- I know I didn’t really follow the rest of the Summer 2007 drama season, but now that’s it’s one or two finales away from being officially over, let’s look at how they did.

The highest-rated drama of the season is the comic-based Hanazakari No Kimi Tachi He, which ran into a bit of a tough spot in the middle, but came out on top with a 21.0-rated finale and a 17.0 average rating. The biggest disappointment is the Monday 9pm Fuji drama First Kiss, which started strong with a 19.7 rating but fell quickly to a 12.4-rating finale and only a 14.1 average. On the other hand, Fuji continues to find success in their new experimental Saturday nights 11 pm period with second drama Life. It started with just a 11.0 rating, but it kept up over the course of the season. In the end, it scored a 17.0 rating finale (extremely good for that time slot) and a 12.2 average. That’s actually even better than last season’s Liar Game.

With an average of 7.5, I have no idea who’s going to be showing up for the Sushi Ouji movie.

Tokyograph also has a preview of the Fall 2007 dramas already, so start your engines and get to picking which ones to downl…buy in a legitimate fashion when they come out with English subtitles.

- Not that anyone out there needs to be reminded, but the first Japan International Content Festival (CoFestaaaaaa!) started on Wednesday. It had some big opening ceremony (anything even that goes for 40 days and 40 nights ought to), and now the Tokyo Game Show is under way with a record number of exhibitors.

- This is for real - apparently the South Korean government is planning to present North Korea dictator Kim Jong-il, an avid movie buff himself, not only a home theater set, but also a bunch of South Korean movies. One of the possible flicks? D-Wars.

- A personal note of interest: Christopher Nolan’s second Batman film The Dark Knight will be coming to shoot in Hong Kong for 9 days in November, and they’re planning to shoot around Central. Time to mark my Hollywood film production stalking schedule.

- American home video distributor Viz Media has picked up the theatrical and home video distribution rights for the two Death Note movies. This is a surprise to me in that I wonder why Warner Bros., whose Japanese division co-produced the film, didn’t sell the hell out of it for the American release themselves. Then again, Viz Media were great enough to bring Linda Linda Linda and The Taste of Tea to the United States, so maybe they’ll do ok with this one. But no DVD release until Summer 2008? That’s a mighty long wait.

- Lastly, Variety has the reviews for Chinese-American director Wayne Wang’s latest two films, which see the director returning to his indie roots, and both shown at the Toronto Film Festival - The Princess of Nebraska and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.

I was going to do one of these last night, but since it was close to the end of the weekend, might as well just do the weekend box office today.

- Hong Kong box office was pretty quiet on Sunday, with the Hollywood horror flick 1408 leading the pack with HK$590,000 from 27 screens. Considering it’s just John Cusack, and that a Japanese film with a similar name opened last weekend, this is a really impressive gross. After 4 days, the Weinstein company film has made HK$2.18 million. At second place wit ha so-so HK$450,000 from 33 screens is Pang Ho-Cheung’s Exodus. Probably helped by Friday’s headlines about the film’s curse words (category III-worthy Cantonese curse words in a category II-B film?!), the audience-unfriendly black comedy has made HK$1.55 million after 4 days.

With a better per-screen average is the Hollywood comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. It also made HK$450,000, but from 27 screens. Staying pretty close behind is the Jet Li b-grade action flick War/Rouge Assassin, which made HK$430,000 from 29 screens, and a 4-day total of HK$1.46 million. For some reason, the other weekend opener - Tokyo Friends, starring J-pop star Otsuka Ai - did not get into the top 10. Anyone know how it did?

In holdover, Hollywood musical Hairspray is still strong in the per-screen average department, making HK$290,000 from 17 screens for a 11-day total of HK$2.95 million, which is not bad, considering that its daily average has more than HK$10,000 per-screen. Lastly, score another disappointment for Hong Kong films, as Carol Lai’s teen horror film Naraka 19 made only HK$50,000 from 16 screens for a 11-day total of HK$1.85 million. Ouch for Ah Gil and co.

HK$7.8=US$1

- In South Korean box office, The Bourne Ultimatum came out on top with an OK-485,000 admissions. It’s also pretty amazing to see 7 Korean films taking the top 10 slots, with D-War and May 18 still hanging on that top 10. However, apparently two of those Korean films are looking to be flops.

-Speaking of Korean films, Dragon Wars, aka D-War, is now the highest-grossing Korean film in the US after getting a 2000-screen release this past weekend (how an independent company managed to book that many screens is beyond me). It’s in 4th place, but it only managed to make US$5.3 million for a US$2,363 per-screen average, which is not very good. However, it seems like a Korean newspaper has already managed to make it sound like good news (courtesy of Asian Popcorn)

It was a public holiday in Japan today, so expect numbers to not come in until tomorrow or Wednesday.

I was going to do one of these last night, but since it was close to the end of the weekend, might as well just do the weekend box office today.

- Hong Kong box office was pretty quiet on Sunday, with the Hollywood horror flick 1408 leading the pack with HK$590,000 from 27 screens. Considering it’s just John Cusack, and that a Japanese film with a similar name opened last weekend, this is a really impressive gross. After 4 days, the Weinstein company film has made HK$2.18 million. At second place wit ha so-so HK$450,000 from 33 screens is Pang Ho-Cheung’s Exodus. Probably helped by Friday’s headlines about the film’s curse words (category III-worthy Cantonese curse words in a category II-B film?!), the audience-unfriendly black comedy has made HK$1.55 million after 4 days.

With a better per-screen average is the Hollywood comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. It also made HK$450,000, but from 27 screens. Staying pretty close behind is the Jet Li b-grade action flick War/Rouge Assassin, which made HK$430,000 from 29 screens, and a 4-day total of HK$1.46 million. For some reason, the other weekend opener - Tokyo Friends, starring J-pop star Otsuka Ai - did not get into the top 10. Anyone know how it did?

In holdover, Hollywood musical Hairspray is still strong in the per-screen average department, making HK$290,000 from 17 screens for a 11-day total of HK$2.95 million, which is not bad, considering that its daily average has more than HK$10,000 per-screen. Lastly, score another disappointment for Hong Kong films, as Carol Lai’s teen horror film Naraka 19 made only HK$50,000 from 16 screens for a 11-day total of HK$1.85 million. Ouch for Ah Gil and co.

HK$7.8=US$1

- In South Korean box office, The Bourne Ultimatum came out on top with an OK-485,000 admissions. It’s also pretty amazing to see 7 Korean films taking the top 10 slots, with D-War and May 18 still hanging on that top 10. However, apparently two of those Korean films are looking to be flops.

-Speaking of Korean films, Dragon Wars, aka D-War, is now the highest-grossing Korean film in the US after getting a 2000-screen release this past weekend (how an independent company managed to book that many screens is beyond me). It’s in 4th place, but it only managed to make US$5.3 million for a US$2,363 per-screen average, which is not very good. However, it seems like a Korean newspaper has already managed to make it sound like good news (courtesy of Asian Popcorn)

It was a public holiday in Japan today, so expect numbers to not come in until tomorrow or Wednesday.

Just going over what we missed yesterday:

- The China weekend box office came out, and the two recent Chinese releases have fallen prety hard. Not too hard is the stinker comedy Contract Lover, losing almost 37% of its audience. Falling much harder is Alexi Tan’s Blood Brothers, which lost damn near 50% of its audiences, but has made more than double Contract Lover’s gross. However, with a poor performance outside China, Blood Brothers is not likely to get its investments back through box office receipts alone. Then again, how many Chinese blockbusters do make money back on box office receipts?

- In North American box office, the two movies that matter had mixed results - War, starring Jet Li, lost 57.4% of its audience from the previous 3-day weekend period (I’m that specific because it was a holiday weekend in the United States). On the other hand, Johnnie To’s Exiled opened to a pretty-good US$7, 751 per-screen average over a 3-day period. OK, it was on only two screens and opened at 70th place, but still, per-screen average is what matters.

Just going over what we missed yesterday:

- The China weekend box office came out, and the two recent Chinese releases have fallen prety hard. Not too hard is the stinker comedy Contract Lover, losing almost 37% of its audience. Falling much harder is Alexi Tan’s Blood Brothers, which lost damn near 50% of its audiences, but has made more than double Contract Lover’s gross. However, with a poor performance outside China, Blood Brothers is not likely to get its investments back through box office receipts alone. Then again, how many Chinese blockbusters do make money back on box office receipts?

- In North American box office, the two movies that matter had mixed results - War, starring Jet Li, lost 57.4% of its audience from the previous 3-day weekend period (I’m that specific because it was a holiday weekend in the United States). On the other hand, Johnnie To’s Exiled opened to a pretty-good US$7, 751 per-screen average over a 3-day period. OK, it was on only two screens and opened at 70th place, but still, per-screen average is what matters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- The problem with being a director that makes the highest-grossing film that year is that expectations suddenly grows high on everything you do. This is the case with Isao Yukisada. After Crying Out for Love in the Center of the World made a ton of cash in Japan, Yukisada’s work has been hit-and-miss, with studio films Kita No Zeronen and Haru No Yuki. Then he returns to write and direct Into the Faraway Sky, a children’s fantasy film that he started working on from scratch for 7 years. However, his name is the only thing that the film had going for it, and 27.04 million yen on about 120 screens. That opening is only 15% of The Great Yokai War. Would this mean Yukisada is going back to studio-friendly big movies?

- Apparently, there’s a trailer for the sequel to the hit film Always: Sunset on Third Street that I can’t get to work. Anyway, director Takashi Yamazaki returns to the director’s chair (apparently, no one called him to make Returner 2)

- Speaking of Returner, Takeshi Kaneshiro is apparently director Peter Chan Ho-Sun’s Robert De Niro, as Kaneshiro will be starring in his third Chan film in a row. This time, it’s back to the vein of the romance genre about a pair of lovers who wait 18 years for each other. Note: the link in that post to the Mainland Chinese website no longer works, so I have no idea whether this news is true or not.

- Did anyone notice a pretty big absence from Hong Kong’s Golden Bauhinia Awards? It was Derek Yee’s Protege - the film had only one nomination (for music), but it somehow made the award’s 10 Best Chinese Film list. The list is as follows:

Protege, The Postmodern Life of My Aunt, After This Our Exile, Exiled, Crazy Stone, Still Life, Isabella, Election 2, Battle of Wits, and Curse of the Golden Flower. Where’s Exodus, the film that got the most nomiations?

Source: Oriental Daily

- The Japanese action flick Midnight Eagle, co-produced by Universal Pictures, will get its premiere in Los Angeles thanks to its Hollywood connections. This is to build momentum for the upcoming American film market, as well as its screening at the Tokyo International Film Festival. For some reason, the trailers I’ve seen just can’t get me excited about this film at all.

- A modest worldwide action star vs. an arrogant worldwide action star. Who to believe? Jackie Chan (that’s the arrogant one) wrote that his fight with Jet Li on Forbidden Kingdom was fast and natural and will probably be equivalent to Jesus rising up to save the world. However, Jet Li says that don’t get your hopes up and that he and Chan are both getting too old for this shit.

- Stephen Gauger’s The Owl and Sparrow won the narrative award at the Asian Film Festival of Dallas. Here is a list of winner from Twitch.

- Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) is making a follow-up to his film “Tachiguishi Retsudan” with the omnibus film “Shin. Onna Tachiguishi Retsudan.” One of the six films will apparently feature a 17-minute long monologue….with the short film just running 23 minutes long.

- China bans yet another TV show, this time about cosmetic surgery and sex changes. However, the authority does mention that the show contain bloody images, so maybe it was riped for a ban, unlike some stupid talent show.

- The problem with being a director that makes the highest-grossing film that year is that expectations suddenly grows high on everything you do. This is the case with Isao Yukisada. After Crying Out for Love in the Center of the World made a ton of cash in Japan, Yukisada’s work has been hit-and-miss, with studio films Kita No Zeronen and Haru No Yuki. Then he returns to write and direct Into the Faraway Sky, a children’s fantasy film that he started working on from scratch for 7 years. However, his name is the only thing that the film had going for it, and 27.04 million yen on about 120 screens. That opening is only 15% of The Great Yokai War. Would this mean Yukisada is going back to studio-friendly big movies?

- Apparently, there’s a trailer for the sequel to the hit film Always: Sunset on Third Street that I can’t get to work. Anyway, director Takashi Yamazaki returns to the director’s chair (apparently, no one called him to make Returner 2)

- Speaking of Returner, Takeshi Kaneshiro is apparently director Peter Chan Ho-Sun’s Robert De Niro, as Kaneshiro will be starring in his third Chan film in a row. This time, it’s back to the vein of the romance genre about a pair of lovers who wait 18 years for each other. Note: the link in that post to the Mainland Chinese website no longer works, so I have no idea whether this news is true or not.

- Did anyone notice a pretty big absence from Hong Kong’s Golden Bauhinia Awards? It was Derek Yee’s Protege - the film had only one nomination (for music), but it somehow made the award’s 10 Best Chinese Film list. The list is as follows:

Protege, The Postmodern Life of My Aunt, After This Our Exile, Exiled, Crazy Stone, Still Life, Isabella, Election 2, Battle of Wits, and Curse of the Golden Flower. Where’s Exodus, the film that got the most nomiations?

Source: Oriental Daily

- The Japanese action flick Midnight Eagle, co-produced by Universal Pictures, will get its premiere in Los Angeles thanks to its Hollywood connections. This is to build momentum for the upcoming American film market, as well as its screening at the Tokyo International Film Festival. For some reason, the trailers I’ve seen just can’t get me excited about this film at all.

- A modest worldwide action star vs. an arrogant worldwide action star. Who to believe? Jackie Chan (that’s the arrogant one) wrote that his fight with Jet Li on Forbidden Kingdom was fast and natural and will probably be equivalent to Jesus rising up to save the world. However, Jet Li says that don’t get your hopes up and that he and Chan are both getting too old for this shit.

- Stephen Gauger’s The Owl and Sparrow won the narrative award at the Asian Film Festival of Dallas. Here is a list of winner from Twitch.

- Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) is making a follow-up to his film “Tachiguishi Retsudan” with the omnibus film “Shin. Onna Tachiguishi Retsudan.” One of the six films will apparently feature a 17-minute long monologue….with the short film just running 23 minutes long.

- China bans yet another TV show, this time about cosmetic surgery and sex changes. However, the authority does mention that the show contain bloody images, so maybe it was riped for a ban, unlike some stupid talent show.

- The independent 20-something drama Koisuru Madori, starring Yui Aragaki (who also stars in the recently-wrapped Papa To Musume No Nanakakan) and Oscar-nominated actress Rinko Kikuchi, opened on 13 screens last weekend, attracting just 4931 admissions and 7.77 million yen on its opening Saturday and Sunday. However, one theater in Tokyo’s Shibuya district actually accounted for 37% of the admissions with 1806 admissions and 2.85 million yen. That makes attendance at the rest of the 12 screens even worse.

Personally, I like these sunny urban 20-something romance pieces, and these usually attract a good number of audiences, so what’s up?

- With the deadline for submitting films for the best foreign film at the Academy Awards coming up, Asian countries are moving quick to find their best to represent them. While Peter Chan Ho-Sun is trying finish Warlords to get it into the Oscars (where I expect period epic fatigue to stop it from getting anywhere), three films from South Korea has been admitted, and Thailand has decided to submit the second film out of a trilogy about a legendary king.

- Twitch has a review of Asian-American director Justin Lin’s latest film Finishing the Game from the Dallas Asian Film Festival. The “review” is more of a review of the screening than a review of the movie, though.

- Speaking of reviews, Japan Times’ Mark Schilling reviews “J.J.” Sonny Chiba’s directorial debut Oyaji. My favorite part is his continuing description of how much Chiba still kicks ass in this movie, despite being 67 years old.

- A film that didn’t come out with reviews is Jet Li’s latest Hollywood B-movie War (named Rouge Assassin here in Asia). On the day of its opening, the two big trade papers already have reviews of it already. Variety’s Joy Leydon calls it a flabby and formulaic programmer. Meanwhile, Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck calls it a thoroughly forgettable exploitationer that will not enhance its stars’ resumes. The saddest part is that I will probably go see it anyway.

- Two pirate DVD retailers in China have been ordered to over $27,00o to 6 Hollywood studios for selling pirated copies of their movies. Great, now these studios can cover their coffee cost for the month.

- Under “do we really need this?” news today, American pop duo Aly & AJ (umm…they’d actually have to be known to be “pop”) will be singing the theme for for Kenta Fukasaku’s horror flick XX (or X-Cross). Note to producers: Not every Japanese film needs a theme song.