Japanese films adapted from novels), comics, video games, or continuation of TV dramas. Then again, a bulk of Hollywood films is made the same way. However, Ryuganji points out that it’s getting a little out of hand these days in Japan.

- Elizabeth Banks has signed on to play the young stepmother role in the American remake of A Tale of Two Sisters. I liked her in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but like all American remakes of Asian films, I remain very very skeptical about this.

- China is getting ready to fight back at the United States after they filed two cases against China with the World Trade Organization. However, with the complaint, China is now less likely to open up its film market any quicker just to get on Hollywood’s nerves.

On the other hand, the EU is warning that it will “go to trade war” with China if they don’t improve cracking down on piracy. Who needs who more these days anyway? You try stopping a billion people from making pirated versions of your overpriced goods.

- Meanwhile, Hong Kong seems to have a thing or two to complain about Japan too. TV Asahi showed its made-for-TV biopic of Asian superstar Teresa Tang on June 2nd, which was shown simultaneously in Hong Kong as well. Since Tang did spend a huge chunk of her career in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong press would naturally put how the Japanese portray Hong Kong under a lot of scrutiny. As a result, Ming Pao had a field day pointing out how much the show screwed up:

1) The movie starts in 1973, when a Japanese talent manager discovered Tang in Hong Kong still under British colonial rule. Yet, the Hong Kong Special Administraive Region flag was seen at the location, instead of the colonial flag.
2) In the scenes that take place during the 80s, the Bank of China Tower (built in 1989) and the International Finance Center (built in 2003) were seen in the background from the Peak.
3) The Murray House was not restored in Stanley, where Tang lived, until 1998. However, it appeared in the film’s 80s scenes as well.

There are a bunch of other nitpicks in that report as well. While I can’t blame Ming Pao for nitpicking (”ha ha! Japanese TV crews suck just as much!”), TV Asahi just didn’t have the money to reproduce all these historical locations with cgi. Plus, it’s not like Hong Kong productions are very good at conveying foreign locations either.

- Disney has signed a deal with an Indian studio to produce several computer-animated features aimed for the region. No word on whether Disney will ever plan to release these films outside the region.

- Ryuganji also has news on upcoming and ongoing projects from Miki Satoshi, all of them starring Joe Odagiri. He also adds on another upcoming Odagiri project as well. It’s all a little complicated, you should go read it yourself, since Joe Odagiri may soon be the male version of Erika Sawajiri. These Japanese stars just never rest.

- Andy Lau really is the hardest working man in Chinese entertainment: When he’s done filming Daniel Lee’s historical epic this month, he’ll do a cameo for a Focus Films production that he’s investing in, then an album and concert tour. All by the end of the year.

- Considering that the film will be entirely in English, it’s so surprise that there’s an English website up for Takeshi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django. However, the trailer remains on the original website, so just go to Twitch instead of getting confused.

Jason Gray also reports that Quentin Tarantino showed up in Japan at the end of the shoot to film his cameo, which would explain why he was not in the trailer and why he showed up at the wrap-up ceremony.

- Do we really need an Asian version of Oprah? Apparently someone thought so.

- Lastly, Tokyograph left a comment yesterday with more about Tea Fight, starring Erika Toda. They had this to say:

“About “Tea Fight” - there actually is a director named, but I know nothing about Taiwanese or Chinese names. The Japanese form is ワン・イェミン, which seems to be something like Wang Ye-Ming, but the closest I could find is an actor. The article says the person was an assistant director for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” but none of the credits I could find (imdb or elsewhere) match the name.

Here’s what another article said about the story (roughly): “The father runs an old tea shop, and he closes shop after his wife dies from what he believes to be a ‘tea curse.’ Through the internet, the daughter finds out about a legendary tea and travels to Taiwan in search of it. The father then follows her, concerned that it may be a trap by Taiwanese tea-makers.” There’s also mention of Taiwanese mafia being involved in the story somehow.”

I can’t seem to find the name through various variations on that name either. But still, that’s more than helpful. Thanks!

- Two NHK mini-dramas were recently announced, but the reason we care here is because one of them is a milestone of sorts. The six-episode drama Shanghai Typhoon will be the first NHK drama to have a non-Japanese lead with Taiwanese star Peter Ho. Apparently, he will plays a Chinese exchange student in Japan that will be a romantic interest for the female lead, played by Tae Kimura. According to Ming Pao, it’ll play at the very time slot that the hit Korean drama Winter Sonata played in 3 years ago, and Ho said like Winter Sonata star Bae Yong-Joon brought on the Korean Wave, he hopes to bring in the Chinese Wave. I doubt it, but go for it, Peter.

- The winners of the 44th Grand Bell Awards have been announced (didn’t I just write about the nominees last week?). Family Ties picked up best picture, while The Host still managed to grab best director. My favorite win of the whole award, though, is Ryu Deok-Hwan’s best newcomer award for Like a Virgin. It’s most definitely well-deserved!

- Lovehkfilm has a couple of new reviews, including one for the Hong Kong romantic comedy Single Blog, the “where the hell did that come from” Chinese film Sweet Revenge, and the delightful Japanese girl power music film Linda Linda Linda.

- Speaking of Linda Linda Linda, the songs the girls cover are by the Japanese punk band The Blue Hearts. Two of its members - vocalist Hiroto Komoto and guitarist Masatoshi Mashima - actually went on to form The High-Lows, and since last year, they have been playing as the Cro-Magnons. So even though the Blue Hearts have been broken up for 12 years now, their spirit is still very much alive. Anyway, the Cro-Magnons will be doing their first movie theme for the film Waruboro, though it’s not clear if The High-Low or The Blue Hearts have done any movie themes before.

- Twitch offers us another review of the over-the-top Singaporean horror comedy Men in White, and the conclusion is pretty much the same as last time.

- The Fujimoto prize, which recognizes producers and directors, was recently given in Japan. TBS has now officially shown their strength over Fuji Television as its producers picked up an award for their ten films last year, including the hit films Tears For You and The Sinking of Japan.

- The restructuring Bangkok International Film Festival has announced a preliminary lineup for its competition, which includes the Chinese film Lost in Beijing and two Thai films as well, one of which is Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s latest Ploy.

- The region 1 DVD of Hot Fuzz is coming July 31st!

- It’s getting more and more dangerous to be an otaku these days in Japan, as crimes in Akihabara has gone on the rise after extensive construction to change the face of the electronic town has brought out more otakus than ever. Of course, it seems like another concern would be whether these otakus would do their part to stop crime (that’s two links there at the end).

- The latest trailer for Ping Pong director Fumihiko Sori’s Vexville is up, and it still looks very technically impressive. I might even be tempted into checking this one out.

- As random as it sounds, Korea Pop Wars has some random notes, including the poor start for the hyped historical epic Hwang Jin-Yi. We’ll find out more about Hwang’s weekend in the next few days.

- Jason Gray reports that Japanese director Sabu’s (whose Dead Run I sort of liked) first foreign language film Arrested Memories, which Gray did the English translation for, has been green-lit.

- Anyone who follows this blog and Hong Kong music at the same time would know that I don’t have much love for Mark Lui, whose pop duplication skills is only second to Hanjin Chan(Edison Chen vs. 2Pac, Jordan Chan vs. Justin Timberlake). But I have to admit that Hong Kong press tends to make far too much out of nothing, even when it’s about Mark Lui’s copycat skills.

Case in point, I point you to the blog of Hong Kong pop star Denise “HOCC” Ho (yes, that is actually her real blog). In a recent entry, she wrote:

今日唔覺意聽電台。
唔覺意比我聽到d甘geh野。
聽到我想死。
我最愛的東西比人攪成甘……..
求神拜佛唔好比我再聽到。

(in translation)
I was unconsciously listening to the radio today.
I unconsciously heard such a thing.
I wanted to die listening to it.
Someone turned the thing I love the most into something like that……
I pray that I won’t have to listen to it ever again.

Somehow the Hong Kong media (and by that, I mean the Oriental Daily, circulation over 2,000,000 in Hong Kong, plus however many internet visitors it attracts) has connected it with reports that Mark Lui’s latest work “Money Money Money Money” by Leo Ku has been accused of copying Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Then somehow, Oriental Daily connected it with HOCC’s post about listening to a song on the radio that has ruined the thing she loves, which is conveniently Queen. Thing is, she has nothing to deny because she never named the song, and the report states that HOCC admits to have heard the song, but doesn’t wish to criticize it. Then the reporter apparently continued to pursue the question, prompting her to say the following:

「 創 作 人 同 音 樂 人 心 中 有 把 尺 ， 我 把 尺 set 得 好 高 ， 自 己 盡 量 避 免 （ 抄 襲 ） ， 其 實 歌 手 都 應 該 有 責 任 ！ 」 阿 詩 最 後 暗 寸 Mark 說 ： 「 有 抄 襲 成 分 話 係 冇 得 追 究 ， 不 過 總 會 有 人 知 ！ 」

(in translation from the report)”Musicians have a bar in their hearts; I set the bar very high, and I try my best to avoid (copying). Actually, all artists have that responsibility!” Ah C also finally subtly criticizes Mark, saying “If there’s copied elements then it can’t be pursued, but someone always knows eventually!”

I love how these reports love to assume what the people are trying to say just by the report’s agenda.

Anyway, here’s the song in question, and here’s Bohemian Rhapsody. There’s a saying in Chinese, “The eyes are tall, but the hand is low,” meaning that the vision is ambitious, but the way it’s done is lackluster, which is the best way to describe the Leo Ku song. Lui’s ambition is high, trying to create a pop song that attempts to emulate Bohemian Rhapsody’s structure (it’s not the only song to do so anyway) and avoiding the Karaoke-friendly cliches. But the song sounds like a bunch of random melodies that Lui’s written before held together by the chorus; the whole thing just sounds like one of those bad pop song medleys…..like this one by Leo Ku rather than an actual song. Furthermore, Ku’s whole “can you hear me trying to sound like I’m having fun?” tongue-in-cheek delivery is irritating, especially when he does it for five minutes. I’m sure Leo Ku is a talented singer (though his “I love to sing” shtick is a little tiresome), but he’s no Freddie Mercury. And yes, the beginning and the random a capella does sound a bit like Bohemian Rhapsody’s structure, but saying that “Money Money Money Money” is copying from Bohemian Rhapsody is an insult.

….an insult to Bohemian Rhapsody, that is.

Still, this isn’t the worst case of Mark Lui’s copying skills. You can even write this one off and call it an homage.

- Speaking of Oriental Daily and bad press behavior, the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority has finally decided to send the erotic pages of several Hong Kong major newspapers, including Oriental Daily, to the Obscene Articles Tribunal for classifications. This comes after the TELA received hundreds of complaints following the Chinese University of Hong Kong student newspaper scandal, where bloggers accuse the TELA for holding a double standard. If they have any type of fairness, then they would classify these pages as category II, which then would just show that the people in charge might just be a tad too uptight about sex.

- After game developers Midway’s abrupt resignation as the official sponsor of the New York Asian Film Festival, Twitch has decided to call a boycott of Midway because of their unethical practices.

On the other hand, Suntory (yes, as in “For relaxing times, it’s Suntory time” Suntory) and the Weinstein Company’s Dragon Dynasty have stepped up to become sponsors, though the financial gap left by Midway’s departure still hasn’t been filled, which should say how big of a presence they would’ve been.

- Korea Pop Wars has a link to a very good editorial about the way the Korean Wave is going.

- Twitch has an extended trailer for the big-budget Korean monster film D-War, which still doesn’t look very good. But hey, the special effects actually look pretty impressive, which balances out the dialogue, which is not very impressive.

- TV Tokyo, which is still considered the CW of Japan (smallest network with the fewest affiliates in the country), is hoping to expand to four more major territories by 2011. More programming choices: good. More crappy variety shows: bad.

- Nominees for the 44th Grand Bell Awards in Korea have been announced. They’re still busy giving awards to The Host? That felt like it was so long ago. The biggest surprise is to see films that I didn’t particularly care for (Seducing Mr. Perfect and Ice Bar) in the nominations.

- Hideo Nakata is a very very busy man - he has the period horror film Kaidan coming out on August 4th, then he’s also shooting the Death Note spinoff film L this summer, and now he has signed on to return to Hollywood for Inhuman, a horror film that’s not a remake. Inhuman will be produced partly by Taka Ichise, who worked with Nakata on the original “Ring” series.

- A while ago I introduced the trailer for the Singaporean film “Men in White,” a horror-comedy that seemed to be trying too hard to be funny. Now there’s a review, and it seems to confirm a couple of things that I fear the film might be.

- I guess Thailand is making a transgender parody of Kung Fu Hustle?

- Lastly, we have a report about China’s closest thing to a school of rock - a rock band named 20088 (they apparently turn 8 in 2008)consisting of 4 kids from the school’s music club. I can’t wait until they do some Nine Inch Nail covers.

Since there isn’t a lot of new from Cannes, we’ll just do it the way we always do it around here.

- First, some news out of Hong Kong in a follow-up to the Chinese University of Hong Kong newspaper scandal. After the news broke out that the student newspaper was slapped with an interim category II rating (ruling it as indecent), Ming Pao Daily reprinted the page on one of their Sunday issues in an attempt to show what the hoopla’s about. After receiving more complaints, the TELA has also given that issue an interim classification of category II. Meanwhile, a survey was also done with over 1000 people about the CUHK newspaper, and to further complicate the definition of obscene, the general public seemed to have been offended by the CUHK newspaper.

Besides the obvious problem stated by EastSouthWestSouth, that most of those people haven’t even read the page themselves because the law won’t allow anyone to reprint it, what about the issue of target audience? The newspaper is not produced nor distributed for the general public, but rather just a small number of people that goes to Chinese University. Some people say that students might bring it back home, where kids can get to it. Then it’s the student’s fault for laying a sex page around the house, not the fault of the editors. Until then, only the students of CUHK should have the right to decide what they can or cannot read.

This is a frustrating situation, because people who have no business in denouncing a newspaper is doing so, and there’s such a hypocrisy going on in the media that I’m surprised no one is pointing it out. This is the Oriental Daily “Male Extreme Section.” It comes out once a week, and it contains articles about how prostitution is a natural thing in society, a column about a woman’s experience with a younger man, a guide to having sex during the summer heat, among other things that would not be very acceptable in a mainstream newspaper. So why hasn’t these people been fined week after week?

Same reason why Easyfinder has managed to survive week after week of exploiting female celebrities: It’s titillating. The contents in the sex pages of mainstream newspapers are meant to encourage people to feel sexual desire, which is why they are often sensational and written in casual Chinese. Though Easyfinder is now closing after years of public pressure, it only got into trouble because of clear acts that are illegal (such as violating Gillian Chung’s privacy by printing the pictures of her changing). Other than that, no one points out that it’s been nothing more than a trashy tabloid that’s meant to entertain.

On the other hand, the CUHK newspaper forces people to face their hidden fantasies, and it pretty much presents the same thing the other mainstream newspapers write about. As for the questionnaire problem, it doesn’t even encourage such behavior, nor is it even meant to be taken seriously. Look at the choices: There are four relatively short answers and an extended mock answer that’s just played for laughs. Hell, for the question about whether readers thought about bestiality, the closest thing to a “yes” choice is the mock answer. Maybe it’s in poor taste, but I don’t see anything particularly obscene about it, as long it’s not encouraging people to engage in such behavior, and that’s my conservative side talking already.

Anyway, on to regular news already.

- Legendary Japanese director Kei Kumai passed away on Wednesday morning Japan time.

- It’s time for the Japanese Oricon charts. On the singles side, Keisuke Kuwata’s latest single “Will It be Sunny Tomorrow,” also the theme song for popular drama Operation Love, debuts at number 1 with 167,000 copies sold. The single also marks his first solo effort in 5 years, and his 5th consecutive number 1 as a solo artist. The debut breaks the record for the consecutive number of number 1 debuts for a solo effort from a band member. Meanwhile, Exile’s latest debuts at a weak number 3 spot with only 89,000 copies sold as the singles market continues to weaken over time. Next week, expect boy band V6’s new single to rule the charts, only to see a huge drop off afterwards.

On the album chart, Linkin Park debuts at number 1 with 150,000 copies sold, while Maroon 5 debuts at the number 3, selling 64,000 copies. The biggest news is the new album by Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi, who is also starring in Kenta Fukasaku’s latest film, debuted only at number 4 with 61,000 copies sold. If the daily rankings hold up, then we should see Japanese albums ruling the charts again.

- Anyone that’s looking to watch Sexy Voice and Robo episode 7 online (I’m not, but I’m just saying) can forget it - NTV pulled the episode after an incident last week where an ex-Yakuza holed up in an apartment shot and killed a police officer during the stand-off. They also have no plans to air the episode yet, as they’ll just skip straight to episode 8 next week.

- Last weekend, the distributor for the independent film sequel Pacchigi - Love and Peace predicted that its gross would past the 1 billion mark based on the opening day of the first film. And it’s true, Love and Peace did indeed open at 150% of the first film, except the distributor didn’t take into account that the first film played to strong word-of-mouth for 22 weeks. Considering that the opening was also only 59% of last year’s indie hit Hula Girl, perhaps expectation is a little high.

- On the other hand, Indies are now all the rage in North America as a form of counter-programming.

- Reviews from Cannes time. The latest film by Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Invisible Waves, Last Life in the Universe) Ploy premiered as part of the Director’s Fortnight. Variety didn’t really like it, saying that it made the slow Invisible Waves look like a rapid approaching tsunami in comparison (that was a pun in bad taste, I say). On the other hand, Twitch likes it a lot, calling it beautiful, thought, and mediative.

- The Edge of Heaven, the new film by Fatih Akin, the director of the great “Head-On” (the film, not the product), is competing in Cannes. Looks like both Variety and Hollywood Reporter liked it. Variety calls it utterly assured and profoundly moving, while Hollywood Reporter calls it intricate and moving. I’m looking forward to it already.

- There have been clips of Sammi Cheng’s Hong Kong concert on Youtube, prompting the record company to ask Youtube to take it off the site. Problem is that these are just badly recorded clips from cell phones of digital cameras, so why start some petty copyrights fight to give up some promotion for the concert DVD?

- The Korean film I’m anticipating the most right now is probably Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, The Bad, and the Weird, and it was recently sold to France in a 6-figure deal. Good for them.

- Dave’s Trailer Page has a link to a pretty good trailer for the fabulous Paris Je T’aime. I have the Hong Kong all-region DVD, but I urge everyone to give this a try in the theaters. Trust me, it’ll appeal to a wide audience better than the arthouse ones, except for a few of the shorts.

- Chow Yun-Fat wants to take on romantic or dramatic lead roles in Hollywood. At least he’ll do better than Jackie Chan, who pretty much said the same thing a year or two ago. But….but…what about Hong Kong??

- Apparently someone used a digital camera or something and bootlegged some footage from the reel for Feng Xiaogang’s The Assembly from the Cannes Film Festival. It looks technically accomplished, with huge explosions and whatnot, but Feng Xiaogang is first and foremost a commercial filmmaker. And honestly, the battle scenes look like they were taken straight out of Taeguki, which took its battle scenes out of Saving Private Ryan.

- Who says that playing video games ruins your mind? Well, maybe in America, but in Japan, the Nintendo DS is actually being used effectively to learn English.

- Oh, there’s another positive review for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, though right now it’s only at 50% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes. I still can’t get over the 2 hours and 48 minutes length myself.

- China is not just looking to Hong Kong for co-production. Those promiscuous bastards are looking all over the world.

- Isabella Leung is going to Hollywood. The star of…Isabella is set to play Michelle Yeoh’s daughter in The Mummy 3, also known as “the latest way to fuck up Chinese culture for worldwide consumption.” Stop taking our people down with you, Hollywood.

- Cannes isn’t even over yet, and the Venice Film Festival is already announcing that Robert Zemekis’ latest film, the 3D Beowulf (can he just go back to doing live-action films already?), will be opening the festival. Also, Ang Lee and Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest films also have a pretty good chance of showing up there as well.

Not much news today, and since I haven’t talked much about the films I’ve seen lately, this would be a good place to start.

Thanks to the Netflix streaming “Watch Now” option, I managed to check out the Japanese film “Who’s Camus Anyway?” It’s so hard to find that it’s not even available on Japanese DVD (If anyone can find one, great, but I looked through Yesasia and CDJapan and found nothing, but you can find the American DVD easily). Anyway, it’s a comedy-drama chronicling a week before the shoot of a student film. The ambitious 9-minute opening shot, which whips through a real Japanese college campus (I believe it’s Rikkyo University) introduces all the major characters - the promiscuous director, his conflicted assistant director, the new lead, the widowed professor, and members of the crew that love to talk about opening shots.

Inserting references to Camus, Death in Venice, Tarantino, and who knows how many more, you don’t exactly need to understand what the film is really about to “get” Who’s Camus Anyway. Confidently written and directed by Mitsuo Yanagimachi (I honestly thought a much younger director made this), anyone remotely interested in filmmaking would find the film interesting at just how tedious the whole process can be. Egos collide, romantic entanglements ensue, and someone’s eventually going to get hurt. Of course, those who aren’t interested might be wondering why art students are so in love with themselves, but as one of them, I can just say that’s the way it is.

It’s not much of a review, but call this a recommendation: Who’s Camus Anyway is well-written and directed enough to be entertaining, even when you can’t quite pick up every layer of the story.

- They’ve done it before, and now they’re doing it again. After the Weinsteins infamously gave up their rights to Chen Kaige’s stinker The Promise (sadly, rightfully so too), they decided to give up the outside-Asia/UK worldwide rights they got for Ong Bak 2 a year ago, except they’ll still hold North America rights. So good news: Weinstein no longer in charge of Western distribution of Ong Bak 2. Bad News: They’re still in charge of it in America.

- Looks like Hollywood is singing the tune “blame Canada” these days after Warner Bros. found that 70% of the camera-recorded pirated versions of their films come from Canada. Since then, Warner Bros. have canceled all advanced screenings of their films, and 20th Century Fox is contemplating delaying releases for major films in Canada. Believe it or not, since Canada has no laws banning recording films in cinemas, it’s now one of the major piracy nations in the world.

- On the other hand, Warner Bros. have secured a video-on-demand program deal in Hong Kong, which may or may not help combat piracy. Now let’s see whether they can make it accessible enough for people to actually take advantage of it.

- Speaking of Hong Kong and piracy, Hongkie Town reviews two reports of the same trial - the appeals hearing of the first person to be convicted of uploading films using Bittorrent. I’ll have to say, though, that the defense is really stretching why this guy might be innocent.

- Speaking of internet behavior, bloggers and forum posters beware - Your hyperlinks can get you in trouble with the law.

- I can’t believe I paid 35 bucks for this. I originally didn’t think that Ken Watanabe’s “Memories of Tomorrow” would actually get anywhere beyond Japan. Character dramas, especially those not produced by the big three - Toho, Shochiku, and Toei, don’t usually see their day outside the region. So I bought the English-subtitle-less Japanese DVD for my mother when I was in Japan, and I hoped that I can understand at least 50% of it with the subtitles on. Then they released it in Hong Kong, and now they’re even releasing it in America theatrically, thanks to Watanabe’s star power. I should be thankful that a film like this got international distribution, but what took them so damn long?

- I knew it was a pretty big hit, but who would’ve guessed that Gegege No Kitaro would actually be breaking box office records? That’s right, the film’s first full week take just over 1 billion yen is actually a record for distributor Shochiku.

- The first trailer for Benny Chan’s Invisible Targets is up, and wow. It’s not a very long clip, but it has a lot of crap blowing up, people jumping off stuff, and even has Nicholas Tse getting hit by a bus. It’ll probably have a crappy story with overacting everywhere, but this looks like a pretty promising action flick.

- Just when you think it’s out, they pull ‘em back in. After the so-so Terminator 3 promised to take the franchise to a brand-new level while also providing a satisfying yet grim end to the series, another private firm has bought the rights, intending to continue the franchise. Shall we file this under “bad idea”………

- Lastly, Korea Pop Wars looked at the Korean Film Council’s Korean film history book for you, and Mark lets you know whether you should read it or not.

Been gone for a bit, now I’m back, hopefully sticking to a regular posting schedule again.

- Obviously, the big story is the domination of Spiderman 3 pretty much all over the world. In North America alone, the second sequel to the popular franchise made US$151 million. I’ll break down the individual Asian box office results (at least the ones I have) later, but after 5 days of release, it has already shattered all types of box office records (though the Box Office Mojo article suggests that’s due to the super expanded release.) AND well on the way to recuperating its US$250 million budget (plus at least 150 million for advertising and print, minus 50% for exhibitors, actors’ back end salaries, etc.), or dare I say - make a healthy profit.

- And when Box Office Mojo meant super expanded release, they mean Sony pretty much took up a majority of the screens available in the countries they invaded. Case in point - the film made another HK$5.78 million from 127 screens on Sunday in Hong Kong, bringing the 6-day total to an amazing HK$28.6 million already. This sucker is on the way to an at least HK$50 million take, which will be the biggest performer in Hong Kong since Initial D back in 2005. But don’t expect it to surpass the HK$60 million box office take set by Kung Fu Hustle.

With 127 screens taken up already, there’s not much room for anything else - Love is Not All Around (which Ming Pao columns are treating like it’s the second coming) continues to succeed with HK$240,000 on 31 screens for a 18-day total of HK$11.41 million, Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book continues to perform strongly on its 2 screens with HK$40,000 on Sunday, and well….everything else is just kinda embarrassing.

(US$1=HK$7.8)

- The same thing happened in South Korea, where Spidey took up 816 screens and attracted 2.56 million viewers (just a tad under The Host). And just like Hong Kong, everything else got left in the dust.

- In Japan, on the other hand, Spiderman still made a boatload of money, but since people in Japan got the entire week off, the box office was quite strong. After 6 days, Spidey managed to make 3.18 billion yen and recording 2.57 million viewers already. But most films on the top 10, such as Gegege no Kitaro and Conan, actually managed to record increasing box office for the latter half of Golden Week (Gegege actually recorded the biggest increase). Last weekend’s other big opener Babel lost about 20% of its audience, but still scored a strong 218 million yen and has already passed the 1 billion yen mark.

In fact, remember last weekend, when Gegege no Kitaro opened, and Shochiku proclaimed that it’ll make 3 billion because The Great Yokai War made 2 billion? Turns out they were right! Eiga Consultant realized that the opening weekend for Gegege was actually 175% of The Great Yokai War, which means it’s now on the way to make at least 3.5 billion yen. Wow, they got it right for once.

(US$1=120 yen)

- Since many in Japan travel during Golden Week, TV ratings also went further down for a bit. Last week’s ratings winner Proposal Daisakusen takes a huge dive because of its Monday time slot, losing 21% of its audience for a 13.4 rating. However, ratings for other dramas also stabilized a little bit - ratings disaster Sexy Voice and Robo steadies with a 7.0 rating, Bambino falls a little bit for its third episode with a 13.7 rating, sequel Kui-Tan 2 drops to its lowest rating with 11.8, and ratings disappointment Joudan Janai goes up a little bit again with 14.4, up from 13. 2 last week, when it was the beginning of Golden Week.

- Anyone that doesn’t feel like shelling out a lot of money for a book on Korean history can now just get the official version. According to Twitch, the Korean Film Council now has an English version of a book of Korean film history on their website.

- Johnnie To is no longer under the control of Dennis Law. Milky Way Image, which is under Law, can no longer afford To’s movies, so To decided to just buy his way out, taking two subsidiaries, which includes his own Milkyway Image, and his production team with him. Once the split is approved, Law’s company will no longer be Milkyway, but Brilliant Arts (which is just plain ironic, considering Law’s quality of work).

- I still haven’t seen War of Flowers (or Tezza: The High Rollers), and they’re already making a sequel. Even though the sequel won’t be made by the director of the original, they were creative enough to bring on Jang Joon-Hwan, the man who made the cult favorite Save the Green Planet (file this under “like, but don’t love” category for me), to do it instead. Like I just wrote, I haven’t seen the original, but is a director who made something as crazy as Save the Green Planet really up for a high-profile sequel for a blockbuster film?

- The Thailand film censorship issue continues, this time with Variety Asia writing about Thai filmmakers’ petitions for a new Film Act that allows freedom of expression.