- It’s reviews time yet again, as Hollywood Reporter’s Maggie Lee has sent in her review of John Woo’s Red Cliff.

- Shiina Ringo has written Japanese band Tokio’s latest single, which will be used for the theme song of a drama this season.  Again, reporting this because I’m a fan.

- Hey, celebrity dancing shows and idol contest, the Chinese government says you can come back now because we’re all done with our collective, state-mandated mourning! They also say you should all be positive because the Olympics are coming!

- This week’s Teleview columns on the Daily Yomiuri looks at I Survived a Japanese Game Show and also some of the dramas this season.

- Instead of Youtube, Japanese public broadcaster NHK will be uploading their content onto video site Joost. I assume that the NHK fee men will not be coming up to your door and ask for subscription fees.

- Finally there’s a trailer for Ryu Seung Wan’s Dachimawa Lee that actually shows something from the movie. Looks like a fun period action romp from here.

- Heads up for those in Hong Kong that the summer edition of the Hong Kong International Film Festival, aka Summer Pops, has revealed their program. Sadly, most of the films either were simply films that pulled from the festival in March or films that already have release set in Hong Kong. I’ll still go, though.

- And it was a huge opening day for John Woo’s Red Cliff here at the Hong Kong box office. Despite a running time of 140 minutes (which means less shows, despite an inflated ticket price), the historical epic made HK$2 million from 60 screens, and newspapers are even reporting sold-out shows in the afternoon. Shows will likely be added over the weekend, and it’ll also likely hit the HK$10 million mark by the end of the weekend.

For kids who don’t care about the Three Kingdoms, Japanese animated film Keroro did fairly well also, opening on 30 screens for an opening day take of HK$776,000, and will also see a fair boost in business over the weekend, as kids films often do. It will also take away a chunk of audience for Kung Fu Panda, which made HK$569,000 from 54 screens on its 13th day of release. More on Monday.

Variety also looks at Red Cliff’s openings in other Asian countries.

- Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has posted what must be the first English-language review of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea.

- It first broke on Ryuganji, and now it’s pretty much everywhere: Japanese detective drama Aibou, whose film adapatation is the biggest hit for the first half of 2008, will be going the Bayside Shakedown route already with a spinoff film for one of its supporting characters.

- The latest Mummy film, shot and set in China as one of the highest-profile Chinese co-productions to date, is reportedly having its release held up by Chinese censorship authories, even though they shot with an approved script.

Saving more news for the weekend entries. See you then.

-

OK. Maybe two:

It ain’t bad, but it ain’t great, either. It also has lots of pigeons.

As always, Kozo will be doing the real review.

- It’s Japanese Oricon charts time! GReeeN!!! rules the album charts for the second week in a row, fending off newcomers Ellegarden and Shiina Ringo (debuting at 2nd and 4th place, respectively). Meanwhile, YUI’s latest takes the top spot at the singles chart in its first week.

More over at Tokyograph.

- Not surprisingly, Kung Fu Panda has now made 135 million yuan in China, making it the highest-grossing animated film in China ever.

- Ryuganji translate an editorial that puts into simple numbers why TV drama adaptations will continue in Japanese cinema as long as just a fraction of its audience goes to see the films.

- Grady Hendrix of Kaiju Shakedown writes about Asian actors participation in the latest Batman flick, including thespian/photo-addict Edison Chen’s one line in the film.

- Under “casting news” today, Jun Matsumoto will be starring in a drama special that is part of Nippon TV’s annual charity program. Matsumoto, hot off the success of Hana Yori Dango Final, is one of the two hosts of the 24-hour program.

Meanwhile, Takako Matsu will be starring alongside Tananobu Asano in a new film based on a story by Osamu Daza. Actually, I don’t believe this is Matsu’s first starring role, since she did star in April Story, which runs just barely over feature film running time of 60 minutes.

Lastly, Hideaki Ito will be playing the villain in the troubled Yoichi Sai production The Legend of Kamui. Wait a minute, Ekin Cheng is in it too!

- Major Japanese film distributor Shochiku has finally started its own Youtube channel for their own trailers. My Youtube source got shut down recently, but trailers are not hard to come by if one searches harder for them anyway. They’re at least on official website (with the exception of Ponyo and many Hong Kong films, of course).

- Speaking of trailers, Nippon Cinema has the full-length trailer for Tetsuya Nakashima’s Paco and the Magic Picture Book, and I’d say it makes the film look a lot more promising than its teasers did.

-  China will be the shooting location for a new film that will be shot using the innovative 4k digital technology, which holds 4 times the data of a usual digital movie. Of course, the word “dragon” is required to be in the title.

-The poor 400 orphan films that lost their home when UK distributor Tartan went under 2 weeks ago have found a new home with a new distributor, who will continue to buy films with the Tartan name attached.

- As expected, Hancock topped the Korean box office, as Hollywood films dominate for another weekend. However, Public Enemy Returns is reaching the 3 million admissions mark, though Crossing isn’t making much of a dent.

More at Korea Pop Wars

- Korea is not the only place where local films are suffering at the box office, as Bollywood is also posting a loss of about USD$37.5 million for the first 6 months of 2008.

- The controversy surrounding the “Waiwai” column on the English version of the Manichi Daily News website continues. Apparently, the newspaper is caving to those obsessed Japanese netizens by not only punishing those involved with the column, which translates Japanese tabloid magazine articles to English, but also carrying a thorough investigation into the column. I did read Waiwai, and I enjoyed reading it as trashy fun. While those responsible should’ve made it more clear about its sensational nature, isn’t it becoming a bit of a witch hunt now?

- With Kung Fu Panda now a major hit in China, Chinese filmmakers are asking why they can’t make that same type of film in their own country. Somewhat surprisingly, they get blame the government and live to tell about it.

- Danny Glover made a public appearance in Tokyo to talk about his latest film, the Japan-American co-production The Harimaya Bridge. He said that he hopes the film will bridge Japanese and American prejudices. I assume that means for America, they should get rid of stuff like I Survived a Japanese Game Show. As for Japan, they should probably not do something like this:

Yes, those are two Japanese actors doing Driving Miss Daisy in full make-up.

- It’s reviews time! First up is Variety’s Derek Elley’s very positive review for the Chinese comedy Two Stupid Eggs. He obviously liked it more than I did.  Hollywood Reporter has a few new reviews for some Bollywood flicks, but the one I’m most interested in is Lisa Tsering’s review for the sci-fi epic Love Story 2050.

- The life of Japanese boxer Daisuke Naito, which include being bullied at school and a period of isolation at home, will be turned into a TV movie. It will be shown at the end of the month.

- Jang Dong-Gun will supposedly be starring in Korean director Lee Myung-Se’s next film. However, the report may be talking about the documentary Earth, which is the shortened film version of the TV documentary Planet Earth. In Japan, the film was narrated by Ken Watanabe, and it was definitely not directed by Lee Myung-Se.

Correction: Turns out maybe the report, seems to be badly translated, is reporting that Jang will be narrating Earth after starring in Lee’s latest film M. Maybe.

- A Brazilian telenovela (the South American version of a soap opera) will be shooting in Indonesia. Wait, do they mean the whole thing?

- Another Japanese drama is going to the big screen. However, unlike your usual adaptations, this drama was shown on TV after midnight because it features nudity. No word on whether said gratuitous nudity will be translated to the big screen as well.

- Some netizens have pointed out that parts of the poster for John Woo’s Red Cliff resemble the poster for the Hollywood film 300. Who’s surprised that an Asian film would rip off Hollywood designs, and who’s surprised that there will be people complaining about it? I don’t see any hands raised.

- With Will Smith’s Hancock getting thrown into the mix, three Hollywood films took up a bulk of the Hong Kong box office over this past weekend. As expected, the superhero comedy took the top spot with HK$2.97 million from 58 screens on Sunday for a 4-day total of $HK10 million. Kung Fu Panda wasn’t far behind, either, with HK$2.43 million from 60 screens for a 11-day total of HK$19.45 million. Wanted is down at third place with HK$1.19 million from 41 screens for an impressive 11-day total of HK$17.43 million. This far outdoes Universal’s previous release, The Incredible Hulk, which has made only HK$12.02 million after 25 days.

Nim’s Island, which didn’t have a very impressive opening day on Thursday, saw a siginificant boost from the family business, making HK$206,000 from 19 screens. It doesn’t sound very good, but that’s more than double the opening day gross. After 4 days, the adventure film has made HK$600,000. The French film Ensemble is also still doing very good limited release business, making HK$44,000 from 4 screens on Sunday, and has since made HK$600,000 after 11 days.

-  In Japanese box office attendance figures, (insert adjective here) Hana Yori Dango Final tops the box office again, with Indiana Jones remaining in second place as well. The newsroom film Climber’s High managed to hit third place, while Speed Racer repeats its fate seen around the world with only a 5th place opening. They tried. More when the numbers come out.

- The new Summer 2008 Japanese drama season has started, and the number one show so far (by a mile) is Code Blue, the medical drama about lots of unbelievable pretty people aseembled into one team of helicopter doctors. On Thursday night, it scored a 21.2% rating, making it the highest number for a Summer drama at the Thursday 10 pm slot, and the 7th highest in the time slot’s history since it Fuji started showing dramas then in 1984. Meanwhile, the over-sensational Monster Parents (I saw the premiere episode in Japan. More on its sensational advertising in the future) premiered with a respectable 14.2% rating, especially when Muri Na Renai had that slot last season. This season’s Japanese remake of a Korean source material, Maou, debut with a 14% rating, which is not bad considering its Friday night slot. Doing not as well on the same night is the lottery drama Loto 6 de 3 Oku 2 Senmanen Ateta Otoko with ex-GTO Takashi Sorimachi, as it debut with a 12.4% rating. It wasn’t a very good show either. The latest drama with Beach Boys co-star Yotaka Takenouchi, the medical drama Tomorrow, did much better than Ryoteki Na Kanojo with its premiere episode, scoring a 16.8% rating.

Go to Tokyograph to see the description of Summer 2008 dramas.

As for Spring 2008 dramas still on air, CHANGE took a slight drop to under 20% again, and becoming less and less likely to beat Gokusen in the season average. Rookies has a very loyal fanbase, as its ratings continue to hover around 14-15%, and Hachi-One Diver got a big boost to a 9.4% for its 9th episode after the previous episode got only a 6.9% rating.

- John Woo’s Red Cliff is finally being unveiled this weekend throughout Asia, as its 140-minute part 1 will open in Hong Kong, China, Korea, and Taiwan this Thursday.

However, Korea will be getting a shorter version of the film, with distributor Showbox cutting 9 minutes of the film with Woo’s permission (though not necessarily blessings). If the film was so damn meaningful, then why cut even one minute of it?

- Meanwhile, Kaiju Shakedown looks at the slate of super patriotic Chinese films that will probably never sell at film markets around the world.

- A little late, but Jason Gray has posted what is probably the first English-language reaction to the potentially creepy Kodomo no Kodomo (”A Child’s Child”), and apparently it’s really not that bad.

- The Thai government is planning to attract more foreign productions with tax breaks that should come into effect next year. Currently, three high-profile films - one of them Hong Kong - are shooting there.

- The Korean brotherhood classic Friend is coming to television, with original director Kwak Kyung-Taek said to be including new stories that were not included in the original film. Still being written, the drama plans to be on TV early next year.

- Herman Yau, fresh off his latest gangland flick, is already starting work on a new film. This time, the film will be more in the vein of his 2007 film Whispers and Moans. About Hong Kong prostitutes, the film stars 80s-90s pop star Prudence Lau, Anthony Wong, Race Wong, and DJ Sammy. The current Chinese title of the flick directly translate to “I Don’t Sell My Body, I Only Sell my Uterus”.

- According to a producer at Milkyway, Johnnie To has considerably slowed down on productions and will not be following his usual schedule of 2-3 films a year after Sparrow.

Heading off to Tokyo one last time tomorrow, and heading back to Hong Kong on Sunday, so this will probably be the last entry until Monday.

- Japan’s Emobile has pulled their latest ad, which features their mascot, a monkey, at the podium of a crowded rally for change, which is meant to resemble the Barack Obama campaign. Of course, Americans believe that they’re the center of the world and think that the Japanese actually know about way to insult an African American, one of which is to compare them to monkeys. If Americans are that culturally sensitive, there wouldn’t Rush Hour movies, Kung Fu Panda, and I Survived a Japanese Game Show. Then again, if Japanese are that culturally sensitive, one of the comedians on a variety show wouldn’t have called Bobby Ologun “Jero” and “Billy” (as in Billy Blank).

- According to Apple Daily, Stephen Chow is teaming up with a Taiwanese film company to bring back Journey to the West (which he explored in the Chinese Odyssey films). According to the Hong Kong Film blog, Chow wanted to take the monk role, but was pressured by the financiers to take on the Monkey King role once more. The way the blog spins this story is that Chow is suffering from the critical bashing from CJ7 because he appeased the Mainland censors too much, and now needs to dig back out old material to please his audience and his financiers again. No word on whether he’ll be directing or just acting like he did with the previous films.

- Kaiju Shakedown clears up that the so-called Warlords DVD from yesterday’s post is not the Jet Li-Andy Lau-Peter Chan Warlords.

- Twitch has a 5-minute-plus promo clip from Mamoru Oshii’s Sky Crawlers.

They also have that 9-minute promo clip for John Woo’s Red Cliff that was shown at Cannes. The Oriental Daily asked stars what they thought of the film at the premiere, and they apparently all liked it. Then again, what with saying the trouble one can get in from saying the wrong thing and this being Oriental Daily, take it with a grain of salt.

- Yesterday I reported that Taiwan may lift their ban of Mainland performers, and now Chinese broadcasting organization Phoenix Broadcasting has applied again for landing rights on the island after Mainland media was banned from the island in 2005.

- Jason Gray points out that the official website for Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata has been updated with a classy new trailer. The trailer is also on Youtube if you want a slightly larger version.

- Variety’s Derek Elley has a review of Help, which is being touted as China’s first all-out horror film.

See you all back from Hong Kong on Monday.

And I didn’t even understand 40% of it. So don’t treat this as a serious review - just a blogger’s rant.

Of course, I have my biases about the flower boys in the first place: My first encounter with them was when they were used as an excuse to start a boy band in Taiwan for “Meteor Garden”, and since then, the so-called Flower 4 has never sat right with me. But with the Japanese counterpart hitting the big screen, making a ton of money, and a shoot that went all over the world, I expected some high-energy silly fun, even if it is about boys compared to flowers (Of course, the whole title is Japanese wordplay. “Boys” in Japanese share the same sound as the Japanese sweets “dango”.). So I went, like most of the other men in the screening, accompanied by a member of the opposite sex. Now I know what a Sex and the City screening must’ve been like.

The trailer, which show central couple Makino and Domyoji running around the world in an adventure, promises such energetic silly fun (exploding cars in Hong Kong? The two doing Castaway on an abandoned island?). The film itself starts off just fine, with the two about to get married when a very very expensive family heirloom is stolen. As a result, the two run off around the world to get the heirloom back, with a little (and I mean very little) help from the other flower boys. That’s it. Really.

However, the filmmakers somehow managed to make everything drag. Apart from the first 20 minutes, there’s no sense of fun at anywhere they go. Dialogue scenes are shot from a distance, as if they’re trying to show TBS and Toho shareholders where they spent their money on by showing as much of where they are as possible. The movie was shot on digital video, with no cinematic flair whatsoever so one can hardly find any difference between the actual movie and the flashbacks from the TV drama. With TV dramas shot like movies these days, you would figure that Hana Yori Dango Final would looks better on the big screen. You’d be wrong - I’ve seen Japanese dramas shot better than this so-called movie.

Of course, I don’t even deserve to review the film if I didn’t understand 40% of the dialogue. Actually, when I can tell a film is bad just by understanding 60% of it, doesn’t it make it worse? I didn’t understand 50% of Gururi no Koto (most of those scenes involve lots of dialogue), either. For all I know, it may be a total embarrassment once I find out what the rest of the movie is about, but the acting, the directorial technique, the editing all told me at that point that there’s something better beyond the written word for all 140 minutes. Hana Yori Dango didn’t have that.

The so-called script simply boils down to two people arguing all the time, especially Jun Matsumoto (whose perfect boy  band hair stays perfectly waxed even on an abandoned island) and his arrogant and loud bad boy voice screaming in every other scene. His surface tough-guy exterior becomes increasingly irritating along the way. On the other hand, Mao Inoue was fairly likable as the girl next door, but even her acting is relegated to simply reacting to events along the way, as oppose to actively doing anything. When she’s not being told something, then she’s just arguing with Domyoji, which  makes me wonder why these two are together in the first place if they talk like that to each other every day. Worst of all, of these adventures boil down to an anti-climatic “that’s it?” resolution that would make you hate rich people like the flower boys for the resource they use for their excessive luxury. Then again, you probably won’t, because they’re still rich and handsome.

Perhaps that’s why it’s such a favorite with the female audience. This is essentially porn for virgin schoolgirls and women who dream of being like protagonist Makino - your poor girl next door swept away by four rich handsome guys who lavish her with attention and luxury like champagne on private planes and pools in presidential suites. Men has the same type of latent fantasy, they’re called action movies.

Don’t mistaken me as a TV drama adaptation hater, either. As much as I don’t like the trend, I actually think drama adaptations can be quite well-done. At least Hero and Bayside Shakedown earn their 2-hour+ runtime with complicated cases that take multiple steps to untie the knots. Hana Yori Dango runs 131 minutes, which is way too long to pull off what the story turned out to be.

I suppose not having seen the drama, I must not be in the position to judge this film. Actually, the filmmakers do their best to let the uninitiated understand what’s going on, and a film should be able to stand on their own as a film instead of a 2-hour episode of a TV show. That’s why people criticized the second and third installments of Lord of the Rings as not real films, because they aren’t “complete” films with a beginning and an end. But at least those films are miles away better shot, better written, and better acted than Hana Yori Dango, which looks like it was shot for TV, and that’s where it belongs.

Still, girls will probably still flock to it for the same reason they would flock to a Daniel Henney movie - Jun Matsumoto appears topless in one scene. Wet. While saying “I love you” to a girl.

By the way, here’s the exact reason why the film did not deserve a 131-minute running time.

MAJOR ENDING SPOILERS:

The so-called family hairloom was a fake, and was a scheme concocted by Domyoji’s mother and father to test the couple’s love. Everyone was in on it, hence meaning that everything that appeared in the film is false and artificial. Just like the manufactured emotions and endless verbal expositions.

Consider yourself warned.

- Our first and foremost jobs here at Lovehkfilm is to review movies, and we got some of those for you today. Boss Kozo has a review of Lawrence Lau/Scud’s City Without Baseball, a review of Korean hand ball flick Forever the Moment, a review of the Taiwanese film Soul of a Demon, and a review of Japanese dark comedy Funuke, Show Some Love, You Losers!. JMaruyama offers a review of Kwak Jae-Young’s Cyborg She, which he insists is a remake of Park Chan Wook’s I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK, and that’s OK too. I myself offer a review of Don’t Laugh at My Romance and a review of cute puppy film A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies.

- It’s Japanese Oricon charts time! As expected, Arashi’s theme for the Hana Yori Dango movie debuted at the top, with an impressive 300,000+ copies sold. Shuchishin (aka the “stupid boy band”.  Really, that’s their nickname) not only survived to their second single, but also manage to sell 200,000+ copies of it. The album chart was also fairly crowded, with GReeeN!!! taking the top position for the first week of their second album, Ayaka’s 2nd following close behind, and Ketsumeishi debuting at a somewhat disappointing 3rd place. My newest idol Jero debuts at 5th with his first album.

More at Tokyograph.

- China loves Kung Fu Panda, as it has already become the most successful animated film ever in China with a box office take nearing 100 million yuan after 10 days. I don’t get that two days’ delay in Sichuan, though, which sounds more like distributor’s indecision more than anything else.

The earthquake didn’t exactly affect people’s moviegoing mood anyway, as May’s box office is up 26% from the previous year, prompting China Film Group to post a cryptic message that seem to spell either showing off or amazement.

- The Japanese news shows were all over a Wall Street Journal story this morning, which compared the rather unpopular Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda with current TV Prime Minister Kimura Takuya. Click on the first link, since going directly to the site won’t let you read the whole story.

-  Kaiju Shakedown’s Grady Hendrix looks at what’s going with The Warlords‘ western distribution ambitions, which has now dwindled down to a butchered DVD release.

- A bit late: Jason Gray offers a look by Midnight Eye’s Jasper Sharp on how Tartan UK came to meet their current fate of closing down.

- Lionsgate will be working with CJ Entertainment for Korean Wedding, aka “How Another White Man Falls in Love with Asian Girl and Finds Asian Culture Funny”.

- Taiwan may take a very significant step in continuing to improve relations with China by lifting their ban on Mainland Chinese performers, even though Taiwanese performers have been performing in the Mainland for years.

- An ad sales slump for Japanese television is causing board member of these TV stations to go from earning tons of money to earning just lots of money.

- After the success of the Ayaka-Kobukuro duet Winding Road, their record company is back for round two with another duet to be released.

Or otherwise known as the weekly number crunching edition.

- The end of the academic year in Hong Kong schools and two major blockbuster openings add up to a very crowded weekend at the Hong Kong box office. On 64 screens (a majority of them showing the Cantonese-dubbed version), Kung Fu Panda won the weekend. Opening on a Saturday (instead of the usual Thursday), the Hollywood animated film made HK$3.41 million for a 2-day total of HK$6.47 million. The other huge film was the action film Wanted, which opened on a Friday. From 47 screens, it made HK$2.49 million on Sunday for a 3-day total of HK$7.37 million. While it seems like Kung Fu Panda won by a stretch, their per-screen average are close enough to indicate that the audience are fairly split evenly between the two films. With a public holiday today, the two films will easily surpass the HK$10 million mark.

It was also a pretty busy weekend for the limited releases. The French film Ensemble (starring Audrey Tautou, who has become quite popular in Hong Kong after Amelie) made HK$84,000 from 4 screens on Sunday for a 4-day total of HK$260,000. The Las Vegas-themed 21 continues it strong run, making HK$51,000 from 3 screens on Sunday with a 11-day total of HK$520,000.

With the major blockbusters, the holdover films obviously lost out of plenty of audience. The Chronicles of Narnia probably managed to retain its Christian audience after losing its family audience to Kung Fu Panda, with a HK$409,000 take from 30 screens on Sunday. After 25 days, the fantasy epic has made HK$24.55 million, with HK$25 million a certainty. Johnnie To’s Sparrow lost its adult audience (and plenty of screens/showings) to Wanted, making only HK$245,000 from 30 screens (most of them with a reduced number of showings a day) and a 11-day total of HK$4.92 million. It’ll do better than Triangle and way better than Linger, though.

- The cat’s out of the bag now: the Hana Yori Dango film version is a major hit at the Japanese box office, making over 1 billion yen from 400 screens in the first two days alone. According to Eiga Consultant, this is 99% of the opening weekend gross of Hero the Movie, and its approximately 805,000 admissions (thanks, JG!) is actually 107% of Hero’s opening weekend as well. Higher admission figures and lower box office means that the film’s audience is either skewing younger (kids and student discounted tickets) or much of the audience bought discounted advance tickets. Also, it’s worth noting that the audience is 91% female, which is  very surprisingly, even though the gimmick of the film is a young girl loved and adored by 4 handsome rich guys. Anyway, such youth-oriented, idols-driven blockbuster are word-of-mouth-proof, and with the school holidays coming up, it’ll probably hit Hero’s 8 billion yen take, or at least fairly close to it.

One of the many achievements Hana Yori Dango will be remembered for is its ability to unseat Indiana Jones after it only spent one weekend at the top. The adventure film reportedly dropped by 57%, but that’s only because Box Office Mojo based this on the Paramount-reported opening weekend number, which included the sneak previews. In reality, the film only lost about 30% of its audience from the previous weekend if you calculate it with the 847 million yen I reported last week. After two weekends, it has already made over 2.5 billion yen, and will top both The Magic Hour and The Chronicles of Narnia by now already.

The biggest disappointment goes to Stephen Chow, whose CJ7 opened on 190 screens with a 2-day take of only 34 million yen. This is after Kung Fu Hustle opened in 2005 with 307 million yen during the New Years holiday. Also, Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah opens just one place below CJ7, but it also opened on far less screens and features a far less appealing subject.

Elsewhere, The Magic Hour still performing strongly with only 22% less audience for its 4th weekend. Even though Narnia reported only a 33% drop, there were only two people at the Thursday screening I attended last week, and it will struggle to even match half the take of the first film. Kwak Jae-Young’s Cyborg She will drop out of the top 10 by next weekend, and nowhere near the 1 billion yen mark, which must be somewhat of a disappointment for its distributor. But it must have Panasian appeal…right?

- Maybe not, because Kwak’s latest Korean film opened this past weekend all the way down at 8th place. The North Korean refugee-themed Crossing also fail to attract the audiences at 4th place and a not-very-good per-screen average. The Public Enemy Returns also lost its first place throne to Wanted, though it has already acculmulated 2.7 million admission.

More over at Korea Pop Wars.

- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! Many of the remaining Spring 2008 drama wrapped up this past week. The highest-rated final episode was of course Gokusen, which wrapped up its third season with 23.6% rating and a season average of 22.6%. This doesn’t quite reach the heights of the season premiere, which saw a 26.4% rating, and the second season’s 27.8% season average. However, it’s still the highest-rated drama of the season, unless Kimura Takuya’s CHANGE catches up in a major way. However, it’s 7th episode only saw a 20.9 rating, and its 20.9 season average means the final two episodes will have to attract major ratings in order to surpass Gokusen.

Meanwhile, Osen managed to rebound from its season low 9th episode for a 10.1%-rated finale and a season average of 9.1%. Zettai Kareshi ends with a 13.6% rating, which is higher than its premiere episode, and saw a season average of 13.2%. Ryoteki Na Kanojo (My Sassy Girl) wrapped up with just 7.2%, or a little more than half the ratings it got for its premiere, and only second-to-last lowest rated drama on the major networks.

- Meanwhile, Tokyograph has put up their preview for the Summer 2008 Japanese dramas. Much credit to their hard work.

-  Japanese media conglomerate Kadokawa has invested into a Japanese academy that will train professionals for different fields within animation. This is the first time the media company has directly invested into training talent.

- Twitch has a trailer for Kallang Roar, which may be Singapore’s first sports biopic.

- The Japanese best-seller Sono Hi no Mae ni is coming to the big screen. About a woman with terminal illness aimed to live her life to the fullest, it doesn’t sound very interesting, let alone original.

- Johnnie To’s Sparrow continues its global film festivals tour and will head next to open the Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival.

- The Mainichi Daily News has an article about American TV network ABC’s new game show/xenophobic disaster I Survived a Japanese Game Show. The producers actually have the idea half right, until this quote: “In Japan, it’s not like that — it’s shock for shock’s sake. If they feel bad, who cares?” Leave it to the Simpsons to get the idea right: “In America, they reward you for your intelligence. Here, we punish you for your ignorance.”

Oh, and Tokyomango has actually seen the show and says it makes her “want to barf”.

- After its vocalist had to take leave for throat surgery, the Nakanomori Band has annouced that it will split up, with its members going their separate ways.

- Natural City director Min Byung-chun is one of the eight people named by the Korean government to join the KOFIC.