- It’s reviews time! From Variety is Russell Edwards’ enthusiastic review for Always 2 (it’s enthusiastic enough to make me plan to search out for the first film on a used DVD on my upcoming trip) and also his review for the Rie Miyazawa-starrer The Invitation From Cinema Orion.

From Lovehkfilm guest review JMaruyama is a review of Japanese hit teen romance film Koizora, also known as the Sky of Love.

From Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has a review for the westerners-friendly geisha documentary Hannari - Geisha Modern. However, the theater website doesn’t indicate any English subtitles.

From the Daily Yomiuri, there’s a review by staff writer Tokiko Oba for Yoshimitsu Morita’s remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Tsubaki Sanjuro, which seems to suggest that while it’s not that good, just be lucky it’s not that bad.  Also, via the Daily Yomiuri is AP News’ positive review of Johnnie To/Wai Ka Fai’s Mad Detective.

- Thanks to Spiderman 3 and Resident Evil III, Sony Japan is having their best year at the Japanese box office ever. Coming up: More cash-in sequels!

-  While this is the best year ever at the Asian Television Forum, buyers can’t help but realize that there are two trade shows in Asia that aren’t competing, but will still have to fight for visitors because they happen within three weeks of each other.

- Yet another Japanese film awards time! At the Fumiko Yamaji Awards this week, Masayuki Suo takes the second best film award in a week for his Japanese legal system expose I Just Didn’t Do It. Meanwhile, Yuko Takeuchi received the best actress award for her “comeback” film Sidecar Ni Inu, and Riko Narumi won the best new actress award. No complete list of winner is available at this time.

- To help domestic films get their time of day at the multiplex, The Guangdong Film Company in China managed to convince multiplexes in some major Chinese cities to leave 50 screens aside to screen Chinese films, which includes Hong Kong-China co-productions.

- One of these co-productions will probably be Johnnie To’s latest romance Linger, which now has a trailer out with a link from Kaiju Shakedown.

- Because it’s only one place’s box office, we’ll put the box office entry in here too. Thursday opening day numbers are out for Hong Kong, and Johnnie To/Wai Ka Fai’s latest Mad Detective came storming out of the gate. Despite the category III restrictive rating (only for one scene that’s pretty borderline II-B anyway), the mystery drama made nearly HK$650,000 from 35 screens. With its targeted adult audience, it should make about HK$3 million by the end of the weekend, which means it’ll end up doing much better than recent Milkyway movies such as Exiled and Eye In the Sky. It’ll probably even do better than Triangle.

In Love With the Dead, the latest from Danny Pang (of the Pang Brothers) made only HK$330,000 from 32 screens after making HK$450,000 in sneaks last weekend. Perhaps the young will come out and see Stephy tear out her hair this weekend and bump up the figures. Hollywood horror film 30 Days of Night opened on 24 screen for a take of HK$200,000. Andrew Lau’s Hollywood debut The Flock did much worse, making only HK$62,000 from 18 screens, and the Korean-Japanese co-production romance Virgin Snow made only HK$55,000 from 12 screens.

-  Despite protests from major Thai filmmakers, The Thai Parliament has passed the Thai film law, which gives way too much power for the government to ban films. At least they can always make movies in China. Oh, wait…….

-It’s trailers time! Twitch again provides all three trailers today: one for the Korean body-switching thriller The Devil’s Game, one for the fairy tale-gone-nightmarish Korean horror film Hansel and Gretel, and one for Tak Sakaguchi’s directorial debut Be a Man! Samurai School.

- It’s Awards time too!  Tang Wei will pick up the Asian Female Star of the year award at the Cineasia convention in macau.

Meanwhile, the Japan newspaper Sports Hochi also gave out their yearly film awards, with Masayuki Suo’s I just Didn’t Do It picking up best film and best actor. Meanwhile, Shiro Ito picked up a surprisingly best supporting actor award for Shaberedomo Shaberedomo and Maiko Haaaan!!!!, and I mean surprising as in his performances in those weren’t particularly award-worthy. Another small surprise is Nobuhiro Yamashita picking up best director for his two films this year: The Matsugane Potshot Affair and Tennen Kokekko.

Lastly, the Japan Record Award winners were announced. The sad part I only know three of those songs, and only two of those are worthy winners in my mind.

- Johnnie To’s Linger stars Mandarin-speaking actors Vic Zhou and Li Bing-Bing, which means that the movie will obviously be in Mandarin. However, according to Grady Hendrix, the movie will be shown in Hong Kong in Mandarin instead of Cantonese, despite the fact that it’s already been dubbed in Cantonese. By the way, Grady, Heidi is the operator in the studio.

- Takeshi Kitano appears on Japanese TV in variety shows often enough already, but audiences still can’t get enough of him: His latest acting role in a made-for-TV miniseries scored an average of 23.75 rating over Saturday and Sunday nights. That’s an even higher average rating than the highest-rated drama this season, and it was on the weekend.

- This isn’t a political blog, and this news isn’t meant to be political, but am I right in saying that a documentary that asserts the Japanese WWII war criminals are the equivalent of the seven samurais is probably a little absurd?

- It’s trailers time! Both courtesy of Twitch today- First, the English-subtitled trailer for the Thai action-fantasy film Siyama (yes, there’s supposed to be time traveling elements in the film that is completely ignored in the trailer). Then, the non-subtitled trailer for the gross-out Korean sex comedy Sex is Zero 2. You can already tell it’ll be grosser than the first film, which doesn’t necessarily make me want to watch it.

- Courtesy of Kaiju Shakedown are 5 clips from Pang Ho-Cheung’s latest film(s) Trivial Matters. With bong-smoking, swearing, and talk about oral sex, I’d be surprised if they can get away with a II-B this time.

- I’m starting to hate my vacation dates: Not only will I be missing Trivial Matters (unless it’s such a big hit and it plays through New Years), I’ll also be leaving Japan the day before the Nodame Cantabile special is scheduled to air on Japanese TV. D’oh!

- At least I’ll be back on time to see the new digital broadcast by Hong Kong free TV stations. Of course, I’ll have to first sink some money for a digital decoder or buy a HDTV. Which means I’ll probably be missing out anyway.

- Under “they mean really well” news today, the Beijing Film Academy produced a documentary about the China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe, and even took it to the American Film Market. However, despite some interest, it couldn’t find any buyers and it won’t even premiere in its homeland until March.

Meanwhile, Thai filmmakers are making their final protest calling for modification to the new Thai Film and Video Act, which could bring further censorship into the film system, despite the addition of a ratings system.

- Remember Lost in Beijing, the much-edited Chinese film that was forced to remove multiple scenes (including shots of dirty Beijing streets) before it cleared the censor board? The uncensored version was shown on Hong Kong screens (with a category III rating, which meant “no one under 18 allowed), and the censored version will finally be shown on Chinese screens with a wide release this week. Apparently, the critical nature of Chinese society remains in the film.

-  The European Union is getting more and more impatient with China over piracy, to the point that they’re threatening to go the principal’s office World Trade Organization about it.

- Huge Chinese blockbusters are not even going to premiere at the People’s Auditorium anymore: Now they’re going premiere in Olympic-sized venues!

- The Chinese father-and-son drama The Red Awn picked up the top prize at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece.

 - I’ve been meaning to post this for a while: Hong Kong distributor Golden Scene uploaded the trailer for Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung’s latest Trivial Matters on Youtube. The trailer is unsubtitled, but I can tell you it includes references to ejaculation, Isabella Leung and Gillian Chung pretending they can sing like pop stars (kinda like real life), it has Shawn Yue smoking a bong, and Edison Chan pretending to speak like a rapper. In other words, it’s not really safe for work.

Just in case you need reminding, Trivial Matters is a film adaptation of 7 short stories all originally written by Pang himself. He also directed all 7 films.

- It’s reviews time! Variety has a review of Samson Chiu’s Mr. Cinema, one of the three Hong Kong handover commemoration film from this past summer.

- In case you haven’t watched any of Akira Kurosawa’s classic films, some of them are now public domain and can be downloaded legally for free. I’m somewhat embarrassed to say I have not seen Ikiru, Stray Dog, and Sugata Sanshiro.

- Han Jae Rim’s The Show Must Go On picked up the best film award at the Blue Dragon Awards. The film’s star Song Kang-Ho also picked up a best actor for playing the role of a gangster who has to balance family and his work in crime. Meanwhile, Jeon Do-Yeon picked up another best actress win for Secret Sunshine, Hur Jin-Ho picked up best director for his latest film Happiness (I can’t wait to see this), Kim Han-Min picked up best director and best screenplay for Paradise Murdered, and *gasp* Daniel Hanney picked up a best new actor award for the melodrama My Father. I guess they mean that he didn’t really act in Seducing Mr. Perfect.

Full winners list here

- Under “Pakistan sure knows how to send out conflicting signals” news today, the government has pressured the authorities in Dubai to shut down two Pakistani television news channels with no planned dates to bring them back on the air. Meanwhile, the Pakistani censor board has cleared an Indian film that will become the first Indian film to open in Pakistani theaters since the countries banned each other’s movies simply because of some financing loopholes. Yay for international co-productions!

- The Daily Yomiuri has a feature on Japanese genre director Ryuhei Kitamura’s decision to go to Hollywood. I thought it was a typo when it says his last Japanese film Lovedeath runs at three hours. Turns out it’s 160 minutes long. It doesn’t look like it deserves 160 minutes.

- The Daily Yomiuri also has a column about NHK’s efforts to boost ratings for its yearly Kohaku Variety show, including making it more concentrated on the strength of music. Wait, wasn’t the show supposed to be about the music in the first place?

In order to get to that, they have invited Akihabara-friendly idols AKB48, Shoko Nakagawa, and Leah Dizon to perform in this year’s show. Somehow I think this music strength thing is going to be a gradual change.

- Again from the Daily Yomiuri is a feature on the current state of Otaku-ism in Japan and its influence in America.

- If you’re in the area of Rotterdam around the end of January, you can get your Asian film fix at the Rotterdam Film Festival, where several Asian films are competing.

-  And if you were asking repeatedly when will someone make an inspirational movie about the game of darts, your prayers have been answered.

- Which country is affecting the growth digital TV broadcast signals? Not America. Not Japan. Not even South Korea. It’s China.

- It’s reviews time! This week we see why reading film criticism is like watching Rashomon - first a glowing review of the Japanese aspiring blockbuster Midnight Eagle from The Daily Yomiuri’s Ikuko Kitagawa, then a pan from Japan Times’ Mark Schilling. Who should we believe?

- The Daily Yomiuri is so enthusiastic about Midnight Eagle that they even have a feature on the actor who plays the Prime Minister in the film. No, he’s not the star, but he talks like one.

- If you’re in New York, Midnight Eagle is playing as a day-and-date release at the Imaginasian theatre in New York City.  Of course, if you’re not, then it doesn’t really mean anything to you.

- The first teaser for Stephen Chow’s CJ 7 is indeed out and a Chinese-subtitled version is all over Youtube. Thanks to Lovehkfilm’s Sanjuro, now I can actually link a version with English subtitles instead. By the way, the first time is mis-translated: it should say “stop yelling or I’ll throw you out to the streets.”

- Oh, no, it’s sex! Chinese doctors are so afraid of the impact of Lust, Caution - now on track to be the highest-grossing Chinese film of the year in China - that they have to warn people to not imitate the sex scenes from the uncensored version. If you get hurt doing them, they’ll probably arrest you for piracy.

- Under “piracy is bad, mmkay?” news today, The Korean Film Council will be launching a new anti-piracy campaign in South Korea, where box office gross is one of the highest in the world without the DVD sales to reflect it. Meanwhile, European businesses are putting the pressure on European Union officials to make China do something about their piracy problem. Lastly, five Hollywood studios have come together to sue a Chinese online service and an internet cafe in Shanghai for providing illegal downloads of films.

Quite frankly, short of shooting ballistic missiles at random Chinese vendors, Chinese pirates are harder to take down than Al Qaeda insurgents. But good tries, everyone.

Later today: Maybe a post in the spin-off.

- This week on the Oricon charts - the new badly named Johnny’s boy band Hey! Say! Jump! debuts at number 1 with their very first single, which is also similarly badly named (A pop boy band singing a song named “Ultra Music Power” is like Tom Cruise talking about psychology - neither has any business to talk/sing about it). Meanwhile, KinKi Kids’ latest album debuts at number 1 for a Johnny’s two-fer on the Oricon. Also, voice actress Nana Mizuki scores the highest debut album for a voice actress.

More details at Tokyograph

- Despite the military crackdown and the tortures, the Korean embassy in the capital city of Myanmar is still planning to hold a Korean film festival in the city featuring films such as Taeguki, Welcome to Dongmakgol, and The Host. Yes, movies about miltary occupations or such undertones will surely get the people in the mood to forget their current situation.

- I reported on Monday that Saw 4’s opening weekend gross in Japan is about on par with the rest of the series. Specifically, Eiga Consultant reports that on par means it’s at 92% of the previous film’s opening. However, they also pointed out that this is the first time opening on additional screens led to a decrease in opening gross.

- Variety Asia has a feature on the power of the Oscars on the Chinese audience.

This year, China’s official submission is The Knot, but I’m sure the people know that Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution has the most chance of getting into the race, with some American magazines naming star Tang Wei as a front-runner to get a best actress nomination, if not at categories such as adapted screenplay, music, and cinematography.

- According to Twitch, the first teaser for Stephen Chow’s A Hope will be on several Yahoo Asia sites, though it may just be for a limited period of time. I’m hoping to catch it when I get home tomorrow night, but I’m really not expecting to see much in the teaser.

- What does a Japanese rock band have to do to be inducted into the Hollywood Rock Walk? Sell 70 million copies of singles and albums combined, just like B’z did.

- With digital singles selling better than ever, even the Japanese diva herself Ayumi Hamasaki will be releasing her latest single in digital form only, even though she will shoot a MTV and a cover jacket. Her record company even said that its results may determine how they release her singles in the future.

- The Father of the Playstation Ken Kutaragi will be honored at the Interactive Achievement Awards, despite the fact that he had to resign from Sony due to the disappointing sales of Playstation 3.

- The Japanese group Fumido will be releasing a single next month that was actually ready to go a year ago - except they had to wait for a year for the MTV to be completed, because it’ll be made up of one year’s worth of pictures from a married couple’s life.

- Courtesy of Twitch, the first real teaser for the Death Note spinoff Change the WorLd is now out with actual clips from the movie. However, it won’t be released until February 9th in Japan, so I guess it’s too early to get excited about what’s on screen. Then again, my Japanese isn’t that good.

- In “they’re getting ahead of themselves” news today, America’s Summit Entertainment bought up the remake rights for the Korean film Seven Days, about a lawyer who must save a man on death row to save her own daughter, before it even opened in Korea. Sounds like a derivative thriller only Hollywood can make, so why don’t they just make the damn thing themselves? Oh, wait….

- It’s reviews time! Japan Times’ Mark Schilling reviews the low-budget V-Cinema film Sundome, which actually managed to get play in a hip Shibuya theater.

- Grady Hendrix writes about the current media situation in Pakistan during the current government repression. Case in point: they’re still releasing the country’s exploitation gory horror film.

- The Daily Yomiuri’s weekly Teleview column bashes the hell out of flopping drama Joshi Deka and writes about the sad sad ways Japanese comedians can make money through spelling simple English.

- According to usual Tony Jaa collaborator director Prachya Pinkaew, him and the action star had a falling out, and their future collaborations have been canceled. Did Pinkaew get pissed because Jaa’s directorial debut Ong Bak 2 has even less story than Ong Bak 1?

- The MTV concert series unplugged is finally going to China. Too bad I have no idea who the hell those two first artists are, and we know that Cantopop tend to suck too much to attract that kind of talent.

- Actress Rie Miyazawa talks about her latest film with the Daily Yomiuri. Miyazawa plays a woman who works with her late husband’s apprentice to keep a small town theatre running in the 1950s after the husband’s death.

Unlike many websites out there, The Golden Rock usually updates on the weekend. However, it mostly involves spreading whatever news we can find on Friday and spreading them out over three days. That’s why we’re starting our (mostly) daily posts on a Friday.

- Twitch has a link to the first footage from the Jet Li-Jackie Chan Hollywood White-kid-magically-goes-to-China-to-save-the-world-and-woos-Chinese-girl family flick The Forbidden Kingdom. You have Jet Li and Jackie Chan, and you still need them on wire-fu? That can’t be good.

- When I was studying in Japan, one of my favorite magazines was Tokyo Walker, a comprehensive magazine that doesn’t have any celebrity gossips and simply offer stuff for non-essential self-indulgent urban living. Imagine my pleasant surprise this morning when I found ads all over the MTR this morning for the new Hong Kong Walker. Coming out next week, I’ll be sure to give everyone a look. Why? Because Stephen Chow is the cover man, and he’ll be talking more about his latest A Hope for the inaugural issue.

- After the success of the Death Note series in Japan, Warner Bros. Japan is planning to get more involved in production and development of films in Japan in order to boost the sale of remake rights to Hollywood. One of the films they’ve got going, according to the report, is the latest from Ping Pong director Fumihiko Sori “Ichi.” However, the introduction says that actress Haruka Ayase will be playing the role of the blind swordswoman. The problem is that Haruka Ayase looks like this:

It’s going to be a little hard to buy her as a blind swordswoman.

- With lax copyright law, many young Koreans are now watching movies downloaded on their computer. However, this isn’t your typical illegal Bittorrent movies - these “peer-to-peer” clubs are actually paid and still very illegal. What the hell’s the point to pay to watch illegal movies?

- The Tokyo International Film Festival has found a new head, but make your own damn pun about the man’s name.

- Let’s start with some AFM news:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Time for some news on Johnnie To/Wai Ka-Fai’s latest collaboration Mad Detective. First of all, Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily reported that the category-III crime drama has secured a November 29th release date opposite Danny Pang’s In Love with the Dead.

There’s also a trailer that’s finally up. Those mirror shots are pretty impressive.

- During the box office report, I reported that the Japanese sequel Always 2 is opening this weekend, and Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has a review of it. Looks like the conclusion is “strictly for fans.”

- Meanwhile, Mr. Schilling also has a feature about the Japanese Eyes section of last week’s Tokyo International Film Festival, while Philip Brasor shares his thoughts on the films he saw.

- Fuji’s 3rd Saturday 11pm drama SP premieres tonight in Japan, and Ryuganji reports that a movie version will probably be greenlit. Then again, the drama IS directed by the director of Bayside Shakedown and written by an award-winning author, so it might be good enough to warrant one. But will the ratings be any good to warrant one?

- Just a day after I wrote about my pessimism towards Andrew Lau’s latest big-budget project, Hollywood Reporter has an interview with the unofficial spokesperson for directors with ADD Andrew Lau himself.