Note: This blog expresses only the opinions of the blog owner, and does not represent the opinion of any organization or blog that is associated with The Golden Rock.
First, a belated Happy New Year to everyone. I just returned from a vacation in Japan, and will need a few days to absorb all the news I missed. Expect news postings to resume this weekend, and possibly a few new posts in the spin-off.
- Time for the opening day numbers from Hong Kong. Yesterday, the first two big Christmas blockbusters - The Warlords and I Am Legend opened, and The Warlords wins the battle. Peter Chan’s war epic was on 72 screens (out of over 200 screens in Hong Kong) and made HK$1.68 million. This is, according to Variety Asia, including the HK$250,000 it made from previews the previous night, which puts its official opening day gross at HK$1.43 million. It’ll probably hit HK$10 million within the week. The question is only: which day?
This means its official opening day only barely beat out Will Smith-starrer I Am Legend, which made HK$1.36 million from 54 screens. This puts the two films’ per-screen average at a head-to-head competition over the weekend, though Warlords will likely win in numbers simply because of the sheer size of the release.
Congratulations to Mad Detective for passing the HK$10 million mark on Thursday. Still on 32 screens (though at a reduced number of shows), the Johnnie To/Wai Ka-Fai crime drama made HK$195,000, and should slow down significantly this weekend thanks to the two big films. Oh, the Chipmunks movie opened with only HK$122,000 from 31 screens. Bummer.
- Fairly big news out of Hong Kong (though it’s one day behind): Stephen Fung is planning to direct a film version of the video game Stranglehold. However, he will first have to finish his Stephen Chow-produced dance film and A New Better Tomorrow with Andy Lau and Aaron Kwok, AND the writers’ strike in Hollywood has to end first so he can actually shoot it. Until then, he’s already talked to Daniel Wu and Brandon “Superman” Routh about starring roles, and the story should be about Wu’s Hong Kong cop teaming up with Routh’s American cop.
- Under “Japanese drama” news today, the hit Japanese drama Gokusen, starring Yukie Nakama, is seeing a third installment in the Spring. Perhaps not so coincidentally, this comes after her latest drama, Joshi Deka, is yet another flop for the advertisement queen. The hit series is about a high school teacher who’s also the head of an organized crime clan. Natrually, it’s a comedy.
Also, the Spring 2007 hit Japanese drama Proposal Daisakusen is getting a gratuitous 2-hour special after people called in saying they were confused about the ending. I think they just asked for a few minutes, not a damn 2-hour special.
- Under “more promising Japanese film news” today, Swing Girls director Shinobu Yaguchi is finally work on his follow-up film Happy Flight. Finally abandoning his “unlikely people doing unlikely things” formula, Yaguchi’s film will entirely take place on one flight and centers around three characters. I’m there.
- Sorry for doing so much Japanese news, here’s some stuff from China: Turns out China, over its negotiations with the United State government, really am banning American movies for 3 months over piracy and trade issues.
This week’s song of the week was originally heard on Khalil Fong’s excellent live album. He called this song “a rare touching but simple” English song. From the 1996 album Urban Hang Suite, it’s Maxwell’s Whenever Wherever Whatever.
- 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….
- 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?
This may be the first time many of you are reading The Golden Rock, which would mean 1) It’ll take a while before you find out my poor musical taste, 2) It’ll take a while before you find out my expert typo skills, 3) How lazy I can get when I get really lazy, and 4) I may have a lot of time on my hands.
Essentially, what this blog does for you is the role of a news aggregator. I look at tons of blogs and RSS feeds so you don’t have to. Plus, I might know more Chinese and Japanese than you, which is supposed to give me a slight advantage. Then again, so do many of you.
A typical post would probably include many sections like this:
So the link means you click on it to see the actual report, and you would want to do that because as you can tell, each section includes more smart-ass comments than actual news reporting. As a mass communication in college, I can tell you that’s what a blog is for. If you want unbiased news reporting, so watch the BBC. Nevertheless, I can guarantee that I don’t report and make smart-ass comments on things I don’t know about, and I don’t assume that my word is the word of all (*clears throat*). In fact, I’ll even ask you readers out there for some help, though that has never quite worked out in the past. Hell, I’ll be happy if this blog gets more than 100 readers a day.
Let’s let it start here. Next time, I’ll explain what a box office post is, and I’ll eventually find time to get to a real post. If you’re still reading by then, I owe you an e-drink.
As you can see from the wrong date in the last entry, this week has been quite tiring for this blogger. With at least two more student productions to work on the next two days and all the news about Pusan not all that engaging, the news entries will be taking a short break. There will probably be a box office report tomorrow, and if there’s something interesting, I might do a news post. But until the end of the weekend, don’t expect too much.
Today’s only box office report is that of Hong Kong’s Thursday opening day. 7 films opened yesterday, with 3 of them I would consider as wide releases. Among them, the best performer was the teen thriller Disturbia (which didn’t get much promotion here). From 24 screens, the Rear Window-in-shitty-teen-rock-music made HK$230,000 for second place. The next one on the list is a bit of a surprise. Alfred Cheung’s Mainland-targeted Contract Lover (review soon in the spin-off) managed to make HK$220,000 from 26 screens, considering that the show I went to last night only had 12 people (and the group I saw it with made up 7 of them). Next on 20 screens is the Korean puppy drama Hearty Paws, which opened with just HK$120,000. This is also a little surprising because puppy films tend to do very well in Hong Kong.
As for the limited releases (I would consider 15 screens and under a limited release, by the way), only one made it to the top 10. The American torture porn Captivity made only HK$60,000 on 14 screens. The other 3 films - La Vie En Rose (2 screens), Renaissance (1 screen), and The Number 23 (1 screen) - naturally didn’t make it into the top 10.
US$1=HK$7.8
- I mentioned that Sicko opened at only about 10% of Fahrenheit 911, but I didn’t take into account that Fahrenheit had a wider opening. In fact, Sicko’s opening was actually 134% of the opening for Bowling for Columbine.
Today’s only box office report is that of Hong Kong’s Thursday opening day. 7 films opened yesterday, with 3 of them I would consider as wide releases. Among them, the best performer was the teen thriller Disturbia (which didn’t get much promotion here). From 24 screens, the Rear Window-in-shitty-teen-rock-music made HK$230,000 for second place. The next one on the list is a bit of a surprise. Alfred Cheung’s Mainland-targeted Contract Lover (review soon in the spin-off) managed to make HK$220,000 from 26 screens, considering that the show I went to last night only had 12 people (and the group I saw it with made up 7 of them). Next on 20 screens is the Korean puppy drama Hearty Paws, which opened with just HK$120,000. This is also a little surprising because puppy films tend to do very well in Hong Kong.
As for the limited releases (I would consider 15 screens and under a limited release, by the way), only one made it to the top 10. The American torture porn Captivity made only HK$60,000 on 14 screens. The other 3 films - La Vie En Rose (2 screens), Renaissance (1 screen), and The Number 23 (1 screen) - naturally didn’t make it into the top 10.
US$1=HK$7.8
- I mentioned that Sicko opened at only about 10% of Fahrenheit 911, but I didn’t take into account that Fahrenheit had a wider opening. In fact, Sicko’s opening was actually 134% of the opening for Bowling for Columbine.
Today’s a big day. All the news I have on hand are all going out. So here we go:
- Anyone in an office box office pool is gonna lost big time. People have been predicting trashfest Grindhouse to own the weekend. Estimates such as 20, 25 million were thrown around, TV advertising were pumped up, and guess what? It only made an estimated 5 million on opening day with an estimated weekend take of 11.9 million. But I personally 11.9 is a little low, I predict just a tad under 15 if the 5 mil opening day holds up.
- The Police apparently were big enough in Japan that the opening weekend of its documentary attracted 911 people the first weekend at a 180-people theater in Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills multiplex. Of course, that’s partly because the director showed up on opening day. This also apparently comes after Roppongi Hill’s successful performance for limited release such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and the director’s cut of the Korean film April Snow. Seems like it’s becoming quite a trendy place for hip limited releases these days.
- While Spiderman 3 got through those strict Chinese censors, not even Chow Yun Fat can get Pirates into China. According to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao, seems like China has rejected the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film because it’s too “gross.” I assume they’re talking about the all that special effects with squids, not the movie’s quality. Excerpt is as follows:
Sources report that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End has been screened, but when the Film Bureau was screening the film, they weren’t pleased with the characters’ looks. Apparently, the second installment “Dead Man’s Chest” was filled with skeletons and scary octopus makeup, and it was criticized by a Film Bureau official as “too gross,” so it was banned. Now “At World’s End” may very well also lose its opportunity to enter the Mainland.
The report also says that 300 was also banned because of the violence. What the hell does it take to please those people?
- Japanese television strikes again, and this time it’s in TBS’s hands. A variety show sent its crew out to Akihabara to interview passerbys, hoping to catch a couple of otakus to answer some questions about current events. Now it’s been exposed that one of those guys were actually contacted in advance to have him just happen to be there so he can get interviewed. Honestly, how quickly can Japanese television’s reputation fall before it’s in the shitter?
- Jason Gray goes to the suburbs of Tokyo to catch another obscure Japanese film (this time an adaptation of an Edogawa Rampo story). The more interesting part is the video of his walk from the train station to the movie theater. Man, I miss Tokyo.
- Being a casual watcher of TV Japan here in the US, which is the subscription-only channel of Japanese programming, mainly from public broadcaster NHK, I realize that NHK news really loves to track the progress of Japanese baseball players who’s made it in the States. They did it for Nomo, they still do it for Ichiro, they now do it for Boston Red Sox’s latest recruit Daisuke Matsuzaka. And now Japan’s finance minister’s had enough, criticizing NHK’s coverage of the pitcher after a recent cabinet meeting. The man has a point, but does he have something personal against Matsuzaka, or he just waited a really long time to let out his opinion?
- Yesterday I posted a link to Asian Cinema - While on the Road’s review of hairy thriller Exte, and today it’s the link to four (!!) Korean film reviews.
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