It might have been April Fools, but it wasn’t a joke when I woke up 4 years ago today to learn that Asian superstar Leslie Cheung died after jumping off the balcony of a Hong Kong hotel. So today’s Golden Rock’s Song of the Day is gonna be my favorite non-cover Leslie Cheung song - “Falling in Love For You”

Why? While he has had many great songs over the years, the gentleness conveyed in Leslie’s delivery and the lyrics makes this one of the best syrupy “awwwwww” love songs to come out of the 80s, and I’m just a sucker for those bastards. Plus, it’s not a cover, that earns extra points already.

Today’s song comes from Japan’s Spinna B-ill, a Japanese reggae artist (I’m most definitely not shitting you), and his collaboration with Simply Red’s Kenji Jammer. The album is Stay Longer (it’s not on Yesasia, I found a new copy at my favorite record store in Tokyo), and the song is “Nan Do Mo” (or Over and Over)

Why? Because the rest of the album is a cross between rock and reggae that’s similarly awesome, but this is the first track I listened to (I found it on Youtube first), and it was the reason I bought the album. Did you expect this from a reggae artist? I didn’t think so.

Here’s another video of da Spinna man doing his raggae thing.

Not a lot of news today, but it’s Sunday, so bear with me, ya?

- Box office estimates here in the States are out, and my faith in the American moviegoing public is fading away more than ever - Letters From Iwo Jima flopped, Children of Men flopped (although from its subject matter, I don’t know if I would’ve greenlit it with an $72 million budget), and now The Host hits theaters with a disappointing $320,000 gross on 71 screens - That’s only a $4,500 per-screen average. Then again, it’s pretty much flopped everywhere outside of Korea, and it’s not like it didn’t make enough money in Korea already.

Of course, I’m not gonna criticize 300, who made back its $60 million budget this weekend with a $70 million weekend, because I haven’t seen it and I think it looks quite cool. But violent testosterone-driven bloodfests has never ceased to attract the young’uns, so whatever.

- Amidst being the theme song of a hit drama and the middle of a very public divorce, Utada Hikaru’s latest (and worst in a while, in my humble opinion) single Flavor of Life hit the number 1 spot with 270,605 copies sold, which is the best-selling Utada Hikaru single since, and this is sad to say, Be My Last (its first week sales already exceeded the latter’s total). It should top the charts again for this week, as it’s been leading on the daily Oricon rankings.

On the album side, Ayumi Hamasaki’s best-of albums - A Best 2 Black and A Best 2 White - or known as “best way to continuously rip off my fans,” scored the number 1 and 2 spot on the album chart, with roughly 470,000 copies sold for each album. Shiina Ringo’s “Heisei Fuuzoku” (which I will be reviewing for Yesasia whenever it arrives) is down to third with 33,000 copies sold (that makes total sales about 120,000 now). Next week should be interesting, as 7 of the albums that were released on March 7th has been making the daily top 10, so look for a huge shift on the album chart next week.

- I don’t want to sound shallow, but I’m not a fan of Tsai Ming Liang - I rented Viva L’amour, and couldn’t sit through it, and I haven’t had a chance to watch his more provocative work. His latest work, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, has been getting positive reviews, and may even get a release in his homeland Malaysia. But the Malaysian censors pulled a China and decided to ban the film because of “negative portrayal” of Kuala Lampur, and they don’t want it messing up their tourist campaign. But after an appeal, it has now been unbanned, but the censors still want those naked buttocks and stories about open burning gone.

Well, that’s one less country to make movies in for me.

- Home Theater Forum has a review of the brand-new Fire on the Plains DVD by Criterion. I saw the film and read the novel for a Japanese film class and enjoyed it immensely (Despite its graphic nature). I recommend anyone who thinks that Japan only makes nationalist war films to check this one out and look at better times before the ultra right-wing took over the Japanese war film genre

- On the other hand, DVD Talk has a review of Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower, due on region 1 DVD on March 27th. I thought this one was OK, but I wish Zhang Yimou would get back to making small human dramas rather than sometimes gratuitous martial arts films for Westerners.

- Webs of Significance has a report on Alan Mak (whom I see as the brains behind the Infernal Affairs trilogy, not Andrew Lau) and his reaction to The Departed. One can see his great promise with the overlooked actioner A War Named Desire, before he became the poor beta member of the Andrew Lau team.

- Oricon talks about this season’s Japanese dramas, and The Flower Boys’ popularity seem to reach almost every age group surveyed (except people in their 40s, who rate it second). Not so fortunate is Karei Naru Ichizoku, who find its biggest fans in those 30 and above (given its grand 70s rich family epic background, that’s not a surprise), and of course, the most consistent performer of the bunch is Haken no Hinkaku, who find itself in the high 70s among all age groups. With all these dramas ending this upcoming week, it should be interesting to see just how top will they go. Haken No Hinkaku will see itself at 3rd for sure, but will the flower boys beat out the steel-producing/bank-swallowing family?

Don’t worry about that yet, drama ratings for these 2nd-to-last episodes will be out tomorrow.

Also tomorrow will be Hong Kong numbers, and after this entry is best of the week.

Trying to catch up with news that I missed, this entry will probably be pretty long, with the related links added in later.

- Hong Kong Thursday numbers are out, and Ghost Rider leads on its opening day with HK$560,000 on 34 screens. The Queen takes second place with just $140,000 on 14 screens (it should still have a fairly strong weekend, though definitely a drop from last weekend), the second highest opener is the “comedy” The Lady Iron Chef (which doesn’t even have a website) with a pathetic HK$70,000 on 26 screens. With the same gross on only 9 screens is the Japanese film “Nada Sou Sou” (or Tears For You, based on the hit Japanese pop song), and Ann Hui’s The Postmodern Life of My Aunt, co-starring Chow Yun Fat, takes in a sadder HK$40,000 on 5 screens. The weekend looks to be fairly weak, as none of those failing opening films have enough screens or attraction to really get ahead of those top films. Next week, Dororo and 300 will be released.

- I was happy when MTV started the MTV Chi network, although I had no idea how they were going to pull it off (I would’ve done a MTV East Asia to combine Korean, Japanese, and Chinese pop together, but that’s just me). And I never found out how they made it work because they never managed to put it on cable in San Francisco, and now it’s shutting down for good. Like the AZN TV network, MTV has announced that it will shut down operations of the MTV World Division (this does not include its subsidiaries in other parts of the world) at an yet-to-be-determined time.

I say their biggest mistake was that they couldn’t roll it out to large Asian-American communities and college campuses, so people who actually wanted to watch it couldn’t. Of course, I don’t work in cable, but even if they couldn’t get that type of plan ready before they started, then they failed before they even started operations.

- Here’s a smart move: Instead of just censoring or simply outright banning a movie in China, why not use a ratings system? The idea has been out for years, but apparently it’s again on the agenda at the National People’s Congress.

- Johnnie To’s new film, previously named The Flying Butterfly and now named Linger, has finished shooting. The romantic drama, starring Li Bingbing and Vic Zhao (of the Taiwanese version of the flower boys) may debut in Cannes too.

- If anyone can read Chinese, Zha Jiangke, off the success of his latest Still Life, has asked Maggie Cheung to play a flight attendant in his new film, about 1949 Hong Kong.

- Official details are finally out for the next crappy Chinese Japanese comic adaptation (the last one being Initial D), and it also stars Jay Chou! This time it’s the Taiwanese film Slam Dunk, based on the basketball comic of the same name and was once an Ekin Cheng vehicle in the 1990s. It’ll be directed by Kevin Ping and set for release for Chinese new year 2008. It will also star Charlene Choi (half of the Twins, but just as annoying) with Ching Siu Tung on action choreography (Last i checked, this was a basketball movie, right?).

- Earlier reports have said that Andrew Lau (who CO-directed Infernal Affairs) was removed from directing duties on his Hollywood debut The Flock. He has come out and cleared up the rumor, but only in Chinese, I’m afraid. Anyway, he said he was only given the right to do two different cuts, and if the producers weren’t satisfactory, they can recut it again, and that’s what happening to The Flock. Lau emphasized that there’s no reshooting happening and now it’s simply another recutting of the film because the producers wanted more sex and violence in the film. He still has the final right to approve the film. He also complained about having to deal with producers in Hollywood (who’s probably telling him to stop using those stupid flash pans), and said he’s now good friends with Richard Gere. Maybe Richard can get Lau one of those apartments he sells in Japan.

- I haven’t seen much Japanese Pink films (If I’m not mistaken, it’s basically quality softcore porn that’s actually like a real movie), but the States will be getting one. It features George Bush, a girl getting shot then turning into a genius, and something about North Korea. Wow.

That movie is The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai, and it sounds like a blast.

That’s it for today, more tomorrow.

But I don’t have much time nor energy to post them all. So I have to be picky and post the ones that are really worth posting.

-In the usual stuff I report, Japanese box office numbers are out, and because they’re now using the exchange rate of $1=116 yen, films are actually making more money in terms of dollars than last week. So talking about percentage changes seem to be useless, except that Sakuran’s expansion isn’t quite impressive, but not bad nevertheless.

- Daily Dumpling reports that Wong Kar Wai and Stanley Kwan (one of the very few openly gay Hong Kong filmmaker) are teaming together to produce a lesbian film. Looks like Brokeback Mountain really did break a barrier that no one in America saw - that Asian filmmakers can make gay-themed films too.

In source-less news (From Oriental Daily), in accepting his award for best screenplay at the Hong Kong Critics Association Awards, Wong Jing said that he’s working on a follow-up to Wo Hu about the drug trade. How convenient for him to come up with it after the success of Protege……Can anyone in Hong Kong confirm this news for me?

- The hearing-impaired community in Japan is protesting a move by Babel’s Japan distributor to not include Japanese subtitles for the Japan section of the film. A film with a hearing-impaired protagonist, and there are no subtitles for it? That’s brilliant.

- Tony Leung has decided to drop out of John Woo’s super-duper epic “Battle of Red Cliffs” because of the exhaustive 6-month shoot schedule (hey, if John Woo can do it, you can too!) and Takeshi Kaneshiro will take his place.

- JASRAC shows that they’re the dicks they are again by getting involved in the personal feud between famous singer Shinichi Mori and songwriter Kouhan Kawauchi, who wrote his hit “O-Fukurosan.” Basically, the story is that Mori has been singing a slightly modified version of it since 1978 (the song came out in 1971) without Kawauchi’s permission. When Mori sang it again at the big yearend Kohaku singing contest last new year’s eve, Kawauchi requested a meeting, which Mori abruptly canceled. So Kawauchi throws a tantrum and refuses to allow Mori sing any of the songs he wrote for him, even threatening a lawsuit if he ever does so.

And now, the JASRAC has apparently posted a message on its site warning people to not sing this song in public, or to face legal action. It’s obvious Kawauchi showing Mori how big his….ego is and him swinging his…power around.

- It’s about bloody time - several broadcasting firms in Japan has set up an ethics code to prevent anymore producers faking data on their health shows.

- Dave’s Trailer Page has a nice 7-minute clip of Spiderman 3. It looks interesting, despite it being more of the same stuff.

I’m far too sleepy to keep typing on this computer, so I shall leave the rest for tomorrow, including new Japan Times reviews and Hong Kong opening day box office numbers.

More of a news day today, but some additions to yesterday’s news:

- Hoga News found the final result for the opening weekend of that Genghis Khan movie, and it’s actually a flop! It may’ve opened at number 1, but it only brought in 197 million yen (and at some 480 screens, that’s only a 410,000 yen per-screen, which rounds down to about $3500). That can’t be good for everything else under it.

- Remember I reported that My Sassy Girl director Kwak Jae Yong is making a Japanese movie named “My Girlfriend is a Cyborg?” Apparently before that, Variety Asia reports that he did end up making a Korean movie starring Shin Mina and On Ju Wan named “My Might Princess” (How many of those “My _______” movies are we gonna get from Korea?) and it’s coming out in the summer. Who knew when those parodies of movies showed up in My Sassy Girl, the director was actually really pitching movie ideas?

- Hong Kong music review blog 3C Music has a damning report on the possibility that a new song on new Gold Label princess Stephy Tang’s album may be copied from famed composer Joe Hisashi. The site has quite a few posts mentioning these possible frauds in Hong Kong music, and as many many people know, hit producer Mark Lui is the biggest perpetrator. Examples include (just play the little play button under the main entry in Chinese to listen to a comparison)

Jill’s “Funny Jealousy” vs. Vitamin C’s “Graduation”

Jill’s sister Janice’s “I Love when I Want To” vs. The Coors’ Breathless

Alex Fong Lik-Sun’s “Large Small Heart” (Obviously an over-literal translation and by no means reflect the actual meaning of the name) vs. Ekin Cheng’s “The Era of Love”

Of course, Mark Lui is not the only one - Mark Lui’s protege Justin Lo’s “Headline News” (sang by a less talented guy in the crapfest Love@First Note) has been known to combine TWO sources (only one is in this post though): The Stylistics’ “You Make me Feel Brand New” and Bondy Chiu’s “Joy-seeking” (I knew that chorus sounds familar!), and Even Eason Chan’s “Bad Habits” seem to resemble Rufus Wainwright’s “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk.”

It even happened to Joey Yung, and according to this report, this is the response by manager Mani Fok:

“《奇》所屬版權的這間公司已關閉多年，根本不存在問題。”

“Regarding the issue of copyright, the copyright holder of the song has already been defunct for years, so there’s no problem.”

Someone on a forum that broke the news said there’s no music in Hong Kong, just an entertainment industry, I’m inclined to agree.

Then again, it’s not like America’s music industry isn’t similarly derivative:

Usher’s Yeah vs. Chris Brown’s Run It.

The Frays’ Over My Head vs. How to Save a Life (holy shit, it’s the same chorus!)

I do have an example for Japan, but I can’t find the necessary clips on Youtube, so let’s just say that they do it too.

- Another Hong Kong, littleoslo, has a line-up of bad album covers from Mainland Chinese CDs. Don’t worry about the captions, some of them are funny anyway.

- Twitch has a long interview with Bong Joon Ho, one of my favorite Korean filmmakers working today in light of the upcoming release of The Host. Again, be sure to go watch The Host, it’s great monster fun.

- Daily Dumpling has a small round-up of some of the celebrity blogs out there. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s a good start.

- Twitch also provides a trailer for the Singaporean film “One Last Dance” starring Francis Ng and Harvey Keitel (who thought of that combination?).

- A very new blog called Hong Kong and Kung Fu DVD News and Review has popped up, and it offers a look at the availability of Hong Kong Kung Fu films’ bootleg being sold in large chain stores around the states.

Lastly, I’m sure everyone that cares have heard by now that Utada Hikaru is getting divorced, but I don’t do celebrity gossips here, so you can look it up yourself.

Updates might not come the next two days because I’ll be at my alma mater again for two days for a mix of personal and professional reasons. So make this one last, ok?

A late update today for personal reasons, but I’m here anyway. But given that it takes me around an hour or two to write a complete entry, I’m just gonna spread them out on this and the next entry. Let’s start with a bunch of numbers and rankings:

- Hong Kong Sunday numbers were, as predicted, fairly weak on the wide release side. The stronger numbers are all in the new limited release, with The Queen leading the way, earning a phenomenal HK$500,000 on 14 screens on Sunday (that’s an HK$35700 per-screen average, or roughly $4600, which is pretty good, considering the average ticket price in HK is give or take HK$55 and The Queen is playing in most, if not all, multiplexes). It’s already made HK$1.63 million, but given its talky nature, it’s hard to tell how far it’ll go with the average HK moviegoer, who was probably attracted by both the subject matter (being a former British colony) and the Oscar win by Helen Mirren. It ties with Protege, which took the same number, but on 33 screens. It’s already gone past that HK$25 million mark, and it’s even about to double Dragon Tiger Gate’s take at the box office, which signals some kind of hope in the HK film industry.

Next in line is Dreamgirls, which made HK$210,000 on 10 screens (total so far: HK$700,000 after 4 days), and then Letters From Iwo Jima with HK$150,000 on 5 screens (total so far: HK$480,000 after 4 days), which means it has a better per-screen average, which would make sense considering the inflated ticket price due to a longer running time. Anyway, I would expect Letters From Iwo Jima to have better word-of mouth and hang around the theatres longer than Dreamgirls anyway.

As expected, the Pang Bros.’ The Messengers did manage to take the 2nd place spot with HK$590,000 on 29 screens for a HK$1.89 million total so far, but with the fickle horror audience, it’ll probably fizzle out around the HK$5 million mark. Meanwhile, Night at the Museum remain unbeatable with HK$870,000 on 37 screens for a HK$35.64 million total so far. Looks like the HK$40 million mark won’t be very hard to reach.

- According to Korea Pop Wars, the South Korean box office seemed to have a much more interesting weekend, as three films are claiming the top spot.

- Japanese box office rankings for total attendance is out, and as expected, the over-titled Genghis Kahn movie takes the top spot. The One Piece movie takes second, Ghost Rider takes 4th, and Tom Tykwer’s Perfume takes 5th (Eiga Consultant analyzes its opening day and predicts that it will do way worse than Phantom of the Opera, which was a huge success in Japan, and do considerably better than A Very Long Engagement. The best news is that it will do better than it did in America. Of course, a 2 million-dollar gross isn’t hard to beat at all.). Sakuran went into wide release and stays at 7th place. It probably had a considerable increase in box office for it to stay at the same spot among the new releases. Takeshi Miike’s “Ryu Ga Gotoku” (based on the game Yakuza) also opened in a limited amount of screens and got the 10th spot (more on the premiere by Hoga News here). Hopefully, numbers will come out tomorrow for a more solid analysis (despite the change in the exchange rate in the last week).

- Japanese drama ratings are also out, and the Flower boys (don’t worry, it’s just my nickname for a show about a group of protagonists that actually have the galls to call themselves “Flower 4″) beat out Karei Naru Ichizoku again for the second week in a row, scoring 22.3 rating on its 9th episode (it’s also its third-to-last episode) while Karei Naru Ichizoku gains slightly with a 21.6 rating, but not enough to win the week. Yukie Nakama’s drama continue to find new lows with a 10.3 rating this week, and Haken No Hinkaku continues its higher-than-average rating run with a 19.9 rating this week. As these dramas begin to wrap up in the next few weeks, ratings should be slightly higher on the whole.

- David Fincher’s Zodiac also opened this weekend waaaaay behind John Travolta’s lowbrow road comedy Wild Hogs at second place with just $13.4 million. Then again, considering that David Fincher may be the film’s biggest attraction, it’s an OK number, but it won’t make back its reported $65 million budget in domestic box office.

- Lastly, it does count as numbers, but not really. Despite the recent health show scandals in Japan, 47% of Japanese people still believe in expert testimony on health shows, according to a survey on the Daily Mainichi news. In fact, only 67% of those people who believed the “natto=diet” correlation (which sparked the scandal) found out that it was false. Which means 1/3 of those people who watched that show is experiencing some heavy cognitive dissonance right about now.

I’ll fill in some of the links tomorrow, all the important news links are already there. And of course, more news will come too.

- Forgot to mention a news item I picked up from reading Oriental Daily (I really should look for a new Chinese news source). At 17 is going to break up and go solo after their show at Baptist University next weekend. I’m not sure when that was decided, the two have been hosting the TVB music show “Jade Solid Gold” for the past year (although I seem to keep missing it on TVB here). Anyway, I’ve been a fan of theirs since they debuted, and I’m sad to see them go. But it should be interesting to see what they’ll be doing as solo artists.

- I mentioned that this blog was named after my pseudo-production company (pseudo because I haven’t made anything since April 2006). So here’s the only one of two films I can claim to be my own. That’s right, it’s the infamous (at least to those that know me) Vergangenheit. Consider it my gift for the week.

Seeing that it’s Sunday, and I don’t have that much time today, thought I’d just update a little earlier today:

- New reviews, one for Kiyoshi Kuorsawa’s Sakebi from the Daily Yomiuri, one for Strawberry Shortcakes (Which Jason Gray wrote about subtitling it for) from Variety Asia, and one for the very very little-known (honestly, even this one slipped out of my hands)Wife From Hell from lovehkfilm.

- In case guys haven’t found out yet, the second and last installment of the Death Note films, The Last Note, is coming out on the cheaper HK DVD alternative on March 13th, except it’s not that much cheaper. I might just wait for the eventual box set or something.

- Hoga Central has the preliminary first-day box office result for the Genghis Khan movie, and it’s 25% ahead of Yamato, so it’s almost officially a hit.

- Lastly, it’s not much to get extremely excited about, but the first image (yes, just image) for the Johnnie To-Tsui Hark-Ringo Lam film Iron Triangle is out thanks to Twitch. You don’t even get to know whose section the image is from, but it looks pretty cool (I’m guessing Tsui Hark’s though).

That’s it for today, but tomorrow I’ll have box office and drama ratings. In other words, something for me to get excited about, but not necessarily for you guys.

Mostly news from Japan today, some outdated, some new.

- First, on the heels of Paris Je T’aime, another French producer is now putting together an omnibus film about another international city, this time being Tokyo (one of my few favorite cities in the world). “Tokyo Tales” will feature short films by Michel Gondry, Bong Joon Ho, and French director/actor Leo Carax, whose films I have never seen. Twitch has a link to a Hollywood Reporter….report here (now you see why I never use Hollywood reporter? The links will just be plain awkward). I can understand why there is no Japanese director involved, seeing so many Japanese mainstream films take place in Tokyo and its suburbs, a Japanese director’s take on Tokyo won’t really bring anything new to the table.

I did read an anthology named Tokyo Fragments, and I didn’t enjoy it that much. I hope this will be better.

I actually watched Gondry’s latest, The Science of Sleep, last night. It’s a great study into the reality of dreams, but it also feels anti-climatic. I liked its visuals and general inventiveness (plus an admirably downbeat, kind of abstract ending), but I’m not going crazy over it.

- Speaking of omnibus films, Ryuganji is reporting that Altamira Pictures is putting together an anthology of twelve films. The special part is that each film will be inspired by a pop song from the Showa era (which I’m sure my mother will love). At the bottom of the same report is a link to the sequel to “Pacchigi!”

- In Ryuganji’s latest entry, he also reports that the world’s most popular xenophobic politician, Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, is criticizing Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima to step up the praise for his own film, “Ore Wa Kimi No Tame Ni Koso Shi Ni Iku,” which he wrote and executive produced. At a party celebrating the completion of the film, Governor Ishihara says that Eastwood’s film did not “have a sense of the American soldier’s frustration,” and that his film is “much better.”

Obviously, Ishihara, who actually granted Eastwood special permission to film on the island of Iwo Jima, did not see Flags of Our Fathers, because I thought seeing an American soldier’s intestines on the ground after getting shot is a pretty good showing of their frustration. Plus, never trust a producer that praises his own film, look at what happened to the Matrix sequels.

As for what Kamikaze pilots are, see here.

- Yay, Twitch has the full trailer for the Thai film The Sperm, and it looks like some crazy fun.

- Variety has a prediction of this summer’s film market. It’s another summer of the sequels (Spiderman, Die Hard, Harry Potter, and Pirates of the Caribbean, to name a few), and sadly, I’ll probably be in theaters for all of them.

- And then David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s blog talks about the possibility that the world may have come to reject Hollywood films (in case you don’t want to read it all, Kristin doesn’t agree). It’s an interesting read, and she gives a good perspective of the world film market right now.

- Sometimes looking on Wikipedia can be quite useful. For instance, I managed to find actor/radio talk host/director Matt Chow’s blog. Personally, I watch some of his stuff (I’ve listened to bits and pieces of his radio show), and despite never getting lots of acclaim for his work, he’s done some good stuff (He was actually brought in to work on the script for Dog Bite Dog, and his script work actually helped got the film going). It’s all in Chinese, though, which means many of you won’t be able to read it. Just look at the pretty pictures then.

Lastly, FG, a blog about all things Japan, has an entry about my favorite ramen joint Ichiran.

A picture I took of the place on my recent trip. Doesn’t that just make your mouth water?