- The Japanese box office numbers are out. Aibou topped the chart for the third week in a row, losing only about 27% of business from last last week. The drama adaptation has now made nearly 2.7 billion yen with no signs of stopping. Meanwhile, Kurosawa remake The Last Princess dropped by nearly 40%, and has made just over 500 million yen so far. If word-of-mouth doesn’t pick up on this, it may be a disappointment for Toho. However, Toho still has the successful Conan film and Shaolin Girl (nearly 1.3 billion yen) to back them up.

On the other hand, The Mist lost only about 30% of last week’s business, and The Sand Chronicles is also hanging in there, losing only about 28%. The Bucket List also managed to stay at 2nd place not only because of Charlie Wilson’s War’s soft opening, but also because it lost only about 33% from its opening week.

Remember the percentage change is only a rough figure due to fluctuating currency from week to week.

- It’s Japanese Oricon charts time! This week, KAT-TUN sees their latest single debut at number 1, making it their 7th consecutive number 1 single, while Ayaka’s latest single could only debut at 6th place. On the albums chart, Superfly’s debut album debuts at number one, while actor Yutaka Mizutani’s self-cover album debuts at number 2. More at Tokyograph.

- The name My Sassy Girl just doesn’t mean much anymore: While the Japanese drama version is flopping on the ratings chart, the American remake is now sent directly to video without a theatrical release.

- The European Union is reporting that they are seizing less pirated entertainment than before, and such goods from China also fell by 20% (from a whopping 93% the year before). However, that could just mean that people are finding better ways to get them in or not getting caught.

- Variety reports that Hong Kong director Yui Lik-Wai’s Plastic City now has Hong Kong’s Sundream Pictures and Japan’s Bitter End on board, while Hong Kong’s Ming Pao adds that it stars Hong Kong’s Anthony Wong and Japan’s Jo Odagiri as father and son.

- Meanwhile, John Woo announced at Cannes that his next movie will be the Chinese epic 1949, chronicling events that occurred at the end of World War II and the Chinese civil war. While it’ll supposedly be a love story, the fact that Woo is trying to finish the film by the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC should tell you that it’s a China-approved love story.

- Also, a British film following the rise of Mao Zedong is in the making……with Vietnamese soldiers. This movie may not be China-approved.

- It’s reviews time! Hollywood Reporter’s Maggie Lee chimes in on Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, while Variety’s Leslie Felperin has a review of Possession, the Hollywood remake of the Korean film Addicted.

- While we’re on the topic of remakes, Dreamworks really went through the old inventory and manage to buy up the remake rights to the 2003 hit Japanese film Yomigaeri. By the way, the Dreamworks-produced A Tale of Two Sisters remake is now called The Uninvited - the name of another Korean horror movie.

- Apparently, the critical and commercial failure of that Genghis Khan movie really got to Haruki Kadokawa’s head….now I’ll go swing my wooden sword a few thousand times.

- Tartan USA, who brought Oldboy and the Election films to America, has sadly closed down.

- Koizora, based on the internet novel about the trials and tribulations of a young Japanese girl, is now going to TV after the film was one of the biggest theatrical hits last year. The director and the production crew from the film are returning, though the cast will not.

- As expected, The Chronicles of Narnia opened first place at the Korean box office. However, as Korea Pop Wars reports, the sequel opened slightly lower than the first film. Meanwhile, Speed Racer didn’t experience a real free fall, already having 745,000 admissions after two weekends, meaning it should move past the million admission mark. Iron Man continues to perform strongly with 3.7 million admissions after three weekends. Full chart over at Twitch.

- The full list of films to be featured at this year’s New York Asian Film Festival is out, and you can find a full list via Tokyograph. Also, Subway Cinema’s Brian offers his thoughts on this year’s picks.

- The Oriental Daily reported it, and now Variety’s Derek Elly confirms it in his review: The new Ashes of Time Redux isn’t much different from the original film in terms of structure and length, although the new score seems to make a world of difference.

- A new English-subtitled trailer for John Woo’s Red Cliff is now online. However, like the trailer for The Good, the Bad, and The Weird yesterday, there’s no guarantee how long it’ll be online. Besides, it didn’t really get me any more excited for the film.

- That was fas, after Thelma Aoyama’s “Soba ni Iru ne” broke the record for reaching one million cell phone downloads in the quickest time about a month ago, previous record holder GReeeen came right back and recaptured the record with their latest song.

- Film buyers, time to add another festival on your schedule: The popular Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival is launching its own film market for genre films. Question is, are there that many films for sale these days?

- The first posters for Derek Yee’s The Shinjuku Incident, featuring Jackie Chan in his first dramatic/non-action-oriented role, showed up at the Cannes film market. Also, someone in the comment section revealed that the film may be due for a ban in China because it involves the Japanese yakuzas, even though the film is a co-production that filmed in China.

- Those who don’t get who the newly popular Japanese male trio Shuuchishin is can get a brief explanation here. Japan has a thing for gimmick pop, and it looks like this is one of them.

- Lastly, the American sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live did a Japanese take on The Office that’s funny at first, but only ended up growing annoying as it went on. Still, at least the Japanese was correct despite the heavy accent. And Ricky Gervais is still brilliant.

- With no major opener this past weekend, Hong Kong box office was fairly quiet this past weekend. The apocalyptic thriller Doomsday performed the best, making HK$330,000 from 23 screens on Sunday for a 4-day weekend total of HK$1.25 million, despite being slapped with the category-III rating. Of course, Iron Man ruled for the third weekend in a row, making HK$724,000 from 41 screens on Sunday. After 19 days, the superhero film has already made HK$19.62 million. However, with Indiana Jones coming this week, it’s not likely to surpass the HK$25 million mark.

Meanwhile, What Happens in Vegas seemed to have been fueled by strong word-of-mouth, retaining much of its business for a second-place finish. On Sunday, the romantic comedy made HK$507,000 from 29 screens for a 11-day total of HK$4.97 million. As counter-programming, it may have a solid chance of hitting HK$10 million. On the other hand, Speed Racer suffered a far worse fate, making only HK$145,000 from 37 screens, and it has only made a depressing HK$2.53 million after 11 days.

Be Kind, Rewind did a lot better over the weekend, making HK$221,000 from just 11 screens for a 4-day total of HK$710,000. Hong Kong continues to prove their love for dog movies with A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies, which made another HK$317,000 from 24 screens for a 18-day total of HK$6.65 million. Too bad only one screen in Hong Kong (I think) is playing the original Japanese version. The dark comedy/horror film Teeth also did OK, making HK$128,000 from 8 screens for a 4-day total of HK$500,000.

- In Japanese cinema attendance figures, only Charlie Wilson’s War hit the top 10, debuting at 3rd place. This bumps everything below it down by at least one place, including The Last Princess, Shaolin Girl, and Crayon Chin-chan dropped from 6th place all the way to 9th. However, The Mist and The Sand Chronicles remain unaffected, staying at 7th and 8th place, respectively. More when the numbers are out.

- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! As I reported on Tuesday, Kimura Takuya’s much-anticipated drama CHANGE started a little disappointingly with just a 23.9% rating. Meanwhile, Muri Na Renai finally found its way up, getting a 6.9% rating after the season-low 6.2% in the previous week. The same applied for Ryoteki Na Kanojo (aka My Sassy Girl), which went up to 8.0% for this week’s episode after last week’s season-low 7% rating. In fact, only Kimi Hannin Janai yo ne is the only drama that reached a new season low this week.

Meanwhile, comic adaptation Rookies have recovered from its disappointing opening and scored a season-high rating of 16.4% rating this week. Hachi One Diver also recovered quite well, scoring a 11% rating for this week’s episode. Gokusen, Osen, Puzzle, and Hokaben all recovered slightly, scoring 25.3%, 9.5%, 10.2%, and 7.8%, respectively. Lastly, Last Friends is still doing well with a 17.2% rating for this week’s after scoring a season-high 19.9% last week.

-  While Hayao Miyasaki’s Ponyo on a Cliff is poised to take the top spot in this year Japan box office, Mark Schilling over at Variety also looks at a few other movies that may hit it big at the Japanese box office this summer. Believe it or not, Speed Racer is one of them.

- In light of last week’s earthquake in China, the government has set a three days’ mourning period, effective stopping all “public recreational activities” for three days, including variety shows and even cinema screenings. Hong Kong is also suspending the nightly laser show at Victoria Harbor, which sucks if you’re a tourist and you’re only in Hong Kong for these three days.

- Since I found it, I’ve already watched it 4 times: It’s the trailer for Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, The Bad, The Weird. Am I overzealous of thinking already that this can either be the most spectacular success or the most spectacular failure of 2008 Korean cinema? Anyway, time to pull out that A Bittersweet Life DVD again.

Note: The link from Kaiju Shakedown is already down. You can catch it here, before it gets deleted.

- It’s reviews time! Variety’s Derek Elley has two reviews from Cannes: First his not-positive-but-not-negative review of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, then his somewhat positive review of Jia Zhangke’s 24 City.

Also, Midnight Eye has been updating quite a bit, including reviews of Fine Totally Fine and Tokyo Sonata, so keeping checking that front page.

- With the Ashes of Time Redux cut having premiered at Cannes already, Grady Hendrix looks at what are some of the already known facts about it. Also, Oriental Daily already covered the premiere today, and reported not seeing much changes except for the new score and some color correction.

-Veteran Japanese pop group Southern All Stars (the originator of many hit Cantopop songs in the 80s and the 90s) are announcing an indefinite hiatus to start after their 30th anniversary concert.

- While Toshiba and Gaga Usen are closing shop as film distributors in Japan, a new distributor backed by record label Avex has popped up, and it will concentrate on directors rather than stars. “Cast and script quality are not enough,” the label’s new head says. Ouch.

- I didn’t see this coming: Actress Manami Konishi’s first single, the theme song for the Takeshi Kaneshiro-starrer Accuracy of Death, has hit the number 1 spot in Taiwan ahead of the film’s opening. Is it for the film, or is Konishi really that popular in Taiwan?

- Beast Cops was on TV this morning, and I was wondering what has happened to Gordon Chan? After finishing the latest Donnie Yen star vehicle Painted Skin, the Hong Kong director will be directing the film version of the classic video game King of Fighters. Worse of all, he’s now known in the West only as the director of The Medallion. How far the greats have fallen.

- Death Note star Kenichi Matsuyama has won the Grand Prize of the first annual Eigakan Taisho, which gathered 6,000 votes for Japan’s favorite actor or actress. Good for him, now his non-Death Note films just have to do better.

- It’s reviews time! First we have Justin Chang’s review of the omnibus film Tokyo!, which had its premiere in Cannes. Chang also reviews the hit Korean film The Chaser. Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has a review of Katsuhito Ishii’s Yama no Anata, which seems to be a shot-for-shot remake of the 1937 film Anma to Onna.

- This year’s Cannes market has quite a few two-part films, and that includes John Woo’s expensive upcoming epic Red Cliff, even though the film will be sold as one film outside of Asia.

- Director Herman Yau is now shooting his first film in 2008 since last year’s On the Edge, Gong Tau and Whispers and Moans. The crime film, made under Universe, stars Shawn Yue, Elaine Kong, Paul Wong, Jun Kung, Chapman To, and Ada Choi as a mob boss.

- I report this because I’m a Shiina Ringo fan - the rock star will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of her major label debut with not only two release, but also a concert in November. Man, I wish I can go to that.

- The aspiring film series about the Tokyo Tsukiji fish market (first installment coming in June) doesn’t have to worry about moving shooting locations for a while - the planned relocation is looking at a 3 years’ delay.

With Cannes underway, I’m trying to stay away from one acquisition news after another, though there are naturally always interesting things going on throughout the festival.

- On that note, a Hong Kong distributor has picked up the controversial Japanese documentary Yasukuni for international sales, and is currently being screened at the Cannes market.

- I’m sure this will open up more and more studies about youths today - A survey reports that 95% of Japanese fifth graders own a game console. Even more humorous is that the variety show London Hearts has been voted as the show parents don’t want their kids watching for the 5th year in a row.

- I reported earlier that ex-Morning Musume member Ai Kago will be in a Hong Kong film, and now it’s been revealed that the film co-stars Vanness Wu and Sammo Hung. Put in Daniel Lee, and you’ve got a trifecta.

- The Cannes market again attracted attention to Bollywood, whose studios have been branching at markets such as this.

- Poor Koda Kumi just can’t catch a break - the pop star recently returned to work on her concert tour after a suspension for making insensitive comments on the radio, but now she’s no longer as the spokeswoman for Kirin, who decided not to renew the contract. She will now replaced by Kyoko Fukada.

- It’s disappointments all around. Let’s start with the Hong Kong box office. Since yesterday was a public holiday in Hong Kong, the grosses I got are from Monday. As expected, Speed Racer really crashed and burned, losing 8 screens after Thursday’s disastrous opening. After 4 days, the Wachowski’s live-action anime film made only HK$1.91 million. In comparison, Iron Man made 9.2 million over the first 5 days last weekend. A ton of theaters in Hong Kong are already taking the film down to 2-3 shows a day by Thursday.

Meanwhile, What Happens in Vegas also beat Speed Racer here, making HK$646,000 from 29 screens on Monday for a 5-day total of HK$2.59 million. Iron Man ruled for the second weekend in a row, making HK$1.35 million from 47 screens for a 13-day total of HK$16.51 million. Japanese puppy movie A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies is bringing in the families, making another HK$688,000 from 25 screens for a 12-day total of HK$5.43 million. The Other Boleyn Girl enjoyed a strong weekend, making HK$182,000 from just 8 screens for a HK$1.86 million 12-day total. My Wife is a Gambling Maestro is actually still in the game, with a 12-day total of just HK$2.46 million. Also, the doggie documentary This Darling Life didn’t do so well, with only HK$300,000 from 8 screens over 5 days.

- In Korean box office, Iron Man is already up to 2.8 million admissions after two weekends, while Speed Racer did so-so with over 400,000 admissions on opening weekend. More over at Korea Pop Wars.

However, as Grady Hendrix writes, from a Time’s photo flub to Speed Racer’s flopping, Rain just can’t seem to get any respect.

The only place where Speed Racer can try and rescue itself is Japan, where the film will open in September. They’ve already gotten a popular boy band member to dub the main character.

- SMAP’s Kimura Takuya must be a little disappointed too, with his latest Monday 9pm (Japanese drama’s most popular time slot) drama CHANGE scoring only an 23.9% rating for its first episode. This is the lowest-rated premiere for a KimuTaku drama since The Sleeping Forest in 1998 with a 21.3% rating for its first episode, though that drama did have a 30.8% rating for its finale. Perhaps word-of-mouth will eventually help pull it up, but right now, it’s losing to Gokusen, and Fuji TV definitely doesn’t want that to happen.

Actually, the trailer looks quite good. Hell, even the Madonna song works.

- While a third place opening is kind of a disappointment for the Japanese blockbuster The Last Princess, Eiga Consultant reminds us that its opening was still 114% of the opening for the last Kurosawa remake Tsubaki Sanjuro, and that one just barely did over 1 billion yen, so there is still hope for it.

- Oh dear, the Back Dorm Boys, essentially two Chinese guys that pretended to be as talented as real pop stars, are already starring in their third movie, directed by the writer/star of Pavilion of Women. Never heard of it? Keep it that way.

- Takashi Miike continues his slow journey into the mainstream, as he is once again taking the director’s seat for the sequel to last year’s hit comic adaptation Crows Zero.

- The Korean Film Archive opened a film museum and a new cinematheque that will be showing rare old films and just plain ol’ rare films. Know what the “cinematheque” in Hong Kong is playing right now? Iron Man and Speed Racer.

- F*ckedGaijin introduces us to the work of Japanese director Yasuyuki Kobota, who has uploaded his own award-winning commercials and short films on Youtube.

- Utada Hikaru’s latest album Heart Station has finally surpassed the one million mark in sales, marking her 6th consecutive album to do so. My review of the album is here.

- A Singaporean company is joining onboard the production of the new Japanese-France co-produced animated film Yona Yona Penguin. Coincidentally, the budget has just been boosted by USD$1 million.

- Hindu groups in India want the Hollywood comedy The Love Guru banned in the country simply because it can potentially hurt the Hindu community. No, none of these guys have actually seen the movie yet.

- Variety’s Ronnie Schieb has a review for the Chinese film Lost Indulgence, starring Karen Mok and Eason Chan.

- There was a public holiday in Hong Kong today, so no box office numbers. Maybe tomorrow night.

- We DO have, however, the cinema attendance figures for Japan. Aibou - The Movie took first place, as expected. What wasn’t expected was the Hollywood comedy The Bucket List got second place, and The Last Princess could only muster a third place opening, which may be a little disappointing considering its blockbuster status. Also, The Mist opened at 7th place. More when the numbers are out.

- We also have last week’s Japanese drama ratings. The biggest surprise is the sudden boost for Last Friends, which saw last week’s rating jumped from the previous week’s 15.9% all the way up to 19.9%. Meanwhile, Muri Na Renai continues to stumble, this week down to 6.2%, while Ryoteki na Kanojo (aka My Sassy Girl) continues its fall with only a 7% rating for this week’s episode. On the other hand, Gokusen got a bit of a bump, scoring a 25% rating for Saturday’s episode, and Fuji’s new Saturday 11pm drama 81 Diver got a bit of a rebound as well with a 7.6 rating this week.

All Japanese drama sypnosis at Tokyograph.

- (via Ryuganji) Sai Yoichi has certainly been in the public eye a lot recently, and his latest appearance is in a discussion with Yasukuni director Li Ying as the head of the Director’s Guild of Japan.

- Not only will Gegege No Kitaro see its movie sequel this summer, there will also be an animated movie coming this December, and there will be six different theatrical versions of the film, depending on the region. Intriguing, but will it give extra incentive for people to buy a ticket?

-Kaiju Shakedown’s Grady Hendrix has revealed that the limited American screenings of Japanese film Death Note will be unfortunately be dubbed in English.

- The Kimura Takuya drama CHANGE is premiering tonight, and Fuji TV actually wants ratings so badly that they’re ready to give away a car for it.

- Japanese young audiences are apparently so poor at reading that subtitlers are now struggling to make subtitles that everyone can understand. It’s depressing that Japanese kids today don’t even know what The Soviet Union is and who the Nazi are.

- It’s Taiwanese music charts time! Soda Green’s live CD tops the G-Music Charts in its first week, taking up over 10% of total sales. Meanwhile, Korean boy band Super Junior’s latest debuts at 2nd place, taking over 5% of total sales. June Chu’s debut album arrive on the chart at 8th place with just under 1% of total sales. Korean pop singer Jang Nara’s Mandarin album could only muster a 13th place debut with 0.75% of sales, but she still did better than Japanese pop duo WaT, whose latest debuted all the way down at 18th place with just 0.53% of total sales.

- This week’s Teleview column is all about Change, the upcoming Kimura Takuya drama where he plays an elementary school teacher who becomes the Prime Minister of Japan. Sounds like a real winner.

- Ryuganji has translated another interesting piece from Sai Yoichi, turns out he wrote an even more scathing piece about the making of Soo before the interview that Ryuganji translated about a week and a half ago.

- It’s trailers time! Twitch brings us all three of them today. First, it’s another trailer for Tokyo Gore Police that’s still, well, gory.  Then it’s a trailer for God’s Puzzle, a teen love story that you would’ve never guessed it’s made by Takashi “Ichi The Killer” Miike.  Lastly, there’s a trailer for Ryuichi Hiroki’s Your Friends, which I missed at the Hong Kong International Film Festival and will not even open in Japan until end of June.

- Korean director Na Hong-Jin is already planning for his next film after his megahit thriller The Chaser. The Murderer will be about a man forced to become a murderer to overcome starvation. Any cannibalism involved?

- The controversial documentary Yasukuni has reached the Kansai area after a week of sold-out screenings in Tokyo. The theater in Tokyo has also extended the film’s run after it was only set to play it for a week.

- A new powerful documentary about the issue of forced comfort women premiered at the Jeonju Film Festival this past week and presents evidence that clearly prove the existence of such women even outside of Japan and Korea.

- JJ Sonny Chiba (or the artist formerly known as Sonny Chiba) will take once again take on 7-Color Mask, a TV series role that Chiba took on as his screen debut all the way back in the 60s. After the death of the original writer last month, Chiba has decided to fulfill the actor’s wish by producing and starring in the film version of the series.

- The San Sebastian Film Festival this year will include a retrospective of old black and white Japanese film noir from Japan.

- Jason Gray shows us some of the promotional material Japan is seeing for Hayao Miyazaki’s latest, which is nice since we overseas get damn near nothing to see on the internet.

- Oh, there’s a new post at the spin-off.

- Let’s look at the Thursday opening day box office. The Wachowski’s Speed Racer is a major flop, making only HK$230,000 from 50 screens. Judging from the turnout at the screening I went to, it’s not going to do too much better this weekend. But honestly, it’s not that bad of a movie. Meanwhile, “counter-programming” romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas opened higher with HK$268,000 from 29 screens. Lastly, the doggie documenatary This Darling Life opened on just 8 screens with just under HK$30,000 on opening day. More on Monday with the weekend numbers.

- Thanks to Mr. Texas over at Eiga Consultant, we have some definitive numbers on how the controversial documentary Yasukuni did in its first weekend. In that one theater in Shibuya, the film attracted 3429 people over the first 4 days of screening, and with 8 showings a day in a theater that seats a little more than 100 people, this means every show was sold out. With screenings happening successfully without major protests, Mr. Texas also writes that those theaters that canceled the screenings must be hitting themselves on the head now.

- It’s reviews time! This week we play Rashomon with the Japanese blockbuster film The Last Princess. First it’s an all-out rave from The Daily Yomiuri’s Ikuko Kitagawa, who seemed to have really loved it. On the other hand, Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has his review as well, but he doesn’t quite like it so much.

-Former UFO director Lee Chi-Ngai finally has a new film, this time it’s a dance movie produced by companies from Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and Singapore, starring actors from Japan and Korea. The dancing film will be released early next year.

- Twitch’s Stefan brings to our attention a Singaporean film about….gangsters?

-  Meanwhile, Variety brings to our attention two Korean-other country co-production efforts: Korean and American companies are teaming up for The Aquarium of Pyongyang, about a family forced into a North Korean prison camp. Also, Beautiful Days director Kim Moon Saeng is adapting a popular French novel into a part-3D animation, part-life-action film produced by the two countries.

- While the movie version of the hit book Homeless Chugakusai just started shooting this March and won’t come out until October, Fuji TV just took a big leap ahead of it by announcing a TV drama version that will start shooting this month and begin airing in July.

- We’ve reported a few times about famous Hong Kong screenwriter Ivy Ho’s directorial debut Claustrophobia. The film, starring Karena Lam and Ekin Cheng, will get its premiere at Cannes…….but not at the festival, just at the market taking place at the festival.

- Finally got some Japanese box office numbers in, although it only covers Saturday and Sunday, which was the middle of the Golden Week holidays. As a result, most of the movies on the chart saw a rise from their previous weekend’s gross. For example, Shaolin Girl saw a 20% boost and has now grossed 715 million yen, despite a somewhat weak opening last weekend. But of course, the biggest boosts went to the kid-friendly films such as Conan (20.3%), Crayon Shin-Chan (27.7%), and The Spiderwick Chronicles (17.7%). However, the Masked Rider movie took a drop instead, losing 23.4% of business despite not losing any screens. Hollywood flick 10,000 B.C. also lost business, presumably because theaters put the more popular films on bigger screens and moved this to smaller ones.

- With its first hit in two years, Toei is now crossing their fingers on God’s Puzzle, Takashi Miike’s latest, to rebound them from what was their worst fiscal year in 20 years.

- Meanwhile, The Forbidden Kingdom has done solid business in China, making 150 million yuan since its release in late April already, partly thanks to the holiday last week.

- Things are not doing so well in Korea, where theaters saw April’s performance as the lowest monthly attendance figures since April 2003.

- However, local performance is not stopping them from taking their award-nominated films for a special showing in Japan.

- Earlier in the week, I mentioned that the Chinese distributor for the new Donnie fantasy film Painted Skin already estimated a final box office take simply based on screen counts. Now, the investors are so confident that not only did they already plan two sequels, they already assume they’re successful enough to raise the budget and get Zhang Ziyi for the second movie.

- The Asia Pacific Screen Awards, which had its first year in Australia last year, is now adding an academy, with all the nominees from last year’s awards being included with voting powers for this year’s awards.

-  There’s a short teaser for the omnibus movie Tokyo!, though it doesn’t really show anything from any of the three films, which will get their premiere at Cannes this year.

- A Spanish film buyer has bought their first Asian film, and…it’s Taiwanese torture porn?

-  Hollywood Reporter’s Maggie Lee turns in a review for Sylvia Chang’s Run Papa Run.

-  Chinese president Hu Jintao told Japanese reporters that his favorite Japanese TV drama is the popular 80s morning drama Oshin. It would’ve been great if he said anything with Kimura Takuya in it, but alas, that was not to be.

- My boy Jero has now joined the ranks of popular Japanese pop stars - he’ll be the spokesman for a new line of canned coffee.