- 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.

A post on Hollywood Elsewhere reported today that Ang Lee’s espionage thriller Lust, Caution has been rated NC-17 in the United States for “explicit sexuality”. That means that no children under 17 may be admitted, period. Apparently, the producer and the studio aren’t even planning to appeal the rating (which is what they usually do, because NC-17 tend to kill all commercial appeal), meaning that they know they’re guilty as charged.

With that rating in America, it’s likely that the film will receive similar ratings around the world, which means I won’t have to watch the film with a bunch of Wang Leehom fan girls. What a ballsy move by Ang Lee.

A post on Hollywood Elsewhere reported today that Ang Lee’s espionage thriller Lust, Caution has been rated NC-17 in the United States for “explicit sexuality”. That means that no children under 17 may be admitted, period. Apparently, the producer and the studio aren’t even planning to appeal the rating (which is what they usually do, because NC-17 tend to kill all commercial appeal), meaning that they know they’re guilty as charged.

With that rating in America, it’s likely that the film will receive similar ratings around the world, which means I won’t have to watch the film with a bunch of Wang Leehom fan girls. What a ballsy move by Ang Lee.

After a slow news day comes a really busy one.

- As usual, let’s look at Japan’s Oricon charts. During a slow week for the singles chart, veteran pop star Kazumasa Oda tops the chart with his latest single, selling just over 48,000 copies. With this, Oda now has the dubious honor of being the oldest artist to have a number 1 single at 59 years and 11 months old. Meanwhile, pop group Tokio follows closely at second place with 45,000 copies of their latest single sold, and the latest million-seller Sen No Kaze Ni Natte is still on the top 10 at 6th place with another 23,000 copies sold. Expect a more active singles chart next week, with Aiko’s latest expected to take the top spot.

On the album chart, Hideaki Tokunaga (whom you might remember for giving a borderline-creepy cover of Mika Nakashima’s Yuki Na Hana) takes the number one spot with his latest cover album, selling 115,000 copies. However, the two Zard compilations (as in a way to cash in on fans’ grief by charging them double for songs they probably already have) sold a combined 175,000 copies for second and third place, respectively. Next week, expect Tokunaga to take the top spot again, but with the usual drop in sales.

- In Chinese box office, Alexi Tan’s Blood Brothers opened quite well, with its opening gross being 104% of Flash Point’s opening 2 weeks ago. Then again, Flash Point’s gross actually went up in its second week, which is not looking like it will happen to Blood Brothers. Oh, if anyone cared, Alfred Cheung Kin-Ting’s Contract Lover starring Richie Ren and Fan Bing Bing opened with one-third of Blood Brothers’ gross, although I have no idea on how many screens it opened.

- Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution continues to prepare for its invasion of arthouses around the world with yet another film festival slot, this time as the opening film at Turkey’s Eurasia Film Festival.

- I was hoping to be the first to break this, but both Kaiju Shakedown and AP News beat me to it. Anyway, according to the not-very-credible Oriental Daily in Hong Kong (still the best-selling newspaper though), Fruit Chan confirmed that he will be making “Kowloon City,” a film produced by Terence “John Woo’s right-hand man” Chang about two young martial arts students that immigrated overseas during the 50s. One of them happens to be Bruce Lee. Chan is considering a wide talent search for his Bruce Lee, and would even abandon the project if he can’t find a suitable actor for the role.

- At this year’s New York Korean Film Festival, a panel of directors and scholars will sit down and once again discuss whether the Korean Wave is dead. I’m almost sure the answer will be “no, but __________”

- Warner Brothers, who dipped into Asian film in Taiwan and Japan, will now attempt to break into the Indian market with the film Made in China. Before you think it’s a satire on Chinese exports, the film will actually take on a crappier storyline about a cook mistaken for a martial arts hero.

- After Paris Je T’aime got me all hot for omnibus films about cities, I’ve been looking very very forward to the Michel Gondry/Leos Corax/ Bong Joon-Ho omnibus “Tokyo!” Now it’s been revealed that Yu Aoi and Teruyuki Kagawa will be starring in Bong’s short, about a shut-in that falls in love with a pizza delivery girl.

- I’ve seen the trailer for Peter Chan Ho-Sun’s The Warlords at almost every movie I’ve been to so far in Hong Kong, but I somehow can’t really get too excited about it. I know, it has Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro, AND Jet Li, plus a whole lot of killin’, but I don’t know how many more big-budget period epics I can take. Looking at how mediocre Curse of the Golden Flower did around the world, I’d say even the rest of the world are kind of tired. That’s not stopping Chan from rushing to finish his film and show it somewhere to get it eligible for a best foreign film Oscar, though.

- The two winners of the Chinese film competition are going to Hollywood to meet studio executives and visit film sets. I can’t wait to buy pirated copies of their movies.

- There isn’t much details, but a live-action version of the Studio Ghibli classic Grave of the Fireflies is in the works. Like all the versions of the story, this will be adapted from the original pseudo-nonfiction novel and be very very depressing.

- I never thought it would happen, but a program by Hong Kong’s TVB actually got nominated for an international emmy award. No, it’s not for a drama, but for a news programming, which is probably what TVB is best at anyway.

- I won’t be translating the whole thing, but there’s a Chinese review of Walt Disney China’s The Magic Gourd on the Chinese movie blog (what the shit is a gourd anyway?). Essentially, the review compares the film with an educational fantasy fairy tale for children, and that it does what it intends to do effectively. Basically, it’s not all bad, it’s just….you know, for the kids.

After a slow news day comes a really busy one.

- As usual, let’s look at Japan’s Oricon charts. During a slow week for the singles chart, veteran pop star Kazumasa Oda tops the chart with his latest single, selling just over 48,000 copies. With this, Oda now has the dubious honor of being the oldest artist to have a number 1 single at 59 years and 11 months old. Meanwhile, pop group Tokio follows closely at second place with 45,000 copies of their latest single sold, and the latest million-seller Sen No Kaze Ni Natte is still on the top 10 at 6th place with another 23,000 copies sold. Expect a more active singles chart next week, with Aiko’s latest expected to take the top spot.

On the album chart, Hideaki Tokunaga (whom you might remember for giving a borderline-creepy cover of Mika Nakashima’s Yuki Na Hana) takes the number one spot with his latest cover album, selling 115,000 copies. However, the two Zard compilations (as in a way to cash in on fans’ grief by charging them double for songs they probably already have) sold a combined 175,000 copies for second and third place, respectively. Next week, expect Tokunaga to take the top spot again, but with the usual drop in sales.

- In Chinese box office, Alexi Tan’s Blood Brothers opened quite well, with its opening gross being 104% of Flash Point’s opening 2 weeks ago. Then again, Flash Point’s gross actually went up in its second week, which is not looking like it will happen to Blood Brothers. Oh, if anyone cared, Alfred Cheung Kin-Ting’s Contract Lover starring Richie Ren and Fan Bing Bing opened with one-third of Blood Brothers’ gross, although I have no idea on how many screens it opened.

- Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution continues to prepare for its invasion of arthouses around the world with yet another film festival slot, this time as the opening film at Turkey’s Eurasia Film Festival.

- I was hoping to be the first to break this, but both Kaiju Shakedown and AP News beat me to it. Anyway, according to the not-very-credible Oriental Daily in Hong Kong (still the best-selling newspaper though), Fruit Chan confirmed that he will be making “Kowloon City,” a film produced by Terence “John Woo’s right-hand man” Chang about two young martial arts students that immigrated overseas during the 50s. One of them happens to be Bruce Lee. Chan is considering a wide talent search for his Bruce Lee, and would even abandon the project if he can’t find a suitable actor for the role.

- At this year’s New York Korean Film Festival, a panel of directors and scholars will sit down and once again discuss whether the Korean Wave is dead. I’m almost sure the answer will be “no, but __________”

- Warner Brothers, who dipped into Asian film in Taiwan and Japan, will now attempt to break into the Indian market with the film Made in China. Before you think it’s a satire on Chinese exports, the film will actually take on a crappier storyline about a cook mistaken for a martial arts hero.

- After Paris Je T’aime got me all hot for omnibus films about cities, I’ve been looking very very forward to the Michel Gondry/Leos Corax/ Bong Joon-Ho omnibus “Tokyo!” Now it’s been revealed that Yu Aoi and Teruyuki Kagawa will be starring in Bong’s short, about a shut-in that falls in love with a pizza delivery girl.

- I’ve seen the trailer for Peter Chan Ho-Sun’s The Warlords at almost every movie I’ve been to so far in Hong Kong, but I somehow can’t really get too excited about it. I know, it has Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro, AND Jet Li, plus a whole lot of killin’, but I don’t know how many more big-budget period epics I can take. Looking at how mediocre Curse of the Golden Flower did around the world, I’d say even the rest of the world are kind of tired. That’s not stopping Chan from rushing to finish his film and show it somewhere to get it eligible for a best foreign film Oscar, though.

- The two winners of the Chinese film competition are going to Hollywood to meet studio executives and visit film sets. I can’t wait to buy pirated copies of their movies.

- There isn’t much details, but a live-action version of the Studio Ghibli classic Grave of the Fireflies is in the works. Like all the versions of the story, this will be adapted from the original pseudo-nonfiction novel and be very very depressing.

- I never thought it would happen, but a program by Hong Kong’s TVB actually got nominated for an international emmy award. No, it’s not for a drama, but for a news programming, which is probably what TVB is best at anyway.

- I won’t be translating the whole thing, but there’s a Chinese review of Walt Disney China’s The Magic Gourd on the Chinese movie blog (what the shit is a gourd anyway?). Essentially, the review compares the film with an educational fantasy fairy tale for children, and that it does what it intends to do effectively. Basically, it’s not all bad, it’s just….you know, for the kids.

- The Japanese box office numbers are out, showing that Ocean’s Thirteen opened fairly well with 496 million yen, and Transformers dropping 36.5% in its second week, which again is somewhat surprising considering how well it has done with word-of-mouth elsewhere. Of course, its drop to third place is also because Harry Potter dropped only by 7% to keep its second-place spot.

However, the biggest drop in the top 10 goes to the latest Naruto movie, which lost 47% of its audience, while the smallest drop belongs to - and I’m almost kind of sad to say this - Monkey Magic, which lost only 3% of its audience to make 2.98 billion yen total, inching ever closer for Fuji TV to break even.

- According to Mark Russell’s Korea Pop Wars, turns out D-War is actually close to getting 5.71 million admissions and has already passed the break-even point at the standards of the reported budget.

- My new favorite weekly feature these days is the Teleview column on the Daily Yomiuri website. This week, writer Wm. Penn writes about what’s on Japanese TV this week and a possible ratings crisis on stations’ hands.

- And yet, Japan are still rolling out one drama adaptation film after another. The latest is the hit Kimura Takuya drama Hero, and a trailer is floating around online. Honestly, it’s not doing much for me, but that’s because I’ve never seen Hero…..Oriental 188 Mall, here I come.

- My bad. I totally forgot to acknowledge that Grady Hendrix’s informative Asian cinema blog Kaiju Shakedown is back, and in a much more complicated link. The link section shall be updated. Anyway, Grady reports today that Hong Kong video distributor Mei Ah’s remastered version of Patrick Tam Ka-Ming’s Nomad is actually not the director’s cut, and that the “corrected” version will be out in 2008.

- After a Tokyo multiplex found success with weekly showing of Korean star Bae Yong-Joon’s dramas, a smaller independent theater is doing the same with Korean star So Ji Sub’s Choa Choa (is that the real name? Or just the Japanese name?). If this is a success as well, then looks like the Korean wave isn’t so dead after all in Japan.

- The Japanese song “Sen No Kaze Ni Natte,” based on an English poem found at the World Trade Center in New York, has finally sold one million copies after becoming a huge hit the first half of the year.

- I don’t know if this can be considered a compliment to someone that’s already been in the business for 20 years - Director Peter Chan Ho-Sun said his biggest surprise from making the period action film The Warlords is Jet Li’s dramatic acting ability. Actually, that moment came for me while watching Fearless.

- I’m going to make a small private confession - I consider my most creative time in terms of scriptwriting to be right after I got dumped by my second girlfriend. During that period, I actually wrote 3 or 4 short film scripts, none of which I ended up making. I mention this because Kazuaki Kiriya, better known perhaps as ex-Mr. Utada Hikaru, seems to be going through a similar thing. Not only is he currently shooting a Japanese film, it’s actually confirmed that he also have his Hollywood debut lined up.

- In casting news today, Koyuki, whose most famous role is in The Last Samurai, has signed up to for Blood: The Last Vampire alongside Jeon Ji-Hyun (to be credited as Gianna Jun). These international Pan-Asian co-production in English just don’t seem to turn out very well (Dragon Squad, anyone?), so I don’t expect much.

Meanwhile, the television remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High And Low has signed up high-profile young actor Satoshi Tsumabuki as the kidnapper.

- The United States government’s bullying continues, as they have asked the World Trade Organization to put together a panel to settle their complaint against China over piracy of their films. Just what exactly are they expecting the Chinese government to do, ask for a couple of bucks from every Chinese citizen to pay off the MPA?

Oh, they want to work bilaterally, so that means they want to actually go into China and take down every single pirate vendors themselves.

- One place America doesn’t need to go to is Shenzhen, where crackdown on pirate vendors have caused the number of vendors to go from 1,000 to 50 in the last few years. Is that enough result for you, America?

- The Japanese box office numbers are out, showing that Ocean’s Thirteen opened fairly well with 496 million yen, and Transformers dropping 36.5% in its second week, which again is somewhat surprising considering how well it has done with word-of-mouth elsewhere. Of course, its drop to third place is also because Harry Potter dropped only by 7% to keep its second-place spot.

However, the biggest drop in the top 10 goes to the latest Naruto movie, which lost 47% of its audience, while the smallest drop belongs to - and I’m almost kind of sad to say this - Monkey Magic, which lost only 3% of its audience to make 2.98 billion yen total, inching ever closer for Fuji TV to break even.

- According to Mark Russell’s Korea Pop Wars, turns out D-War is actually close to getting 5.71 million admissions and has already passed the break-even point at the standards of the reported budget.

- My new favorite weekly feature these days is the Teleview column on the Daily Yomiuri website. This week, writer Wm. Penn writes about what’s on Japanese TV this week and a possible ratings crisis on stations’ hands.

- And yet, Japan are still rolling out one drama adaptation film after another. The latest is the hit Kimura Takuya drama Hero, and a trailer is floating around online. Honestly, it’s not doing much for me, but that’s because I’ve never seen Hero…..Oriental 188 Mall, here I come.

- My bad. I totally forgot to acknowledge that Grady Hendrix’s informative Asian cinema blog Kaiju Shakedown is back, and in a much more complicated link. The link section shall be updated. Anyway, Grady reports today that Hong Kong video distributor Mei Ah’s remastered version of Patrick Tam Ka-Ming’s Nomad is actually not the director’s cut, and that the “corrected” version will be out in 2008.

- After a Tokyo multiplex found success with weekly showing of Korean star Bae Yong-Joon’s dramas, a smaller independent theater is doing the same with Korean star So Ji Sub’s Choa Choa (is that the real name? Or just the Japanese name?). If this is a success as well, then looks like the Korean wave isn’t so dead after all in Japan.

- The Japanese song “Sen No Kaze Ni Natte,” based on an English poem found at the World Trade Center in New York, has finally sold one million copies after becoming a huge hit the first half of the year.

- I don’t know if this can be considered a compliment to someone that’s already been in the business for 20 years - Director Peter Chan Ho-Sun said his biggest surprise from making the period action film The Warlords is Jet Li’s dramatic acting ability. Actually, that moment came for me while watching Fearless.

- I’m going to make a small private confession - I consider my most creative time in terms of scriptwriting to be right after I got dumped by my second girlfriend. During that period, I actually wrote 3 or 4 short film scripts, none of which I ended up making. I mention this because Kazuaki Kiriya, better known perhaps as ex-Mr. Utada Hikaru, seems to be going through a similar thing. Not only is he currently shooting a Japanese film, it’s actually confirmed that he also have his Hollywood debut lined up.

- In casting news today, Koyuki, whose most famous role is in The Last Samurai, has signed up to for Blood: The Last Vampire alongside Jeon Ji-Hyun (to be credited as Gianna Jun). These international Pan-Asian co-production in English just don’t seem to turn out very well (Dragon Squad, anyone?), so I don’t expect much.

Meanwhile, the television remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High And Low has signed up high-profile young actor Satoshi Tsumabuki as the kidnapper.

- The United States government’s bullying continues, as they have asked the World Trade Organization to put together a panel to settle their complaint against China over piracy of their films. Just what exactly are they expecting the Chinese government to do, ask for a couple of bucks from every Chinese citizen to pay off the MPA?

Oh, they want to work bilaterally, so that means they want to actually go into China and take down every single pirate vendors themselves.

- One place America doesn’t need to go to is Shenzhen, where crackdown on pirate vendors have caused the number of vendors to go from 1,000 to 50 in the last few years. Is that enough result for you, America?

- Looks like another case of misreporting box office figures in Japan. The latest Pixar film Ratatouille supposedly earned about 489 million over two days this past weekend. However, what Disney didn’t report is that the actual earning is actually 360 million yen, and the rest were made during the special sneak previews last weekend. That would make the opening a bit of a disappointment, as it’s only 95% of the opening for the last Pixar film Cars. However, the word-of-mouth for the film is actually batter than Cars (at least in the States), so it might come out earning more in the long run.

- It’s official, China has decided to not let the latest Jackie Chan Hollywood star vehicle Rush Hour 3 on Chinese movies screens. There are a couple of possible reasons for this - 1) China doesn’t like the content, especially the presence of the triads. However, how can that be true when the first two films featured triad villains? 2) China simply can’t stand all these Hollywood films dominating the box office and has implemented the usual summer policy of getting rid of Hollywood films to let Chinese films have their day. 3) It just got unlucky and couldn’t be secured as one of the 20 American films allowed to be shown in Chinese theatres each year. 4) The movie sucks, and the Chinese people shouldn’t be exposed to that type of crap. I got five bucks on numbers 2 and 3.

- Meanwhile, the trade reviews are out. Hollywood Reporter’s Michael Rechtshaffen says the routine goes awfully stale, while Variety’s Robert Koehler says that the adrenaline rush just isn’t there anymore.

- Variety has a few more Asian film reviews, one for the 2007 Korean hit Voice of a Murderer, Fumihiko Sori’s Vexville, and the Thai horror film Alone, which is currently a hit at the Korean box office.

- Kabuki’s bad boy Shido Nakamura has followed the steps of Last Samurai actress Koyuki and signed with Avex. With that, he has also officially joined the cast of John Woo’s The Battle of Red Cliff, which would make this his second Chinese blockbuster after Jet Li’s Fearless.

- If you’ll indulge me another game of multiple degrees of separation, Tony Leung Chiu-wai also stars in the Battle of Red Cliff, but he originally withdrew from the film because of the fatigue he suffered after making Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution. The film, almost or already completed, will compete in the upcoming Venice Film Festival. Though the film was originally submitted as a USA-China entry because there’s where the money came from. However, it almost brewed a small controversy when the nationality was changed to Taiwan due to director Ang Lee’s nationality.

- A nation at war turns to TV soap operas, culinary shows, and idol competitions. Surprisingly, it’s not the United States.

- Japan will be the first to see a MTV-created mobile social network, which will also feature pages created by Japanese pop stars. Do we really need to be THAT connected?

- Speaking of embracing the new media, another Japanese media producer has signed a deal with Youtube to upload promo clips and various content on the video site.

- Avril Lavinge’s album has sold a million copies in Japan, making her the first foreign artist to sell more than one million copies of each of her three albums. They’ll find a record for anything in Japan, especially when it comes to music.

- Twitch has an interview with director Steven Okazaki, whose latest film is the documentary White Light/Black Rain, about the fallout of nuclear warfare including the bombings of Hiroshim and Nagasaki.

- Japanese R&B/A Capella group Gospellers is teaming up with forgotten Backstreet Boys member Howie D for their latest single. Not to be a party pooper, but I think Howie needs the Gospellers more than they need Howie.

- With the 2008 Olympics approaching in a year, China has still yet to deliver the full media freedom they promised foreign journalists there. 95% of those who responded to the survey by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China says China’s reporting conditions are not up to what they call an “international standard.”

By the way, remember to vote for our poll. The future of The Song of the Day depends on all of you.

- Looks like another case of misreporting box office figures in Japan. The latest Pixar film Ratatouille supposedly earned about 489 million over two days this past weekend. However, what Disney didn’t report is that the actual earning is actually 360 million yen, and the rest were made during the special sneak previews last weekend. That would make the opening a bit of a disappointment, as it’s only 95% of the opening for the last Pixar film Cars. However, the word-of-mouth for the film is actually batter than Cars (at least in the States), so it might come out earning more in the long run.

- It’s official, China has decided to not let the latest Jackie Chan Hollywood star vehicle Rush Hour 3 on Chinese movies screens. There are a couple of possible reasons for this - 1) China doesn’t like the content, especially the presence of the triads. However, how can that be true when the first two films featured triad villains? 2) China simply can’t stand all these Hollywood films dominating the box office and has implemented the usual summer policy of getting rid of Hollywood films to let Chinese films have their day. 3) It just got unlucky and couldn’t be secured as one of the 20 American films allowed to be shown in Chinese theatres each year. 4) The movie sucks, and the Chinese people shouldn’t be exposed to that type of crap. I got five bucks on numbers 2 and 3.

- Meanwhile, the trade reviews are out. Hollywood Reporter’s Michael Rechtshaffen says the routine goes awfully stale, while Variety’s Robert Koehler says that the adrenaline rush just isn’t there anymore.

- Variety has a few more Asian film reviews, one for the 2007 Korean hit Voice of a Murderer, Fumihiko Sori’s Vexville, and the Thai horror film Alone, which is currently a hit at the Korean box office.

- Kabuki’s bad boy Shido Nakamura has followed the steps of Last Samurai actress Koyuki and signed with Avex. With that, he has also officially joined the cast of John Woo’s The Battle of Red Cliff, which would make this his second Chinese blockbuster after Jet Li’s Fearless.

- If you’ll indulge me another game of multiple degrees of separation, Tony Leung Chiu-wai also stars in the Battle of Red Cliff, but he originally withdrew from the film because of the fatigue he suffered after making Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution. The film, almost or already completed, will compete in the upcoming Venice Film Festival. Though the film was originally submitted as a USA-China entry because there’s where the money came from. However, it almost brewed a small controversy when the nationality was changed to Taiwan due to director Ang Lee’s nationality.

- A nation at war turns to TV soap operas, culinary shows, and idol competitions. Surprisingly, it’s not the United States.

- Japan will be the first to see a MTV-created mobile social network, which will also feature pages created by Japanese pop stars. Do we really need to be THAT connected?

- Speaking of embracing the new media, another Japanese media producer has signed a deal with Youtube to upload promo clips and various content on the video site.

- Avril Lavinge’s album has sold a million copies in Japan, making her the first foreign artist to sell more than one million copies of each of her three albums. They’ll find a record for anything in Japan, especially when it comes to music.

- Twitch has an interview with director Steven Okazaki, whose latest film is the documentary White Light/Black Rain, about the fallout of nuclear warfare including the bombings of Hiroshim and Nagasaki.

- Japanese R&B/A Capella group Gospellers is teaming up with forgotten Backstreet Boys member Howie D for their latest single. Not to be a party pooper, but I think Howie needs the Gospellers more than they need Howie.

- With the 2008 Olympics approaching in a year, China has still yet to deliver the full media freedom they promised foreign journalists there. 95% of those who responded to the survey by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China says China’s reporting conditions are not up to what they call an “international standard.”

By the way, remember to vote for our poll. The future of The Song of the Day depends on all of you.

- That’s more like it - Michael Bay’s Transformers managed a huge surge in box office in Hong Kong on Sunday, making HK$4.3 million from 76 screens for a 4-day total of HK$14.05 million. Harry Potter is still very strong, with HK1.32 million on 53 screens for a 19-day total of HK$44.51 million. This one might overtake Spiderman 3 as the highest grossing of the year so far. Note that both these films had their ticket prices inflated by HK$10 (about 10-20%) due to length, which means their gross doesn’t equate to the usual attendance number.

Thanks to word-of-mouth (and no thanks to multiplexes putting in on small screens), Invisible Target hangs on for its second week, making a moderate HK$690,000 on 33 screens for a 11-day total of HK$9.5 million. Hopefully it’ll stick around for another week so I can watch it next week. Jay Chou’s Secrets had a strong preview weekend, making HK$80,000 on 6 screens with three shows each, and a weekend total of HK$150,000. This signals that Secrets has a pretty strong opening weekend coming up. Secrets also opened in China this weekend, but only scored an 8th place opening on an unknown number of screens and showings. Lastly, the weekend’s only limited release Hula Girl makes a sad HK$20,000 on 3 screens for a HK$60,000 4-day total. This is going to be gone by the weekend.

- In Japanese box office numbers, Harry Potter is reported to have dropped 66%, which is not true since Warner Bros. accounted the early weekend preview numbers into its opening week gross. If you count only the 3-day total from last weekend, the film actually lost only about 43% in business, which is pretty good for a film on 919 screens. Meanwhile, Ratatouille didn’t do too bad either, scoring the highest per-screen average on the top 10, while all the films on the top 10 suffered only moderate drops. Meanwhile, Summer Day With Coo is a victim of the case where it beat Maiko Haaaan in the number of admissions, but lost out to it when it comes to dollars and cents because kids tickets cost less.

- It seems like while the success of Hollywood films continue, other foreign films aren’t doing too well in Japan this year. However, I can think of at least 3 Hong Kong films that opened in Japan, not two - Election, Dragon Tiger Gate, and Confession of Pain. On the other hand, that decline of Korean flicks is definitely pretty painful.

- As reported yesterday, May 18 took the weekend at the box office in Korea, but only at 1.3 million admissions, not the 1.4 figure that was previously reported. The Thai horror film Alone dropped to 8th place already, but not before taking over 450,000 admissions down with it, and it seems like Ratatouille performed a little weaker than I thought it would.

- With news stacking up this year about the lack of originality in Chinese pop music (and MTV as well), an angry blogger in China has decided to devote an entire blog exposing pop songs that allegedly are copying others. The blog is here (just click on the song titles to hear the song samples), but it got the Kelly Chan song “No Reservations” wrong. It didn’t copy Britney Spears’ “Boys”, but rather Destiny Child’s “Lose My Breath”. Hell, maybe it copied both songs. Plus, Britney Spears copied herself with Slave 4 U anyway.

- The top box office winner in Thailand right now, and we only report that kind of thing when it’s a standout, is a little crossdressing comedy named Kung Fu Tootsie. You read right. Twitch has more information here.

- Kenichi Matsuyama, the rising young star of Death Note, has signed on to star in the latest film to be directed by Korean-Japanese director Yoichi Sai (who also made Blood and Bones) and written by Ping Pong and Maiko Haaaan scribe Kankuro Kudo. This could be a good follow-up to the upcoming Death Note spinoff L.

- Be careful - if you are caught pirating films in Japan, be prepared to be treated like a Yakuza member.

- The Hong Kong film blog (in Chinese) has updated its release date sidebar - new release dates include Flashpoint for August 9th, Soi Cheang’s Shamo for September 6th, and Triangle for November 1st.

- Under “that director can do that?!” news today, Taiwanese actress Shu Qi has signed up for her third Hou Hsiao-Hsien film, this time set to be a kung-fu film. How the hell is he going to pull off his legendary 10-minute-plus long takes?

- On that note, under “how the hell are they going to pull that off?!” news today, Universal has acquired the rights to remake the Japanese period actioner Shinobi, except writer/director Max Makowski (who last directed Francis Ng in One Last Dance) is planning to move the story to Hong Kong and turning the two ninja clans into rival “multinational security forces” (whatever the hell that is). Why didn’t Universal just say it’s based on Romeo and Juliet and saved themselves a couple of bucks?

- Japanese musical group Pistol Valve managed to put their U.S. debut album onto the billboard charts. Specifically, it made number 15th on the internet album chart. Good for them.

- Get ready for yet another Panasian co-production. But this is a rare one, because it’s from Singapore. Other than that, even the title suggests that it’ll be the same old stuff.

- Following the steps of Wilson Chen and Choi Ji-Woo, Korean actor/singer Ryu Si-Won will join the cast of the upcoming Japanese drama Joshi Deka alongside Yukie Nakama. Apparently, he’ll even be speaking completely in Japan, which is not a surprise since he sings in Japanese anyway.

- Ken Watanabe’s daughter Anna Watanabe is making her acting debut in the previously-mentioned TV remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low. Are there any pictures of her NOT in excessive makeup?

- The Tokyo International Film Festival has a couple of changes, including the addition of a world cinema section and a section dedicated to the portrayal of Tokyo that shows it as more than just another overcrowded city.