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.
- Five of the six movies that opened this weekend got on the top 10 of the Hong Kong box office chart on Thursday opening day. Opening very strongly on top is the Japanese comedy Detroit Metal City. On just 19 screens (really?!), it made a very impressive HK$467,000. Expect theaters to add more screens over the weekend, and judging from the reaction at the screening I went to, expect this to do better than 20th Century Boys. Landing in second is Saw V, which made HK$315,000 from 25 screens.
More disappointing is the opening for City of Ember, which made HK$126,000 from 22 screens. It might get boost from the weekend family audience. On the other hand, the indie comedy Smart People won’t get that boost, and it only made HK$48,000 from 10 screens. Despite packed screenings and very positive reactions from the HKAFF, The Magic Hour made only HK$15,000 from 2 screens on opening day. The one film that didn’t make it to the top ten is Hur Jin-Ho’s Happiness, which opened on only two screens as well. More when the numbers come in on Monday
- Let’s look at some opening weekend data for a few Japanese films that opened last week:
There was fairly high expectations for the first film version of the hit novel The Homeless Student (Homeless Chugakusei). However, not only did it only open at third place this past weekend , its opening gross (115 million yen from 309 screens) was only 59% of Tokyo Tower’s opening gross (that ended up doing 1.88 billion yen). Since Tokyo Tower’s gross was helped by word-of-mouth, The Homeless Student may even have trouble getting to the 1 billion yen mark.
By the way, The Homeless Student is directed by Tomoyuki Furuyama, who made This Window is Yours, the 1993 PIA Scholarship film I briefly reviewed in the last entry.
The exact opposite thing happened to Journey to the Center of the Earth. Since half of its 104 screens are playing the 3D version, this means a large number of tickets sold were on an inflated price. From 104 screens, the film made a total of 120 million yen, with the 3D version responsible for 76% of that gross. As a result, even though the film only ended up at 7th place of the attendance chart, it ended up being either 3rd of 4th place on the box office gross chart. For some reason, the Box Office Mojo is lower than the number Mr. Texas reported. Either way, the point is that the price of the ticket boosted the film’s place, which shows how inaccurate it is to purely look at a film’s success with gross.
In case you don’t know, there is a type of movie tickets in Japan that are sold in advance for a cheaper price, and some outlets even continue to sell them after the movie has already opened. Each ticket also have the film’s art on it, and they’d be worth collecting if they didn’t cost the price of a movie ticket.
- In related news, the Golden Horse Awards committee had originally nominated actor Taiwan-born/half-Japanese Takeshi Kaneshiro for Outstanding Taiwanese filmmaker of the year for his roles in Red Cliff and The Warlords. However, after learning that Kaneshiro holds only Japanese nationality, he’s now been disqualified. Then again, he would’ve lost against the director of Cape No. 7 anyway.
- Oh, yeah, here are the nominees for this year’s Golden Horse Awards. Congratulations to Pang Ho-Cheung for the four nominations for Trivial Matters and to Peter Chan for the 12 nominations for The Warlords. My sympathies to John Woo and Johnnie To for their lack of nominations in the major awards category.
After 17 days, 16 festival movies, 3 theatrical screenings, and 2 other missed screenings, the 2008 HKAFF has come to an end. Here are the last six movies this blogger watched:
Miao Miao (dir: Cheng Hsiao Tse. Taiwan, 2008)
A pretty-looking youth film from Wong Kar-Wai’s Jet Tone further proves the fact that “gay youths in Taiwan” is practically its own genre. Director Cheng Hsiao Tse’s debut film has a cast of good-looking sets and good-looking people - the girls act cute while the men wander around with the word “angst” branded on their forehead. But what it doesn’t do is add anything to the genre. It’s nice during its brief running time, but if you’ve seen Blue Gate Crossing, Eternal Summer, and Spider Lillies, chances are you’ve seen this movie before.
A review I read of this omnibus film called it the “bad-boy sibling of Paris Je’Taime”, and that label is mostly right. The two films by French directors can be alienating with their weirdness and an obvious Western-centric take on Japan’s capital city. However, what Gondry is able to do with his film that Corax can’t is actually get his audience involved with the story. Of course, the Corax film, about a monster who crawls up from his underground hideout and terrorizes Tokyo with his anti-social behavior, is almost intentionally hard to get involved in, but what’s there really isn’t all that interesting. On the other hand, with its brilliant camerawork and thoroughly involving story, Bong Joon-ho’s segment may have less of an impact than the other two films, but it’s easily the best short film I’ve seen all year.
Director Yukiko Sode (left) at the Q&A for Mime Mime
This 2008 PIA Film Festival runner-up prize and the Avex Entertainment Award winner is one of those indie-style slow-burn drama with an interesting central character. It features several nicely-directed scenes, but the rest of the story feels too vague and too ambiguous to really make an impact. Nevertheless, protagonist Makoto’s sarcastic and indifferent nature makes her an interesting character to follow, even though the film sometimes feel as direction-less as Makoto’s life. I would rank it as the weakest PIA film out of the seven I’ve seen so far, but even that is a major compliment to the general quality of films coming out of the film festival.
BONUS FEATURE:
Sode also signed my ticket stub with three hearts. You gotta love a female film director who signs autographs like that.I know I do.
Claustrophobia (dir. Ivy Ho. 2008/2009, Hong Kong)
Renowned Hong Kong screenwriter Ivy Ho’s directorial debut has three interesting things going for it: 1) Karena Lam and Ekin’s fourth pairing, 2) The film is clearly divided into eight sections, and 3) The story is told backwards. Even though the structure seems more suited for a European film, Ho picks very local settings and very local characters for this tale of an ambigious office romance between an employee and her boss. There’s not much of a plot or narrative, but the mood it gives off and the fact that it stayed with me for days make this an easy pick for one of my favorite Hong Kong films of the year. Too bad it won’t come out until next year.
This Window is Yours (dir. Tomoyuki Furuyama. 1993, Japan)
The 1993 PIA Scholarship film, this is a very low-key look at an unrequited romance between two high school students before one of them moves to Hokkaido for good. It’s also very strange, because it was shot on 16mm (not even with widescreen in mind), and the sound was in mono, so it felt like a homemade 70s film. But it also helped emphasize its perosnal indie spirit. Nothing much happens in this movie, except for two people teasing each other before realizing that they actually love each other. The more interesting stuff happens when the side characters and their criss-crossing infatuations come together. This is one of those movies that works much better on repeat viewing, but you just have to get through that first viewing to fully enjoy it later on.
Sky Crawlers (dir. Mamoru Oshii. 2008, Japan)
Chihiro Ito, who’s been writing for Isao Yukisada since Crying Out For Love In the Center of the World (Yukisada, on the other hand, is a “script consultant” on this film), adapts the novel for this very slow animated film about teenagers who fight brutal aerial battles, smoke, drink, and do all the things that adults do. Mamoru Oshii supposedly keeps up the tedious pacing he has been known for over the years, but what he does is make some breathtaking aerial battle sequences (helped by the sound effects by Skywalker Sound). However, his handling of the story doesn’t match up to Ito’s script, which has a strange way of revealing plot points. Nevertheless, I surprisingly liked it, and it was a good way to wrap up the festival.
It also has a really good theme song that fits well with the tone of the film:
Overall, all the films I saw this year had strong points, and I can’t say I was really disappointed by any of them. However, this is how I would rank them if I had to:
1. Tokyo Sonata 2. After School 3. Claustrophobia
4. Parking
5. Crows Zero
6. Cape No. 7
7. Tokyo!
8. Yoshino’s Barber Shop
9. Sky Crawlers
10. True Women For Sale
11. AYSL: Park and Love Hotel
12. Accuracy of Death
13. Miao Miao
14. The Window is Yours
15. Happiness
16. Mime Mime
Next is the Hong Kong Asian Independent Film Festival, which will have The Rebirth, Tokyo Gore Police, and the Matsugane Potshot Affair. Until then, we’ll be back to our normal programming.
Four more films to go at the HKAFF - Today is Claustrophobia and The Window is Yours, another PIA Film Festival film after yesterday’s Mime Mime and the PIA Film Festival talk.
- It’s looking to be a more active weekend at the Hong Kong box office this weekend. Tropic Thunder opened on top on Thursday with HK$531,000 from 31 screens. However, it’s not going to top the weekend box office, as the Hong Kong Film blog reports that High School Musical 3, which didn’t open until Friday here, opened with HK$1.15 million and will lead theweekend box office by a very large margin.
Even though a total of six films opened this weekend, only one other film got on the top 10 on Thursday, and that’s the film version of the TV drama Kurosagi. From just 3 screens, the swindler drama made HK$32,000 and will do relatively well for it’s limited number of screens. On the other hand, both Jacob Cheung’s Ticket and the Korean film A Man Who Was Superman opened on five screens, while Wushu - The Young Generation opened on 14 screens. None of them made more than HK$30,000 to get on Thursday’s top 10. I don’t expect to see them on Monday, either.
-The Japanese film Departures, which won the top prize at the Montreal World Film Festival and will represent Japan at the Academy Awards, has become a surprise hit for distributor Shochiku. It has now recorded more than 2 million admissions and made nearly 2.5 billion yen with no signs of dropping out of the top 10 soon.
Box Office Mojo has caught up with the Japan box office numbers, so it’s a good time to look at how other films are doing. Departures lost only 31% of its past weekend’s gross in its 6th week, and it’s the smallest drop in the top 10. The biggest drop goes to Wanted, which lost 55% in its 5th week. Even though Suspect X was on top for the 3rd weekend in a row, it lost nearly 40% of business, although this is fairly normal after a holiday weekend. Also worth noticing is that the box office has gotten so quiet that 3rd place film P.S. I Love You’s gross is 215% of the 4th place Departures. Also very depressing is the second weekend of Warner Bros.’ Get Smart, which saw a two-thirds drop in its second weekend and out of the top 10. Ouch.
- The Tokyo Film Festival Market has wrapped up on Friday, and while things didn’t match the excitement of opening day, organizers (at leasy Variety) were very happy, especially since so may buyers decided to skip the Asian Film Market in Pusan.
Also, The Golden Rock will be offering a more personal perspective on the world of film market pitching hopefully next week. No worries, I’m not the one doing the pitching.
- Earlier I reported that Red Cliff female lead Lin Chi-Ling signed on to be in Beverly Hills Ninja 2, which is set to be shot in Korea. However, Lin has now dropped out of the film, which now makes David Hasselhoff the biggest star on the film. As cool as the Hoff is, I’m not surprised if the Korean investors are now reconsidering the whole thing. Or they can always cast Vicky Zhao, the other Red Cliff female star.
- Japanese-American pop singer melody. has suddenly announced her retirement as a music artist, deciding that she will follow her dream to become a clothes designer. Her last high-profile job was the host of NHK’s English-language, oversea-aimed music show J-Melo, which presents Japanese pop music videos every week.
- First, here are how the opening films are doing at the Hong Kong box office after 5 days in theaters:
Mirrors - HK$1.97 million - 31 screens The Vampire Who Admires Me - HK$1 million - 27 screens Awake - HK$420,000 - 10 screens (opened on 13 screens) Accuracy of Death - HK$170,000 - 3 screens.
As for the others, Body of Lies is now at HK$4.94 million after 11 days, Butterfly Lovers is behind with HK$4.87 million after 11 days, Painted Skin is still under the HK$10 million mark with HK$9.87 million after 20 days, Connected has passed the HK$13 million mark with HK$13.06 million after 26 days, Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona is doing well (by Woody Allen standards) with HK$1.89 million after 11 days, and Mamma Mia is still going with HK$11.87 million after 40 days.
- At the Japanese box office attendance chart, Suspect X (the film spin-off of TV drama Galileo) gets its third weekend at the number one spot. Hollywood films Eagle Eye and P.S. I Love You open at 2nd and 3rd place, respectively. Departures continues its strong run at 4th place, and Ponyo jumps back up to 8th place.
-The fall 2008 drama season in Japan is coming to a great start for some of the major networks. Fuji has great premiere ratings for Celeb to Binbou Taro (17.6% rating) and The Glorious Team Bastista (15.2% for their troubled Tuesday 10pm spot is pretty good), while Kaze no Garden holds on to a respectable 18.0 rating in its second week. TBS has the highest-rated drama premiere with Ryusei no Kizuna (21.2% rating), with its Sunday night drama Scandal premiering with a promising 16.9 rating. On the other hand, NTV’s highest-rated drama is currently Scrap Teacher, with only a 12+ rating so far for both episodes.
Still, TBS and Fuji have their share of disappointments: the expensive terrorist drama Bloody Monday (co-produced with film distributor Toho) is still at 11.4% rating after two weeks, while Fuji’s Saturday 11pm drama Room of King has fallen to single-digit ratings for its second week in a row. More next week, when the rest of the private network dramas premiere.
- The Tokyo International Film Festival is off to a strange start this year: First, guests at opening film Red Cliff were walking out because only one of the two screens had an Englush-subtitled print. Then competition jury chairman Jon Voight raised his hands towards the ceiling while thanking Akira Kurosawa in Japanese during his opening remarks. Maybe it’s the green carpet.
-Hong Kong film producer Universe is looking at another year of loss as video sales drop 30% and theatrical takings dropped by 12%, mainly due to the lack of a true hit film. If I remember correctly, their only releases this year so far are See You in Youtube (which was a surprise moderate hit) and Sparrow, neither of which got even past the HK$7 million mark. Of course, they blame internet piracy instead.
- The role of internet libel in the recent string of celebrity suicides in South Korea have sparked talks of imposing restrictions on free speech on the internet. Of course, there are theories that suggest it’s the government’s way of suppressing dissent.
- Lastly, Hong Kong actress Gigi Lai, who may be best known to foreign viewers for her role in the Young and Dangerous movies, has announced that she will retire to take care of her ailing younger brother’s business. Of course, Hong Kong viewers will continue to see her on the small screen until February as one of the three female leads on the new 82-episode TVB drama The Gem of Life. Yes, that’s 82.
The second week of the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival for me was 6 films spread out over 5 nights. Within the last 8 days, I have seen 12 movies in theaters, 10 of those as part of the HKAFF. I may declare for bankruptcy when this is all said and done.
Anyway, here’s everything I’ve seen since my last entry:
Parking (dir. Chung Mong Hong. Taiwan, 2008)
The synosis of the film suggests that this might be Taiwan’s answer to After Hours, but that’s only the basic structure of the film. Part film noir, part urban fable, this strange comedy-drama is surprisingly packed with emotions, as well as some beautiful shots. However, the film suffers from an uneven pace due to its digressions into the backstories of the various side characters. Overall, it’s a promising debut for director Ching Mong Hong, and some of the visuals are bound to stay in your mind for days.
True Women For Sale (dir. Herman Yau. Hong Kong, 2008)
Herman Yau’s latest film has a Chinese title that translates to “I Don’t Sell My Body, I Sell My Uterus”. It may sound like the wrong title for a film about prostitution, but it’ll make perfect sense when you realize that the film’s second major storyline is about a pregnant Mainland woman trying to fight for residency in Hong Kong. Compared to Whispers and Moans, True Women For Sale is a significantly lighter look at its subject matters, and some spots are actually quite funny (though some recurring jokes fall flat the whole way through). The cast is uniformly strong (Prudence Lau is excellent, and Anthony Wong is as likable as ever), but some of the forced dialogue delivery heard in Whispers and Moans is back, but at least done with less preachy speeches. Overall, one of the finer truly local efforts of the year, and has a very good chance to perform better than Whispers and Moans at the Hong Kong box office.
Director Herman Yau (right) and Race Wong (left) at the Q&A for True Women For Sale
ASYL: Park and Love Hotel (dir. Izuru Kumazaka. Japan, 2007)
My first of several Pia Film Festival films this year at the HKAFF is an episodic drama about four lonely women in Tokyo who find refuge at a community park built on top of a love hotel. It’s one of those quiet, Japanese indie-style films with a slow pace, long takes, and a lot of quirkiness. But the portrayal of its characters (especially Lily as central character Tsuyako) and its down-to-earth approach make it worth watching. Not the strongest Pia Film Festival film I’ve seen, but it’s worth the attention.
Seagull Diner and Glasses director Naoko Ogigami’s debut is a cute look at a small town where all the boys have the same hairstyle to keep with a strange local custom, until the new kid from Tokyo comes to town and changes everything with his hip, Kimura Takuya-like hair. Ogigami shows her talent for dry quirky humor, depiction of places far from urban Tokyo, and her love of actress Masako Motai in this unlikely pick for a Pia Film Festival Scholarship film. Of course, being a film festival film, the story suggests some kind of social allegory, but it’s never heavy-handed and highly enjoyable the whole way through. I still never want to have the Yoshino hairstyle, though.
Cape No.7 (dir. Wei Te-Sheng. Taiwan, 2008)
It’s easy to see why this comedy-drama became the BIGGEST FILM EVER in Taiwan and why it was such a crowdpleaser at the screening I attended. Made with a commercial spirit on an indie budget (the director reportedly paid NT$30 million of the total NT$50 million budget from his own pocket), this is blatantly commercial filmmaking that packs in all the effective elements: The charming locals that make a group of underdog misfits, the handsome bad boy, the exotic Japanese love interest, and even an unrequited love story. It has some extremely notable flaws (funny how both romances in a romance film don’t really work), but it’s such a likable flick that you’re likely to be able to overlook it all and just take it all in. As it has been already, expect this to be a festival darling for the next year. Not required to be immersed in Taiwanese culture to appreciate it, but apparently you would love it even more if you are.
After School (dir. Kenji Uchida. Japan, 2007)
Kenji Uchida’s follow-up to Stranger of Mine is more of the same stuff, with a plot that takes you through twists and turns for the first half, only to spend the second half revealing how clever Uchida is by showing what really happened. Nevertheless, it’s still a smart, low-key mystery that is clever and great to watch with an unaware audience. As Mark Schilling pointed out in his review, the characters this time are even more like Uchida’s pawns, moving around to faciltate the plot or in manipulating the perception of reality in the plot. But it also does have genuine emotions, as he leaves the most poignant reveal to be one about the characters instead of the mystery. Uchida has now become one of my favorite up-and-coming young directors from Japan.
P.S.: Stick around for the end of the credits for a small reveal that’s also the mystery’s most important.
And here’s a ranking of the films seen at the festival so far:
1. Tokyo Sonata
2. After School
3. Crows Zero
4. Parking
5. Cape No. 7
6. Yoshino’s Barber Shop
7. AYSL: Park and Love Hotel
8. True Women For Sale
9. Accuracy of Death
10. Happiness
It’s pretty amazing that I haven’t been disappointed with any of the offerings so far, but this is how I would rank them if I had to.
That’s it for part 2 of the HKAFF report. The next report should be for the final set of films, including Tokyo!, Ivy Ho’s Claustrophobia, and Mamoru Oshii’s Sky Crawlers.
A quick entry before going off for another film at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival (tonight it’s Kenji Uchida’s After School).
- Judging from Thursday opening day box office numbers in Hong Kong, it’s looking to be a rather quiet weekend when the numbers come out tomorrow. Mirrors, the Hollywood remake of the Korean film Into the Mirror, opened on top with HK$275,000 from 31 screens. The new Wong Jing-produced horror film The Vampire Who Admires Me managed to make HK$202,000 from 27 screens, but it would be a miracle if it even makes it to HK$2 million. The Hollywood thriller Awake made HK$49,000 from 13 screens, and Accuracy of Death made an OK HK$25,000 from just 3 screens. More tomorrow with the weekend numbers.
- Just before the temporary relaxed regulations for foreign journalists in China during the Olympics was due to expire, the Chinese authorities decided to extend those regulations. However, nothing has changed for domestic journalist, and Chinese nationals are still not allowed to be full-time correspondants for foreign networks.
- First Cuts, the project created by Andy Lau’s Focus Group to find young talents, has announced the first four filmmakers for the second stage of the project, which will now set its sights mainly in the Mainland Chinese market. The first project’s biggest success was Crazy Stone, by Mainland Chinese director Ning Hao. The first project also featured films from Malaysia and Lam Chi-Chung’s I’ll Call You. Too bad Lam followed it with The Luckiest Man.
- The Tokyo Drama Award, part of the International Drama Festival during the Japan CoFesta, has given out its first prizes. The grand prize went to two dramas - drama special Ten to Sen and made-for-cable drama Pandora. Believe it or not, Last Friends, which deals with domestic violence, gender identity crisis, and even incest, won Kids and Youth category.
- The Japanese cinema attendance figure for Saturday and Sunday is finally out after the holiday weekend. Suspect X, the film version of the hit drama Galileo, retains its number 1 spot, and the Masked Rider movie also retains its number 2 spot. The surprise this weekend is the boost for Departures from 5th place to 3rd place. It may be because of the news of actor Toru Minegishi’s death, or it may be due to really good word-of-mouth (as shown by its small 17.6% drop in the second weekend). Lastly, only one opening film made the top 10, and that’s Get Smart at 10th place.
- In Korea, Eagle Eye debuts at 1st place, while aspiring blockbuster Modern Boy drops to 3rd place. Kim Ki Duk finally sees another one of his film land on the top 10, as Dreams open at 6th place after opening on over 100 screens.
- South Korean gangster drama Fate opened last weekend in Japan, but the Korean wave has been fading away for a long time in Japan. From 94 screens, the film only made 23.87 million yen, which is only 37% of the opening for Running Wild.
- Looks like Japanese TV network TBS is about to stir some controversy with its upcoming drama special, which has casted Takeshi Kitano as Hideki Tojo, who was prime minister during World War II and was executed as one of the major war criminals after the war.
- As I predicted, Jingle Ma’s Butterfly Lovers came back from behind over the weekend to beat Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies at the Hong Kong box office. On Sunday, the idols period flick made HK$761,079 from 36 screens for a 4-day weekend total of HK$2.67 million. Meanwhile, Body of Lies made HK$734,000 from 35 screens on Sunday for a 4-day weekend total of HK$2.6 million. While Body of Lies has one less screen and runs 20 minutes longer, it also attracts the higher-priced adult tickets, while Butterfly Lovers attracted the lower-priced student tickets, so there’s essentially no handicap for either film.
As for other openers, Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona did pretty well on its relatively limited release (although this is pretty wide for Woody Allen). It made HK$261,000 from 16 screens on Sunday for a 4-day weekend total of HK$890,000, which is reportedly better than Match Point already. The Hollywood rom-com My Best Friend’s Girl did slightly better during the weekend, making HK$110,000 from just 13 screens, but it still only made HK$280,000 after 4 days.
Painted Skin lost almost half of its audience over the weekend, making HK$517,000 from 30 screens on Sunday for a 11-day total (it says 19, but it’s really 11) of HK$8.28 million (minus the possibly bogus HK$350,000 gross from its “one-week run”). Connected is proving relatively long legs, making HK$382,000 from 34 screens on Sunday. After 18 days, Benny Chan’s action thriller has made HK$11.91 million. The Duchess also hangs on during its second weekend in limited release, making HK$67,000 from 6 screens for a 12-day total of HK$1.36 million. 20th Century Boys has passed the HK$6 million mark after 18 days after making HK$87,000 from 14 screens. Lastly, Mamma Mia is now at 11.56 million after 32 days, and Eagle Eye is at HK$6.14 million after 18 days.
-It’s a public holiday in Japan today, so all we have today is last week’s drama ratings. The Fall 2008 season has started, and as reported last week, Kaze no Garden is leading the pack with a 20.1% rating for its premiere episode. Yume wo Kanaeru Zou takes a big drop for its second episode, losing nearly 43% of its audience for a 4.1% rating in its second week. OL Nippon, from the writer of the successful Haken no Hinkaku, flops in its first episode with just a 8.3% rating. Fuji’s Saturday night 11pm drama fails to outdo last season’s 33-Minute Detective, but outdoes Hachi One Diver’s premiere with a 10.4% rating.
- Jason Gray reports that the new Japanese food film Flavor of Happiness has been acquired by a French distributor that will be opening it on 40 screens. That’s more than double the screens the film got for its opening weekend in Japan.
- Twitch has a trailer for the Mamoru Oshii-led anthology Kill~Kiru, which is essentially four action finales for four films that don’t really exist. It look like a maybe-maybe not. We’ll know how it is after it premieres at the Tokyo International Film Festival.
I found out during a random look yesterday at the Now TV movie trailer channel that there’s a trailer out for the Wong Jing-produced cheapie flick The Vampire Who Admires Me. Here it is in all its Youtube glory.
- Salon Films, hot off the success of their first film Painted Skin at the Chinese box office, is now set to make nine more films. Four of the films, all English-language films, will be made with the recently established multinational Asian film fund and will be shot in China. One of the other five films will be a sequel to Eat Drink Man Woman, which doesn’t seem to have Ang Lee’s name attached…yet?
- Veteran Japanese actor Toru Minegishi, who last appeared in the acclaimed film Departures and I probably last saw him in TV drama Karei Naru Ichizoku, passed away from cancer on Saturday. He was 65.
This past weekend, this blogger spent roughly 8 hours at the movies because it’s time for the yearly Hong Kong Asian Film Festival. All the politics aside, this year’s picks were solid enough that I bought tickets to 14 films. Unfortunately, I found out that three of the four movies I saw over the weekend already have Hong Kong distributors. One even comes out this week.
Anyway, here are some brief reviews of the films I saw, sans those that I plan to write longer reviews for:
Tokyo Sonata (dir: Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Japan, 2008): I don’t really watch much horror films, which means I’ve sorely missed out on the most popular K. Kurosawa films over the years. But I fairly enjoyed Bright Future, and have been looking forward to his take of the family drama, especially after its win at Cannes. I’m happy to say that despite a dragged-out third act, it definitely didn’t disappoint. Heartbreaking but darkly comedic, this is the work of a master. A longer review possibly to come.
Accuracy of Death (dir. Masaya Kakei. Japan, 2008): This sentimental look at death and destiny would’ve been a drag to sit through without a surprisingly charming performance from Takeshi Kaneshiro and co-writer/director Masaya Kakei’s sense of humor throughout. An episodic look at how a Grim Reaper finds life through three different cases, the fantasy drama is obviously going for a very sentimental approach (I still shudder at the Japanese English title: Sweet Rain) at a grim subject. The plot twists and how these three stories end up connecting are foreshadowed about two miles away, but they get the emotional effect they’re going for. I just wanted more. I’m not sure of what, but I just wished there was more.
Crows Zero (dir. Takeshi Miike. Japan, 2007): It’s weird to see Accuracy of Death has a higher body count then this film. Takeshi Miike is another Japanese director I’ve missed out on over the years. Crows Zero marks the third complete Miike film I’ve seen (after Ichi the Killer and City of Lost Souls), and it’s by far the best and the most entertaining of the bunch. The 2-hour+ film starts off furiously and keeps the blood pumping most of the time. Miike knows how to do the tough guy thing, and does it well. But the romantic thing with the R&B-singing is a little too awkward for a film where overgrown high school boys beat up each other in the rain. Nevertheless, it’s great fun to watch in a packed house, and it shows how good Miike can be with a budget. Bring on Crows Zero II.
Happiness (dir: Hur Jin Ho. Korea, 2007): Hur’s Christmas in August is an all-time favorite and one of my first exposures to Korean films. Its follow-up One Fine Spring Day remains one of my favorite depiction of a relationship. So imagine the expectations I had for his first film since April Snow, which I never finished watching for some inexplicable reason. The sights are pretty, but Hur’s attention to detail and his central relationship are not as poignant this time around, instead going for a more melodramatic approach. Still, it’s interesting to see him turning the gender bias of One Fine Spring Day completely around, putting the man at fault. By the way, the film is loooooooong, even by Hur Jin Ho standard. Perhaps a longer review eventually.
This week is 6 more movies spread out over 5 days, including Parking and Cape No. 7 from Taiwan, Herman Yau’s True Women For Sale, and Kenji Uchida’s After School on Sunday. It’s looking to be one of the best movie-going weeks all year. Unless all the movies suck, then it’ll be one of the worst.
- It’s looking like it’ll be a quiet weekend at the Hong Kong box office. Especially disappointing is the opening day for Jingle Ma’s Butterfly Lovers, which opened on 36 screens with a HK$389,280 take. But it’s only at second place, because Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies not only opened on less screens (33) with less showings (it runs 20 minutes longer), but it also made HK$389,419, beating it by HK$139, which is roughly two tickets. Talking about a close one.
Butterfly Lovers does have two things going for it: 1) It appeals more to younger audiences, which means it probably sold more student tickets at a lower price. 2) The young idol chasers will likely flock to this over the weekend when they’re out of school. So I expect this to get a bigger boost over the weekend than Body of Lies.
As for the other opening films, Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona opened on 16 screens and made just under HK$106,000, and the Hollywood comedy My Best Friend’s Girl opened on 12 screens for just a take of HK$28,000. More on Monday with the weekend numbers.
- Tokyograph has unveiled its comprehensive guide to the Fall 2008 season Japanese dramas, and there are quite a few interesting ones this season. Fall seasons tend to do much better than the summer seasons, so hopefully ratings report will be more interesting to do this time around.
- Even though Warner Bros. has not done very well recently in Japan with either its Hollywood productions (The Dark Knight, Speed Racer, Nights in Rodanthe) nor its Japan productions (Sky Crawlers, Sushi Ouji, Sweet Rain), it still plans to boost local productions in the country.
- One of WB Japan’s upcoming releases is Ichi, director Fumihiko Sori’s take on the Zatoichi legend using a female lead, and Twitch has an advance review of it.
- I’ll be watching three movies at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival tomorrow, and I’ll be offering short thoughts for at least two of the films. In its 5th edition, the HKAFF has become Hong Kong’s second biggest film festival. However, this year is also looking to be the most controversial year ever.
Still, it should be all about the movies. That’s what I care about, and that’s where I’ll be tomorrow. See you all on Sunday.
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